This paper concerns the cartography of Afghanistan in antiquity using the example of Ortospana, a toponym that is presumably a corruption of *Oryospana, the ancient name of Ghazni. In order to cover all the hypotheses involved in this study, the itinerary of Alexander will also be revisited from southern and northern Afghanistan to Taxila through the crossroads of Alexandria in the Caucasus and along the Kabul River.
Svetlana M. Goršenina, Francophone travellers in Central Asia in the years 1860 to 1932. This article constitutes a preliminary report of research on the francophone historiography of Central Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, the CNRS team on Hellenism and Oriental Civilizations and the French Institute for Central Asian Studies. A large amount of documentation (from archives, bibliographic resources, photographic archives) was collected for nearly all of the francophone travellers, scholars, and photographers who went to Russian (later Soviet) Central Asia between the beginning of Russian colonization and the closing of the frontiers in the 1930s. These travellers, with a few exceptions, fell into an unwarranted oblivion, or were presented in the Soviet historiography uniquely under the aspect of colonialism or espionage. This study attempts to reconstitute the historical environment of these travellers (their educational background, their personal motivations and those of their sponsors, the manner in which they were welcomed by the local authorities, etc.), as well as the political situation in Central Asia, particularly from the point of view of French interests in the region (commercial activities, political and economic information missions ordered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1918-1922, etc.).
