Étienne De La Vaissière

He is teaching economic and social history of early medieval Central Asia, before and after the arrival of Islam. He is a specialist of the Sogdian culture, its traders and nobility, and also of the nomadic invasions of the 4th-5th centuries. Some of his theories are:

• a depiction of the network which gave to the image of "Silk Road" its only historical reality during the Early Middle Ages
• the textual proof that the Huns and the Xiongnu are indeed synonymous
• a shift of two centuries in the history of Eastern Manichaeism (it arrived in China in the 6th century)
• a reinterpretation of Abbasid 9th century political history pushing the birth of the mamluk phenomenon to the 860s-870s

• Histoire des marchands sogdiens, De Boccard, Paris, 2002
  • New edition corrected and expanded, 2004
  • English translation Sogdian traders : a history, Handbook of Uralic studies v.10, Leiden, 2005, ISBN 978-90-04-14252-7
• Samarcande et Samarra. Elites d'Asie centrale dans l'empire abbasside, Peeters, Louvain, 2007
• With Éric Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Paris, 2005
• With Matteo Compareti, Royal Nawruz in Samarkand, supplement of the Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 2006
• With M. Ghose "Ephtalites", in Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2007.[1]
• Islamisation de l'Asie centrale. Processus locaux d'acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, Peeters, Louvain, 2008.

• de La Vaissière, Étienne (2003). "Is There a "Nationality of the Hephtalites"?". Bulletin of the Asia Institute. 17: 119–132. ISSN 0890-4464. JSTOR 24049310.
• de La Vaissière, Étienne (2005). "Huns et Xiongnu". Central Asiatic Journal. 49 (1): 3–26. ISSN 0008-9192. JSTOR 41928374.
• de La Vaissière, Étienne (2006). "Les Turcs, rois du monde à Samarcande". Rivista degli studi orientali. 78: 147–162. ISSN 0392-4866. JSTOR 41913394.