The reading list seems to be empty for this region on the ask historians wiki, and I'm having a hard time finding a good book that covers what I'm looking for.
I'm looking for a book that covers the history and cultures of the people of Central Asia during the time of the Silk Road at what seems to be its height in the 4th to 8th centuries (I could be wrong about that of course). I'm particularly interested in the period before Islam, and I'd like to learn about the religions and cultures that mixed in the area before the dominance of Islam.
Thank you for any suggestions.
Creating a Central Asia book list (and improving the Russian one) are definitely to-do projects on my mind....
Anyway, the two books that come to mind for the period you're focusing on are Christopher Beckwith's Empires of the Silk Road and Svat Soucek's History of Inner Asia. The former covers a very broad swathe of history (bronze age to modern era), but does devote some chapter space to the period and topic in question. Soucek's work mostly covers this period in its first chapter before continuing on to the arrival of Islam and the succeeding periods of history.
It's a bit questionable whether the 4th - 8th centuries are actually the "height" of the Silk Road - the trading networks had a few waxings and wanings, and the period in question is between the fall of the Kushan Empire and the Han and the Arab Invasions, so most of the history of that period would focus on the Kök Turk Khanate, with the Tang Dynasty establishing itself in the 7th century.