Islam, Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (15th - early 20th Centuries) (Veroffentlichungen Zur Iranistik) 9783700173366, 3700173369

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NICCOLÒ PIANCIOLA AND PAOLO SARTORI (EDS.) ISLAM, SOCIETY AND STATES ACROSS THE QAZAQ STEPPE (18TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

ÖSTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE SITZUNGSBERICHTE, 844. BAND

VERÖFFENTLICHUNGEN ZUR IRANISTIK HERAUSGEGEBEN VON BERT G. FRAGNER UND FLORIAN SCHWARZ NR. 72

NICCOLÒ PIANCIOLA AND PAOLO SARTORI (EDS.)

ISLAM, SOCIETY AND STATES ACROSS THE QAZAQ STEPPE (18TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURIES)

Vorgelegt von w. M. BERT G. FRAGNER in der Sitzung am 14. Juni 2013

Cover: "Volost administrators from the Ural'sk region with Qazaq students of the Ural'sk secondary military school (1901)", courtesy of the journal DANA.kaz.

Diese Publikation wurde einem anonymen, internationalen peer-review Verfahren unterzogen This publication had been anonymously reviewed by international peers

Die verwendete Papiersorte ist aus chlorfrei gebleichtem Zellstoff hergestellt, frei von säurebildenden Bestandteilen und alterungsbeständig.

Alle Rechte vorbehalten ISBN 978-3-7001-7336-6 Copyright © 2013 by Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien Druck: Prime Rate kft., Budapest http://hw.oeaw.ac.at/7336-6 http://verlag.oeaw.ac.at Printed and bound in the EU

CONTENTS Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... 7 Niccolò Pianciola and Paolo Sartori Introduction: Towards a Connected History of the Qazaq Steppe ............................ 9 Devin DeWeese The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq from the 16th to 18th Century ............. 27 Alfrid Bustanov Notes on the YasavƯya and NaqshbandƯya in Western Siberia in the 17th – Early 20th Centuries ........................................................................................ 69 Tomohiko Uyama The Changing Religious Orientation of Qazaq Intellectuals in the Tsarist Period: SharƯҵa, Secularism, and Ethics ................................................. 95 Paul W. Werth The Qazaq Steppe and Islamic Administrative Exceptionalism: A Comparison with Buddhism Among Buriats ...................................................... 119 Anna Afanasyeva Qazaq Religious Beliefs in the Writings of Russian Doctors during the Imperial Age (1731–1917) .................................................................... 143 Yuriy Malikov Disadvantaged Neophytes of the Privileged Religion: Why Qazaqs Did Not Become Christians .............................................................. 181 Allen J. Frank Sufis, Scholars, and Divanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the Works of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï ...................................................................... 213 Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov SharƯҵa for the Bolsheviks? FatvƗs on Land Reform in Early Soviet Central Asia................................................................................................. 233 David Brophy Correcting Transgressions in the House of Islam: Yang Zengxin’s Buguozhai wendu on Xinjiang’s Muslims ................................... 267 Niccolò Pianciola Interpreting an Insurgency in Soviet Kazakhstan: The OGPU, Islam and Qazaq “Clans” in Suzak, 1930 .......................................... 297 Index....................................................................................................................... 341

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The papers which appear in this volume were first presented at a conference on the social and religious history of Central Eurasia held at the Cini Foundation in Venice in October 2009. The event was organized by the Institute of Social and Religious History (Vicenza) thanks to a generous grant from ENI, to which goes our gratitude. We would like to express our warmest thank to Gian Luca Bonora (University of Bologna/L.N. Gumilëv Eurasian National University, Astana), who organized the conference with us, and who has been a valuable companion over years of collaboration on different projects at the Institute. We would also like to thank the Secretary of the Institute of Social and Religious History, Giorgio Cracco, along with Francesca Lomastro, Sara Bordignon, and the whole staff of the Institute in Vicenza, for their indispensable support in organizing the event. The process of editing the book has been long: we are grateful to the authors for their commitment to the project, and to our colleagues who served as anonymous referees throughout the revision process. For different reasons, it has been impossible to include in this volume all the papers presented at the conference. Nevertheless, we would like to thank Meruert Abuseitova, Juliette Cadiot, Aftandil Erkinov, Ashirbek Muminov, Saypualla Mollaqanaghatuli, Bruce Privratsky, and Tamara Volkova for their presentations and contributions during discussions. Irina Erofeeva was unable in the end to attend the conference, but we would like to thank her and Laura Ertaevna Masanova of the “Kazakhstan Scientific Research Institute on Problems of the Cultural Heritage of the Nomads” for their support and collaboration in Almaty. Finally, we would like to thank Florian Schwarz, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for supporting the book project, and Bettina Hofleitner for her enormous contribution towards the process of turning the manuscript into a book. Niccolò Pianciola Paolo Sartori

Introduction: Towards a Connected History of the Qazaq Steppe NICCOLÒ PIANCIOLA AND PAOLO SARTORI Hong Kong – Vienna

The present volume brings together a selection of studies that were first read at an international symposium held in Venice in October 2009. In convening this event, we sought to map out some new lines of inquiry into the social history of the Qazaq steppe from the early modern to the early Soviet period. We term “Qazaq steppe” the region of central Eurasia inhabited by Qazaq communities, at the centre of which we find the steppes of present-day Kazakhstan as well as areas now belonging to Xinjiang, Siberia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In the period following the first half of the 18th century, sources consistently described the Qazaqs as inhabiting a residual space between Central Asian Muslim principalities and the tsarist and Chinese empires. The cultural construction of the Qazaq steppe was evidently a product of predominantly settled societies of Islamic Central Asia, and it has been usually defined more by what it was not than by what it was. Moreover, it was mainly in sedentary areas that practices deemed representative of the steppe culture were acted out, narrated and recorded. As a result, urban milieus and complex social groupings also necessarily partake of the cultural area in question.1 The symposium was based on the premise that opening new lines of inquiry would necessarily call for a close reading and an assessment of a wide range of sources. Proceeding from this, we included in our purview not only texts crafted in vernacular languages and “speaking Muslim”—that is, the sources representing what with little latitude we might refer to as Islamic cultural traditions—such as hagiographic literature, the memoirs of Qazaq 1

Allen J. Frank and Mirkasym A. Usmanov, “Introduction”, in: QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe (1770–1912), eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005), xv.

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literati, and the press; instead, we also deemed it useful to explore the cultures of documentation of the bureaucracies of the non-Muslim majority states ruling over the Qazaq steppe and thus examined the records produced by the officials of the tsarist and the Qing empires, the Chinese Republic, and the Soviet Union. The stratification and the blending of writing cultures and practices of documentation are salient features of the border regions of empires; and Central Asia is no exception in this respect. The imperial subjects of Western and Eastern Turkestan clearly moved across cultural jurisdictions and exploited the various available documentary regimes 2 to achieve their own purposes. They clearly did so in compliance with the formalistic prescriptions of Islamic epistolography and bureaucratic practice, now by acquiring a bill securing entitlements expressed in the formulaic repertoire of Islamic notary tradition, now by appealing to the provincial commandant in imperial bureaucratese, thus pandering to Russian tastes. Nor did the politics of documentation always reflect one writing culture alone. Rather, practices of documentation could inhabit parallel worlds; the Islamic hagiographies and juristic texts that were produced for Muslim consumption alone in Russian and early-Soviet Central Asia are cases in point. However, one might well presume that the bureaucratic practices of the polities that ruled in Central Asia between the 19th and the 20th centuries must have exerted some kind of influence also on the compositional genres that one would perceive as typical of a Muslim region such as the Qazaq steppe.3 Talking of writing cultures in a pastoral region such as Central Asia might sound counterintuitive, but wrongly so; it is a fact that the pastoral societies of central Eurasia have been widely described by outsiders including imperial officials, diplomatic emissaries, madrasa students, and traders. This is a structural feature of the foundational basis for the study of the region, one which necessarily poses a number of problems for the historians 2

3

We are drawing here on Derek K. Peterson and Giacomo Macola, “Homespun Historiography and the Academic Profession”, in: Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa, eds. D.K. Peterson and G. Macola (Athens, OH, 2009), 8. It appears that Orientalists like Nikolai Katanov and Wilhelm Radloff acted as informants of QurbƗn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ while he was writing the TavƗrƯkh-i khamsa-yi sharqƯ; see Nathan Light, “Muslim Histories of China: Historiography across Boundaries in Central Eurasia,” in: Frontiers and Boundaries: Encounters on China’s Margins, eds. Zsombor Rajkai and Ildikó Bellér-Hann (Wiesbaden, 2012), 160, fn. 43.

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who choose religious practice and discourses as the main objects of their inquiry. Though the paucity of (or the overtly bureaucratized and hence difficult access to) sources in situ might represent an issue for the historian to consider, grappling with the history of the religious landscape of Muslim pastoral communities such as the Qazaqs requires more than just expanding the available informational basis; it also calls for the application of a dedicated framework within which to interpret the data that were produced outside of the Qazaq steppe. We thus have selected out and edited for publication a handful of essays that best reflect the delicate work of coordinating and cross-checking etic and emic categories in writing about the history of Islamic institutions and Muslim culture in the history of the region. For all this, however, the picture which emerges from the book is still one of blank spots and dark corners rather than a coherent and conclusive narrative: the reader will find that in-depth studies on specific Islamic devotional practices as well as detailed inquiries into tsarist confessional policies applied in the Central Asian steppe are coupled with an impression that the student of the social and religious history of the pastoral regions of Islamic Central Asia still gropes in the dark over missing records. In seeking a remedy for this state of affairs, we looked across the steppe and commissioned a few contributions reflecting Islamic cultural practices as well as forms of governance over Muslim communities in the neighboring areas of Siberia, Xinjiang, and Uzbekistan. In asking for such chapters, we purposefully instigated the production of three case-studies of comparative potential, which might be of exemplary character for future inquiries into the social as well as the cultural history of the core Qazaq territory. We are aware that in taking such a course of action and experimenting with the cultural connectivity4 of Central Asia we are at risk of producing a bricolage of studies with little thematic unity. Nevertheless, we hope that in piecing these essays together we are able to show that the Qazaq steppe should be viewed not as a self-contained and clearly bounded cultural area but as an enmeshed part of a larger regional framework, best explored through the prism of transnational forms of governance, trade networks, and cultural encounters. Given these premises, it is arguable that the final outcome of a new season of 4

Horden, Peregrine, and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000).

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studies will not be an “Islamic history of the Qazaqs,” but instead a firmer positioning of the Muslims inhabiting the steppe inside the networks and debates of the larger Muslim world. In what remains of the present introduction we purposefully limit ourselves to discuss the practices, the discourses, and the forms of authority which were deemed “Islamic” by the inhabitants of the Qazaq steppe. 1. SOURCES AND QUESTIONS It would be perhaps fair to note that writing the history of the Qazaq steppe has become relatively easier in the wake of the Cold War, now that many – though far from all – archives in Central Asia and Russia have finally become accessible to researchers; the political and institutional settings in which research is conducted in the region have also changed substantially. Along with such ruptures, however, continuities with the Soviet past are also in place, for national narratives remain largely dominant in Central Asian historiographies. But by focusing our attention on transnational religious traditions and practices we may begin to offer a counterweight to these etatist narratives, and to view the region instead within a web of wider connectivities. Much of the scholarship produced in the past twenty years has focused on the period spanning from the Russian conquest of Central Asia to the Stalinist “revolution from above” (mid-19th-century to the famine in 1931–1933). The present collection of essays reflects this approach, though the chapters authored by Devin DeWeese and Alfrid Bustanov project their inquiries back into earlier epochs. This periodization, which privileges the tsarist and the early Soviet periods, clearly reflects the potentials as well as the limitations of the post-Soviet archives in Kazakhstan, Central Asia and Russia: these archives represent an institutional legacy of the Soviet Union and, to a minor extent, of the tsarist empire. The texts available in repositories of Kazakhstan may well speak on behalf of the Qazaqs, but their production was in fact largely a function of the tsarist and Soviet systems of governance. As such, they reflect the taxonomies and systems of classification of the tsarist and Soviet administrations, thereby misrepresenting what the historian today would like to know. At the risk of being overly schematic, one could say that the main endeavor of the historiography of Qazaq social history after the demise of the USSR has been to debunk the tsarist and Soviet administrative and academic

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discourses on the Qazaqs, which were still dominant right into the 1990s. Such discourses concerned religious practices as well as indigenous forms of communal organization. Recent studies challenge the traditional and often repeated interpretation attributing an ideal-typical “stateless” character to Qazaq society, characterized by a similarly ideal-typical lignatic segmentary system of “tribes” and “clans” over which Qazaq khƗns supposedly lacked any real power.5 No matter how stimulating these new approaches might be, it is necessary to keep in mind that they are still based on a very narrow source-base, and that very little is known about the social history of the Qazaqs prior to the tsarist conquest of Central Asia.6 Misleading assumptions and misconceptions about the social and religious history of the Qazaq steppe proliferated under tsarist rule. This state of affairs should by no means be viewed as a product of colonial cultural production alone, unless we are willing to overlook the very influential ways in which Qazaq military officials, scribes and intellectuals contributed to the making of imperial knowledge on the steppe. Figures such as the famous military official and ethnographer Chokan Valikhanov, for instance, were instrumental in producing a cultural history of the Qazaq steppe that matched much of the topoi of the Russian administrative jargon, these including the religious illiteracy of the Qazaqs, the moral decay of the indigenous judiciary, and the cultural backwardness of the pastoral groups living in the steppe, to cite just a few.7 The papers in this volume lead us to question such assumptions about the “defective” nature of Islam in the steppe by alerting us to the embeddedness of Qazaqs’ ritual and devotional practices within a landscape which now appear by far richer and less superficial than once it was assumed to be; it should be noted, however, that the “archival revolution” 8 which started in 5

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David Sneath, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York, 2007); Virginia Martin, “Kazakh Chinggisids, Land and Political Power in the Nineteenth Century: a Case Study of Syrymbet”, Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 79–102. Jürgen Paul, “Recent Monographs on the Social History of Central Asia”, in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 119–30. Allen J. Frank, “The Qazaqs and Russia”, in: The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, eds. N. di Cosmo, A.J. Frank, P. Golden (Cambridge, 2009), 378 Cf. on the impact of the “archival revolution” on the study of tsarist and Soviet history, see the special issues of Cahiers du Monde Russe 40/1–2 (1999); Kritika: Explorations in

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the 1990s has not yet yielded a significant impact on the study of Islam in the steppes of Central Eurasia. This is most probably due to the tendency among scholars of Islamic studies to confer more instrumental utility on texts in vernacular languages than on sources produced in Russian. The former—it must be observed—figure less prominently in the archives— especially the archives created by empires largely dominated by non-Muslim or, still worse, anti-religious Communist regimes as the Soviet Union, the administrators of which could seldom read those languages, or, even if they could have, would hardly have used them.9 Secondly, since a state-centered approach is still paramount among students of tsarist and Soviet history, the marginality of the steppe and the other nomadic regions within the Russian empire and its twentieth-century successor may have contributed to a diminished attention to the Islamic history of the steppe. Qazaqs appear to have occupied a marginal place in the mental map of tsarist bureaucrats: a haze of preconceived opinions about the insubstantial religiosity of the nomads led the Russians to accord their Qazaq subjects a lowly position in the hierarchy of concerns originating from the “Muslim question” in the last decades of the empire.10 Moreover, from the second half of the 19th century the administration of Islamic institutions in the Muslim-majority Governorship-Generals of the Steppe, of Russian Turkestan and the North Caucaus differed starkly from what obtained in the Muslim-minority Crimea, Volga-Ural and South Caucasus regions, where institutions were overseen by the state via the medium of a Muslim Spiritual Assembly. Further research will show whether the absence in the steppe of any such representative body—together with the closing of mosques and

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Russian and Eurasian History 2/2 (2001); Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 51/1 (2003). It should be equally considered, however, that a large portion of Central Asian colonial subjects communicated with the Russian military bureaucracy in vernacular languages; the same phenomenon is characteristic of the bureaucratic practices of early-Soviet Central Asia. In post-Soviet Central Asian archives it is therefore possible to find a significant amount of texts in Arabic script. On this specific issue, cf. Elena Campbell, “The Muslim Question in Late Imperial Russia”, in: Russian Empire. Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark Von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 2007), 320–47.

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religious schools—made it harder for bureaucrats to keep local religious affairs within the purview of state administration.11 Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Islamic education remains a largely indeterminate entity in the religious history of the steppe. We presently know very little, for instance, about what constituted an Islamic cursus studiorum among the Qazaqs. Something can be gleaned from the urban history at the fringes of the steppe, since the culture of the madrasa radiated from Islamic educational hubs such as Orenburg, Semipalatinsk and Tashkent, which attracted a number of students from the steppe regions.12 The teaching imparted by itinerant mullƗs among pastoral groups equally represents an entirely new subject deserving further inquiries.13 Above all, one would like to know whether among the Qazaqs the monumenta of ণanafite school of law were glossed differently from the commentaries produced within urban cultural milieus, or were read precisely in the same fashion as one would find in the madrasas in the settled areas of the region, thereby contributing to the production of a single ণanafite discourse across the steppe. The same approach evidently holds true for Sufi literature. If so far scholars have noted that Qazaq moldakas (mullƗs) taught their students on the basis of texts which were current also in Bukharan madrasas,14 it would now be useful to find out why and how moldakas referred precisely to a set of texts, and what was the knowledge they sought to impart to their students.15 11

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Crews, Robert, For Prophet and Tsar. Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 197; Gulmira Sultangalieva, “The Russian Empire and the Intermediary Role of Tatars in Kazakhstan; the Politics of Cooperation and Rejection”, in: Asiatic Russia. Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. Uyama Tomohiko (London and New York, 2012), 67. Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001), 236–46; Materials for the Islamic history of Semipalatinsk: two manuscripts by A‫ۊ‬mad-WalƯ alQazƗnƯ and QurbƗn ҵali KhƗlidƯ, eds. Allen J. Frank and Mirkasyim A. Usmanov (Berlin, 2001). Allen J. Frank, “A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara: Observations on Islamic Knowledge in a Nomadic Environment”, in: Explorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19th – Early 20th Century), ed. Paolo Sartori (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 247–266. Ibid. We are here clearly over-privileging the written, textual, and formal milieu of Islamic education. It should be equally noted, however, that oral and even folkloric material were no less part of education and no less expression of religious culture. See, for example,

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2. A READING OF THE ESSAYS A number of contributions to the present volume try to give a general assessment of sources which were not produced by state administrations. Devin DeWeese shows that, though descent groups claiming genealogical connections with the family of Aতmad YasavƯ and devotional traditions relating to his shrine are well known from the 18th century onward, the presence of the YasavƯ Sufi order in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq is rather tersely attested. Proceeding from this, DeWeese suggests that Qazaqs appropriated a relation to the YasavƯya “outside the framework of the ‘Sufi order’ as traditionally understood,” a relation which, far from being based on continuity of devotional practices and initiatory transmission, mostly relies on kinship and shrine traditions. In this contribution DeWeese pushes back to at least the second half of the 17th century a phenomenon that he already identified for later periods. Elsewhere he had suggested that “for the late 18th and especially 19th century, it is no longer useful to assume the presence of fixed “brotherhoods” similar to the Sufi orders of the 16th century, or to understand the references to QƗdirƯ or YasavƯ lineages as reflecting actual corporate structures (as had been the case in earlier times); modes of organization and selfidentities among Sufi communities had changed substantially by the 19th century”.16 Alfrid Bustanov employs narratives of Islamization to trace the evolution of the cult of Muslim saints in Siberia. By so doing, he suggests that shaykhs affiliated to the YasavƯ Sufi order, who emigrated from Khorezm and the Syr Darya, played a prominent role in establishing a culture of devotion to Sufi shrines. Bustanov’s essay thus offers a valuable insight on the trans-regional dimension of the YasavƯ disciplinary legacy that clearly extends well beyond the southern steppe. It therefore geographically extends DeWeese’s conclusions regarding the changing character of what we often term “Sufi traditions” from a communal organization to a set of shrine-based devotional

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Devin DeWeese, “Ahmad Yasavi and the Dog-Men: Narrative of Hero and Saint at the Frontier of Orality and Textuality”, in: Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Proceedings from a Symposium held in Istanbul march 28–30, 2011, eds. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kopp (Würzburg, 2007), 147–73. Devin DeWeese, “‘Dis-ordering’ Sufism in Early Modern Central Asia: Suggestions for Rethinking the Sources and Social Structures of Sufi History in the 18th and 19th Centuries”, in: History and Culture of Central Asia, eds. Bakhtiyar Babadjanov and Yayoi Kawahara (Tokyo, 2012), 259–79.

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practices. It also suggests that the shift from an organizational and conceptual structure to a relationship based on natural descent was in place well outside of pastoral communities. Allen Frank’s contribution offers an insight into the oeuvre of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï, a Qazaq intellectual who lived through the tsarist and early Soviet period. Reflecting as they do his historical, folkloric and poetical interests, Mäshhür Zhüsip’s works are particularly valuable for the study of Islamic institutions in the steppe, as “his portraits of patrons, scholars […] reveal a system of practices and institutional structures for all intents and purposes similar to those documented in the Volga-Ural region and sedentary Central Asia.” Uyama Tomohiko’s essay investigates literature, mainly poetry composed by Qazaq intellectuals of the second half of the 19th century. By inquiring into the “politics of admonition”17 among the Qazaqs, Uyama yokes together the different voices of local literati, and their calls for political participation, with the discussion on the application of Islamic law in the steppe. The preoccupations of the Qazaq ҵulamƗҴ seem distant from the emic ethnography of Mäshhür Zhüsip. While the former seem to lament the identity crisis of Qazaq Muslimness trapped between secularism and Islamic revival, the latter appear mostly concerned with the activity of recording. Both signal a preoccupation for cultural and social change unfolding in the steppe. Paul Werth, Anna Afanasyeva, and Yuriy Malikov take a Russian viewpoint on Qazaq society. Paul Werth considers the relationship between the empire’s secular and confessional institutions by comparing the case of the subtraction of the Qazaqs (with the important exception of the Bukey zhüz) from the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly in 1868 with that of cis-Baikal Buriats from the authority of the Bandido-KhamboLama twenty years later. As Werth explains, the cases of the Qazaqs and Buriats were the only ones in the entire tsarist empire where the state abandoned its policy of government control over specific religious communities.18 This happened in the crucial initial decade of Alexander II’s reforms,

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Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Cultural Reform. Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkely, CA, 1998), 114–54. This situation was reversed in the early Soviet period. In 1923 the jurisdiction of the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate in Ufa was extended over the Qazaq steppe: see Uyama Tomohiko, “The Alash Orda’s Relations with Siberia, the Urals, and Turkestan:

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the 1860s. According to Werth, this decision was not simply a consequence of local conditions. Instead, it was a symptom of specific ideas shared by some tsarist statesmen and bureaucrats whose aim was to reform the empire’s whole multi-confessional institutional setting. As Alberto Masoero reminds us, bureaucratic projects have a significance that goes beyond their actual implementation. Their sedimentation in administrative knowledge, and in the realm of possibility in bureaucratic minds, can bear fruit at later stages, and/or can influence administrative practices in more indirect but nonetheless significant ways.19 Werth’s conclusions resonate with Yuriy Malikov’s treatment of cases of conversion to Christian Orthodoxy among the Qazaqs. Malikov shows that, despite the official rhetoric, conversion among the Qazaqs was very limited, because of the social consequences this would entail for the converts. This is even more interesting if one bears in mind the context of the “borderland culture” that formed during the 18th and 19th centuries in the northern steppe, as detailed elsewhere by the same author.20 The frontier society inhabited by Qazaqs and Cossacks was a space of constant cultural borrowings and everyday interactions, which worked, in Malikov’s definition, as a “society of interests,” where the borders of religious communities crossed estates (soslovie) and ethnic categories. Trenspassing those borders between religious communities, however, remained nonetheless a highly socially significant course of action for the converts. Indeed, until 1861, Qazaq converts were removed from the soslovie of the “people of different stock” (inorodtsy) and were obliged to leave their homeland and live outside the steppe.21 Anna Afanasyeva’s study scrutinizes writings of Russian doctors working in the steppe over a longer period of time, from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. Largely neglected by previous scholarship, Russian doctors’ accounts of everyday life of the steppe population are a significant source

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the Kazakh national movement and the Russian Imperial Legacy”, in: Asiatic Russia, 283, 287. Alberto Masoero, “Layers of Property in the Tsar’s Settlement Colony: Projects of Land Privatization in Siberia in the Late Nineteenth Century”, in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 9–32. Yuriy Malikov, Tsars, Cossacks and Nomads. The Formation of a Borderland Culture in Northern Kazakhstan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Berlin, 2011). Agila M. Nurgalieva, Ocherki po istorii Islama v Kazakhstane (Almaty, 2005), 39.

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about Qazaq healing practices and their connection with their religious beliefs. In part ethnographic descriptions, in part memoirs, by the early twentieth century doctors’ reports also attest to how doctors aspired to play a more active political role in society as carriers of a specific scientific knowledge, in the framework of the political mobilization brought about by the 1905 revolution. Two contributions to our volume—David Brophy’s on Xinjiang and that of Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov on Uzbekistan—make the most use of published documentation produced or inspired by non-Muslim political authorities with the aim of influencing the perception, in Central Asian societies and/or by “metropolitan” audiences, of state-led policies of cultural reform. David Brophy details the attitude toward Islamic institutions in Xinjiang by early Republican governor Yang Zengxin through a close reading of materials dealing with Islamic practices from a published collection of Yang’s decrees, letters and instructions. As Brophy explains, these materials were selected and published during Yang’s rule in Xinjiang; therefore they are the official image about “religious policies” in the province that Yang wanted to project. Brophy’s chapter opens important comparative perspectives, and shows how surprisingly firm the grasp of Chinese administrators could be on Islamic devotional practices among the various Muslim communities (Qazaqs included) which inhabited Xinjiang. As Brophy observes, “Yang’s writings show an overriding interest in maintaining boundaries: between natives and foreigners, among the province’s various menhuan and mosque communities, and between religious practice and other forms of social life. In his vision of a stable Xinjiang, Islam was to be confined spatially to the mosque, and doctrinally to the QurҴƗn.” Though one could note (as Brophy does) that self-proclaimed colonial governments ruling over Muslim-majority regions applied containment- and supervision- policies of Islamic institutions (such as sharƯҵa courts and charitable endowments) which were comparatively more insidious, Yang’s acrimonious attitude towards Sufi lodges is redolent of the kind of obtrusive Sufiphobia that the tsarist and early-Soviet governments nourished in the Qazaq steppe and in Turkestan.22 22

Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 224–25; A.S. Morrison, “Sufism, Pan-Islamism and Information Panic: Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin and the Aftermath of the Andijan Uprising,” Past and Present 214 (2012): 255–304.

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Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjan Islamov account for the success of the Bolshevik administration in Turkestan in mobilizing a group of ҵulamƗҴ to support the land reform policies implemented during the 1920s. In fatvƗs on land reforms published in the press under state control, some ҵulamƗҴ conferred Islamic legitimacy upon land reforms and, surreptitiously, on the ideology of egalitarianism informing communist policies in early-Soviet Central Asia. Unfortunately little is known about the biographies of the Muslim jurists who sided with the Bolsheviks and made this choice, why they did it, and how these positions were received within Uzbek society. The essay of Babajanov and Islamov suggests a number of observations regarding the instrumental value which the Soviet government conferred upon fatvƗs as a medium to reach the Muslim population. In assessing the clerics’ agency behind the production of these legal opinions, the authors reach some necessarily circumspect conclusions. If we were to take their arguments further, we might find that contemporary documents from party and OGPU files provide evidence of a coordinated campaign organized by the political police. An OGPU report about “clergy” activity in 1927 Central Asia, recently published by Dmitrii Arapov, indeed confirms that the political police instigated the production of some fatvƗs supporting the land reform of the second half of the 1920s. The OGPU plenipotentiary in Central Asia lamented that, during the land reform, “in spite of the preemptive measures we took in order to neutralize the clergy, such as the publication of fatvƗs and rivƗyƗts on behalf of the Spiritual Directorate”, influential ҵulamƗҴ – especially in Ferghana and Tashkent – spoke out openly against land redistribution as an unlawful act under Islamic law.23 The application of the same policy is not attested in the Qazaq steppe in the early Soviet period; however, it would be misleading to assume that Qazaqs’ approach to Islam was less normative and hence jurists’ response had a weaker impact on their ethics (see Pianciola’s essay in the present volume for a case in point). Even in times of war and famine a fatvƗ clearly represented among the Qazaqs a resource with which to establish some kind of legitimization for specific political decisions.

23

Musul’manskoe dukhovenstvo v Srednii Azii v 1927 g. (po dokladu polnomochnogo predstavitelia v Srednei Azii), 4 June 1927, Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI), f. 62, op. 2, d. 1145, l. 35–68; now in Dmitrii Arapov, sost., Islam i sovetskoe gosudarstvo (1917–1936). Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 2010), 96–133 (quote from p. 100).

Introduction: Towards a Connected History of the Qazaq Steppe

21

The instrumental use of Muslim jurists by the early Soviet state in order to support the land reforms leads us to consider the issue of Central Asian voices in the archives and in the official press. It has become a truism to argue that the colonial (or Soviet) archive cannot convey the voice of the subjects, especially in the countryside, as they appear only when they talk to the state. If we were to follow this approach, we should thus infer that the voices of Muslims living under tsarist and Soviet rule were all irremediably distorted by the repressive bureaucratic practices of state apparatuses. A helpful way to escape this hermeneutic bind would be to distinguish the voices of those Muslims who talked at the instigation of the state from those who wanted the state to hear them. An example of the former could be the transcripts of the police interrogations in the early 1930 (clearly different from those produced during the Great Terror) such as those studied by Pianciola. Even from this documentation, as Pianciola details in his contribution, it is possible to read sources with the grain and make sense of the categories employed by representatives of the Soviet state as well as by the victims of its repressive machinery. OGPU documentation shows the discursive significance of group categories related to the Qazaq segmentary lineage system. At the same time, the case study suggests that their use and social relevance had been limited by the legacy of the tsarist administrative practice in the steppe. Examples of the latter kind of sources could be petitions to tsarist authorities to secure certain fiscal privileges, the control of the revenues generated by an endowment or more simply to confirm property rights on a plot of land. These petitions crafted in vernacular languages speak Muslim as much as a genealogical chart or an endowment deed could do. When Muslims interacted with the state they did not speak only the local administrative languages, i.e. Persian and Chaghatay. They also resorted to Russian, as shown in documents produced in a context of legal pluralism, such as tsarist and early Soviet Central Asia. When they jostled the available jurisdictions—be they sharƯҵa courts, Russian justices of peace or militarycivil chancelleries—Muslims spoke (or ventriloquized) loudly, often adopting a muscular behavior before colonial bureaucrats. They did not seem particularly shy, let alone silent, when they exercised leverage on the institu-

22

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tions of the colony,24 or on the obsessions of their colonial masters,25 to pursue their own aims; nor did they show any hesitation while widening the domain of Islamic law and seeking a favorable adjudication according to the imperial law. The agency, the emotions and ultimately the voices of the Muslim population remain in the documents in which the people addressed the state. There is no reason to believe in a significant divide, in this respect, between the sedentary and nomadic areas of Central Asia as shown by recent inquiries into this subject. 26 If we acknowledge the agency of the local Muslim population also in the documentation produced by or at least for the state, the next interpretative problem is to assess the extent to which indigenous communities appropriated categories imposed by the imperial administration(-s).27 This is especially true for the possibility of finding a true nomadic Qazaq legal culture beyond the sphere of influence of the Russian state,28 or to make sense of a segmentary lineage system independently from the reformist policies of the states under which the Qazaqs (and the other largely pastoral peoples of Central Asia) happened to live.29 In this respect, the transnational study of Qazaq society should acquire more importance. The study of the history of the polities centered in Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand during the 18th and 19th centuries has also yet to yield a clearer idea about the interaction of their administrators with local pastoral communities. The disproportion between the tsarist documentation and those produced by the bordering (or conquered) states 24

25

26

27

28

29

Paolo Sartori, “Authorized Lies: Colonial Agency and Legal Hybrids in Tashkent, c. 1881–1893,” in: Legal Pluralism in Muslim-Majority Colonies, eds. Paolo Sartori and Ido Shahar (= Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55/4–5 [2012]): 688– 717. Morrison, “Sufism, Pan-Islamic and Information Panic: Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin and the Aftermath of the Andijan Uprising.” Johann Bussow, David Durand-Guédy, Jürgen Paul, “Preface,” in: Id., Nomads in the Political Field (= Nomadic Peoples, 51/1 [2011]): 5–6. Paolo Sartori, “Introduction: Dealing with States of Property in Modern and Colonial Central Asia,” in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 5–7. Paolo Sartori, “Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva (1895),” in: Joining the Dots: Essays on Central Asian Documents and their Readings, eds. Paolo Sartori and Thomas Welsford (= Der Islam 87/2 [2012]): 217–57. Jacquesson, Svetlana, “Reforming Pastoral Land Use in Kyrgyzstan: from Clan and Custom to Self-Government and Tradition”, in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 103–18.

Introduction: Towards a Connected History of the Qazaq Steppe

23

will be, of course, a hindrance. Nonetheless, the comparative study of adjoining areas across the tsarist/Qing border could help us to disentangle the respective impacts of the two imperial administrations on Qazaqs’ social practices, discursive categories, and institutions.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Arapov, Dmitrii, sost., Islam i sovetskoe gosudarstvo (1917–1936). Sbornik dokumentov (Moscow, 2010) Büssow, Johann and Durand-Guédy, David and Paul, Jürgen, “Preface,” in: Id., Nomads in the Political Field (= Nomadic Peoples 51/1 [2011]): 1–10 Campbell, Elena, “The Muslim Question in Late Imperial Russia,” in: Russian Empire. Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark Von Hagen, and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 2007), 320–47 Crews, Robert, For Prophet and Tsar. Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA, 2006) DeWeese, Devin, “Ahmad Yasavi and the Dog-Men: Narrative of Hero and Saint at the Frontier of Orality and Textuality,” in: Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Proceedings from a Symposium held in Istanbul march 28– 30, 2011, eds. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kopp (Würzburg, 2007), 147–73 –––––, “‘Dis-ordering’ Sufism in Early Modern Central Asia: Suggestions for Rethinking the Sources and Social Structures of Sufi History in the 18th and 19th Centuries,” in: History and Culture of Central Asia, eds. Bakhtiyar Babadjanov and Yayoi Kawahara (Tokyo, 2012), 259–79 Frank, Allen J., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001) –––––, “The Qazaqs and Russia,” in: The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, eds. N. di Cosmo, A.J. Frank, P. Golden (Cambridge, 2009), 363–79 –––––, “A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara: Observations on Islamic Knowledge in a Nomadic Environment”, in: Explorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19th – Early 20th Century), ed. Paolo Sartori (Leiden and Boston, 2013), 247–266. ––––– and Usmanov, Mirkasym A. (eds.), Materials for the Islamic history of Semipalatinsk: Two Manuscripts by A‫ۊ‬mad-WalƯ al-QazƗnƯ and QurbƗn ҵAlƯ KhƗlidƯ (Berlin, 2001) ––––– and Usmanov, Mirkasym A., “Introduction”, in: QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe (1770–1912), eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005), xi-xxvi Horden, Peregrine, and Purcell, Nicholas, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000) Jacquesson, Svetlana, “Reforming Pastoral Land Use in Kyrgyzstan: from Clan and Custom to Self-Government and Tradition”, in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 103–18 Khalid, Adeeb, The Politics of Cultural Reform. Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkely, CA, 1998) Light, Nathan, “Muslim Histories of China: Historiography across Boundaries in Central Eurasia,” in: Frontiers and Boundaries: Encounters on China’s Margins, eds. Zsombor Rajkai and Ildikó Bellér-Hann (Wiesbaden, 2012), 151–76

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Malikov, Yuriy, Tsars, Cossacks and Nomads. The Formation of a Borderland Culture in Northern Kazakhstan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Berlin, 2011) Martin, Virginia, “Kazakh Chinggisids, Land and Political Power in the Nineteenth Century: a Case Study of Syrymbet,” in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 79–102 Masoero, Alberto, “Layers of Property in the Tsar’s Settlement Colony: Projects of Land Privatization in Siberia in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 9–32 Morrison, Alexander S., “Sufism, Pan-Islamic and Information Panic: Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin and the Aftermath of the Andijan Uprising,” Past and Present 214/1 (2012): 255–304 Nurgalieva, Agila M., Ocherki po istorii Islama v Kazakhstane (Almaty, 2005) Paul, Jürgen, “Recent Monographs on the Social History of Central Asia,” in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 119–30 Peterson, Derek K. and Macola, Giacomo, “Homespun Historiography and the Academic Profession,” in: Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa, eds. D.K. Peterson and G. Macola (Athens, OH, 2009), 1–28 QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005) Sartori, Paolo, “Introduction: Dealing with States of Property,” in: The Land Question in Colonial Central Asia, ed. Paolo Sartori (= Central Asian Survey 29/1 [2010]): 1–7 –––––, “Authorized Lies: Colonial Agency and Legal Hybrids in Tashkent, c. 1881–1893,” in: Legal Pluralism in Muslim-Majority Colonies, eds. Paolo Sartori and Ido Shahar (= Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55/4–5 [2012]): 688–717 –––––, “Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva (1895),” in: Joining the Dots: Essays on Central Asian Documents and their Readings, eds. Paolo Sartori and Thomas Welsford (= Der Islam 87/2 [2012]): 217–57 Sneath, David, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York, 2007) Sultangalieva, Gulmira, “The Russian Empire and the Intermediary Role of Tatars in Kazakhstan; the Politics of Cooperation and Rejection,” in: Asiatic Russia. Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. Uyama Tomohiko (London and New York, 2012), 52–79 Uyama, Tomohiko, “The Alash Orda’s Relations with Siberia, the Urals, and Turkestan: the Kazakh national movement and the Russian Imperial Legacy”, in: Asiatic Russia. Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. Uyama Tomohiko (London and New York 2012), 271–87.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq from the 16th to 18th Century DEVIN DEWEESE Bloomington

It is often assumed that the arena for the historical development of the YasavƯ Sufi tradition was chiefly the steppe regions of Central Asia inhabited by Turkic-speaking nomads, including groups that came to be known, from the 15th century, as Qazaqs.1 This assumption in part reflects stereotypes about the historical role of Aতmad YasavƯ, the eponym of the YasavƯya, as an Islamizer of the Turks, but it also simply reflects the scene of Aতmad YasavƯ’s life and Sufi career, namely the town of Yasï, or TurkistƗn, located at the frontier between the urban, commercial environment of the Syr Darya valley, and the steppe itself; the presence in that town of YasavƯ’s shrine, known as a major pilgrimage site since the 14th century, only encouraged the notion that the Sufi tradition named for Aতmad YasavƯ must have been strong in the region, and among the people, most directly tied to the shrine.2 1

2

The Qazaqs, of course, are customarily portrayed as incompletely Islamized (whatever that might mean) until the 18th or 19th century, on the one hand, or as devoted to “YasavƯ dervishes” from an early time, and these two discordant characterizations have at times been reconciled through the assumption that the YasavƯ tradition was itself not quite wholly Islamic; such characterizations have been based upon ideological assumptions, misconstrued evidence, or no evidence at all. The assumption that Aতmad YasavƯ and the Sufi tradition linked to him were linked especially closely with the nomadic Turks of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, including the Qazaqs, is reflected already in such pioneering studies as the works of Köprülü and Bartol’d from a century ago, but still remains strong in western scholarship, whether in popular “background” surveys given in works on contemporary Central Asia, or in attempts at more serious historical surveys; see, in the former regard, Kemal H. Karpat, “The Roots of Kazakh Nationalism: Ethnicity, Islam or Land?,” in: In a Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union, ed. Marco Buttino (Milan, 1993), 316–7]; Olivier Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York, 2000; originally published in French, La Nouvelle Asie centrale ou la fabrication des nations [Paris, 1997]), 143–4, 147; Yaacov Ro’i, Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Sec-

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The devotion of the Qazaqs to the shrine of Aতmad YasavƯ is certainly well-attested, but it hardly needs to be pointed out that shrine traditions are not identical, or coterminous, with Sufi traditions. Pilgrims come to saints’ shrines with a wide range of religious aims, and both historically and at present, shrines serve a public extending well beyond the affiliates of Sufi traditions, however we define these. As for individuals tied to particular shrines more directly than occasional pilgrims, as custodians or employees of the shrine complex, the “constituencies” of shrines often include groups claiming hereditary ties to the saint buried at the site, as well as elements of the local population linked to the shrine through their connection with vaqf properties established to support the shrine financially; they may also include groups linked spiritually, as in a Sufi community, to the saint buried at the site, but they need not, and it is quite common for the custodians of a saint’s shrine to be utterly unconnected with any initiatic lineage traced to the saint. In the case of Aতmad YasavƯ’s shrine, the strength and prominence, among the Qazaqs, of familial traditions claiming genealogical connections with the saint’s family are well-known, and can be traced back to the 18th century at least;3 but these descent-groups, too, need not and typically do not

3

ond World War to Gorbachev (London, 2000), 360, 386, 394; and Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven and London, 2002), 27; as for attempts at historical surveys, see Samuel A. M. Adshead, Central Asia in World History (New York, 1993), 156–8, and Svat Soucek, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, 2000), 141–3. The same assumption permeates works produced in the former Soviet world as well; see, for example, Anara Tabyshalieva, Vera v Turkestane (Ocherk istorii religii Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana) (Bishkek, 1993), 90–1; A. K. Sultangalieva, Islam v Kazakhstane: Istoriia, ètnichnost’ i obshchestvo (Almaty, 1998), 7–8, 14–5, 24; N. D. Nurtazina, Islam v istorii srednevekovogo Kazakhstana (Almaty, 2000), 99, 108–22, 147–8, 286, 288; and, also reflective of Soviet scholarship, Galina M. Yemelianova, Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (New York, 2002), 48, 61, 128–9. See my discussion in “The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31/4 (1999): 507–30, and the recent publication of such genealogical material in Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 2: Genealogicheskie gramoty i sakral’nye semeistva XIX-XXI vekov: nasab-nama i gruppy khodzhei, sviazannykh s sakral’nym skazaniem ob Iskhak Babe / Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia: The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions, Vol. 2: Genealogical Charters and Sacred Families: Nasab-namas and Khoja

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

29

have any connection with what we know, from sources of the 15th–18th centuries, as the YasavƯ Sufi order. The possibility that these descent traditions, known from the 18th century onward, reflect “genealogized” understandings of Sufi silsilas, and thus indirectly attest to a YasavƯ Sufi presence at least in the southern steppe, cannot be dismissed; but at the same time it cannot be more than conjectural at this point, and there is only occasional evidence available by which to argue this sort of connection. More broadly, although it is important to be somewhat flexible in our understanding of what a Sufi tradition might encompass at different times, it is no less important to delineate carefully the multiple strands comprising a Sufi tradition in a given period, on the basis of explicit sources at our disposal. In recent times, we may conclude, the YasavƯ legacy among the Qazaqs is limited primarily to shrine traditions linked with YasavƯ saints, and to kinship groups claiming descent from YasavƯ’s family and from other YasavƯ saints. Can we find evidence, however, of a YasavƯ presence in the steppe, and/or among the Qazaqs, in the earlier periods? The present study will attempt to take stock of the scattered indications, in written sources, of the presence, during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, of the YasavƯ “order”—i.e., a communal structure that defined itself in terms of a silsila, with a selfconception based on a presumed continuity of practice and initiatic transmission going back to Aতmad YasavƯ—in (or near) the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, a region where, in later times, quite different modes of connection with the YasavƯ tradition—based on shrine traditions and kinship—appear dominant. 1. FROM THE 13TH THROUGH THE 15TH CENTURY Our earliest sources on the YasavƯ tradition confirm Aতmad YasavƯ’s activity as a Sufi shaykh in the milieu of the Syr Darya basin, but our evidence is exceedingly sparse regarding the early development of his Sufi community there. We know the names of several disciples active in the same region, such as ৡnjfƯ Muতammad DƗnishmand, Süksük Ata, and Yashlïgh Ynjnus Ata, and we can assume a degree of travel into and through the steppe regions in connection with accounts about the Islamizing activity of Sayyid

Groups Linked to the Ishaq Bab Narrative, 19th-21st Centuries, eds. A. Muminov, A. von Kügelgen, D. DeWeese, M. Kemper (Almaty, 2008).

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Ata, for instance, in the Golden Horde;4 we can also trace somewhat more fully the important hereditary Sufi tradition, centered initially between Tashkent and SayrƗm, linked with the figure of IsmƗ‫ޏ‬Ưl Ata, who died in the early 14th century. 5 The latter saint’s immediate descendants, however, became prominent in more southerly parts of Central Asia, and it is clear from written sources that the central initiatic lineage traced to Aতmad YasavƯ, which yields the recognizable YasavƯ Sufi order of the 15th–18th centuries, was centered not in the steppe, or even in the Syr Darya basin, but in the heart of Mavarannahr, already by the second half of the 14th century, at the latest. Indeed, aside from occasional evidence of hereditary lineages linked to saints incorporated into the YasavƯ tradition centered in KhwƗrazm and in the vicinity of Tashkent, virtually all our evidence regarding Sufi lineages linked with Aতmad YasavƯ during the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries— found above all in hagiographical works produced from the 16th–18th centuries—points to Mavarannahr, and chiefly the region between Samarqand and Bukhara, as the scene of their lives and Sufi careers. From the 15th century, to be sure, we hear of figures in the YasavƯ silsila whose nisbas link them with the Syr Darya basin. One such figure is KamƗl Shaykh of ƮqƗn (near Yasï/TurkistƗn), known as a contemporary of KhwƗja AতrƗr;6 he, as well as his master, Mavdnjd Shaykh, and his fellow disciple KhƗdim Shaykh, may well have been natives of the region of TurkistƗn, but their center of activity was clearly in the vicinity of Samarqand, and it was there that their only known legacy as Sufi shaykhs continued. The same is true of MavlƗnƗ Shams NjzgandƯ, two generations after KamƗl Shaykh in the YasavƯ silsila; although his nisba is explicitly explained as referring to the town of 4

5

6

See my discussion in Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994), 101–04 (and elsewhere), and in “The Descendants of Sayyid Ata and the Rank of NaqƯb in Central Asia,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 613–14. On the legacies of IsmƗ‫ޏ‬Ưl Ata, see my discussion in “YasavƯ Šayপs in the Timurid Era: Notes on the Social and Political Role of Communal Sufi Affiliations in the 14th and 15th Centuries,” in: La civiltà timuride come fenomeno internazionale, ed. Michele Bernardini [= Oriente Moderno, N.S., 15 (76), No. 2 (1996)]: 173–88, and in: “Orality and the Master-Disciple Relationship in Medieval Sufi Communities (Iran and Central Asia, 12th– 15th centuries),” for Oralité et lien social au Moyen Âge (Occident, Byzance, Islam): parole donnée, foi jurée, serment, eds. Marie-France Auzépy and Guillaume Saint-Guillain (Paris, 2008), 305–7. ‫ޏ‬AlƯ b. ণusayn ৡafƯ, Rasha‫ۊ‬Ɨt-i ҵayn al-‫ۊ‬ayƗt, ed. ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Aৢghar Mu‫ޏ‬ƯnƯyƗn (Tehran, 2536/1977), I, 30–1.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

31

“NjzkƯnt,” on the Syr Darya downstream from Yasï, the stories related about him place him in Herat and in Samarqand, and it was chiefly in Samarqand that his activity as a Sufi shaykh unfolded.7 We may protest that this concentration of YasavƯ shaykhs and khƗnqƗhs in Mavarannahr is solely an accident of our sources, i.e., of the greater level of hagiographical production (and of literary production in general) centered in the settled urban parts of Central Asia, but this is beside the point; we may insist that dozens of YasavƯ shaykhs were active in the steppe, but if so, we cannot now know anything about them, and such a claim can only remain in the realm of speculation until and unless additional sources from these eras are discovered. It is only with the first half of the 16th century that we begin to find some hints that one or another YasavƯ shaykh, linked initiatically to a prominent master of Mavarannahr, stayed in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq and established a YasavƯ presence there, possibly in the form of a substantial and ongoing Sufi community. Even in such cases, however, our evidence is quite sparse, and in any case there is no support in the sources for the assumption, also encountered in discussions of the YasavƯ tradition, that this tradition was especially popular among the nomadic Uzbeks of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, at the time of their conquest of the Timurid domains of Mavarannahr.8 2. THE 16TH CENTURY: THE ERA OF KHUDƖYDƖD AND QƖSIM SHAYKH The earliest YasavƯ shaykh for whom we have clear evidence of prestige, connections, and actual disciples among the nomads of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq is the most prominent YasavƯ shaykh of the first half of the 16th century, KhudƗydƗd (d. 939/1532), whose center of activity was the village of GhazƯra, near Samarqand; he is arguably the central figure in the chief hagiographical source on the YasavƯya, the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt min nafa‫ۊ‬Ɨt al-quds, written in 1035/1626 by ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh of ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd (himself a YasavƯ shaykh

7 8

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 45b–46a; see below, note 9, on this work. I have discussed this issue in “The YasavƯ Order and the Uzbeks in the Early 16th Century: The Story of Shaykh JamƗl ad-DƯn and Muতammad ShïbƗnƯ KhƗn,” for Tsentral’naia Aziia: Istochniki, Istoriia, Kul’tura. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 80-letiiu doktora istoricheskikh nauk E. A. Davidovicha i deistvitel’nogo chlena Akademii nauk Tadzhikistana, akademika RAEN, doktora istoricheskikh nauk B. A. Litvinskogo, Moskva, 3–5 aprelia 2003 g., ed. E. V. Antonova and T. K. Mkrtychev (Moscow, 2005), 297–310.

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whose legacy in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq is discussed below). 9 Several of KhudƗydƗd’s associates and successors belonged to the nomadic communities that, in the first part of the 16th century, were moving into Mavarannahr and parts of KhurƗsƗn as a result of the ShïbƗnid conquest; these figures’ careers illustrate not only the success of the YasavƯya in appealing, for the first time (at least insofar as our sources reveal), to nomadic groups from the steppe regions north and west of Mavarannahr, but also the close ties still existing between groups, and individuals, who moved to Mavarannahr with the ShïbƗnid princes, and those who remained in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, ties that were increasingly strained, if never altogether broken, by the emergence of distinct Chinggisid polities based upon tribal groupings only then coming to be permanently distinguished as “Uzbeks” and “Qazaqs.” KhudƗydƗd himself is said to have had an unidentified sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn of the Qazaqs as his murƯd; the brief anecdote that mentions their relationship in fact places this Qazaq Chinggisid in a somewhat unflattering light (though in this case it is difficult to judge whether he is depicted in this way because he is a Qazaq, or simply because he is a ruler),10 but in general KhudƗydƗd is portrayed as much more amenable to dealings with nomads than were other shaykhs of Mavarannahr, whether of the YasavƯya or of other traditions. Despite his ‘rustic’ image, he is also shown as intensely interested in the organizational success and spread of the YasavƯ order, and to this end he cultivated ties with the Abnj’l-Khayrid elite (especially with Abnj Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd b. Köchkünji, who ruled as khƗn in Samarqand from 937/1530–940/1533, but 9

10

On this crucial source, see my discussion in “The YasavƯ Order and Persian Hagiography in Seventeenth-Century Central Asia: ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh of ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd and his Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt min nafa‫ۊ‬Ɨt al-quds,” in: The Heritage of Sufism, vol. III: Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501–1750), The Safavid and Mughal Period, eds. Leonard Lewisohn and David Morgan (Oxford, 1999), 389–414. References here are to the oldest known manuscript of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, preserved in the Institute of Oriental Studies in St. Petersburg, MS C1602, described in: Opisanie tadzhikskikh i persidskikh rukopisei Instituta narodov Azii, ed. N. D. Miklukho-Maklai, vyp. 2, Biograficheskie sochineniia (Moscow, 1961), 133–5, No. 187. Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, f. 65b. According to the account, “one of the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns of the QazƗqs who was a murƯd of his” was at a gathering with KhudƗydƗd and other disciples; the QazƗq sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn wanted a certain cut of meat that was near KhudƗydƗd, and mentioned this to DarvƯsh Shaykh (a disciple of KhudƗydƗd, and ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s grandfather), who stopped him from asking the shaykh outright. KhudƗydƗd immediately knew of his wish, however, and at once told the khƗdim to take the meat to the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn, “so he and DarvƯsh Shaykh may eat it together,” prompting an embarrassed DarvƯsh Shaykh to lament that sitting near the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn had led him into difficulty.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

33

was prominent in the city for much of his father’s reign), and with the recently arrived “enclosed” nomadic population of Mavarannahr. One of KhudƗydƗd’s disciples, Qanbar Shaykh, appears to have belonged to the Qonghrat tribe, and was an amƯr in the service of the khƗn Abnj Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd b. KöchkünjƯ before attaching himself to KhudƗydƗd;11 the khƗn himself was induced to become a murƯd of KhudƗydƗd after witnessing Qanbar’s humble service gathering firewood for the kitchen of his shaykh’s khƗnqƗh. Qanbar was also the father of PƯrim Shaykh, who was a disciple of QƗsim Shaykh and the master, in turn, of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, and despite his consequent importance for the latter (as a source of anecdotes about KhudƗydƗd, for instance), he appears not to have been a major figure in the community; he evidently did not seek to establish a separate Sufi community beyond that of KhudƗydƗd (this is suggested, at least, by his burial beneath the ‫܈‬uffa at KhudƗydƗd’s grave). Qanbar Shaykh’s ties with the steppe thus do not include any known Sufi lineage established there, but they are of interest nonetheless. In one anecdote from the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, 12 Qanbar Shaykh is ascribed an “Özbek” kinsman dwelling in “QazƗqïstƗn,”13 called “ৡnjfƯ ƮshƗn,” who became a disciple of KhudƗydƗd before even meeting him. According to the story, several of ৡnjfƯ ƮshƗn’s camels had become lost in QazƗqïstƗn, and after much searching, when he was on the verge of giving up, he recalled, “I have a relative (khwƯshƯ) in Mavarannahr, named Qanbar ৡnjfƯ; I will appeal to his pƯr, for his pƯr will find the camels and return them.” ৡnjfƯ ƮshƗn then had a vision in which KhudƗydƗd appeared and declared, “I am the pƯr of Qanbar ৡnjfƯ;” during the vision, ৡnjfƯ ƮshƗn became a murƯd of KhudƗydƗd, who then told him how he would recover his camels. He should go to a certain valley, where fifteen men brandishing swords would come quickly, bringing the camels; the men would then hand over their swords to him, and disappear. ৡnjfƯ ƮshƗn did as instructed, and recovered his camels just as 11 12 13

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 99a–100b. Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 61b–62a. We cannot belabor the point here, but the phrase, “an Özbek from QazƗqïstƗn,” in the early 16th century, refers to a member of the socio-political units from which the groups we call both Uzbeks and Qazaqs emerged, and should not be taken as indicating that the story deals with an “Uzbek” as opposed to a “Qazaq” (it does not have the same meaning, for instance, as the phrase, “an Uzbek from Kazakhstan,” would have in the early 21st century, although both usages reflect—in different ways—the effects of transitional eras on political, “ethnic,” and geographical labels).

Devin DeWeese

34

KhudƗydƗd had predicted; but the incident affected him deeply, and he soon gave away all his property and moved to Mavarannahr to enter KhudƗydƗd’s service. When at KhudƗydƗd’s feet he declared his wish to become his murƯd, the shaykh reminded him that he had already done so while still in QazƗqïstƗn. This narrative, of course, frames the spiritual power of KhudƗydƗd both in terms of the spiritual reality of the “events” of a dreamvision (including the shaykh’s prescience), and in terms of the concrete ability to find lost objects; at the same time, however, and beyond the theme of detachment from worldly things, the story reflects also the organizational developments of KhudƗydƗd’s era: it sanctions the kind of “long-distance” murƯd-ship that allowed even distant affiliates of what had become a genuine Sufi order to be linked to the ‫ܒ‬arƯqa’s principal shaykh. Another disciple of KhudƗydƗd, called “Monchaq ণƗfi਌,”14 was a native of “ManghïtistƗn” (i.e., the lands of the Manghïts or Noghays to the north of the Aral and Caspian Seas—a region also called, in this era, both “ÖzbekistƗn” and “QazƗqïstƗn”), and is said to have come from there to Mavarannahr as a result of a dream his wife had. According to the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt’s account, Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s wife dreamed that she became KhudƗydƗd’s follower and then placed her husband’s hand in his; when she told her husband of the dream, Monchaq ণƗfi਌ set off for Mavarannahr and sought to become KhudƗydƗd’s disciple, but KhudƗydƗd insisted that he should become a murƯd in the way foreseen in his wife’s vision in ManghïtistƗn: she became KhudƗydƗd’s disciple first, and then took her husband’s hand and gave it to her master. KhudƗydƗd further insisted that whenever Monchaq ণƗfi਌ would come to him, his wife should enter first, “for she was the medium for your training.” His wife was indeed among the saints, the account continues, and Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s son, DarvƯsh Muতammad, “who was also among the spiritual guides in this silsila,” received his training from his mother. The Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt also affirms that even after KhudƗydƗd’s death, Monchaq ণƗfi਌ always brought his wife along when he came for ziyƗrat to their master’s shrine in GhazƯra. The source cited in the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt for the latter comment is the figure of ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr, an eclectic shaykh of the 16th century who is typically assigned to a non-AতrƗrƯ NaqshbandƯ lineage but is linked also with a wide range of masters, including other YasavƯ shaykhs; the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt affirms that ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr was one of Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s “servants and devotees.” In reporting his 14

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 97Ab-98a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

35

comment about “Monchaq ণƗfi਌,” the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt is clearly citing an oral account, but ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr also wrote a work, entitled Maܲhar al-ҵajƗҲib and completed in 973/1565–66, focused on a saintly woman known as AghƗ-yi Buzurg,15 and in this work he mentions, as a devotee of AghƗ-yi Buzurg, a figure called “PƯr MunjƗqƯ;” it seems likely that this figure is to be identified with the “Monchaq ণƗfi਌” of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt. In ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr’s work, “PƯr MunjƗqƯ” is the subject of an extended narrative set just prior to the death of AghƗ-yi Buzurg (in 929/1522–23); 16 the account makes no mention of KhudƗydƗd or any other YasavƯ shaykhs linked in the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt with “Monchaq ণƗfi਌,” and says nothing of his origins in “ManghïtistƗn.” The story affirms, rather, that this PƯr MunjƗqƯ was among the devotees of AghƗ-yi Buzurg, to whose family he belonged (he was apparently a cousin of AghƗ-yi Buzurg on her father’s side), and that PƯr MunjƗqƯ was unjustly accused of being a “schismatic;” this accusation was made in Bukhara, and is blamed in the account upon the intrigues of the famous MƯr-i ‫ޏ‬Arab;17 PƯr MunjƗqƯ was accused by four witnesses and treated roughly by a crowd before being imprisoned to await judgment at the dƗr al-amƗrat. ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr himself went to Bukhara to offer encouragement, but even stronger support was mobilized quite quickly: Moghul KhƗnïm, the wife of ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh KhƗn, sent a letter on his behalf (Moghul KhƗnïm too is portrayed as a devotee of AghƗ-yi Buzurg), and a fatvƗ was issued in support of him by a group of the ҵulamƗҴ of Bukhara. Finally a man sent directly by Moghnjl KhƗnïm freed PƯr MunjƗqƯ from prison, and the letter and the fatvƗ ensured that the decision at the dƗr al-amƗrat came down on PƯr MunjƗqƯ’s side; even MƯr-i ‫ޏ‬Arab was silenced and, his machinations exposed, he was soon obliged to leave for TurkistƗn,, “and his office and his esteem remained no longer.” The 15 16

17

On this figure, and the source, see my discussion in “Orality,” 300–3. Maܲhar al-ҵajƗҲib, MS Tashkent, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan [hereafter IVANRUz], inv. no. 8716, ff. 176a-179b; see the description in A. A. Semenov, et al., eds., Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauka Uzbekskoi SSR (hereafter SVR), V (Tashkent, 1960), 406–7, no. 4137. On MƯr-i ‫ޏ‬Arab, see Bakhtiiar Babadzhanov, “Mir-i Arab,” Kul’tura kochevnikov na rubezhe vekov (XIX-XX, XX-XXI vv): Problemy genezisa i transformatsii. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, g. Almaty, 5–7 iiunia 1995 g. (Almaty, 1995), 88–102, and see also Florian Schwarz, ‘Unser Weg schließt tausend Wege ein:’ Derwische und Gesellschaft im islamischen Mittelasien im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2000), 76–79, 119–21 (on his involvement in the tensions between ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh KhƗn and the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns of Tashkent and Samarqand).

36

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account concludes noting that PƯr MunjƗqƯ was then honored by ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh and Moghul KhƗnïm, who received him joyously. The Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt preserves no hint of this account from ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr’s work; it is possible, of course, that PƯr MunjƗqƯ and Monchaq ণƗfi਌ were different men, but it is more likely that the two works simply present different views of his activity, perhaps at different stages of his career. The rest of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt’s account, in any case, portrays Monchaq ণƗfi਌ as a typical YasavƯ shaykh who maintained khƗnqƗhs and continued KhudƗydƗd’s tradition of stark poverty and self-deprivation. ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh notes that he had visited the khƗnqƗh of Monchaq ণƗfi਌ in MiyƗnkƗl, as well as other khƗnqƗhs subordinate to it; he describes the wonderful aroma that came to all his companions as they approached these khƗnqƗhs, which, he affirms, “is clear proof of the greatness of its master.” The Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt affirms Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s role in “completing” the training of some of KhudƗydƗd’s disciples, but otherwise we learn of no specific disciples prepared by him. We do hear, however, of his encounters with two prominent shaykhs of other orders: the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt specifies that Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s meeting with the KubravƯ master ণusayn KhwƗrazmƯ (d. 958/1551) occurred in the village of Sarpul in MiyƗnkƗl,18 and also describes his encounter with the ‫ޏ‬IshqƯ shaykh Muতammad ৡƗdiq (d. 952/1545).19 The accounts of both the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt and the Maܲhar al-ҵajƗҲib allow us to assume that Monchaq ণƗfi਌ did not return to his homeland among the Manghïts, but remained in Mavarannahr; it was there, the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt affirms, that he was buried, in Kümüshkent, a locality known also as the burial place of several early members of the YasavƯ silsila. Another “Özbek” disciple of KhudƗydƗd, however, evidently did establish an actual YasavƯ Sufi community in the steppe, though how long it remained active there remains uncertain. The origins of this figure, called 18

19

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 98a-b. On ণusayn KhwƗrazmƯ, see my discussion in “The Eclipse of the KubravƯyah in Central Asia,” Iranian Studies 21/1–2 (1988): 45–83. Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, f. 98b. On Muতammad ৡƗdiq and the ‫ޏ‬IshqƯya, see B. Babadzhanov, “Èpigraficheskie pamiatniki musul’manskikh mazarov kak istochnik po istorii sufizma (Na primere mazarov Astana-Ata i Katta Langar),” in: Iz istorii sufizma: Istochniki i sotsial’naia praktika, ed. M. M. Khairullaev (Tashkent, 1991), 89–98, and B. Babadzhanov, “‫ދ‬Ishkiia,” Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vyp. 3 (Moscow, 2001), 46–7, as well as my “Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufi Communities of Iran, Central Asia, and India: The KhalvatƯ/૽IshqƯ/Sha৬৬ƗrƯ Continuum,” in: Religion and Identity in South Asia and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle, ed. Steven Lindquist (New York/London/Delhi, 2010), 251–300.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

37

BakhshƗyish Shaykh,20 are not indicated (later tradition identifies him as a QïpchƗq), but it is clear from the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt’s account of him that his career marks the closest thing we can find, in any of our sources, to the implantation of a genuine YasavƯ initiatic presence in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq. The Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt’s account includes a brief anecdote about BakhshƗyish’s spiritual training by KhudƗydƗd, 21 but turns quickly to some interesting ‘external’ details of his life. BakhshƗyish spent winters in KhudƗydƗd’s service, the account explains, but in summertime maintained a maktab (where is not specified); it also describes him as an extremely coarse and unceremonious figure who “did not know worldly customs (rusnjm-i dunyavƯ),” and it was for this reason that KhudƗydƗd told him he would become the shaykh of “ManqïtistƗn.” BakhshƗyish thus went to “Manqït” and guided the people there for several years, and later came for ziyƗrat to the shrine of his master, KhudƗydƗd, “accompanied by 300 pure Sufis who like him did not know the customs of the people of this world” (rusnjm-i ahl-i ҵƗlam); here the author reminds us that their coarseness was perfectly appropriate, citing the saying “al-ta‫܈‬avvuf tark al-rasm,” i.e. “Sufism is the abandonment of form”. BakhshƗyish and his dervishes performed the ziyƗrat and then went to Samarqand, where the people were astonished at the appearance of this large band of Sufis fresh from the steppe: “the shaykh had sewn a rain-hood (kulƗh-i bƗrƗn) atop his turban, even though it was summer, and his companions were wearing skins of lions and foxes and wolves; they had broken off cattle-horns and hung them at their sides to use for carrying salt.” The party then headed toward the home of Samarqand’s ruler, ‫ޏ‬Abd al-La৬Ưf KhƗn (r. 947/1540–959/1552, a brother of KhudƗydƗd’s devotee Abnj Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd), who arranged to meet them in a mosque; there he found them engaged in the dhikr-i arra (the famous YasavƯ “dhikr of the saw,” so called because of its rasping sound), and the khƗn himself stood in front of those who were performing the dhikr and beat his staff to their rhythm. After enjoying the khƗn’s hospitality and offerings, BakhshƗyish and his followers visited the home of Qanbar Shaykh, the dis20 21

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 100b-101b. BakhshƗyish once dreamed, the account says, that he was climbing a mountain but could not manage the last two or three yards; when he recounted the dream to his shaykh, KhudƗydƗd explained, “You still have a bit of worldliness in you.” BakhshƗyish acknowledged that he owned a horse, and KhudƗydƗd told him, “Sell the horse and give the money to the Sufis, and you will climb that mountain;” and so he did.

38

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ciple of KhudƗydƗd with kinship ties to the “Özbek” from “QazƗqïstƗn” mentioned above; Qanbar asked why BakhshƗyish wore the rain-hood, and he answered, “This was a gift of blessing from the holy ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn [KhudƗydƗd], and I have been wearing it ever since I moved to ManqïtistƗn.” Then almost at once, in Qanbar Shaykh’s home, BakhshƗyish died. The entourage of 300 Sufis led to Samarqand by BakhshƗyish suggests a sizable YasavƯ community established in “ManqïtistƗn;” unfortunately our sources provide no further information on this community, on BakhshƗyish’s successors, or even on the fate of his 300 followers after he died in Samarqand.22 However, BakhshƗyish is certainly the historical personage underlying the ancestral figure of “Baqsayïs” still honored in southern Kazakhstan today; and undoubtedly because of his association with the country of the Manghïts, BakhshƗyish figures in legendary traditions about the Islamization of the Dasht-i Qïpchaq, in which endeavor he is portrayed as accompanying Sayyid Ata on his Islamizing ‘mission.’23 As I have suggested elsewhere,24 the case of Baqsayïs may offer the most compelling argument in favor of the conclusion that the descent groups of southern Kazakhstan, and elsewhere, whose origins are presently traced through various holy ancestors back to the Caliphs, owe their origins as distinct communities in part to the activity of Sufi shaykhs. 22

23

24

Gravestone inscriptions for natural descendants of “BakhshƗyish ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn” in a village near Samarqand are discussed in B. Aminov, “Samarkandskie shaikhi iasaviia,” in The Role of Samarkand in the History of World Civilization: Materials of the International Scientific Symposium devoted to the 2750th Anniversary of the City of Samarkand (Tashkent/Samarkand, 2007), 346–9. In these traditions, Sayyid Ata and BakhshƗyish are further accompanied by “QƗsim Shaykh.” In 19th-century lists of saints assigned to various tribal groups (see below, note 56), “BakhshƗyish Shaykh” is said to have been a QïpchƗq (IVANRUz, inv. no. 12870, f. 88b). A shrine of “Baksais-ata,” described as in disrepair and as no longer “staffed” by a chiraqchï, was mentioned as a pilgrimage site in V. Kallaur, “Drevnie goroda, kreposti i kurgany po reke Syr-Dar’e, v vostochnoi chasti Perovskago uezda,” PTKLA, 6 (1901), 74; cf. I. A. Kastan’e, Drevnosti Kirgizskoi stepi i Orenburgskago kraia (Orenburg, 1910; Trudy Orenburgskoi Uchenoi Arkhivnoi Komissii, vyp. XXII), 202. A shrine of “BƗqsƗyis Ata” was rebuilt in the mid-1990s, not far southwest of Chiili/Shieli, by a group of khwƗjas who consider themselves descendants of this saint; according to the inscription at the shrine, BƗqsƗyis Ata was a descendant of “SqƗq BƗb” (i.e., IsতƗq BƗb) and of Aতmad YasavƯ, but it may well be that both the shrine and the descent group reflect the memory of this BakhshƗyish Shaykh’s affiliation with the YasavƯ silsila. “The Politics of Sacred Lineages,” 522–3.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

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Qanbar Shaykh, Monchaq ণƗfi਌, and BakhshƗyish are not the only disciples of KhudƗydƗd linked to the nomadic communities that were diverging, during the early 16th century, into distinct “Özbek,” “Manghït,” and “Qazaq” polities; little is known of the others, however, beyond their names (e.g., ণƗjjƯ ShƗhƯ NnjqƗyƯ,25 JƗn Davlat ণƗjjƯ NaymƗn, ণu਌njr Boldï ৡnjfƯ26), but all of them appear to have settled, ultimately, in Mavarannahr, and whether their activities in the steppe left any ongoing YasavƯ transmission lines there remains unknown from available sources. It must be emphasized, indeed, that in relative terms—compared with our abundant literary evidence on YasavƯ communities in Mavarannahr, for instance—our sources offer very sparse data that simply cannot justify speaking about any substantial spread of the YasavƯ order into the steppe regions north and west of Mavarannahr during this period. BakhshƗyish, alone among these figures, may have been involved in such a process, but if so, the few lines from the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt and the possible echoes of his career in local hagiographical and genealogical traditions of the Syr Darya valley appear to be his only legacy there; he too eventually resided in Mavarannahr, further confirming the paucity of our information, ultimately, on a 16th-century YasavƯ presence in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq. The lack of evidence continues into the second half of the 16th century, in connection with the leading YasavƯ shaykh of that period, QƗsim Shaykh of KarmƯna (d. 989/1579). QƗsim Shaykh had extensive connections with various ShïbƗnid princes, and played a major role in the rise to power of ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhƗn b. Iskandar; nevertheless, he is ascribed rather low opinions of nomads, in this case the “Uzbeks” established in Mavarannahr, as reflected in a narrative set during the reign of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-La৬Ưf KhƗn (947/1540– 959/1552). According to the account,27 the khƗn once asked at an assembly why MavlƗnƗ ValƯ Knjh-i zarƯ (QƗsim Shaykh’s master) was not willing to take Uzbeks as murƯds and refused their offerings, while DarvƯsh Shaykh did receive Uzbeks as murƯds, and did accept their offerings—even though MavlƗnƗ WalƯ and DarvƯsh Shaykh were both disciples of KhudƗydƗd. Summoned to give an explanation, QƗsim Shaykh is said initially to have given various responses, which are not recounted; but then, recognizing that

25 26 27

Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, f. 65b. Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, f. 102b (a joint entry on ণu਌njr Boldï ৡnjfƯ and JƗn Davlat ণƗjjƯ). Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, f. 106b.

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the khƗn would not understand what he had said, he offered a simple comparison appealing to court titulature: Your khƗn has made someone his atalïq, and he has made someone else his privy counselor (ma‫ۊ‬ram-i khƗ‫)܈܈‬. The atalïq looks after the privileged and the commoners (khavƗ‫܈܈‬ va ҵavvƗm); the privy counselor looks after no one but the elect. In just the same way, ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn Shaykh KhudƗydƗd made ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn DarvƯsh Shaykh his atalïq, so that he takes Uzbeks and others as murƯds; and he made ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn MullƗ WalƯ his privy counselor, who takes the elect as murƯds.

The Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt’s author reports that QƗsim Shaykh followed this up with another comment even less flattering to the nomadic Uzbeks, who he implied would defile anyone who associated with them: “It is as if there were two roads leading from Samarqand to ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd, one full of mud, and the other without mud; DarvƯsh Shaykh ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn travels by way of the muddy road, and whoever gets into the mud, even if on horseback or by cart, gets covered with mud.” As for connections with the Dasht-i QïpchƗq and its nomadic peoples, the JƗmiҵ al-murshidƯn of ণazƯnƯ (written in 972/1564–65, still during QƗsim Shaykh’s lifetime) features the sweeping statement that QƗsim Shaykh’s following included, in addition to “the khƗn of Mavarannahr” and many of the ҵulamƗҴ, “all the people” of Bukhara, Samarqand, Tashkent, and the Qazaqs (jamƯҵ-i ahl-i bukhƗrƗ be-‫ۊ‬aĪratash mushtƗq / tamƗm-i khalq-i samarqand-nj-tƗshkand-nj-qazƗq).28 The latter comment is surely exaggerated, and in any case, even though QƗsim Shaykh too is a major figure in the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, we find virtually no information there or in other sources about any disciples of his linked with the Dasht-i QïpchƗq. What we do find, by contrast, is discussion of a disciple called Shams DƯvƗna, whom QƗsim Shaykh criticized for serving as a shaykh “without my licensure” in the country of TurkistƗn;29 this report raises the possibility of internal quarrels within the YasavƯ community, such as might have left figures claiming initiation in the YasavƯya active in various regions without acknowledgment in available sources, but in the end it too offers only minimal evidence regard-

28

29

ণazƯnƯ, JƗmiҵ al-murshidƯn, MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, No. orient. Oct. 2847, f. 58b; the manuscript is described in Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Band XIV/1: Persische Handschriften, ed. Wilhelm Eilers, descr. Wilhelm Heinz (Wiesbaden, 1968), 274–5, no. 352. Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, ff. 118a-b, 121b-122a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

41

ing an actual YasavƯ presence, however framed, on the frontiers of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq during the period of QƗsim Shaykh. From that era, finally, we find additional information about the religious leanings of the Qazaqs in a source that on the one hand reminds us of the appeal of NaqshbandƯ shaykhs among them—itself a helpful caution against simplistic assumptions of “ethnic” alignments with particular Sufi traditions—but on the other hand may also offer a glimpse, at least, of a YasavƯ shaykh’s attempt to establish himself in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq. The SaҵdƯya, written by ণusayn SarakhsƯ in the latter 16th century and devoted to the lives of the JnjybƗrƯ shaykhs KhwƗja Muতammad IslƗm (d. 971/1563) and his son KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d (d. 997/1589), includes an interesting report concerning KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d’s relationship with several unidentified Qazaq princes who were resident for a time in Bukhara.30 It was their association with KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d, the account explains, and his approval of them, that guaranteed these Qazaq sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns’ success when they returned to their native country and sought to conquer TurkistƗn, and Tashkent; but their good fortune ended when, out of ignorance and gullibility—the Qazaqs are characterized collectively as “sƗdda-law‫( ”ۊ‬in effect, “a blank slate”)—they began to direct their devotion toward a miracle-working saint who appeared among them. The saint, called “TupchƗq KhwƗja” and “TupchƗq Sayyid,” was clearly regarded as a charlatan by KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d, who predicted that the Qazaqs, their fortune reversed because of their devotion to TupchƗq Sayyid, would be defeated and destroyed; and indeed, the author concludes, the Qazaqs were thereafter “uprooted and dispersed” (the author alludes here to ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhƗn’s successes against the Qazaqs, which were to prove only a temporary setback to their dominance of the southern Dasht-i QïpchƗq). The SaҵdƯya may, of course, have exaggerated the importance of these Qazaq sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns’ relationship with KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d; but it is also uncertain whether we should regard “TupchƗq Sayyid” as a YasavƯ dervish at all, let alone as one whose activity in the steppe entailed an actual organizational presence for the YasavƯya in that region. On the one hand, KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d’s hostility toward him is in keeping with the often tense rivalries between NaqshbandƯ and YasavƯ shaykhs of this era, and “TupchƗq Sayyid’s” YasavƯ affiliation 30

SaҵdƯya, IVANRUz, inv. no. 4514, ff. 34a-b; this manuscript is uncatalogued, but other copies are described in SVR III (Tashkent, 1955), 324, Nos. 2591–2593. On the work, see Bakhtyar Babajanov and Maria Szuppe, Les inscriptions persanes de ChƗr Bakr, nécropole familiale des khwƗja JnjybƗrƯ près de Boukhara (London, 2002), 18.

42

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might be argued on the basis of the author’s citation, in this account, of a saying traditionally attributed to the mashƗҲikh-i turk; the saying (ikhlƗ‫܈‬-sïz yitti, iҵtiqƗd-lïq bitti, “The faithless one has gone astray, the trustworthy one has become complete”) simply sums up this figure’s negative influence, but would have greater effect if TupchƗq Sayyid could be classed among the shaykhs of the YasavƯya, by turning their words, as it were, against one of their own. On the other hand, TupchƗq Sayyid need not have been a representative of the YasavƯya to have been regarded by KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d as a fraudulent miracle-monger; he may have had no affiliation at all, or he may have been a rogue affiliate of any established group (such as the YasavƯ dervish we saw QƗsim Shaykh repudiating). It is noteworthy, in any case, that the author of the SaҵdƯya does not explicitly call TupchƗq Sayyid a YasavƯ or JahrƯ shaykh; the presence in the work of other anecdotes critical of JahrƯ shaykhs suggests that TupchƗq Sayyid would readily have been identified as one if he had in fact been one, or if it had been credible to portray him as linked to the YasavƯ tradition (evidently neither his appellation, nor his objectionable activities as a miracle-worker, nor his appeal to the Qazaqs was sufficient to make such a portrayal credible). What seems clear, in any case, is that our sources on Sufi groups of the 16th century offer no basis for insisting that the YasavƯ order, as such, bore any particularly distinctive appeal for the newly-established nomadic elements in Mavarannahr, or for the nomads who remained in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq; nor do our sources offer evidence that YasavƯ shaykhs had any particular liking for nomads, or that they enjoyed any competitive advantage among them. Both among the Uzbek nomads of Mavarannahr and among the Qazaqs in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, shaykhs of the NaqshbandƯya were to prove as attractive, and as successful, as they were among the sedentary population; acknowledging this, as the sources require, entails abandoning some widely accepted views regarding religious and communal alignments. An amusing anecdote from the same SaҵdƯya may be instructive in this regard. It describes the helplessness of “a Sufi from among the murƯds of the shaykhs of the JahrƯya,” who is explicitly called a “Turk,” in dealing with an angry Uzbek, “from the realm of the Qazaqs” (az qalam-raw-i qazƗq), and thus pits a YasavƯ “Turk” from Mavarannahr, who eventually has recourse to the influence of a NaqshbandƯ shaykh, against an “Uzbek” nomad from the Dasht-i QïpchƗq.31 The Uzbek, we are told, seized the Sufi’s property after 31

SaҵdƯya, IVANRUz, inv. no. 4514, ff. 44b-45a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

43

the latter had unwittingly allowed the Uzbek’s servant-girl to escape, and refused to return it until the girl was caught; the problem was eventually solved after the Turk Sufi appealed for aid to the JnjybƗrƯ “hero” of the hagiography, but the account’s juxtaposition of a YasavƯ dervish, from among the “Turks,” with a hostile “Uzbek” among the “Qazaqs” nicely undermines prevailing assumptions about where the YasavƯya’s strength lay. 3. THE LEGACIES OF ‫ޏ‬ƖLIM SHAYKH AND MUণAMMAD SHARƮF IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES With ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh (d. 1041/1632), author of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt and the most important YasavƯ shaykh of the early 17th century,32 we encounter a distinctly hostile attitude toward the Chinggisid leadership of the Qazaqs, and toward the Qazaqs collectively as well; his biographer, a disciple named FatতullƗh, compiled a supplement (Takmila) to the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, in which he recounted several anecdotes that illustrate this hostility in particularly stark terms. 33 One story recorded by FatতullƗh, in addition to conveying this hostility, is also of interest for its portrayal of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s vision of the YasavƯya as a genuine trans-historical and trans-regional community in which not only the ‘founder,’ but subsequent shaykhs such as KhudƗydƗd as well, would join together to look after later members of the group, and to protect them against hostile forces. 34 The account involves “Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq,” a prominent figure of the early 17th century known also as “Tursnjn Muতammad KhƗn;” he ruled in Tashkent, usually allied with, and in formal submission to, the Ashtarkhanid ruler ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn, whose interests in dividing and weakening the Qazaq threat to his control in the middle and upper Syr Darya valley were served for a time by Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn’s rivalry

32

33

34

On ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and his legacy, see my discussion in “The YasavƯ Order and Persian Hagiography.” As discussed there, ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh himself had important hereditary ties in addition to his initiatic legacy in the YasavƯ silsila: he claimed descent from the eminent Sufi ShihƗb al-DƯn ‫ޏ‬Umar SuhravardƯ (d. 632/1234), and was an ancestor of the Ni਌Ɨms of Hyderabad. Several of these were noted briefly in “The YasavƯ Order and Persian Hagiography,” 401– 2. Takmila, MS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, inv. no. C1602, ff. 132a-b (FatতullƗh’s Takmila is known to survive only in this manuscript).

44

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with Ishim Sul৬Ɨn, the more troublesome Qazaq Chinggisid based in TurkistƗn.35 Despite Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn’s generally good relations with ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s patron, ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn, ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh claimed credit for the death of this Qazaq prince, whom he blamed for preventing him from making the pilgrimage to Aতmad YasavƯ’s shrine in TurkistƗn. As FatতullƗh tells the story, ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh was once seated with some of his disciples and companions in the dƯvƗn-khƗna-yi sharƯf, when someone brought in the head of Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq, which we are told had been cut off by ShujƗ‫ ޏ‬al-DƯn RaতƯm Bek, son of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-ৡamad BƯy Kenäges (an eminent and trusted amƯr already in the time of ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhƗn), and sent by him to ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh from Tashkent. When ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh saw the prince’s head, he explained that on many occasions, when he would go to the shrine of KhudƗydƗd in GhazƯra, he would complain to that shaykh’s spirit that, “because of the iniquity of this despotic QaĪƗq sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn, I have been unable to pay my respects and to perform proper service at the noble grave [of KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ], and instead of attending to the rites of servitude and of kissing the holy threshold there, I am left far-removed and cut off from that place.” One evening, after again performing the circumambulation at KhudƗydƗd’s shrine and “greatly exercising my spiritual powers” (bisyƗr tavajjuh kardam), ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh saw KhudƗydƗd in a dream, commanding him to hurry to TurkistƗn, to the presence of the “Axis of Saints,” the holy Sul৬Ɨn [KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ]; ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh obeyed this order—still in his dream—and quickly reached the banks of the Syr Darya, where the water parted before him to let him pass. He thus came to YasavƯ’s shrine and was able to perform the pilgrimage; as he did, however, the grave was split open, and the pure and luminous 35

Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn seems to have been established in Tashkent already at the outset of ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn’s reign, when, after initially challenging the new khƗn’s authority in alliance with other Qazaq Chinggisids, including Ishim Sul৬Ɨn (in Qazaq “Esim”), he submitted to ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn and was recognized as governor of Tashkent; after recurrent rebellions against ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn, and mostly hostile relations with Ishim KhƗn, Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn was killed by the latter, evidently in 1036/1626–27. On Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn’s career, see the introduction and notes to ShƗkh-Ma‫ۊ‬mnjd ibn MƯrzƗ FƗܲil ChurƗs: Khronika, ed. and tr. O. F. Akimushkin (Moscow, 1976), 128–9, 300 [n. 222], 304 [n. 235]; M. Kh. Abuseitova, Kazakhstan i Tsentral’naia Aziia v XV-XVII vv.: Istoriia, politika, diplomatiia (Almaty, 1998), 98–103; and Boris Kochnev, “Les relations entre Astrakhanides, khans kazaks et ‫ދ‬Arabshahides (dernières données numismatiques),” L’Héritage timouride: Iran - Asie centrale - Inde, XVe-XVIIIe siècles (= Cahiers d’Asie centrale, 3–4 [1997]), 157–60.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

45

spirit of the holy Sul৬Ɨn appeared. ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh explained his situation, and YasavƯ told him, in his best bureaucratese, “Rest assured: we have dismissed your enemy [from rule] and had him transferred from this world” (dil jamҵ dƗrƯd, dushman-i shumƗ-rƗ ҵazl karda az dunyƗ intiqƗl farmnjdƯm). The account concludes with the affirmation that “when five months had passed after his holiness made this allusion to the ruin of that reprobate, the effect of that vision came to pass.” The end of this anecdote also depicts ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh applauding the extermination of one group of Qazaqs, to whom he refers as “rabble” (awbƗsh), and the transformation of another group of Qazaqs into servants of the khƗn; the dire consequences of offending the shaykh are then underscored by another story about the unexpected demise of an unnamed Qazaq amƯr, formerly in the service of “Ishim KhƗn QaĪƗq” but at the time of his death a retainer (nöker) of ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn, who had inadvertently committed an offense against the companions of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh. 36 Yet another anecdote reinforces the warning that the consequences of offending ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh might be not merely individual, but communal; in this case, “the descendants (avlƗd) of ৫Ɨhir BƯy QïrqƯz,”37 who were clearly then dwelling in the southern Dasht-i QïpchƗq near Tashkent, are singled out as an example of “those who during [‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s] time committed some fault and, suffering considerable pain and torment, had the cord of their lives cut off and were enlisted in the ranks of the deceased.” The details of the offense (bƯ-adabƯ) committed by “that party” (jamƗҵa) against ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh are not specified, but because of their action, we are told, the people of this ৫Ɨhir BƯy were decimated, during a campaign led by ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn near ShahrukhƯya, as

36 37

Takmila, f. 133b. This figure remains unidentified. The text’s reference to this group’s ancestor as ৫Ɨhir BƯy undoubtedly precludes identifying him with the Qazaq Chinggisid ৫Ɨhir Sul৬Ɨn, who was proclaimed khƗn among the Qazaqs of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq in the 1520s, but by the end of that decade had fled among the Qïrghïz, where he died; see Materialy po istorii kazakhskikh khanstv XV-XVIII vekov (Alma-Ata, 1969), 195, 222–3, 353 (from the 16th-century TƗrƯkh-i RashƯdƯ and the 17th-century Ba‫ۊ‬r al-asrƗr); Abuseitova, Kazakhstan i Tsentral’naia Aziia, 83–4; and T.I. Sultanov, Kocheveye plemena Priaral’ia v XV-XVII vv. (Voprosy ètnicheskoi i sotsial’noi istorii) (Moscow, 1982), 116. It is doubtful that a writer of this era would have called anyone whose Chinggisid descent was undisputed—even among the Qazaqs or Qïrghïz—a bƯy.

46

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his army crossed the Syr Darya in order to besiege MurƗd Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq (the campaign referred to occurred in 1033/1624).38 The latter stories are intended, naturally, to explain the real, spiritual causes of the demise of these Qazaqs (whether individuals or groups), which lay in the virtually inevitable consequences of committing an offense against a saint as spiritually powerful as ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh; yet inadvertently, at least, they convey a sense of the shaykh’s antipathy toward the Qazaqs in this era, who are mentioned with disproportionate frequency as offenders against him. There are, to be sure, multiple reasons for this depiction. Chief among them, no doubt, is simply the frequent hostility of the Qazaqs and their rulers toward ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s royal patron, ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn (or, at best, their ‘unreliability’ as his allies); from the standpoint of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, such opposition put the Qazaqs as a people effectively outside the governance of Islam (in the person of his patron), adding a potent religious foundation for their harsh treatment (though we should of course avoid the collective caricaturization of the Qazaqs in this era as ‘bad Muslims,’ or as not yet converted to Islam, on this basis). Specific ‘personal’ reasons are cited in some cases, involving ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s resentment of the role he ascribed to the Qazaqs and their rulers in blocking his efforts to perform ziyƗrat to the shrine of Aতmad YasavƯ. We might also consider the possibility, at least, that ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s hostility toward the Qazaqs reflected their devotion to rival Sufi communities; some evidence of NaqshbandƯ influence among the Qazaqs in the latter 16th century was noted above, and we have similar evidence from the early 17th century as well.39 Such evidence should remind us again of the error of assuming that the Qazaqs must always have been devoted to the Sufi ‘order’ linked to a saint whose shrine they came to patronize, but on balance 38

39

Takmila, f. 133b-134a. ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn’s campaign against MurƗd Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq— evidently a Chinggisid, and a loyal supporter of the Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn mentioned above—is mentioned in the Ba‫ۊ‬r al-asrƗr (MS India Office, Ethé 575, ff. 107b-108a; cf. Abuseitova, Kazakhstan i Tsentral’naia Aziia, 103); Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn, during one of his revolts against ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn (in the fall of 1623) had installed MurƗd Sul৬Ɨn in ShƗhrukhƯya, and the khƗn marched against the town in the following spring, but a major confrontation was averted when Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn again submitted to the khƗn’s authority. For instance, the Persian historian Iskandar MunshƯ mentions a Qazaq prince who shifted his allegiance from ValƯ Muতammad KhƗn to ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn (in 1020/1611), on the advice of an unnamed NaqshbandƯ shaykh, adding that shaykhs of the NaqshbandƯya “are the spiritual directors of the QazƗqs, and the QazƗq rulers account themselves their disciples” (Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ҵAbbas the Great, tr. Roger Savory, vol. II [Boulder, CO, 1978], 1055).

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

47

it seems unlikely that ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s attitudes toward the Qazaqs stemmed to any substantial degree from their rulers’ attachment to rival shaykhs of any affiliation. It seems more likely that ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, like many other YasavƯ masters of Mavarannahr, simply preferred the style of religiosity that accompanied the settled environment with which he was most familiar, and had little use for the nomads, whether those dwelling nearby or those in the service of rulers he had reason to dislike or distrust on other grounds as well. In this regard, finally, we must not lose sight of the fact that ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s likely preference for the settled life and its religious structures shaped his presentation of YasavƯ history in his own work and, indirectly, in the short Takmila of his disciple; the limitations imposed by the urban and sedentary “bias” of our sources upon our understanding of the YasavƯ Sufi tradition must be recognized, but in the end they are insurmountable: if our sources do not show us certain things, we cannot know anything about them, even if we insist that they must have existed nonetheless. In any case, regardless of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s hostility toward the nomads of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq as reflected in the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt and the Takmila, we do find scattered information on disciples of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh linked with the Syr Darya basin who may have been active among the Qazaqs. The evidence we have on the presence of YasavƯ shaykhs in the steppe during the 17th and 18th centuries involves several figures who are linked, in a quite complicated pattern of silsila relationships, both with ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and with the major YasavƯ shaykh of the latter 17th century, MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf of Bukhara (d. 1109/1697). This MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, author of the last substantial “internal” YasavƯ hagiographical work (the ‫ۉ‬ujjat al-dhƗkirƯn, completed around 1080/1670), was clearly a spiritual “grandson” of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh; that is, he himself affirms that he was the disciple of several shaykhs who were disciples of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, thus placing him one generation removed from ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh in the YasavƯ silsila, and some sources confirm this picture. Other sources, however, complicate the situation, sometimes eliminating the intermediaries between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, and in other cases seeming to insert ‘extra’ spiritual generations between them; and for the most part, these sources add these complications precisely in connection with the figures, considered below, who are associated with the Syr Darya valley. Our evidence on these figures is sparse and often contradictory, but it suggests the incorporation, into the YasavƯ silsila, of a series of shaykhs whose nisbas link them to the region of the middle Syr Darya basin; most appear to belong, in terms of silsila ties,

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between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, but we can also trace a few figures active in this region after the time of Muতammad SharƯf. One portrayal of the relationships among the figures in question may be derived from the ThamarƗt al-mashƗҲikh, a large hagiographical compendium compiled in the 1680s by Sayyid Zinda-‫ޏ‬AlƯ of Bukhara.40 The author was personally acquainted with many YasavƯ shaykhs, but unfortunately much of his account of the YasavƯ silsila is missing from the version of the ThamarƗt that has come down to us; it nevertheless preserves the names of YasavƯ shaykhs, and some indication of the relationships among them, both in a brief summary of the YasavƯ lineage appearing early in the text, and in the table of contents (fihrist) that accompanies the work.41 The ThamarƗt lists, last among the disciples of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, a certain ণusayn Shaykh ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn, who in the fihrist is assigned the nisba “Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ.” This ণusayn Shaykh is not mentioned at all by MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf in the ‫ۉ‬ujjat al-dhƗkirƯn, but he is the only figure among the successors of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh who is ascribed, in the ThamarƗt’s lists, disciples of his own. One of his disciples, we are told, was ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh, identified as the eldest son of ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ, and referred to by the ThamarƗt’s author as “our shaykh,” indicating direct acquaintance; this ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ޏ‬is likewise assigned his own disciples, as discussed below. The other disciple ascribed to ণusayn Shaykh is MavlƗnƗ KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, with whom the ThamarƗt’s author was likewise personally acquainted, as he affirms elsewhere in his work. 42 These two disciples of “ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ” are also mentioned in the fihrist to the ThamarƗt, where, however, an additional name appears: between the name of ণusayn Shaykh and those of his two disciples—“MavlƗnƗ KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ” and “‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ” —is added the name of “IbrƗhƯm Shaykh QnjrghƗnƯ” [sic]. The latter figure might reasonably be construed as yet another disciple of ণusayn Shaykh; however, this IbrƗhƯm is known from the work of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, discussed below, where his place in the YasavƯ silsila is shown somewhat differently, and where his nisba is given, undoubtedly 40

41 42

See my discussion of this work and its author in “The MashƗ’ikh-i Turk and the KhojagƗn: Rethinking the Links between the YasavƯ and NaqshbandƯ Sufi Traditions,” Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2 (1996): 180–207; citations here are to IVANRUz, inv. no. 2619, described in SVR III, 353, no. 2669. ThamarƗt, ff. 38b-42a (the fihrist), ff. 65b-68a (the summary of the YasavƯ silsila). ThamarƗt, f. 270a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

49

more correctly, as “QavghƗnƯ.” This nisba, along with that assigned in the fihrist to ণusayn Shaykh, “Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ,” 43 and those borne by ণusayn Shaykh’s two disciples—NjtrƗrƯ and TurkistƗnƯ—suggests (for the first time since the age of Aতmad YasavƯ himself) a substantial YasavƯ Sufi community active in the middle Syr Darya valley. Our sources still tell us little about their possible connections with the Qazaqs or their impact in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, but this “cluster” of YasavƯ shaykhs linked to the Syr Darya basin in the mid- to latter 17th century and the early 18th century stands as the most substantial indication of a sizable YasavƯ Sufi community in this region, and it is worth reviewing the diverse accounts we have of these shaykhs’ activities. We unfortunately know next to nothing about “ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ;” the account of him intended for the ThamarƗt was evidently quite brief (to judge from the fihrist, it was limited to a single page), and later works add no details about him (even his nisba, known only from the fihrist, disappears from later sources). The ThamarƗt’s author, however, does provide additional information about ণusayn Shaykh’s disciples, both of whom he met personally. He notes that he spent considerable time in the service of “MavlƗnƗ KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ TurkistƗnƯ” when the latter shaykh visited Bukhara, adding that NjtrƗrƯ also gave the bayҵat to a certain Shaykh YƗr Muতammad Dih-darƗzƯ; 44 the latter figure’s principal master, however, was one ৡubnjr KhwƗja (d. 1051/1641–42), a NaqshbandƯ shaykh belonging to a lineage traced from the eminent Makhdnjm-i A‫ޏ‬਌am.45 NjtrƗrƯ’s link to the disciple of ৡubnjr KhwƗja is not confirmed by other sources, but the latter figure’s death-date suggests that NjtrƗrƯ may have been active in the middle of the 17th century. This Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ is probably to be identified, further, with the figure called simply “Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ” in the Tadhkirayi Majdhnjb NamangƗnƯ, a hagiographical compendium produced at the end of the 18th century; this work’s account suggests Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ’s associ43

44

45

Ɩq-qnjrghƗn is near the town of Özkent (“Njzgand”), downriver from TurkistƗn; it is the center of a khwƗja lineage claiming descent from the family of Aতmad YasavƯ, on which see Aširbek K. Muminov, “Die Qožas: Arabische Genealogien in Kasachstan,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2: Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds. Anke von Kügelgen, Michael Kemper, and Allen J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 195–6. ThamarƗt, f. 270a; judging from the fihrist, the account of Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ was to comprise three or four pages. ThamarƗt, f. 269a.

50

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ation with the YasavƯ Sufi circles of Bukhara led by MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf.46 The ThamarƗt’s author also refers to ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh‫ ޏ‬as “our master,” but his account of this other disciple of ণusayn Shaykh is somewhat less personal, adding virtually no details about ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫’ޏ‬s own career.47 The ThamarƗt does, however, give a list of of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫’ޏ‬s disciples,48 listing MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf first among them; he, of course, was active not in the Syr Darya region, but in Bukhara, and the other disciples of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh likewise appear to have been based in Bukhara, with no evidence of a connection with, or legacy in, the Syr Darya basin or the Dasht-i QïpchƗq. MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf’s status as ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫’ޏ‬s disciple is of interest, however, insofar as Muতammad SharƯf himself never refers to such a figure in the ‫ۉ‬ujjat al-dhƗkirƯn—where he does, however, mention three other disciples of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh whom he served. Nevertheless, the ThamarƗt elsewhere includes another passage affirming the connection between MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf and ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ޏ‬: it says that Muতammad SharƯf sought out many eminent shaykhs and obtained licensure (ijƗzat) from them, including “the holy ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ‫ޏ‬,” who is here identified as “among the descendants (a‫ۊ‬fƗd) of the

46

47 48

Tadhkira-yi Majdhnjb NamangƗnƯ, IVANRUz, inv. no. 2662, ff. 76b-77b; see the description of the manuscript in SVR, III, 374, no. 2714. In this work’s account, “Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ” is credited with the spiritual patronage and training of a certain MullƗ Tnjrsnjn BƗqƯ NamangƗnƯ, who eventually became a disciple of Muতammad SharƯf; MullƗ Tnjrsnjn’s family hailed from Tashkent but settled in NamangƗn, in the Ferghana valley. There “Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ” once lodged with MullƗ Tnjrsnjn’s father, whom he had known earlier, and during his stay he declared that the boy was under his spiritual protection and would be his adopted son. When MullƗ Tnjrsnjn grew up, he went to Bukhara for his studies, and one day fell in with a group of qalandars; they took him to MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, who, because the young man was Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ’s adopted son, completed his training and licensed him in the dhikr-i jahr. The latter detail suggests that Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ’s role in MullƗ Tnjrsnjn’s training was minimal, but unfortunately the work offers few further details about either Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ or MullƗ Tnjrsnjn BƗqƯ NamangƗnƯ; the account suggests that Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ’s relationship with MullƗ Tnjrsnjn’s father reflected a time when both dwelled in the Syr Darya valley, but in the end tells us nothing about any ongoing legacy of Shaykh NjtrƗrƯ in that region. And in any case, the account suggests a legacy of this figure not in the steppe, but in the Ferghana valley. The fihrist suggests that the account of this ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ was to occupy 2–3 pages. ThamarƗt, f. 67a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

51

holy Sul৬Ɨn KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ.”49 The latter comment implies that this ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh belonged to a hereditary kinship group linked with Aতmad YasavƯ, whatever his initiatory connection might have been. Our other major source on these shaykhs is the large hagiographical compilation of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, from the middle of the 18th century;50 this work complicates our understanding of the place of these figures in the YasavƯ silsila, but nevertheless confirms and augments what is known of this “cluster” of shaykhs linked with the Syr Darya basin in the 17th and early 18th centuries. ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn names only one direct successor of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, and further increases the distance between MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf—whom he knew personally—and ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh. ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s concise account names as ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s direct disciple “MavlƗnƗ IbrƗhƯm TurkistƗnƯ QavghƗnƯ,”51

49

50

51

ThamarƗt, f. 508a. The relationship of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf with “a shaykh of TurkistƗn by the name of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ,” who is further identified as the “jƗ-nishƯn-i ‫ۊ‬aĪrat sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn khwƗj [sic] a‫ۊ‬mad” (perhaps signaling, again, a hereditary connection), is mentioned also in a collection of the works of Muতammad SharƯf copied by the 18thcentury YasavƯ shaykh KhudƗydƗd b. TƗsh-Muতammad in 1169/1755–56; it is mentioned in a brief note added by the copyist (IVANRUz, inv. no. 6656, ff. 197b-198a). Tadhkira-yi ܑƗhir ƮshƗn (completed in 1157/1744), IVANRUz, inv. no. 855, f. 75a; the manuscript is described in SVR III, 365, no. 2694. This figure’s nisba reflects the spelling “q.v.ghƗn,” evidently attested as the name of a town near TurkistƗn already in the Sharaf-nƗma-yi shƗhƯ, from the late 16th century; see Materialy po istorii kazakhskikh khanstv XV-XVIII vekov, 258, giving the form “Kugan” (cf. 501, n. 154), and V. V. Bartol’d, “K istorii orosheniia Turkestana,” Sochineniia, III (Moscow, 1965), 224, 229, referring to “Kavgan-Ata.” For more recent references to “Kaugan-Ata,” see Kastan’e, “Drevnosti,” 209; V. A. Groshev, Irrigatsiia Iuzhnogo Kazakhstana v srednie veka (Alma-Ata, 1985), 88–90; and Svod pamiatnikov istorii i kul’tury Kazakhstana: Iuzhno-Kazakhstanskaia oblast’, ed. M. Kh. Asylbekov, K. A. Akishev, et al. (Almaty, 1994), 120, 125–6. Muminov (“Die Qožas,” 196) lists, among the subdivisions of the Aqqorghan khwƗjas who claim descent from IsতƗq BƗb, a group called “QavghƗndïq,” whose ancestor was “‫ޏ‬Ɩlim QavghƗn Ata.” Oral tradition published in 1996 mentions an “Alïm Shaykh,” further identified as “Qaughan Ata,” among the five sons of a descendant of the Islamizing saint IsতƗq BƗb (ancestor of Aতmad YasavƯ and of the Aqqorghan khwƗjas), with another of the sons called “IbrƗhƯm Shaykh,” who is further identified as “Oqshï Ata” (a shrine bearing the latter name is found near the town of ShielƱ, not far from the site of SïghnƗq); see S. Qǎrbanqozhaev, “Qozha Akhmet Yäsaui turalï angïz-änggƱmeler,” Yäsaui taghïlïmï (Turkistan, 1996), 134. It would not be surprising to find echoes of the names of historically attested shaykhs fitted into such a genealogical framework, or to find a single “IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ” broken up into two figures; the name “Alïm Shaykh” assigned to “Qaughan Ata” may in turn echo the name of the figure

52

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who is clearly the same figure mentioned in the ThamarƗt, though only in the fihrist, as “IbrƗhƯm Shaykh QnjrghƗnƯ;” as noted, the extant portions of the ThamarƗt do not explicitly identify IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ’s master (though they also do not include QavghƗnƯ in a list of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s disciples), and unfortunately a recently discovered Persian treatise ascribed to “MullƗ IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ,” though of interest for other aspects of the history of the YasavƯ tradition, fails to clarify its author’s place in the YasavƯ silsila.52 According to ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, in any case, this IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ was in turn the master of MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ—the figure who is identified in the ThamarƗt as the father of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh—and MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh’s disciple was “ণusayn Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ” (who has thus himself been separated from ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh by two silsila-generations). At this point ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s version of the lineage becomes more recognizable: ণusayn Shaykh had two disciples, ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ (whose natural relationship to MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ is not mentioned by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn) and Ɩkhnjnd MullƗ KhwƗja Muতammad OtrƗrƯ [sic, the more standard form of the nisba given in other sources as “NjtrƗrƯ”]; the latter is said to have had two disciples, to whom we will return below. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh’s disciple, finally, was MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, a major figure in the religious life of Bukhara in the second half of the 17th century, whom ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn elsewhere identifies as the head of the silsila-yi mashƗҲikh-i JahrƯya in his time; ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn notes that he met this YasavƯ master at the age of 18, remained with him for two years, and was 20 years old when Muতammad SharƯf died (in 1109/1697–98). 53 Given his direct association with Muতammad SharƯf, what is perhaps most remarkable in ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s account, besides the insertion of two figures into the silsila between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and ণusayn Shaykh, is that this lineage is the only one given for Muতammad SharƯf: ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn makes no mention of Muতammad SharƯf’s

52

53

identified in some traditions as IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ’s Sufi master, namely ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh of ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd. The treatise is included in a manuscript that also includes the text of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt (copied in 1272/1856) and another of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s works (and still others), preserved in Almaty at the National Library of Kazakhstan (inv. no. 87/VII, ff. 269a-294b); ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s works, but not the treatise ascribed to IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ, are mentioned in Katalog rukopisnykh knig na persidskom iazyke iz sobraniia Natsional’noi biblioteki Respubliki Kazakhstan, eds. Safar Abdullo and S. M. Bakir Kamalleddini (Almaty, 2008), 115–116, nos. 80–81. IVANRUz, inv. no. 855, f. 76b; cf. f. 73a.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

53

association with other direct successors of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, and the net effect of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s presentation is to make Muতammad SharƯf—whom he can hardly be suspected of intending to slight—a fifth-generation spiritual descendant of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh.54 In tracing the YasavƯ lineage down to MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, then, ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn mentions a few figures whose nisbas link them with the Syr Darya valley; like the ThamarƗt, however, his account tells us little about their activity in that region, and his foray into the frontiers of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq ends with a return to MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, in Bukhara. Much of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s presentation of the links between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, including these shaykhs, is nevertheless reflected in scattered texts, each amounting to a brief account of a Sufi lineage, that give no more than a bare sequence of shaykhs (with curious deformations of the earlier YasavƯ silsila as well). These texts, indeed, are our only other sources to mention the name of “IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ,” who seems to be an important figure in them: he is shown there as a disciple not of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, but of the latter’s master, PƯrim Shaykh, and the fact that IbrƗhƯm was retained in the lineage while the more prominent ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh was omitted suggests that IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ was of some particular significance in the milieu, or lineage, that produced these texts. One such text appears in the manuscript containing the earliest copy of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt itself, but seems to have been added by a later hand;55 two other versions appear in two Turkic manuscripts preserved in Tashkent, in which they are accompanied by brief but interesting lists of the tribal affiliations claimed for various Sufi shaykhs.56 The text in the manuscript of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt traces the lineage thus: PƯrim Shaykh > IbrƗhƯm Shaykh > MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh > ণusayn Shaykh > ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh > “Ɩkhnjn ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn” > Nnjrnjm KhwƗja; aside from giving ণusayn Shaykh’s name as “ণasan Shaykh,” the version in the two Turkic texts traces exactly the same lineage down to “Ɩkhnjnd ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn” but

54

55

56

I.e., ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh > IbrƗhƯm TurkistƗnƯ QavghƗnƯ > MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ > ণusayn Shaykh > ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ > MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf. MS St. Petersburg, C1602, f. 125a; the text appears to have been added on a page left blank between the end of the Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt and beginning of the Takmila (even this version omits mention of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, the author of the former work and the subject of the latter). IVANRUz, inv. no. 11838, ff. 139b-140b (this version of the list, but not the lineage, has been summarized in Muminov, “Die Qožas,” 207–8), and no. 12870, ff. 88a-b.

54

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as the latter’s disciple names another “QƗsim Shaykh” instead of Nnjrnjm KhwƗja. All three of these silsila texts thus present the YasavƯ silsila essentially as it may be reconstructed from ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s account, which, however, in addition to lacking both QƗsim Shaykh and Nnjrnjm KhwƗja as disciples of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, includes both ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh (placed between PƯrim Shaykh and IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ) and Muতammad OtrƗrƯ (and two disciples, discussed below); or rather, given the chronological precedence of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s work, we should understand that the brief silsila texts have omitted ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh as well as Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ and his disciples. The name of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf is also missing from these brief silsila texts, but he is clearly the figure intended by the designation “Ɩkhnjnd ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn,” identified in the texts as the disciple of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh. The inclusion of the latter figure in these texts, and their omission of Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, are of interest in connection with another set of texts, in this case actual charts showing Sufi silsilas, in which Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ figures as a key link in the lineages depicted, but ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh makes no appearance (and MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf is likewise not mentioned, by any designation); such an alternation suggests the possibility of rival or even hostile groups portraying their lineages differently as part of their competitive assertion of their respective claims to legitimacy or superiority, and this possibility in turn may in part account for the discrepancies in the accounts we have of the Syr Darya shaykhs of the 17th and early 18th centuries. One of these silsila charts, preserved in the State Archives of Uzbekistan in Tashkent, appears to have been compiled in the middle of the 18th century (though the extant copy dates only from the 19th or even early 20th century);57 the lineage it presents runs thus: PƯrim Shaykh > MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh > ণusayn Shaykh > KhwƗja Muতammad OtrƗrƯ > MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvƯĪ [sic] Muতammad BaৢƯr > ƮshƗn KhalƯfa NiyƗz Muতammad al-BukhƗrƯ. This version thus mentions the figure cast in earlier sources as the father of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh, i.e., MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh, but not ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh, and not MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf; it also omits ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ entirely. The other silsila chart, preserved in the library of Kazan University, traces the lineages of several (chiefly NaqshbandƯ) shaykhs from Kizläw and other nearby villages of present-day Tatarstan.58 The lineage of 57 58

Central State Archive of Uzbekistan (Tashkent), fond I-323, op. 2, d. 90. Kazan University, inv. no. T-2681, likewise copied in the latter 19th or early 20th century.

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

55

interest here ascribes two disciples to PƯrim Shaykh, namely IbrƗhim Shaykh (i.e., QavghƗnƯ, though this nisba is not mentioned), and “Shaykh ণasan” (no doubt masking the name of ণusayn Shaykh [Ɩq-qurghƗnƯ] ); IbrƗhƯm Shaykh is here portrayed as the master of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, with whom this branching ends, but “Shaykh ণasan” is ascribed two disciples: one is called “MavlƗnƗ Muতammad KhwƗja al-TarƗzƯ (the form of the latter nisba clearly masks the nisba “al-OtrƗrƯ”), and the other is called MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪMuতammad BaৢƯr (his greater importance is signaled by the red ink used for his place in the chart). This chart thus omits both MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh and ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh (as well as MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf), and moves ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and IbrƗhƯm Shaykh outside the lineage leading to Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ; it also depicts Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ and MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪMuতammad BaৢƯr as co-disciples, rather than as master and disciple. Despite their divergence on these points, the two versions share the omission of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh and the inclusion of Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, and thus contrast with the three brief silsila texts reviewed above, which omit Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ and highlight ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh. MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ-Muতammad BaৢƯr, the figure named in the Kazan silsila chart as a disciple, along with Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, of “ণasan Shaykh,” and identified as a disciple of Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ in the Tashkent chart, is mentioned also in the Tadhkira-yi ܑƗhir ƮshƗn, which supports the latter version’s account; he is, indeed, one of only two disciples of Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ mentioned by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, 59 who calls him “ƖkhnjndƯ MullƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ BaৢƯr KƗghadh-furnjsh.” The latter occupational designation, as a paper-seller, may suggest his activity in a chiefly urban environment, but more decisive is ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s affirmation that MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf’s son, ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhwƗja, became attached to this ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ BaৢƯr after his service with his father’s murƯd, KhwƗja FuĪayl; this allows us to assume that ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ BaৢƯr was active in the first half of the 18th century, but clearly suggests a Bukharan locus for this disciple’s activity. With the other disciple of KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ” mentioned by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, however, we finally reach explicit, if limited, evidence of a YasavƯ initiate of Qazaq origin active in the Syr Darya valley. He is called ৡnjfƯ Miৢr-‫ޏ‬AlƯ QazƗq; next to nothing is

59

IVANRUz, inv. no. 855, f. 76a.

56

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known of him, unfortunately, but ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn does tell us that he dwelled in TurkistƗn, and belonged to the Kerey tribe of the Qazaqs.60 By contrast, the silsila charts noted above refer to a different disciple of MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ-Muতammad BaৢƯr; in the Kazan version, the disciple is called “Akhnjnd DƗmullƗ NiyƗz- Muতammad Shaykh ChnjqmƗqƯ,” and the inclusion of the latter nisba (found also in the forms “ChaqmƗqƯ” and “ChƗqmƗqƯ”) leaves no doubt that the figure in question, called “ƮshƗn KhalƯfa NiyƗz Muতammad al-BukhƗrƯ” in the Tashkent chart, is the prominent shaykh of Bukhara in the late 18th century, NiyƗz-Muতammad ChnjqmƗqƯ, known chiefly as a disciple of the famous ƮshƗn ImlƗ (d. 1161 or 1162/1749) and as the shaykh of the Manghït ruler ShƗh MurƗd.61 Both this NiyƗz-Muতammad and ƮshƗn ImlƗ are prime examples of the phenomenon of ‘bundled’ silsilas, a common if still largely unrecognized development, during the 18th century, that marks the dissociation of initiatic transmission from organizational succession and communal structure; their reported receipt of initiatic transmission from shaykhs with YasavƯ lineages thus no longer indicates a distinctly YasavƯ organizational structure or communal presence. It is also clear, in any case, that the activity of NiyƗz-Muতammad and ƮshƗn ImlƗ (and of their successors as well) was centered in Bukhara, and any possible impact they might have had in the Syr Darya basin or the Dasht-i QïpchƗq remains unknown. Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion to draw from the varied presentations, reviewed here, of the YasavƯ silsila between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and Muতammad SharƯf is that the various shaykhs from the Syr Darya valley, including ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ, IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ, MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ and his son ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ޏ‬, and KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ maintained multiple connections, including formal ties of discipleship and of instruction and licensure in specific areas, within a loose community of YasavƯ Sufis linked to the legacy of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh. One implication of this interpretation would be the understanding that several lines of YasavƯ shaykh established themselves in the Syr Darya valley. If we venture to reconcile the 60

61

The two Turkic lists of shaykhs assigned to specific Uzbek tribes, mentioned above in connection with the two texts that echo ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s version of the YasavƯ silsila between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and Muতammad SharƯf, mention a “ৡnjfƯ Miৢr ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh” (thus in MS 11838; in MS 12780, “MisƯr ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh”) and declare that he was of the Ɩlchïn; he is followed by “Ɩkhnjnd ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn” (which as noted above is probably a designation for Muতammad SharƯf), who is assigned to the Kerey. Tadhkira-yi Majdhnjb NamangƗnƯ, IVANRUz, inv. no. 2662, ff. 62b-63a.

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57

various accounts, we might suppose that ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh had three disciples active in that region, namely IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ, MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ, and ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ, perhaps in that order of seniority (with QavghƗnƯ perhaps having also been linked with ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s master, PƯrim Shaykh); their precise relationship may well have been more complex, with one shaykh “inheriting” the others, and it would not be particularly surprising to find, for example, ণusayn Shaykh training the natural son of MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh, regardless of whether the latter was formally a master or co-disciple of ণusayn Shaykh. The place of KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ is more complicated, since some sources imply his association with MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, perhaps even as his disciple, but most of the accounts reviewed here say nothing of a connection between these two figures; indeed, they mostly imply substantial independence between the two figures and their respective communal legacies. It is interesting in this regard, however, that to judge from our sources, all the Sufi lineages involving these shaykhs of the Syr Darya valley soon lead back to Bukhara: within a very few generations, the lines of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ޏ‬ Shaykh and Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ leave us only with masters active in Bukhara (including, of course, Muতammad SharƯf), and evidently cease to matter in the Syr Darya valley. This impression may, of course, be dismissed again as a consequence of our sources’ overwhelming provenance from Bukhara; but it is possible that something else is at work, involving an even more complex interplay between normative YasavƯ Sufi silsila lines and hereditary lineages based in the region of TurkistƗn. In particular, it is noteworthy that the other figures seemingly inserted into the YasavƯ silsila between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and Muতammad SharƯf (and inserted in different ways by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn and the ThamarƗt’s author)—namely the natives of QavghƗn, Ɩq-qnjrghƗn, TurkistƗn, and OtrƗr—all hailed from a region in which the dominant “YasavƯ” presence, so far as we know of it, took the form of descent groups claiming natural ties to Aতmad YasavƯ’s family, or to other saints; these figures’ ties to that region suggest that the confusion in our sources about these silsila relationships might reflect something beyond a mere differential rationalization of the careers of several shaykhs linked to ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s Sufi circle (the same conclusion may be suggested also by the context in which we find ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s version of the YasavƯ lineage reflected, namely the texts noted above affirming the apparent tribal affiliations of various Sufi saints). It is possible, in other words, that the discrepancies in our sources may have arisen because the figures in question were in fact originally linked

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with local lineages, probably hereditary, in the vicinity of TurkistƗn; they were thus recognized, we may surmise, as representatives of the YasavƯ tradition, and they may indeed have associated with ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh, with disciples of his, or with Muতammad SharƯf—and in this connection we may recall ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh’s pilgrimages to TurkistƗn, attempted and accomplished, as well as the earlier accounts of an ‘unlicensed’ disciple of QƗsim Shaykh in that region—but because of their primarily hereditary connections, it may be suggested, their silsila relationships were rationalized differently by different writers. That is, we may suppose that MavlƗnƗ SharƯf, for instance, did indeed associate with ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬TurkistƗnƯ, but that the latter figure was primarily, or exclusively, a member of a lineage based on hereditary sanctity, and had only a minimal connection, if any at all, with ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh or a spiritual lineage stemming from him; we read after all in the ThamarƗt that ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬was a descendant of Aতmad YasavƯ, and we might imagine that silsila-systematizers (the ThamarƗt’s author among them) ascribed him a place in a silsila linked to ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh primarily because they knew of his association with Muতammad SharƯf and of Muতammad SharƯf’s association with disciples of ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh. Similarly, it may be that Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ was a contemporary of Muতammad SharƯf, and frequented his company in Bukhara, but was initiatically ‘independent,’ as suggested by the problematical accounts in the ThamarƗt, in ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s work, and in the various silsila texts and charts outlined above. The confusion of our sources, then, might reflect the interplay of hereditary and silsila connections, a process that probably characterizes the YasavƯ tradition nearly from its beginning. As for the YasavƯ lineage after MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, the sources reviewed so far allow us to suggest the activity of MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪMuতammad BaৢƯr in the early 18th century, but in Bukhara; the same era is also likely, however, for the activity of the figure paired with ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ BaৢƯr by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, as a disciple of KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, namely ৡnjfƯ Miৢr-‫ޏ‬AlƯ QazƗq, who clearly seems to have been active in the Syr Darya basin. In addition to the latter figure may be mentioned a disciple of Muতammad SharƯf with whom ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn was directly acquainted: this was KhwƗja FuĪayl, mentioned above, who was also a natural descendant of KhudƗydƗd, and whom ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn once visited in a mosque located in ƮqƗn, not far from TurkistƗn.62 Most of the information we have on this KhwƗja FuĪayl implies his association with his illustrious ancestor’s homeland, near 62

IVANRUz, inv. no. 855, ff. 75a, 77a (in a verse recapitulation of the YasavƯ silsila).

The YasavƯ Presence in the Dasht-i Qïpchaq

59

Samarqand, but ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn’s comment suggests some connection with the Syr Darya basin as well. In any case, this figure’s legacy likewise leads us away from the Syr Darya basin: ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn names a single disciple of KhwƗja FuĪayl, namely the latter’s son-in-law, ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhwƗja, who was the son of Muতammad SharƯf, and from another source,63 we know of a second disciple, namely KhwƗja FuĪayl’s own son, who was in turn the master of the last major YasavƯ shaykh of the 18th century: KhwƗja FuĪayl > his son, Lu৬fullƗh > KhudƗydƗd KhwƗrazmƯ b. TƗsh-Muতammad ‫ޏ‬AzƯzƗn. The latter figure, author of a number of works from the latter 18th century (one of which was recently published64), may have lived to the beginning of the 19th century, and is in any case the latest known shaykh who may be linked in a meaningful way with a distinctly YasavƯ Sufi lineage and community (even his lineage, however, exhibits the phenomenon of ‘bundled’ silsilas, noted above, and by his time “pure” YasavƯ lineages—and, for that matter, “pure” NaqshbandƯ or other lineages—become nearly impossible to identify); all of the figures in this brief lineage, in any case, appear to have been active chiefly or exclusively in Mavarannahr. From yet another source, the AshjƗr al-khuld by the KashmƯrƯ writer Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am (completed in 1139/1726)—which does not mention any of the figures discussed here so far—we learn about an additional disciple of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf linked, if temporarily, to the Syr Darya valley. This figure, called QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh, was known personally to Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am:65 he affirms that he had formerly been in the service of the holy QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh, “who was among the eminent figures of the exalted and resplendent ‫ܒ‬arƯqa of the YasavƯya.” The account affirms that QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh was a native of “IstƯjƗb, among the dependencies of Arnjs” (i.e., IsfƯjƗb/SayrƗm, near the Arys river), and was a ণusaynƯ sayyid (the latter detail might point to his possible affiliation with one of the khwƗja lineages of SayrƗm, but also suggests his association with the series of shaykhs native 63

64

65

The link is confirmed in a silsila recorded in IVANRUz, inv. no. 8684/I (ff. 1b-16a); the manuscript is described in Katalog sufiiskikh proizvedenii XVII-XX vv. iz sobranii Instituta Vostokovedeniia im. Abu Raikhana al-Biruni Akademii Nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan, ed. Baxtiyar Babadjanov, Ulrike Berndt, Ashirbek Muminov, and Jürgen Paul (Stuttgart, 2002), 13–17, no. 3. Shaykh KhudƗydƗd b. TƗsh-Muতammad al-BukhƗrƯ, BustƗn al-mu‫ۊ‬ibbƯn, ed. B. M. Babadzhanov and M. T. Kadyrova (Turkistan, 2006). Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am, AshjƗr al-khuld, IVANRUz, inv. no. 498, ff. 131b-132a; the manuscript is described in SVR, III, 363, No. 2689.

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to, or active in, the Syr Darya basin, during the 17th century, such as ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh and IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ). In the YasavƯ order, the account continues, QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh was a disciple of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, and with full successorship and complete rukh‫܈‬at from him had been licensed to go “to the plains of Arnjs.” Near the end of his life he set out to make the ‫ۊ‬ajj, taking the path to India through KƗshghar; “in this way, he graced KashmƯr with his blessed presence,” arriving in “this city”— undoubtedly Srinagar is meant—in the year 1122/1710–11. He spent nearly three years in KashmƯr, offering guidance and impressing many people with his expansive spirituality; then he departed to complete the ‫ۊ‬ajj, but got no farther than ShƗh-jahƗnƗbƗd (i.e., Delhi), where, on 16 ShavvƗl 1126/23 October 1714, he died. The author concludes, “One may say that the diffusion of the resplendent YasavƯ silsila in this realm [i.e., KashmƯr] came about through his holiness, for prior to [his arrival], its scent had not existed in this place; then after fifteen years, the holy ƮshƗn KhalƯfat al-RaতmƗn [Shaykh ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh BukhƗrƯ, another disciple of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf] made his blessed appearance, and this ‫ܒ‬arƯqa became even more well-established.” As for the significance of this figure’s presence on the frontiers, at least, of the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, another work by the same author affirms that “QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh ণusaynƯ BukhƗrƯ” was born in SayrƗm, “az bilƗd-i arnjs,” but grew up in Bukhara, where he was trained by MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf; it nevertheless also affirms that he spent “most of his life” guiding seekers “on the borders of TurkistƗn,” before setting out for the ‫ۊ‬ajj by way of KƗshghar, reaching KashmƯr toward the end of 1123/January-February 1712.66 One more possible disciple of Muতammad SharƯf linked with the Syr Darya basin is mentioned briefly by ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn, who was himself a compan66

Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am, WƗqiҵƗt-i KashmƯr, MS British Museum, Or. 26,282, ff. 248b-249b; cf. the lithograph printing of this work, TƗrƯkh-i KashmƯr-i AҵܲamƯ (Lahore, 1303/1885), 221–2. For further evidence on this QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh’s activity in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq, I am indebted to Alfrid Bustanov, who has studied a Turkic text from Siberia affirming that “DavlatshƗh b. ShƗh ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb” (assigned the nisba “IsbijƗfƯ”) came from Bukhara and converted the ruler of the “QƗlmƗqs” to Islam (a story no doubt reflecting the frequent Junghar campaigns into the region of SayrƗm and the Syr Darya basin in the latter 17th and early 18th centuries), and has also uncovered evidence of a Siberian disciple of DavlatshƗh active near Tobol’sk; see A. K. Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob islamizatsii Sibiri,” Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 2009–2010: Tiurkskie narody Evrazii v drevnosti i srednevekov’e (Moscow, 2011), 63, 66, and Bustanov’s contribution to the present volume.

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ion of Muতammad SharƯf, as he tells us in a verse summary of the YasavƯ silsila after QƗsim Shaykh. 67 There, referring to the death of Muতammad SharƯf in 1109/1697–98, ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn notes that 30 years later (i.e., in 1139/1726–27), he had a dream in which Muতammad SharƯf appeared and passed a book to him; the dream turned out to be a sign that a book (its identity is not indicated) would be sent to ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn by a certain Shaykh Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd-i QurghƗn, and when the book indeed arrived, it resolved all his difficulties. ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn does not explicitly identify Shaykh Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd-i QurghƗn as a disciple of Muতammad SharƯf, but this seems to be his implication; “QurghƗn” is a common element in Central Asian toponyms, but it is tempting to link it, and Shaykh Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd’s sphere of activity, with the nisba “Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ” assigned to the YasavƯ shaykh ণusayn, noted above, and with the broader “cluster” of YasavƯ shaykhs of the 17th century (including, perhaps, QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh of “IstƯjƗb”) who hailed from the Syr Darya valley. *** As noted above, some of the confusion in our sources regarding the Syr Darya shaykhs of the 17th century (and those traceable into the 18th century as well) may reflect the interplay of relationships based on initiatic ties within a silsila-based organizational (and conceptual) structure, and relationships based on kinship and natural descent; this interplay is a quite old, and contested, phenomenon in Sufism, and it is important to keep in mind its implications for our understanding of issues of continuity and leadership in Sufi communities. Increasingly, however, in the period after the time of MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, in the early to mid-18th century, we face another factor, also alluded to above: it is possible, that is, that instead of, or in addition to, the possible impact of hereditary lineages on our sources’ presentation of the YasavƯ silsila between ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and Muতammad SharƯf and beyond, the blurring of communal divisions that appears so common later in the 18th century, together with the “bundling” of silsila affiliations (and the consequential dilution of a distinctive “YasavƯ” communal identity), was already well underway by the end of the 17th century. These developments, in turn, might have encouraged the compilers of the written sources upon which we depend (1) to trace “YasavƯ” transmission lines on the basis of poorly attested, or oversimplified, relationships, and (2) to fit individuals into clearcut 67

IVANRUz, inv. no. 855, f. 76b; cf. f. 73a.

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lineages without regard for any real communal (or doctrinal, or ritual) consequences that ought to have accompanied such affiliations, and without regard for more complex patterns of interrelationship that might have rendered assumptions about exclusive affiliation with a single community meaningless. With this in mind, for instance, we might suggest that the legacy of ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ, or of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬TurkistƗnƯ, might be better sought within a social environment framed by “NaqshbandƯ” affiliation (or by hereditary ties) than in the nominally “YasavƯ” circles to which they are assigned in the ThamarƗt or the work of ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn. However we may understand the relationships among the various shaykhs linked with the Syr Darya basin during the 17th and early 18th centuries— MavlƗnƗ IbrƗhƯm TurkistƗnƯ QavghƗnƯ, ণusayn Shaykh Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ, MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ, ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ, KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ, Shaykh Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd-i QurghƗn, and QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh—or the nature of their connections with the two ‘mainstays’ of the YasavƯ silsila during this era, ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh and MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf, this “cluster” of YasavƯ shaykhs (whether or not it constitutes a “lineage”) disappears, for all practical purposes, after the generation of Muতammad SharƯf’s relatively few identifiable successors, or at most after the second generation, with the enigmatic figure of ৡnjfƯ Miৢr-‫ޏ‬AlƯ QazƗq; the latter figure’s appellation is intriguing, and suggests the possibility that oral tradition, perhaps, might offer a venue for the discovery of new hagiographical information regarding a YasavƯ presence in the steppe that can be firmly linked with the silsila structures known from written sources. If this sort of information is uncovered, it will naturally be important to compare the names preserved in oral tradition with the names recorded in the written sources explored here; it may be that some of these names might offer points of contact whereby silsilas or simple lines of initiatic transmission established on the basis of written sources could be “continued” into later times on the basis of oral accounts. Until such evidence is adduced, however, we are compelled to acknowledge that, to judge from available sources, the presence of the YasavƯ order in the Dasht-i QïpchƗq was always marginal, compared with its strength in Mavarannahr; and a more general study of Sufi communities in the 18th and 19th centuries suggests shifting patterns of affiliation that ultimately result in the effective disappearance of specifically YasavƯ communities and transmission lines. Both of these conclusions suggest, in turn, that the legacy of the YasavƯ tradition in the steppe, and among the Qazaqs, must be sought primarily outside the framework of the ‘Sufi order’ as traditionally understood.

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More broadly, we may conclude, the standard narratives about YasavƯ dervishes in the steppe are mostly without foundation, having been formulated without actual consultation of the extant written sources on the YasavƯ tradition. Those written sources nevertheless do include occasional information about individuals from the Syr Darya valley and the frontiers, at least, of the Dasht-i Qïpchaq who became followers of YasavƯ shaykhs based in Mavarannahr during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries; in some cases such figures may indeed have been instrumental in mediating some connection with the YasavƯ tradition, whether through kinship structures, ritual practices, or actual initiatic bonds, to the nomadic Qazaq communities inhabiting the Dasht-i QïpchƗq in that era, but in any event it is clearly among such figures that possible connections with the personalia of Qazaq oral tradition (and of still unexplored written sources) are likely to be most fruitfully sought.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources ‫ޏ‬AlƯ b. ণusayn ৡafƯ, Rasha‫ۊ‬Ɨt-i ҵayn al-‫ۊ‬ayƗt, ed. ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Aৢghar Mu‫ޏ‬ƯnƯyƗn (Tehran, 2536/1977) ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗdƯ, Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, MS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, inv. no. C1602 Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ҵAbbas the Great, tr. Roger Savory, vol. II (Boulder, Colorado, 1978) ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr, Maܲhar al-ҵajƗҲib, MS Tashkent, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan [hereafter IVANRUz], inv. no. 8716 ণazƯnƯ, JƗmiҵ al-murshidƯn, MS Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, inv. no. orient. Oct. 2847 ণusayn SarakhsƯ, SaҵdƯya, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 4514 IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ, RisƗla, MS Almaty, National Library of Kazakhstan, inv. no. 87/VII, ff. 269a-294b) Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am, AshjƗr al-khuld, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 498 Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am, TƗrƯkh-i KashmƯr-i AҵܲamƯ (Lahore, 1303/1885) Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am, WƗqiҵƗt-i KashmƯr, MS British Museum, Or. 26,282 Silsila chart, MS Kazan, Kazan University, inv. no. T-2681 Silsila chart, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, No. 8684/I ShƗkh-Maতmnjd ibn MƯrzƗ FƗ਌il ChurƗs: Khronika, ed. and tr. O. F. Akimushkin (Moscow, 1976) Shaykh KhudƗydƗd b. TƗsh-Muতammad al-BukhƗrƯ, BustƗn al-mu‫ۊ‬ibbƯn, eds. B. M. Babadzhanov and M. T. Kadyrova (Turkistan, 2006) Tadhkira-yi Majdhnjb NamangƗnƯ, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 2662 Tadhkira-yi ܑƗhir ƮshƗn, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 855 Takmila-yi Lama‫ۊ‬Ɨt, MS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, inv. no. C1602

Secondary Literature Abdullo, Safar and Bakir Kamalleddini, S. M. (eds.), Katalog rukopisnykh knig na persidskom iazyke iz sobraniia Natsional’noi biblioteki Respubliki Kazakhstan (Almaty, 2008) Abuseitova, Meruert Kh., Kazakhstan i Tsentral’naia Aziia v XV-XVII vv.: Istoriia, politika, diplomatiia (Almaty, 1998) Adshead, Samuel A. M., Central Asia in World History (New York, 1993) Aminov, Babur, “Samarkandskie shaikhi iasaviia,” in: The Role of Samarkand in the History of World Civilization: Materials of the International Scientific Symposium devoted to the 2750th Anniversary of the City of Samarkand (Tashkent/Samarkand, 2007), 346–349 Asylbekov, M. Kh. and Akishev, K. A. et al. (eds.), Svod pamiatnikov istorii i kul’tury Kazakhstana: Iuzhno-Kazakhstanskaia oblast’, eds. (Almaty, 1994)

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Babadjanov, Baxtiyar and Berndt, Ulrike and Muminov, Ashirbek and Paul, Jürgen (eds.), Katalog sufiiskikh proizvedenii XVII-XX vv. iz sobranii Instituta Vostokovedeniia im. Abu Raikhana al-Biruni Akademii Nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan (Stuttgart, 2002) Babadzhanov, Bakhtiiar, “Mir-i Arab,” in: Kul’tura kochevnikov na rubezhe vekov (XIX-XX, XX-XXI vv): Problemy genezisa i transformatsii. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, g. Almaty, 5–7 iiunia 1995 g. (Almaty, 1995), 88–102 –––––, “Èpigraficheskie pamiatniki musul’manskikh mazarov kak istochnik po istorii sufizma (Na primere mazarov Astana-Ata i Katta Langar),” in: Iz istorii sufizma: Istochniki i sotsial’naia praktika, ed. M.M. Khairullaev (Tashkent, 1991), 89–98 –––––, “‫ދ‬Ishkiia,” Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vyp. 3 (Moscow, 2001), 46–47 Babajanov, Bakhtyar and Szuppe, Maria, Les inscriptions persanes de ChƗr Bakr, nécropole familiale des khwƗja JnjybƗrƯ près de Boukhara (London, 2002) Bartol’d, V. V., Sochineniia, III (Moscow, 1965) Bustanov, A. K., “Sufiiskie legendy ob islamizatsii Sibiri,” Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 2009– 2010: Tiurkskie narody Evrazii v drevnosti i srednevekov’e (Moscow, 2011), 33–78 DeWeese, Devin, “The Eclipse of the KubravƯyah in Central Asia,” Iranian Studies 21/1–2 (1988), 45–83 –––––, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994) –––––, “The Descendants of Sayyid Ata and the Rank of NaqƯb in Central Asia,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 612–634 –––––, “YasavƯ Šayপs in the Timurid Era: Notes on the Social and Political Role of Communal Sufi Affiliations in the 14th and 15th Centuries,” in: La civiltà timuride come fenomeno internazionale, ed. Michele Bernardini [= Oriente Moderno, N.S., 15 (76), No. 2 (1996)]: 173–188 –––––, “The MashƗ’ikh-i Turk and the KhojagƗn: Rethinking the Links between the YasavƯ and NaqshbandƯ Sufi Traditions,” Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2 (1996): 180–207 –––––, “The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31/4 (1999): 507–530 –––––, “The YasavƯ Order and Persian Hagiography in Seventeenth-Century Central Asia: ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh of ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd and his LamaতƗt min nafaতƗt al-quds,” in: The Heritage of Sufism, vol. III: Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501–1750), The Safavid and Mughal Period, eds. Leonard Lewisohn and David Morgan (Oxford, 1999), 389–414 –––––, “The YasavƯ Order and the Uzbeks in the Early 16th Century: The Story of Shaykh JamƗl ad-DƯn and Muতammad ShïbƗnƯ KhƗn,” in: Tsentral’naia Aziia: Istochniki, Istoriia, Kul’tura. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 80-letiiu doktora istoricheskikh nauk E. A. Davidovicha i deistvitel’nogo chlena Akademii nauk Tadzhikistana, akademika RAEN, doktora istoricheskikh nauk B. A. Litvinskogo, Moskva, 3–5 aprelia 2003 g., eds. E. V. Antonova and T. K. Mkrtychev (Moscow, 2005), 297–310 –––––, “Orality and the Master-Disciple Relationship in Medieval Sufi Communities (Iran and Central Asia, 12th-15th centuries),” in: Oralité et lien social au Moyen Âge (Occident, Byzance, Islam): parole donnée, foi jurée, serment, ed. Marie-France Auzépy and Guillaume Saint-Guillain (Paris, 2008), 293–307

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–––––, “Spiritual Practice and Corporate Identity in Medieval Sufi Communities of Iran, Central Asia, and India: The KhalvatƯ/૽IshqƯ/Sha৬৬ƗrƯ Continuum,” in: Religion and Identity in South Asia and Beyond: Essays in Honor of Patrick Olivelle, ed. Steven Lindquist (New York/London/Delhi, 2010), 251–300 Eilers, Wilhelm (ed.), descr. Wilhelm Heinz, Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, Band XIV/1: Persische Handschriften (Wiesbaden, 1968) Groshev, V.A., Irrigatsiia Iuzhnogo Kazakhstana v srednie veka (Alma-Ata, 1985) Kallaur, V., “Drevnie goroda, kreposti i kurgany po reke Syr-Dar’e, v vostochnoi chasti Perovskago uezda,” PTKLA 6 (1901), 69–78 Karpat, Kemal H., “The Roots of Kazakh Nationalism: Ethnicity, Islam or Land?,” in: A Collapsing Empire: Underdevelopment, Ethnic Conflicts and Nationalisms in the Soviet Union, ed. Marco Buttino (Milan, 1993), 313–333 Kastan’e, I. A., Drevnosti Kirgizskoi stepi i Orenburgskago kraia (Orenburg, 1910), 202 Kochnev, Boris, “Les relations entre Astrakhanides, khans kazaks et ‫ދ‬Arabshahides (dernières données numismatiques),” L’Héritage timouride: Iran - Asie central - Inde, XVe-XVIIIe siècles (= Cahiers d’Asie centrale 3–4 [1997]: 157–67 Materialy po istorii kazakhskikh khanstv XV-XVIII vekov (Alma-Ata, 1969) Miklukho-Maklai, N. D. (ed.), Opisanie tadzhikskikh i persidskikh rukopisei Instituta narodov Azii, vyp. 2, Biograficheskie sochineniia (Moscow, 1961) Muminov, Aširbek K., “Die Qožas: Arabische Genealogien in Kasachstan,” Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2: InterRegional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, ed. A. von Kügelgen, M. Kemper, and A.J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 193–209 ––––– and von Kügelgen, Anke, and DeWeese, Devin and Kemper, Michael (eds.), Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 2: Genealogicheskie gramoty i sakral’nye semeistva XIX-XXI vekov: nasab-nama i gruppy khodzhei, sviazannykh s sakral’nym skazaniem ob Iskhak Babe / Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia: The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions, Vol. 2: Genealogical Charters and Sacred Families: Nasab-namas and Khoja Groups Linked to the Ishaq Bab Narrative, 19th-21st Centuries (Almaty, 2008) Nurtazina, N. D., Islam v istorii srednevekovogo Kazakhstana (Almaty, 2000) Qǎrbanqozhaev, S., “Qozha Akhmet Yäsaui turalï angïz-änggƱmeler,” Yäsaui taghïlïmï (Turkistan, 1996), 132–41 Rashid, Ahmed, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (New Haven and London, 2002) Ro’i, Yaacov, Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to Gorbachev (London, 2000) Roy, Olivier, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York, 2000; originally published in French, La Nouvelle Asie centrale ou la fabrication des nations [Paris, 1997]) Schwarz, Florian, ‘Unser Weg schließt tausend Wege ein:’ Derwische und Gesellschaft im islamischen Mittelasien im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 2000) Semenov, A.A. et al. (eds.), Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauka Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent, 1960) Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, 2000)

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Sultangalieva, A. K., Islam v Kazakhstane: Istoriia, ètnichnost’ i obshchestvo (Almaty, 1998) Sultanov, T. I., Kocheveye plemena Priaral’ia v XV-XVII vv. (Voprosy ètnicheskoi i sotsial’noi istorii) (Moscow, 1982) Tabyshalieva, Anara, Vera v Turkestane (Ocherk istorii religii Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana) (Bishkek, 1993) Yemelianova, Galina M., Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (New York, 2002)

Notes on the YasavƯya and NaqshbandƯya in Western Siberia in the 17th – early 20th Centuries ALFRID BUSTANOV* Amsterdam

The study of the role played by Islamic mysticism in the history of the Muslim communities of Western Siberia is a relatively recent undertaking, which is closely related to the ethnographic study of the Siberian Tatars. Since the well-known publication of Nikolai F. Katanov 1 , the Sufi presence in the region was associated with the activity only of the NaqshbandƯya shaykhs. The new material collected in expeditions and archives allows a more detailed study of Sufi activities in Siberia and to raise new questions. It is necessary to pay attention to the sources produced by the local Muslim population and in the broader context of Islamic history on the territory of the Russian Empire, because otherwise we miss the voice of the actors themselves and see the development of communities in anachronistic terms of nationality, which was a feature of Soviet scholarship. Moreover, such sources are necessary to question the narrative, promoted by both Soviet and post-Soviet authors, about the NaqshbandƯs being the sole actors in the literary representation of Islamization and, more specifically, in formation of the cult of saints. A number of Turkic and Persian texts produced by Siberian Sufis call into question the long-term “domination” of the NaqshbandƯya since the time of the Siberian Khanate and early Russian rule (16th–17th c.). If we agree on the crucial role of Sufi masters in the process of Islamization, we have to ask ourselves what was the context of appearance of our sources on this topic, why do they point on this or that particular Sufi affiliation, and what do we know about individual shaykhs? In order to answer these questions I should *

1

Many thanks to Paolo Sartori, Niccolò Pianciola, Thomas Welsford and Artemy Kalinovsky for reading early drafts of this paper. I am grateful to Il’ias Mustakimov and Allen J. Frank for sharing with me copies of manuscripts and rare literature. N.F. Katanov, O religioznykh voinakh uchenikov shaykha Bagauddina protiv inorodtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri (po rukopisiam Tobol’skogo gubernskogo muzeia) (Kazan, 1904).

70

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like to bring to light several Turkic and Persian texts written by Siberian Sufis which pay special attention to the local legend (more properly, sacred history2) of Islamization in its two variants. I define Islamization legends as narratives which recounts the local community’s story of conversion to Islam in the aftermath of a holy war conducted against the infidels. One of such texts was edited by Katanov. Similar texts which probably became prototypes for Siberian legends are broadly known in Central Asia3 and existed in the Volga-Ural region too.4 The compilation and circulation of Islamization legends is strongly connected to descent groups who claim their origin from a saint who was martyred in the holy war for spreading religion; numerous burial places of saints in Siberia are known as astƗna5 and are legitimated through the catalogues of holy graves included into the Islamization legends. It should be said that these sacred narratives do not directly address the question of Sufi brotherhoods. They were not written in order to prove belonging of local tradition to this or that particular ‫ܒ‬arƯqa (this function was played by special licenses ʊ ijƗza). The main goal of these texts was to legitimate the cult of saints (avliyƗ’), which emerged in Western Siberia in the late 16th century, as well as to draw a sacred geography of local 2

3

4

5

Devin DeWeese, “Yasavian Legends of the Islamization of Turkestan,” in: Aspects of Altaic Civilization, ed. Denis Sinor, vol. III (Bloomington, IN, 1990), 2; Id., Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994), 9–11. Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 2: Genealogicheskie gramoty i sakral’nye semeistva XIX-XXI vekov: nasab-nama i gruppy khodzhei, sviazannykh s sakral’nym skazaniem ob Iskhak Babe / Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia: The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions, Vol. 2: Genealogical Charters and Sacred Families: Nasab-namas and Khoja Groups Linked to the Ishaq Bab Narrative, 19th-21st Centuries, eds. A. Muminov, A. von Kügelgen, D. DeWeese, M. Kemper (Almaty, 2008).; Z. Zhandarbek, “Nasab-nama” nusqalary zhene turki tarikhy (Almaty, 2002); A.K. Muminov, Rodoslovnoe drevo Mukhtara Auezova (Almaty, 2011). A.J. Frank, “Islamic Shrine Catalogues and Communal Geography in the Volga-Ural Region: 1788–1917,” in: Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2 (1996), 265–86; Id., Islamic Historiography and ‘Bulghar’ Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia, (Leiden, 1998); A.K. Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” in: Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 2009–2010. Tiurkskie narody Evrazii v drevnosti i srednevekov’e, eds. S.G. Kliashtornyi et al. (Moscow, 2011): 69–73. A.G. Seleznev and I.A. Selezneva, “Kontsept astana i kul’t sviatykh v islame,” in : Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 2007–2008, Istoriia i kul’tura tiurkskikh narodov Rossii i sopredel’nykh stran (Moscow, 2009): 338–59.

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71

Islamic community, which also corresponded to the core of the Siberian Khanate. Islamization legend should be separated from genealogical narratives of individual families of Bukharans who at various points moved to Siberia. The latter texts were used as a proof of aristocratic origin.6 Thus in both cases, Islamization legends and genealogical narratives do not articulate Sufi affiliations as the main point. In what follows I shall attempt to suggest two-phase model of development of Sufism in Siberia: the presence of the YasavƯya between the second half of the 16th century and the early 18th century and an overlapping dissemination of NaqshbandƯs since the 18th century until the early 20th century. My hypothesis is that the cult of saints might have been constructed by shaykhs with YasavƯ affiliation who had emigrated from Urgench and SayrƗm to numerous Siberian villages and towns, bringing with them Central Asian religious traditions. Since the 18th century domination of NaqshbandƯya in Siberia is unquestionable. It should be remembered that the main sources of information on the first Central Asian emigrants, the so-called Siberian Bukharans, are their genealogies accompanied by more or less extending historical narratives. True, there is no direct documentary evidence of YasavƯyan presence in Western Siberia manifested by the chains of spiritual succession.7 I am aware of the fact that, as Devin DeWeese clearly demonstrates in 6

7

F.T.-A. Valeev, “Rodoslovnye zapisi (shezhere) sibirskikh tatar kak istorikoetnograficheskii istochnik,” in: Problemy antropologii i istoricheskoi etnografii Zapadnoi Sibiri (Omsk, 1991), 98–104. In 1997 such a chain of the Volga-Ural Sufis was discovered by Dzhamil’ G. Mukhametshin (Bulghar) in the village Iske Räjäp, in Spask region of Tatarstan. After Aতmad YasavƯ the source counted his disciples: BƗbƗ MachƯn, KhudƗydƗd, ৡadrƯ Ata, ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh, Shaykh MurƯd, JalƗl ad-DƯn, and QƗsim Shaykh. At this point the document was cut by the owners because of the fear of repressions against relatives of those who were mentioned in the chain. However, as Mukhametshin suggested, it is possible to reconstruct the chain on the basis of local epigraphic material (Dzh. Mukhametshin, “Ber shejereneng sere,” Vatanym Tatarstan 30.05.2007; D.M. Iskhakov, Institut seiiidov v Uluse Dzhuchi i pozdnezolotoordynskikh tiurko-tatarskikh gosudarstvakh [Kazan, 2011], 22). Thus, this source, as well as similar documents preserved at the Ibragimov Institute of Language, Literature and Art in Kazan and Bulghar State Museum are still to be collected and studied in inter-regional context. I would like to thank Dzhamil G. Mukhametshin and Damir M. Iskhakov for sharing this information with me. Some arguments on the presence of YasavƯya in the Volga-Ural region since the late mediaeval up to the mid-18th century were discussed by Michael Kemper in his monograph Sufis und Gelehrte in Tatarien und Baschkirien, 1789–1889: Der islamische Diskurs unter russischer Herrschaft (Berlin, 1998), 82–6.

72

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his contribution to this volume, the YasavƯyan presence in Dasht-i Qïpchaq has been previously taken for granted by scholars and that the history of Sufi brotherhoods based on spiritual lines of succession (silsila) and descent groups of elite families based on genealogical narratives (shajara, nasabnƗma) should be studied without strict relation to each other;8 however, there is considerable indirect data in our sources that allows discussion of the activity of several YasavƯyan shaykhs in Siberia. The present essay is organized as follows. Part 1 surveys the secondary literature on Sufism and the cult of saints in Siberia. In Parts 2 and 3 I consider a range of evidence suggesting that members of the YasavƯya played a significant role in the Islamization of the region in the 16th-early 18th centuries. In Part 4 I discuss data on the local NaqshbandƯ shaykhs and the discussion around vocal and silent remembrance (dhikr). 1. THE STATE OF THE ART The Siberian legend of Islamization and therefore the question of Sufi brotherhoods in the region was first addressed by the Kazan’-based Turkologist Nikolai F. Katanov (1862–1922), who was asked by Tobol’sk agronomist and museum employee Nikolai L. Skalozubov (1861–1915) to translate a copy of two manuscripts which were preserved at Muslim sacred places near the village of QarƗghƗy in Tobol’sk region.9 We owe to Katanov the thesis of the NaqshbandƯ’s predominance in the region.10 Generations of scholars replicated the same argument, claiming that Islam in Siberia was spread by NaqshbandƯ Sufis in 797/ 1394–1395, the date mentioned in a manuscript preserved in the Tobol’sk Museum and published by Katanov.11 The history 8 9

10 11

See also Muminov, Rodoslovnoe drevo Mukhtara Auezova, 162. A detailed story of this publication is reproduced in I.V. Belich, “O religioznykh voinakh uchenikov shaykha Bagauddina protiv inorodtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri (k 100-letiiu publikatsii N.F. Katanovym rukopisei Tobol’skogo muzeiia,” Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i etnografii 6 (2006): 153–171; M.A. Usmanov and R.A. Shaikhiev, “Obraztsy tatarskikh narodno-kraevedcheskikh sochinenii po istorii Zapadnoi i Iuzhnoi Sibiri,” in: Sibirskaia arkheografiia i istochnikovedenie (Novosibirsk, 1979), 88, footnote 14. N.F. Katanov, O religioznykh voinakh, 1, 18–19. This manuscript is stored in the Archive of Written Sources of the Tobol’sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, inv. no. 61, ff. 1a, 3b. See: F.T. Valeev, Sibirskie tatary: kul’tura i byt, (Kazan, 1992); F.T. Valeev, N.A. Tomilov, Tatary Zapadnoi Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura, (Novosibirsk, 1996); Islam, obshchestvo i kul’tura, (Omsk, 1994); Islam v isto-

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73

of this manuscript was studied in detail by Igor’ V. Belich who pointed out that Islamization legends are largely of sacred, not documentary nature and that despite the last fact all the sacred places mentioned in manuscripts indeed exist and the shrine custodians recount similar stories found in the legends of Islamization. In 1989 and 2000 Belich also recorded an oral version of YasavƯyan hagiography known as ‫ۉ‬akƯm Ata kitƗbï in the village of Baishevo in the Tiumen’ region, where the sacred grave of ণakƯm Ata, one of the main disciples of KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ, is located. Therefore Belich detected links between the wide-spread cult of ণakƯm Ata in Siberia and Khorezm, where, it is said, ণakƯm Ata was born in 1186.12 However, the presence and impact of the YasavƯya was not yet discussed in Belich’s works. In Western scholarship, the Sufi texts were taken into account in a broader geographical context. Allen J. Frank placed the Siberian narratives of religious war against infidels in the context of similar traditions in the Volga-Ural region, Eastern Turkestan, and Southern Kazakhstan.13 By so doing Frank stated that Islamic life in Siberia was not isolated from neighbouring centres of Islamic culture. Like Thierry Zarcone14, Frank did not question the idea of NaqshbandƯya predominance among Siberian Muslims. This view

12

13

14

rii i kul’ture Tiumen’skogo kraia, (Tiumen’, 2004); A.G. Seleznev, I.A. Selezneva, Sibirskii islam: regional’nyi variant religioznogo sinkretizma, (Novosibirsk, 2004), etc. I.V. Belich, “Legenda o Khakim-Ata,” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy piatogo Sibirskogo simpoziuma “Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri, ed, by A.A. Adamov et al. (Tobol’sk/Omsk, 2002): 405–12; I.V. Belich, “Vsemirnaia skazka v fol’klore sibirskikh tatar,” in: Etnografo-arkheologicheskie kompleksy: Problemy kul’tury i sotsiuma, vol. 8, eds. N.A. Tomilov et al. (Omsk, 2004), 63–96. Publications of the ‫ۉ‬akƯm Ata kitƗbï: ‫ۉ‬akƯm Ata kitƗbï, (Kazan, 1840); D. DeWeese, “Three Tales from the Central Asian ‘Book of HakƯm Ata’”, in: Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation, ed. J. Renard (Berkley/Los Angeles/London, 2009), 121–35; K.G. Zaleman, “Legenda pro Khakim-Ata,” Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk 9/2 (1898): 105–50. A unique Turkic manuscript of this hagiography was discovered in Novosibirsk region in 2005; see A.K. Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” 57–8. Allen J. Frank, The Siberian Chronicles and the Taybughid Biys of Sibir’, (Bloomington, IN, 1994); Id., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: the Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910, (Leiden/Boston/Köln, 2001), 18, 38; Id., [Review of:] “R. Kh. Rakhimov, Astana v istorii Sibirskikh tatar: mavzolei pervykh islamskikh missionerov kak pamiatniki istoriko-kul’turnogo naslediia,” Central Eurasian Reader 1 (2008): 367–9. Thierry Zarcone, “Les confreries soufies en Siberie (XIXe siècle et debut du XXe siecle),” Cahiers du Monde russe 41/ 2–3 (2000), 279–96.

74

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may of course be correct for the later period of regional history, but it might be called into question when we consider the earlier period. In his encyclopaedic overview on the YasavƯya brotherhood DeWeese briefly mentioned that “as to the Volga region and Western Siberia, there are some scattered reports on the activity of YasavƯyan shaykhs there, but there is no evidence of the strong historical presence of the YasavƯya in these regions.”15 These “scattered reports on the activity of YasavƯyan shaykhs” are nonetheless worth to be studied in greater details. Some data on the presence of Sufis in Siberia can be found in the legends of Islamization. These texts provide diverse information on the history of Islam in the region: on the dynamic development of the cult of saints in the 17th–18th centuries and on the accepted Sufi rituals (voiced and silent remembrance of God). There are two versions of the legend, which were compiled in the 17th and the mid-18th centuries respectively. Some parts of the first version of the legend correspond with sources dated from 1669 and the late 17th century. The smaller number of listed sacred graves also suggest that the first version is older, because afterwards their number grew significantly. The authors of the second, largest version, named in the manuscripts, lived in the mid-18th century.16 The appearance of these two versions reflects the growing number of venerated places. Perhaps, competition between the keepers of “old” and “new” sacred places lead to writing of legitimizing documents. Eight texts of the first redaction17 and three texts of the

15

16 17

D. DeWeese, “Iasaviia,” Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vyp. 3 (Moscow, 2003), 37 A.K. Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” 46–9. 1) TƗ’rƯkh, MS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, inv. no. A1545; 2) Shajarat al-AwlƯyƗ’ min bilƗd MƗwarƗ’an-Nahr, Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 5 (Asar: formuliarnye spiski, nekrologi, teksty namogil’nykh nadpisei, spiski raznykh lits s biograficheskimi svedeniiami, 1808–1917), ff. 118–20; 3) Nasab-nƗma, Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 7 (Materialy po voprosam semeinogo prava i istorii tatar, 1823–1925) 4) One variant which belonged to the poet MavlnjkƗ’Ư YnjmƗchiqov (worked as a teacher in Embaevo near Tiumen’), was published in Qïssa-yi ‫ۉ‬ubbƯ KhwƗja, (Kazan, 1899), 10–13; 5) A similar copy is in the private archive of Mullah Il’fat Abdullin (b. 1973) in Tobol’sk. 6) A copy which belongs to a private collection of Sh.P. Saitchebarova (Tiumen’) was published in: R. Kh. Rakhimov, Astana v istorii sibirskikh tatar: mavzolei islamskikh missionerov kak pamiatniki istoriko-kul’turnogo naslediia (Tiumen’, 2006), 12–14 (transl. by M. I. Ah-

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second redaction18 are known presently. All manuscripts discovered so far are dated from the late 18th–20th centuries. Some of them were translated into Russian by Nikolai F. Katanov, Farit Z. Iakhin, and Marsel’ I. Akhmetzianov.19 My hypothesis is that one can observe the presence of YasavƯyan personalities in the Islamization legends, even if the second version of the legend displays influence from NaqshbandƯya circles in rituals, images, and persons. In the following I would like to demonstrate that two redactions of the legend suggest a slow evolution towards the spread of the NaqshbandƯya among Siberian Muslims. 2. THE PROBLEM OF YASAVƮYAN PRESENCE IN SIBERIA (16TH–17TH CENTURIES) Archaeological data show that already in the time of the Siberian Khanate the Tatar cities of the region were centers of intensive trade attracting merchants from Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region. Ceramics and coins from the 13th–14th centuries also provide evidence in support of a long history of interregional relations.20 The Russian state-supported trade of Central Asian merchants was the main reason for a considerable migration to West-

18

19

20

metzianov), 63 (a photographic reproduction). 7–8) Two copies of the narrative are preserved in the private archive of Foat T.-A. Valeev (1918–2010) in Kazan. Archive of the Tobol’sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, inv. no. 61. The manuscripts from the villages of QarƗghƗy and Kümüshle are preserved at the private collections of Mulla Rakhmatulla Batinov and Abdulmachit Aliev. See publication of the QarƗghƗy copy: I.V. Belich, A.G. Seleznev, I.A. Selezneva, Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame: spetsifika universal’nogo, (Moscow, 2009), I-XV, 193–202. For descriptions of the manuscripts see: A.K. Bustanov, Miras: Knigi kak kul’turnyi kapital: Musul’manskie rukopisi v Zapadnoi Sibiri (Moscow, 2013, forthcoming). Katanov, O religioznykh voinakh, 18–28; Rakhimov, Astana v istorii sibirskikh tatar, 12– 14; Belich, Seleznev, Selezneva, Kul’t sviatykh, 203–6. See a comprehensive study of Siberian Khanate’s archaeology in the posthumously published monograph of V.I. Sobolev, Istoriia sibirskikh khanstv (po arkheologicheskim materialam) (Novosibirsk, 2008). Pictures of one Chaghataid and three Juchid coins, which probably were found near the Tobol’sk city, are to be found in N. Witsen, Severnaia i Vostochnaia Tartariia, vkliuchaiushchaia oblasti, raspolozhennye v severnoi i vostochnoi chastiakh Evropy i Azii, transl. from Dutch by V.G. Trisman, eds. by N.P. Kopaneva, B. Naarden, vol. 2, (Amsterdam, 2010), 939. See also the review of Mongol numismatics from Siberia in my “Denezhnoe obrashchenie v Sibirskom uluse,” Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 2007–2008: Istoriia i kul’tura tiurkskikh narodov Rossii i sopredel’nykh stran (Moscow, 2009), 56–66.

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ern Siberia. Among those who emigrated in the 16th–17th centuries were a number of religious authorities from sacred families who were known under the Arabic and Persian titles sayyid, khwƗja, and shaykh. The first known wave of emigration, which is well-documented, goes back to the 1570s.21 In what follows I would like to consider some of the available data on the YasavƯya in Siberia pertaining to kinship connections through shajaras, secondly to initiatory spiritual connections, and finally to the construction of hagiographical tradition. 2.1. Kinship connection According to the numerous extant genealogies of the afore-mentioned sacred aristocracy, Siberian KhƗn Küchüm (d. 1598) invited several religious authorities from the city of Urgench (via the Bukharan KhƗn ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh II, 1534–1598). Among those persons were Yarïm Sayyid, his relative DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja, SharbatƯ Shaykh and BƗbƗ AbdƗl Shaykh. Yarïm Sayyid, who died shortly after his migration, and DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja both had the status of Shaykh al-Islam in the Siberian Khanate; the latter even married Küchüm’s daughter. SharbatƯ Shaykh was charged with discovering so far unknown sacred places in Western Siberia. BƗbƗ AbdƗl Shaykh became the first keeper of a sacred grave in the village of Ulnjgh BurƗn, in the present day Omsk region. Genealogies of each of them survived until the present day and have been partially studied.22 Due to their high status in the Siberian Khanate, numerous descendants of DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja had enjoyed prosperity, ownership of considerable stretches of land, as well as economic and spiritual power under Russian rule.23 In their sacred texts they were represented as descendants of a famous 21

22

23

Alfrid K. Bustanov, “The Sacred Texts of Siberian KhwƗja Families. The Descendants of Sayyid Ata,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 2/1 (2011), 70–99. On the genealogy of DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ and his descendants see my “The sacred texts”, 70–99. On the descendants of BƗbƗ AbdƗl see Id., “Manuskripty sufiiskikh shaikhov: turkestanskaia traditsiia na beregakh Irtysha,” in: Etnografo-arkheologicheskie kompleksy: problemy kul’tury i sotsiuma, vol. 11, eds. N.A. Tomilov et al. (Omsk, 2009), 195–230; Id., “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” in: Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 2009–2010. Tiurkskie narody Evrazii v drevnosti i srednevekov’e, eds. S.G. Kliashtornyi et al. (Moscow, 2011), 49–60. A.K. Bustanov, S.N. Korusenko, “Rodoslovnye sibirskikh bukhartsev: Im’iaminovy,” Arkheologiia, etnografiia i antropologiia Evrazii 2/42 (2010): 97–105.

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YasavƯyan saint, Sayyid Ata, one of the main disciples of KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ.24 In Russian imperial context of the 18th– early 20th centuries such an affiliation aimed at proving the aristocratic origin of Siberian Bukharans. In this regard, the name of a particular saint was not of importance for the tsarist administration. In the Islamic context, by contrast, affiliations with a certain saint did matter, but we still have no sources to identify the differences in status of various descent groups. It seems, however, that descendants of Sayyid Ata played a central role among the Siberian aristocratic families.25 The manuscript detailing the genealogy of SharbatƯ Shaykh26, who arrived from Urgench at the KhƗn Küchüm’s court together with DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja and BƗbƗ AbdƗl, is the earliest ever explored copy of a Muslim genealogy in Western Siberia. It goes back as far as the first half of the 18th century, when it was copied specially for the St. Petersburg Academician Gerard F. Miller (1705–83) during his visit of Tobol’sk and the surrounding region. This manuscript is a variant of risƗla, jointly studied and published by Devin DeWeese, Ashirbek Muminov and other colleagues.27 The newly discovered copy deserves to be treated separately,28 but what is of concern here is that SharbatƯ Shaykh appears as a descendant of IsতƗq BƗb, the tenth-generation ancestor of Aতmad YasavƯ. It is worth mentioning that the grave of SharbatƯ Shaykh was located near or in Isker, the former capital of the Siberian Khanate, near the city of Tobol’sk. This grave became a place of active veneration and existed until 29 May 1881, when it was destroyed by fire.29

24 25 26

27

28

29

DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 483–90. A. Bustanov, “The Sacred Texts of Siberian KhwƗja Families,” 70–99. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov, f. 199, portfel’ 347, d. 10, l. 10. This manuscript was recently identified by Il’ias Mustakimov, to whom goes my gratitude for providing me with a copy of the source. Devin DeWeese, “Yasavian Legends of the Islamization of Turkestan,” in: Aspects of Altaic Civilization, ed. Denis Sinor, vol. III (Bloomington, IN, 1990), 1–19; Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 2: Genealogicheskie gramoty, 51–81. For a detailed study, Russian and English translation and publication of the manuscript see my article “The Narrative of IsতƗq BƗb and the Lore of Holy Families in Western Siberia: A Preliminary Discussion,” in: Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 1 (forthcoming). I.V. Belich, “Mavzolei musul’manskikh sviatykh v raione Iskera,” in: Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i etnografii, vol. 1, (Tiumen’, 1997), 92–8.

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In both versions of the Islamization legend it is stated that SharbatƯ Shaykh and his brothers PirƯ Shaykh and Nazar Shaykh were descendants of ZangƯ BƗbƗ, also a YasavƯyan saint.30 In addition, a genealogical treatise of the 17th century titled Shajara risƗlasƯ states that SharbatƯ Shaykh was a “discoverer” of sacred places (astƗna) in the time of Küchüm KhƗn, i.e. in the 1570s.31 Therefore it is not surprising that a number of such places of worship were associated with YasavƯyan heritage. Along with the graves of ণakƯm Ata, SharbatƯ Shaykh and his brothers, also Sayyid Ata, BƗbƗ MachƯn and ণnjbbƯ KhwƗja not only appeared as ancestors of saints buried in various Siberian villages32, but also as the saints (avliyƗ’) buried in the cemetery of Baishevo village in the Tiumen’ region. As suggested in a genealogy of his descendants, BƗbƗ AbdƗl, DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja’s companion, after arriving to Siberia became the first shrine’s keeper in the village of Ulnjgh BurƗn (present-day Omsk region). In the first version of the Islamization legend this place was described as the sacred grave of a certain BighƗch Ata, a descendant of JalƗl ad-DƯn, who might be well identified with JalƗl ad-DƯn, a personage known from YasavƯyan hagiography, ‫ۉ‬akƯm Ata kitƗbï, as the first keeper of ণakƯm Ata’s grave. For the first time the grave of BighƗch AtƗ was mentioned as astƗna on the late 17th– early 18th century map by Semen U. Remezov (1642–1720), a Tobol’sk historian and cartographer.33 The modern custodians of this sacred place, which 30

31

32

33

Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 5 (Asar: formuliarnye spiski, nekrologi, teksty namogil’nykh nadpisei, spiski raznykh lits s biograficheskimi svedeniiami, 1808–1917), f. 118a; Archive of the Tobol’sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, inv. no. 30796, f. 1b. On ZangƯ Ata see, Sergei N. Abashin, “Zangi-ata,” Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vyp. 1 (Moscow, 2006), 150–3; A.G. Seleznev, I.A. Selezneva, “Zange-Ata i Khyzyr-Il’ias: istoricheskie i etnicheskie aspekty rasprostraneniia islama v Sibiri,” Ètnograficheskoe obozrenie 6 (2003), 41–56. A.K. Bustanov, “Sochinenie ‘Shadzhara risalasi’ i ego spiski,” in: Srednevekovye tiurkotatarskie gosudarstva, vol. 1, ed. I. Zagidullin (Kazan, 2009), 39–40, 44–5. Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 5 (Asar: formuliarnye spiski, nekrologi, teksty namogil’nykh nadpisei, spiski raznykh lits s biograficheskimi svedeniiami, 1808–1917), f. 119 a; Archive of the Tobol’sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, inv. no. 30796, f. 2a. The Atlas of Siberia by Semyon U. Remezov. Facsimile edition with an introduction by Leo Bagrow (S-Gravenhage, 1958), 107. Quite recently the atlas was published again in colour and supplemented by research articles, see: Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga

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still exists and is very popular among believers, transmit the idea that BighƗch Ata was a brother of ণakƯm Ata, whose burial place is located, according to Siberian tradition, in the village of Baishevo, or BaqïrghƗn, in the Tiumen’ oblast’.34 A legendary saint, BighƗch Ata, according to this tradition, was a leader of local shaykhs. Another group of sources is related to a group of shaykhs who arrived from SayrƗm in the 17th century. There are at least four (without counting numerous present-day copies) Arabic, Persian, and Turkic manuscripts of a genealogical charter of the Shaykh (Russian: Shikhovy) family in Tara (Omsk oblast’), dated from the 19th–20th centuries. For trading and religious purposes ‫ޏ‬AvvƗz BƗqï Shaykh, the founder of the Shaykh clan, moved from the city of SayrƗm to the outskirts of Tara in Western Siberia, sometime in the mid-17th century.35 In his genealogy ‫ޏ‬AvvƗz BƗqï is claimed to be descendant of PƗdshƗh MƗlik BƗbƗ, whose burial place is still present in SayrƗm.36

34

35

36

Sibiri S.U. Remezova, 2 vols.: vol. 1, Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga Sibiri. Faksimile; vol. 2, Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga Sibiri S.U. Remezova. Rasshifrovka teksta, nadpisei, primechaniia, prilozheniia (Tobol’sk, 2011). I.V. Belich, “Legenda o Khakim-Ata,” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy piatogo Sibirskogo simpoziuma “Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri”, (Tobol’sk, Omsk, 2002), 405–12. I am preparing the publication and study of genealogies of the Shaykh family, which members still live in Siberian villages and towns as well as in a village of Boghrüdelik (vilayet Konya, Turkey), where they moved in the early 20th century. On the Siberian migrants in Turkey see, E.J. Kläy, Dörfer tatarischer “Rückwanderer” (Muhacir) aus Russland in Inneranatolien. Beiträge zur Kenntnis anatolischer Muhacirsiedlungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung eines Dorfes westsibirischer Tataren uzbekischer Abstammung (buhärist). Diss. phil.-hist. (Bern, 1975). Ash-shajara al-‫ۊ‬usaynƯya li-sh-shaykh SayyƯd Ba‫ܒܒ‬Ɨl b. Davlet BƗqï ash-ShaykhƯ (Orenburg, 1908), 23–24. PƗdshƗh MƗlik BƗbƗ and his son, MƯr ‫ޏ‬AlƯ BƗbƗ, are mentioned in Devin DeWeese, “Sacred History for a Central Asian Town. Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in Histories of Sayram, 18th-19th Centuries,” in: Figures mythiques des mondes musulmans, ed. D. Aigle [=Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 89–99 (2000)], 281.

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2.2. Spiritual connections The second version of the Islamization legend, compiled in the mid-18th century, 37 paid attention to the “Islamizing” efforts of a certain KhwƗja DavlatshƗh b. ShƗh ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb al-IspichƗfƯ from Bukhara. According to the sources, he preached among “the Qalmaqs” (probably the Junghars); then, in Siberia, he discovered eighteen tombs for pilgrimage and collected a special genealogy of saints buried there. Many believers in the region became his disciples (murƯds). 38 Thanks to the source material we retrieved from the archive of MuftƯ RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn (1858–1936), we know about one of the KhwƗja DavlatshƗh’s followers in Siberia. At the end of the 19th century Ni‫ޏ‬matullƗh Qarïmshaqov (1829–1901), a Siberian merchant, sent to the aforementioned muftƯ a document written by KhwƗja DavlatshƗh: “I gave a permission (rukh‫܈‬at) and a license (ijƗza) to the brother of the Sufi path (‫ܒ‬arƯqa, emphasis added – A.B.), to the worthy, perfect, noble friend ণaĪrat Ɩkhnjnd MullƗ KhwƗjam Shükür. This was written by a poor man, DavlatshƗh b. ShƗh ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb al-ণusaynƯ in the fourteenth day of Rabi‫ޏ‬al-akhir, [in the year] one thousand hundred and six [i.e. 2 November 1694].”39 Unfortunately, the name of the ‫ܒ‬arƯqa is not specified in this source. Ɩkhnjnd KhwƗjam Shükür b. ‫ޏ‬AvvƗৢ-BƗqï was a religious authority who lived near Tobol’sk in the early 18th century. According to RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, KhwƗjam Shükür wrote an advice book (na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at-nƗma) for the people of TƗb living along the Tobol river. MuftƯ RiĪƗ ad-DƯn saw that work and mentioned that according to the colophon it was finished on Satur-

37 38

39

Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” 68–69. Text from the second version of the Islamization legend: ƦLJʷ̋ā

łǨˁ̤ Ʀāǚˏ̋Ǩ̶ ĺāĢLJʦ̑ Ȁ˙̒ ć ŁćǨʌ͟ ɷ˶̒ĢǍ̋ ƈLJ˳ͫLJ͘ ŁćĢLJ̑ ŁǍ̒ćā ɬ̋ǚ͵Ǎ̋Ǎ̑ ɕ˶͵ ťḲ̌ Łΐā Ǎʒ̶ćā Ȁ͎LJʤʒ̵ҙҏā ŁLJ΀āǍͫāǚʒ͇ ƱLJ̶ ɬ̑ā ƱLJ̶ ȈͫǍ̒ ɷ̣āḀ̌ ɷ͵LJ˅̵ΐā ǩˠ̵ Ʀćā Ʊǚ͵Ǎ̋Ǎ̑ ɕ˶͵ ťḲ̌ Łΐā Ǎ̑ ŁǍˬ͟ ŁǍʓ̋LJ͘ ɷ˶̋ĢǍʓˬ͟ ɷˉ͵LJ˳̋ā Ȁ͵ Ȁʤ̋Ǎ˅ˠ͵Ǎ͘ Ȁ̵LJ̶ĔLJ̑ ŁćĢ ƈLJ˳ͫLJ͘ ĢҨҞ̋ǚͫǍ̑ ȵˬʥͲ ǚ̋ǨͲ ŁǍˬʌ͘ Ȉ̑LJ˶̋ā LJˠ͵ΐā ĺĢҙҏLJ̋ā ĔLJ˙ʓ͇ā ŁǍ͟ ɨ΀ ć ĺĔҨҞ̋ā Ǩʌ΀LJͅ See, Katanov, O religioznykh voinakh, 8 (text), 22–23 (Russian translation); [A.K. Bustanov,] “Tekst rukopisi iz derevni Karagai Vagaiskogo raiona Tiumenskoi oblasti,” in Belich, Seleznev, Selezneva, Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame, 7 (facsimile), 197 (text); Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” 63 (translation). RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, Athar, vol. 3, f.12ɚ, Scientific Archive of the Scientific Center in Ufa, fond 7, opis’ 1, #3 novyi akt. Cf. Fekhreddin Rizaeddin, Asar, vol. 1 (Kazan, 2006), 34–35 (modern Tatar text), 233 (Russian translation).

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day 9 RamaĪan 1114/ 27 January 1703.40 Most likely, KhwƗjam Shükür had in his possession the historical work of Abnj’l-GhƗzƯ, Shäjärä-yi Türk (17th century), which later became known to a European academic audience, including the Russian historian Miller. 41 Manuscript Turc. 22 (orient. 163) from Göttingen University Library was arguably copied from KhwƗjam Shükür’s exemplar in Tobol’sk in 1129/ 1716,42 because I do not believe that there were several manuscripts of this work in the town at that time. KhwƗjam Shükür received a permission to teach the Sufi path, and we would not know any details about this, because the original document got lost or is still to be found, but DeWeese counted a certain QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh (d. 1126/1714) as a YasavƯ shaykh active in Dasht-i Qïpchaq, “who was among the eminent figures of the exalted and resplendent ‫ܒ‬arƯqa of the YasavƯya.”43 There is no doubt about identity of this person, because according to Devin DeWeese, who refers to the work AshjƗr al-khuld (completed in 1139/1726), QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh originated from SayrƗm and therefore bore a nisba al-IspichƗfƯ, which is mentioned in the afore-quoted legend of Islamization. He grew up in Bukhara and studied under the supervision of another prominent YasavƯ figure, MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf al-BukhƗrƯ (d. 1109/1697). Moreover, AshjƗr al-khuld suggested that he was a ণusaynƯ 40

41 42

43

Ibid., 35 (text), 233 (translation). Cf., Farit Z. Iakhin, “Tobol’skii tatarskii poet Amdami i ego proizvedenie ‘Nasikhatname’ (Kniga nastavlenii),” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy Vgo mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma ‘Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri (Tobol’sk; Omsk, 2002), 601. G.F. Miller, Istoriia Sibiri, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1999), 192. Verzeichnis der Handschriften im Preußischen Staate. Die Handschriften in Göttingen, 3, Universitäts-Bibliothek Nachlässe von Gelehrten orientalische Handschriften, Handschriften im Besitz von Instituten und Behörden, Register zu Band 1–3, (Berlin 1984), 481–2. The history of this discovery is described in: A.N. Kononov, Istoriia izucheniia tiurkskikh iazykov v Rossii, Dooktiabr’skii period, 2nd edition, (Leningrad, 1982), 72. KhwƗjam Shükür b. ‫ޏ‬AvvƗs-BƗqï appeared there as “Ɩkhnjnd Azbakevich.” See, also, A.K. Bustanov, Miras: Knigi kak kul’turnyi kapital: Musul’manskie rukopisi v Zapadnoi Sibiri (Moscow, 2013), forthcoming. See, Devin DeWeese’s contribution to this volume. However, it should be added that another manuscript from the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg (A 1539, ff. 81a-85b), a collection of Sufi texts compiled in ca. 1893 by ‫ޏ‬Abd al-WƗতid b. Aতmad b. ... ‫ޏ‬AbdallƗh, contains a small Persian-language treatise on the ritual of samƗҵ in the NaqshbandƯya. This treatise was written by DavlatshƗh b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb in Kabul in 1104/ 1692–93. This information can be treated as DavlatshƗh’s link to the NaqshbandƯya. See: O.F. Akimushkin et al. Persidskie i tadzhikskie rukopisi Instituta Narodov Azii AN SSSR (kratkii alfavitnyi katalog), vol. 1 (Moscow, 1964), 508.

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sayyid which is also proven by DavlatshƗh’s ijƗza, where he called himself al-ণusaynƯ. Perhaps, the Tobol’sk Ɨkhnjnd KhwƗjam Shükür studied under QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh’s supervision in Bukhara in the late 17th century and there entered the YasavƯya. Nothing is known from QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh’s biography on his visit to Siberia, which is reported by Islamization legend, though Devin DeWeese points out that the former “spent most of his life guiding seekers on the borders of TurkistƗn.” It is highly possible that KhwƗjam Shükür also had followers in Tobol’sk area and he was able to continue YasavƯ silsila there too, though there are no direct sources available yet. It should be also mentioned in this part that, according to the second version of the Islamization legend, ƮshƗn Iskandar al-KhwƗrizmƯ al-MamlƗnƯ visited Siberia and discovered there nine graves of martyrs. He compiled a list with their names and burial places and sent it from Turkestan to the Tobol’sk Ɨkhnjnds through assistance of MƯr SharƯf KhwƗja, a custodian of the YasavƯ shrine.44 This tells us about clear links between the circles around the mausoleum and religious authorities in Siberia. 2.3. Hagiographical evidence As it is rightfully mentioned by ethnographers, the towering figure of ণakƯm Ata is central for the cult of saints in Siberia.45 His grave on a cemetery in Baishevo is the only place in Siberia that is regarded locally as an equivalent of Mecca for those who are not able to go for a ‫ۊ‬ajj. According to the first version of the Islamization legend, “custodians (mnjjƗvƯrlar) in Mecca say that circling around (‫ܒ‬avƗf) of [the grave of] ণakƯm Ata is [an equivalent to] the circling around [of Ka‫ޏ‬ba] in Mecca.”46 The name of ণakƯm Ata regularly appears both in oral tradition and in written sources. The legend of ণakƯm Ata, recorded from the keepers of his grave in Baishevo by Tobol’sk ethnographer Igor’ Belich and also included into several copies of the first version of the Islamization legend, reveals the story of bringing the body of deceased ণakƯm Ata by a bull to BaqïrghƗn, which echoes the second name of the

44 45 46

Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy,” 64. This person is not familiar to me from other sources. Belich, Seleznev, Selezneva, Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame, 54–5. Bustanov, “Sufiiskie legendy,” 36 (text), 39 (facsimile), 41–42 (Russian translation).

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above-mentioned Baishevo village.47 ণakƯm Ata’s companions and relatives are also said to be buried in the neighborhood. The published text of the Islamization legend suggests that Sufi shaykhs arrived to Siberia from TurkistƗn, discovered sacred graves (astƗna), annually read there QurҴƗn and gave alms (‫܈‬adaqa), and prayed for the soul of ণaĪrat Sul৬Ɨn KhwƗja Aতmad YasavƯ.48 The cult of “eleven Aতmads” (on ber A‫ۊ‬mad) and ‘seven sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns’ (edi sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn) is present in Siberia as well as in the Volga-Ural region and the Kazakh steppe.49 On the basis of these arguments I suggest that the cult of saints in Western Siberia could have been established by YasavƯyan shaykhs, first of all by SharbatƯ Shaykh, whose genealogy goes back to IsতƗq BƗb and probably became an example for Siberian legends of Islamization. It is true that the traces of YasavƯyan presence in the region can be detected only during a very short period of time, namely from the late 16th century, when Sufis arrived to the khƗn’s court, until the late 17th century, when KhwƗjam Shükür received his ijƗza. This brevity of YasavƯya activity was the reason why scholars so far stated that there had been “no evidence of the strong historical presence of the YasavƯya”.50 3. THE SIBERIAN NAQSHBANDƮYA IN THE 18TH–EARLY 20TH CENTURIES NaqshbandƯya practices have been established in the region from the second half of the 18th century. In the ethnographical collection of the Omsk State University there is a manuscript (a water mark suggests the date ‘1785’), which offers a description of the khatm-i khwƗjagƗn (Pers.; in Tatar: khatïm khoja) rite.51 This ritual involved the repeated reading of short QurҴƗn verses, using small stones or bones for counting. In the end, the participants pro47

48 49

50 51

Belich, “Legenda o Khakim-Ata,” in: Tiurkskie narody, 405–12; Belich, “Vsemirnaia skazka v fol’klore sibirskikh tatar;” Qïssa-yi ‫ۉ‬ubbƯ KhwƗja, 11–12. Qïssa-yi ‫ۉ‬ubbƯ KhwƗja, 10. A.K. Bustanov, “Rukopis’ v kontekste sibirskogo islama,” in: Belich, Seleznev, Selezneva, Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame, 167; Muminov, Rodoslovnoe drevo, 128–30; G. Saifullina, Bagyshlau (posviashcheniia) v kontekste kul’tury narodnogo islama volzhskikh tatar (Kazan, 2005), 18. DeWeese, “Iasaviia,” 37. Archive of Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Omsk State University, fond 7, inv. no. 92–3. The manuscript was acquired in 1987 during an expedition to the village of QarƗghƗy (Tiumen’ region).

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nounced a long dedication (baghïshlau) of the read sacred texts to the NaqshbandƯ shaykhs.52 In the 19th–20th centuries the khatm-i khwƗjagƗn became a widespread practice, and there are tens of manuscripts with its description. Even though the original meaning of the rite as a Sufi discipline was almost lost during Soviet times, it survived up to the present day and is regarded by believers as a part of ordinary religious practice. There is little evidence about the early stages of the dissemination of NaqshbandƯs in the region, but already in the first version of the conversion narrative, which was presumably compiled in the mid-17th century, the initiative of sacred war against infidels is ascribed to BahƗ’ ad-DƯn Naqshband.53 Only from the mid-18th century do we have more clear reports, which are provided by the second version of the sacred legend. Above all, it suggests that the silent remembrance (dhikr-i hafƯ) was the appropriate way of Sufi practice54 as opposed to the vocal (in some cases even public) ceremonies practiced by YasavƯya members and by some NaqshbandƯ groups. In the mid-19th century there was a discussion among local scholars who adhered to silent dhikr and those who began to practice vocal and public dhikr. Probably, the latter group received licenses affiliated with some MujaddidƯ NaqshbandƯ groups or Indian QadirƯya lineages, which preferred the vocal dhikr. 55 It is said that BahƗ’ ad-DƯn Naqshband himself performed silent 52

53

54 55

For the discussion of khatm in the NaqshbandƯ tradition see: Fritz Meier, Zwei Abhandlungen über die NaqshbandƯya, I. die Herzensbindung an den Meister, 2. Kraftakt und Faustrecht des Heiligen (Istanbul, 1994), 189–213. The study of khatm-i khwƗjagƗn in Siberia: A.K. Bustanov, “Rukopis’ v kontekste sibirskogo islama,” 166–80. Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 5 (Asar: formuliarnye spiski, nekrologi, teksty namogil’nykh nadpisei, spiski raznykh lits s biograficheskimi svedeniiami, 1808–1917), f. 118 a. Archive of the Tobol’sk State Historical-architectural Museum, inv. no. 30796, f. 1a. Devin DeWeese, “Foreword”, in: Sobranie fetv po obosnovaniiu dhikra dzhahr i samaҵ, eds. B.M. Babadzhanov and S.A. Muhammadaminov (Almaty, 2008), 11; Jürgen Paul, Doctrine and Organization. The KhwƗjagƗn/ NaqshbandƯya in the First Generation after BahƗ’uddin (Halle/Berlin, 1998), 18–30; Isenbike Togan, “The KhafƯ, JahrƯ Controversy in Central Asia Revisited,” in: E. Özdalga (ed.), Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia. Change and Continuity (Istanbul, 1997), 17–45. Isenbike Togan, among other things, mentioned that “it seems that for marginal and newly emerging communities, vocal dhikr was the distinguishing mark at the beginning.” This could be the case for some of Siberian Muslims too, because the village of QarƗghƗy, where loud forms of remembrance were performed, emerged as a religious centre only in the second half of the 18th century.

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85

remembrance, but generally in various groups of NaqshbandƯya in different regions both or one of the practices were acceptable. The general picture is very diverse; therefore I would like to examine the details. In Tobol’sk, in the library of ‫ޏ‬Abd al-Machit Aliev, a local religious authority, Belich and I found, amongst other valuable written sources, a number of documents dated from the 1850s–60s.56 The majority of the texts originally belonged to the Sufi Shaykh Suynjnch BƗqï b. Qarïmshaq, who settled in a village near Tobol’sk in the mid-19th century: 1. A grant of permission (ijƗza) for spreading NaqshbandƯ path for khalƯfa Suynjnch BƗqï; in Persian. The spiritual chain is as follows: Muতammad NaqshbandƯ, Sayyid BƗrhƗmƯ, MavlƗnƗ Shams ad-DƯn, AmƯr ণusayn, KhwƗja Ynjsuf, Muতammad KhƗfiz, SharƯf KhwƗja Muতammad PƗrsƗ, KhwƗja Muতammad HnjzmnjzƯ, ণusayn, Suynjnch BƗqï. The page size is 54 × 31 cm. The style of the script is naskh. The document was written by a certain KhƗfizƯ, appended with the seal of TnjrƗ KhƗn b. ‫ޏ‬A਌Ưm KhƗn. Without date. 2. A spiritual chain from the Prophet down to Muতammad NaqshbandƯ, together with a defense of the public dhikr (dhikr-i ҵalanƯya), written by KhƗfizƯ. Two pages, size 22,5 × 34,5 cm. The style of the script is naskh. Obviously, this is an addition to previous document. In Persian, undated.57 3. A grant of permission (ijƗza) for NaqshbandƯ path, sealed by IbrƗhƯm b. Muতammad SamarkandƯ. This document was written for Suynjnch BƗqï. Text is in Chaghatay and Arabic. The size of page is 41 × 23 cm. Undated. 4. A letter defending the vocal dhikr (dhikr-i jahr) addressed by Shaykh IlyƗs b. RaতƯm BƗqï to ƮshƗn Suynjnch BƗqï, who taught at that time in the village of TaylƗq. It is evident from the text that Shaykh IlyƗs lived in the neighboring QarƗghƗy village, supported Suynjnch BƗqï’s adherence to vocal dhikr, and even claimed that IbrƗhƯm SamarqandƯ’s letter (see next document) with its critiques is not a fatvƗ at all. The size of page is 35 × 22 cm. The text is in Tatar and Persian, and was written on 18 RamaĪan 1281/ 14 February 1865. 56

57

Preliminary research in the context of debates on the form of dhikr and a detailed description of this interesting collection was published in I.V. Belich, A.K. Bustanov, “Zametki o sufiiskikh traditsiiakh v Zapadnoi Sibiri,” Pax Islamica 2/5 (2010): 39–59. This text was partly translated by S.M. Giliazutdinov in R.Kh. Rakhimov, “Novye dokumental’nye istochniki po istorii islama v Sibiri,” in: Natsional’naia istoriia tatar: teoretiko-metodologicheskoe vvedenie (Kazan, 2009), 292–7.

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5. A sealed letter of IbrƗhƯm b. Muতammad SamarkandƯ to ƮshƗn KhalƯfa Suynjnch BƗqï b. Qarïmshaq, who at that time live in a village of VƗghƗy, Tobol region. The size of page is 23,5x18,5 cm. It says that “there is no merit (‫܈‬avƗb) for execution of vocal dhikr.” The letter is in Chaghatay, and was written in 1271 / 1854–55. No doubt, all of these letters and licenses merit publication together with detailed commentary 58 . From these manuscripts we learn how a Siberian Sufi Shaykh was under the influence of various Central Asian authorities who argued for or against the vocal dhikr. Unfortunately, we do not know where Suynjnch BƗqï b. Qarïmshaq studied, but he probably became one of the keepers of sacred places near QarƗghƗy village, because he possessed a copy of the manuscript which belonged to the keepers of the shrine in QarƗghƗy.59 From this aspect we can assume that vocal dhikr was performed by a group of religious authorities around QarƗghƗy. This group was close to the keepers of sacred graves. It deserves mentioning that the practices of vocal dhikr and affiliation with QadirƯ tradition were preserved by a group of emigrants from Western Siberia who moved to the Konya vilayet in the Ottoman Empire in 1907 and afterwards became linked to the Turkish branch of QadirƯya brotherhood. They are a minority in comparison to the local Tatar NaqshbandƯs, but they also kept oral memories that some of them are “descendants” of Aতmad YasavƯ. When I visited the settlement of these emigrants, the village of Boghrüdelik, I found the genealogy of a Shaykh clan from SayrƗm (descendants of PƗdshƗh MƗlik BƗbƗ)60. In the late 19th–early 20th centuries the traditions of the NaqshbandƯya in Western Siberia were continued by two Sufi masters who lived near Tobol’sk, in the villages Turbï and AtyƗl. These were KhalƯlov KhalƯl ƮshƗn (1864–1931)61 and NƯyƗz BƗqï b. Biktemir (1846–1924) respectively. Both of them studied at the madrasa and khƗnqƗh of “the last great NaqshbandƯ shaykh of the Volga-Urals region”62 ZaynullƗh RasnjlƯ (Rasulev, 1833–1917) 58 59 60 61

62

See Bustanov, Miras: Knigi kak kul’turnyi kapital, forthcoming. Belich and Bustanov, “Zametki o sufiiskikh traditsiiakh,” 45–7. See footnote 36. On KhalƯl ƮshƗn, see the view of his contemporary ‫ޏ‬Abd ar-RashƯd IbrƗhƯm, Miraҵat, 17 (1903 [Kazan]): 7. Hamid Algar, “Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The last great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals region,” in: Muslims in Central Asia. Expressions of Identity and Change, ed. Jo-Ann Gross (Durham/London, 1992), 112–33.

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in Troitsk.63 One of the “innovations” of ZaynullƗh ƮshƗn in the life of local society was the introduction of a loud and public form of dhikr, performed outside of mosques in sacred places where a considerable amount of believers could be gathered.64 According to the memories of some of my informants in Tobol’sk, KhalƯl ƮshƗn and his students also practiced the loud dhikr. In contrast to KhalƯl ƮshƗn, it appears that NƯyƗz BƗqï b. Biktemir, who also studied in Troitsk and returned to his home village AtyƗl near Tiumen’, was an adherent of silent remembrance (in Tatar: erök zikri).65 NƯyƗz BƗqï is also known for his activity as discoverer of local sacred places (astƗna). He possessed a list of such burials, probably, a copy of conversion narrative, but this document got lost. Both the Siberian Sufi masters taught a huge number of local students66; however KhalƯl ƮshƗn became the last NaqshbandƯ leader in the region. In present days his grave became a place of active veneration by Muslims from many regions, including Daghestan. It is well known that at least since the early 19th century, Siberian Muslims studied widely in Central Asian religious centers, especially in Bukhara. NƯyƗzqulƯ at-TurkmƗnƯ (d. 1236/ 1820–21), a Bukharan shaykh of the NaqshbandƯya MujaddidƯya, had many students from Western Siberia. 67 However, even though there is a considerable amount of information on

63

64 65

66

67

For this figure see RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, Shaikh ZaynullƗh haĪratnin tarjuma-yi hƗlƯ, (Orenburg, 1917); M.N. Farkhshatov, „Delo“ shaykha Zainully Rasuleva (1872– 1917): Vlast’ i sufizm v poreformennoi Bashkirii. Sbornik dokumentov (Ufa, 2009). Ibid., 54. Interview by A.K. Bustanov and I.G. Gumerov with NiyƗz BƗqï’s grandson Munir Biktimirov, in the village of AtyƗl, Ialutorovsk region of Tiumen’ oblast’, 5 July 2011. In February 1901 seventy three students attended NiyƗz BƗqï’s lectures in the village of AtyƗl. See the list of their names and the fihrist of NiyƗz BƗqï’s library in MS 4471 T in the Oriental Sector of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Scientific Library of Kazan Federal University. Cf. ImƗm Muҵta‫܈‬im BilƗl ughlïndan murƗsala [1895], Archive of Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131 (Rizaetdin Fakhretdinov), op. 1, d. 5 Asar: formuliarnye spiski, nekrologi, teksty namogil’nykh nadpisei, spiski raznykh lits s biograficheskimi svedeniiami, 1808–1917), f. 111– 112. On NƯyƗzqulƯ at-TurkmƗnƯ see: Anke von Kügelgen, “Die Entfaltung der NaqshbandƯya Mu÷addidƯya im mittleren Transoxanien vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: ein Stück Detektivarbeit,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2, Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds. A. von Kügelgen, M. Kemper, A.J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 131–6.

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Siberian Muslim scholars of the 19th–early 20th centuries68, there is very little evidence to which particular Sufi brotherhoods they belonged to. 4. CONCLUSION Though the genealogies of Siberian Bukharans and the Islamization legends were not aimed to elucidate the history of Siberian Sufis, but rather to demonstrate a noble origin of keepers of these narratives and to draw a list of legitimate sacred graves in Siberia, nevertheless one might find in these texts some information on particular shaykhs and their Sufi connections. There is no reason to believe that all members of sacred families claiming to be descendants of famous YasavƯyan saints actually belonged to this Sufi brotherhood, especially over the last three centuries. Even if well-founded, claims of kinship need not automatically entail spiritual adherence, and a descendant of a YasavƯ shaykh might very well be a NaqshbandƯ. However, as I showed through this paper, there is some evidence to suggest that the first generation of emigrants from Urgench and SayrƗm could have had a YasavƯyan affiliation (be it genealogical or Sufi links): a number of the most important (and earliest) sacred places in Western Siberia were connected with YasavƯ tradition; YasavƯ shaykh DavlatshƗh, had at least one student in the region; the corresponding legends of origin and sacred histories were also widespread in the same areas. The activity of the NaqshbandƯ Sufis is better documented: there are many works in Persian and Chaghatay containing details of respective lineages and spiritual practices. However, these sources elucidate the situation only in the late 18th–early 20th centuries. My general conclusion is that the first steps in the Islamization of the region could have been made by a small number of YasavƯyan shaykhs, while more institutionalized and popular trend came only with the NaqshbandƯya.69 Why and how the YasavƯyan groups were replaced by the NaqshbandƯya in Western Siberia remains an open question. 68

69

In the 1890s ‫ޏ‬Abd ar-RashƯd IbrƗhƯm (1857–1944) wrote a biographical dictionary of famous Siberian Sufis, scholars, and merchants. Approximately at the same time, in 1896, ণujjat al-ণakƯm b. Davnjd at-TƗrƗvƯ finished a biography of RaতmatullƗh YƗnghnjrƗzƯ (1824–1887), who had for a long time served as imƗm in Tara and then Semipalatinsk. My conclusion was recently supported by Damir M. Iskhakov, who expressed similar ideas regarding the Islamization process in the Volga-Ural area. See his Institut seiiidov v Uluse Dzhuchi i pozdnezolotoordynskikh tiurko-tatarskikh gosudarstvakh (Kazan, 2011), 32–4, 37–41.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources ‫ޏ‬Abd ar-RashƯd IbrƗhƯm, Miraҵat, 17 ([St. Petersburg], 1903) Ash-shajara al-‫ۊ‬usaynƯya li-sh-shaykh SayyƯd Ba‫ܒܒ‬Ɨl b. Davlet BƗqï ash-ShaykhƯ (Orenburg, 1908) Fihrist of NiyƗz BƗqï’s library, Oriental Sector of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books, Scientific Library of Kazan Federal University, inv. no. MS 4471T ‫ۉ‬akƯm Ata kitƗbï, (Kazan, 1840) Nasab-nƗma, MS St. Petersburg, Orientalists’Archive, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), f. 131, op. 1, d. 7, l. 45 Qïssa-yi ‫ۉ‬ubbƯ KhwƗja (Kazan, 1899) RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, Athar, vol. 3, Scientific Archive of the Scientific Center in Ufa, f. 7, op. 1, #3 novyi akt RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, Shaikh ZaynullƗh haĪratnin tarjuma-yi hƗlƯ (Orenburg, 1917) Rizaeddin, Fekhreddin, Asar, vol. 1 (Kazan, 2006) Shajarat al-AwliyƗ’ min bilƗd MƗwarƗ’an-Nahr, MS St. Petersburg, OA-IOM, f. 131, op. 1, d. 5, ll. 118–120 TƗ’rƯkh, MS St. Petersburg, Institute of Oriental Studies, inv. no. A1545 Untitled manuscript, Archive of the Tobol’sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, inv. no. 61 Untitled manuscript, Archive of Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Omsk State University, fond 7, inv. no. 92–3

Secondary Literature Abashin, Sergei N., “Zangi-ata,“ Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vyp. 1 (Moscow, 2006), 150–153 Akimushkin, Oleg F. et al. Persidskie i tadzhikskie rukopisi Instituta Narodov Azii AN SSSR (kratkii alfavitnyi katalog), vol. 1 (Moscow, 1964) Algar, Hamid, “Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the VolgaUrals region,” in: Muslims in Central Asia. Expressions of Identity and Change, ed. JoAnn Gross (Durham/London, 1992), 112–133 The Atlas of Siberia by Semyon U. Remezov. Facsimile edition with an introduction by Leo Bagrow (S-Gravenhage, 1958) Belich, Igor’ V., “Mavzolei musul’manskikh sviatykh v raione Iskera,” in: Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i etnografii 1 (1997): 92–98 –––––, “O religioznykh voinakh uchenikov shaykha Bagauddina protiv inorodtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri (k 100-letiiu publikatsii N.F. Katanovym rukopisei Tobol’skogo muzeiia,” Vestnik arkheologii, antropologii i etnografii 6 (2006): 153–171

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–––––, “Legenda o Khakim-Ata,” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy piatogo Sibirskogo simpoziuma “Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri, eds. A.A. Adamov et al. (Tobol’sk/Omsk, 2002), 405–412 –––––, “Vsemirnaia skazka v fol’klore sibirskikh tatar,” in: Etnografo-arkheologicheskie kompleksy: Problemy kul’tury i sotsiuma, vol. 8, eds. N.A. Tomilov et al. (Omsk, 2004), 63–96 –––––, “Legenda o Khakim-Ata,” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy piatogo Sibirskogo simpoziuma “Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri, eds. A.A. Adamov et al. (Tobol’sk/Omsk, 2002), 405–12 ––––– and Bustanov, A.K., “Zametki o sufiiskikh traditsiiakh v Zapadnoi Sibiri,” Pax Islamica 2/5 (2010): 39–59 ––––– and Seleznev, A.G. and Selezneva, I.A., Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame: spetsifika universal’nogo (Moscow, 2009) Bustanov, Alfrid K., “Denezhnoe obrashchenie v Sibirskom uluse,” Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 2007–2008: Istoriia i kul’tura tiurkskikh narodov Rossii i sopredel’nykh stran, eds. S.G. Kliashtornyi et al. (Moscow, 2009), 56–66 –––––, Miras: Knigi kak kul’turnyi kapital: Musul’manskie rukopisi v Zapadnoi Sibiri (Moscow, 2013), forthcoming –––––, “Sochinenie ‘Shadzhara risalasi’ i ego spiski,” in: Srednevekovye tiurko-tatarskie gosudarstva, vol. 1, ed. I. Zagidullin (Kazan, 2009) –––––, “Rukopis’ v kontekste sibirskogo islama,” in: Belich, I.V. and Seleznev, A.G. and Selezneva, I.A., Kul’t sviatykh v sibirskom islame: spetsifika universal’nogo (Moscow, 2009), 156–192 –––––, “Manuskripty sufiiskikh shaikhov: turkestanskaia traditsiia na beregakh Irtysha,” in: Etnografo-arkheologicheskie kompleksy: problemy kul’tury i sotsiuma, vol. 11, ed. N.A. Tomilov (Omsk, 2009), 195–230 –––––, and Korusenko, Svetlana N., “Rodoslovnye sibirskikh bukhartsev: Im’iaminovy,” Arkheologiia, etnografiia i antropologiia Evrazii 2/42 (2010): 97–105 –––––, “Sufiiskie legendy ob Islamizatsii Sibiri,” in: Tiurkologicheskii sbornik, 2009–2010. Tiurkskie narody Evrazii v drevnosti i srednevekov’e, eds. S.G. Kliashtornyi et al. (Moscow, 2011), 49–60 –––––, “The Sacred Texts of Siberian KhwƗja Families. The Descendants of Sayyid Ata,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 2/1 (2011): 70–99 –––––, “Spisok ‘Shadzhara-ii tiurk’ Abu-l-Gazi iz biblioteki Gettingenskogo universiteta,” in: Tiurko-tatarskie gosudarstva, vol. 3, ed. I. Zagidullin (Kazan, 2012): 53–55 DeWeese, Devin, “Yasavian Legends of the Islamization of Turkestan,” in: Aspects of Altaic Civilization, ed. Denis Sinor, vol. III (Bloomington, IN, 1990): 1–19 –––––, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994) –––––, “Sacred History for a Central Asian Town. Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in Histories of Sayram, 18th-19th Centuries,” in: Figures mythiques des mondes musulmans, ed. D. Aigle [=Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Mediterranee 89–99 (2000)]: 245– 295 –––––,“Iasaviia,” in: Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: Èntsiklopedicheskii slovar’, vol. 3 (Moscow, 2003), 37

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–––––, “Foreword”, in: Sobranie fetv po obosnovaniiu dhikra dzhahr i samaҵ, eds. B.M. Babadzhanov and S.A. Muhammadaminov (Almaty, 2008), 9–15 –––––, “Three Tales from the Central Asian ‘Book of HakƯm Ata’”, in: Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation, ed. J. Renard (Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2009), 121–135 –––––, “The Narrative of IsতƗq BƗb and the Lore of Holy Families in Western Siberia: A Preliminary Discussion,” in: Islamizatsiia i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii: Nasledie Iskhak Baba v narrativnoi i genealogicheskoi traditsiiakh, Tom 1 (Almaty, 2013), forthcoming Farkhshatov, Marsil’ N., “Delo” Shaykha Zainully Rasuleva (1872–1917): Vlast’ i sufizm v poreformennoi Bashkirii. Sbornik dokumentov (Ufa, 2009) Frank, Allen J., “Islamic Shrine Catalogues and Communal Geography in the Volga-Ural Region: 1788–1917,” Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2 (1996): 265–286 –––––, Islamic Historiography and ‘Bulghar’ Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia (Leiden, 1998) –––––, The Siberian Chronicles and the Taybughid Biys of Sibir’ (Bloomington, IN, 1994) –––––, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: the Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden/Boston/Köln, 2001) –––––, [Review of:] “R. Kh. Rakhimov, Astana v istorii Sibirskikh tatar: mavzolei pervykh islamskikh missionerov kak pamiatniki istoriko-kul’turnogo naslediia,” Central Eurasian Reader 1 (2008): 367–369 Iakhin, Farit Z., “Tobol’skii tatarskii poet Amdami i ego proizvedenie ‘Nasikhatname’ (Kniga nastavlenii),” in: Tiurkskie narody: Materialy V-go mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma ‘Kul’turnoe nasledie narodov Zapadnoi Sibiri, eds. A.A. Adamov et al. (Tobol’sk/Omsk, 2002): 601–602 Iarkov, A.P. (ed.), Islam v istorii i kul’ture Tiumen’skogo kraia (Tiumen’: Elektopress, 2004) Iskhakov, Damir M., Institut seiiidov v Uluse Dzhuchi i pozdnezolotoordynskikh tiurkotatarskikh gosudarstvakh (Kazan, 2011) Katanov, Nikolai F., O religioznykh voinakh uchenikov shaykha Bagauddina protiv inorodtsev Zapadnoi Sibiri (po rukopisiam Tobol’skogo gubernskogo muzeia) (Kazan, 1904) Kemper, Michael, Sufis und Gelehrte in Tatarien und Baschkirien, 1789–1889: Der islamische Diskurs unter russischer Herrschaft (Berlin, 1998) Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga Sibiri S.U. Remezova, 2 vols.: vol. 1, Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga Sibiri. Faksimile; vol. 2, Khorograficheskaia chertezhnaia kniga Sibiri S.U. Remezova. Rasshifrovka teksta, nadpisei, primechaniia, prilozheniia (Tobol’sk, 2011) Kläy, Ernst J., Dörfer tatarischer “Rückwanderer” (Muhacir) aus Russland in Inneranatolien. Beiträge zur Kenntnis anatolischer Muhacirsiedlungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung eines Dorfes westsibirischer Tataren uzbekischer Abstammung (buhärist), Diss. phil.-hist. (Bern, 1975) Kononov, Andrei N., Istoriia izucheniia tiurkskikh iazykov v Rossii, Dooktiabr’skii period, 2nd edition, (Leningrad, 1982) von Kügelgen, Anke, “Die Entfaltung der NaqshbandƯya Mu÷addidƯya im mittleren Transoxanien vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: ein Stück Detektivarbeit,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2,

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Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds. A. von Kügelgen, M. Kemper, A.J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 101–151 Meier, Fritz, Zwei Abhandlungen über die NaqshbandƯya, I. die Herzensbindung an den Meister, 2. Kraftakt und Faustrecht des Heiligen (Istanbul, 1994) Miller, Gerard F., Istoriia Sibiri, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1999) Mukhametshin, Dzhamil’, “Ber shejereneng sere,” Vatanym Tatarstan 30.05.2007 Paul, Jürgen, Doctrine and Organization. The KhwƗjagƗn/ NaqshbandƯya in the First Generation after BahƗ’uddin (Berlin, 1998) Rakhimov, Rishat Kh., Astana v istorii sibirskikh tatar: mavzolei islamskikh missionerov kak pamiatniki istoriko-kul’turnogo naslediia (Tiumen’, 2006) –––––, “Novye dokumental’nye istochniki po istorii islama v Sibiri,” in: Natsional’naia istoriia tatar: teoretiko-metodologicheskoe vvedenie, ed. D.M. Iskhakov (Kazan, 2009), 292–297 Saifullina, Guzel’, Bagyshlau (posviashcheniia) v kontekste kul’tury narodnogo islama volzhskikh tatar (Kazan, 2005) Seleznev, A.G. and Selezneva, I.A., “Zange-Ata i Khyzyr-Il’ias: istoricheskie i etnicheskie aspekty rasprostraneniia islama v Sibiri,” Ètnograficheskoe obozrenie 6 (2003): 41–56 –––––, Sibirskii islam: regional’nyi variant religioznogo sinkretizma (Novosibirsk, 2004) –––––, “Kontsept astana i kul’t sviatykh v islame,” Tiurkologicheskii sbornik 2007–2008, Istoriia i kul’tura tiurkskikh narodov Rossii i sopredel’nykh stran (Moscow, 2009), 338– 59 Sobolev, V.I., Istoriia sibirskikh khanstv (po arkheologicheskim materialam) (Novosibirsk, 2008) Togan, Isenbike, “The KhafƯ, JahrƯ Controversy in Central Asia Revisited,” in: Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia. Change and Continuity, ed. E. Özdalga (Istanbul, 1997): 17–45 Tomilov, N.A. et al. (eds.), Islam, obshchestvo i kul’tura (Omsk, 1994) Usmanov, M.A. and Shaikhiev, R.A., “Obraztsy tatarskikh narodno-kraevedcheskikh sochinenii po istorii Zapadnoi i Iuzhnoi Sibiri,” in: Sibirskaia arkheografiia i istochnikovedenie (Novosibirsk, 1979), 84–103 Valeev, F.T.-A., “Rodoslovnye zapisi (shezhere) sibirskikh tatar kak istoriko-etnograficheskii istochnik,” in: Problemy antropologii i istoricheskoi etnografii Zapadnoi Sibiri, ed. N.A. Tomilov (Omsk, 1991), 98–104 Valeev, Foat T., Sibirskie tatary: kul’tura i byt (Kazan, 1992) ––––– and Tomilov, Nikolai A., Tatary Zapadnoi Sibiri: istoriia i kul’tura (Novosibirsk, 1996) Verzeichnis der Handschriften im Preußischen Staate. Die Handschriften in Göttingen, 3, Universitäts-Bibliothek Nachlässe von Gelehrten orientalische Handschriften, Handschriften im Besitz von Instituten und Behörden, Register zu Band 1–3, (Berlin, 1984) Witsen, Nicolas, Severnaia i Vostochnaia Tartariia, vkliuchaiushchaia oblasti, raspolozhennye v severnoi i vostochnoi chastiakh Evropy i Azii, transl. from Dutch by V.G. Trisman, eds. N.P. Kopaneva and B. Naarden, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, 2010) Zaleman, Karl G., “Legenda pro Khakim-Ata,” Izvestiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk 9/2 (1898): 105–150 Zarcone, Thierry, “Les confreries soufies en Siberie (XIXe siècle et debut du XXe siecle),” Cahiers du Monde russe 41/ 2–3 (2000): 279–296

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The Changing Religious Orientation of Qazaq Intellectuals in the Tsarist Period: SharƯҵa, Secularism, and Ethics TOMOHIKO UYAMA Sapporo

While Jadidism has been researched as a point of intersection between Islam and the intellectual history of the Volga-Urals and the sedentary areas of Turkestan, the history of Qazaq intellectuals has been dealt with almost exclusively in the framework of national movements, largely separate from Islam.1 Moreover, the study of Central Eurasian intellectuals itself has not seemed popular in recent years. This is regrettable, because these intellectuals left a great number of writings that serve as valuable historical sources related not only to nationalism but also to various other subjects, including Islam. Indeed, the distinction between secular intellectuals and religious literati was blurry: many intellectuals received both Islamic and Russian education.2 There were also a large number of poets who fell between the religious and secular categories. Historians rarely read poetry, but Qazaq poetry was much more developed than prose until the early twentieth century, and verse works provide important clues for understanding Qazaq history.3 1

2

3

E.g., Mämbet Qoygeldiev, Alash qozghalïsï (Almaty, 1995); Dina Amanzholova, Kazakhskii avtonomizm i Rossiia: Istoriia dvizheniia Alash (Moscow, 1994); Steven Sabol, Russian Colonization and the Genesis of Kazak National Consciousness (Basingstoke, 2003). See the short biographies of 65 Qazaq intellectuals in Uyama Tomohiko, “The Geography of Civilizations: A Spatial Analysis of the Kazakh Intelligentsia’s Activities, from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century,” in Matsuzato Kimitaka, ed., Regions: A Prism to View the Slavic-Eurasian World (Sapporo, 2000), 70–99. Most Qazaq poems were handed down orally until the late nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, they began to be recorded in written form, and new poems were published, both in Arabic script. They have been republished, and some more were newly recorded in Cyrillic script in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. As many Qazaq publications lack notes on sources, it is often hard to know when a poem was first recorded or published. Even when the source is known, it is

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The role of Islam in Qazaq society under Russian rule was in flux because of the lack of well-established communities of ҵulamƗҴ (Islamic scholars) and the Russian policy of hindering the institutionalization of Islam in this region, exemplified by the removal of the Qazaqs from the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly in 1868. 4 Although recent scholars have rightfully criticized the view that the Qazaqs were “Muslims only in name” and have shown the importance of Islam and Muslim identity to Qazaq society,5 the choice of further Islamization or secularization was certainly a crucial issue for the Qazaqs of the Tsarist period, and it related to their attitude toward Russia and their perspective on their development as a nation. In this chapter, we examine a number of works of verse and prose by Qazaq authors and intellectuals from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, concentrating particularly upon their writings about Islam. In so doing, we aim to analyze the complicated relations between Islam, secularism, and nationalism among the Qazaqs, putting them in the contexts of imperial and intellectual history. 1. FROM RUSSOPHOBIA TO REFORMISM: “ZAR ZAMAN” POETS AND AFTER In the early nineteenth century, the Qazaq Steppe came under the firm control of the Russian Empire. Revolts led by Isatay Taymanov in Western Kazakhstan (1836–1838) and by Kenesarï Qasïmov in Central and Southeastern Kazakhstan (1837–1847), as well as other revolts, failed. Aqïns (poets) known as “Zar Zaman” (Time of Lament) poets, namely Dulat Babatayǎlï

4 5

not easy to locate and copy rare manuscripts or first editions. Therefore I am often obliged to use modern editions, although I am aware that there can be mistakes in their Cyrillic transcription. It should be noted that the earlier Arabic-Qazaq script was largely similar to Tatar and Chagatay, but in the early twentieth century Qazaqs began to reform the orthography to make the literary language closer to the vernacular. I transliterate pre-reform Qazaq using the Arabic Romanization system, and transliterate reformed Arabic-Qazaq as well as proper names using the orthographic principles of modern Cyrillic-Qazaq, while preserving some of the specifics of the original. See Werth’s chapter in this volume. Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001); Bruce G. Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001).

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(1802–1874?), Shortanbay Qanayǎlï (1818–1881), and Mǎrat Möngkeǎlï (1843–1906), deplored the Qazaqs’ unhappy and hopeless conditions under Russian rule.6 Here we focus on Dulat and Shortanbay, because their poems are rich in Islamic motifs.7 Shortanbay lamented: You ran and were caught in a trap set by Russians, Our brave men, who were born with strong will, Raised livestock and slept peacefully, Are now in the hardship of captivity!8

Shortanbay expressed his disgust at how quarrels increased with the introduction of Russian law, and at the loss of the precedence of men over women, and of seniors over juniors. As a native of a sedentary area near the city of Turkistan who had received an Islamic education, he repeatedly condemned both Russian kƗfirs (infidels) and the Qazaq administrators who obeyed them, although he admitted that the Kokand Khanate, an Islamic state, was “an enemy much worse than the Russians.”9 He recommended that the Qazaqs think about the afterlife and build madrasas (Islamic schools for secondary and higher education) and mosques, and that they send their children to muftƯs (authoritative legal scholars entitled to issue religious opinions) for study. However, he could not propose any practical solution to real problems other than “sleeping in a quiet home.” As if foreseeing the Soviet period, he predicted that people without religion would one day come and become rulers.10

6

7

8 9 10

Poets of a similar trend, also called “Zar Zaman” poets, appeared among the Kyrgyz, probably under some Qazaq influence. They included poets of various generations, such as Kalïgul (1785–1855), Arstanbek (1824–1878), and Moldo Kïlïch (1866–1917), and were also Islamic-oriented and often anti-Russian. It is remarkable that there were a number of mullƗs among Kyrgyz poets. See Khrestomatiia po istorii Kyrgyzstana, ed. Valentina A. Voropaeva 2nd edn. (Bishkek, 2004), 281–6; Sadyk Alakhan [Tillebaev], Besh moldo: Moldo Niyaz, Nurmoldo, Moldo Kïlïch, Aldash Moldo, Moldo Bagïsh (Bishkek, 2004). Although Mǎrat was also antagonistic to the rule by “people of a different religion,” he more consistently expressed grievance over the fact that Russia occupied the homelands of historic and epic heroes of the Noghay Horde and the Qazaq Khanate, Zar zaman (Almaty, 1993), 137–169. Ibid., 71. All the translations in this chapter are mine. Ibid., 109, 115. Ibid., 71, 77, 121; Qi‫܈܈‬a-i Chnjr‫ܒ‬ƗnbƗy, Chnjr‫ܒ‬ƗnbƗyning bƗlƗ zƗrƯ (Kazan, 1890), 3.

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Dulat also deplored that the Qazaqs had abandoned the way of sharƯҵa (Islamic law) and instead followed the law of the Russian kƗfirs.11 Don’t be a companion to kƗfirs, They will show you hostility, Will torment you with slanders, Because their religion is different.12

He especially hated ƗghƗ sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns (district chiefs) and qƗĪƯs (Islamic judges) who curried favor with Russians and could not prevent fertile land from being taken.13 In contrast, he idealized Abïlay KhƗn from the previous century, and mourned for the brave men who had died defending their homeland. 14 Thus, Shortanbay and Dulat praised Islam and Qazaq khƗns, contrasting them with Russia and its Qazaq pawns, and lamented over the loss of sharƯҵa, land, and peaceful nomadic life. Unlike some later intellectuals, they did not regard nomadism as detrimental to Islam. Shortanbay and Dulat did not endorse everyone who claimed to serve Islam in the Qazaq Steppe. Shortanbay pointed out that although the numbers of mullƗs (Islamic teachers and prayer leaders) were increasing, they betrayed God by reciting prayers without cleansing their bodies and by charging for their services.15 Dulat also condemned ƯshƗns (Sufis) for claiming to cure diseases without having such ability and for preaching despite being faithless.16 Criticism of mullƗs and ƯshƗns was shared by various groups of poets and intellectuals of later generations. Äbubäkír Kerderí (Boranqǎlov, 1861?í1905?), known for his poems on religious themes, harshly criticized Sufis: What is the use of being Sufi, If one doesn’t walk in truth? If they don’t know the way of sharҵƯa, They are worse than ignorant people, ... There is no use for ‫ܒ‬arƯqa [the Sufi order],

11 12 13 14 15 16

Zar zaman, 6–11. XIX ghasïr ädebietí: Khrestomatiya, ed. Khanghali Süyínshäliev (Almaty, 1992), 24. Zar zaman, 15, 40. Ibid., 6, 19, 27. Shortanbay, Tolghavlar, aytïstar, dastan (Almaty, 1993), 74–75. Zar zaman, 42–43.

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If they don’t know the truth!17

Unlike Shortanbay and Dulat, Äbubäkír was not anti-Russian. He advocated the necessity of knowing Russian and praised the Tsar for his support of education and science.18 As we will see later, many intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries promoted the learning of not only Islam but also Russian, because it was essential for Qazaqs to learn the Russian language and to get a Russian education so that they could secure their rights under Russian rule. The famous poet Abay Qǎnanbaev (1845–1904) wrote: It would be good to educate children, but it would be enough [at least] to learn worship and Turkic. In this land of DƗr al-‫ۉ‬arb, one has to acquire wealth first and then [to learn] Arabic and Persian. ... It is necessary to learn Russian. Russians have everything: knowledge, wealth, art, and science. It is necessary to learn their language, education, and science, both to avoid their harms and to share their advantages. They became as they are by learning the world’s language[s]. If you learn their [Russians’] language, your heart and eyes will be opened. A person who knows another’s language can enter into dispute with them on equal terms, and there will be no need to stoop to begging for something. Good knowledge is also useful for religion.19

The combination of Islam and Russophobia was rare by the end of the nineteenth century, although we can hardly say that it entirely disappeared: during the revolt of 1916, some people, including mullƗs, called for a ghazavƗt (holy war) against the Tsar.20 Intellectuals who cooperated with the Russian authorities also criticized mullƗs. A Qazaq contributor to Dala walayatïnïng gazetí, a newspaper published under the direction of the Governor-General of the Steppe from 1888 through 1902, wrote that mullƗs were barely literate, resorted to corporal 17

18

19

20

Wälikhan Qalijan, Jädidshíl jïrlar (Almaty, 1998), 20. Qalijan calls Kerderí, Nǎrjan Navshabaev, Shädí Jänggírov and Maqïsh Qaltayǎlï “Jadid poets,” although their relations with Tatar Jadids are not clear. Bes ghasïr jïrlaydï: XV ghasïrdan XX ghasïrdïng bas kezíne deyíngí qazaq aqïnjïravlarïnïng shïgharmalarï, vol. 2 (Almaty, 1989), 280. Abay, “Jiïrma besínshí söz,” in his Shïgharmalarïnïng ekí tomdïq tolïq jinaghï, vol. 2 (Almaty, 1995), 176. DƗr al-‫ۊ‬arb means the “house of war,” where sharƯҵa is not in force. The tsarist authorities did not allow sharƯҵa to be applied in the Qazaq Steppe, unlike in the Volga-Urals and the sedentary areas of Turkestan. Uyama Tomohiko, “Two Attempts at Building a Qazaq State: The Revolt of 1916 and the Alash Movement,” in: Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries), eds., Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (London, 2001), 86.

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punishment while teaching, and dulled the intellectual abilities of children. Another contributor to the same newspaper accused mullƗs from Kazan and Bukhara of engaging in commerce and usury.21 Later, Mir-Ya‫ޏ‬qub Dulatov (infra) and other participants of national movements also severely criticized mullƗs for ignorance. Thus, Qazaq intellectuals of varied backgrounds shared concern about the state of religious life and education in the Qazaq Steppe and an interest in reforming it. 2. SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS INTELLECTUALS’ SHARED INTEREST IN THE QAZAQ LANGUAGE Modern education and Islam in the Qazaq Steppe have often been viewed as opposites. Chokan Valikhanov (1835–1865), whose criticism of Islam has been cited by many researchers, called Islam “a religion hostile to all kinds of knowledge.”22 However, we should treat his comments not as a typical opinion of Qazaqs in the nineteenth century, but rather as a reaction of a young European-oriented intellectual to the growing interest of a large part of Qazaqs in Islam. Many notable figures built new mosques and madrasas and made pilgrimages to Mecca, a prominent example being Abay’s father, Qǎnanbay Öskenbaev (1804–1886?). Valikhanov’s beloved uncle and a colonel of the Russian army, Mǎsa Shormanov (1819–1884), also built a number of mosques. Islam’s influence was not limited to the Qazaq elite. When Valikhanov ran for the position of Atbasar ƗghƗ sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn, he complained that “barbaric” people of the Baghanalï clan, who lived in a remote semi-desert area and supported his rival candidate, did not want to have an ƗghƗ sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn who “does not perform ablutions five times a day.”23 Although the Russian authorities in the Qazaq Steppe after the 1860s were generally hostile to the spreading influence of Islam, they were sometimes obliged to consider the religious needs of the Qazaqs. Some Qazaq

21

22

23

Uyama Tomohiko, “A Strategic Alliance between Kazakh Intellectuals and Russian Administrators: Imagined Communities in Dala Walayatïnïng Gazetí (1888–1902),” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 250, 253. Chokan Ch. Valikhanov, “O musul'manstve v stepi,” in: Id., Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, vol. 4 (Alma-Ata, 1985), 71–75. Valikhanov’s letter to Fedor Dostoevskii dated 15 October 1862, in Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5, 151.

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intellectuals, most notably Ibrahim Altïnsarin (1841–1889), eagerly sought to promote these needs. Altïnsarin was one of the first students of the Qazaq school attached to the Orenburg Border Commission, which was established in 1850 and whose academic subjects included Russian, Arabic, Tatar, Persian, and the QurҴƗn.24 He worked closely with the famous Russian educator and Orthodox missionary Nikolai Il’minskii, and became inspector of the schools in Turgay oblast’ in 1879. In the 1930s, long after his death, Altïnsarin was defamed as an Orthodox “missionary”; in reality, he was a firm defender of Islam, and he accused some schools of teaching the Bible and serving pork to children.25 His famous poem that urged children to go to school began with the phrase “Having prayed to the one God, / Let’s study, children!” but the first line, along with some other religious phrases, was omitted in publications of the Soviet period.26 In 1884, he published the first Qazaq-language book on Islamic dogma: SharƗyi‫ ܒ‬al-IslƗm (Norms of Islam). Its preface pointed out that sacred texts and related literature were written in Arabic, a language unfamiliar to most people, and while the Tatars, Turks and other peoples had published commentaries on the QurҴƗn and ‫ۊ‬adƯth in their own languages, there was no such literature in Qazaq. To write this book, he used various materials, including a book written by Ataullah Bayazitov, a famous Tatar theologian and writer who was then working as an imƗm (mosque leader) in St. Petersburg.27 Altïnsarin strove to establish a distinct Qazaq literature. In the foreword to Kirgizskaia khrestomatiia (Qazaq reader, 1879), he complained that the lack of books in Qazaq had compelled teachers to use books written in Tatar with a large number of Arabic and Persian words, which were incomprehen-

24

25

26

27

For Altïnsarin’s biography, see B. S. Suleimenov, “Zhizn’ i deiatel’nost’ Ibragima Altynsarina (1841–1889),” in: Ibragim Altynsarin, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Alma-Ata, 1975), 7–48. Altïnsarin’s letter to V. V. Katarinskii dated 20 February 1889, in: Altynsarin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3 (Alma-Ata, 1978), 145–147; Isabelle Kreindler, “Ibrahim Altynsarin, Nikolai Il'minskii and the Kazakh National Awakening,” Central Asian Survey 2/3 (1983): 109. Compare the two versions of the poem published in Bes ghasïr jïrlaydï, vol. 2, 6–8, and Tǎlghalar: Ïbïray Altïnsarin, Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíǎlï (Almaty, 2007), 182–183. Tǎlghalar, 111–112.

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sible to Qazaqs.28 The development of Qazaq language and culture whose Tatar influence was reduced corresponded to the aim of the Russian authorities and Il’minskii, who feared the threat of Pan-Islamic unity under Tatar leadership.29 Although Il’minskii did not answer Altïnsarin’s request to help publish SharƗyi‫ ܒ‬al-IslƗm, he later recommended this work to Russian administrators as the sole suitable book for teaching Islam in Qazaq schools, because it was written, according to Il’minskii, in a sober tone, in contrast to legendary embellishments and fanaticism found in Tatar books.30 Altïnsarin’s effort to write religious literature in Qazaq can also be placed in a broader trend among the Turkic peoples to publish Islamic literature in their own languages, as the above-mentioned preface to SharƗyi‫ ܒ‬al-IslƗm suggests. As if stimulated by Altïnsarin, Islamic literati published a large number of books in Qazaq in Kazan and other cities,31 although their language was often mixed with Tatar. In A‫ۊ‬wƗl-i qiyƗmat (Conditions of the Resurrection), a manuscript recently found and published, its author, presumably Shädí Jänggírov (1855–1933), emphasized that this was a book “written entirely in our own Turkic language” for the Qazaqs, a “people who are entirely Turkic.”32 It was a common task for both Russian-oriented and Islamic-oriented intellectuals to spread knowledge among the people in a language understandable to them. 3. GENEALOGY OF “AWAKENING”: AQMOLLA, NA‫܇‬Ʈ‫ۉ‬AT-I QAZƖQƮYA AND OYAN, QAZAQ! In contrast to Shortanbay, who recommended that people “sleep” in order to abstain from evil and avoid the bad influences of outsiders, intellectuals of the early twentieth century advocated “awakening.” These intellectuals were acutely aware of the Qazaqs’ backwardness and felt obliged to adapt them to the modern world. The most famous example of books propagating the idea 28 29 30

31

32

Altynsarin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 77. See Uyama, “A Strategic Alliance,” esp. 253–6. Kreindler, “Ibrahim Altynsarin,” p. 109; “Pis’mo professora N. I. Il’minskogo nach-ku Turgaiskogo u. Ia. P. Iakovlevu o knige I. Altynsarina ‘Shariat i islam’,” in: Altynsarin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 3, 313–314. See a bibliography of Qazaq books published before 1917 in Ü. Subkhanberdina and D. S. Seyfullina, Qazaq kítabïnïng shejíresí, 1807–1917: Bibliografiyalïq körsetkísh (Almaty, 1996). Akhual qiyamet (Almaty, 2005), 14–17.

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of awakening was Oyan, qazaq! (Awake, Qazaq!), a collection of poems written by Mir-Ya‫ޏ‬qub (Mírjaqïp) Dulatov (1885–1935) from 1905 to 1909 and published in Ufa in 1910. Most researchers have accentuated this book’s criticism of the Tsar and Russian policy, and have treated it only in the context of the political situation after the 1905 revolution.33 But if we read this book carefully, we notice considerable Islamic elements. First, it discusses problems related to sharƯҵa, mosques, madrasas, and mullƗs, and ways to reform religious institutions. Second, some sections of the book are written in the styles of na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at (admonition), munƗjƗt (prayer), and waҵĪ (sermon). Third, the book contains many Tatar, Arabic, and Persian words.34 Therefore, it is useful to compare Oyan, qazaq! with works of authors who are considered to be more Islamicoriented. The last part of Oyan, qazaq! gives some indication of Dulatov’s influences. He cites a number of talented intellectuals who devoted themselves to their nations: the Russian writers Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Krylov, Turgenev, and Tolstoi, and the Qazaq poets Abay, Akhmet Baytǎrsïnov, Äbubäkír,, Qïpshaqbay, Aqmolla, Nǎrjan, Shöje, Orïnbay, and Mäshhür Zhüsip .35 It is well known that Abay inspired younger generations of intellectuals, and Akhmet Baytǎrsïnov (1873–1937) was a close associate of Dulatov, but Aqmolla (1831/39–1895)36 was also an important predecessor of Dulatov. 33

34

35 36

For example, see Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris, 1964), 153; Gulnar Kendirbay, “The National Liberation Movement of the Qazaq Intelligentsia at the Beginning of the 20th Century,” Central Asian Survey 16/4 (1997): 495–496. I earlier highlighted Dulatov’s multifaceted views on Russia, Islam, and nomadism in my “Mirovozzrenie kazakhskikh intelligentov v nachale XX v.: O knige Mir-Iakuba Dulatova «Prosnis’, kazakh!»” [Abstract of MA thesis written in 1992], in Mírjaqïp Dulatǎlï, Bes tomdïq shïgharmalar jinaghï, vol. 5 (Almaty, 2004), 380–387. Later, Dulatov advocated using a pure Qazaq language, and confessed regretfully that at the time of writing Oyan, qazaq! he had been strongly influenced by the Tatar press and literature, which used a “literary” language mixed with Arabic and Persian. M. D. [MirYa‫ޏ‬qub Dulatov], “Tíl-qǎral,” Qazaq 93 (4 January 1915). MƯr-Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb DnjlƗ৬njf, NjyƗn, qazƗq! (Ufa, 1910), 97–98. Qazaq and Bashkir scholars have debated whether Aqmolla was a Qazaq, or a Bashkir. Aqmolla himself said that his father was a Qazaq, but Bashkir scholars are convinced that he was lying to escape military conscription. Akhat Kh. Vil’danov and Giniiatulla S. Kunafin, Bashkirskie prosvetiteli-demokraty XIX veka (Moscow, 1981), 208–211;

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A Bashkiria-born mullƗ and admirer of the Tatar Islamic reformer Shihabbadin Marjani, Aqmolla was a sharp critic of influential but ignorant people. Hüner (öner), a word that broadly means knowledge, art, and technology, was a key notion common to Aqmolla and Dulatov. While Aqmolla criticized bis (customary court judges) and volost’ (canton) heads for “receiving not hüner but bribes,” Dulatov deplored that the Qazaqs lacked “a competitive spirit with others [in acquiring] hüner,” and hoped that they would prosper by obtaining hüner, especially technology from Russia and Europe. Both used the metaphor of “sleeping” and “awakening,” and the contrast between darkness and light. Aqmolla wrote: We are Qazaq nomads living in huts, Sleeping idly with blankets, without hüner.

To cite another example, Other people’s lives are like the day, The ignorant people’s lives are like the night. ... You see, there is much difference between them, Are sleeping and being awake the same thing?37

Dulatov, using similar metaphors, made a more powerful appeal for awakening on the title page of Oyan, qazaq!: Open your eyes, awake, Qazaq, lift your head, Don’t spend time idly in darkness!

In the early twentieth century, a number of books on subjects related to Islam and Qazaq society were published, most typically with the title Na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at-i qazƗqƯya (Admonition for the Qazaqs).38 In the case of one such book, the author Zeynulghabiden al-Jawari wrote that the principal factors in the development of a nation are science, hüner, and knowledge, and that he wanted to “awaken” himself in this “age of knowledge.”39 He advocated the necessity of getting an Islamic education, learning some Russian, developing Qazaq

37 38

39

Wälikhan Qalijanǎlï, Qazaq ädebietíndegí díni-aghartushïlïq aghïm (Almaty, 1998), 32– 35. Qalijanǎlï, Qazaq ädebietíndegí, 88–91. A bibliography mentions six books by different authors entitled Na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at-i qazƗqƯya or Na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at al-qazƗqƯya, published between 1900 and 1914. Subkhanberdina and Seyfullina, Qazaq kítabïnïng shejíresí, 103, 146, 156, 177, 216. Zayn al-‫ޏ‬ƖbidƯn al-JawƗrƯ, Na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at-i qazƗqƯya (Ufa, 1909), 2, 32. I am grateful to Allen Frank for providing me with a copy of this book.

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literature, and engaging in farming, and he criticized the factional strife and bribery that occurred during local elections—themes common to Oyan, qazaq! However, al-Jawari wrote much more about the QurҴƗn, sharƯҵa, and the “Messenger of God” (Muতammad) than Dulatov did, and was less enthusiastic about promoting Russian education, instead emphasizing the harm of mixing the Russian and Qazaq languages.40 Dulatov also wrote much about Islam, but he always connected it with reforms of Qazaq society. He proposed the introduction of sharƯҵa in civil cases and the establishment of a hierarchy of clergy with a muftƯ as its head. He also advocated using the funds of zemstvos (local councils) to construct madrasas (intellectuals then had been demanding the introduction of zemstvos in the Qazaq Steppe) and teaching Russian in madrasas. These ideas were apparently inspired by the systems and institutions that existed in the Volga-Ural region, where the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (muftiate), madrasas, and zemstvos had important social functions. Oyan, qazaq! abounds with evidence of the influence of Volga-Ural Muslim thought and with expressions of concern common to the Qazaq Islamic literati. Such features of Oyan, qazaq! coincided with calls for national awakening and learning of modern knowledge from Russia and Europe. 4. ANOTHER PATH: THE THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL THOUGHT OF ABAY AND SHÄKÄRÍM Another important religious current among the Qazaqs was theological and ethical thinking, most notably represented by Abay and his nephew Shäkärím. Qazaq scholars of literature have extensively studied Abay’s works, but they have paid little attention to, or have sometimes misunderstood, the religious motifs in these works. Moreover, during the Soviet period, official ideology forced researchers to downplay the Islamic elements in Abay’s thought. Changes in the works of Mǎkhtar Äwezov, a prominent writer and specialist on Abay, testify to such ideological pressure. Writing Abay’s biography in the mid-1920s, Äwezov asserted that Abay had been “a Muslim in the true sense,” and that he had used Islamic notions in explaining humanism and other concepts deriving from European philosophy, though he noted his reservation that Abay’s approach to the religion had been a crit-

40

Ibid., esp. 24–25.

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ical and intellectual one.41 In 1939, after narrowly surviving the waves of repression, Äwezov wrote that Abay had “sought his ‘Kaaba’ not in the ruins of Islam” and had preferred the “beneficial influence of the cultures of the West and the Great Russians.”42 In his lectures in 1945–1946, Äwezov used the cautious and ambiguous statement “Abay’s religion was the conditional religion of a rational and critical intellect (ratsionaldïq sïnshïl aqïldïng sharttï díní),”43 which was often cited later by Soviet scholars. Äwezov’s view in the 1920s was more accurate than his later statements. Religious motifs were not always dominant in Abay’s works, but when writing about religion, he appeared as a devout Muslim poet believing in the supremacy of Allah. In the poem “Allah himself is true, his word is also true” (1902), Abay wrote: Epochs, economy, morals changed every day. Prophets came to them [people] one after another. Even when the rules of sharƯҵa changed, Allah’s definition (taҵrƯf) did not change anywhere. All living things will change, but Allah will not. People of the Book [Christians and Jews] will not say this is false.44

At the same time, Abay criticized those who thought that performing worship and other religious duties (ҵibƗdƗt) was enough to make them good Muslims. He explained that ҵibƗdƗt are only shadows of inner faith, and he warned that if someone performed ҵibƗdƗt without understanding their inner secrets, his faith would decay.45 Although Abay studied in a madrasa in Semipalatinsk when he was a child, he wrote intensively about Islam much later, with a mature sense of ethics and humanism. Citing the ‫ۊ‬adƯth that “if someone does not have [a sense of] justice, he does not have [a sense of] shame; if someone does not 41 42 43 44

45

Mǎkhtar Äwezov, Abaydï bílmek parïz oylï jasqa (Almaty, 1997), 168. Mukhtar Auezov, Izbrannoe (Almaty, 1997), 368–369. Mǎkhtar Äwezov, Abaytanu därísterí (Almaty, 1994), 55. Qazaq aqïnï Ibrahim Qǎnanbay ǎghlïnïng ölengí (St. Petersburg, 1909; repr., Almaty, 2009), 49. Citing the passage about prophets coming one after another, some Qazaq scholars allege that Abay thought that prophets including Muতammad had distorted divine truth, and they call this poem heretical and antireligious. See Mukhanmadiiar Orynbekov, Filosofskie vozzreniia Abaia (Almaty, 1995), 62; Garifolla Esimov, Khakim Abai (Almaty, 1995), 53. However, Abay nowhere denied that Muতammad was the last prophet, and it is reasonable to assume that here he meant the prophets before Muতammad. Abay, “Otïz segízínshí söz,” in his Shïgharmalarïnïng ekí tomdïq, vol. 2, 208.

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have [a sense of] shame, he does not have faith,” he wrote that faith cannot exist alone, but must always exist together with justice and nobility. He again emphasized that manifestations of servitude to God such as prayer and fasting do not automatically produce justice and goodwill.46 Abay regarded love as the essence of the relationship between God and humankind. He wrote: [Allah] created mankind with love (mu‫ۊ‬abbat), You should also love him with all your heart. Love all mankind, oh my brother, This is the just way of truth.

... Fasting, prayer, zakƗt [almsgiving] and ‫ۊ‬ajj are indisputable things, If you are a good person, observe them all well. [But] without consolidating the first three, Doing the last four will not bear substantial fruit.47

Here, “the first three” refers to God’s love for humankind, humankind’s love for God, and people’s love for each other, so here Abay connects faith and humanism. He also relates love with reason (ҵaql) and knowledge (ҵilm): “Love resides, first of all, with such things as man’s humanity, reason, and knowledge”; “Aspiration and intelligence arise from love”; “[Man’s knowledge is] love for Allah himself. Being one of the attributes (‫܈‬ifƗt) of Allah, knowledge is truth, and love for it is truth and humanity in itself.”48 Here we should note that Abay’s view of reason was two-sided. On one hand, he was aware of the limitations of reason, and wrote a short tale about a dispute among “zeal,” “reason,” and “heart” (jürek in Qazaq), which came to the conclusion that the heart should guide reason and zeal, which can do both good and evil, in the right direction.49 He also thought that only the heart, not reason, could perceive God: “Allah will not fit into reason”; “Reason and the senses do not know [Allah’s] presence, [but] the heart feels it.”50 On the other hand, Abay emphasized that God gave reason not to animals but only to human beings, and that the best form of faith is a faith proven by 46 47

48 49 50

Ibid., 198. Qazaq aqïnï Ibrahim, 49. Some of Abay’s love poetry, including the famous “Közímníng qarasï [You are the pupil of my eyes],” can also be interpreted as mystic poems on love for God. Abay, “Otïz segízínshí söz,” in his Shïgharmalarïnïng ekí tomdïq, vol. 2, 189–190. Abay, “On jetínshí söz,” ibid., 171–172. Abay, “Alla degen söz jengíl,” ibid., 31.

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reason: yaqƯnƯ ƯmƗn (“faith with conviction”).51 Therefore we can understand that the limitations of reason for Abay only meant humanity’s imperfection in contrast to God. He also stressed the importance of knowledge; in the above-mentioned tale, knowledge acts as the judge in the dispute among zeal, reason, and heart. Writing that people should learn and imitate Allah’s attributes—life (‫ۊ‬ayƗt), knowledge, power (qudra), sight (ba‫܈‬ar), hearing (samҵ), will (irƗda), speech (kalƗm), creation (takvƯn)—he pointed to knowledge and power as the most important of these attributes.52 Contrary to the assertion by Qazaq scholars (both during the Soviet and the post-Soviet periods) that Abay was a freethinker who deviated from traditional Islam,53 Abay’s views on Islam fit in well with Islamic theology, especially with the ideas of thinkers such as Abnj ণƗmid al-GhazƗlƯ (1058– 1111), who argued at length about the relations between faith, knowledge, and heart. True, Abay was far from the formalistic position that gives priority to strict observance of sharƯҵa over inner faith, and we can find many similarities between his ideas and Sufism, which ardently expresses love for God and regards the heart as the seat of divine knowledge and the organ of conscience. His recommendation to imitate Allah’s attributes also reminds us of the first stage of fanƗ’ (annihilation of the self), when man struggles to exchange his base qualities for God’s praiseworthy attributes.54 Despite the possible influence of Sufi thought, however, Abay was extremely critical of Sufi practitioners. He wrote: “If perfection of humanity is to be achieved through sainthood and all the people enter ‫ܒ‬arƯqas, despairing of this world, then the world would be devastated. Who will graze cattle, who will stop enemies, who will weave clothes, who will sow grain, who will search for resources that Allah created for human beings in the world?” 51 52

53

54

Abay, “Otïz segízínshí söz,” ibid., 194–196; idem, “On üshínshí söz,” ibid., 169. Abay, “Otïz segízínshí söz,” ibid., 191–194. Again, Qazaq scholars allege that Abay deviated from traditional Islam that prohibits people from learning the aspects of Allah and becoming similar to him (Orynbekov, Filosofskie vozzreniia Abaia, 81; Esimov, Khakim Abai, 177). This allegation is not adequate because learning Allah’s attributes is an important subject in Islamic theology. See notes 44 and 52 above, and also Abay: Entsiklopediya, eds. R. N. Nǎrghaliev et al. (Almaty, 1995), 218–222. See Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975), ch. 3. While the heart (qalb) is a word frequently employed in QurҴƗn, it was the Sufis who placed special emphasis on it and gave a variety of interpretations to it. L. Gardet, “঱alb,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edn. (Leiden, 1978), 486–488.

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He severely criticized ƯshƗns for being ignorant of the rules of sharƯҵa, for deluding people, and for doing harm to religion.55 Abay deemed that non-Muslim scholars (‫ۊ‬akƯm, literally “wise men”), although lacking true religious knowledge (maҵrifa), had contributed tremendously to humanity by harnessing electricity, and inventing the telegraph and other useful things. In contrast, Muslim mullƗs contemporary to him were ignorant, selfish and harmful. He also considered old madrasas to have become useless, and he pointed to military and high schools in the Ottoman Empire as examples of reform.56 At this point, Abay’s religious thought finds common ground with modernism and resonates with calls for enlightenment, which he made in many poems and essays. It seems that most subsequent generations of intellectuals adopted his ideas of enlightenment and ethics in a secularizing way, separating them from his religious thought. When Älikhan Bökeykhanov (1866–1937; infra), Baytǎrsïnov and Dulatov wrote about Abay’s life and work, they praised him as a great national poet and paid little attention to the religious aspects of his works. Bökeykhanov simply wrote that Abay was renowned for being well acquainted with holy books, that hypocritical mullƗs were afraid of meeting Abay because he would expose their spiritual poverty, and that Abay did not observe fasting and the five daily prayers.57 Abay’s nephew Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíev (1858–1931) inherited his religious thought and further developed its spiritual and rationalist aspects. In the book ƮmƗn ҵibƗdƗt (“Faith and worship”), published in 1911, Shäkärím emphasized that although God does not punish people who do not pray, one should pray for one’s soul.58 He also thought it necessary to learn of the oneness of God through reason, by deliberating on who created humans and nature, because people who believed in Allah simply because they followed

55 56 57

58

Abay, “Otïz segízínshí söz,” 200, 205. Ibid., 203–204. Alikhan Bukeikhan, “Abai (Ibragim) Kunanbaev: Nekrolog” [1905], in his Izbrannoe (Almaty, 1995), 307–310; A. B. [Akhmet Baytǎrsïnov], “Qazaqdïng bas aqïnï,” Qazaq, 39, 40, 43 (23 November, 30 November, and 22 December 1913); M. D. [Mir-Ya‫ޏ‬qub Dulatov], “Abay (Ofat 23 yun 1914nshí jïl),” Qazaq, 67 (23 June 1914). Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Mǎsïlmandïq shartï (Almaty, 1993), 38. About this book, see also B. U. Aibekov, “Problema very v uchenii Shakarima Kudaiberdiuly,” Izvestiia Akademii nauk Respubliki Kazakhstan, Seriia obshchestvennykh nauk 2 (1992): 13–8.

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the ways of their ancestors and others were prone to the temptations of Satan.59 Shäkärím stressed that it was wrong to believe religions other than Islam, and he admonished people against committing heretical behaviors such as believing in shamans’ foretelling.60 At the same time, however, he wrote that one should accept true things even if they were told by kƗfirs,61 and here his position is similar to Abay’s. He admired Tolstoy (“I am Tolstoy’s disciple,” “Tolstoy is not a kƗfir,” he wrote62) and read many books written by Russians and Westerners. In the treatise Üsh anïq (Three truths), he extensively referred to Western thinkers such as Pythagoras, Mesmer, Comte, Darwin, and Spencer, and he even wrote a lot about Spiritism, with respect to the immortality of the soul.63 In his later years, Shäkärím’s religious view became even more rationalist, despite often being expressed in mystical forms. He wrote that he had accepted from ‫ۊ‬adƯth, words of scholars, mullƗs’ methods, and saints’ secrets only what was reasonable to accept.64 Here he deviated from orthodox Islam by putting the Prophet’s ‫ۊ‬adƯth in the same category as other people’s words. Moreover, he thought that every religion had degenerated in modern times, and he did not discriminate between Islam and other religions in this regard.65 The hairs of the beloved are so many That it’s impossible to count them. Each person seizes one hair, Saying that this is the ray of the truth. ... There is no religion that has been Established in the whole world. There are risks in every one of them. That is why religions multiply.66

59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66

Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Mǎsïlmandïq shartï, 8–9. Ibid., 12, 21–23. Ibid., 40. Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Imanïm (Almaty, 2000), 124. Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Üsh anïq / Tri istiny (Almaty, 1991). This work seems to have been completed in the late 1920s. Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Imanïm, 199. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 128–129.

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Here he used mystic metaphors of comparing God to one’s beloved, and religions to hairs. For him, all religions were roads to the truth, albeit incomplete roads, and the differences between them were less important than the search for the divine truth itself—an idea similar to those of the famous Sufi thinkers al-ণallƗj (858?–922) and Ibn ‫ޏ‬ArabƯ (1165–1240).67 He also wrote a number of poems about drinking alcohol (spirits, wine, and kumiss) as a metaphor for feeling divine truth, following the tradition of “mystic intoxication” advocated by Sufi poets, especially ণƗfi਌ (1326?–1390?).68 Comparing Shäkärím’s thought with that of Abay, we find many similarities. For example, Shäkärím integrated Abay’s complicated approach to heart, reason, and practice by espousing the simple words of “honest labor,” “pure heart,” and “clean reason.”69 At the same time, Shäkärím was a bolder freethinker who absorbed Sufi thought more deeply. He lived like a Sufi hermit, especially after Soviet power was established, although he had been engaged in administration and politics earlier in life. After seeing how European powers used science and technology to produce weapons for mass killing during World War I, he could no longer be optimistic about scientific progress. He also tacitly criticized the Soviet regime, saying that distributing the rich’s property to the poor simply made poor people lazy.70 After much despair and deep contemplation, he reached the conclusion that conscience (he used both the Arabic and the Russian words for this: wijdƗn and sovest’), a concept that integrates honesty, justice, and grace, should become the basis of human life. In the end, Shäkärím brought this seemingly purely ethical idea back to the Islamic realm: “If a man fully believes that the soul has life after death and that conscience is food for the soul, nothing can blacken his heart. The only way to make all mankind brothers and enable them to live in goodness both in this and the next world seems to be the Muslim way.”71 Shäkärím’s thought was far from typical for Qazaq intellectuals. It cannot be simply compared with ideas of other pre-Revolutionary intellectuals, 67

68

69 70 71

G. D. Rysmaganbetova, “Sufiiskie motivy v kazakhskoi literature: Shakarim Kudaiberdiev (1858–1931),” Vostok 1 (1999): 54–55. E.g., Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Imanïm, 27, 38, 110, 122, 227–228, 247, 250, 255. He also translated several poems of ণƗfi਌. Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíev, Shïgharmalarï (Almaty, 1988), 400– 408. E.g., ibid, 186. Ibid., 178–181, 541. Ibid., 270, 541–542; Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Üsh anïq, 30–34.

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because, although basically formed before 1917, it reached completion in the Soviet period. However, the fact that Shäkärím was able to develop a unique thought, despite never having been educated in a madrasa, indicates how Qazaq poets and intellectuals living far from Islamic cities could develop religious ideas freely and deeply. 5. WHY DID SECULARISM PREVAIL? THE 1914 POLEMIC AND THE ALASH ORDA72 The previous sections revealed that works by Qazaq poets and intellectuals had significant Islamic elements. It is known, however, that the Alash Orda autonomous government (1917–1920), established when political activity by Qazaq intellectuals culminated, did not have a noticeable religious orientation. This section explains why Islam and Qazaq nationalism did not converge in the years of the Russian Revolution. At the early stages of the Qazaq national movement, religion was one of the most important concerns. The petition signed by 12,767 people in Qarqaralï in June 1905 pointed to the great difficulty in receiving permission from the regional administration to build mosques and schools and to make pilgrimages to Mecca. It also requested that a spiritual directorate for the Qazaqs be organized.73 The first Qazaq journal, Ay-qap (1911–1915), published many articles about Islam and the Muslim world. Its editor, Mǎkhamedjan Seralin, wrote that religion was the most urgent question for the Qazaqs. He and his comrades advocated that the Qazaqs return to the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, that sharƯҵa be introduced, and that Qazaqs be sedentarized, considering that settled life would facilitate the building of mosques, maktabs (Islamic elementary schools) and madrasas.74 In 1913, conflicts began between Ay-qap and Qazaq (1913–1918), a less Islamic-oriented newspaper published under the initiative of Baytǎrsïnov, Dulatov, and Bökeykhanov. A decisive moment came at the Fourth AllRussian Muslim Congress in June 1914. Bökeykhanov opposed a resolution on the necessity of the Qazaq Steppe being returned to the jurisdiction of the 72

73 74

For details, see Uyama Tomohiko, “Byla li islamskaia al'ternativa? Mesto islama v natsional'nom dvizhenii kazakhov nachala XX veka,” Shygys 2 (2008): 143–148. Alash qozghalïsï / Dvizhenie Alash: Sbornik dokumentov, vol. 1 (Almaty, 2004), 33–39. E.g., Ay-qap, 2 (1911): 1–2; 4–5 (1913): 92–94.

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Spiritual Assembly, and he declared that the introduction of sharƯҵa would be harmful to the “half-Muslim” Qazaqs. Baqïtjan Qarataev, Jihansha Seydalin, Seralï Lapin, and others, who were contributors to Ay-qap, furiously criticized him and defended sharƯҵa.75 To be precise, Bökeykhanov was not an anti-Islamist; he actively cooperated with the Muslim faction at the State Duma and criticized the Holy Synod for violating the religious rights of Qazaqs.76 But apparently what he cherished was religious freedom as a civil right, and his secularist idea of separating Islam and administration was evident. Ay-qap, long suffering from financial weakness and persecution by the authorities, soon ceased publication. Islamic-oriented intellectuals became temporarily inactive, although some of them later reemerged as opponents of the Alash Orda and supporters of the Soviets (most notably, Qarataev), or as leaders of the ҵulamƗҴ movement in Turkestan (Lapin). In contrast, Bökeykhanov and his comrades became more and more active and influential. That is, the dispute between the two groups had no clear and logical conclusion; rather, the less Islamically oriented group consolidated its position. Remarkably, by the time of this dispute Dulatov had stopped writing about Islam as ardently as before, presumably because of the influence of Bökeykhanov. In 1917, Qazaqs convened congresses to discuss political plans for the future, including the issue of spiritual administration.77 The draft program of the Alash party, published on 21 November 1917, also provided for a separate muftiate to be established.78 However, the most urgent problems of this period were not religious issues, but questions of a future political and administrative system, along with land problems. The Second All-Qazaq Congress in December planned to discuss the question of muftiate, but after declaring the establishment of the Alash Orda with Bökeykhanov as its head and discussing other hotly contested issues, it decided to remove that question from the agenda. The congress required the oblast’ qƗĪƯs to present a plan for reforming spiritual administration to the future constituent assembly

75 76

77

78

Ay-qap, 13 (1914): 209–210; 14 (1914): 226–229; 24 (1914): 335–337. Alikhan Bukei-Khanov, “Otkrytoe pis'mo chlenam Gos. Dumy,” Musul'manskaia gazeta 4 (1 February 1914). Alash qozghalïsï, vol. 1, 234–5, 263–4, 303, 372, 394, 407–8; Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan), f. 811, op. 20, d. 72, ll. 2ob.–3; Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan, f. R-9, op. 1, d. 51, ll. 1ob.–2. Alash qozghalïsï, vol. 1, 439.

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of the Alash autonomy,79 but that assembly was never convened. The activities of the Alash Orda after the congress rarely concerned religion. However, this does not mean that the Alash Orda and Islamic intellectuals were hostile to each other. Famous Islamic scholars such as Shäkärím, Kökbay Janataev (Abay’s disciple and mullƗ), and Ghǎmar Qarashev (elected as a qƗĪƯ of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly in May 1917) supported the Alash Orda. 80 There were a number of reasons why the Alash Orda did not pursue an Islamic-oriented policy while maintaining good relations with Islamic intellectuals. First, in many parts of the former Russian Empire, political movements were led by secular leaders under the banners of national autonomy (or independence). The Qazaqs also needed leaders educated in Russian who were acquainted with ways of political mobilization and who could negotiate with other political forces in Russia. Second, as we have already seen, many Islamic intellectuals shared the cause of modernization and the development of national culture, and had little reason to oppose the Alash Orda’s policy. Third, there were few Islamic or secular Qazaq intellectuals, and many of them knew each other well. In particular, Shäkärím, and Kökbay were on friendly terms with Bökeykhanov, who played a crucial role in publishing Abay’s works posthumously. 6. CONCLUSION As we have seen, in Qazaq society during the Tsarist period Islam, nationalism, secularism, and ethics coexisted, collided, and intermixed, acquiring different roles and meanings according to circumstance. In the midnineteenth century, Islam was a powerful tool for criticizing Russian domination; subsequently, however, sharƯҵa -oriented thought largely lost its antiRussian connotation and followed the Volga-Ural model, where the Russian state and Muslim society closely interacted through the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly. There also emerged Russian-educated intellectuals who were more or less familiar with Islam but cooperated with the Russian authorities in developing Qazaq culture, and they finally formed the core of national movement. 79 80

Alash qozghalïsï, vol. 1, 474, 482. Erlan Sïdïqov, Shäkärím jäne Alashorda (Almaty, 2008), 5–20; Qayïm Mǎkhamedkhanov, Abay mǎragerlerí (Almaty, 1995), 103–5; Salavat M. Iskhakov, Rossiiskie musul'mane i revoliutsiia (vesna 1917 g. – leto 1918 g.) (Moscow, 2004), 192–193.

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Many concerns and ideas were shared by the Islamic literati and activists of national movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, they wanted to spread knowledge among the people in a language understandable to them, so they promoted the Qazaq (or Turkic) language(s) and literature. Second, they promoted effective education and proper behavior, criticizing ignorant and rude mullƗs, ƯshƗns, bƯs, and local administrators. Third, they preferred social and political activism to passive attitudes like those of Shortanbay, and they wanted to “awaken” people. The aspirations and behaviors of various kinds of intellectuals can be commonly understood as directed at modernization, mass education, and transition to knowledge society. The contemplative religious thinking of Abay and Shäkärím seems to be an isolated phenomenon at a first glance, but their deep interest in knowledge and ethics also resonated with ideas of other intellectuals. In general, ideas of Qazaq intellectuals had deeper Islamic dimensions than have been commonly thought. The predominance of secular intellectuals in the political scene was both accidental and natural. Bökeykhanov’s rather cynical attitude toward Islam was not entirely common even among his comrades, and his popularity seems to have stemmed not from his secularism but from his leadership, knowledge, and devotion to national causes. But the formation of a discursive space in the Qazaq language, to which Islamic literati also contributed, and the need to educate and mobilize people using the same language, inevitably lent more power to national rather than Islamic leaders. Moreover, political turmoil during the revolutions and civil war left political activists little time to engage in religious issues.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Ay-qap, 1911–1914 DnjlƗ৬njf, MƯr-Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb, NjyƗn, qazƗq! (Ufa, 1910) Musul’manskaia gazeta, 1914 Qazaq, 1913–1915 Qazaq aqïnï Ibrahim Qǎnanbay ǎghlïnïng ölengí (St. Petersburg, 1909; repr., Almaty, 2009) Qi‫܈܈‬a-yi Chnjr‫ܒ‬ƗnbƗy, Chnjr‫ܒ‬ƗnbƗyning bƗlƗ zƗrƯ (Kazan, 1890) Zayn al-‫ޏ‬ƖbidƯn al-JavƗrƯ, Na‫܈‬Ư‫ۊ‬at-i qazƗqƯya (Ufa, 1909)

Secondary Literature Abay, Shïgharmalarïnïng ekí tomdïq tolïq jinaghï (Almaty, 1995) Aibekov, B.U., “Problema very v uchenii Shakarima Kudaiberdiuly,” Izvestiia Akademii nauk Respubliki Kazakhstan, Seriia obshchestvennykh nauk 2 (1992) Akhual qiyamet (Almaty, 2005) Alakhan [Tillebaev], Sadyk, Besh moldo: Moldo Niyaz, Nurmoldo, Moldo Kïlïch, Aldash Moldo, Moldo Bagïsh (Bishkek, 2004) Alash qozghalïsï / Dvizhenie Alash: Sbornik dokumentov, vol. 1 (Almaty, 2004) Altynsarin, Ibragim, Sobranie sochinenii v trekh tomakh (Alma-Ata, 1975) Amanzholova, Dina, Kazakhskii avtonomizm i Rossiia: Istoriia dvizheniia Alash (Moscow, 1994) Äwezov, Mǎkhtar, Abaydï bílmek parïz oylï jasqa (Almaty, 1997) –––––, Izbrannoe (Almaty, 1997) –––––, Abaytanu därísterí (Almaty, 1994) Bennigsen, Alexandre and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Chantal, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris, 1964) Bes ghasïr jïrlaydï: XV ghasïrdan XX ghasïrdïng bas kezíne deyíngí qazaq aqïn-jïravlarïnïng shïgharmalarï, vol. 2 (Almaty, 1989) Bukeikhan, Alikhan, Izbrannoe (Almaty, 1995) Esimov, Garifolla, Khakim Abai (Almaty, 1995) Frank, Allen J., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001) Iskhakov, Salavat M., Rossiiskie musul’mane i revoliutsiia (vesna 1917 g. – leto 1918 g.) (Moscow, 2004) Kendirbay, Gulnar, “The National Liberation Movement of the Qazaq Intelligentsia at the Beginning of the 20th Century,” Central Asian Survey 16/4 (1997): 487–515 Kreindler, Isabelle, “Ibrahim Altynsarin, Nikolai Il’minskii and the Kazakh National Awakening,” Central Asian Survey 2/3 (1983): 99–116 Mǎkhamedkhanov, Qayïm, Abay mǎragerlerí (Almaty, 1995) Nǎrghaliev, R. N. et al. (eds.), Abay: Entsiklopediya, eds. (Almaty, 1995)

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Orynbekov, Mukhanmadiiar, Filosofskie vozzreniia Abaia (Almaty, 1995) Privratsky, Bruce G., Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001) Rysmaganbetova, G.D., “Sufiiskie motivy v kazakhskoi literature: Shakarim Kudaiberdiev (1858–1931),” Vostok 1 (1999): 47–58 Qoygeldiev, Mämbet, Alash qozghalïsï (Almaty, 1995) Qǎdayberdíev, Shäkärím, Shïgharmalarï (Almaty, 1988) Qǎdayberdíǎlï, Shäkärím, Üsh anïq / Tri istiny (Almaty, 1991) –––––, Mǎsïlmandïq shartï (Almaty, 1993) –––––, Imanïm (Almaty, 2000) Sabol, Steven, Russian Colonization and the Genesis of Kazak National Consciousness (Basingstoke, 2003) Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill, 1975) Sïdïqov, Erlan, Shäkärím jäne Alashorda (Almaty, 2008) Shortanbay, Tolghavlar, aytïstar, dastan (Almaty, 1993) Subkhanberdina, Ü. and Seyfullina, D.S., Qazaq kítabïnïng shejíresí, 1807–1917: Bibliografiyalïq körsetkísh (Almaty, 1996) Süyínshäliev, Khanghali (ed.), XIX ghasïr ädebietí: Khrestomatiya (Almaty, 1992) Tǎlghalar: Ïbïray Altïnsarin, Shäkärím Qǎdayberdíǎlï (Almaty, 2007) Uyama, Tomohiko, “The Geography of Civilizations: A Spatial Analysis of the Kazakh Intelligentsia’s Activities, from the Mid-Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century,” in: Regions: A Prism to View the Slavic-Eurasian World, ed. Matsuzato Kimitaka (Sapporo, 2000), 70–99 –––––, “Two Attempts at Building a Qazaq State: The Revolt of 1916 and the Alash Movement,” in: Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries), eds., Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (London, 2001), 77–98 –––––, “A Strategic Alliance between Kazakh Intellectuals and Russian Administrators: Imagined Communities in Dala Walayatïnïng Gazetí (1888–1902),” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003) –––––, “Mirovozzrenie kazakhskikh intelligentov v nachale XX v.: O knige Mir-Iakuba Dulatova «Prosnis’, kazakh!»” [Abstract of MA thesis written in 1992], in: Mírjaqïp Dulatǎlï, Bes tomdïq shïgharmalar jinaghï, vol. 5 (Almaty, 2004), 380–387 –––––, “Byla li islamskaia al’ternativa? Mesto islama v natsional’nom dvizhenii kazakhov nachala XX veka,” Shygys 2 (2008): 143–148 Valikhanov, Chokan Ch., Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, (Alma-Ata, 1985) Vil’danov, Akhat Kh. and Kunafin, Giniiatulla S., Bashkirskie prosvetiteli-demokraty XIX veka (Moscow, 1981) Voropaeva, Valentina A. (ed.), Khrestomatiia po istorii Kyrgyzstana, 2nd edn. (Bishkek, 2004) Wälikhan Qalijan, Jädidshíl jïrlar (Almaty, 1998) Wälikhan Qalijanǎlï, Qazaq ädebietíndegí díni-aghartushïlïq aghïm (Almaty, 1998) Zar zaman (Almaty, 1993)

The Qazaq Steppe and Islamic Administrative Exceptionalism: A Comparison with Buddhism Among Buriats PAUL W. WERTH

*

Las Vegas

Among the peculiarities of the Qazaq steppe in imperial Russia was the removal of its Islamic affairs from the general regulatory apparatus of the imperial state in 1868. This adjustment, formalized in the permanent Steppe Statute of 1891, canceled the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly over the steppe and reduced (formal) state regulation of Islam in the region to a minimum. In this paper, I seek to situate the seemingly anomalous character of imperial administration of Islam in the steppe in a broader comparative framework encompassing the Russian Empire as a whole. I seek first of all to establish that many other Muslim populations lacked a regulatory apparatus akin to that of the Orenburg Assembly and thus to emphasize the regionally fractured character of Muslim administration in Russia. Secondly, I compare the removal of the steppe from the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Assembly to a similar exemption of the Buddhist population west of Lake Baikal from the spiritual authority of the Bandido Khambo Lama in 1889. This comparison suggests a more general imperial strategy by the late nineteenth century of separating certain population groups that were considered amenable to Russian “civilization” and perhaps conversion to Orthodoxy (e.g. Qazaqs and cis-Baikal Buriats) away from religions deemed “hostile” to Russian imperial pretensions (e.g., Islam and Buddhism). This comparative discussion demonstrates the ways in which Qazaq religious experience was both unique in the Russian Empire and reflective of broader patterns. *

I express my sincere thanks to an anonymous external reviewer who provided an invaluable critique of an earlier version of this essay. For support for the research leading to this article, I thank the International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center.

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My contribution rests on the premise that there is much to be gained from examining different regions of the Russian Empire in comparative perspective. Indeed, here I would like to make a larger claim for the significance of comparative analysis within the Russian Empire, which permits us to discern broader patterns in religious experience and modes of imperial rule based on religious institutions. 1 To be sure, many developments depended on local and regional circumstances and even on the outlooks of particular officials, religious elites, and local communities. The dictates of St. Petersburg were frequently altered or transformed in the process of implementation – or ignored altogether. Local initiative – emanating from administrators and subjects alike – was often crucial. From this perspective research on the local, the regional, and the particular will and should always occupy a fundamental place in the production of historical knowledge. Yet I propose that broader logics – based on shared imperial outlooks and bureaucratic cultures, structural similarities between different regions of the empire, and larger imperatives flowing from the empire’s necessary engagement with an emerging modernity – were also frequently at work. It is primarily these broader logics that I emphasize here – without, I hope, doing too much violence to the local and the particular. The years from roughly 1720 to 1860 saw the creation of what I call imperial Russia’s multiconfessional establishment of religion. By “establishment” I mean the ordering, regulating and upholding of the ordinances of a religion recognized by state power, as well as the conferring on a particular religious body the status of a state church.2 It is true, to cite the Law Digest of 1832, that Orthodoxy was the “ruling and predominant faith” of the Russian Empire.3 Yet it should be noted that in particular regions of the empire – Finland, the Baltic region, and the Kingdom of Poland – other religions enjoyed explicit recognition as “ruling” faiths or other marks of preference 1

2 3

Such comparative analysis informs my own larger research agenda, for example with regard to institutions and legal statutes produced by the imperial state for Russia’s diverse religions: “The Institutionalization of Confessional Difference: ‘Foreign Confessions’ in Imperial Russia, 1810–1857,” in: Defining Self: Essays on Emergent Identities in Russia, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Michael Branch (Helsinki, 2009), 152–172. Among the first to attempt such an analysis on such religious questions was Robert Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in NineteenthCentury Russia,” American Historical Review 108/1 (Feb., 2003): 50–83. These are definitions provided by the Oxford English Dictionary. Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1832), article 40.

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(though of course never at the expense of Orthodoxy itself). Furthermore, essentially all the recognized non-Orthodox religions of Russia were eventually construed by the government as being state institutions, located under the jurisdiction of the interior ministry (by 1832) and charged with performing significant administrative tasks, such as the maintenance of civil acts.4 Aside from those in certain distant and recently conquered regions, by the mid-nineteenth century the vast majority of Russian subjects were under the authority of religious bodies which had been created or legitimized by state power and were regulated by imperial statute. These laws and institutions defined the basic parameters of religious life in imperial Russia, and in this regard we may speak of the domestication of the so-called “foreign confessions.” This is not to deny that there was much unregulated religious activity, involving Sufis, pilgrimages, and so on. Some of this activity is in fact described by other contributions to this volume.5 Nonetheless, this regulated sphere of religious activity needs to be included in our consideration, if only because it defined the parameters of the unregulated realm as well. This process of establishment began with Orthodoxy itself and the creation of the Holy Synod in place of the Patriarch in 1721. Subsequent decades saw the creation of consistories, as well as other measures designed to improve and standardize diocesan administration. This new ecclesiastical bureaucracy permitted stricter and more centralized Church control over local religious life, even though a coherent legal basis for its efficient functioning on the diocesan level appeared only with a statute on consistories in 1841.6 Historians differ about the degree of independence that the Orthodox Church was able to maintain in this process of bureaucratization. It seems fair to conclude that while the Church acquired an absolutized authority over a distinct “spiritual domain” and retained distinct institutional interests, the 4

5

6

Buddhists in eastern Siberia were transferred from the jurisdiction of the foreign ministry to the interior ministry only in 1841, while Buddhist Kalmyks were under the ministry of state domains until 1902. Consider also two recent documentary collections dealing with such cases: Marsil’ Nurullovich Farkhshatov, “Delo” sheikha Zainully Rasuleva (Ufa, 2009); Diliara Usmanova, Musul’manskoe “sektanstvo” v Rossiiskoi Imperii: “Vaisovskii Bozhii polk staroverovmusul’man,” 1862–1916 gg. (Kazan, 2009). James Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (New York, 1971); Gregory L. Freeze, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA., 1977), 46–77; A. S. Lavrov, Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii, 1700–1740 gg. (Moscow, 2000); T. V. Barsov O sobranii dukhovnykh zakonov (St. Petersburg, 1898), 52–65.

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Synod nonetheless evolved into something akin to a government ministry for the Orthodox religion by the nineteenth century.7 While this process occurred more slowly with respect to Russia’s nonOrthodox religions, by the mid to late eighteenth century several factors combined to place a premium on institution-building for the non-Orthodox religions. The acquisition of new territories from Poland rendered imperative the assertion of some state control over the affairs of Roman and Greek Catholics, especially in light of papal claims to spiritual authority over those populations. Further eastward, uprisings in 1755 and 1773–75, partly in response to violent missionary campaigns of the 1740s, convinced imperial officials that an accommodation with Islam was essential. This was all the more desirable after the treaty of Küçük Kanarc of 1774, which recognized some spiritual authority for the Sultan beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire, most directly over Muslims in Crimea. 8 Finally, guided by Polizeistaat models of statecraft and Enlightenment conceptions of religious toleration, Catherine’s government came to recognize the utility of nonOrthodox religions as sources of order and stability.9 In this context it was logical for the state to seek to replicate, with appropriate modifications, the institutional and legal arrangement that had been set in place for Orthodoxy earlier in the century. These modifications were significant, however, and the degree of replication was conditioned by a series of theological, spatial, and (geo)political circumstances that limit our ability to generalize. It is possible nonetheless to assert that in the case of Christian confessions the state sought generally to unite religious affairs under a single institution or religious leader. True, in some cases this authority did not extend (at least immediately) to the Kingdom of Poland or the Grand Duchy of Finland, each of which had its own 7

8

9

Gregory L. Freeze, “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750– 1850,” in: Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, eds. Jane Burbank and David Ransel (Bloomington, IN, 1998), 210–249; Elena Vishlenkova, Zabotias' o dushakh poddannykh: religioznia politika v Rossii pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Saratov, 2002), 169–181; A. Iu. Polunov, “Ober-Prokuror sviateishego sinoda: Osnovnye etapy stanovleniia i razvitiia (XVIII - seredina XIX v.)” in: Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k stoletiiu istorika (Moscow, 2008), 231–260. D. Iu. Arapov, Sistema gosudarstvennogo regulirovania Islama v Rossiiskoi Imperii: Posledniaia tret' XVIII – nachalo XX vv. (Moscow, 2004), 45; Robert Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 39–45. For a fuller elaboration, see Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State.”

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laws and institutions. But a general tendency towards the concentration of spiritual power is clear. Thus, for example, the state recognized the authority of the Armenian Catholicos over all subjects of the Apostolic (Gregorian) confession within the Russian Empire – and also, for theological and geopolitical reasons, even over that church’s adherents abroad. 10 In the case of Roman Catholics, while admittedly trying to dilute the authority of the Pope, tsarist authorities nonetheless formally subordinated bishops within Russia to a single Archbishop and then Metropolitan,11 and in 1785 extended the authority of that figure even over Catholics of the eastern rite.12 The affairs of Lutherans were meanwhile concentrated in a General Consistory in St. Petersburg. This tendency towards concentration was weaker for non-Christian religions. In the case of Jews, despite the creation of a Rabbinical Commission in 1848, it is difficult to speak of any coherent and durable tendency towards spiritual centralization – though there was some limited discussion of this idea.13 For Buddhists a basic distinction emerged between Buriats and Kalmyks; each received its own statute and spiritual head, while Kalmyks were subdivided even further between Astrakhan’ province and the Don Region. For Muslims, too, territorial distinctions were crucial. The Orenburg Assembly was initially established for all of the empire’s Muslims, but from the very beginning an exception was made for Crimea, where in due course a

10

11

12

13

In this case Russian statesmen drew both on traditional claims to ecumenical authority on the part of the Catholicos and on its aspirations to use that figure to influence Armenian communities in Persia and the Ottoman Empire. For details, see my article “Glava tserkvi, poddannyi imperatora: Armianskii Katolikos na perekrestke vnutrenei i vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1828–1914 gg.,” Ab Imperio 3 (2006): 99–138 This arrangement violated Catholic canonical standards positing the independent power of bishops within their own dioceses and their subordination directly to Rome without intermediary instances. There was, accordingly, some resistance to this Archbishop/Metropolitan. Barbara Skinner, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb, IL, 2009), esp. 160– 161, 165–167. In the longer term, of course, the fate of Greek Catholics (Uniates) was to be “reunion” with Orthodoxy. Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, second series, vol. 23, no. 22276 (24.06.1848), 346–7; Iu. Gessen, “Ravvinat v Rossii,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 13 (1912), 227. The commission convened only six times over seventy years and could therefore scarcely direct Jewish affairs in a highly organized fashion.

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separate muftƯ and spiritual body appeared.14 When the muftƯ of Orenburg proposed the creation of a central college for Muslim affairs in St. Petersburg in 1804 – presumably on the model of the Roman Catholic College – this idea was rejected as entailing an excessive strengthening of spiritual authority over Muslims.15 Subsequently acquired territories were left beyond the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Assembly. The state furthermore created separate institutional and statutory arrangements for Shias and Sunnis in the South Caucasus,16 while the North Caucasus featured a particular regime that aspired to restrict the role of Islamic clerics by supporting secular elites and traditional, non-Islamic law.17 The administration of Muslims was accordingly fractured throughout different parts of the empire, and across the nineteenth century the state expressed growing opposition to any further centralization in this regard. Indeed, government plans for reform of the Muslim administration almost always promoted further fragmentation, even as Muslims themselves frequently proposed greater unity and integration.18 Both Qazaqs and Buriats – my focus in this article – were brought into this general system of administration and indeed were arguably at the fore14

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18

For the arrangements in Crimea, see Arapov, Sistema, 60–66; and Ivan Aleksandrov, “K istorii uchrezhdeniia Tavricheskago Magometanskago Dukhovnago Pravleniia.” Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii 54 (1918), 316–355 Crews, For Prophet, 56–57; D. D. Azamatov, Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie v kontse XVIII - XIX vv. (Ufa, 1999), 31–32. On tsarist administrators’ recognition of the importance of this distinction, see Kolonial'naia politika rossiiskogo tsarizma v Azerbaidzhane v 20–60-x gg. XIX vv. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1937), 283, 396. In actual practice, cooperation with loyal Muslim leaders and clerics proved more common. On these arrangements and practices, see V. O. Bobrovnikov, Musul’mane severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow, 2002); and Timothy K. Blauvelt, “Military-Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–1883,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11/2 (2010): 221–255. Consider, for example, the examination of this issue by a special commission in St. Petersburg after the Revolution of 1905: Russian State Historical Archive (henceforth, RGIA), f. 1276, op. 2, d. 593, ll. 107–115ob. Greater unity was also characteristic of the requests of some Kalmyks concerning the administration of Buddhism. See S. G. Rybakov, “K voprosu ob ustroistve dukhovnogo byta buddistov v Rossii,” a memorandum produced after the February Revolution of 1917 and published in: Buddisty v Rossiiskoi Imperii v 1917 godu: Zakonodatel’stvo, opisaniia, eds. D. Iu. Arapov and E. V. Dorzhieva (Elista, 2004), 31. In his book Sistema, Dmitrii Arapov discusses a whole series of (largely unrealized) projects in the second half of the nineteenth century that would have further fragmented the administration of Muslims in the Empire.

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front of its process of creation. As noted, the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Assembly was initially conceived in the broadest possible terms (though of course the largely Muslim regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia had not yet been incorporated into the empire). As a result, the authority of the Assembly and its muftƯ extended well into the Qazaq steppe, and indeed – as numerous historians have noted – the imperial government actually facilitated this extension.19 In fact, given that the state’s first efforts towards institutionalizing Islam occurred in Orenburg rather than in Muslim centers of the Russian interior (for example, Kazan’), and that in staffing the Orenburg Assembly the imperial government drew substantially on figures who had established reputations in steppe diplomacy, one may conclude that the Qazaq steppe was by no means peripheral to the concerns of state actors in establishing the Assembly.20 For several reasons, the situation for Buddhists was somewhat different, although certain similarities are nonetheless discernable.21 The circumstances here were unusual in that Buddhism was still taking root in the transBaikal region as Russia gradually established its rule there. Even in neighboring Mongolia the khƗn had converted to the Mahayana (great vehicle) form of Buddhism of the Gelugpa school – also referred to as “yellow hat” – only in 1578, while the first monastery in Mongolia appeared eight years later. Though there is evidence of Buddhism arriving in the Baikal region as early as the 1660s, the Soviet publication Lamaizm v Buriatii suggests that the first datsan (temple) appeared only in 1707,22 just as Russia was solidify19

20

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Allen J. Frank, “Tatarskie mully sredi kazakhov i kirgizov v XVIII – XIX vekakh,” in Kul’tura, iskusstvo tatarskogo naroda: Istoki, traditsii, vzaimosviazi (Kazan, 1993), 124– 131; Gul’mira Sultangalieva, “‘Tatarskaia’ diaspora v konfessional’nykh sviaziakh kazakhskoi stepi, XVIII – XIX vv.,” Vestnik Evrazii 4 (2000): 20–36. My line of argumentation here follows Allen Frank, “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Towards an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 269–270. For reasons having to do with the sources at my disposal, I focus here primarily on Buddhism among Buriats, while recognizing that the Kalmyk case certainly warrants more analysis. For broad introductions to the topic, see G. Sh. Dordzhieva, Buddizm i khristianstvo v Kalmykii (Elista, 1995); and K. V. Orlova, Istoriia khristianizatsii kalmykov (Moscow, 2006). On conversion see also Svat Soucek in A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, 2000), 167– 169. On Buddhism in Siberia, see H. S. Hundley, “Defending the Periphery: Tsarist Management of Buriat Buddhism,” Russian Review 69/2 (2010): 236–238.

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ing its control there. After concluding an initial treaty at Nerchinsk in 1689, Russia and China clarified their border and the subject status of the Mongolian tribes in the region in 1727. St. Petersburg now sought to restrict religiously motivated border crossings, and accordingly prohibited the movement of Buddhist lamas across the newly defined frontier.23 Indeed, the principal goal of the state’s religious policy in this region – at least until the midnineteenth century or even later – seems to have involved segregating its new Buddhist subjects from their counterparts across the border in Mongolia, and thus strengthening its claims to dominion in the recently acquired territory. This aspiration in turn served as the principal catalyst in the state’s formal recognition and institutionalization of Buddhism in Russia. Lamas in Russia had initially been dependent on the authority of the Hutagt in Mongolia for initiation and spiritual guidance,24 but with the solidification of the border Russian authorities were determined to break this connection. In practice this meant encouraging the institutionalization of Buddhism in the trans-Baikal region and conferring prestigious titles on particular individuals who were eager to raise their stature. The goal, in a word, was autocephaly for Buddhism in Russia. Thus already in 1741 – before comparable steps with regard to most other religions and simultaneously with the initiation of a massive missionary campaign in the Volga region that included extensive destruction of mosques25 – Russian authorities in the region created a registry (shtat) for the “lamaist clergy,” and the Tsongol’skii datsan, founded a decade or so 23

24

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V. Vashkevich, Lamaity v vostochnoi Sibiri (St. Petersburg, 1885), 35 (reproduced in T. V. Ermakova, ed., Buddiiskii mir glazami rossiiskikh issledovatelei XIX – pervoi treti XX veka [St. Petersburg, 1998], 29–57); Institut Bandita-khambo-lamy i buriat i ego otnoshenii k lamaizmu i missii (Kazan, 1911), 3. On mapping of this region, see Marina Tolmacheva, “The Early Russian Exploration and Mapping of the Chinese Frontier,” Cahiers du monde russe 41/1 (2000): 41–56. Hutagt (Russian: Khutukta) = “blessed one,” a high-ranking Mongolian incarnated “saint” or huvilgaan (incarnation, or “Living Buddha,” often the head of a monastery or temple). The Hutagt in Urga (Mongolia) gained also the title of Javzan damba in 1650 after study in Tibet. The Javzandamba Hutagt was outranked in the Lamaist hierarchy only by the Dalai and Panchen Lamas. On these concepts, see Historical Dictionary of Mongolia, ed. Alan J. K. Sanders (Landham, 1996), 27, 104, 111. Urga (also Hüree) was renamed Ulanbaator) in 1924. The contrast between the fates of Buddhism and Islam at this moment is highlighted by Nikolai Tsyrempilov, “Za sviatuiu dkharmu i belogo tsaria: Rossiiskaia imperiia glazami buriatskikh buddistov XVIII – nachala XX vekov,” Ab Imperio 2 (2009): 107.

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earlier, was recognized as the primary temple among Buriats. 26 In 1764, authorities in Irkutsk recognized a certain Damba Dorzha Dzaiaev (Jaya) as Bandido Khambo Lama,27 which gave him the authority to ordinate people into lower orders. Dzaiaev had been seeking to fend off a challenge for religious leadership from a slightly newer datsan established at Goose Lake in 1741/1758.28 Although he attained recognition as Bandido Khambo Lama, this struggle for preeminence between Goose Lake and the Tsongol’skii datsan continued for the rest of the eighteenth century and was resolved only in 1809, with the victory of Goose Lake.29 Buddhism’s inclusion in imperial Russia’s statutory regime lagged a bit behind the other confessions – not least of all because Buriats were transferred from the jurisdiction of the foreign ministry to the interior ministry only in 184130 – but in 1853 Buddhists in Eastern Siberia were accorded their own legal statute akin to those produced for the other “foreign confessions” in the 1830s.

26

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28 29

30

A. S. Riazhev, “Prosveshchennoe dukhovenstvo pri Ekaterine II,” Voprosy istorii 9 (2004): 45; V. P. Androsov, Slovar’ Indo-Tibetskogo i Rossiiskogo Buddizma (n.p., 2000), 174; D. Shaglakhaev, Proshloe i nastoiashchee Khoimorskogo datsana (Ulan-Ude, 2003), 3; Galina G. Chimitdorzhin, Institut Pandito Khambo Lam, 1764–2004 (Ulan-Ude, 2004), 17. The term “Bandido” (also “Bandita” and “Pandita”) is a Sanskrit term signifying someone with great knowledge. “Khambo” and “Lama” are Tibetan words signifying “religious teacher” and pertained only to religious figures within their monasteries (Vashkevich, Lamaity; and Institut Bandita-Khambo Lamy u buriat [1911], 2. Dzaiaev was able gain recognition of this title from Empress Catherine II during a visit to St. Petersburg in 1767. See Rybakov, “K voprosu,” 16. I have encountered different dates for the founding of this datsan. The Russian historian A. S. Riazhev suggests that the struggle for leadership in Buriat Buddhism was in part one between Mongolian and Tibetan orientations. At stake in this regard was whether Russian Buddhists would look primarily to the Hutagt in Urga or to the Dalai-Lama in Lhasa for spiritual guidance and leadership. (Riazhev, "Prosveshchennoe dukhovenstvo,” 54). The preference that Russian authorities eventually gave to Goose Lake may perhaps have reflected the hope that the Tibetan orientation, given Lhasa’s faraway location, would strengthen the religious independence of local (Russian) Buddhism. By one account, as late as 1748 lamas in the trans-Baikal region were being ordained in Tibet. (Memorandum by tsarist official Velichko [position not indicated] in RGIA, f. 1261, op. 1, 1841, d. 12b, l. 40). The circumstances of transfer are addressed in the report of Dmitrii Bludov, head of His Majesty’s Second Division, to the Emperor in RGIA, f. 1261, op. 1, 1841, d. 12b. (6 March 1841), ll. 70–80ob.

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Certain parallels with the Muslim case will be immediately apparent. True, Islam had appeared among Muslim communities in Russia earlier than did Buddhism among Buriats.31 But – in a clear analogy to the Buddhist case – undoubtedly one of the most important reasons for Catherine II’s government to establish and/or recognize muftƯs in Ufa and Crimea was her desire to ensure spiritual independence of Russian Muslims from Islamic figures in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere.32 Thus the Bandido Khambo Lama and Goose Lake in functional terms played – or at least were designed to play – a role quite similar to that of the muftƯ and the Assembly in Ufa. Another important similarity – one more directly relevant to the issue in this article – involves those adherents to Islam and Buddhism who were perceived by imperial rulers to be at the margins of their respective confessional communities. Many scholars of the Qazaq steppe now reject the proposition that Islam constituted merely a superficial layer over a “pagan” or shamanist core, in favor of the idea that it formed a deep synthesis with indigenous Inner Asian values and conceptions, especially those concerning communal origins.33 From this perspective, though the practice of Islam in the steppe may have differed from that in sedentary regions in the VolgaUral provinces and Central Asia, Islamic conceptions were still integral to the ways in which Qazaqs conceived of their communities and their history.34 For all this, though, many Russian officials and ethnographers – and 31

32

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34

On the development of Islam on the territory of Kazakhstan, see Meruert Aubuseitova, “The Spread of Islam in Kazakhstan from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century,” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society in the History of Central Asia, eds. Gian Luca Bonora, Niccolò Pianciola, and Paolo Sartori (Turin, 2009), 113–24. This point is made by several historians: Crews, “Empire and the Confessional State,” Sultangalieva, “’Tatarskaia’ diaspora,” 21; Charles Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire: State, Religion, and Ethnicity in Tsarist Bashkiria, 1773–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999), 50–54. A compelling case along these lines is offered by Devin DeWeese in Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, 1994). For a similar set of assertions rooted in the study of contemporary Qazaq religion, see Bruce Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001), esp. 7–19. For a consideration of some of these differences – for example involving oral as opposed to written transmission of Islamic knowledge among Qazaqs (of the Inner Horde) – see Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde (Leiden, 2001), esp. 274–305. Frank is also inclined to emphasize a set of features of Islamic practice that were nonetheless

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even some Qazaq informants – believed that Qazaqs were not (yet) Muslims, that Islamization was still rather superficial, and that effective state interventions could prevent Islam from becoming thoroughly rooted in steppe communities. Imperial policy thus posited a distinction between “true” Muslims (for example, Tatars and sedentary groups in Central Asia) and superficially Islamicized shamanists (Qazaqs). Administrators drew a similar distinction between Buriats in the trans-Baikal region and the roughly similar number of those to the west of that lake, the cis-Baikal. The former were understood to be thoroughly Buddhist, with only small remnants of a foregoing shamanism. The latter offered precisely the opposite image: largely shamanistic Buriats among whom Buddhism constituted a rather superficial layer, if it was present at all.35 To be sure, there are important differences between the two cases. If in the Muslim case the (perceived) degree of Islamization largely coincided with ethnic distinctions (crudely: Tatar vs. Qazaq), then in the Buddhist case the distinction ran through a specific ethnic group – Buriats. This allowed imperial officials to gloss the undesirable Islamization of Qazaqs as “Tatarization,” whereas – to my knowledge – there was no comparable term in the Baikal region. Moreover, my impression is that at least in proportional terms far more Buriats than Qazaqs converted to Christianity, at least nominally. Qazaq conversions to Orthodoxy were very rare, whereas a segment of (at least nominally) Christian Buriats had appeared by the mid-nineteenth century, especially to the west of Lake Baikal.36 For all that, the broad structural

35

36

broadly shared by nomadic Qazaqs and the sedentary population of Central Asia. See his “Islamic Transformation,” especially 264. On the roots of this similar conception for Qazaqs and Buriats, see Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan, 17. Tomohiko Uyama finds just 1902 Orthodox Christians who identified Qazaqs as their mother tongue in the 1897 census in his article, “A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia,” in: Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, ed. Tomohiko Uyama (Sapporo, 2007), 35. Niccolò Pianciola points to little more than one thousand conversions in thirty years of missionary activity, in “Orthodoxy in the Kazakh Territories,” in: Kazakhstan, eds. Bonora, Pianciola, and Sartori, 241. Meanwhile Helen Hundley relates that 11.8% of the Buriat population of Irkutsk province (cis-Baikal) were formally Christian by 1868. See Helen Sharon Hundley, “Speransky and the Buriats: Administrative Reform in Nineteenth-Century Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1984), 166–71. On the very modest accomplishments of Orthodoxy missionary work among Qazaqs and the general problems encountered, see also Robert Geraci, “Going Abroad, Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Ka-

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similarities between the two cases are significant. Initially (in the eighteenth century) tsarist authorities had sought to integrate adherents to a given religion – Islam and Buddhism – across a large scope of territory. Subsequently, those authorities turned against this policy, rejected it as misguided or mistaken, and sought to segregate certain groups of the respective populations from other Muslims / Buddhists and their centers of religious authority. The reorientation in both cases can be dated roughly to the middle of the nineteenth century and more immediately to the 1860s. This timing was clearly a product, in part, of developments specific to each religion. On the one hand, the end of the Caucasian War in 1864 and especially the conquest of major portions of Central Asia at about the same time suggested the need for a new relationship between the state and its Muslim subjects. Whereas hitherto the inclusion of Qazaqs in the empire’s confessional order had apparently promoted their pacification and subordination to imperial authority, after the conquest of Central Asia some statesmen began to fear that this inclusion was enabling the formation of a single and potentially dangerous mass of “fanatical” Muslims extending from the Volga River all the way to the Tian-Shan mountains. Russia’s eastward expansion also placed ever more Qazaqs under more direct forms of tsarist authority, which ultimately diminished Islam’s utility as an instrument of imperial rule.37 On the other hand, various Christian missionary efforts among Buriats had by mid-

37

zakh Steppe, 1881–1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, ed. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001): 274–310; and several contributions to the present volume. On the Buddhist case, see Dittmar Schorkowitz, “The Orthodox Church, Lamaism, and Shamanism among the Buriats and Kalmyks, 1825–1925,” in: Of Religion and Empire, 201–225. For an account on the Trans-Baikal region that stresses the minimal success of missionary work, see E. E. Ukhtomskii, O sostoianii missionerskago voprosa v Zabaikal'e, v sviazi s prichinami, obuslavlivaiushimi malouspeshnost’ khristianskoi propovedi sredi buriat (St. Petersburg, 1892). On this reorientation of official attitudes towards Islam (about which there continues to be disagreement), see Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 192–195; Sultangalieva, “‘Tatarskaia diaspora’,” esp. 29–32; Elena Campbell, “The Muslim Question in Late Imperial Russia,” in: Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolii Remnev (Bloomington, IN, 2007), 320–47; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, 2010), esp. 122–152; and Paul W. Werth, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY, 2002), 177–199.

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century laid the foundation for a more determined effort to promote Orthodoxy among them. Thus the first permanent Orthodox missionary station among Buriats was established in 1850, while Irkutsk diocese created two missionary sections in 1863.38 It was immediately apparent that, especially in the cis-Baikal region where shamanism remained relatively strong, Buddhism represented a major competitor to Orthodoxy and thus an obstacle to the success of these missionary projects. Yet even larger forces were also in play. The Great Reforms, and in particular their anti-soslovie dimension, implied new modes of integrating the empire’s vast territories, by way of powerful (if also nebulous) conceptions of “civilization,” grazhdanstvennost’, and “Russification” (obrusenie). The January Insurrection of 1863 in the western provinces and Poland rendered this imperative even more pressing and inclined state authorities and conservative publicists to see “separatism” in virtually any aspiration on the part of non-Russian peoples to maintain their particularity. In this context imperial statesmen now paid more attention to those communities and groups which seemed to represent obstacles to achieving greater unity and integration of the imperial polity. Poles undoubtedly were at the top of this list, but Tatars and, somewhat later, Buriats and Armenians also came to occupy prominent places in it as well. It is noteworthy that each of these ethnic groups was related to a distinct non-Orthodox religious tradition – Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and the Apostolic (Gregorian) confession. Indeed given that the tsarist regime continued to classify people for many administrative purposes by religion, there was a good deal of confusion and overlap in religious and ethnic categories. To the extent that the imperial government had patronized these religions in the previous century or so, many statesmen and observers began to criticize those earlier policies as misguided or mistaken. For state officials, one of the more distressing attributes of these obstacle groups was the prospect that they would assimilate neighboring non-Russian communities that might otherwise be amenable to Russian influence – for example, Belarusians and Ukrainians in the western provinces and various non-Russian groups (inorodtsy) in the Volga region.39 Qazaqs and cis-Baikal Buriats should be added to this list. 38 39

On these developments, see Hundley, “Defending the Periphery,” esp. 247–248. This is an important theme in my book, At the Margins of Orthodoxy, and likewise occupies a central place for Robert P. Geraci in Window on the East: National and Imperial

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The reorientation in policy on the steppe has been addressed by a number of scholars, so I shall recount it only briefly here. As we have seen, doubts began to appear among administrators about the degree to which Qazaqs were actually Muslims, based in part on the development of ethnography and the appearance of Russian-educated Qazaqs – most notably Chokan Valikhanov – which cast the steppe in a new light.40 These doubts drove administrators to reject the pattern of interaction with Muslims established for the sedentary regions to the west (state-sponsored institutionalization of Islam) and to begin favoring customary law over sharia.41 This reorientation was codified in the (temporary) steppe statute of 1868, which formally terminated the Orenburg Assembly’s jurisdiction over the steppe and allowed only one mullƗ – always ethnically Qazaq – for each massive volost’. Those clerics were now subordinated directly to the local civil administration.42 Subsequent developments have received different interpretations from histo-

40

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Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2001). On the western regions of the empire, see most recently Darius Staliunas, Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 (Amsterdam, 2007); and Mikhail Dolbilov, Russkii krai, chuzhaia vera: Etnokonfessional’naia politika imperii v Litve i Belorussii pri Aleksandre II (Moscow, 2010). On this assessment and role of figures like Valikhanov, see Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 210–223; Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan, 17–19; Peter Rottier, “Creating the Kazak Nation: The Intelligentsia’s Quest for Acceptance in the Russian Empire, 1905–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2005), esp. 77–79; and Anatolii V. Remnev, “Rossiiskaia imperiia i islam v kazakhskoi stepi (60–80-e gody XIX v.),” Rasy i narody: Sovremennye etnicheskie i rasovye problemy 32 (2006): 238–277, here at 253–256. Valikhanov’s core text in this regard was “O musul’manstve v stepi” [1864], republished in Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4 (Alma-Ata, 1985). On the state’s promotion – and even “invention” – of customary law, as well as its relation to Russian legal culture, see the careful analysis of Virginia Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond, 2001). Those provisions are in sections 251–261 of the statute, reproduced in M. G. Masevich, Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana, vol. 1 (Alma-Ata, 1960), 339–40. Several of these provisions were very close to what Valikhanov was suggesting, and indeed the Steppe Commission of 1865–68 directly cited Valikhanov in making its recommendations. See Rottier, “Creating,” 79; and Uyama, “A Particularist Empire,” 27–28. The temporary statute did not pertain to the Inner (Bukei) Horde, which had been established between the Volga and Ural rivers in the early nineteenth century. Likewise, the Orenburg Assembly continued to have jurisdiction over Tatar inhabitants in the steppe and thus exercised a kind of extra-territorial religious authority. On this, see Arapov, Sistema, 167.

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rians. The authors of a recent synthetic work on Central Asia assert that the permanent statute of 1891, which replaced its “temporary” predecessor of 1868, reduced the state regulation of Islam even further, “practically to a minimum.” 43 Yet Allen Frank argues that a process of “Islamic transformation” of the steppe continued even after 1868, because to a large extent it was rooted in an expansion of the Russian economy into the region – one that continued regardless of specific state rulings about the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Assembly. 44 Examining clandestine “administrative orders” as well as law statutes, Robert Crews detects a gradual reappearance of state supervision of Islam in the steppe, though this oversight seems always to have taken negative forms (surveillance, arrest, etc.). Whether it actually constituted “an Islamic restoration” in the steppe (as Crews’ section title would have it) remains unclear.45 But in any event, it seems safe to posit a fundamental reorientation of state policy on Islam in the steppe in the 1860s, and even Crews, eager to establish broad similarities in the interactions between Muslims and the state throughout the Russian empire, treats this case explicitly as exceptional. This reorientation was rooted in the proposition that the state need not accept that Qazaqs were definitively Muslims (yet) and could perhaps change them into something else instead with the appropriate interventions and manipulation.46 In the Buddhist case, this reorientation took a bit longer, although even the statute of 1853 – which from one perspective might be construed as signaling the full incorporation of Buddhism into Russia’s multiple establishment of religion – seems already to have reflected an important shift. Aside from the fact that the statute imposed extensive limitations on the numbers and activities of lamas and datsans, Nicholas I instructed that it should not be included in the empire’s Law Digest (Svod zakonov). This implies, perhaps, that the statute was designed to be temporary – to regulate the affairs of Buddhists only until missionary successes would render such a provision

43

44 45 46

Sergei Abashin, et al., eds., Tsentral’naia Aziia v sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii (Moscow, 2008), 24–41. But on the continued authority of the Orenburg muftƯ in the steppe, see Uyama, “A Particularist Empire,” 36. This process is the central concern of Frank in “Islamic Transformation.” Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 227–238. On this reorientation, see also Sultangalieva, “‘Tatarskaia’ diaspora,” 29–34.

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obsolete.47 Voices more openly critical of earlier policy appeared not long thereafter. When Bandido Khambo Lama Choivan Danzan Eshizhamsuev died in 1859, efforts to replace him immediately ran into difficulties when it turned out that none of the three proposed candidates knew Russian, as required by the statute. State authorities were compelled to appoint an acting Bandido Khambo Lama (Sandeleg Vanchikov), who was later removed for flagrantly ignoring the 1853 statute.48 In the immediate aftermath of the unsuccessful election – that is, in 1860 – a tsarist official by the name of Haupt was sent to investigate the Buddhist question,49 and he came to the conclusion that the state’s entire policy was based on the erroneous supposition that lamas constituted a “spiritual corporation” – and thus an indispensable soslovie – with particular duties in relation to the laity. Haupt rejected the proposition that the general Buriat population should be regarded as adherents of “the Lamaist faith” simply because most Lamas in the region were indeed Buriat by ethnicity.50 Arguing that lamas served only as an obstacle to the penetration of Christianity and Russian grazhdanstvennost’ among Buriats, he concluded that the government should eliminate the title Bandido Khambo Lama and prohibit lamas from performing any rites (treby) for the laity.51 The supposition here, in effect, was that only lamas themselves could be considered Buddhists, whereas the laity was something else entirely.52 Haupt’s recommendations had no immediate effect. True, the Orthodox bishop of Sengelinsk, Veniamin, quickly latched on to his arguments and proposed to the “higher authorities” that they reconsider their patronage of 47

48 49

50

51 52

This was the interpretation of Sergei Rybakov, an employee of the Department of Religious Affairs of Foreign Confessions, writing shortly after the February Revolution of 1917. (“K voprosu,” 17). For details: RGIA, f. 821, op. 8, d. 1236. His precise task is not clearly indicated; documents refer merely to his dispatching (komandirovka) to perform an audit (reviziia) in 1860. It is likely that he was sent in conjunction with the election, which was terminated in 1860. Haupt may also have had in mind the fact, reported by Rybakov in 1917, that in 1767 Dzaiaev had been recognized by Catherine II specifically as “Khambo-Lama of all the Buriat and Tungus peoples,” which implied the right of Buddhist Buriats to spread Buddhism among those fellow Buriats who continued to adhere to shamanism. See “Rybakov, “K voprosu,” 16. The Tungus were a separate, smaller ethnic group in the region. Haupt’s position is recounted in Vashkevich, 81. Tsyrempilov likewise remarks that Buddhism addresses few directives to the “laity,” and instead focuses almost exclusively on rules for those who have adopted monastic life. See “Za sviatuiu dkharmu,” 117.

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Buddhist “paganism.”53 But when the local Governor-General convened a special committee to discuss the issue in 1865 – just as the Steppe Commission was contemplating the removal of Qazaqs from the authority of the Orenburg Assembly – it proposed only a few insignificant changes and concluded that the 1853 statute remained consistent with the goals of the government. Likewise, complaints of the Orthodox Missionary Society against state policy at the time were dismissed by the government, which instead merely promoted a policy of more strict enforcement of the statute, especially its provisions prohibiting Buddhist “propaganda” among non-Buddhists.54 By the 1880s, however, Haupt’s earlier argument, fortified by complaints of Orthodox missionaries, was proving more compelling to the bureaucracy in St. Petersburg. In this regard two circumstances were crucial. First, in 1883 the state had reorganized the administration of Siberia by creating a governor-governorship along the Amur River, which included the transBaikal region. Thus in strictly administrative terms, the Buriat population was now divided between two distinct institutions: one centered to the east of Baikal and the other to the west. 55 This reorganization created certain incentives for the state also to revise the religious authority of the Bandido Khambo Lama, which continued to extend across these administrative boundaries and was now directly subordinate to two separate state authorities. Second, the tsarist government seems generally at this time to have undertaken a review of existing religious statutes with the evident goal of abandoning its earlier policy of institutionalization and patronage for nonOrthodox religions. For Buddhism the central text in this regard was V. Vashkevich’s The Lamaists of Eastern Siberia (1885), which insisted on important differences between cis- and trans-Baikal Buriats and proposed the elimination, or at least a fundamental review, of the statute of 1853 – including even the issue of its recognition of the office of Bandido Khambo La-

53

54 55

Veniamin, O Lamskom idolopoklonnicheskom sueverii v vostorchnoi Sibiri (Irkutsk, 1882). This work was originally composed in 1863 and was first published in Irkutskie eparkhial’nye vedomosti in 1882. One commentator, Prince Ukhtomskii, very much doubted that this text, unrevised and published twenty years after its composition, had any relevance as an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground. See Ukhtomskii, O sostoianii, 19. Vashkevich, Lamaity, 82–88. Vsepoddaneishii otchet i. d. General-Gubernatora Vostochnoi Sibiri za 1885–1886 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1886), 3.

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ma. 56 On this basis, a young Prince Esper Ukhtomskii was dispatched to eastern Siberia for another survey of the Buddhist issue there in 1886–87. What precisely Ukhtomskii proposed is not clear from the sources I have,57 but the interior ministry now conceded that “the attitude of the government towards lamas should be negative.” Apparently, there was serious consideration of the abolition of the 1853 statute altogether, but the interior ministry rejected this as an imprudent way of resolving “the difficult question about lamas.” Buddhists had evidently got wind of the possibility of impending anti-Buddhist measures, and the resulting agitation, it was feared, might destabilize the border regions with Mongolia. The interior ministry therefore suggested a more modest approach involving the gradual modification of the more objectionable aspects of the statute. The first step in this regard was to terminate the jurisdiction of the Bandido Khambo Lama over the Buddhists of Irkutsk province in 1889 – a jurisdiction that was especially undesirable in light of the much stronger institutional and cultural presence of Lamaism on the other side of Lake Baikal. The experience of many years had shown, the ministry remarked, “that the concentration of power in the hands of one Head Lama alone has given strength and significance to Lamaist propaganda among local pagans and paralyzes the establishment of Christianity among them.” A new “temporary instruction” was accordingly produced for the Buddhists of Irkutsk province, which denied them a spiritual leader (aside from the head of each datsan, a shiretui) and also prohibited any contact with foreign clergy, under threat of “resettlement to the most distant places of Siberia.”58 Thus the western Buriat population was separated from their

56

57

58

Vashekevich, Lamaity. See also the less restrained criticism on the statute in O Lamaistve v zabaikal’skom krae (n.d, n.p., probably mid 1880s), located in the Russian National Library (St. Petersburg) under the call number: 114 /1013. As Hundley notes, between 1800 and 1860 there were only three Bandido Khambo Lamas, each of them serving until his death. Over the next forty years, three of the four Bandido Khambo Lamas were removed from their positions by state authorities. See Hundley, “Defending the Periphery,” 248. Although some of his observations, at least about the missionary situation, were included by Ukhtomskii in his O sostoianii, published in 1892. David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye relates that that this published text was in fact a variant of Ukhtomskii’s 1888 report to the Department of Foreign Confessions. See Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb, IL, 2001), 45–47, 228–229 (n. 19). RGIA, f. 821, op. 150, d. 423, ll. 13–25, 56–57ob. (citations at ll. 19ob.-20, 25, 56ob.). See also Schorkowitz, “Orthodox Church,” 207, who also ascribes this change to the initi-

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trans-Baikal counterparts in order to make the former safe for Orthodox proselytism. Sources suggest that this was a significant source of dissatisfaction for cis-Baikal Buddhists, who found it extremely difficult to maintain their religious life and institutions while being deprived of contacts with the main centers of Siberian Buddhism east of Baikal. Yet even after the autocracy made promises of religious reform in 1905, their requests for the restoration of the statute and the authority of the Bandido Khambo Lama west of Baikal were rejected or ignored.59 The two cases presented here are notable both for their similarities and differences. Both involved attempts by state authorities to preserve a group of imperial subjects from the negative effects (as they saw it) of dynamic religious and cultural competitors to Russian “civilization” and Orthodoxy – Islam and Buddhism. Both involved identifying a particular, seemingly marginal segment of a given confessional community that could be effectively segregated, it was thought, from its core and thus diverted, over the longer term, into a different cultural channel – one more conducive to the long-term interests of the imperial state. A principal difference, however, involves ethnic distinctions. In the case of Qazaqs, the case for segregation could be made by appealing to their emerging national consciousness. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Qazaq critics of Islam, like Valikhanov, were notable in the first generation of an emerging Qazaq nationalist intelligentsia.60 Thus in the Qazaq case, the group that was to be segregated was – or could at least be construed as – a distinct ethnic community. In the Buddhist case this was more difficult, as the line separating full-fledged Buddhists from only marginal ones needed to be drawn through the Buriat people itself. Thus while the separation of Qazaqs from Orenburg and “Tatar influence” could facilitate their national consolidation, divisions in the Buddhist case would have the opposite effect – dividing one segment of the Buriat population from another. If we consider the situation in the Qazaq steppe in comparison to wider patterns of imperial rule through religious institutions, we see that this case was in important ways atypical, but by no means utterly unique. By the mid-

59 60

ative of the chief procurator of the Orthodox Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev and his circle. See the account sympathetic to Buriats provided by Rybakov in “K voprosu,” 18–22. This, for example, is that way that Rottier presents Valikhanov and several others in “Creating the Kazak Nation.”

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nineteenth century, most religious communities in Russia, whatever their religion or confession, were under the jurisdiction of state-authorized religious institutions and legal statutes specifically designed for the regulation of their spiritual affairs. Qazaqs and Buriats fit into this broader pattern from the beginnings of state institutionalization in ca. 1740 to the second half of the nineteenth century. But even when both groups were removed from the religious jurisdictions in question, they joined other groups – Muslims in the North Caucasus, Muslims in Central Asia, “pagans” throughout the empire – that lacked state-sponsored religious institutions. Qazaqs and Buriats were unique in that only in these two cases were populations actually removed from the jurisdiction of established religious institutions and returned to a condition of only rudimentary regulation. That is, if in several cases the state failed to take the process of religious institutionalization to its logical end by incorporating previously unregulated populations, then only in the case of Qazaqs and Buriats did the state actually backtrack and deinstitutionalize particular populations and territories. In my view this act of deinstitutionalization was reflective of a broader aspiration in certain quarters of the state administration to dismantle Russia’s multi-confessional establishment in a more comprehensive fashion. But it speaks to the continued utility of these institutions – or at least to the fact that tsarist administrators had nothing with which to replace them – that this dismantling did not go beyond these two groups. On the whole, Imperial Russia’s multi-confessional establishment continued to function, even if the Qazaq steppe and the cis-Baikal region were now located on its periphery.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, second series, vol. 23 (St. Petersburg, 1848) Barsov, T. V., O sobranii dukhovnykh zakonov (St. Petersburg, 1898) Institut Bandita-khambo-lamy i buriat i ego otnoshenii k lamaizmu i missii (Kazan, 1911) O Lamaistve v zabaikal’skom krae (n.d, n.p.) Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1832) Valikhanov, Ch. Ch., Sobranie sochinenii (Alma-Ata, 1985) Vashkevich, V., Lamaity v vostochnoi Sibiri (St. Petersburg, 1885) Veniamin, (Episkop Selenginskii) O Lamskom idolopoklonnicheskom sueverii v vostorchnoi Sibiri (Irkutsk, 1882) Vsepoddaneishii otchet i. d. General-Gubernatora Vostochnoi Sibiri za 1885–1886 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1886)

Secondary Literature Abashin, Sergei et al. (eds.), Tsentral’naia Aziia v sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii (Moscow, 2008) Aleksandrov, Ivan, “K istorii uchrezhdeniia Tavricheskago Magometanskago Dukhovnago Pravleniia.” Izvestiia Tavricheskoi uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii 54 (1918): 316–355 Androsov, V. P., Slovar’ Indo-Tibetskogo i Rossiiskogo Buddizma (n.p., 2000) Arapov, D. Iu. and Dorzhieva, E. V. (eds.), Buddisty v Rossiiskoi Imperii v 1917 godu: Zakonodatel’stvo, opisaniia (Elista, 2004) Arapov, D. Iu., Sistema gosudarstvennogo regulirovaniia Islama v Rossiiskoi Imperii: Posledniaia tret’ XVIII – nachalo XX vv. (Moscow, 2004) Aubuseitova, Meruert, “The Spread of Islam in Kazakhstan from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century,” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society in the History of Central Eurasia, eds. Gian Luca Bonora, Niccolò Pianciola, and Paolo Sartori (Turin, 2009), 113–124 Azamatov, D. D., Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie v kontse XVIII - XIX vv. (Ufa, 1999) Blauvelt, Timothy K., “Military-Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858– 1883,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11/2 (2010): 221–255 Bobrovnikov, V. O., Musul’mane severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow, 2002) Campbell, Elena, “The Muslim Question in Late Imperial Russia,” in: Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, eds. Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen, and Anatolii Remnev (Bloomington, IN, 2007): 320–347 Chimitdorzhin, Galina G., Institut Pandito Khambo Lam, 1764–2004 (Ulan-Ude, 2004) Cracraft, James, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (New York, 1971) Crews, Robert, “Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth-Century Russia,” American Historical Review 108/1 (2003): 50–83

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–––––, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, MA, 2006) DeWeese, Devin, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994) Dolbilov, Mikhail, Russkii krai, chuzhaia vera: Etnokonfessional’naia politika imperii v Litve i Belorussii pri Aleksandre II (Moscow, 2010) Dordzhieva, G. Sh., Buddizm i khristianstvo v Kalmykii (Elista, 1995) Ermakova, T. V (ed.), Buddiiskii mir glazami rossiiskikh issledovatelei XIX – pervoi treti XX veka (St. Petersburg, 1998) Farkhshatov, Marsil’ Nurullovich, “Delo” sheikha Zainully Rasuleva (Ufa, 2009) Frank, Allen J., “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Towards an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003): 261–289 –––––, “Tatarskie mully sredi kazakhov i kirgizov v XVIII – XIX vekakh,” in Kul’tura, iskusstvo tatarskogo naroda: Istoki, traditsii, vzaimosviazi (Kazan, 1993): 124–131 –––––, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde (Leiden, 2001) Freeze, Gregory L., “Institutionalizing Piety: The Church and Popular Religion, 1750–1850,” in Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire, eds. Jane Burbank and David Ransel (Bloomington, IN, 1998): 210–249 –––––, The Russian Levites: Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1977): 46–77 Geraci, Robert P., Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2001) –––––, “Going Abroad, Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Kazakh Steppe, 1881–1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001): 274–310 Hundley, Helen Sharon, “Speransky and the Buriats: Administrative Reform in NineteenthCentury Russia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1984) –––––, “Defending the Periphery: Tsarist Management of Buriat Buddhism,” Russian Review 69/2 (2010): 231–250 Gessen, Iu., “Ravvinat v Rossii,” Evreiskaia entsiklopediia, vol. 13 (1912) Kolonial’naia politika rossiiskogo tsarizma v Azerbaidzhane v 20–60-x gg. XIX vv. (Moscow/Leningrad, 1937) Lavrov, A. S., Koldovstvo i religiia v Rossii, 1700–1740 gg. (Moscow, 2000) Martin, Virginia, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Curzon, 2001) Masevich, M. G., Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana, vol. 1 (Alma-Ata, 1960) Orlova, K. V., Istoriia khristianizatsii kalmykov (Moscow, 2006) Pianciola, Niccolò, “Orthodoxy in the Kazakh Territories (1850–1943),” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society in the History of Central Eurasia, eds. Gian Luca Bonora, Niccolò Pianciola, and Paolo Sartori (Turin, 2009): 237–254

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Polunov, A. Iu., “Ober-Prokuror sviateishego sinoda: Osnovnye etapy stanovleniia i razvitiia (XVIII - seredina XIX v.)” in: Petr Andreevich Zaionchkovskii: Sbornik statei i vospominanii k stoletiiu istorika (Moscow, 2008): 231–260 Privratsky, Bruce, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001) Remnev, Anatolii V., “Rossiiskaia imperiia i islam v kazakhskoi stepi (60–80-e gody XIX v.),” Rasy i narody: Sovremennye etnicheskie i rasovye problemy 32 (2006): 238–277 Riazhev, A. S., “Prosveshchennoe dukhovenstvo pri Ekaterine II,” Voprosy istorii 9 (2004): 43–57 Rottier, Peter, “Creating the Kazak Nation: The Intelligentsia’s Quest for Acceptance in the Russian Empire, 1905–1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 2005) Sanders, Alan J.K. (ed.), Historical Dictionary of Mongolia (Landham, 1996) Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven, 2010) –––––, Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan (DeKalb, IL, 2001) Schorkowitz, Dittmar, “The Orthodox Church, Lamaism, and Shamanism among the Buriats and Kalmyks, 1825–1925,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001): 201–225 Shaglakhaev, D., Proshloe i nastoiashchee Khoimorskogo datsana (Ulan-Ude, 2003) Skinner, Barbara, The Western Front of the Eastern Church: Uniate and Orthodox Conflict in 18th-century Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia (DeKalb, IL, 2009) Soucek, Svat, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, 2000) Staliunas, Darius, Making Russians: Meaning and Practice of Russification in Lithuania and Belarus after 1863 (Amsterdam, 2007) Steinwedel, Charles, “Invisible Threads of Empire: State, Religion, and Ethnicity in Tsarist Bashkiria, 1773–1917” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999) Sultangalieva, Gul’mira, “‘Tatarskaia’ diaspora v konfessional’nykh sviaziakh kazakhskoi stepi, XVIII – XIX vv.,” Vestnik Evrazii 4 (2000): 20–36 Tolmacheva, Marina, “The Early Russian Exploration and Mapping of the Chinese Frontier,” Cahiers du monde russe 41/1 (2000): 41–56 Tsyrempilov, Nikolai, “Za sviatuiu dkharmu i belogo tsaria: Rossiiskaia imperiia glazami buriatskikh buddistov XVIII – nachala XX vekov,” Ab Imperio 2 (2009): 105–130 Ukhtomskii, E. E., O sostoianii missionerskago voprosa v Zabaikal’e, v sviazi s prichinami, obuslavlivaiushimi malouspeshnost’ khristianskoi propovedi sredi buriat (St. Petersburg, 1892) Usmanova, Diliara, Musul’manskoe “sektanstvo” v Rossiiskoi Imperii: “Vaisovskii Bozhii polk staroverov-musul’man,” 1862–1916 gg. (Kazan, 2009) Uyama, Tomohiko, “A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia,” in: Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, ed. Tomohiko Uyama (Sapporo, 2007), 23–63 Veniamin, (Episkop Selenginskii) O Lamskom idolopoklonnicheskom sueverii v vostorchnoi Sibiri (Irkutsk, 1882) Vishlenkova, Elena, Zabotias’ o dushakh poddannykh: religioznaia politika v Rossii pervoi chetverti XIX veka (Saratov, 2002)

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Werth, Paul W., “Glava tserkvi, poddannyi imperatora: Armianskii Katolikos na perekrestke vnutrenei i vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1828–1914 gg.,” Ab Imperio 3 (2006): 99–138 –––––, “The Institutionalization of Confessional Difference: ‘Foreign Confessions’ in Imperial Russia, 1810–1857,” in: Defining Self: Essays on Emergent Identities in Russia, Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, ed. Michael Branch (Helsinki, 2009), 152–172 –––––, At the Margins of Orthodoxy: Mission, Governance, and Confessional Politics in Russia’s Volga-Kama Region, 1827–1905 (Ithaca, NY, 2002)

Qazaq Religious Beliefs in the Writings of Russian Doctors during the Imperial Age (1731–1917) ANNA AFANASYEVA* Yaroslavl

Qazaq religious practices constitute a significant part of the Russian doctors’ observations of nomadic life, whether they were the descriptions of the baksy’s (shaman) performances, analyses of the difficulties of vaccination campaigns or plans for establishing a wide-scale system of medical help for the Qazaqs. Often being the only Russian officials in the huge area of thousands of square kilometres, doctors worked in close contact with Qazaqs whose social and religious life they could observe closely and describe at first hand. Their accounts reflect a wide range of Qazaqs’ reactions to the introduction of Russian medicine to the steppe – reactions, frequently influenced by popular religious beliefs. The writings of Russian doctors, however, are rarely employed as a source for the history of Qazaq religion. Whereas some of these texts such as those of N. Zeland or A. Iagmin, which include detailed descriptions of Qazaq social and religious life, are well known to the students of Russian and Qazaq history, most of the doctors’ writings remain beyond the reach of the scholars of Qazaq religious history, being scattered between various archives, specialized collections of essays and medical periodicals. The picture of Qazaq religious life as presented by the doctors, working in the steppe, cannot escape various mistakes and distortions, as always happens with any depiction of an alien culture made by outside observers. Given the relative scarcity of written testimonies left by the Qazaqs themselves *

I would like to thank my colleagues, who participated in the discussion of my paper, which formed the basis for this article, at the conference in Venice in 2009, and especially Niccolò Pianciola, Paolo Sartori, Bruce G. Privratsky and Juliette Cadiot, whose questions stimulated further reflections and research. Research for this essay was partly carried out under the auspices of a British Academy Visiting Fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London.

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during the period, however, these reports must not be overlooked. To ignore them would mean leaving out a whole range of texts, rich in details of Qazaqs’ everyday life. This chapter will begin with the doctors’ descriptions of the Islamic practices of the Qazaqs and will then proceed to their examination of Qazaq traditional medicine, which was closely connected with the nomads’ religious beliefs. First of all, however, it may be helpful to give a brief overview of historiographic debates about the place of Islam in the life of Qazaq society during the imperial age and to describe the sources of this study. As is well known, for many years Soviet and Western scholars shared the idea that Islam as practiced among the Qazaqs was of a purely “superficial” nature.1 Such a view was based largely on the assessments of various nineteenth-century Russian authors, who were referring to the policies of the government of Catherine II, which had undertaken to “civilize” Qazaqs by supporting the propagation of Islam in the steppe. The authors believed that this propagation, carried out mainly by Tatar mullƗs, eventually brought Qazaqs under Tatar influence and resulted in what they called the “fanaticization” of the Qazaqs, who were assumed to have hitherto been largely heathen. In recent years the idea of the superficiality of the Qazaqs’ allegiance to Islam has been increasingly contested by scholars, who refer to it as to “one of the most resilient misconceptions” about Qazaqs.2 In one of the most influential works on this issue, Allen J. Frank, drawing on a text written by a Tatar imƗm in 1910, creates a picture of Qazaq religious life from within the Muslim community. He points out that during the imperial age, and most noticeably in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Qazaqs went through an Islamic revival, which involved a “rapid and sustained growth for the Muslim institutions”, Muslim education, book-publishing and consolidation of their Islamic identity. This 1

2

E. Bacon. Central Asians under Russian Rule (Ithaca, NY, 1968); M. B. Olcott. The Kazakhs. (Stanford, 1987); K. Beisembiev. Ideino-politicheskie techeniia v Kazakhstane v kontse XIX-nachale XX veka (Alma-Ata, 1961); E. Bekmakhanov. Kazakhstan v 20-e – 40-e gody XIX veka (Alma-Ata, 1992). G.L. Bonora, N. Pianciola, P. Sartori. “The Central Eurasian Steppes as a Multireligious Space in History,” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society of Central Eurasia, eds. G.L. Bonora, N. Pianciola, P. Sartori (Turin, 2009), 26. See also: P. Sartori, “Who Can Employ Offerings to Shrines? A Steppe Mullah against Descent Groups,” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society, 211.

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religious development, which became part of the wider transformation of Qazaq society under imperial rule, had initially been given vigorous support by the Russian government, starting from the reign of Catherine II. Nevertheless, it had not been imposed from the outside by the state, as Russian authors had presumed in the nineteenth century, but was the result of local initiatives from within Qazaq society, which had already possessed a clear Muslim identity. As Frank shows, the piety and religious fervour of the Qazaqs would surprise even the Tatars.3 These new studies in the history of the Qazaqs, drawing evidence from previously neglected or unknown sources, enrich our understanding of Qazaq religious life, adding new dimensions to the picture of religious allegiance amongst the nomads. It remains the case, however, that Frank relies in his work predominantly on sources written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which describe the situation characteristic of these decades. Earlier periods (the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries) are largely left out of the discussion. Also, the nature of the process of Islamic transformation of Qazaq society that Frank describes – emergence and the growth in numbers of mosques, madrasas, maktabs etc., – implies that in the earlier period there were no such institutions or that they existed, but on a much lesser scale. This is exactly what the Russian observers of the first half of the nineteenth century reported, which means that we cannot dismiss their accounts altogether as being biased and prejudiced in regard to this particular question. They pointed to the differences in religious practice between Tatars and Bukharans, on the one hand, and Qazaqs, on the other, reporting on the absence of mosques in the steppe, the ignorance of Arabic among the Qazaq masses and their consequently mere mechanical repetition of prayers, their indifference to theology, their formal performance of rituals and so on. Despite this, most of the Russian sources produced from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries (and indeed thereafter) still character-

3

A. Frank. Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of the Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001), 308–12. See also: Id., “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Toward an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Tadayuki Hayashi (Sapporo, 2003), 261– 289; QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005).

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ize Qazaqs as Muslims; their texts are full of descriptions of Muslim practices that existed among the Qazaqs.4 What makes the Russian accounts rather problematic are their assessments of the Islamic identity of the Qazaqs: as it was less visible among the Qazaqs in comparison with their sedentary neighbours, many Russian authors reached conclusions as to its “superficiality”. 5 These assessments would be repeated from one text to another with only minor changes: a close reading, for instance, of a description of Qazaq religion in a work written by A.K. Geins in 1865, reveals its striking resemblance to the 1804 work of Ia.P. Gaverdovskii, although chronologically they are divided by over 60 years. As Tomohiko Uyama notes, Russian observers may have been correct to regard Qazaqs as somewhat unfamiliar with Islamic doctrines, but they “failed to differentiate between doctrines and identity”.6 Ranking societies as “more Islamic” or “less Islamic” according to the degree of the proximity of their variant of Islam to a “norm” is still not uncommon in scholarly texts. In contemporary Islamic studies, however, the 4

5

6

Statements that the Qazaqs still remained pagan were rare and reflected the political agenda of a certain period. See: V.V. Grigor’ev, “Russkaia politika v otnoshenii k Srednei Azii,” Sbornik gosudarstvennikh znanii, Vol.1 (St. Petersburg, 1874), 249; O.O. Diugamel’, “Upravliaiuschemu delami II Sibirskogo komiteta,” State Archive of the Orenburg Region (henceforth, GAOO), f. 3. op. 4. d. 5650, cited in: A.V. Remnev, “Rossiiskaia imperiia i islam v kazakhskoi stepi (60 – 80-e gody XIX veka),” Rasy i narody (2006): 251–2. On the reasons of attributing paganism to Qazaqs see: A.V. Remnev, “Rossiiskaia imperiia i islam”; T. Uyama, “A Strategic Alliance between Kazakh Intellectuals and Russian Administration: Imagined Communities in “Dala Walayatining Gazeti” (1888–1902),” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories, ed. T. Hayashi, 237–59. Ia.P. Gaverdovsky, “Obozrenie kirgiz-kaisatskoi stepi” (1804), in: Istoriia Kazakhstana v russkikh istochnikakh XVI – XX vekov. Vol. V. Pervye istoriko-etnograficheskie opisaniia kazakhskikh zemel’. Pervaia polovina XIX veka, eds. I.V. Erofeeva, B.T. Zhanaev (Almaty, 2007), 440; A. Levshin. Opisanie kirgiz-kazach’ikh, ili kirgiz-kaisatskikh ord i stepei. Part III. Ethnograficheskie izvestiia (St. Petersburg, 1832), 55; A.K. Geins, “Kirgiz-kaisaki (v Zaural’skoi stepi)” (1860s) in: Id., Sobranie literaturnykh trudov, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1897), 75–76; A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizi Bukeevskoi ordy (Antropologoetnologicheskii ocherk),” Izvestiia Imperatorskogo obshchestva liubitelei estestvoznaniia, antropologii i etnografii 63/1 (1889): 92–99; F. Lobysevich, Kirgizskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva (Moscow, 1891), 32–34. T. Uyama, “A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia,” in: Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, ed. T. Uyama (Sapporo, 2007), 39.

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validity of such assessments is increasingly being questioned: no society which claims to be Muslim can ever be free of practices and rituals accruing from its own cultural tradition. It is much more important to consider to what extent this society identifies itself as Islamic.7 As the failure of the Orthodox missions in the steppe showed, the Qazaqs’ Islamic identity was stronger than it may have seemed. 8 It would be a mistake, however, to dismiss all Russian testimonials as “unreliable”; the range of texts is too wide and the authors’ motives were too diverse. If some authors trotted out highly conventional assessments of Qazaq Islam, others by contrast drew on their own observations to call such clichés into question. Thus, in the work “On the Kirghiz and More Generally on All Muslim Subjects of Russia” (1887) N.N. Balkashin criticizes those who “without careful consideration of Kirghiz9 religion concluded that their Islamic faith has grown weak,”10 and goes on to quote the firm Islamic beliefs of Qazaqs. Accounts of Qazaqs by Russian authors, just like those of any other outside observers, require a certain degree of caution and sensitivity to discursive constraints, both to the more general and persistent ones and to those arising from the current political situation. At the same time it needs to be said that there was no unified fixed discourse “about Qazaqs”, which would remain unchanged for all regions of the steppe and for all periods. Due to the differences in the authors’ own aims, priorities, professional backgrounds and attitudes to the state, their testimonies of Qazaq religious life are very diverse and this varied picture undoubtedly deserves our attention.

7

8

9 10

D. DeWeese, “Islam and the Legacy of Sovietology: A Review Essay on Yaacov Ro’i’s ‘Islam in the Soviet Union’,” Journal of Islamic Studies 13/3 (2002): 309–310; J. Rasanayagam. “Introduction,” in: Post-Soviet Islam: an Anthropological Perspective, ed. J. Rasanayagam [= Central Asian Survey 25/3 (2006)]: 221–225; M. Arkoun, Islam: To Reform or to Subvert? (London, 2006): 233–237; P. Schrode, “The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Uyghur Religious Practice,” Die Welt des Islams 48 (2008): 394–433. I am grateful to Philipp Bruckmayr, who drew my attention to the last two works. T. Uyama, “A Particularist Empire,” 39; R.P. Geraci, “Going Abroad or Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Kazakh Steppe, 1881–1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. R.P. Geraci and M. Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY, 2001), 274–310. In Russia the Qazaqs were called the ‘Kirghiz’ or ‘Kirghiz-Kaisaks’ until 1925. N.N. Balkashin, O kirgizakh i voobshche podvlastnykh Rossii musul’manakh (St. Petersburg, 1887), 36.

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In relation to the study of Qazaq religious beliefs, texts written by the doctors, working in the steppe, have certain advantages over those of other observers, both Russian and non-Russian. Unlike missionaries, for example, doctors did not need to measure the degree of Islamization of the population to explain their failures or to inspire others to preach in the Qazaq steppe. The doctors’ professional interests orientated them mostly towards the presentation of the largest possible amount of practical data for medical purposes so that the elements of discourse about the religiousness of Qazaqs, which are so prominent in the texts of other Russian observers, are relegated here to the background. 1. SOURCES This essay is based on around fifty texts written by Russian doctors from the end of the eighteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These include: 1) medico-topographical descriptions, composed by doctors who took part in the scientific expeditions or diplomatic missions, as well as by the medical practitioners working permanently in the steppe, 2) reports of the doctors sent to the steppe to fight epidemics and 3) essays written by doctors about the state and development of medical services in the region, published both in specialized medical periodicals and in the press intended for a wider audience. The introduction of Russian medicine into the Qazaq steppe reflected the pattern of imperial expansion in its steady move from the edges to the inner parts of the steppe. From the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries it was limited to occasional medical expertise being made available to Qazaq nobles. When invited by a khƗn, the only doctor, working for the Orenburg Border Committee, would go to the steppe accompanied by an armed Cossack escort. A hundred years later the medical personnel of the anti-plague brigades conducted interventionist campaigns on an unprecedented scale, cordoning off the suspect areas, performing house-to-house medical checks of the Qazaq auls (villages), exhuming dead bodies, disinfecting and incinerating the property of infected nomads. Measures that were being undertaken during anti-epidemic campaigns, however, occurred only in emergencies and did not indicate total medical control over the general situation in the steppe. Throughout the nineteenth century doctors were pointing out severe shortage of medical personnel and the constant lack of funding which they saw as the main factors impeding the spread of Russian medicine in the steppe. The administrative reforms of 1868–1869, which divided the steppe

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into districts and increased the overall number of medical personnel, had only a minor effect on this situation. Nevertheless, as we will see later, Russian medicine was making its way into the steppe, slowly but steadily, expanding into the everyday life of the nomads. In 1858 Kh. Kardzhasov, a graduate of Orenburg Feldsher School, became the first Qazaq feldsher (medical assistant) and in 1887 the first Qazaq doctor, M. Karabaev, completed his course of study at the Medical Faculty of the University of Kazan’.11 Chronologically, the sources noted above reflect the different stages of the establishment of Russian medicine in the region. The first group of sources, the medico-topographical surveys, had emerged as a result of the need of the state for a systematic and comprehensive body of knowledge about the empire. These works had become a part of the “textual production” of the Qazaq steppe, which developed with the consolidation of the Russian position in the region as it expanded to the south-east in the nineteenth century. Medico-topographical surveys of the various parts of the empire were already being compiled in the eighteenth century, but in the nineteenth century the composition of such works acquired a new momentum. In the 1820s and the 1850s, the Russian government launched large-scale campaigns to produce military-statistical and medico-topographical descriptions of all the parts of European and Asiatic Russia, and both army doctors and the officers of the General Staff were assigned to provide detailed information on the geography, topography, flora and fauna of a given region and to take mete11

Natsionalnyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan, f. 977, op. l/d, d. 29958, l. 15; “Posluzhnoi spisok pis’movoditelia Aktiubinskogo uezdnogo upravleniia, kollezhskogo sekretaria Khamzy Kardzhasova” in: Istoriia Kazakhstana v russkikh istochnikakh XVI – XX vekov. Vol. VIII. Part 2. O pochetneishikh i vliiatel’neishikh ordyntsakh: alfavitnye, imennye, formuliarnye i posluzhnye spiski. 12 noiabria 1827 g. – 9 avgusta 1917 g., ed. B.T. Zhanaev (Almaty, 2006): 428–430. On Russian medical policies in the Qazaqs steppe see: A. Afanasyeva. ‘“Osvobodit’… ot shaitanov i sharlatanov”: diskursy i praktiki rossiiskoi meditsiny v Kazakhskoi stepi v XIX veke’. Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 113–50. On the history of the Russian medical initiatives in the other regions of Central Asia see: A. Latypov, “Healers and Psychiatrists: The Transformation of Mental Health Care in Tajikistan,” Transcultural Psychiatry 47/3 (2010): 419–51; J. Sahadeo, “Epidemic and Empire: Ethnicity, Class and ‘Civilization’ in the 1892 Tashkent Cholera Riot,” Slavic Review 64/1 (2005): 117–39; C. Cavanaugh, “Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia, 1868–1934” (Ph.D. dissertation; Columbia University, 2001).

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orological, geological and hydrographical measurements. 12 At the core of this programme lay the acquisition of ethnographic data, which included descriptions of the empire’s subject peoples, the economies of their households, their living habits and religious beliefs. Although doctors complained that the programme was too extensive to be properly fulfilled,13 the exemplary accounts of A. Iagmin, N. Litunovsky, N. Zeland or M. Kenigsberg, which strictly followed the plan, demonstrated the feasibility of the task and the width of these authors’ scholarly horizons.14 These doctors’ works were written as dissertations: the production of an expanded survey of any given region of the empire was considered as deserving of a doctoral degree for the author. Medico-topographical surveys were also published as monographs and appeared both in the literary magazines and the scientific (geographical and medical) journals. Many of these texts, however, remained anonymous: concentrated in the archives, they were being incorporated into general works on geography and statistics on the different areas of the Qazaq steppe. As was usual at the time, no reference to the authors was provided.15 This is especially typical of the publications compiled by the officers of the General Staff, who viewed the writings of the army doctors, kept in the Staff archive, as the property of the state.16 12

13 14

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Russian State Military-Historical Archive (henceforth, RGVIA), f. 879, op. 2, d. 633, d. 1012. On the rise of military statistics in Russia in the mid-nineteenth century see: P. Holquist. “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia”, in: A State of Nations: Empire and NationMaking in the Age of Lenin and Stalin eds. R. G. Suny and T. Martin (Oxford, 2001), 111 – 144. RGVIA, f. 879, op. 2, d. 1012, ll. 49 – 50, 62, 67. A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli (St. Petersburg, 1845); N. Litunovskii, “Mediko-topograficheskoe opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii,” (Dissertatsiia na stepen’ doktora meditsiny, Ɇoscow, 1878); N. Zeland, “Kirgizy. Etnologicheskii ocherk,” Zapiski Zapadno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, VII/II (1885); M.M. Kenigsberg. “Opyt medico-topograficheskogo issledovaniia g. Orenburga” (Dissertatsiia na stepen’ doktora meditsiny, St. Petersburg, 1886). See, e.g.: V.M. Cheremshanskii, Opisanie Orenburgskoi gubernii v khoziaistvennostatisticheskom, etnograficheskom i promyshlennom otnoshenii (Ufa, 1859); E. Smirnov, Syr-Dar’inskaia oblast’. Opisanie, sostavlennoe po ofitsial’nym istochnikam E. Smirnovym (St. Petersburg, 1887). B.N. Palkin, Ocherki istorii meditsiny i zdravookhraneniia Zapadnoi Sibiri i Kazakhstana v period prisoedineniia k Rossii (1716–1868) (Novosibirsk, 1967), 465. See: Gern, Vasil’ev. “Voenno-statisticheskoe obozrenie Orenburgskoi gubernii,” in: Voenno-

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In the nineteenth century, as part of these military-statistical, geographgeographical and ethnographic descriptions, the doctors’ accounts enjoyed a wide circulation, which revealed the demand for the data collected by doctors and the significance of this data for both theoretical scientific and practical administrative purposes. This chapter, however, is based exclusively on the texts that can be clearly attributed, as the information about their authors and the circumstances of the production of their work allows us to estimate the duration and regularity of the authors’ observations, their competence in the Qazaq language and, in the end, to make conclusions about the value of these doctors’ notes on Qazaq religious beliefs.17 Research on the Qazaq steppe was also carried out by doctors who were sent to the region to fight epidemics. Epidemic control was a matter of constant concern for the imperial authorities: epidemics not only wiped out the population of the steppe but threatened the inner Russian territories. As early as 1830s a system of control over the spread of epidemics among the Qazaqs was set up. It involved regular summaries from the various parts of the region being compiled into monthly reports “about the state of health of the people in the Kirghiz steppe,” which were then sent from the Border Committee to the Orenburg Governor. On arrival of the news of a “pestilence” in the steppe, the administration would take immediate action to isolate the suspect area and investigate the potential epidemic disease in all possible detail.18 Recurrent smallpox epidemics throughout the nineteenth century caused the authorities particular anxiety, and necessitated a widespread programme of vaccination amongst the Qazaqs. Tatar medical personnel proved to be the most effective here, as they spoke the language that the nomads could easily understand. Apart from that, an important weapon in the struggle against

17

18

statisticheskoe obozrenie Rossiiskoi imperii, izdavaemoe po Vysochaishemu poveleniiu pri Pervom otdelenii Departamenta General’nogo Shtaba. Vol. XIV, Part 2 (St. Petersburg, 1848); L. Meier, Materialy dlia geografii i statistiki Rossii, sobrannye ofitserami General’nogo shtaba. Kirgizskaia step’ Orenburgskogo vedomstva (St. Petersburg, 1865). Apart from the original writings of the doctors, I also used their testimonies which were quoted in the works of the other authors, listed here: those of Dr N.P. Gloriozov, cited in A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”; and comments of Dr I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev. Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz Turgaiskoi oblasti (Turgai, 1902). Further on they are referred to as: N.P. Gloriozov in A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”; and: I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz. GAOO, f. 6, op. 10, d. 5689, 6802, 6106, 3854.

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smallpox was the training of vaccinators from among the Qazaqs themselves. Outbreaks of cholera affected the nomads to a lesser degree than the sedentary communities; none of the great cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century (1829–1831, 1871–1872 and 1892) had the same disastrous effect on the steppe which they had on the inner Russian provinces or on Turkestan. Doctors attributed the comparative well-being of Qazaqs to the “physical conditions” of the steppe with its hot, dry air, being blown away by winds, as well as to the nomadic lifestyle of the Qazaqs which prevented overcrowding.19 The measures taken to localize the epidemic consisted for the most part of setting up quarantine areas, which were, however, strictly enforced. The most serious challenge to the imperial authorities was posed by the series of plague outbreaks that spread through the Caspian steppes in 1899– 1912. In spite of great efforts to eradicate the sources of infection, plague reappeared sporadically over a long period, giving rise to the ideas that the pathogens were endemic. To locate the hotbed of disease and stop the spread of infection, anti-plague brigades which had considerable powers, were sent to the steppe. The territory under inspection was divided into sections, each served by a separate sanitary group. Doctors working in these groups wrote comprehensive accounts (which usually followed the pattern of the medicotopographic descriptions) of the climate and natural conditions of the region, its sanitary state and the lifestyle of the population, in the attempt to find out the causes of the outbreaks and to define a strategy for their possible prevention in the future.20 Unlike the doctors who served permanently in the steppe hospitals and ambulatories, the medical personnel, coming from other places for the period of the epidemic outbreaks, did not have the opportunity for prolonged obser19

20

V.G. Matskevich, Kirgizskie stepi Turgaiskoi oblasti v kholernuiu epidemiiu 1892 goda. Mediko-statisticheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1893), 31, 73; I. Khantinskii, “Kholera v Kirgizskoi orde v 1829, 1830 gg,” Turgaiskie oblastnye vedomosti 14 (1893), 6–8. On the cholera epidemic in Tashkent see: J. Sahadeo, “Epidemic and Empire”. S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia v kirgizskikh stepiakh Astrakhanskoi gubernii v dekabre 1900 i ianvare 1901 g.,” Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, sudebnoi i prakticheskoi meditsiny, izdavaemyi Meditsinskim departamentom 10 (October 1902): 1491–1515; 11 (November 1902): 1595–625; I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al., Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia (St. Petersburg, 1907); N.M. Berestnev, “Chumnaia epidemiia v Kirgizskoi stepi v 1905–1906 gg.”, Russkii vrach 26 (1906): 789–792.

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vation, which might therefore have influenced their opinions. Nevertheless, during those several months spent in the steppe, their contacts with Qazaqs were fairly intensive, which would not have been the case with the permanent medical staff that normally worked with the Russian population of the steppe garrisons. Doctors sent to fight the epidemics lived in the midst of the Qazaq population, dwelling according to the season either in “earth huts” (zemlianki) or in yurts in the Qazaq auls, and could observe Qazaq life closely. Everyday inspections of the new area of the steppe involved making house-to-house medical checks and inquiries of the inhabitants and provided the doctors with rich material for observations not only about the origin of a disease or the ways the epidemic spread, but also on the ethnography of the region. By the end of the nineteenth century, and particularly after the 1905 Revolution, doctors were becoming increasingly active in both the regional and national press, pointing out the drawbacks of the administrative system in the Qazaq steppe.21 Their activities were related to the process of their formation as a professional group seeking greater independence from state control.22 The specialized periodicals of the time were also changing their tone, turning into a mouthpiece of the doctors in their struggle for their rights and recognition of their professional status. Depiction of the working conditions of the medical personnel in the Qazaq steppe, as well as of the living conditions of the nomads themselves, was often used as a way of criticizing the government.

21

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M. Shiperovich, “Meditsinskaia pomoshch’ v Ural’skoi oblasti,” Vestnik Evropy II/4. (April 1895): 753–769; V. Iordanskii, “Protivochumnye meropriiatiia v Kirgizskoi stepi i pravitel’stvennaia organizatsiia meditsinskoi pomoshchi kirgizam,” Russkii vrach 6 (1907): 198–201; S. Fedorovskii, “Kirgizskaia step’ kak endemicheskii ochag chumy. Usloviia, pri kotorykh proizvoditsia “obsledovanie” stepi,” Russkii vrach 17 (1910): 595– 597. On the professionalization of doctors in the beginning of the twentieth century and their relationship with the state see: N.M. Frieden, “Physicians in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Professionals or Servants of the State?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 49/1 (1975): 20–29; Ead., Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 1856–1905 (Princeton, 1981).

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2. DOCTORS’ OBSERVATIONS OF QAZAQ ISLAMIC PRACTICES The picture of Qazaq religious life presented by doctors, like that given by other Russian observers, was highly diverse. Some doctors pointed to the differences between Qazaq religious practices and those of the Qazaqs’ sedentary neighbours, the Tatars and Bukharans. They noted that Qazaqs had virtually no mosques and did not have their own clergy, they did not know any Arabic although they recited it in the prayers, they performed only some of the Muslim rituals and were indifferent to Islamic theology.23 Some doctors, following ethnographers, assumed that Qazaq religious beliefs were “shaky” and that the “Mohammedan faith… is yet not deeply rooted” among them.24 Other doctors drew on their own observations and communication with the nomads to question assumptions about the superficial nature of Qazaq Islamic identity. Dr A. Kruzhilin, who was working in the Inner (Bukey) Horde during the plague outbreaks in the early 1900s, wrote: “There is an opinion that until very recently a Kirghiz remained a pagan de facto and that only a short time ago the Mohammedan faith began to grow strong among them, due to Tatar influence. After my numerous conversations with the Kirghiz I have come to the conclusion that this opinion is based on a misunderstanding. Just as a Lutheran with his uncomplicated rituals is as Christian as an Orthodox or a Catholic, with their elaborate ceremonies, so a bigoted fanatic Turk, whose hand clenches into a fist at the very sound of the word “giaour”25, is as Muslim as a tolerant Kirghiz, indifferent to the formal rites… A Kirghiz is surely religious; he firmly believes the dogma “there is no other God but Allah, and Mohammad is His Prophet” and he will never say “I shall do it” without adding “if it is acceptable to God’s Holy Will”. “The Kirghiz are good Muslims”, Kruzhilin went on, “The mosques are 23

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Kh. Bardanes, “Kirgizskaia, ili kazatskaia, khorografiia’ (1770-ɟ gg.)” in: Istoriia Kazakhstana v russkikh istochnikakh XVI–XX vekov. Vol. IV. Pervye istorikoetnograficheskie opisaniia kazakhskikh zemel’. XVIII vek, ed. I.V. Erofeeva (Almaty, 2007), 179–180; S. Bol’shoi, “Zamechaniia o kirgizakh”, Syn Otechestva, 80/XXXV (1822): 58–59; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 31. V.G. Matskevich, Kirgizskie stepi Turgaiskoi oblasti v kholernuiu epidemiiu 1892 goda. Mediko-statisticheskii ocherk (St. Petersburg, 1893), 28; L. Rybal’chenko, “Pervyi Primorskii okrug Vnutrennei Bukeevskoi Ordy,” in: I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al., Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia, Part II, 87; S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1495. A derogatory term for a non-Muslim, especially a Christian, used by the Turks. From Turkish “giaur” – unbeliever, infidel.

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rarely visited by them, but they pray willingly at home and often I was wokwoken at dawn by the monotonous incantation of my landlord who was doing his morning namaz”.26 Doctors’ assessments of Qazaqs’ religious identity varied according to the region: throughout the imperial period the Qazaqs of the Inner (Bukey) Horde were described as Muslims more explicitly than the nomads of the other parts of the steppe (although one can find opposite views about Islamic religiosity of Bukey Qazaqs side by side in one volume).27 Correlations of the doctors’ opinions with the period of description are less obvious: similar observations, stressing the specifics of the Qazaq Islam, were made in the eighteenth century as well as in the 1840s or 1890s, but on the whole by the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century the doctors were increasingly confident in defining the Qazaqs as “Mohammedans”. Like other observers, doctors indicated the general correlation between the degree of religiousness and the social position of a person, pointing out the greater piety of the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns and the wealthier Qazaqs in contrast to the wider Qazaq population.28 Most doctors, however, characterize Qazaqs as Muslims without engaging in polemics on the depth of the nomads’ Islamic faith. In their writings Qazaqs are portrayed as people in whose life the Muslim rituals and other Islamic religious attributes play a notable role. Throughout the period the religion of the Qazaqs increasingly appears as a factor which has to be taken into account by the medical administration. Doctors, for example, notice the resistance of Qazaqs to the cremation of plague victims – a disinfection practice that went against Muslim burial tradition;29 they also mention difficulties in performing medical checks on women and the diagnosing of diseases of the genital area among men. V.G. Matskevich, a medical expert sent to the Turgay province to fight the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in 1892, recalled an amusing incident concerning his homeopathist colleague, who also worked with the Qazaqs 26

27

28 29

A. Kruzhilin, “Vtoroi Primorskii okrug Vnutrennei Bukeevskoi Ordy,” in: Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia, eds. I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al Part II, 133–134. I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al., Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia. See the assessments by Kruzhilin and Rybal’chenko of the religiousness of Qazaqs of the neighbouring districts. See, for example: L. Rybal’chenko, “Pervyi Primorskii okrug”, 87. Trudy s’ezda uchastnikov protivochumnykh meropriiatii v Astrakhanskoi gubernii i Ural’skoi oblasti v g. Astrakhani 2 – 8 aprelia 1910 g (Astrakhan’, 1910), 180, 455.

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during the epidemic. Having brought with him a “considerable number of copper plates for distribution among the Kirghiz” (19th-century homeopathists believed these could provide protection from cholera when they were worn round the neck on a string), he discovered that the plates, being part of a bigger lot designed for Russian peasants, had crosses engraved on them. “To dispense them among the Mohammedan Kirghiz was awkward;” remarked Matskevich mockingly, “he corrected his mistake afterwards by making another order, but it came without any pictures as there was no time to engrave crescents”. 30 This example clearly demonstrates that the Russian medical administration would perceive Qazaqs as Muslims rather than indifferent “heathens”, and that the nomads’ Muslim sensitivities were being taken into account. Muslim clergy were seen as effective intermediaries between the administration and the Qazaq population, which was especially so during the plague epidemics in the Inner Horde in 1899–1910: mullƗs were requested to ask the Qazaqs about the causes of deaths and the symptoms of diseases that occurred in their families, and to notify the authorities if plague was suspected. The medical administration was also looking to the Muslim learned men for their assistance in the sanitary education of the nomads: during the Congress of those Participating in the Anti-plague Programme, held in Astrakhan’ in 1910, it was suggested that the mullƗs should spread information about epidemic diseases among the population, emphasising the symptoms of the deadliest ones; this was supposed to induce the nomads to assist in reporting the new outbreaks of epidemics. To encourage the mullƗs, it was decided to ask the Orenburg muftƯ to assert his influence on the Qazaq Muslim clerics.31 The appeal to the Muslim clergy as intermediaries was not characteristic of the late imperial period only: as early as 1845 A. Iagmin had already pointed out the importance of the assistance of mullƗs in persuading the Qazaqs of the benefits of vaccination, a practice which was making its way across the steppe with difficulty.32 The medical administration saw the more educated mullƗs as its natural allies and not only recognized their authority among the Qazaq population, which stemmed from the allegiance of the nomads to Islam, but relied on this authority to carry out its own plans. 30 31 32

V.G. Matskevich, Kirgizskie stepi, 49. Trudy s’ezda uchastnikov protivochumnykh meropriiatii, 171, 427, 432. A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 70.

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On the whole the doctors did not pay particular attention to the issues of the Qazaqs’ religion, being more concerned with the questions of medical practice. However, their texts are abundant with the observations of elements of Qazaqs’ religious life, which inevitably came to their attention. Doctors noticed the varied activities of the mullƗs in the steppe: they conducted divine services, took part in the ceremonies of marriage and burial, read prayers during difficult childbirths, carried out circumcisions, taught children to read and write and cured the sick. In the daily life of Qazaqs there were namazes, fasts, pilgrimages to the holy shrines and ablutions before prayers and meals; Qazaqs were guided by Islamic prescriptions on the matters of appearance, sexual behaviour and dietary prohibitions.33 However, in the doctors’ writings Qazaq society does not appear as an orthodox Muslim one: there are a lot of indications of the often merely formal character of ritual observation (which they attribute to the specificities of nomadic life) and of the presence of elements of pagan cults in the everyday life of the Qazaqs. Assessing the state of health and the causes of disease among the population of the steppe, doctors often made remarks on the influence of the Muslim practices on the human body. The habits like shaving heads by the men and ritual ablutions were considered hygienic ones, although many experts commented that ablution was more of a symbolic nature – it might only consist of passing a wet hand over the boots, or washing hands with just a drop of water which spread the dirt around; this was explained by them by the absence of a sufficient amount of water in the steppe.34 33

34

Kh. Bardanes, “Kirgizskaia, ili kazatskaia, khorografiia’ (1770-ɟ gg.)”, 179–180; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43, 63; A. Reipol’skii, “Medikotopograficheskii ocherk Vnutrennei Kirgizskoi ordy i khod ospennoi epidemii v nei v 1874 g.,” Sbornik sochinenii po sudebnoi meditsine, sudebnoi psikhiatrii, meditsinskoi pomoshchi, obshchestvennoi gigiene, epidemiologii, meditsinskoi geografii i meditsinskoi statistike, izdavaemyi Meditsinskim departamentom I/2 (1875): 22–23; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 27–28; K.A. Belilovskii, “Ob obychaiakh i obriadakh pri rodakh inorodcheskikh zhenshchin v Sibiri i Srednei Azii,” Zhivaia starina III-IV (1894): 388–390; Dr. Shustov, “V Kirgizskikh stepiakh,” Ezhenedel’nik zhurnala “Prakticheskaia meditsina” 18 (1895): 268; 19 (1895): 282; 21 (1895): 313, 316; R. Karuts, Sredi kirgizov i turkmenov na Mangyshlake (St. Petersburg, 1911): 126–127. N.P. Gloriozov in A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”, 245; S.I. Gol’dberg, Iz vospominanii o komandirovke v Kirgizskuiu ordu (St. Petersburg, 1900), 8; I. Avdakushin, “Sanitarnyi obzor Amu-Daryinskogo otdela s 1887 po 1891 g.,” Sbornik materialov

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Doctors invariably approved Qazaqs’ abstinence from alcoholic drinks, prescribed by the QurҴƗn . In the doctors’ opinion, such abstinence not only favourably distinguished the Qazaq auls from Russian settlements (“You go for thousands of versts and there is not a single tavern, not a single drunk man anywhere, there is no drink-induced loquaciousness and harassment, no false cheerfulness!”),35 but also had a most beneficial effect on the health of the Qazaqs and served as “a pledge for the moral and economic progress of the people”.36 Medical practitioners pointed to the benefits of prolonged maternal breast-feeding, allowed by the QurҴƗn for a period of up to two years. This habit, which was widely spread among the Qazaq mothers, significantly decreased infant mortality and protected children from many diseases, ranging from rickets to dysentery, which were the common companions of children in the Russian villages.37 Speaking about Muslim habits that they considered harmful, doctors mentioned Muslim fasting, which lasted 30 days. Abstention from food during the daylight hours and its excessive consumption after dark caused adverse effects on the gastro-intestinal tract. Medical practitioners claimed that the number of patients suffering from “catarrh” of the stomach and intestines increased strikingly every year immediately after the fasting. Similar observations on fasting were being made by other doctors working in Muslim countries. Doctor Treillé, who was practicing in Algeria, remarked: “Sensible people eat correctly, taking small amounts of nutritious food at a time, but the majority of fasters, particularly in towns, spend nights eating until gorged… Such a habit does a lot of harm to the body… The health changes quickly, affecting first and most seriously the digestive tract,

35 36

37

dlia statistiki Syr-Dar’inskoi oblasti, Vol. II (Tashkent, 1892), 85; R. Karuts, Sredi kirgizov i turkmenov, 35. A. Reipol’skii, “Mediko-topograficheskii ocherk”, 26. V.G. Matskevich, Kirgizskie stepi, 27; see also: Dr. Shustov, “V Kirgizskikh stepiakh,” Ezhenedel’nik zhurnala “Prakticheskaia meditsina” 24 (1895): 359; A. Kruzhilin, “Vtoroi Primorskii okrug”, 141; I. Avdakushin, “Sanitarnyi obzor”, 77. M.M. Kenigsberg. “Opyt medico-topograficheskogo issledovaniia”, 10; Kh. Bardanes, “Kirgizskaia, ili kazatskaia, khorografiia’ (1770-ɟ gg.)”, 182; S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1496–1497.

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causing its malfunction, followed by intense weakening of the body, which “opens the door to diseases” and paves the way for epidemics”.38 Doctors indicated particular difficulties in the provision of medical care to Qazaq women: they would not allow an unrelated male doctor to perform gynaecological examinations, and the medical personnel in the steppe were predominantly male. The same problems arose when any other medical check was required, like auscultation. On account of an Islamic ban upon the display of the body, Qazaq women would only ask for the assistance of a male doctor as a last resort.39 Still many medical observers noted that Qazaq women were much less restricted in their behaviour than were women in Samarkand or Kazan’: “Kirghiz women never cover their faces while meeting a man, always willingly engage in conversation in a male environment and usually stay in the kibitka (yurt – A.A.) when a guest comes… they take part in the feast together with the men… and pour out tea for everyone present. That extremely primitive shyness and reticence which Tatar, Bukharan or Sart women show in the presence of a stranger, rigidly hiding themselves away in corners and behind the curtains, that slavish, meek position which is so common among other Muslims, one would not find in a Kirghiz woman”.40 Some doctors succeeded in drawing conclusions about the “physiological manifestations of Kirghiz women’s sexual life,” 41 solely by asking these women about the number of pregnancies and duration of deliveries and even managed to take their anthropological measurements – with the help of a

38

39

40

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Ir. Skvortsov, “Vos’moi mezhdunarodnyi gigienichesko-demograficheskii congress,” Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, sudebnoi i prakticheskoi meditsiny XXVI/3, Part II (June 1895): 240. See also: N.P. Gloriozov in A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”, 247; L. Rybal’chenko, “Pervyi Primorskii okrug”, 111. I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al., Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia, Part II, 37; S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1493. L. Rybal’chenko, “Pervyi Primorskii okrug”, 91. See also: N.M. Berestnev, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 790; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 28. On Tatar women see: K.F. Fuks, Kazanskie tatary v statisticheskom i etnograficheskom otnosheniiakh (Kazan, 1844), 25. On Sart women see: RGVIA, f. 400, op. 1, d. 4848, ll. 6, 50ob, 51. V.V. Vasil’ev, “Nabliudeniia nad fiziologicheskimi proiavleniiami polovoi zhizni u kirgizok,” Vrachebnaia gazeta 2 (1904): 48.

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female feldsher, through a shirt and in the presence of the husbands or mothmothers of the patients.42 Difficulties arose with the medical examination of men as well, which was especially problematic where the genital area was concerned: the patients were extremely reluctant to go through a medical check of their private parts as their demonstration was regarded as sinful. Doctors emphasized the impossibility of accurate diagnosis in these circumstances and pointed out that this Muslim tradition had been and remained a significant obstacle to the timely detection and successful treatment of venereal diseases.43 Finally, medical experts lamented the fatalism of the Qazaqs, who regarded all diseases as an inevitable visitation of God for their sins. Moreover, as the sources reveal, Qazaqs often directly resisted the treatment of a disease – especially of smallpox – viewing any attempt to avoid divine punishment as sinful.44 Such an attitude made the early disclosure of diseases extremely difficult and posed obstacles to the implementation of preventative measures, such as vaccination. It needs to be said that the Russian administration deliberately did not insist on vaccination in the Qazaq steppe, or amongst the sedentary population of Central Asia, being aware, along with other considerations, of the potential resistance of Muslims. The necessity of such a policy became even more obvious after the 42

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I.S. Kolbasenko, “Semirechenskaia kirgizka v akusherskom otnoshenii; plodovitost’ ee i detskaia smertnost,” Protokoly zasedanii akushersko-ginekologicheskogo obshchestva v Kieve, 4/7, 8, Appendices (1891): 121–126; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 33–57. N.P. Gloriozov in A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”, 246; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 33; L. Rybal’chenko, “Pervyi Primorskii okrug”, 113. Among the diseases that are now known as sexually transmitted or venereal, syphilis was by far the most discussed disease in the nineteenth century; however, at that time the syphilis that was spread among the Qazaqs (as well as the syphilis of Russian peasants) was widely recognized to be of a nonvenereal origin; it was thought to be transmitted through domestic contacts like the use of shared utensils, rather than via sexual intercourse. On discussion of “rural” syphilis of the Russian countryside and its relation to the ideas of the peasants’ morality in the nineteenth-century medical thought see: L. Engelstein. “Morality and the Wooden Spoon: Russian Doctors View Syphilis, Social Class, and Sexual Behaviour, 1890–1905”, Representations 14 (1986): 169–208. Bogoslovskii. “Vypiska iz medico-topograficheskogo opisaniia Kokchetavskogo okruga lekaria Bogoslovskogo,” (1841), St.Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (henceforth: SPbF ARAN), f. 317, op. 1. d. 44, l. 7; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 69; I. Avdakushin, “Sanitarnyi obzor”, 59.

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Khodzhent45 uprising of 1872, in the course of which the rumours that vaccinations were “imposing a Russian brand and inoculating Muslim children with the kafirs’ blood” had provoked the murder of those who encouraged this new medical practice. 46 There were no such incidents in the Qazaq steppe, but even in the second half of the nineteenth century smallpox remained fairly widespread and many nomads still tried to avoid vaccination by all possible means. On the whole, however, doctors attributed the spread of diseases among Qazaqs not to their religious traditions but to their living habits and the conditions of nomadic life. The most noticeable of these for the authors was “uncleanliness and untidiness”.47 “While complying with the ritual of washing some parts of the body,” the doctors wrote, “a Kirghiz avoids washing the rest; bathing is non-existent among them; changing of underwear occurs rarely and irregularly, then it is poorly washed, often without any soap, the homes are kept in the same grimy manner… lice and fleas are abundant in the underclothing and felts of a Kirghiz”.48 Everyone eating from one bowl, using the hands and wiping hands and lips after the meal with a shared towel – all this was listed among the unhygienic habits that contributed to the spread of disease. Over the course of time attitudes had been gradually shifting: starting from the last third of the nineteenth century and especially from the beginning of the twentieth, responsibility for the spread of diseases in the steppe was increasingly attributed not to the Qazaqs themselves and their habits, but to the Russian imperial administration. In the opinion of many doctors, it was the official neglect of the Qazaqs’ medical needs and the lack of attention both to the hygienic instruction of the nomads and to their general conditions that was the main reason for strong and naturally healthy 45 46

47

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Khujand, a city in today Tajikistan. RGVIA, f. 400, op. 1, d. 4848, l. 50; M.A. Terent’ev, “Turkestan i turkestantsy,” Vestnik Evropy 10 (1875): 515. S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 10 (1836): 73; SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 6, 6ob; M. Shchensnovich, “Epidemicheskaia cholera v Kamysh-Samarskoi chasti Vnutrennei Kirgizskoi ordy v 1866 g.”, Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny 2 (1867): 79; Stratilatov, “Vopros, trebuiushchii resheniia. Ospa i ospoprivivanie”, Turkestanskie vedomosti 31 (1877): 142–143; S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1497; R. Karuts, Sredi kirgizov i turkmenov, 34–37; A. Kruzhilin, “Vtoroi Primorskii okrug”, 140. I.V. Strakhovich, A.L. Polenov et al., Chuma Astrakhanskogo kraia, Part II, 30.

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Qazaqs succumbing to different diseases.49 These ideas reveal the growing paternalism of the Russian public towards the peoples of “our” imperial borders, while also showing how doctors strove to achieve greater professional independence from the state that was being criticized.50 3. “KIRGHIZ HIPPOCRATES”: QAZAQ MEDICAL PRACTICES AS DESCRIBED BY THE RUSSIAN DOCTORS Doctors paid particular attention in their accounts to Qazaq traditional medicine. For the Qazaq healers and their patients medical treatment was inseparable from their religious beliefs, the healing process being a complex synthesis of methods, techniques and procedures, which were rooted in the various religious cults. Qazaqs perceived the world as inhabited by numerous spirits, both good and evil, which influenced everything that happened to a person, including his or her health.51 Doctors often noticed this, writing that all illnesses were “ascribed by them to the influence of spirits or shaitans”.52 “Recently”, reported I. Los’ev, “I met a man who suffered from abdominal dropsy… to all my inquiries he responded with full conviction that here, in the stomach, he had the heads of two shaitans. It proved totally useless to explain to him that there were no shaitans there. The good and trusting Kirghiz turned out to be a skeptic this time and looked at me reprovingly as if at somebody who wanted to take advantage of him”.53

49

50 51

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Dr. Shustov, “V Kirgizskikh stepiakh,” Ezhenedel’nik zhurnala “Prakticheskaia meditsina” 24 (1895): 360; I. Los’ev, “Meditsina v Kirgizskoi stepi,” Moskovskaia meditsinskaia gazeta, 28 (1874): 866; N.M. Berestnev, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 790; V. Iordanskii, “Protivochumnye meropriiatiia”, 198–201; Trudy s’ezda uchastnikov protivochumnykh meropriiatii, 224; N.E. Frinovskii, “Neskol’ko slov ob organizatsii vrachebnoi pomoshchi v Turgaiskoi oblasti,” Turgaiskaia gazeta 98 (1897): 2–3; 99 (1897): 2–3. See: N.M. Frieden, Russian Physicians. M. Iastrebov, “Kirgizskie shamany. Otryvok iz zapisnoi knizhki,” Moskovitianin 2/8 (1851): 301–311; A.N. Kharuzin, “Kirgizy Bukeevskoi ordy”, 91–103; Kh. Kustanaev, Etnograficheskie ocherki kirgiz Perovskogo i Kazalinskogo uezdov (Tashkent, 1894); A.A. Divaev, Etnograficheskie materialy (Tashkent, 1900). S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 10 (1836): 73; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 32; I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 45. I. Los’ev, “Meditsina v Kirgizskoi stepi”, 863–864.

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Accordingly, the treatment of any disorder was accompanied by rituals aimed at pacifying or expelling spirits. Describing healing methods used by Qazaqs, Russian doctors noticed that these would normally involve “magic spells”.54 Spells were used both by traditional healers and mullƗs, because they were all fighting against another world, where Muslim demons coexisted with the ancestor spirits and various spirits of nature. Talking about “symbolic” ways of treatment, doctors often referred to the examples of the surviving animistic beliefs of the Qazaqs. Writing in 1885, Dr N. Zeland observed: “A very peculiar remedy is used to cure the mountain disease: it is imagined as a young girl, as the illness is associated with shortness of breath and faintness, so they utter obscene expressions near a patient which are aimed to scare the chaste girl away”.55 One of the most widely spread methods of healing in the steppe was the symbolic transfer of an illness to another living creature, normally to an animal (a hare, a dog or a frog) – an ancient practice, fairly common around the world.56 A rather intriguing record of Dr I. Kolbasenko shows a curious mixture of healing techniques used by Qazaqs. The doctor described an “idol” at Issygatinskoe Gorge (now Issyk-Ata in Kyrgyzstan), to which Qazaqs came to ask for children, greasing the block with fat and bathing in the hot springs nearby.57 Kolbasenko characterized the “idol” this way: “…a huge block of solid granite… on its flat western side a figure is cut… of significant proportions, nearly half the height of a human; the figure is sitting with its legs crossed in the Eastern manner and clasping a child with both its hands to the lower part of the belly; the figure is outlined with a perfect circle; on the sides of the image there are, presumably, inscriptions”.58 Apart from the figure, which can still be seen in the gorge today and actually represents a 54

55 56

57

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Kh. Bardanes, “Kirgizskaia, ili kazatskaia, khorografiia’ (1770-ɟ gg.)”, 117, 162; A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 17, 19. N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 65. A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 19, 30–31, 47. On symbolic transfer of illnesses see: A. Hultkranz, “The relation between medical states and soul beliefs among tribal peoples,” in: Medicine across cultures: history and practice of medicine in non-Western cultures, eds. H. Selin, H. Shapiro (Dordrecht/London, 2003), 385. I.S. Kolbasenko, “Neskol’ko slov o lechenii zhenskikh i drugikh boleznei estestvennymi goriachimi mineralnymi vodami u drevnikh obitatelei Semirechenskoi oblasti,” Protokoly zasedanii akushersko-ginekologicheskogo obshchestva v Kieve, 4/7–8, Appendices (1891): 151–155. See also: N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 32. I.S. Kolbasenko, “Neskol’ko slov”, 152–153.

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Buddha, Kolbasenko also succeeded in finding some pieces of rock there with inscriptions, fragments of bas-reliefs and round-shaped plates with the pictures of seated human figures. Referring to the opinion of his scientific colleagues, the doctor related these artefacts to Buddhist tradition and associated them with the Mongol culture. For the Qazaqs, however, the image of Buddha was obviously not linked with the actual Buddhist cult, as the Qazaqs were treating it in a particular way, characteristic of pagan ritualism: thus, in his Patterns in Comparative Religion Mircea Eliade refers to the similar habit of smearing “a fertilizing stone” with grease, common among the people of Madagascar and the islands of the Malay Archipelago.59 The Buddha in Issyk-Ata was probably perceived by Qazaqs as an abstract sacred figure which remained from the ancient times and possessed a certain spiritual force. The effects of this force were further “enhanced” by Qazaqs by bathing in the hot springs near the rock - an empirical practice that fits well into the pattern of modern rationality, but could also have been preserved from the predecessors of Qazaqs in these lands. Talking about the use of symbolic methods of healing, as opposed to empirical ones (for the Qazaqs themselves the distinction between the two would hardly be possible60 and I am using it only for analytical purposes), doctors frequently described the techniques which show a significant role of Islamic tradition in the treatment of diseases by Qazaqs. They mention mullƗs who read the QurҴƗn over the patients, prepared amulets (these could be nine hair threads braided together, hung around a patient’s neck after prayer, or small scrolls of paper with Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic verses quilted inside the clothes), “put a spell” on water (i.e., read prayers over it) for a sick person to drink, wrote down the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic verses on a piece of paper that had to be reduced to dust and then taken by the sufferer, or burnt in front of a patient so that he could breath in the smoke emanating from it. In the absence of a mullƗ Qazaqs read prayers by themselves, made animal offerings (also accompanied by a prayer), hung Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic verses, written on paper and framed, on the walls of the yurt, put the QurҴƗn under the head of a sick

59

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M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by R. Sheed (Lincoln/London, 1996; or. ed. 1958), 220. See about it: P.A. Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh, 2003), 26.

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person, wore the amulets made by a mullƗ, used holy water from Mecca or the sand from a holy shrine.61 These procedures sit well within the framework of one of the traditions of Islamic medicine, called “Medicine of the Prophet”. Islamic medicine is defined as the complex of medical theories and practices, that has been developed in Islamic cultural contexts and was expressed most commonly in Arabic or Persian. 62 It comprised two rather distinct medical strands – Greco-Islamic medicine, grounded in the fundamental assumptions of classical Greek and Hellenist (Galenic) medicine, and Prophetic medicine, which is derived from the principles written down in the sacred texts of Islam. Originally Prophetic medicine was based on the Bedouin healing practices of Muতammad’s time, which included treatment using various local products, such as dates or camel’s milk, and manipulations like cupping. These elements of the Arab healing tradition, which incorporated beliefs in spirits, evil eye and sorcery as agents of diseases, became legitimated by the QurҴƗn and ‫ۊ‬adƯths after the death of Muতammad. Two important features were added to this tradition: the healing power, possessed by the Prophet, came to be regarded as inheritable by his descendants, and the words of the QurҴƗn were seen as having the power to prevent and treat illnesses. Accordingly, there emerged two categories of practitioners of Prophetic medicine: the holy man, who as a descendant of Muতammad (or of a saint, which is especially important in the Central Asian context) could bring about a cure through his spiritual power (baraka), and the learned person - the expert in the QurҴƗn, who treated through the word of Allah or his Prophet.63 Both could be seen in the Qazaq steppe: the former was repre61

62

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S. Bol’shoi. “Pribavlenie k dnevnym zapiskam doktora 7-go klassa Bol’shogo” (1820s), in: I.V. Erofeeva, B.T. Zhanaev, eds., Istoriia Kazakhstana v russkikh istochnikakh XVI – XX vekov. Vol. V. Pervye istoriko-etnograficheskie opisaniia kazakhskikh zemel’. Pervaia polovina XIX veka (Almaty, 2007): 264, 267; S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 10 (1836): 73; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43, 63; K.A. Belilovskii, “Ob obychaiakh i obriadakh”, 390; I. Avdakushin, “Sanitarnyi obzor”, 125; I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 27, 30; R. Karuts, Sredi kirgizov i turkmenov, 126, 131. G. Attewell, “Islamic medicines: perspectives on the Greek legacy in the history of Islamic medical traditions in West Asia,” in: H. Selin, H. Shapiro, eds., Medicine across cultures, 326. B. Greenwood, “Cold or Spirits? Ambiguity and Syncretism in Moroccan Therapeutics,” in: The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa, eds. S. Feierman and J. M. Janzen

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sented by the figure of qozha (khwƗjas), 64 and the latter was normally a mullƗ or a respected elderly person, who could read prayers over a patient. Another tradition of Islamic medicine, the Greco-Islamic one, was developed in the period of the Abbasid Caliphate from the ninth to eleventh centuries through the translation of classic Greek and Hellenist medical texts and their further elaboration. It was grounded in the theory of four elements and four humours which are balanced in the healthy body; it was secular, empirical and concerned primarily with the inner experience of the body in relation to the environment.65 This empirical tradition of Islamic medicine was manifested in the Qazaq steppe in the range of methods, which included bloodletting, diet, cautery and the art of reading a patient’s pulse – one of the principal diagnostic tools of Muslim ‫ܒ‬abƯbs (doctors).66 Doctors frequently noted that the ability to make a diagnosis merely by examining a patient’s pulse was seen by Qazaqs as the main indicator of the doctor’s skill; this was the reason for the remarkable popularity of the practice in the steppe.67 A “good” doctor was expected not only to name a disease, describe its symptoms and predict its outcome by examining a pulse, but also to be able to tell everything about the patient’s past and the illnesses of all the members of his family. To impress the clients, local healers would frequently resort to various tricks, for example, collecting all possible information about the

64

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(Berkeley-Oxford, 1992), 287; I.H. Abdalla, “Diffusion of Islamic Medicine into Hausaland,” in: Ibid., 190; M. Ibn Qayyim al-JawzƯyah, Medicine of the Prophet, translated by P. Johnstone (Cambridge, 1998); F. Rahman, Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity (New York, 1987). On Qozhas in Central Asia and particularly in Kazakhstan, see: S. Abashin, “Potomki sviatykh v sovremennoi Srednei Azii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 4 (2001): 62–83; S. Abashin, Natsionalizmy v Srednei Azii: v poiskakh identichnosti (St. Petersburg, 2007), Chapter 6; B.G. Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001), Chapter 6. B. Greenwood, “Cold or Spirits?”, 289; M. Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1978); E.G. Browne, Islamic Medicine: Fitzpatrick Lectures Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in 1919–1920 (New Delhi, 2001); P.E. Pormann, “Introduction,” in: Islamic Medical and Scientific Tradition. Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, ed. P.E. Pormann (New York, 2011), Vol. I, 1–30. G. Attewell, “Islamic medicines”, 326. S. Bol’shoi, “Pribavlenie k dnevnym zapiskam”, 263; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43; SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, ll. 7ob, 8; N. Zeland, “Kirgizy”, 65.

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patient’s family beforehand; if they could not succeed in this, they would talk about the disease “fairly equivocally”.68 Some healers, practising in the Qazaq steppe, described the constitution of a patient as cold, warm, dry or moist, according to the prevalence of one or another humour in the body, although this classification was less widespread among Qazaqs compared to other Central Asians.69 Qazaq surgery, recognized by Russian doctors as surprisingly skillful and effective, also seemed to have developed under the influence of Arabɨ-Persian surgery which was famous both in Europe and in the East.70 For the most part, however, the empirical practices of Qazaq traditional medicine, unlike the spiritual ones, consisted of techniques that were not connected to Islam. In the healing of the sick, animal products prevailed. These could easily be obtained by the nomads, whose economy was based on breeding sheep and horses. These remedies included guts, fat, blood, bile, lard, milk, skins of wild and domestic animals as well as of birds and reptiles, that were applied to the sore parts of the body and given by mouth in various forms. One of the most popular ways of curing diseases was wrapping a patient in the skin of a freshly killed cow (“an animal bath”71) – a technique that was considered particularly effective in the treatment of fevers and rheumatism. Healing practices could involve bathing in hot springs, salt water and mud. 72 Herbal medicine, based mostly on the locally available herbs and plants, was rather wide-spread in the steppe; the range of remedies was broadened through contacts with neighbouring Bukharans, Russians and

68 69

70

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72

SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 8. A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43. See also V. Nalivkin, M. Nalivkina, Ocherk byta zhenshchiny osedlogo tuzemnogo naseleniia Fergany (Kazan, 1886), 70–72; A. Latypov, “Healers and Psychiatrists”; G.A. Kolosov, “O narodnom vrachevanii u sartov i kirgizov Turkestana,” in: Trudy Antropologicheskogo otdeleniia VoennoMeditsinskoi akademii za 1899/1900 gg. Vol 6 (St. Petersburg, 1903); A. Poslavskaia, E. Mandel’shtamm, Obzor desiatiletnei deiatel’nosti ambulatornoi lechebnitsy dlia tuzemnykh zhenshchin i detei g. Tashkenta (1883 – 1894 gg.) (Tashkent, 1894). A. Reipol’skii, “Mediko-topograficheskii ocherk”, 23; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 44 - 45; I. Avdakushin, “Sanitarnyi obzor”, 121. SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 9ob-10; S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 11 (1836): 83. A. Reipol’skii, “Mediko-topograficheskii ocherk”, 17; S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 11 (1836): 84; I.S. Kolbasenko, “Neskol’ko slov”, 152–155.

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Chinese who supplied the Qazaqs with mineral preparations, such as mercumercury, alum, carmine or ammonium chloride.73 This large number of various healing techniques was performed in the steppe by a wide range of medical practitioners. Apart from mullƗs, the elements of Islamic medicine (of both Prophetic and Greek traditions) were being spread in the steppe by qozhas, who, according to the sources, carried out amputations and variolation – immunizing patients against smallpox with material from a human carrier. 74 A certain part in the transmission of Islamic medical knowledge in the steppe was played by the healers from Bukhara, Kokand and Samarkand, normally called taups. Folk doctors who were mostly using local traditional healing methods seem to be united under the category of dargers, although the exact boundaries between taups and dargers remained elusive in the sources. Other categories of people, associated with healing, were snake-charmers, masseurs, midwives, bonesetters and – the most notorious of all – shamans, or baksy. Doctors frequently noticed the syncretic character of Qazaq medicine, rooted in the combination of various religious beliefs. The methods of healing could involve the reading of the QurҴƗn by a mullƗ during the traditional wrapping of a patient in a sheep skin; the treatment of epilepsy could consist of the reading of the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic sura Yasin, accompanied by the washing of the patient with the bouillon made from a hare’s head, after which the head and brain of the hare were eaten by the sufferer.75 When the illness was persistent, a folk doctor, a baksy and a mullƗ were invited in turn to assist a patient; they could also all appear at the bedside of a sufferer at the same time.76

73

74

75

76

SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 16; GAOO, f. 6, op. 10, d. 3438, l. 4, 10, 18, 20; I.S. Kolbasenko, “Iz meditsinskoi praktiki sredi kirgiz Kopal’skogo uezda”, Vestnik sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny IV/III (1888): 65. I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 36, 40; P.V. Dobrovolskii, “Ocherk ospoprivivaniia v Turgaiskom uezde (Turgaiskoi oblasti) s 1869 goda po 1901 god,” Zhurnal Russkogo obshchestva okhraneniia narodnogo zdraviia 7–8 (1902), 320; I.S. Kolbasenko, “Iz meditsinskoi praktiki kirgiz Kopal’skogo uezda”, 73. I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 42; U.A. Larin. “Narodnaia meditsina Astrakhanskoi gubernii,” Russkii meditsinskii vestnik 2 (1904): 59. S. Bol’shoi, “Pribavlenie k dnevnym zapiskam”, 264; P. Vavilov. “Vo mrake nevezhestva“, Turgaiskaia gazeta 73 (1896): 2

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Interestingly enough, whereas some Russian doctors in the early twentitwentieth century reported that Qazaqs now more often turned to the reading of the QurҴƗn over their sick rather than to the folk medicine – which could have been interpreted as a sign of the gradual consolidation of Islamic consciousness among the Qazaqs, – other doctors at the same time observed that Qazaqs still widely used such traditional healing methods as drinking fresh animal blood. The extent to which this practice, strictly forbidden in Islam, had spread in the steppe, shows that the Qazaqs either ignored this ban or did not know about it.77 Unlike Qazaq healers and their patients, Russian doctors considered the distinction between empirical and magical elements in medicine to be indisputable. Describing Qazaq medicine, doctors were eager to recognise and appreciate the methods that they regarded as rational – those which had a clear therapeutic effect and demonstrated “the Qazaqs’ sound mind and accuracy of observation”.78 These practices included the use of local herbs and certain animal products (kumys, or fermented mare’s milk, always received the highest praise), as well as the use of mud, hot water and salt water baths. Thus, around the hot springs at Issyk-Ata Gorge, mentioned above, a basic resort was already organized in the 1890s, which began to develop quickly from the 1930s; today “Issyk-Ata” is a widely known spa resort in Kyrgyzstan. Doctors often pointed to the mastery of the steppe bonesetters who performed elaborate operations on fractured or dislocated limbs; they also approved the isolation of patients during the smallpox epidemics, which was a common practice among Qazaqs, as a measure against the spread of disease.79 However, the medical personnel were rather sceptical about the “unclean” remedies, such as the putting of sheep excrement into the ears and nostrils of a sufferer to relieve a headache, or gargling with warm animal blood for a sore throat. While admitting a certain efficacy in both these treatments – the effect of ammonium chloride in the

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A. Kruzhilin, “Vtoroi Primorskii okrug”, 142; I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 25, 45, 52–54. For the earlier examples of drinking blood as a method of therapy see: A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43; SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 12. I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 41. A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 44–45; A. Reipol’skii, “Medikotopograficheskii ocherk”, 23; I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 41.

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former case and of the hot liquid in the latter – doctors remarked that “a more sustainable result can be achieved through far more hygienic means”.80 Their harshest criticism was directed towards the use of magic cures. Whereas the giving of amulets and putting spells on water was thought of as pointless but harmless, other treatments were considered dangerous, possibly even to the point of being life-threatening. Notable among such treatments was the practice of exorcism, administered by Qazaq shamans, or baksy. Unlike the bonesetters or folk doctors, baksy were believed to possess special powers, inherited from their ancestors, which allowed them to communicate with spirits in other worlds. The appearance of the shaman was meant to impress the observers: as Dr Iarotskii wrote in 1836, “they are dressed in rags, which have a very specific effect on the imagination of the Kirghiz; the baksy’s facial expression is always forbidding, his eyes are wild, his movements are slow”.81 The descriptions by Russian authors of the ritual of the expelling of shaitans were almost identical: a healer would summon the evil spirit by playing a particular type of musical instrument called a kobyz, a violent struggle would follow, which would manifest itself to the audience through the shaman’s trance-like state, during which he would “convulse and grimace in a menacing manner, crying out sounds as if he were mad”82, pierce his throat and belly with his dagger in such a way that it protruded from the opposite side, walk on fire, bite and beat a patient with a stick; at the end of the séance he would foam at the mouth and lose consciousness.83 During the séance a baksy would call on Allah, Prophet Muতammad, Archangel Jibrail or Muslim saints to cast out demons:84 in the course of time the shamans managed to adapt to Islamic ritualism. As Bruce Privratsky 80 81 82 83

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I.Z. Marakhovets in A.V. Vasil’ev, Narodnye sposoby vrachevaniia u kirgiz, 18, 13. S. Iarotskii, “Narodnaia kirgizskaia meditsina,” Drug zdraviia 10 (1836): 73. Nevol’nik, “Vo mrake nevezhestva,” Turgaiskaia gazeta 79 (1896): 2. Dr. Shustov, “V Kirgizskikh stepiakh,” Ezhenedel’nik zhurnala “Prakticheskaia meditsina” 24 (1895): 358–359; Bronevskii, “Zapiski o Kirgiz-kaisakakh Srednei Ordy,” Otechestvennye zapiski XLIII (1830): 219; P. Nebol’sin, “Kirgizskie vrachi i charodei,” Zhurnal dlia chteniia vospitannikam voenno-uchebnykh zavedenii XCI/363 (1851): 340–348; M. Iastrebov, “Kirgizskie shamany”, 308–311; Zhil’tsov, “Baksy (Nechto o kirgizskoi meditsine),” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik 1/5(1) (1895): 263–264; A.E. Alektorov, Iz mira kirgizskikh sueverii. Baksy (Kazan, 1899). S. Bol’shoi, “Pribavlenie k dnevnym zapiskam”, 265; S. Rybakov, “Otchet chlenasotrudnika S. Rybakova o poezdke k kirgizam letom 1896 goda po porucheniiu Imperatorskogo Geograficheskogo obshchestva,” Zhivaia starina 2 (1897): 205.

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notes, “the Qazaq baqsis absorbed the Islamic therapeutic vocabulary preprecisely because their curing methods depended on an overarching social myth or ideology, and Islam… was the ideology of the Qazaqs from the time they emerged from the Golden Horde as a distinct people”.85 Qazaqs would turn to a baksy when an illness was persistent or when it did not show clear symptoms, particularly with nervous or mental disorders. The treatment usually consisted of the ritual described above - the expulsion of evil spirits from the body of the patient - but the authors’ views of the outcomes varied. Most observers called the shamans “charlatans”, and were indignant about, what seemed to them, an obvious deception of the sufferers and their relatives. According to the writings of the doctors, shamanistic rituals not only gave no relief to the patients, but actually caused their health to deteriorate enormously, as the baksy exhausted them and inflicted injuries. Some doctors, however, reported on the surprising effectiveness of such treatment: in the opinion of Dr Bogoslovskii, the cure resulted from a special, rather strict diet, to which a patient was subjected by a shaman for several days before the séance. Other medical experts presumed that it was the patients’ belief in the efficacy of the ritual that accounted for most of its success. Also, the type of illnesses (nervous or mental diseases), for which the baksy was called, meant that the patients were more susceptible to this effect.86 Talking about the baksy, many doctors remarked that, apart from magic, shamans also used material substances, preparing herbal poultices and decoctions, cauterizing ulcerations and recommending the bathing of babies in salt water to prevent illnesses.87 In his book A. Iagmin devotes considerable space to listing the remedies employed by the experienced baksy for the treatment of various diseases – including endemic ones (in which case baksy

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Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan, 217. On the elements of Islam in the shamanistic practices see also: V.N. Basilov, Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (Ɇoscow, 1992). SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 8–9; S. Bol’shoi, “Pribavlenie k dnevnym zapiskam”, 265. Kh. Bardanes, “Kirgizskaia, ili kazatskaia, khorografiia’ (1770-ɟ gg.)”, 162; A. Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 43–45; S.V. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1493; Dr. Shustov, “V Kirgizskikh stepiakh,” Ezhenedel’nik zhurnala “Prakticheskaia meditsina” 24 (1895): 359.

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appear as the only experts sui generis, whose opinion is regarded as particularly valuable).88 At the same time, when most observers took note of the differences between the “specialisms” of Qazaq healers, talking separately about baksy with their séances of exorcism and about folk healers (dargers and taups), who mostly used material remedies, for some doctors such divisions did not exist and they merged all healers into the one category of baksy. This confusion probably caused the distortion of the information about the range of medical practices employed by the Qazaq shamans; however one can still assume that the baksy used a wider range of remedies, and did not confine themselves to magic rituals. Doctors noted the gradual decrease in the number of shamans in the steppe and the loss of their authority among the Qazaqs. Whereas in the first half of the nineteenth century it was quite easy to attend a baksy’s séance, in the second half of the century and especially towards its end, the shamans were becoming less and less accessible to the Russian observers; doctors reported that now the baksy “mystify themselves enormously and… fear any authorities”.89 This change can be attributed to the growing number of medical personnel in the steppe (unlike the shamans, the state-employed doctors did not charge their patients for treatment and the use of materia medica), as well as to the consolidated religiousness among the Qazaqs which made them, as one author said, “shoo” the baksy from the auls as “sharia law forbade them”.90 These observations demonstrate that the claim that Russian scholars “came to the subject of Qazaq medicine with the assumption that it was a fixed and unchanging body of practices”91 is misleading. Doctors and other commentators not only noticed the changes in the status of various healers over the course of time and the replacement of one form of cure by the other, but also indicated the transformation of the methods and techniques of Qazaq medicine, which was influenced mainly by the arrival of Russian medicine. Physicians frequently mentioned that Qazaq healers employed remedies borrowed from Russian medicine, as well as the practices which

88 89 90 91

Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 64. Konstansov, “Chumnaia epidemiia”, 1493; Kruzhilin, “Vtoroi Primorskii okrug”, 142. Rybakov, “Otchet chlena-sotrudnika”, 207. Michaels, Curative Powers, 25.

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were associated with them.92 New materia medica were widely used among the nomads, from the common Qazaqs to the sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns, who soon after meeting Russian doctors began, already in the 1810s, to order from the Orenburg Border Committee “blood-clearing drops, camphor spirit… lapis, laxative powders… cantharides, smelling salts”.93 Dr Bogoslovskii wrote in 1841: “Kirghiz people get mineral medication from Russian merchants, and every Kirghiz strives particularly to have with him ammonium chloride and alum. The former is used per os against pricking and pain in the belly and the latter – externally, diluted in water, against ulcers, impetigo and nappy rash”. 94 The practice of variolation (immunizing patients against smallpox with material from a human carrier), which had been performed in some places before by the qozha and Bukharans, was gradually being replaced by vaccination (inoculation with a cowpox virus); by the early twentieth century the number of Qazaq vaccinators was increasing and vaccination did not meet any serious resistance among the population. Thus Qazaq medicine demonstrated its adaptability, trying to absorb and internalize those elements of Russian medical practice, which seemed most effective. 4. CONCLUSION The accounts of Russian doctors are a rich source of information about the social and religious life of Qazaqs. Due to the specifics of medical work, directed at the wider population, these texts are especially instructive in their descriptions of the manifestations of Qazaq popular religious beliefs and practices at an everyday level. In spite of the fact that the authors belong to a single professional group, they present a widely varying – and sometimes mutually inconsistent – picture of Qazaq religious life, thus reflecting both their different views and programmes and their diverse sources of data, as well as the circumstances of their actual encounters with the nomads. Without deliberately intending to contribute to the discourse about the ‘degree’ of Islamic consciousness among the Qazaqs, physicians nevertheless provided a copious range of details pertaining to this question. Their writings indicate the presence of numerous Islamic rituals in the 92 93 94

See, e.g.: Iagmin, Kirgiz-kaisatskie stepi i ikh zhiteli, 65. GAOO, f. 6, op. 10, d. 3438, l. 18; see also: GAOO, f. 6, op. 10, d. 786, l. 2, 5. SPbF ARAN, f. 317, op. 1, d. 44, l. 15ob-16.

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everyday life of Qazaqs, which were meaningful to the nomads; they attest to the importance for Qazaqs of Islamic prescriptions in matters of eating, appearance and marital behaviour. In the course of the nineteenth century and especially by the beginning of the twentieth century these features were appearing increasingly in the doctors’ accounts. On the other hand, physicians noticed specificities of the ways the Qazaqs practised Islam, in comparison with their sedentary neighbours, which showed, for example, the less confined life of women and the less thorough manner of ritual ablutions. As can be seen in the writings of the doctors, elements of various religious cults still existed among the Qazaqs in the imperial period, which is especially obvious in the descriptions of Qazaq traditional medicine. Whereas the spiritualist component of healing practices was increasingly dominated by Islamic ritualism, in the empirical methods of treatment even in the beginning of the twentieth century the local techniques prevailed which were not connected with Islamic tradition. As Eric Robertson Dodds, a British classicist and a scholar of religious consciousness, rightly remarked, “religious growth is geological: its principle is, on the whole and with exceptions, agglomeration, not substitution”.95 The writings of doctors offer a rich account of Qazaq religious life as an example of just such an agglomeration, of a versatile interaction of cultures, whose borders cannot be defined in a simple way.

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E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 2004; or. ed. 1951), 179.

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Vavilov, P., “Vo mrake nevezhestva,” Turgaiskaia gazeta 73 (1896): 2–3 Zeland, N., “Kirgizy. Etnologicheskii ocherk,” Zapiski Zapadno-Sibirskogo otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva VII/II (1885) Zhil’tsov, “Baksy (Nechto o kirgizskoi meditsine),” Pravoslavnyi blagovestnik 1/5. Iss. 1 (1895): 262–266

Secondary Literature Abashin, S., “Potomki sviatykh v sovremennoi Srednei Azii,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 4 (2001): 62–83; –––––, Natsionalizmy v Srednei Azii: v poiskakh identichnosti (St. Petersburg, 2007) Afanasyeva, A., “‘Osvobodit’… ot shaitanov i sharlatanov’: diskursy i praktiki rossiiskoi meditsiny v Kazakhskoi stepi v XIX veke,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 113–150 Arkoun, M., Islam: To Reform or to Subvert? (London, 2006) Bacon, E., Central Asians under Russian Rule (Ithaca, NY, 1968) Basilov, V.N., Shamanstvo u narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (Moscow, 1992) Beisembiev, K., Ideino-politicheskie techeniia v Kazakhstane v kontse XIX – nachale XX veka (Alma-Ata, 1961) Bekmakhanov, E., Kazakhstan v 20-e–40-e gody XIX veka (Alma-Ata, 1992) Bonora, G.L., Pianciola, N., and Sartori, P., “The Central Eurasian Steppes as a Multireligious Space in History” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society in the History of Central Eurasia, eds. G.L. Bonora, N. Pianciola, and P. Sartori (Turin, 2009), 21–34 Browne, E.G., Islamic Medicine: Fitzpatrick Lectures Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians in 1919–1920 (New Delhi, 2001) Cavanaugh, C., Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia, 1868–1934 (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2001) DeWeese, D., “Islam and the Legacy of Sovietology: A Review Essay on Yaacov Ro’i’s «Islam in the Soviet Union»,” Journal of Islamic Studies 13/3 (2002): 298–330 Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley, 2004; or. ed. 1951) Eliade, M., Patterns in Comparative Religion, translated by R. Sheed (London, 1996; or. ed. 1958) Engelstein, L., “Morality and the Wooden Spoon: Russian Doctors View Syphilis, Social Class, and Sexual Behaviour, 1890 – 1905,” Representations 14 (1986): 169–208 Feierman, S. and Janzen, J.M. (eds.), The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (Berkeley/Oxford: 1992) Frank, A.J., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of the Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001) –––––, “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Towards an Islamic History of Kazakhstan Under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. H. Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 261–289 Frieden, N.M., “Physicians in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Professionals or Servants of the State?,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 49/1 (1975): 20–29 –––––, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 1856–1905 (Princeton, 1981)

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Geraci, R., “Going Abroad, Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Kazakh Steppe, 1881–1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. M. Khodarkovsky and R. Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001), 274–310 Holquist, P., “To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate: Population Statistics and Population Politics in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia,” in: A State of Nations: Empire and NationMaking in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, eds. R. G. Suny and T. Martin (Oxford, 2001), 111–144 Ibn Qayyim al-JawzƯyah, M., Medicine of the Prophet, translated by P. Johnstone. (Cambridge, 1998) Latypov, A., “Healers and Psychiatrists: The Transformation of Mental Health Care in Tajikistan,” Transcultural Psychiatry 47/3 (2010): 419–451 Michaels, P.A., Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Central Asia (Pittsburgh, 2003) Olcott, M.B., The Kazakhs (Stanford, 1987) Palkin, B.N., Ocherki istorii meditsiny i zdravookhraneniia Zapadnoi Sibiri i Kazakhstana v period prisoedineniia k Rossii (1716–1868) (Novosibirsk, 1967) Pormann, P.E. (ed.), Islamic Medical and Scientific Tradition. Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies (New York, 2011) Privratsky, B.G., Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001) QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005) Rahman, F., Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition: Change and Identity (New York, 1987) Rasanayagam, J., “Introduction,” in: Post-Soviet Islam: an Anthropological Perspective, ed. J. Rasanayagam [= Central Asian Survey 25/3 (2006)]: 221–225 Remnev, A.V., “Rossiiskaia imperiia i islam v kazakhskoi stepi (60–80-e gody XIX veka),” Rasy i narody (2006): 238–277 Sahadeo, J., “Epidemic and Empire: Ethnicity, Class and ‘Civilization’ in the 1892 Tashkent Cholera Riot,” Slavic Review 64/1 (2005): 117–139 Sartori, P., “Who Can Employ Offerings to Shrines? A Steppe Mullah against Descent Groups,” in: Kazakhstan: Religions and Society in the History of Central Eurasia, eds. G.L. Bonora, N. Pianciola, and P. Sartori (Turin, 2009): 211–221 Schrode, P., “The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Uyghur Religious Practice,” Die Welt des Islams 48/3–4 (2008): 394–433 Selin, H. and Shapiro, H. (eds.), Medicine across cultures: history and practice of medicine in non-Western cultures (Dordrecht/London, 2003) Ullmann, M., Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh, 1978) Uyama, T., “A Strategic Alliance between Kazakh Intellectuals and Russian Administration: Imagined Communities in “Dala Walayatining Gazeti” (1888–1902),” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Histories in Slavic Eurasia, ed. H. Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 237–259 –––––, “A Particularist Empire: The Russian Policies of Christianization and Military Conscription in Central Asia,” in: Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia, ed. T. Uyama (Sapporo, 2007), 23–63

Disadvantaged Neophytes of the Privileged Religion: Why Qazaqs Did Not Become Christians YURIY MALIKOV Oneonta

The present chapter focuses on Russian religious policies in the Qazaq steppe during the nineteenth century. In the article, I examine the failure of Christian missionary activity in this outlying region of the Russian Empire, and consider some of the reasons why Orthodox clergymen were unable to convert nomadic Muslim Qazaqs to Christianity. In particular, by focusing upon particular case studies of Qazaq conversion to Christianity I examine the social, economic, and legal ruptures which conversion might entail. As we shall see, the nomadic Qazaqs found that conversion to Christianity was tantamount to starting their lives from scratch in an environment where their pre-Christian knowledge and skills were useless. Conversion to Christianity sealed a Qazaq’s fate, making one’s return to his or her previous nomadic lifestyle impossible, and effectively severed the ties connecting a Qazaq to his or her tribe. Despite numerous statements by Russian officials on the need to convert the natives of the steppe to the Christian faith, and to utilize conversion as a means of achieving greater homogeneity among the subject peoples of the empire, the Russian government in the nineteenth century did almost nothing to make conversion to the new faith beneficial for Qazaqs.1 Nor did it use

1

Raymond Pearson argues that the Russian government considered confessional criterion – the Russian Orthodox faith – to be the most suitable one for the creation of a homogeneous population in the Russian Empire. He speaks of the “Orthodox crusade” launched in the 1840s with the purpose of drawing in the non-Russian Orthodox population of Russia. According to the author, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church launched a joint attack against the religions of ethnic minorities in all parts of the empire. See Raymond Pearson, “Privilegii, prava i rusifikatsiia,” Ab Imperio 3 (2003): 40. My article makes Pearson’s argument conditional,

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coercion to force the steppe nomads to become Christians.2 Those Qazaqs who did convert to Christianity thus found themselves disadvantaged neophytes of the privileged religion. Under such conditions, only extraordinary circumstances could force Qazaqs to take such a step, which made their conversion to Christianity a very rare exception. The evidence presented in this chapter also demonstrates that the northern Kazakhstani frontier was not a zone of rigid demarcation between Russian and Qazaq societies, but a place of active interaction between representatives of different cultures. The policies of the Russian state toward newly converted Qazaqs, however, threatened to obstruct this interaction. According to Russian law, a Qazaq’s redefinition of faith transformed him or her from being a member of a demographically fluid and actively interacting steppe community into an individual whose position on the “Russian side” of the frontier was firmly fixed and closely watched by the Russian government.3 In establishing strict rules which newly converted Qazaqs had to follow, imperial authorities tried to enforce their vision of cultural interactions on the eastern edges of the empire. This vision excluded the possibility of mutual acculturation of immigrants from the West, and non-Slavic and nonChristian natives. Assimilation in Asian Russia was purported to be a one-

2

3

demonstrating the absence of “religious Russification” in the policies of the Russian government towards Qazaqs. In this respect, Russian policies towards Qazaqs were quite different from the enforcement of Christianity upon animists, Buddhists, and Muslims of Siberia and Middle Volga, where non-Christian landlords lost their estates, which had been populated with Christian farmers in the period between 1682 and 1718. In addition to material losses, those nonChristian elites who rejected conversion to Christianity were deprived of their noble status and acquired the status of state serfs or merchants. See Andreas Kappeler, “Iuzhnyi i vostochnyi frontir Rossii v XVI – XVIII vekakh,” Ab Imperio 1 (2003): 60. The depiction of the Russian eastern borderlands as a zone of mutually beneficial cultural and economic exchanges, which are responsible for blurring distinctions between the participants of contact, can be found in the following works: Thomas M. Barrett, At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier (Boulder, 1999); Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (Ithaca, NY/London, 2005); Willard Sunderland, “Russians into Iakuts? “Going Native” and Problems of Russian National Identity in the Siberian North, 1870s–1914,” Slavic Review 55/4 (1996) and Yuriy Malikov, Tsars, Cossacks and Nomads. The Formation of a Borderland Culture in Northern Kazakhstan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Berlin, 2011).

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way road, with natives ascending the scale of civilization. Tsarist ideologists expected not the coexistence and mixture of different cultures, but the superseding of one by another.4 This vision determined imperial policy toward the baptized Qazaqs and was ultimately responsible for the failure to convert Qazaqs en masse to the “True Faith” (pravoslavie). The tsarist administration was hampered in its aspirations towards conversion both by its failure to grasp the realities of cultural interaction in the eastern borderlands and, more pragmatically, by a shortage of the resources necessary to impose its own vision of intercultural relations. 1. A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF THE REASONS FOR THE FAILURE OF CHRISTIANIZATION Both Western and Russian historians of tsarist policies on the Qazaq steppe from the 1820s onwards agree in general that attempts by the Russian authorities and missionaries to gain Christian converts among the Qazaqs were unsuccessful. A Russian ethnographer analyzing the religious composition of the people populating the Qazaq steppe on the eve of World War I observed that the increased number of Christians in the region could be accounted for only by the influx of Russians to the steppe.5 According to data collected by Robert Geraci, the Qazaq Mission in the Omsk diocese could boast of baptizing only 50 to 60 Qazaqs per year in the last decade of the nineteenth century.6 To summarize the results of the activity of the Semipalatinsk Mission, M. Konshin called it “one of the most useless institu-

4

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For more information on the Russian state’s vision of its eastern borderlands, see Yuri Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY/New York, 1994); Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge, 1999); and Sunderland, “Russians into Iakuts? “Going Native” and Problems of Russian National Identity in the Siberian North, 1870s-1914.” P. P. Liubimov, “Religii i veroispovedal’nyi sostav naseleniia Aziatskoi Rossii,” in: Aziatskaia Rossiia, liudi i poriadki za Uralom, ed. G. V. Glinka (St. Petersburg: Izdanie pereselencheskogo upravleniia glavnogo upravleniia zemleustroistva i zemledeliia, 1914), 234. Robert P. Geraci, “Going Abroad or Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Kazakh Steppe, 1881 – 1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. Robert Geraci and Michael Khodarkovsky (Ithaca, NY/London, 2001), 291.

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tions of the Semipalatinsk region.” 7 The number of natives from Central Asia (including Qazaqs) who converted to Christianity supports this accusation. According to an estimate by Petr Liubimov, only 1,544 Central Asian natives became Christians during the entire period of Russian imperial rule.8 Despite the shared belief that the missionary effort on the steppe was unsuccessful, Western and Russian historians disagree on the reasons for this failure. Yuri Slezkine argues that Russian settlers on the Siberian frontier did not offer a good example of Christian piety to the nomads. As Slezkine observes, the settlers’ “own world was not as starkly divided into … Christian and non-Christian spheres” as that of American Puritans or Pilgrims. The Russians of the frontier “did not refer to the natives as savages, barbarians, or pagans” and did not consider the natives’ ways of life inferior.9 To the chagrin of Russian officials, instead of spreading the Russian religion and way of life, the settlers adopted foreign customs and traditions, and became indistinguishable from the native population. A member of the Steppe Commission, A. Geins, expressed his ideas on the failure of the Cossacks to be agents of Russification in the following words: Cossacks failed to play the role which we expected of them. These people who dress in Kirghiz gowns, talk to their children in Kirghiz, and call themselves “Cossacks,” and all people who come from beyond the Ural Mountains as “Russians” can hardly serve as the instrument of Russification on the steppe.10 Geraci supports this view, arguing that instead of “setting proper examples of Christian, civilized, and Russian national values and, by participating directly in baptized Qazaqs’ acculturation on a day-to-day basis,” the Russians on the Qazaq steppe fell under the cultural influence of the nomads, adopting their lifestyle, worldview, and traditions.11 He cites the missionaries who believed that the religious consciousness of Russians on the frontier waned and that they themselves needed missionaries to be re-

7

8 9 10 11

M. Konshin, Chto mogut dat’ issledovateliu Semipalatinskie arkhivy (Semipalatinsk, 1929). Liubimov, “Religii,” 235. Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, 40. A. K. Geins, Sobranie literaturnykh trudov, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1897), 117. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 295.

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Christianized.12 Not only did Russians on the frontier fail to serve as an example of pious life, but they also dissuaded Qazaqs from being baptized.13 Michael Khodarkovsky attributes the failure of the natives’ conversion to inadequate training, poor knowledge of native languages, and the lack of dedication of Russian missionaries, as well as the corruption of local officials. According to him, these factors prevented potential converts from learning the Scriptures and accommodating to Russian society. 14 Ludmila Polonskaya and Alexei Malashenko in their study of the religiosity of Central Asians contend that mass conversion to Christianity amongst the Qazaqs never took place because “[n]o Christians ever conducted missionary work there on a meaningful scale, and the Orthodox faith – the official religion of Russia – was never imposed on Central Asia.”15 Such scholars as Andreas Kappeler and Yuri Slezkine share this opinion. Their research demonstrates that the Russian state tolerated the non-Christian religions of its subjects. Traditional pragmatic and tolerant relations with Muslims and animists prevented the Russian state from supporting the missionary activity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The imperial government terminated the practice of forcible Christianization used by Peter I in the first half of the eighteenth century (that is, before the inclusion of the Qazaq steppe into the Russian Empire) in 1755, after which the state reimplemented its policy of tolerating non-Orthodox inhabitants in the eastern part of the empire.16 A further factor which deterred the native population of the steppe from converting to Christianity was their fear that baptism would cause the wrath of their tribesmen.17 Geraci also suggests that the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church on the frontier did not consider it necessary to take measures to convert Qazaqs to Christianity. According to his observations, “the local clergy made no attempts whatsoever to convert Qazaqs; the only baptisms of non-Russians were those requested specifically by those wishing to convert.”18 Additionally, the fact that most of the missionaries were not 12 13 14

15 16

17 18

Ibid., 296, 300. Ibid., 302, 304–5. Michael Khodarkovsky, “The Conversion of Non-Christians in Early Modern Russia,” in: Of Religion and Empire. Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, 142. Ludmila Polonskaya and Alexei Malashenko, Islam in Central Asia (Lebanon, 1994), 49. Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors, 50, 51; Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (Harlow, 2001), 142, 160. Khodarkovsky, “The Conversion of Non-Christians,” 132. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 307.

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ethnic Russians made them inadequate tools for the Russification of Qazaqs.19 Geraci and Khodarkovsky attribute the insignificance of Russian missionary activity to the “financial shortages and a dearth of well-educated and enthusiastic personnel,” as well as higher officials’ desire to avoid the widespread opposition of the natives, which attempts to convert them to Christianity could cause. 20 Bruce Privratsky, by contrast, depicts the relations between Qazaqs and Russians as an epic struggle between Muslims and the infidels who seized their territory.21 From the analysis he offers, it may be inferred that the Muslim consciousness of Qazaqs became an impermeable obstacle to the spread of Christianity throughout the steppe.22 To summarize the aforementioned arguments, these historians attribute the Russian failure to convert Qazaqs to Christianity to the following reasons: the deeply entrenched Islamic faith on the steppe made Qazaqs hostile to Christian missionary activity; the Russian state was unwilling to support missionary activity; Russians on the frontier were unable to set a good example of pious living; and local Russian authorities and the Church were indifferent to the spread of Christianity. The lack of skills, as well as the corruption of local officials and the fear of potential converts of

19 20 21

22

Ibid., 310. Robert Geraci, Michael Khodarkovsky, “Introduction,” in: Of Religion and Empire. Bruce G. Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001), 48, 249. The question of Qazaqs religiosity has been a debated issue in recent historiography. An older interpretation, exemplified by such scholars as Martha Brill Olcott, Elizabeth Bacon, Geoffrey Wheeler, Reef Altoma, and Laurence Krader, suggested that Qazaqs were only nominally Muslims, and that their religion was a syncretism of Shamanism and some Islamic beliefs. See Geoffrey Wheeler, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (London, 1964); Lawrence Krader, Peoples of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN, 1963); Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs, 2nd ed. (Stanford, 1995); Elizabeth Bacon, Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study in Culture Change (Ithaca, NY/New York, 1966). More recent research by scholars such as Devin DeWeese, Allen Frank, and Bruce Privratsky has instead shown that long before the inclusion of the Qazaq steppe into the tsarist Empire Islam had been deeply enmeshed with Qazaqs daily life: Devin Deweese, Islamization and the Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tukles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994); Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001); Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan.

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retaliation from their tribesmen, also contributed to the fact that only a tiny minority of Qazaqs became Christians. The purpose of this paper is not to challenge the validity of the aforementioned arguments. Neither should it be considered a contribution to the debate on the level of religiosity of Qazaqs. Instead, I offer another reason for the failure of the Christianization effort on the Qazaq steppe. The evidence collected in this article suggests that the economic disadvantages which conversion to Christianity presented to the neophytes and the unwillingness of the Russian state to smoothen the transition of conversion, after which Qazaqs became full members of Russian society, were among the most significant factors that made the idea of conversion to the “Russian faith” unappealing to Qazaqs. The documentary evidence provided in this article also demonstrates the ambiguous position of Orthodox Christianity in the Russian Empire during the nineteenth century. Despite of the fact that, as the state religion, Orthodox Christianity enjoyed the support of high-ranking imperial administrators, the privileges granted to the Church were not extended to those individuals who wished to become its members. The obligations which baptism implied clearly outweighed the rights that a Qazaq individual could acquire. As the evidence reveals, some Qazaqs came to this realization only after they converted. The losses which they experienced following baptism were so traumatic that they used all opportunities to de-Christianize and return to their traditional way of life. 2. THE RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TO THE CONVERSION OF QAZAQS By stating that the aim of Russian policy in Kazakhstan was “Russification and forced conversion to Christianity,”23 the renowned Kazakhstani historian M. Abdirov established a framework within which modern Kazakhstani historians conduct the study of the religious policies of the Russian Empire on the steppe. Zh. Artykbaev considers the imposition of Christianity on Qazaqs to be one of the major reasons for the disturbances on the steppe in the second half of the nineteenth century and argues that attempts at the forceful Christianization of Qazaqs was an important factor – alongside Russian colonization, the failures of administrative reforms, the 23

M. Zh. Abdirov, “Voenno-Kazach’ia kolonizatsiia Kazakhstana (konets XVI veka – nachalo XX veka), Opyt istoriko-evoliutsionnogo analiza” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Kazakhstan State University, 1997), 292.

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impoverishment of the Qazaq masses, and the moral shock experienced by the nomadic population –, in the strengthening of the position of Islam on the steppe.24 In addition, historian M. Tynyshpaev adds drama to the description of Russian religious policies in Kazakhstan. His textbook, The History of Kazakhstan, is filled with accounts of “Qazaq children imprisoned behind the high walls of Russian missions,” and “the tortures of Qazaq women for their unwillingness to convert to Christianity.”25 Contrary to the aforementioned statements, Russian authorities were quite reluctant to allow Qazaqs to convert to Christianity, let alone force them to be baptized. Rather than promoting the spread of Christianity on the steppe, the Russian government in the second half of the eighteenth century tried to reinforce the position of Islam among Qazaqs, considering it to be a stabilizing factor which could bring peace and order to the steppe.26 Tsarina Catherine the Great, for example, ordered the construction of mosques for the Qazaqs, the distribution of QurҴƗn texts, and the migration of mullƗs from Kazan to the Qazaq steppe.27 In her decree issued on November 27, 1784, Catherine II demonstrated her belief that supplying different Qazaq tribes with mullƗs might considerably improve Russia’s position on the steppe. According to this decree, the governor-general of Simbirsk and Ufa was required to find “reliable people from the Kazan Tatars” who could become teachers of Islam for Qazaqs. These mullƗs received financial 24 25

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Zh. O. Artykbaev, Istoriia Kazakhstana: Uchebnik dlia vuzov (Kostanai, 2006), 230. M. Tynyshpaev, Istoriia Kazakhskogo naroda (Almaty, 2002), 23. Though the view that the Russian government used force to impose Christianity on the Qazaqs dominates Kazakhstani historiography, not all scholars share this opinion. A. Sultangalieva argues that “the inclusion of Kazakh society into the Russian Empire was not accompanied by the forcible conversion [of Qazaqs] to Christianity.” See Sultangalieva, Islam v Kazakhstane, 63. According to Geraci, Catherine II thought that Russian control of the steppe would be established “more readily in the presence of Islam than of the traditional religions of the steppe.” See Geraci, “Going abroad,” 280. Olcott shares this belief, arguing that, in the view of imperial officials, “Islam would serve as a civilizing force for the wild and unpredictable Qazaqs.” See her The Kazakhs, 47. Shirin Akiner argues that in addition to being the “civilizing force,” Catherine believed that Islam would be able to unify Qazaqs tribes “thereby enabling them to be controlled more effectively.” See Shirin Akiner, Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union (London, 1983), 289. Geoffrey Wheeler “Russian Conquest and Colonization of Central Asia,” in: Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Lanham, 2000), 282; Liubimov, “Religii,” 232.

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support from the Russian treasury for their work, which aimed at fortifying the Muslim faith among the nomads of the steppe.28 Moves by the Russian state towards the introduction and even the imposition of Islam on the steppe sometimes assumed extreme forms. According to Qazaq scholar Bilial Aspandiiarov, there were cases in which Cossacks forced Qazaqs to go to a mosque on pain of corporal punishment.29 In the minds of imperial leaders of this period, the spread of Islam was to ensure native loyalty and obedience to the empire. 30 The state also took measures to prevent the Russian Orthodox Church from engaging in the conversion of Qazaqs. Catherine II prohibited the proselytizing activity of the Orthodox Church on the steppe in 1767.31 Russian attitudes toward Qazaq religious practices changed somewhat in the 1820s. The Governor-General of Siberia, M. Speranskii, believed that the introduction of religious toleration might in time lead Qazaqs to Christianity. In his statute issued in 1822, he expressed a hope that “[d]ue to the fact that the system of beliefs of the Kirghiz-Kaisaks at the present time is more pagan than Muslim, there is a hope that many of them can be brought to Christianity.”32 In the same article he ordered the establishment of a mission on the steppe, intructing its clergymen to persuade rather than coerce natives to convert to Christianity. Even this limited policy directed at bringing Qazaqs into the realm of Christianity was short-lived. Eight years after the promulgation of Speranskii’s legislation, the Holy Synod refused to establish missions on the steppe, stating that “it would be premature, as there were too many ‘pagan’ vestiges in the Qazaq religion for a Christian mission to be effective.” 33 Of interest here is that both Speranskii and the Holy Synod mentioned the weakness of Islam on the steppe as a factor justifying their policies, which were at odds with each other. 28 29 30

31 32

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Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, (hereafter PSZ), ser. 1, vol. 22, no. 16292. Bilial Aspandiiarov, Obrazovanie Bukeevskoi Ordy i ee likvidatsia (Alma-Ata, 1947), 23. Dov Yaroshevski, “Empire and Citizenship” in: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700– 1917, eds. Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 1997), 66; Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 2002), 176. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 281. PSZ, ser. 1, vol. 38, no. 29,127, 243. In all the quotes used in this article, I use the ethnonyms “Kirghiz,” which Russians employed in the imperial period to refer to Qazaqs nomads. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 281.

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One of the tasks of the Steppe Commission of 1865–1868 was to define the level of religiosity of Qazaqs and the possibility of their Christianization. The commission took a strong anti-Muslim position, criticizing the earlier policies which had expressed toleration for the Muslim faith on the Qazaq steppe. The members of the commission suggested using different measures aimed at the preservation of pre-Islamic Qazaq beliefs with their subsequent replacement by Christianity. 34 Even though the members of the commission emphasized the necessity of spreading “lawful Christian propaganda” among the Qazaq population, they believed that the dissemination of anti-Islamic propaganda was a responsibility to be given not to Orthodox Christian missions, but to secular Qazaq-Russian schools.35 Prior to the end of the nineteenth century, even foreign missionaries were more active on the steppe than the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian anthropologist N. Kazantsev described the activities of the Scottish Protestant Mission, which was founded not far from Orenburg Fortress in 1815. Its attempt to convert Qazaqs to Christianity can hardly be described as successful. Though the missionaries instructed several Orenburg Qazaqs in the basic tenets of the Christian religion and managed to persuade them to convert to Christianity, this conversion appeared to have been nominal. The following example illustrates this point. Not content with the numbers of their followers, the Protestant missionaries sent a cart loaded with Holy Bibles to the steppe in 1820. Their most trustworthy disciples were to accompany the cart and distribute the Bibles among the steppe Qazaqs. This mission resulted in a complete failure. As soon as the new converts found themselves on the Qazaq side of the Line, they abandoned the cart and their duties, and rode off to the steppe. Shortly following this incident, the missionaries closed the mission.36 The first Orthodox Christian missionaries were sent to the Qazaq steppe in 1883 – that is, 61 years after the steppe was officially recognized as a part of the Russian Empire.37 In the words of Russian historian A. Remnev, even after the introduction of Russian Orthodox missions on the Qazaq steppe, 34 35

36 37

Geins, Sobranie literaturnykh trudov, 211–212. M. G. Masevich, Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana (so vremeni prisoedineniia Kazakhstana k Rossii do Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi Sotsialisticheskoi Revoliutsii) (Alma-Ata, 1960), 276. I. N. Kazantsev, Opisanie Kirgiz-Kaisakov (St. Petersburg, 1867), 59. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 285.

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language and secular school played by far a more important role in the impeimperial policies of the Russian government towards Qazaqs than missionary activity. Up to the very end of the Russian Empire, its leaders marginalized missionary activity on the steppe, considering the Christianization of Qazaqs an issue of the distant (and unidentifiable) future.38 Local Russian authorities were not less reluctant than the state officials to impose Christianity on the natives of the steppe. When in 1815 four Qazaqs who lived in the Russian fortress of Chernorechenskaia asked officials of the Frontier Commission to allow them to become Christians, the commission not only refused their request, but also ordered them to leave Russian territory under the pretext that they could steal horses and escape to the steppe.39 Even the representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church on the frontier did not consider it necessary to take measures to baptize Qazaqs. As Geraci notes, “the local clergy made no attempts whatsoever to convert Qazaqs; the only baptisms of non-Russians were those requested specifically by those wishing to convert.”40 Contemporary authors criticized Russian priests for their unwillingness to spread Christianity among the Qazaqs. Even those Qazaq children who were bought by the priests “for services” (dlia uslug) oftentimes remained nonChristians.41 In addition, Russians who employed Qazaqs opposed their conversion, since they were afraid that this conversion would “scare off Qazaq employees who were unwilling to convert; employers thus stood to lose their lowest-paid group of laborers.” 42 According to Geraci, Russians’ hostile attitude to the Christianization of their Qazaq employees led missionaries to conduct their work in secret.43 The most decisive obstacle to the conversion of Qazaqs was, however, the unwillingness of the Russian government to create conditions that would make the process of Christianization less painful for Qazaq neophytes. Under the conditions of the Qazaq steppe, Khodarkovsky’s statement that 38

39

40 41 42 43

Anatoly Remnev, Tatars on the Kazakh Steppe: Allies and Rivals of the Russian Empire, presented at the 38th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Washington, D.C., 2006), 12 . A. I. Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’. Istoricheskii ocherk,” Izvestiia Orenburgskogo otdela Imperatorskogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, vol. 1 (Orenburg, 1900), 229. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 307. Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’,” 229. Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 305. Ibid.

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“religious conversion in Russia … involved only a nominal redefinition of religious identity” loses its validity.44 On the contrary, conversion to Christianity implied drastic changes in the lives of Qazaq nomads. The Russian administration suspected that Qazaqs converted to Christianity not because of their understanding of the religion, but due to the possibility of enhancing their economic opportunities. Instead of preventing such people from entering the Christian faith, the Russian administration used repressive measures to make the converted Qazaqs “real Christians.” The neophytes were supposed to settle in Russian villages, to abandon their nomadic way of life, to switch from livestock breeding to agricultural practices, and to subject themselves to Russian law. According to the state, conversion also made Qazaqs legally Russians. In this case, his or her rights were drastically curtailed. The state determined his or her way of life and place of residence. The fact that these new responsibilities clearly superseded individual rights became another factor which made conversion to Christianity undesirable for Qazaqs. To demonstrate some of the transformations which newly converted Qazaqs experienced, I shall compare the way of life, traditions, and the steppe system of justice of traditional Qazaq society with the lives of those few Qazaqs who, through their conversion to Christianity, became full members of Russian society. The changes in all spheres of life produced quite a traumatic effect on the neophytes, inducing some of them to wish to return to Islam. Instead of enforcing Christianity on a reluctant population, or giving meaningful material rewards to those who wished to become Orthodox Christians, the Russian authorities made conversion to the Orthodox Christianity extremely unbeneficial even for those Qazaqs who wished to switch their religion. 3. THE CONVERSION OF QAZAQS TO CHRISTIANS (DZHATAKS AND ADOPTED CHILDREN) The Central State Archive of Kazakhstan has many cases which demonstrate the willingness of Qazaqs to become Russian Orthodox Christians and/or to enter the ranks of the Cossacks, peasants, merchants, or city dwellers (meshchane). Two of the most numerous groups of these converts were 44

Michael Khodarkovsky, “‘Ignoble Savages and Unlawful Subjects:’ Constructing NonChristian Identities in Early Modern Russia,” in: Russia’s Orient, 20.

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those Qazaqs who, in their young age, were adopted and raised by Russians, and dzhataks – the Qazaqs who had a permanent settlement close to Russian villages or stanitsas. 45 In this part of the essay, I propose to consider what made some Qazaqs convert to Christianity and seek permission to live among Russians according to imperial laws – that is, to become Russians in all but ethnic terms; I consider also how conversion to Christianity served to alter the neophyte’s legal status. In many cases, Qazaqs petitioned the imperial government to allow them to convert to Christianity and become full-fledged members of Russian society as a result of having lived among Russians as laborers. In one instance, a dzhatak named Dzhursiun Ulzhasov, who had lived for several years in a Russian settlement, his wife Bigatcha, and their daughter Zlyke wrote a petition to the Russian administration asking for permission to convert to Christianity and to live as peasants in the Krestinskaia village of the Omsk oblast’.46 In response to Ulzhasov’s request, imperial administrators asked the volost’ chief whether Ulzhasov had any debts to the state treasury. As long as no debt obligations were pending, the Russian administration complied with Ulzhazov’s petition and permitted the family to convert to Christianity and become peasants “with all the privileges and duties of this estate.”47 Of importance here is that nomadic Qazaqs did not consider dzhataks to be full members of their society and vice versa. A nineteenth-century ethnographer provides an interesting account on the relations between the dzhataks and those Qazaqs who lived on the steppe. The dzhataks avoided marrying their daughters to the steppe Qazaqs, preferring instead to have Qazaqs who lived by Russian settlements as their sons-in-law. The Qazaqs of the steppe, on the contrary, preferred to marry dzhatak girls and, if their parents did not consent to the unions, they would kidnap them. It is important to note that though the kidnapping of girls was traditional in Qazaq culture, the parents of the kidnapped dzhatak girls received only a small portion of the kalym (the bride price) that the parents of a steppe 45

46

47

The number of dzhataks living in or near Cossack stanitsas on the Russian side of the Irtysh Line was rather considerable and reached 20,000 in 1820. See N. G. Apollova, Khoziaistvennoe osvoenie Priirtysh’ia v kontse XVI – pervoi polovine XIX v. (Moscow, 1976), 157. Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter TsGARK), f. 345, op. 1, d. 1966, ll. 1–1 ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1966, ll. 1–1 ob.

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Qazaq girl would receive. They were also deprived of the aib – the penalty which, according to tradition, the parents of the kidnapper were obligated to pay. The biis [traditional judges] informed the parents of a dzhatak girl that they “should pray to God, that our man took your daughter. Otherwise she could marry a Russian and you would get nothing for her.”48 Another large group of converts included Qazaqs who, at an early age, had been bought or adopted by Russians and raised by their guardians. Many nineteenth-century observers commented on the mass character of the Russian acquisition of Qazaq children: “Their [the Qazaqs’] poverty was so rampant that crowds of Kirghiz came to Russian settlements to sell their children for a sack of flour or a loaf of bread.”49 A Russian pre-revolutionary ethnographer also deemed Qazaqs’ poverty to be the reason for the sale of their children: Some of the Kirghiz who have their pastures not far from the Line have become so poor that they give their little children, with the permission of their elders, to the clerks of the Russian administration and to Cossacks. These Qazaqs ask Russians to baptize their children in the Orthodox Faith and make them eternal Russian subjects (ostat’sia vechno vo vserossiiskom poddanstve).50 Additionally, Senator Karnilov, following his trip to the Qazaq steppe in 1808, wrote the following lines to justify Russians’ purchase of Qazaq children: Though the purchase or exchange of children seems to be disgusting to a sensitive heart, it is actually an act of humanity. By buying Qazaq children, the Russians save humankind. What fate would await these victims of ignorance and brutality if they were left on the steppe? What could these innocent babies expect besides poverty, starvation, and death? But now, when Russians bought them out of pity [and] instilled in their minds respect for hard work, they can be useful and thankful subjects of their new fatherland – Russia. Russians saved them from death and gave immortality to their souls through Holy Baptism. Buying these children of nature can also benefit our fatherland, since the number of people in Siberia would increase.51

Karnilov suggested permitting the purchase of Qazaq children not only by state officials and merchants, but also by Cossacks under the condition that 48 49

50 51

Kirgiz, “Kirgizy-Dzhataki: Etnograficheskii ocherk,” Russkaia Rech’ 8 (1879): 320. V. Grigor’ev, “Orenburgskie Kirgizy: Ikh chestnost’ i umenie v torgovykh delakh,” Narodnyi Vestnik (1864): 41. A. I. Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’,” 221. Karnilov, Zamechaniia o Sibiri senatora Karnilova (St. Petersburg, 1828), 11.

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each of them would have the purchased child baptized.52 According to Karnilov’s suggestion, the Cossacks who bought Qazaq children could use their labor until they turned twenty years, at which age these “newly acquired sons of Russia” were to enter the Cossack Army and serve in place of their guardians. After the end of five years of service, the new Cossacks were to be settled in Cossack stanitsas, enjoying the same rights as the other dwellers. Of interest here is that Karnilov recommended that Cossack Army leaders not allow the wards to serve close to the Line separating the Qazaq steppe from Russian territory, since “closeness of their native land [could] make an impact on their spirit, thereby endangering the whole undertaking.” 53 This remark reveals Karnilov’s doubts in his own words of the “thankfulness” of these “new children of Russia.” The central authorities took Karnilov’s recommendations seriously. Soon after the senator submitted his report to Alexander I, the tsar promulgated a law which allowed the purchase and exchange of Qazaq children in order to raise them as Cossacks.54 The result of this policy was an increase in the number of ethnic Qazaqs in the Siberian Army, who in their way of life and attitudes “did not differ from Russian Cossacks.”55 Although in 1822 the Russian government promulgated the Ustav o Sibirskikh Kirgizakh, which prohibited the acquisition of Qazaqs in private possession, 56 imperial authorities had to modify the legislation four years later because the prohibition could not be enforced and the purchase of Qazaq children continued. According to the resolution of the Omsk Oblast’ Council of 1826, Russian individuals had the right to buy Qazaq children from their parents only in cases when the sale of their children would save the Qazaq adults from starvation.57 Then the purchased children had to be given to the Charity Commission, which would reimburse the money or goods spent on the purchase of these children. The children were to be distributed by the commission to “good and well-to-do [Russian] families” on the condition that after the children turned twenty-five years of age they

52 53 54

55 56 57

Ibid., 12. Ibid. Tsarskaia kolonizatsiia v Kazakhstane. Po materialam russkoi periodicheskoi pechati 19 v., ed. F. M. Omarzaev (Almaty, 1995), 6. Grigor’ev, “Orenburgskie Kirgizy,” 41. PSZ, ser. 1, vol. 38, nos. 29, 127, 273. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 635, l. 18ob.

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were to be freed.58 The council also instructed the commission to distribute the children to settlements in which they would not be able to communicate with their relatives.59 The guardians were to convert their wards to Christianity and teach them crafts suitable for their age and gender.60 Upon turning eighteen years of age, these children had the right to marry a free person if they wished.61 On their twenty-fifth birthday, the wards were to enter any Russian estate they wished or become Cossacks. Archival sources confirm that many of these children chose to enter the Cossack Army. Russian scholar A. Levshin described cases in which Line Cossacks bought children from Qazaq parents, had them baptized and, after they grew up, the Qazaqs themselves became Cossacks. 62 Whether Qazaq children were bought directly from their parents or distributed by the Charity Commission, they were raised in such a way that when they became adults, “it was impossible to tell them [apart] from Russian Cossacks.”63 These adopted children became Christianized either in their childhood or of their own will when they came of age. In one case, the peasant Fedor Samoilov petitioned local authorities to allow him to adopt a 10-year-old Qazaq boy, who was given to him by his mother, the poor Qazaq widow Kalmykena in 1843. Samoilov requested that the boy be ascribed to the estate of factory peasants and that he be made the heir to Samoilov’s property in case of the man’s death. At the time that Samoilov submitted the request, the boy had already been baptized and given the Christian name of Ivan.64 The life story of another Qazaq, Vasilii Iakovlev, demonstrates that those Qazaqs who lived among Russians since their childhood considered their conversion to Christianity and entrance into Russian military service to be quite natural. In his petition to the governor of Omsk oblast’, Iakovlev explained his wish to become a Cossack due to the fact that “since his childhood [by the time he submitted the petition, he was 39 years of age] he ha[d] always been a farmhand in the Nikolaevskaia stanitsa, and was con-

58 59 60 61 62

63 64

TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 635, l. 17. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 635, l. 23ob. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 635, l. 24. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 635, l. 28ob. A. Levshin, Istoricheskoe i statisticheskoe obozrenie Ural’skikh kazakov (St. Petersburg, 1823), 48, 49. Grigor’ev, “Orenburgskie Kirgizy,” 41. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1878, ll. 195–197.

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verted to Christianity according to his own will.”65 Iakovlev never experienced the steppe life of his ancestors and most of the people who surrounded him were Cossacks. Thus, it seemed natural to him (and to the Russian authorities who complied with his request) to join the Cossack Army. Another Qazaq named Zakhar Filimonov, whose pre-Christian name was Agim Abylov, asked for permission to become a factory peasant (zavodskoi krestianin) in Biisk okrug, Barnaul volost’.66 Along with his request, he also submitted a letter from the peasants of Moroshikha village, in which they expressed their consent to his settling among them. The Altai Mountain Board of Administration complied with his petition and permitted him to enter the peasant estate on the condition that he did not have any tax debts to the treasury.67 Filimonov, however, failed to provide the administration with information regarding his clan’s name, which was necessary in order to determine whether he had any debts. He argued that he was so young when he left the steppe that he remembered neither the name of the volost’ to which he belonged, nor the name of his clan elder.68 Filimonov and Iakovlev’s legal entrance into Russian estates took place long after the ties connecting them with traditional Qazaq life were severed. The lawful recognition of their rights as full members of Russian society occurred after they became Russians in religious and cultural terms.69 The Qazaqs who were sent to Russian settlements in their childhood often married Russians and entered Russian estates.70 As the aforementioned examples demonstrate, the ranks of Russian society were open to Qazaqs who previously converted to Christianity. The only concern of the Russian administration in granting Qazaqs permission to enter the Russian estate system and to become full-fledged Russian citizens was the issue of their debts. 4. NOMADIC QAZAQS WHO BECAME CHRISTIANS Non-Christian Qazaqs who applied to enter the Russian estate system, however, faced a different situation. In this case, they were to present 65 66 67 68 69

70

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1973, ll. 1–2 ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1878, ll. 100–101 ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1878, l. 101. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1878, ll.167–168ob. Geraci claims that many Qazaqs who were baptized had been living with Russian families since their childhood. See Geraci, “Going Abroad,” 289. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1878, ll.160–161.

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evidence that the elder of their clan did not have any objections against his clansmen becoming Russian citizens (Rossiiane). Archival sources confirm that tribal leaders quite often prevented applicants from being accepted into Russian estates. A Qazaq of Akmolinsk okrug, Temys Izbasarov, sent a petition to the oblast’ administration asking for permission to allow him, his wife, and two sons to become peasants and settle in the village Okopishechevskaia in Omsk oblast’. Izbasarov supplemented his request with an agreement on his settlement signed by the people of this village.71 The oblast’ administration forwarded Izbasarov’s request to the Akmolinsk okrug to ask if the elder of the Izbasarov’s clan had any objections to their becoming peasants. As it turned out, the elders of Izbasarov’s clan not only objected to his becoming a peasant, but also demanded that he and his family return to their aul.72 The Tobol’sk City Council decided to meet the demands of the clan elders and return the Izbasarovs to their clan.73 As the aforementioned examples demonstrate, conversion to Christianity was considered to be a milestone in determining who held authority over a Qazaq. Prior to conversion, his clan had the right to determine where a Qazaq lived and the occupation he held. Conversion severed the legal ties between a clan and a Qazaq. The Russian administration was fully aware of the fact that material interests determined the desire of most Qazaqs to become Christians. 74 Volkonskii, the Governor-General of Orenburg, stated in his letter to the Frontier Commission that though there were no legal obstacles to converting Muslims to Christianity, their devotion to Christian teachings seemed doubtful. This consideration led Volkonskii to endorse the recommendation of the Orenburg Frontier Commission of 1804, according to which it was necessary to ask permission both of the parents and of the clan elders to convert Qazaq children to Christianity. Permission was to be given in written form in the presence of several Qazaq witnesses. This decision, according to 71 72 73 74

TsGARK, f.345, op. 1, d. 1940, ll. 1–2. TsGARK, f.345, op. 1, d. 1940, ll. 10. TsGARK, f.345, op. 1, d. 1940, ll. 11. According to Semenov, the only Qazaqs who were receptive to the Bible were dzhataks. Semenov claimed that the most important motivation behind the dzhataks’ wish to convert to Christianity was their material interests, which made their devotion to the teaching of Christ questionable and their adherence to the Russian Orthodox Church unreliable. See Rossiia: Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie nashego otechestva. Nastol’naia i dorozhnaia kniga dlia russkikh liudei, ed. V.P. Semenov, vol. 18 (St. Petersburg, 1903), 222.

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Dobromyslov, significantly decreased the number of Qazaqs who became Christians.75 Volkonskii was afraid that these new converts could escape to the steppe at any time, and that their flight could harm the interests of the empire in the region. The Frontier Commission shared Volkonskii’s belief that Qazaqs only converted for material gain and that they would abandon their new faith: The wish of certain Kirghiz to enter the realm of Christianity is based not on their piety, but on their desire to provide themselves with food. They will not be convinced adherents to the Faith and will easily return to their old life, especially if they are allowed to settle close to the Line.76

Semenov’s observations demonstrate that these fears were not groundless. According to him, the cases of neophytes returning to Islam were quite abundant.77 To minimize the chances of the new Christians’ return to Islam, the Frontier Commission recommended that Volkonskii send converted Qazaqs to one of the two settlements (Nagaibatskaia and Tabynskaia) which were established for neophytes in Orenburg Guberniia. These new converts could then join the Cossack Army. In the case that they did, they were freed from service for a period of three years and the state distributed between five and ten rubles per convert. The Frontier Commission also raised the question of the conversion of Qazaq children and women. According to the opinion of these Russian commissioners, there was no risk for them to stay within the proximity of the steppe after they were baptized, since “the comforts of settled life” would persuade them to “not want to return to their old life.”78 Of course not all Qazaqs wished to convert to Christianity for reasons of material benefits. Dobromyslov described a case in which a Qazaq widow named Mendy Shaverbaeva expressed her wish to become a Christian in 1807. She wanted to convert in order to thank a Russian Cossack who saved her from drowning in the Ural River.79 In other cases, Qazaqs saw conversion to Christianity as the only way to start life from scratch. Conflicts with their clan or the impossibility of resolving a problem within the traditional steppe system of justice were 75 76

77 78 79

Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’,” 224. Ibid., 222–3. The Russian government provided those Qazaqs who converted to Christianity with land allotments and money. See TsGARK, f. 4, op.1, d. 3389, ll. 1–7. Semenov, Rossiia, 222. Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’,” 223. Ibid., 224.

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some of the factors which forced some Qazaqs to leave their community and become Russians in faith and occupation. Here is one of the examples of such a situation: A Qazaq man named Baigozhin and a Qazaq woman named Aisa went to the volost’ administration where they “expressed their decisive desire to become converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity” and asked the official to send them to the nearest settlement that had a church. Their request was fulfilled and they were sent to the Russian village of Chumashki.80 As they did not have any documents, however, their conversion was delayed, but they were allowed to stay in the bathhouse of a local priest. Early in the morning, the priest’s servants witnessed a Qazaq man breaking into the bathhouse. The servants captured him and placed him under arrest. As it turned out, the man they caught was not a burglar, but Ibragim, the husband of Aisa, who came to take back his wife and “talk” to her lover. The Russian authorities sided with the lovers in this conflict: They sent Ibragim to his volost’, and Aisa and Baigozhin were converted to Christianity and married in the Orthodox Church.81 Ibragim’s petition to the governor-general of Siberia of the lovers having stolen three gowns, a horse, two boxes with household items, and forty rubles was refused since Aisa and Baigozhin, two newly converted Christians, swore that they took nothing from him. It is impossible to determine even the approximate numbers of Qazaqs who converted to Christianity. Though the Frontier Commission ordered the registration of all converts, the priests seldom complied. Dobromyslov suggested that only a small fraction of new Christians were registered with the Frontier Commission. To prove his claim, he cited the fact that out of 23 converted Qazaqs who escaped to the steppe from the stanitsa Ust’-Uiskaia in 1814, none had asked the commission for permission to convert to Christianity. The list of those Qazaqs who were officially registered as neophytes in 1817 included 71 people. Dobromyslov thought that in reality their numbers reached several hundred per year. According to the author, Old Believers kept cases of conversion to their faith in secret, as it was a crime to spread what was considered to be “schismatic heresy” in imperial Russia.82

80 81 82

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 841, ll. 3–3ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 841, ll. 3–3ob. Dobromyslov, “Turgaiskaia oblast’,” 228.

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The cases of Aisa, Baigozhin, and Shaverbaeva appear to have been exceptions to the rule, since most of the letters requesting permission for conversion which are presently held in the archives of Omsk and Almaty were composed either by Qazaqs who were raised in Russian settlements or by dzhataks. 5. THE POSSIBILITY OF QAZAQS RETURNING TO THE STEPPE Qazaqs who moved to Russian settlements sometimes thereafter sought permission to return to the steppe. Non-converts frequently had their requests granted. One such individual was a peasant from Tobol’sk Guberniia named Bogembelev, who petitioned the Oblast’ Board of Administration of the Siberian Kirghiz for permission to return with his family to the Akmolinsk okrug. He did not wish to remain a peasant and asked for permission to return to nomadic livestock breeding. As he explained in his petition, his kinsmen had invited him and his family to return and live with them, and he had agreed to assist them in acquiring the livestock necessary for a nomadic life.83 To his request he attached a “Leave Verdict” (Uvol’nitel’nyi Prigovor) from the village commune and a “Receiving Verdict” (Priemnyi Prigovor) signed by his clansmen. The “Leave Verdict” testified that “as long as this family of the Muslim faith does not have any unpaid duties to the treasury or to any individual, and none of them committed any crime, we [the people of the village] do not have any objections to their resettlement.”84 The “Receiving Verdict” stated the wish of Bogombelev’s relatives to accept him into their aul. These two “Verdicts” were enough for the Russian administration to permit Bogombelev and his family to cross the Line and return to their nomadic way of life. Those Qazaqs who were converted to Christianity, however, found it virvirtually impossible to return to the steppe. The Almaty archive has various requests from new converts who expressed their wishes to return to the steppe. For example, Nikolai Alekseev, a converted Christian Qazaq of Ikonnikovo village, Omsk oblast’, wrote to the governor of the oblast’ of Siberian Kirghiz explaining his poor health and being unable to provide his family with sufficient food. As his relatives were ready to accept him and to 83 84

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2288, ll. 1–1ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2288, ll. 2–2ob.

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help in sustaining his family, he requested the governor to allow him to return to the steppe.85 In addition, Dmitrii and Matrena Pavlinov, two Qazaqs of Kulikovka village of the Omsk oblast’, requested to return to the steppe on the grounds that they could not learn agricultural practices, and were unable to grow enough bread to feed themselves and their four children, the eldest of which was five years old.86 Another reason for the request was the old age of some Qazaqs and the absence of anyone to help them. “I am 70 years old,” wrote Praskovia Vasil’eva, a Qazaq woman, “and my husband is 75 years old. The only child we have is our 17-year-old daughter. We do not have any relatives on the Russian side to help us, and we are too old to grow food. Our relatives in the steppe are eager to accept us, and to provide us with food and shelter.”87 Some of the petitions for return can be defined as desperate pleas, since the applicants considered their migration to the steppe as the only means of survival. Tatiana Griaznova wrote that since her husband died three years ago, she had failed to learn any Russian craft and spent everything they managed to save on feeding herself and her 8-year-old daughter who was lame since birth. She begged the Russian administration to expedite her return to the steppe, where her nephew promised to provide for her and her disabled daughter.88 A similar request was sent by the new convert Vasilii Il’in, who added to his request that he vowed to follow the rites of the Christian faith upon his return to a nomadic lifestyle.89 The Russian government, nonetheless, refused the requests of Qazaq Christians who wished to return to the steppe. The Council of the General Board of Administration of the Siberian Kirghiz gave the following explanation for its unwillingness to permit those Qazaqs who converted to Christianity to cross the Line into nomadic territory: It is a well-known fact that all Kirghiz who converted to Christianity are poor people who wander along the Line, that is, in the vicinity of Russian settlements. Not a single one of them is prosperous. That is why there are no doubts that the driving force for the change in their religion was not their belief that their religion was wrong, but their pragmatic interest of some kind. One person adopts Christianity because he desires a milder punishment for some crime that he has committed. Another wants to become a Christian 85 86 87 88 89

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 6–6ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 18–18ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 20–21. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 23–25. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 8–8ob.

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in order not to return a wife whom he has stolen from another Qazaq – they marry in the church and the ex-husband loses any rights to this woman. Such neophytes do not have any idea of the importance of Christian duties. If they are allowed to return to the steppe to live among their clansmen without [us having] any control over them, they will stop following the rites which our religion prescribes to its followers. They and their children will become the same Kirghiz that they were before baptism. For keeping the neophytes in their new religion and preventing them from returning to Muslim practices, it is necessary to settle them in Russian villages immediately after their conversion. Only in the Russian villages with a church will they be under the supervision of a local priest, who should teach them the rules of their new religion. It should be prohibited for a neophyte to go to the steppe for a period of one year even for a short visit.90

This quote indicates that the Russian administration was aware of the fact that some Qazaqs converted to Christianity not because of their religious belief, but in order to enhance their own economic opportunities. Instead of preventing such people from entering the Christian faith, the Russian administration used disciplinary measures to transform converted Qazaqs into “real Christians.” As the examples of the Qazaqs who applied to the Russian administration with requests to be allowed to return to the steppe demonstrate some of their situations were quite unbearable and the only way out for them was to flee across the Line. If they did return to the steppe, the Russian authorities considered their escape “a crime against the Christian faith” and “a crime against the state,” since “leaving their place of residence without written permission” was illegal. These charges were sufficient enough to order officials of the okrug prikaz to capture the “criminals” and to bring them to Omsk or Orenburg where they were to be put on trial.91 6. RUNAWAY NEOPHYTES: THE CASE OF AFANASII ALEKSEEV Though conversion to Christianity seemed to seal a Qazaq’s fate, rendering impossible his or her return to their previous steppe life, there were cases which demonstrate that Qazaqs managed to find ways to overcome this seemingly impermeable obstacle. Here is one such example: The commander of the Akmolinsk Cossack detachment received information that the retired Cossack Afanasii Alekseev with his family lived in the aul administered by lieutenant colonel Kochenov. As Alekseev was ascribed to the Akmolinskaia stanitsa, his residence in the Qazaq aul was illegal. He lived 90 91

TsGARK, f.345, op. 1, d. 2416, ll. 11–14ob. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 506, ll. 1–5.

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there, however, for many years without being disturbed by Russian authorities. The Cossack commander sent his people to the aul and they discovered that the information was true. The named convert, his wife Dar’ia, their 10year-old son, and three daughters were captured and brought to Akmola.92 Along with not observing the rites of the Orthodox Church, which they could not perform in the absence of a church and a priest, it transpired that Alekseev and his wife had committed another crime against the Orthodox faith, in failing to have their children baptized. How did it happen that a newly converted Qazaq and his wife, a Qazaq who was born a Christian, lived for many years among nomads without anyone calling for their return? The investigative committee discovered the following: Afanasii Alekseev belonged to a clan of the Siberian Kirghiz. He converted to Christianity when he was 28. Before the conversion he was an interpreter and, after entering the Christian faith, he petitioned to become a reserve Cossack and to be ascribed to the Krivoi fort. The Russian authorities complied with his request. Soon after his conversion, he married the Christian girl Dar’ia (whose parents were Qazaqs who had converted to Christianity). After seven years of service in Fort Krivoi, Alekseev spent three years in Omsk where he worked at an army clothes factory. Then he was transferred to Karkarala okrug where, after eleven years of service, he retired. After his retirement, he stayed in Karkarala for three years and, then, according to his wish and the request of lieutenant colonel Turtubek Kochenov, Alekseev was transferred to Akmola. The official reason for his transfer to Akmola was Kochenov’s request that he needed a Cossack to protect his house and the mosque. This transfer occurred twelve or more years ago.”93 Here is where the legality of Alekseev’s situation ended. Instead of setsettling in Akmola, he joined his relatives and began to lead a nomadic life with them. Alekseev left the Christian faith and practiced the rites of Islam, together with other Qazaqs. Living in the auls of Alekseev’s relatives, his wife gave birth to three children, none of whom were baptized. It is interesting to note that, though these children were not baptized in the Christian faith because there were not any priests in the area, nor were they converted to Islam. The relatives of Alekseev also testified that, although Alekseev

92 93

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1546, ll. 23–31. TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1546, ll. 23–31.

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occasionally went to the mosque, his wife never practiced the rites of Islam.94 This migration back and forth across the Line dividing Christians and Muslims separated the family along religious lines: The Alekseev family included a Christian wife, a Muslim husband, and children who were neither Christians nor Muslims. Why did both Qazaq and Russian authorities allow this violation of the law to occur? As the investigation demonstrates, they were indifferent to Alekseev’s situation. Cossack officer Vishnevskii, who allowed Alekseev to leave Karkarala for Akmola, informed the investigator that he had no knowledge of Alekseev and his wife’s Christianity since he never asked them about their religious faith and they did not offer that information. His claim that he had no knowledge of their religious affiliation is difficult to believe since both Dar’ia and Afanasii are Christian names, which would not have been given to them unless they were Christians. Moreover, by allowing them to leave Karkarala, Vishnevskii failed to have their children baptized and to enroll their son into the Cossack ranks. Finally, Kochenov testified that even if they were Christians, he did not know whether they left their religion or not, since their aul was far from his. So why did he violate the order of the Cossack authorities and permit Alekseev to wander far from the place to which he was ascribed? Kochenov answered that he was unaware of this law’s existence. Alekseev’s case demonstrates that, with the aid of Qazaq officials in Russian service, it was possible, even for a Qazaq who was converted to Christianity, to return to the steppe and lead a nomadic way of life. Knowing that it was forbidden to allow Alekseev to be transferred to their relatives’ aul, his relatives asked the volost’ chief Kochenov to send Alekseev to their aul under the pretext of protecting his house. When Alekseev and his family arrived, his relatives simply took them back to their aul. This “inventive native accommodation,” 95 coupled with the cooperation (or perhaps carelessness) of Russian officials permitted Qazaqs to achieve their goals even if they violated imperial laws. Life on the frontier was not as well regulated from St. Petersburg as traditional historians depicted.

94 95

TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1546, ll. 23–31. Dov Yaroshevski coined this term. See Dov Yaroshevski, “Empire and Citizenship,” in: Russia’s Orient, 72.

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7. RUSSIANS WHO BECAME MUSLIMS Before concluding this paper, I should like to give another example which illustrates two of the aforementioned points: first, that a redefinition of religious affiliation was caused primarily by hopes to improve one’s material situation, and secondly that being a Russian Orthodox Christian in what is now Kazakhstan did not give an individual any privileges over the followers of other religions. A result of the Revolution of 1905 was a series of edicts promulgated by the tsarist government, which allowed Orthodox Christians to redefine their religious affiliation.96 Along with the cases of conversion from Islam to Christianity described earlier, these edicts initiated cases in which ethnic Russian settlers abandoned Orthodox Christianity and converted to Islam. The newspaper “Russian Turkestan Diocesan Gazette,” which was published in Turkestan, informed its readers in 1908 of the conversion of an ethnic Russian priest(!) named Gornov to Islam. According to the account, the priest converted to Islam due to the poverty in which he lived and he hoped that, by becoming a Muslim, he would improve his material situation. Upon conversion, the local Muslim society awarded Gornov with a lump sum of 1,000 rubles, which he invested in a commercial enterprise to support himself in his old age.97 Gornov was not the only Russian who became a Muslim. Although the Russians who abandoned their religion explained their actions by the fact that “Islam is more conducive to their moods,”98 local Russian administrators claimed that, in actuality, they converted out of material interests, such as the “hope of receiving assistance from their Muslim neighbors, the possibility of obtaining kalym (bride price) in case they marr[ied] a local girl, etc.”99 The aforementioned examples prove that the point of view that “full privileges [in the Russian Empire] would be bestowed only on Christians and converts” does not always hold true.100 The afore-going discussion suggests that privileges granted to Russian Orthodox Church did not necessarily mean that the conversion to Christian Orthodoxy guaranteed the welfare of the neophytes.

96 97 98 99 100

Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 334 Sultangalieva, Islam v Kazakhstane, 39. Ibid. Ibid. Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier, 39.

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The cases which we have examined also reveal that since conversion to Christianity created an obstacle for Qazaqs wishing to negotiate different cultural spheres, it went against the economic interests of the natives of the steppe. The ability to negotiate cultures was a prerequisite for an individual’s success in the eastern Russian borderlands, yet this was something which the Russians directly prohibited in their policies toward converted Qazaqs. The confines of this paper prevent me from giving numerous examples of the Qazaq individuals who were able to gain wealth and prestige by adopting some elements of Russian culture, while also preserving their ties to their tribesmen. Let then the following example suffice. In his petition written to the Russian administration in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Qazaq Tynybai Kachkin explained his desire to settle in Semipalatinsk because of the fact that since his early years he had been a merchant’s assistant and had adopted a settled way of life. When he came of age, he went to the steppe to trade with Qazaqs. As he wrote in his petition to the Semipalatinsk police department, “these last six years of Kirghiz life were unbearable for me, but allowed me to collect sufficient funds for building a wooden house in the merchants’ part of Semipalatinsk.”101 Of interest here is the fact that, despite his description of “Kirghiz life” as “unbearable,” Kachkin did not wish to break the ties which connected him to his clan. Moreover, as he added in his petition, “the better people and the biis of our volost’ elected me to be their elder (starshina).”102 He asked the police department to approve his election and to allow him to build a house in Semipalatinsk. Neither Qazaqs nor Russian authorities found it unacceptable that a Qazaq lived in a Russian settlement while being simultaneously an elder of his clan, which continued a nomadic way of life. Living in two worlds was possible and beneficial on the frontier: Russian authorities both allowed Kachkin to build a house in Semipalatinsk and to take the leadership of his clan. Conversion to Christianity would deprive him of such an opportunity. Hardly surprisingly, then, Kachkin preferred to remain a Muslim, rather than converting to Christianity.

101 102

TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 505, ll. 4–4ob. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 505, ll. 5–5ob.

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8. CONCLUSION As the evidence provided in this article demonstrates, conversion to Christianity was successful only in cases following the neophytes’ inclusion into Russian society, which occurred with the Qazaq children adopted by Russians or Qazaq farmhands who had lived with their Russian employers for many years. In such instances, Qazaqs’ redefinition of their faith was the final step in their Russification, making them Russians in all but ethnic terms. In all other cases, conversion for a Qazaq meant an abrupt break with his or her family, traditions, way of life, and economic practices. Russian authorities used repressive methods to ensure this break by forcing the neophytes to stay away from their kin and prohibiting them from pursuing their traditional economic practices. Duties imposed on the neophytes clearly outweighed their rights, placing them in a disadvantageous position. Deprived of assistance from their kinsmen and unable to provide for themselves, the new converts experienced hardships which Russian authorities were either unable or unwilling to alleviate. Conversion to the privileged Orthodox religion meant for the Qazaqs more losses than gains. Russian society was not closed, and Russians allowed the natives of the newly incorporated lands to enter their society. The acquisition of the most important identity marker of Russianness – conversion to Russian Orthodox Christianity – made inclusion easier, as it caused the severance of ties connecting a Qazaq to his tribe. In the eyes of the imperial state, conversion turned a Qazaq into a Russian, at least legally. Conversion also drastically curtailed a Qazaq’s rights, since the state could henceforth determine his or her way of life and place of residence. Thus, the gates which the state opened to allow Qazaq converts into Russian society often led them directly into a trap. By establishing impermeable boundaries which separated the new converts from the non-Christian members of the frontier society, Russian imperial authorities endeavored to change this outlying region from a “borderland” (territory of active economic interactions and mutual acculturation) to a “borderline” (a place which set impervious boundaries between representatives of different religions). Since this transformation went against the economic interests of the members of the frontier society, and the Russian state did not have sufficient resources to impose its vision of intercultural relations or to make this transformation beneficial for the individuals, such policies were doomed to failure. As the evidence presented in this paper demonstrates, the number of converts was insignificant and

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even those Qazaqs who became Christians used different methods to alter their status, either by petitioning the Russian administration or escaping to the steppe.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Geins, A. K., Sobranie literaturnykh trudov, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1897) Grigor’ev, V., “Orenburgskie Kirgizy: Ikh chestnost’ i umenie v torgovykh delakh,” Narodnyi Vestnik (1864) Karnilov, Zamechaniia o Sibiri senatora Karnilova (St. Petersburg, 1828) Kazantsev, I. N., Opisanie Kirgiz-Kaisakov (St. Petersburg, 1867) Kirgiz, “Kirgizy-Dzhataki: Etnograficheskii ocherk,” Russkaia Rech’ 8 (1879) Levshin, A. Istoricheskoe i statisticheskoe obozrenie Ural’skikh kazakov (St. Petersburg, 1823) Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, ser. 1, vol. 22 and 38 Semenov, V.P., ed., Rossiia: Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie nashego otechestva. Nastol’naia i dorozhnaia kniga dlia russkikh liudei, vol. 18 (St. Petersburg, 1903)

Secondary Literature Abdirov, M. Zh., “Voenno-Kazach’ia kolonizatsiia Kazakhstana (konets XVI veka – nachalo XX veka), Opyt istoriko-evoliutsionnogo analiza” (Ph.D. diss., Kazakhstan State University, 1997) Akiner, Shirin, Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union (London, 1983) Apollova, N. G., Khoziaistvennoe osvoenie Priirtysh’ia v kontse XVI – pervoi polovine XIX v. (Moscow, 1976) Artykbaev, Zh. O., Istoriia Kazakhstana: Uchebnik dlia vuzov (Kostanai, 2006) Aspandiiarov, Bilial, Obrazovanie Bukeevskoi Ordy i ee likvidatsia (Alma-Ata, 1947) Bacon, Elizabeth, Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study in Culture Change (Ithaca, NY, 1966) Barrett, Thomas M., At the Edge of Empire: The Terek Cossacks and the North Caucasus Frontier (Boulder, 1999) Bassin, Mark, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge, 1999) Breyfogle, Nicholas B., Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (Ithaca, NY/London, 2005) DeWeese, Devin, Islamization and the Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994) Dobromyslov, A. I., “Turgaiskaia oblast’. Istoricheskii ocherk,” Izvestiia Orenburgskogo otdela Imperatorskogo geograficheskogo obshchestva, vol. 1 (Orenburg, 1900) Frank, Allen J., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001) Geraci, Robert, “Going Abroad, Going to Russia? Orthodox Missionaries in the Kazakh Steppe, 1881–1917,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in

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Tsarist Russia, eds. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001), 274– 310 Geraci, Robert, and Khodarkovsky, Michael, “Introduction,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001): 1-15 Kappeler, Andreas, “Iuzhnyi i vostochnyi frontir Rossii v XVI – XVIII vekakh,” Ab Imperio 1 (2003): 47-64 –––––, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History (Harlow, 2001) Khodarkovsky, Michael, “‘Ignoble Savages and Unlawful Subjects:’ Constructing NonChristian Identities in Early Modern Russia,” in: Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, eds. Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 1997): 9-26 –––––, “The Conversion of Non-Christians in Early Modern Russia,” in: Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia, eds. Michael Khodarkovsky and Robert Geraci (Ithaca, NY, 2001): 115-43 –––––, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 2002) Konshin, M., Chto mogut dat’ issledovateliu Semipalatinskie arkhivy (Semipalatinsk, 1929) Krader, Lawrence, Peoples of Central Asia (Bloomington, IN, 1963) Liubimov, P. P., “Religii i veroispovedal’nyi sostav naseleniia Aziatskoi Rossii,” in: Aziatskaia Rossiia, liudi i poriadki za Uralom, ed. G. V. Glinka (St. Petersburg, 1914) Malikov, Yuriy, Tsars, Cossacks and Nomads. The Formation of a Borderland Culture in Northern Kazakhstan in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Berlin, 2011) Masevich, M. G., Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana (so vremeni prisoedineniia Kazakhstana k Rossii do Velikoi Oktiabr’skoi Sotsialisticheskoi Revoliutsii) (Alma-Ata, 1960) Olcott, Martha Brill, The Kazakhs, 2nd ed. (Stanford, 1995) Omarzaev, F. M., ed., Tsarskaia kolonizatsiia v Kazakhstane. Po materialam russkoi periodicheskoi pechati 19 v. (Almaty, 1995) Pearson, Raymond, “Privilegii, prava i rusifikatsiia,” Ab Imperio 3 (2003): 35-56 Polonskaya, Ludmila and Malashenko, Alexei, Islam in Central Asia (Lebanon, 1994) Privratsky, Bruce G., Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001) Remnev, Anatoly, “Tatars on the Kazakh Steppe: Allies and Rivals of the Russian Empire”, paper presented at the 38th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Washington, D.C., 2006) Slezkine, Yuri, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North (Ithaca, NY, 1994) Sultangalieva, A. K., Islam v Kazakhstane: Istoriia, etnichnost’ i obshchestvo (Almaty, 1998) Sunderland, Willard, “Russians into Iakuts? “Going Native” and Problems of Russian National Identity in the Siberian North, 1870s-1914,” Slavic Review 55/4 (1996): 806-25 Tynyshpaev, M., Istoriia Kazakhskogo naroda (Almaty, 2002) Wheeler, Geoffrey, The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia (London, 1964) –––––, “Russian Conquest and Colonization of Central Asia,” in: Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution, ed. Taras Hunczak (Lanham, 2000)

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Yaroshevski, Dov, “Empire and Citizenship” in: Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, eds. Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington, IN/Indianapolis, 1997), 58-79

Sufis, Scholars, and Divanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the Works of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï ALLEN J. FRANK Takoma Park, Maryland

Poet, historian, genealogist, folklorist and Islamic scholar, Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï (1857–1931) was a major cultural figure in the history of the Qazaq steppe of the late imperial and early Soviet eras. For the most part he is still little known outside of Qazaq-language literature, largely perhaps because his conservative religious orientation made him unattractive to historians and literary critics in Soviet Kazakhstan, who preferred to focus on secular, modernist, or plainly Russophile Qazaq intellectuals such as Chokan Valikhanov, M. Dulatov, and Abay Qunanbayulï.1 In independent Kazakhstan Mäshhür Zhüsip has made something of a comeback. This has been particularly the case in his native Pavlodar province, where local leaders have appropriated his legacy, and where local scholars have published a thirteen-volume collection of his written works, transcribed from Arabic-script Qazaq into Cyrillic-script Qazaq. Pavlodar State University is also home to the Mäshhür Studies Center that has supported the publication of scholarly studies and conferences devoted to his legacy.2 There is a large mosque named after him in Pavlodar, and his tomb near Bayanaul is today a pilgrimage site.3 However his works have also been published in Almaty, in 1

2

3

This is not to say that he was completely ignored during the Soviet era. He is mentioned several times in the Brezhnev-era official history of the Kazakh SSR; cf. Qazaq SSR tarikhï, III (Alma-Ata, 1982), 507, 509–510. In fact the collection is projected to eventually comprise twenty volumes. Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï, Shïgharmalarï, 13 voll. (Pavlodar, 2003–2008); cf. also VII Mäshhür Zhüsip oqularï attï khalïqlararasï ghïlmi-praktikalïq konferentsiya materialdarï (Pavlodar, 2010); L. Q. Zhüsipova, Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï derektanushï: oqu quralï, (Pavlodar, 2007). Several of his poems have also been translated into English; cf. Mashkhur Jusup Kopeiuly, Selected Poems I–III (Pavlodar, 2007–2008). How early Mäshhür Zhüsip’s tomb became a pilgrimage site is not clear, however the Soviet authorities destroyed his mausoleum in the early 1960’s, and as of 1977 Soviet of-

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separate volumes, and there is no question that he is a nationally-recognized literary figure, and a prime example of a great literary figure “rediscovered” as a result of Kazakhstan’s independence.4 Mäshhür Zhüsip was born in the Middle Horde’s Arghïn tribe, and belonged to that tribe’s Külik clan. Although he studied in Bukhara and Tashkent, as well as in Bayanaul, near where he was born, his focus throughout his life was the Qazaq communities located roughly between Semipalatinsk and the town of Akmolinsk, today known as Astana. Mäshhür Zhüsip’s life straddled the tsarist and Soviet eras, and although he appears to have ceased publishing during the Soviet era, he nevertheless remained active as a poet and historian, producing several manuscript works in this era.5 There is no question that Mäshhür Zhüsip’s collected works will prove to be an indispensable body of sources for understanding Islamic culture on the Qazaq steppe during the late-Imperial and early Soviet periods, and particularly for appreciating the nomadic dimensions of the region’s Islamic history. One of his main areas of activity was the collection and recording of Qazaq oral traditions. He recorded numerous oral epics, and he transcribed the poetry of earlier aqïns (poets) and zhïraws (bards) as they were remembered in his time. He claimed to be the first person to write down Qazaq historical and genealogical traditions in his region. Mäshhür Zhüsip was also the author of numerous original works. Much of this corpus consists of epic poems devoted to the prophets memorialized in Islamic tradition and figures from early Islamic history. He also wrote many verse works devoted to the Islamic sciences of adab (Islamic etiquette), tafsƯr

4

5

ficials were reporting, whether accurately or not, that pilgrims were no longer visiting his tomb; cf. Iz istorii islama v Pavlodarskom Priirtysh’e 1919–1999, eds. V. D. Boltina and L. V. Sheveleva (Pavlodar, 2001), 333. Some intellectual histories also provide a more extensive discussion of Mäshhür Zhüsip; cf. Wälikhan Qalïzhanulï, Qazaq ädebietindegi dini-aghartushïlïq aghïm (Almaty, 1998), 180–210; more recently, a group of Astana scholars, including Maqsat Alpïsbes, have focused on Mäshhür Zhüsip’s legacy as a genealogist; cf. Maqsat Alpïsbes et al., Köne Köktav, bayïrghï Bayanaula baytaghïnïng tarikhï (Astana, 2005), 432–446. Most of Mäshhür Zhüsip’s manuscripts are housed in Almaty at the Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan and in the National Library of Kazakhstan. Some autographs also remain in the hands of his descendants. For a discussion of his manuscripts cf. Zhüsipova, Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï derektanushï, 26–50.

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(exegesis) and kalƗm (dogmatic theology), as well as autobiographical works, praise poems for local figures, and travel or pilgrimage poems. However, it is Mäshhür Zhüsip’s legacy as a historian and folklorist that we are concerned with here. He devoted much attention to recording the historical traditions of his own Arghïn tribe, as far back as the Shïbanid era, and preserved a great deal of material on the Qazaqs’ historical memory of the khƗns and their conflicts with the Oirats. He is also one of our main sources on Qazaq genealogy, especially for the Qazaqs and khwƗjas of the Middle Horde. This chapter will examine Mäshhür Zhüsip’s works as biographical sources for Sufis and scholars in the Middle Horde. Detailed biographical information about Qazaq scholars in the nomadic environment is still exceedingly rare, and broader generalizations about Islamic institutions on the steppe are dependent upon a better understanding the Islamic institutions among nomads in particular. Despite the wealth of biographical information in his works, Mäshhür Zhüsip does not attempt a disciplined biographical exposition of the steppe as we can see in the case of his contemporary QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, who was evidently strongly influenced by the main currents of Tatar historiography, in which biographical dictionaries were a particularly prominent genre. Rather, Mäshhür Zhüsip’s biographical information is scattered throughout the corpus of his works, in both his verse works, especially his praise and travel and pilgrimage poems, and in his prose works, which include autobiographical writings, genealogies, and historical works. Like QurbƗn‫ޏ‬AlƯ, Mäshhür Zhüsip records both Qazaq oral tradition and his own observations and recollections. However, Mäshhür Zhüsip’s interests are so wide-ranging, and his attention so thorough, that we are able to appreciate the broader social, political, and literary aspects of how oral culture functioned in Qazaq nomadic society. His writings are especially instructive because they refute ʊ conclusively, I suggest ʊ the assumption that religious heterodoxy was a standard feature of Islamic practice among the Qazaq nomads. The fact that Mäshhür Zhüsip does not feel a need to address this issue further demonstrates the prominence of Islamic orthodoxy among the Qazaq nomads. His portraits of patrons, scholars, and especially ƯshƗns and divanas, reveal a system of practices and institutional structures for all intents and purposes similar to those documented in the Volga-Ural region and sedentary Central Asia. At the same time, Mäshhür Zhüsip’s works are instructive for demonstrating that scholars or ƯshƗns did not necessarily conform to ethnic or descent divisions, just as there was no necessary division between ƯshƗns and scholars, with individuals freely crossing such

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imaginary lines. In this regard, the situation on the Qazaq steppe is reminisreminiscent of the Soviet era, where the distinction between “official” and “unofficial” clerics has proven to be illusory. The scope of Mäshhür Zhüsip’s geographical and chronological coverage is relatively restricted. He is not so much concerned with an overview of the ҵulamƗҴ, which is the typical subject for Islamic biographical dictionaries; rather his exposition of Sufis and scholars on the Qazaq steppe is based on his own recollections as a young man, and on the figures he either knew himself in his childhood and youth, or on what others told him at that time. As a result, the chronological limits of his attention are restricted to the middle of the 19th century, roughly corresponding from about 1860 to 1880. Geographically his discussion is centered in Bayanaul, and its limits included Omsk to the north, Akmolinsk (today Astana) to the west and Karkaralinsk to the east and south. This area corresponds largely to the territory of the Arghïn and Qïpshaq tribes, and forms the heart of the region known among Qazaqs as the Sarï Arqa, or Arqa Zhurt.6 1. PATRONS The information that Mäshhür Zhüsip provides on the types of patrons and the role they played in sustaining scholars and Sufis provides insights on the evolution of Islamic patronage among the Qazaq nomads. His accounts make it clear that from the middle of the 19th century scholars, ƯshƗns, khwƗjas, and divanas were not uncommon among the nomads of the Middle Horde. They received support from Chinggisids and more often wealthy tribal Qazaqs, especially those holding official positions in the Russian administrative system. The question of how nomadic patronage of Sufis and scholars evolved among the Qazaqs under Russian rule is complicated by our sources relating to the earlier period, particularly for the period before 1822. Russian sources, including the writings of Russophile Qazaqs such as Chokan Valikhanov and Muhammad-Salih Babadzhanov generally perceive Sufis and scholars as a foreign element imposed upon the Qazaqs as a result of the negligence on the part of Russian officials. These Russophiles describe Sufis and scholars as “Sarts and Tatars,” and calls for restricting the 6

On the historical geography of the Arqa Zhurt cf. B. Kh. Karmysheva and Dzh. Kh. Karmysheva, “Chto takoe Arka-Iurt? (k istoricheskoi geografii Kazakhstana),” Onomastika Vostoka (Moscow, 1980): 108–114.

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activities of non-Qazaq Muslims usually accompany these descriptions. In their view, there were neither Qazaq scholars nor Qazaq patrons before 1822. Many Tatar authors make a similar argument, giving their fellow Tatars credit for “bringing” Islam to the Qazaqs, but again failing to mention the role of Qazaq patrons in supporting these figures. 7 Mäshhür Zhüsip paints quite a different picture for the Sarï Arqa, demonstrating that by the middle of the 19th century patronage was firmly under the control of Qazaq notables, and that religious figures themselves were for the most part from among the khwƗjas and tribal Qazaqs. A similar pattern is documented for the early 20th century among Qazaqs under Chinese rule, particularly in the Altay region.8 It appears clear that among nomadic Qazaqs the patronage of religious figures was closely linked to political power. For the earlier period, especially before 1822, we mainly encounter Chinggisid patronage of scholars, and beginning in the 18th century we see the Russian state also functioning in the role of patron, subsidizing and appointing Muslim scholars to the Qazaq khƗns.9 However, Russian administrative reforms of the steppe in the 1820’s and 1860’s gradually stripped the Chinggisids of their political authority, and “commoners” were increasingly appointed to positions of authority. In the eastern regions of the Qazaq steppe, including among communities under Chinese authority, Chinggisid patronage appears to have remained stronger, although overall patronage of scholars and Sufis clearly shifted by the middle of the 19th century to Russian-appointed political leaders and to wealthy nomads from among the tribal Qazaqs. However it should not be assumed that patronage was restricted by ethnic and economic boundaries, since there are numerous accounts of Qazaq patrons funding mosques and madrasas in cities such as Semipalatinsk, Ayaguz (Sergiopol’), and Orsk. 10 However among nomadic communities patrons were almost exclusively Qazaqs. Unlike merchants, who typically 7

8 9

10

JahƗn-ShƗh b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-JabbƗr an-NƯzhghƗrnj৬Ư, TƗrƯkh-i AstarkhƗn (Astrakhan, 1907) 27– 28. Malik Chanishif, Junggo tatar ma’arip tarikhi (Urumchi, 2001), 113–114. A. Dobrosmyslov, “Zaboty imperatritsy Ekateriny II o prosveshchenii kirgizov,” Trudy Orenburgskoi Uchenoi Arkhivnoi Komissii IX (1902): 51–63. Cf. ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ, TƗrƯkh-i MuҵƗdhƯya (Orenburg, 1907), 10; Materials for the Islamic history of Semipalatinsk: two manuscripts by A‫ۊ‬mad-WalƯ al-QazƗnƯ and QurbƗn ҵali KhƗlidƯ, eds. Allen J. Frank and Mirkasyim A. Usmanov (Berlin, 2001), 24; QurbƗn‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, TavƗrƯkh-i Khamsa-yi SharqƯ (Kazan, 1910), 420.

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supported urban institutions with cash donations, nomadic patrons generally supported Sufis and scholars with in-kind offerings, including livestock. QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ mentions one Chinggisid patron in the eastern Qazaq steppe, Bek Sultan Törä b. Aghaday KhƗn, who supported a Bashkir scholar known only as BƗbƗy, 11 and he also mentions tribal figures, including Jümantük, a leader of a Nayman clan, who supported another Bashkir scholar named ণakƯm JƗn MullƗ.12 Toward the end of the 19th century Qazaq notables in the Chinese Altay, including both tribal Qazaqs and Chinggisids, were also acting as patrons to scholars who were establishing maktabs and even madrasas in their encampments.13 Mäshhür Zhüsip focuses primarily on several non-Chinggisid patrons who held positions of authority in Bayanaul district, including the first Senior Sultan (duwanbasï in Qazaq, starshii sultan in Russian) in Bayanaul, a certain Shong Biy Edigeulï (1754–1836),14 and his successor Musa Shormanulï (1818–1884). 15 These figures were Russian appointees responsible for the administration of specific nomadic clans. Administrative seats, (duwan in Qazaq, prikaz in Russian) were established throughout much of the eastern and central Qazaq steppe in the 1830’s; one such administrative seat was Bayanaul, which was established in 1833 on the site of an existing Cossack settlement. These small administrative centers typically contained several official buildings, but often gradually grew into commercial and, especially in the case of Bayanaul, religious centers. The Russian administrative reforms of 1822 also allowed the appointment of officially-licensed imƗms (ukaznye mully in Russian sources) in these settlements, and in some cases, such as in Bayanaul, and the neighboring district of Qarqaralï (Karkaralinsk), the Qazaq Senior Sultans also acted as patrons, establishing mosques 11

12 13 14 15

QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, eds. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005), ff. 33a–34a; QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, TavƗrƯkh-i Khamsa-yi SharqƯ, 454–455. QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary, fol. 41a. Chanishif, Junggo tatar ma’arip tarikhi, 112–114. On Shong Biy cf. Alpïsbes et al., Köne Köktav, 254–261. He appears in Russian sources as Musa Chormanov. His sister was Chokan Valikhanov’s mother, and he is also the author of numerous ethnographic articles on Qazaq life in Russian journals; cf. G. N. Potanin, “V iurte posledniago kirgizskago tsarevicha,” Russkoe Bogatstvo 8 (1896): 78; his ethnographic writings for Russian periodicals have recently been republished; cf. Musa Shormanov, Kazakhskie narodnye obychai, 2nd ed. (Astana, 2007).

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and madrasas, and seeking out prestigious scholars to serve as imƗms and mudarrises.16 In Bayanaul, the original Senior Sultan, Shong Biy, evinced little interest in this new type of patronage. In 1833 the Russians authorized an ukaznyi mulla for Bayanaul, but Shong Biy rejected the idea because, in his view, the Qazaqs “had prayed in their yurts for a thousand years, and he saw no reason to change that.” However in 1838 or 1839 Musa Shormanulï began collecting money for a mosque, and by 1844 its construction had been completed.17 Mäshhür Zhüsip identifies several imƗms and mudarrises whom Shormanulï attracted to Bayanaul. He does not usually provide dates, but because his account is largely based in his childhood recollections, it appears these figures were present in Bayanaul in the 1860’s. He credits Shormanulï with bringing Fayzolla ƮshƗn who served as ukaznyi mullƗ. Fayzolla ƮshƗn was born in Bayanaul, but came from a family of khwƗjas, and was descended from a shaykh al-islƗm in Turkistan. He is said to have been living in an encampment called Atïghay, when Shormanulï bought him a house in Bayanaul and moved him in.18 In 1866 Shormanulï brought to Bayanaul as imƗm and mudarris Qamaraddin ণazrat (b. 1807), a Qazaq scholar who had been serving as District Ɨkhnjnd (oblastnoi Ɨkhnjnd) in Omsk. 19 However, before coming to Omsk, Qamaraddin had been supported by several other Senior Sultans, including Qongïr Qozha Qudaymendeulï, in Akmolinsk, and the Kerey Senior Sultan Turlïbek.20 Wealthy tribal Qazaqs also emerge as the patrons of Sufis and scholars. In response to an appeal for assistance from the Sufi Qurmanbay Abïz Bayqonaq, a wealthy Qazaq named Qïstabay Abïz Sarïqusanulï gave Qurmanbay fifty of his 300 sheep with which to support himself. Later

16

17

18 19 20

Qunanbay Öskenbayulï was the Senior Sultan in Karkaralinsk at that time; on him cf. Zhanuzak Kasymbaev, Starshii Sultan Kunanbai Oskenbaev i ego okruzhenie (Almaty, 2004). Qalmuqan Isabay and Sapar Bayzhan-Ata, Qazhïgha barghan qazaqtar (Almaty, 1996), 19. Shïgharmalarï IX, 266; X, 167. Shïgharmalarï IX, 307. Shïgharmalarï I, 254; Qongïr Qozha Qudaymendeulï (born ca. 1794) appears in Russian sources as Sultan Konur-kul’dzha Khudaimendin. The administrative seat (prikaz) of Akmolinsk was established in 1830 at the site of his winter encampment; cf. Zh. Kasymbaev and N. Aguev, Istoriia Akmoly (Almaty, 1998), 9–14.

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Qurmanbay received money from Musa Shormanulï to go on the ‫ۊ‬ajj.21 Support for religious figures could also involve kinship ties, as the case of the same Qïstabay Abïz who gave his daughter in marriage to a local khwƗja and ƯshƗn named Isabek ƮshƗn.22 2. SCHOLARS The line dividing Sufis from scholars can be an arbitrary one, since on the Qazaq steppe, as in the Volga-Ural region and Central Asia, Sufism was in fact understood as a constituent Islamic science, and was commonly one of several disciplines an educated Muslim would study. However, Muslim biographers sometimes made the distinction, perhaps because Islamic science was divided into two components, ‫ޏ‬ilm-i bƗ‫ܒ‬in, or the esoteric sciences that included most prominently Sufism, and ‫ޏ‬ilm-i ܲƗhir, the exoteric sciences, that included scholarship in a more narrow sense, to include tafsƯr, QurҴƗn recitation, Islamic law, dogmatic theology, and so forth. Also, it appears clear enough that specific figures were often remembered primarily as either Sufis or scholars, even if they in fact were licensed in both disciplines. Scholars who are remembered as focusing on exoteric sciences are relatively few in Mäshhür Zhüsip’s works, and their absence may confirm the general observation among Tatar scholars that the exoteric sciences were rather poorly developed on the Qazaq steppe in the 19th century, although these same Tatar observers also comment on the rapid development of such sciences among Qazaq nomads by the early 20th century. These Tatar commentators generally attribute the growth of Islamic scholarship among the nomads to the religious zeal of the Qazaqs themselves, and also to the expansion of Islamic institutions on the steppe. It appears clear enough that the administrative and economic integration of the Qazaq Steppe with Russia in fact contributed substantially to the development of Islamic institutions and Islamic knowledge among the nomads.23 21 22 23

Shïgharmalarï IX, 266–7. Shïgharmalarï IX, 265–6. Allen J. Frank, “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Toward an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Identities in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 285–7.

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Mäshhür Zhüsip’s works illustrate this development quite clearly, espeespecially since he describes figures and events from the 1860’s, which is somewhat earlier than did most Tatar observers. His accounts demonstrate that Islamic scholarship and education, that is, the exoteric sciences, were most closely dependent upon patrons who held political positions in the Russian administrative structure, that is, above all Senior Sultans. Scholars were primarily established in the administrative center of Bayanaul, and, as we shall see, were mainly tribal Qazaqs and khwƗjas, thereby challenging the opinion voiced by Valikhanov and others that Muslims scholars came mainly from outside of Qazaq society. In fact, by the middle of the 19th century Qazaq imƗms and mullƗs were especially numerous in the Qazaq Junior Horde.24 We must include Mäshhür Zhüsip himself among the scholars active in the region, since, as we have seen, he produced numerous works touching upon a series of Islamic sciences, and his biography places him among the most educated figures in the territory. His father, Köpey, had received some education in Petropavlovsk around 1817, before he fell ill and was forced later to work to support himself, although later in his life he was able to study Sufism in Tashkent with Abnj’l-QƗsim KhƗn ƮshƗn KhƗn.25 But it is clear enough that Köpey saw to it that his son’s education was more complete than his own. Mäshhür Zhüsip tells us that at age five he was studying in Bayanaul with Najm al-DƯn ণazrat, a maktab instructor who had studied in Bukhara. He describes himself as a precocious child who by age six was reading the chahƗr-kitƗb. At age eight he continued his studies in Bayanaul with Qamaraddin ণazrat studying fiqh by means of the Mukhta‫܈‬ar al-WiqƗya.26 At age 29 he went to Bukhara, where he studied at the Ulughbek Madrasa under ণamza KhwƗja, at the Pay-Astana Madrasa with the Tatar muftƯ SirƗj ad-DƯn,27 and elsewhere with MiyƗn MƗlik b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-QƗdir 24

25 26

27

Istoriia Bukeevskoi ordy, 1801–1852 gg., ed. B. T. Zhanaev (Almaty, 2002), 776–9; Isabay and Bayzhan-Ata, Qazhïgha barghan qazaqtar, 20–21. On that figure cf. QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary, ff. 21b-22a. This is a fiqh text attributed to ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh SadrƯ-SharƯ‫ޏ‬a; on its place within the ণanafƯ curriculum cf. N. Khanykov, Opisanie Bukharskago khanstva, (St. Petersburg, 1843), 216. Abnj’l-AkrƗm DamullƗ SirƗj ad-DƯn al-ৡƗritaghƯ (d. 1310 AH 1892/3 CE), a Tatar scholar who served as muftƯ in Bukhara; cf. Aতmad b. ণƗfi਌ ad-DƯn al-BarangavƯ, TƗrƯkh-i BarƗngavƯ, Institut Rukopisei Tatarskoi Akademii Nauk, koll. 39, op. 1, ed. kh. 34, fol. 199a.

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SƗhibzƗda ƮshƗn.28 He then went to Tashkent, to that city’s Beshaghach district, and studied under Abnj’l-QƗsim KhƗn ƮshƗn KhƗn.29 In this respect, it is important to recognize that Mäshhür Zhüsip’s education in both a Russian administrative center and in the madrasas and khƗnqƗhs of Bukhara and Tashkent was by no means unusual among nomadic Qazaqs. QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ mentions several Qazaq graduates of Bukharan madrasas, as do Aতmad BarangavƯ and Mäshhür Zhüsip himself.30 As we have seen, the first Senior Sultan in Bayanaul, Shong Biy, refused the Islamic scholars whom the Russian authorities were willing to send to Bayanaul, but his successor, Musa Shormanulï made considerable efforts to staff Bayanaul’s mosque, madrasa, and maktab. Mäshhür Zhüsip provides little information on his first teacher, Najm al-DƯn ণazrat, except that he had studied in Bukhara and taught in Bayzhan ণazrat’s madrasa. 31 Bayzhan ণazrat was the Tatar mudarris in Bayanaul who departed on the ‫ۊ‬ajj in 1857 and who died while performing the pilgrimage.32 We can also include among the officially-recognized scholars in Bayanaul the mosque’s “licensed imƗm” Fayzolla ƮshƗn, who is mentioned above. Mäshhür Zhüsip provides considerably more information on his own teacher, the former Ɨkhnjnd Qamaraddin ণazrat, whom Musa Shormanulï recruited from Omsk in 1866. Qamaraddin was a Qazaq. He was from the Inner Horde – that is, from the Junior zhüz ʊ and studied in several madrasas in Bukhara. His origins in the Inner Horde and his education may not be coincidences. During his reign, (1824–45) the khƗn of the Inner Horde, Jahangir KhƗn Bükeykhanulï made the training of imƗms and other Islamic scholars from among the Qazaq nomads an important priority. As a result, he sent many young Qazaqs to study in madrasas in Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region. There is no indication what position, if any, Qamaraddin may have held in the Inner Horde, since his name does not

28

29 30

31 32

See Anke von Kügelgen, “Sufimeister und Herrscher im Zwiegespräch: Die Schreiben des Faঌl Aতmad aus Peschawar an AmƯr ণaydar in Buchara,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia Vol. 3, Arabic, Persian and Turkic Manuscripts (15th – 19th Centuries), eds. A. von Kügelgen, A. Muminov, M. Kemper (Berlin, 2000), 232. Shïgharmalarï IV, 251–2, IX, 276–7. TƗrƯkh-i BarƗngavƯ, fol. 209b; Alpïsbes et al., Köne Köktav, 430–431; QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary, fol. 26a. Shïgharmalarï IX, 277, X, 38. Shïgharmalarï IX, 264, X, 38, 219.

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appear among a list of 107 officially-appointed Qazaq mullƗs among the clans of the Inner Horde compiled in 1848.33 After completing his studies in Bukhara, Qamaraddin ণazrat did not return to the Inner Horde, but rather obtained the patronage of the Chinggisid Senior Sultan based in Akmolinsk, Qongïr Qozha Qudaymendeulï and taught among the Qïpshaqs subordinate to him, in the Zhar avïlï region. His next patron was the Counselor (sovetnik) and Kerey Senior Sultan Turlïbek (Koshenov). Qamaraddin ণazrat then traveled to Omsk, where he served as the Territorial Ɨkhnjnd (oblastnoi Ɨkhnjnd) until 1866, when Shormanulï traveled to Omsk and successfully convinced Qamaraddin to come to Bayanaul to serve as mudarris and imƗm there.34 In a genealogy of Arghïn Qazaqs descended from the ancestor Basantiyin, Mäshhür Zhüsip provides some biographical information on another Ɨkhnjnd in Omsk, probably Qamaraddin’s successor, Zhaqay Akhun. This figure appears in QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ’s biographical dictionary under the name YaতyƗ b. RamaĪƗn Ɩkhnjnd, whom he describes as a dyed-in-thewool Qazaq who would also hire Russian lawyers in Omsk or St. Petersburg to argue cases for the benefit of the Qazaqs.35 Mäshhür Zhüsip collects and analyzes Qazaq reminiscences about Zhaqay Akhun that recall him in a more critical light, as above all a figure who sought to impose a fatvƗ of the Orenburg muftƯ that declared there could be no Islamic marriages (nikƗh) among the Qazaqs, saying, “There is no nikƗh among the Qazaqs,” (qazaqta neke zhoq). Mäshhür Zhüsip points out that Zhaqay Akhun would take bribes, but eventually was forced from office, and indeed the position of Ɨkhnjnd was abolished in 1868 with the imposition of new administrative reforms on the steppe.36 3. ƮSHƖNS Mäshhür Zhüsip himself is a case in point for illustrating the blurred dividing line between esoteric and exoteric sciences. He studied the exoteric sciences with Qamaraddin, but also studied the esoteric sciences with a number of Sufis in Bukhara and Tashkent. However, in Mäshhür Zhüsip’s 33 34 35 36

Istoriia Bukeevskoi ordy, 776–779. Shïgharmalarï I, 254, X, 266, 307. QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, A Biographical Dictionary, ff. 96b-97b. Shïgharmalarï X, 165–167.

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writing those who practiced the Sufi discipline, and in particular those who trained murƯds, generally had the title ƯshƗn after their names. The presence of many ƯshƗns among Qazaq nomads has given rise to common stereotypes, mainly associating ƯshƗns with an assumed Qazaq heterodoxy, and more generally equating ƯshƗns with a degraded form of religious practice. Such a view is evident in the works of Chokan Valikhanov, but they are also commonly encountered in reformist Muslim writings of the early 20th century, 37 and in Soviet anti-religious literature. 38 There have been some more informed studies on Sufism on the Qazaq steppe, but these works have relied on Tatar sources that focus primarily on Sufism in the larger cities, rather than on Sufism among nomadic communities.39 There is no evidence that Sufism was more popular among nomads than among sedentary Muslims, and the large numbers of Qazaq murƯds who studied among ƯshƗns in Troitsk, Semipalatinsk, Petropavlovsk, and Tashkent are attributable more to the demographic preponderance of Qazaqs in the environment than to any innate Qazaq attraction to Sufism. However it is clear from Mäshhür Zhüsip and other observers that Qazaq nomads held ƯshƗns in high esteem, and in the nomadic environment ƯshƗns could concentrate considerable wealth and prestige, although the prestige of ƯshƗns was equally evident among sedentary Muslims in Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region.40 QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ includes in his biographical dictionary an ƯshƗn named Manৢnjr Muতammad ƮshƗn who lived among the Kerey tribe in the Chinese-controlled Altay Mountains, and his account illustrates well the positions some ƯshƗns held in Qazaq society: [His father] was originally from the city of Kokand and in 1240 AH [1824–25 CE] he came here, that is, to the Kirey tribe at the headwaters of the Irtysh. After that Mansur followed his father. He stayed there for a year or two, then he went to Bukhara, received training, and received authorization to act as a Sufi shaykh’s deputy; in 1250 AH [1834– 35 CE] he returned to the Kirey tribe and resided there. Since he was pious and God37

38

39

40

Typical in this regard is the pamphlet by ƮshƗn Muতammad-ণarrath AydƗrof al-QƗrghƗlƯ, ƮshƗnlargha khitƗb! (Sterlitamak, 1911). Cf. Zarif Mozaffari, Iúannar-DΩrviúlΩr (Kazan, 1931). This work focuses mainly on the Volga-Ural region, but also includes a section on ƯshƗns among the Qazaqs. Thierry Zarcone, “Les confréreries soufies en Sibèrie (XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle),” in: En Islam sibèrien, ed. S.A. Dudoignon [= Cahiers du Monde Russe 41/2–3, (2000)]: 279–296. For a discussion of the social and religious role of ƯshƗns in Tashkent cf. N. S. Lykoshin, Pol zhizni v Turkestane (Petrograd, 1916), 144–156.

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fearing, the entire Kirey tribe was devoted to this individual, offered their hands, and bebecame [his] murƯds. They forgot his name and he became known as Kirey ƮshƗn. He got married, settled down, had children, and everyone collected into a single big encampment. When he camped in winter and summer it was as though he had with him one of the Kirey clans or tribes, but God knows best. […] He was someone who gave blessings like the Pole of the Era (zamƗnning qnj‫ܒ‬bƯ). His tearful eyes were now smiling now crying, and his words were those of a completely ecstatic Sufi. For seventy years he was a guide among the Kazakhs. He taught Islam to the Kirey tribe and was an instructor. He was a great person from whom blessings are received, who gave names to all of the renowned and important people, and who brought all of them up as though they were his own sons. Consequently, the whole Kirey tribe called him “Father” (Ata). They say that the entire Kirey tribe would call him ƮshƗn of the Kirey Country, the Holy ƮshƗn, or Father. He died one year short of a hundred at someone’s [encampment]. He attained the rank of a noble in a secular state [i.e. China] and in his own lifetime he had more than a hundred sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was also quite wealthy.41

In his compendium of silsilas, primarily centered on the Volga-Ural region, Khorezm, and the Qazaq steppe, the Orsk historian ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ identifies numerous Qazaq Sufis (to judge from nisbas), as well as Sufis who lived and practiced among nomadic communities. For example GhƗzƯMuতammad al-QazƗqƯ was a murƯd of the Turkish KhƗlidƯya shaykh, ĩiyƗ‫ގ‬ ad-DƯn GumushkhƗnavƯ, and “practiced irshƗd along the Emba River.” Elsewhere he identifies Jum‫ޏ‬a-‫ޏ‬AlƯ al-OrinbnjrghƯ al-QazƗq as a khalƯfa of the Bukharan shaykh MiyƗn-MƗlik b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-QƗdir (ৡƗতibzƗda ƮshƗn).42 Mäshhür Zhüsip mentions six figures known as ƯshƗns among the Qazaqs of the Middle Horde, most of whose silsilas reveal MujaddidƯya lineages linked to Bukhara and Tashkent. As we have seen, the khwƗja Fayzolla ƮshƗn served as imƗm of Bayanaul’s mosque. Another Sufi, Samay Toqpanulï, was from the Arghïn tribe’s Külik clan, left on the ‫ۊ‬ajj in 1857 and died during the journey.43 However we have no additional details on these two figures. Another Sufi was Qurmanbay Abïz Bayqonaq, a member of the Arghïn tribe’s Bayqonaq clan. Although it is not clear that he taught Sufism among the Qazaqs, it is clear enough that he possessed considerable religious authority. He had studied in Petropavlovsk under SayfullƗh b. ÜtagƗn, who served as imƗm of Petropavlovsk’s First Mosque, from 1824 until his death in 1852. SayfullƗh was himself of khwƗja descent, from a 41 42

43

QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary, fol. 87ab. ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ, Qa‫ܒ‬rat min bi‫ۊ‬Ɨr al-‫ۊ‬aqƗҴƯq fƯ tarjumat a‫ۊ‬wƗli mashƗҴƯkh a‫ܒ‬‫ܒ‬arƗҴƯq, (Orenburg, n.d.), 62. Shïgharmalarï IX, 264, X, 219.

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lineage in the Kazan region based in the village of Qomirguja. He studied Sufism from Ja‫ޏ‬far ƮshƗn UfavƯ, and obtained a license to train murƯds (idhni irshƗd) from ‫ޏ‬Abd al-Qayynjm BadakhshƗnƯ, a khalƯfa of the Bukharan shaykh KhalƯfa ণusayn.44 Mäshhür Zhüsip tells us that the Bayqonaqs were notorious for their involvement in theft.45 A Qazaq ƯshƗn who trained murƯds in the Bayanaul region was Qongïrbay Khalfa. He was from the Uysun Oshaqtï tribe, of the Senior zhüz, and obtained his license from the Bukharan shaykh ‫ޏ‬Abd as-SattƗr b. KhalƯfa ণusayn. At age 41 he came to the Sarï Arqa and built the “Khalfa Dükeni”46 in a place near Bayanaul called Qïzïltas. Mäshhür Zhüsip adds that his murƯds came mainly from the Qarakesek and Süyindik clans, and he was able to perform miracles. He is also said to have traveled to Bukhara to give ‫ޏ‬Abd as-SattƗr a hundred rams and sixty pieces of white felt.47 Mäshhür Zhüsip identifies several ƯshƗns who came from among the khwƗjas. These include Zhüsip ƮshƗn b. Qïghash Qozha (his name also appears as Yusip Qïyghash Qozha). Zhüsip ƮshƗn obtained his license (kha‫ܒܒ‬i irshƗd) from Abnj’l-QƗsim KhƗn in Tashkent, and was married to the daughter of a notable named Baytoq, from the Arghïn tribe’s Taykeltir clan. Mäshhür Zhüsip further identified Zhüsip ƮshƗn as descended from the Divana khwƗja line, and gives the following genealogy: Zhüsip ƮshƗn b. Qïghash Qozha b. Kün Qozha b. Baytorï b. Qazhï Qozha b. Qazha Kel.48 The most renowned ƯshƗn in the region was evidently Isabek ƮshƗn Muratqozhaulï (or Ghaysabek ƮshƗn), concerning whom Mäshhür Zhüsip wrote a praise poem in 1871. We have little information on Isabek ƮshƗn’s background or training. He is said to have come from a line of saints, and his father was a khwƗja named Murat. We are also told that one of his distant ancestors was named Nazar ƮshƗn. Isabek established himself in a place 44

45 46

47 48

Galimjan Barudi, Qïzïlyar säfäre (Kazan, 2004), 86–7; ShihƗb ad-DƯn MarjƗnƯ, MustafƗdh al-akhbƗr fƯ a‫ۊ‬wali QazƗn wa BulghƗr II, (Kazan, 1900), 260 ; RiĪa‫ ގ‬ad-DƯn b. Fakhr adDƯn, ƖthƗr, I-II (Orenburg/Ufa, 1900–1908) II:11, 231–3. Shïgharmalarï IX, 266. Among the nomadic Qazaqs a düken appears to have been the equivalent of a khƗnaqƗh, or Sufi lodge. Shïgharmalarï IX, 265, 267. Shïgharmalarï IX, 266, X, 107; On the Divana khwƗja lineage, cf. Aširbek Muminov, “Die Qožas ʊ Arabischen Genealogien in Kasachstan,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries. Vol. 2: Inter-Regional and InterEthnic Relations, eds. A. von Kügelgen, M. Kemper, A.J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 198.

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called Shanshan, and his patron was Qïstabay b. Sarïqusan Abïz who gave him his daughter in marriage, and he married the daughters of other notables as well. Mäshhür Zhüsip calls Isabek a “Pole of the Era” (qu‫ܒ‬b-i zaman), and we are told he had murƯds among the Bavïr and Qanzhïghalï people in the Ereymen and Aqköl region and along the Zhayïlma and Sileti Rivers, as far as Omsk, and that the Qarabuzhïr and Tentek clans were especially zealous in the Sufi discipline under his tutelage. In the Aqköl and Zhayïlma regions, where he “became a pƯr,” he trained murƯds, and built a düken, and there his murƯds were from among the Aqtiles, Sïrïm, and Küshik Basentiyin clans.49 Isabek ƮshƗn’s descendants continue to live in the region, particularly in the vicinity of Ekibastuz, where legends concerning his miracles continue to circulate.50 4. DIVANAS In his discussion of religious figures in the Sarï Arqa Mäshhür Zhüsip includes accounts of several divanas. These figures commonly appear in accounts of Qazaq religion, and are typically depicted as embodying both the Sufi tradition of the itinerant dervish, and Inner Asian shamanic, or “preIslamic” tradition. Mäshhür Zhüsip describes four separate divanas whom he knew, primarily during the 1860’s. Divanas, with their eccentric behavior and outlandish appearance, have long attracted the attention of observers of the Qazaq steppe. They are absent from Islamic biographical dictionaries of Muslim because they were not scholars, nor do they appear to have participated—at least as divanas—in the master-student relationship or to have featured in silsilas. At the same time, the ethnographic sources are often rather contradictory in describing and defining the divanas among the Qazaqs. Ivan Andreev, a Russian officer who served in Semipalatinsk and elsewhere on the Qazaq steppe at the end of the 18th century, provides one of our earliest descriptions of a divana among the Qazaqs. More precisely, Andreev retells an account of a divana he obtained from a Count von Manteuffel, who described an encounter he had in 1787. Von Manteuffel told how he was at the encampment of Cheregei Saltan (according to the 49 50

Shïgharmalarï I, 229–36; IX, 265–266. Shïgharmalarï I, 410–1; in one of these legends, for example, Isabek ƮshƗn predicts the arrest of one of his descendants in 1937.

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Russian spelling), where he met a Qazaq shaman (baqsï), as well as a didivana, who was from Tashkent and presumably a Sart. This divana is dedescribed as wearing a white striped robe, and wearing a turban in a similar fashion as khwƗjas. He also carried a long iron staff, and was involved in performing prayers, invoking his tutelary spirits, and healing the sick.51 Grigorii Potanin, who did not meet any divanas personally, and like Andreev obtained his information from informants, indicates that the divana would always go about wearing a hat fashioned from a swan, which is worn so that the head of the swan would face backwards. The hat was also adorned with coral, cowry shells, or snake heads. Divanas would heal the sick, and at harvest time assist with the harvest. Uninvited the divana would also perform incantations over the grain during threshing, as if it was obligatory, and then they go to the yurts and collect grain as alms. Every Qazaq owner would provide the grain unquestioningly.52 A Siberian ethnographer named Shestakov who observed the Qazaqs of Omsk district in the late 19th century, provides a completely different description of the divanas. He writes that among the Qazaqs the divana did not treat the sick, and did not ask for alms, and whatever he received was considered charity. The divana was said to be the servant of a “good and saintly spirit.” He was also said to be the enemy of the baqsï, so a divana was said never to be found on an encampment where a baqsï was present.53 I. A. Chekanskii describes the divana as being of Central Asian origin, and an amalgam of Islam and shamanism. Subsequently Chekaninskii explains that the divana possessed a distinctive costume, consisting of a hat, robe, and a staff called an asa-musa from which iron rings and other metallic objects are strung.54 In Qazaq tradition, it is clear that divanas were understood as figures abounding in sanctity, and particularly Islamic sanctity. The legend of 51 52

53

54

I.G. Andreev, Opisanie Srednei Ordy kirgiz-kaisakov (Almaty, 1998), 71–72. G. N. Potanin, Ocherki Severo-Zapadnoi Mongolii II (St. Petersburg, 1881), 88; a widely cited eye-witness description of a Qïrghïz divana from the middle of the 19th century made by the Russian traveler Severtsov corresponds very closely to Potanin’s; cf. N. A. Severtsov, Puteshestviia po Turkestanskomu kraiu (St. Petersburg, 1873), 346–347; cf. also T.D. Baialieva, Doislamskie verovaniia i ikh perezhitki u kirgizov (Frunze, 1972), 121. “Otchet o deiatel’nosti i sostoianii Zapadno-Sibirskago otdela IRGO s 1 ianvaria 1885 po 1 iiulia,” Izvestiia Imperatorskago Russkago Geograficheskago Obshchestva XXII (1886): 654–655. I.A. Chekaninskii, “'Baksylyk’ (Sledy drevnikh verovanii kazakov),” Zapiski Semipalatinskogo otdela obshchestva izucheniia Kazakstana 1 (1929): 79.

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Aleuko Batyr, recorded among the Qazaqs by Potanin in the 19th century, has the great saint Baba Tükles reappearing in various guises, including in the guise of a “Sart divana,” to assist the hero.55 Mäshhür Zhüsip’s account also reveals that Qazaqs considered divanas to be saintly figures. He discusses them in a prose work titled “On the Qulboldï Saints” (Qulboldï äwliyeleri turalï). One of these saints was the divana Sopaq, the son of Aqközi Batïr, and a member of the Arghïn tribe’s Aydabol clan. Mäshhür Zhüsip obtained his description of this figure from Musa Shormanulï. Mäshhür Zhüsip writes that he would go about wearing his hair in two long braids that hung below his waist. He was a stern-featured and intimidating person, and he would walk without getting out of the way of horses or even camels. Sopaq made the pilgrimage to Turkistan three times in his life, and after he died his body is said to have disappeared from its grave.56 Some divanas could receive patronage from ƯshƗns as well. Two prominent ƯshƗns, Isabek ƮshƗn and Qongïrbay ƮshƗn separately would feast a pair of divanas, named Zholbarïs Divana and Shalbay Divana in a sort of friendly rivalry.57 In addition Mäshhür Zhüsip identified four divanas he knew personally, evidently during his childhood. These were Batïr Divana of the Ormanshï clan, Eskendir Divana of the Qarzhas clan, Shalqïman Divana of the Aqbura clan, and Shalqïman’s son Isaqbay Qazhï.58 The tradition of the divana appears to have survived among the Qazaqs in the Soviet era, well into the postwar era. Raushan Mustafina, who provides the most informed description of the divana phenomenon among the Qazaqs, indicates that by the early 1980’s divanas had virtually disappeared in southern Kazakhstan. She succeeded in interviewing two elderly informants who had been divanas for a period of their lives, and concluded that they were involved in healing rituals. She considered them to be separate from shamans, and firmly rooted in the Sufi tradition.59 Bruce Privratsky considers 55

56

57 58 59

Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994), 455. Shïgharmalarï X, 247; one of Mustafina’s informants indicated that while he was a divana, performing pilgrimages to saints’ tombs was an important demand made upon him by his tutelary spirit; Mustafina, R.M. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakhov (Almaty, 1992), 144. Shïgharmalarï IX, 266. Shïgharmalarï X, 247. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul'ty, obriady u kazakhov, 143–6.

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divanas to be linked to the Sufi tradition of ascetic mendicancy, and more specifically to the YasavƯ tradition. He adds that this tradition had survived around the city of Turkistan region into the 1950’s.60 5. CONCLUSION While the study of Qazaq manuscript sources for the Islamic history of the Qazaq Steppe under Russian rule is still very much in its infancy, it would be mistaken to treat Mäshhür Zhüsip as an isolated or marginal figure in Qazaq religious and intellectual history. His Islamic education in the steppe and in the cities of Bukhara and Tashkent was prestigious, but by no means unusual among the nomads. Indeed, Islamic education was much more the norm among Qazaq scholars than Russian education, let alone Russophilia, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Similarly, Mäshhür Zhüsip can in no way be considered a modernist or reformist jadƯd, although he certainly showed the capability for critical evaluations of religious institutions and figures. Mäshhür Zhüsip’s information demonstrates above all the role Qazaqs themselves played in developing and staffing these institutions, as well as their ability to adapt these institutions to the nomadic environment. In this regard his example brings into question the oft-encountered stereotype that Islamic institutions and Islamic religious figures were “imported” to the Qazaqs from sedentary Central Asia or the Volga-Ural region. At the same time, the extension of Russian administrative control into the steppe regions in the first half of the 19th century facilitated the establishment of Islamic institutions among Qazaq nomads. This phenomenon is particularly evident in the case of Bayanaul, and Musa Shormanulï’s role in attracting and sponsoring Qazaq religious scholars to settle there. Mäshhür Zhüsip also demonstrates the continued significance of khwƗjas in the Middle zhüz, particularly those functioning in the capacity of Sufi shaykhs.

60

Bruce G. Privratsky, Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001), 104.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ, TƗrƯkh-i MuҵƗdhƯya (Orenburg, 1907) ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ, Qa‫ܒ‬rat min bi‫ۊ‬Ɨr al-‫ۊ‬aqƗҴƯq fƯ tarjumat a‫ۊ‬wƗli mashƗҴƯkh a‫ܒ‬-‫ܒ‬arƗҴƯq (Orenburg, n.d.) Aতmad b. ণƗfi਌ ad-DƯn al-BarangavƯ, TƗrƯkh-i BarƗngavƯ, MS Kazan, Institute of Manuscripts, Tatar Academy of Sciences, koll. 39, op. 1, ed. kh. 34 Galimjan Barudi, Qïzïlyar säfäre (Kazan, 2004) Frank, Allen J. and Usmanov, Mirkasyim A. (eds.), Materials for the Islamic history of Semipalatinsk: Two Manuscripts by A‫ۊ‬mad-WalƯ al-QazƗnƯ and QurbƗn ҵAlƯ KhƗlidƯ (Berlin, 2001) ƮshƗn Muতammad-ণarrath AydƗrof al-QƗrghƗlƯ, ƮshƗnlargha khitƗb! (Sterlitamak, 1911) JahƗn-ShƗh b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-JabbƗr an-NƯzhghƗrnj৬Ư, TƗrƯkh-i AstarkhƗn (Astrakhan, 1907) QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, TavƗrƯkh-i Khamsa-yi SharqƯ (Kazan, 1910) QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, eds. A. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Leiden, 2005) RiĪa‫ ގ‬ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn, ƖthƗr, I-II (Orenburg/Ufa, 1900–1908) ShihƗb ad-DƯn MarjƗnƯ, MustafƗdh al-akhbƗr fƯ a‫ۊ‬wali QazƗn wa BulghƗr (Kazan, 1900) Zarif Mozaffari, Iúannar-DΩrviúlΩr (Kazan, 1931)

Secondary Literature Alpïsbes, Maqsat et al., Köne Köktav, bayïrghï Bayanaula baytaghïnïng tarikhï (Astana, 2005) Andreev, I.G., Opisanie Srednei Ordy kirgiz-kaisakov (Almaty, 1998) Baialieva, T.D., Doislamskie verovaniia i ikh perezhitki u kirgizov (Frunze, 1972) Boltina, V. D. and Sheveleva, L. V. (eds.), Iz istorii islama v Pavlodarskom Priirtysh’e 1919– 1999 (Pavlodar, 2001) Chanishif, Malik, Junggo tatar ma’arip tarikhi (Urumchi, 2001) Chekaninskii, I.A., “‘Baksylyk’ (Sledy drevnikh verovanii kazakov),” Zapiski Semipalatinskogo otdela obshchestva izucheniia Kazakstana 1 (1929): 79. DeWeese, Devin, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA, 1994) Dobrosmyslov, A., “Zaboty imperatritsy Ekateriny II o prosveshchenii kirgizov,” Trudy Orenburgskoi Uchenoi Arkhivnoi Komissii IX (1902): 51–63 Frank, Allen J., “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Toward an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule,” in: The Construction and Deconstruction of National Identities in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003), 261–89 Isabay, Qalmuqan and Bayzhan-Ata, Sapar, Qazhïgha barghan qazaqtar (Almaty, 1996)

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Karmysheva, B.Kh. and Karmysheva, Dzh.Kh., “Chto takoe Arka-Iurt? (k istoricheskoi geografii Kazakhstana),” Onomastika Vostoka (Moscow, 1980): 108–14 Kasymbaev, Zhanuzak, Starshii Sultan Kunanbai Oskenbaev i ego okruzhenie (Almaty, 2004) Kasymbaev, Zh. and Aguev, N., Istoriia Akmoly (Almaty, 1998) Khanykov, N., Opisanie Bukharskago khanstva (St. Petersburg, 1843) Köpeyulï, Mäshhür Zhüsip, Shïgharmalarï, 13 voll. (Pavlodar, 2003–2008) Kopeiuly, Mashkhur Jusup, Selected Poems I-III (Pavlodar, 2007–2008) v. Kügelgen, Anke, “Sufimeister und Herrscher im Zwiegespräch: Die Schreiben des Faঌl Aতmad aus Peschawar an AmƯr ণaydar in Buchara,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia Vol. 3, Arabic, Persian and Turkic Manuscripts (15th - 19th Centuries), eds. A. von Kügelgen, A. Muminov, M. Kemper (Berlin, 2000), 219–351. Lykoshin, Nil S., Pol zhizni v Turkestane (Petrograd, 1916) Muminov, Aširbek K., “Die Qožas: Arabische Genealogien in Kasachstan,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2: Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds. A. von Kügelgen, M. Kemper, and A.J. Frank (Berlin, 1998), 193–209 Mustafina, R.M., Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakhov (Almaty, 1992) “Otchet o deiatel’nosti i sostoianii Zapadno-Sibirskago otdela IRGO s 1 ianvaria 1885 po 1 iiulia,” Izvestiia Imperatorskago Russkago Geograficheskago Obshchestva XXII (1886): 654–5 Potanin, G. N., Ocherki Severo-Zapadnoi Mongolii II (St. Petersburg, 1881) –––––, “V iurte posledniago kirgizskago tsarevicha,” Russkoe Bogatstvo 8 (1896): 60-88 Privratsky, Bruce G., Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory (Richmond, 2001) Qalïzhanulï, Wälikhan, Qazaq ädebietindegi dini-aghartushïlïq aghïm (Almaty, 1998) Qazaq SSR tarikhï III (Alma-Ata, 1982) Severtsov, N.A., Puteshestviia po Turkestanskomu kraiu (St. Petersburg, 1873) Shormanov, Musa, Kazakhskie narodnye obychai, 2nd ed. (Astana, 2007) VII Mäshhür Zhüsip oqularï attï khalïqlararasï ghïlmi-praktikalïq konferentsiya materialdarï (Pavlodar, 2010) Zarcone, Thierry, “Les confréreries soufies en Sibèrie (XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle),” in: En Islam sibèrien, ed. S.A. Dudoignon [= Cahiers du Monde Russe 41/2–3, (2000)]: 279–296 Zhanaev, B. T. (ed.), Istoriia Bukeevskoi ordy, 1801–1852 gg. (Almaty, 2002) Zhüsipova, L. Q., Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï derektanushï: oqu quralï (Pavlodar, 2007)

SharƯҵa for the Bolsheviks? FatvƗs On Land Reform In Early Soviet Central Asia BAKHTIYAR BABAJANOV AND SHARIFJON ISLAMOV∗ Tashkent

Factories to the workers, land to the peasants! Bolshevik slogan

Historians generally agree that Bolshevik economic policies began with moves towards the expropriation (at times in the form of nationalization) of land owned by wealthy individuals – or, to use the ideological terminology of the period, “capitalists and landowners.” One of the first such actions was the 1918 Decree on the Nationalization of Land. In accordance with the declared slogans of equality, land was supposed to pass into the hands of the “laboring proletariat of the countryside” or, to put it simply, the peasantry. But in Central Asia, unlike the European regions of the former Tsarist Empire, a peasant revolution did not take place. In fact, the land reforms introduced by the new regime dragged on for many years. After 1925 they were implemented painfully, often by violent means, particularly where these measures involved the creation of collective farms.1 Research into the question of land reform in early Soviet Central Asia has been so far largely based on Russian-language literature. Little attention, by contrast, has been devoted to materials in vernacular languages, which could shed light on the Muslims’ reception of land’s confiscation performed by a non-Islamic state. Though limited in number, the available vernacular sources are indispensable in the study of the debates among Muslim religious scholars (ҵulamƗҴ) of the region. More specifically, a reading of the Muslim press indicates that Central Asian jurists (fuqahƗҴ) issued a number ∗ 1

The authors are indebted to an anonymous reader and the editors of this volume for comments on an earlier draft. Akmal Ikramov, Itogi zemelƍnoi reformy i perspektivy ee zakrepleniia (Samarkand/Tashkent, 1926), 6–7, 14, and elsewhere; T.S. Saidbaev, Islam i obshchestvo (opyt istoriko-sotsiologicheskogo issledovaniia) (Moscow, 1984), 3, 139–40.

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of legal opinions (fatvƗ, rivƗyat in the vernacular)2 concerning the legitimacy from the point of view of Islamic law (sharƯҵa) of the Bolsheviks’ land reform. The present essay offers a brief survey of the Islamic legal discourse on the land reform as it was conveyed by the Muslim press. In addition, the texts of a few legal opinions (rivƗyat) are presented in full transcription together with annotated translations. We hope that a survey of this body of texts may allow scholars better to assess how Muslim clerics and jurists adapted to changing circumstances in Central Asia under Soviet rule. 1. THE LAND REFORM IN THE MUSLIM AND SOVIET PRESS The Bolsheviks’ project to nationalize the property of “capitalists and landowners” was already the subject of energetic discussion among Muslim intellectual circles in the Russian Empire before the turbulent events connected with the revolutions of 1917. A notable example is provided by the Tatar reformist Ismail Bey Gasprinski (1851–1914), who was extremely critical towards the ideology of “socialism,” especially with regard to the unlawful confiscation of properties.”3 In Central Asia the nationalization of land became a topic of discussion immediately after the October Revolution. The expropriation was viewed with some hostility, above all amongst the local Muslim jurists. The position of these latter is well illustrated in two essays which appeared in al-ƮĪƗ‫ۊ‬,4 a journal published by the Tashkent Council of the ҵUlamƗҴ (ҵUlamƗҴ JamҵƯyatƯ). 5 The first article was succinctly entitled “On the Land” (yir ‫ۊ‬aqqƯda).6 Its author, MullƗ TƗsh QƗrƯ, composed it as a commentary on the tenth verse of the sura al-A’raf: “And We have certainly established you 2

3 4

5 6

Apparently, the term rivƗyat refers to the quotations from the Islamic juristic literature, which are given in the fatvƗ. In common parlance rivƗyat is used ab extenso as a synonym for fatvƗ. Tardzhuman/TarjumƗn, 66–76 (1909). See esp. issue no. 75 of 10 July, in which Gasprinskii discusses the flaws in the socialists’ economic platform. On this periodical see Paolo Sartori, “La nazione nella tradizione. Millat nella pubblicistica degli ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ di Tashkent (1917–1918),” Rivista degli Studi Orientali LXXIX (2008), Supplemento no. 1. Adeeb Khalid, “Tashkent 1917: Muslim Politics in Revolutionary Turkestan,” Slavic Review 55/2 (1996): 270–96. MullƗ TƗsh QƗrƯ, “Yir তaqqƯda,” al-ƮĪƗ‫ۊ‬, 26 (1918): 391–392.

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upon the earth and therein made for you ways of livelihood. Little are you grateful.”7 MullƗ TƗsh QƗrƯ evokes the idea that the entire life of a man is tied to the land, and that land should thus be viewed as a gift from God.8 He further suggests that the verse should be understood as pointing at the man’s rights on the land, and concludes that “seizing the land without the owner’s permission and without his agreement is a form of violence (ܲulmlƯk).” The author then cites a number of ‫ۊ‬adƯths in support of his view, which indicate that landownership rights are sacred. Another essay published in al-ƮĪƗ‫ ۊ‬was symbolically entitled “The Socialist and Islam”.9 In the foreword to this essay, we read that an anonymous Arabic-language version of the text was originally published in the North-Caucasian periodical JarƯdat DƗghistƗn (1913–18); this was then translated into Turki for al-IĪƗ‫ ۊ‬by MubƗshƯr KhƗn, a native of the city of Aulie-Ata. The author attributed the emergence of socialism in the Russian Empire to the fact that the wealthy did not concern themselves with the needs of their fellow citizens. In conceptualizing “socialists”, the author divides these into two groups, according to their attitudes towards the “land question”. The author identifies as “democrats” those who believed that the land should remain at the disposal of their owners, and that, should the state wish to acquire this land, it should do so by purchase rather than confiscation; he identifies as “revolutionaries” (inqilƗbchƯlƗr), meanwhile, those who called for a complete program of nationalization, with land to be confiscated from those who could not till it by themselves. It is yet not clear what prompted the composition of these two articles published by al-ƮĪƗ‫ۊ‬. But the pieces indicate that in the southern region of Central Asia the ҵulamƗҴ were following with apprehension the evolving attitude of the Bolsheviks with regard to the land question. The expropriation of land became the topic of strident debate when the chairman of the Commissariat of Nationalities, TashkhwƗja ‫ޏ‬ƖshnjrkhwƗjaughlƯ, brought the issue to the attention of the Tashkent Society of the Jurists (FuqahƗҴ JamҵƯyatƯ). The commissar’s questions were the following: 1. How does sharƯҵa regard poor citizens? 2. Can poor peasants champion their own 7 8 9

All English citations from the QurҴƗn are based on The QurҴƗn: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meanings, transl. by Saheeh International (Jeddah, 2007) It must be emphasized that these discussions are identical to the preambles formulated in the documents cited below. IdƗra, “SƗsyƗlƯst wa islƗm,” al-ƮĪƗ‫ ۊ‬15 (1917): 235–238.

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rights? 3. Is partnership (mushtarak) possible outside the realm of the family, as in agriculture, trade, and in (other issues of) life? 4. How does sharƯҵa view partnership with regard to agriculture? The responsa were first formulated on 10 June 1918 during a special meeting of the Society of the Jurists,10 and two days later they were published in the newspaper, Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn.11 Summarizing in an article elsewhere the main points of the Muslim jurists’ brief responses,12 Paolo Sartori notes how the jurists adamantly insisted on the incompatibility of socialism with the principles of sharƯҵa.13 The responses which have the greatest bearing on our topic are those to the last two questions (nos. 3 and 4).14 In responding to the third question, the jurists referred to the famous juristic work al-HidƗya15 to support their view that partnership is possible only in relation to water, firewood gathered on waste land, and fire, and that no other commodities – including land – can legitimately be held in partnership. Having thus in their third response already largely answered the fourth question, the jurists used their fourth response to clarify their position on the confiscation of land and its subsequent redistribution. 16 The authors stated that land is inviolable regardless of whether it was private property or belonged to the state (pƗdishƗh). Their remarks are followed by a reiteration of sharҵƯ arguments forbidding partner10 11 12 13 14

15

16

Central State Archive of the Uzbekistan (hereafter TsGARUz), f. R-36, op. 1, d. 12, ll. 183 (the commissar’s questions), fols. 182–182v. (Report of the FuqahƗ‫ ގ‬Jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯ). “MƯllƯ IshlƗr KƗmƯsarƯna fuqahƗ jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯ ৬arafindan bƯrilgƗn javƗblƗr,” Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn 104 (12 June 1918): 4. Paolo Sartori, “Tashkent 1918: Giurisperiti musulmani e autorità sovietiche contro i ‘predicatori del bazaar,’” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, Serie Orientale XLV/3 (2006): 123–124. Ibid., 124. In this respect, the response to the first question stated that the Islamic precept to pay the zakƗt is the most important institute of care for the poor. The obvious implication was that, from the point of view of sharƯҵa, there was no need for “socialism.” The second question also contained a “revolutionary hidden motive,” by which the “rights of poor peasants” were understood as the right to expropriate property from wealthy individuals. The Society of the Jurists replied that sharƯҵa protects the property of Muslims, irrespective of the level of their prosperity, and does not allow confiscation. A work by BurhƗn al-DƯn al-MarghƯnƗnƯ (1123–97), widely published and translated. For additional details about MarghinƗnƯ, see Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur: [supplement], 3 vols. (Leiden, 1937–42), 1: 376–8 (henceforth, GAL); Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauka Uzbekskoi SSR, eds. A.A. Semenov et al. (Tashkent, 1960), IV: nos. 217 and 3083. See, e.g., the June–July issues of Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn.

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ship, with an exception to be made for the cases already indicated in the alHidƗya. A lengthier version of these responsa was published ten days later in ƮĪ‫ۊ‬Ɨr al-‫ۊ‬aqq, the press organ of the FuqahƗ‫ ގ‬Jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯ. 17 The articles sparked a prolonged debate. Here we will single out two publications. The questions posed by the Commissar of Nationalities were severely criticized by a scholar from Kokand, who signed his article as “Country Bumpkin” (QishlaqƯ). 18 The author noted that the Bolsheviks differ from the SocialRevolutionaries and the democrats with respect to two points in their party program: in the political struggle they espouse mass terror, and on the agrarian question they support the forcible confiscation of land and the creation of a “land fund” to be followed by the distribution of land among collective users (“partnerships”). The author then posed the following rhetorical questions: “What is the meaning of the questions, which ‫ޏ‬ƖshnjrkhwƗja-ughlƯ addressed to the Fuqaha Jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯ? Is it not the desire to obtain a fatvƗ in support of nationalization?19 Does this mean, then, that if sharƯҵa allows it, socialization will take place, and if not, then it will not happen?” The author went on to say: “Incidentally, Russian and Tatar socialists and the Bolsheviks have not only refused to consult the clerics, but they have already suggested in the Council [of People’s Commissars] that all their [organizations] be disbanded.” In addition, the author himself suggested some rather apologetic supplementary responses to the Commissar’s four questions. He argued that in Islam there is freedom, equality, mutual assistance, and that many similar precepts can be found in the QurҴƗn (though he refrained here from adducing any actual textual citations). Nevertheless, the author continues, sharƯҵa is categorically against forcible confiscation,20 even if it is carried out for the sake of improving the status of poor people. Islam prescribes the equality of all people before the law. But people cannot be equal in terms of their wealth. The author borrows his subsequent arguments from the QurҴƗn (21:11; 43:32), the ‫ۊ‬adƯths and, most 17 18

19 20

“FuqahƗ‫ ގ‬Jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯnƯng javƗbƯ,” IܲhƗr al-‫ۉ‬aqq 16 (1918): 229–232. “MƯllƯ IshlƗr KƗmƯsƗrƯ TƗshwƗja AfandƯning ‘FuqahƗ Jam‫ޏ‬ƯyatƯ’ga birgƗn su’Ɨli munƗsabatƯ Ưla,” Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn, 110/29 (June 1918), 2. Judging by the orthography and grammar, the author was a Tatar (e.g., he prefers shulƗy to the Uzbek shnjndƗy/shnjndƗq and bnjla to bnjlƗdnjr. The word originally used here was susyƗlƯzasiya. The author himself used the term gha‫܈‬b and translated it into Russian as uzurpatsiia (usurpation).

238

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often, the work by Ibn TaymƯya (1263–1328), entitled Majmnjҵa-yi fƗtavƗ,21 who wrote that any encroachments on another’s property is violence (ܲulm) and does not correspond to God’s will. The author concluded his article on a provocative note. By relying on Ibn TaymƯya’s legal opinions, he wrote: “If you want your actions to correspond to sharƯҵa, here is a fatvƗ for you and here is the true path for you! But if you were a follower of the true path, what sense is there in consulting the fatvƗ?” Such a radical position could not remain ignored, all the more so as the opponents of such a point of view were more or less radically attuned. A response written by RiĪƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn Shakirnjf was published in Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn.22 The harshly-worded article was marked by a somewhat aggressive tone. RiĪƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn launched into a harsh critique of the religious scholars and the jurists (‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ wa fuqahaҴ), accusing them of failing to follow Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic precepts, always keeping themselves busy with mundane occupations, engaging in money-grubbing, refusing to consider the needs of the poor, seeking to serve the rich, and absconding with the income from charitable endowments. He also mentions the abuses which occurred during collections of the zakƗt, declaring that for a long time now this system “has not worked and is not working for the poor.” In the spirit of the times, the author poses some highly “revolutionary” questions: “With whom, then, should the ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ associate—the oppressed or the oppressors?” “Why have they constructed large walls in their houses and gates with three locks?” etc. The other accusations, which were directed at the religious scholars, are also formulated in the style of revolutionary leaflets, although they contain references to the QurҴƗn and to the formative period of Islam when, in the author’s view, equality reigned. The author’s conclusion boils down to the statement that socialization responds to the spirit of “pure Islam” from the days of the Prophet, and that “progressive ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ, who come from the people” all supported the idea of socialism. As soon as the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, having curbed the Basmachi movement (Rus.: basmachestvo), they resolved to introduce more radical measures to implement the land reform. However, a substantial 21

22

The title is rendered in Persian, instead of the Arabic Majmnjҵa al-fƗtawƗ. However, the presence of Arabic quotations indicate that RiĪƗ al-DƯn used the Arabic original; compare TaqƯ ad-Din ibn TaymƯya, Majmnjҵa fƗtawƗ (Cairo, 1908), 94. “‘QishlƗqƯ’ afandƯning KƗmƯsƗr TƗshkhwƗjagha khitƗba yƗzghƗn ‘fatvƗ’ larƯgha javƗb,” Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn 115 (16 July 1918): 2–3.

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proportion of peasants did not take immediate advantage of the land rights offered by the Soviet authorities. Besides fear of counter-measures from wealthy landowners and the risk of being punished by members of the Basmachi movement, there were apparently certain religious and ethical barriers which stopped peasants from instantly seizing the lands of wealthy landowners. The peasants’ refusal to take advantage of the land which, after the confiscation, Soviet authorities were distributing became the subject of an article published in the newspaper QƯzil NjzbƯkistƗn. To this item, published under the headline “News about the Implementation of the Land Reform”23, the editors added the following characteristic note: “Already last year [1924] the duped people, fearing Judgment Day, did not take what was theirs by right” (i.e., the nationalized lands). The article clearly points to the peasants’ unwillingness to violate religious norms. Similar information about their refusal to take advantage of the confiscated lands was cited in Pravda Vostoka.24 According to this article, the publication of a number of fatƗwƗ by the press, which were distributed by the Muslim judicial body called ma‫ۊ‬kama-yi sharҵƯya25 in the form of leaflets, also served as an excellent stimulus for encouraging the peasants to overcome their doubts concerning the religious legitimacy of using the land seized by the Bolsheviks. The text noted that “the peasants, are now convinced that expropriating the lands of the wealthy is in accordance with the sharƯҵa, [and therefore] began taking over the land en masse and tilling them”. Local Soviet periodicals gave room to a number of essays (mostly in Uzbek), which, interestingly enough, made use of extensive references to religious arguments in support of the land reform. As we will see, these arguments are quite similar to those that appear in the rivƗyat (see below). For obvious reasons, these pieces made their way into the press in Russian. The aforementioned article published in QƯzil NjzbƯkistƗn was reprinted (in a very rough adaptation) in the newspaper Pravda Vostoka.26 It was signed by ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam, who, judging by the content of his article, drew upon a

23 24 25

26

“YƯr iৢlƗতƗtƯ tnjghrƯsƯda khabarlar,” QƯzil NjzbƯkistƗn 287/26 (November 1925), 2. Pravda Vostoka 282 (3 December 1925): 1. On this institution see, Niccolò Pianciola and Paolo Sartori, “Waqf in Turkestan: the Colonial Legacy and the Fate of an Islamic Institution in Early Soviet Central Asia, 1917– 1924,” Central Asian Survey 26/4 (2007): 485–491. Pravda Vostoka 269 (28 November 1925).

240

Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov

fatvƗ 27 issued by the Tashkent branch of the Commissariat for Religion (NaܲƗrat-i dinƯya).28 ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam was a well known personality. He belonged to a circle of reformers, and in 1922 he was the editor of the shortlived journal ‫ۉ‬aqƯqat.29 In his articles he made frequent use of the expression “true Islam” (chƯn IslƗm), which, according to him, meant “the original religion of the days of the Prophet and his Companions.” Following the ideas of most reformist intellectuals of the time, ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam suggested that only this kind of Islam is capable of ensuring “justice in society and the cultural flowering of the umma.” In his writing he marshaled arguments in support of the confiscation of land from landowners and its transfer to the peasants. He explained his stance by pointing out that the Commissariat for Religion could not stand aside from the discussions which were taking place around the land reform. He held that Muslims were deeply concerned by the idea that disposing of lands previously confiscated could not be in accordance with sharƯҵa. The article (and in turn the fatvƗ on which it was based) offers a number of arguments in defense of the legitimacy of the land reform that was being introduced by the Soviet authorities. The first one refers to the 104th sura and verse 92 of the sura “al-ImrƗn”. These quotations from the QurҴƗn reflect a condemnation of the “gatherers of wealth.” The 104th sura is interpreted as the condemnation of wealthy individuals who do not wish to share their wealth with the poorest and weakest people, or viewed as a directive to the wealthy to make donations (i‫ۊ‬sƗn) and food for the benefit of the poor. Then an additional Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic expression (ǍͫLJ˶̒ ɬͫ ƱǨʒͫā) [sic] was used by the compilers of the fatvƗ and it appears extrapolated from the Ɨya (4:102). The author writes that this Ɨya should be also interpreted as a directive to share with the poor. In all likelihood, ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam sought to 27

28

29

This fatvƗ, as indicated in the article, was composed on 23 November 1925, and signed and stamped with the seals of the following individuals: MullƗ ‫ޏ‬Ⱥbd al-ণƗfi਌ Makhdnjm (committee chairman); ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim KhƗn MusƗ KhƗnƯ (member of the FatwƗ Directorate), ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn (member of the FatvƗ Directorate and the author of the article); the veracity of the fatwƗ was confirmed by ‫ޏ‬Abdnj al-VƗতid QƗrƯ and TƗj al-DƯn (secretary). An organization founded in 1919, which managed various SharƯҵa committees (sharƯҵat qnjmƯtalarƯ). Usually, the first component in the name NaܲƗrat was given to organizations within the structure of the Bolshevik government (“Committees”). The translation of the name of this organization as “Spiritual Directorate,” which appeared in Russian-language articles, is inaccurate. According to its function, a committee was part of the Soviet bureaucratic structure. Only two issues of ‫ۉ‬aqƯqat ever appeared. Cf. Zhurnal “Haqiqat” kak zerkalo religioznogo aspekta v ideologii dzhadidov, ed. B. M. Babadzhanov (Tokyo, 2007), 8.

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substantiate the Bolshevik authorities’ call for the voluntary transfer of some lands to needy peasants and farmhands. As those who penned the article explains: “These Ɨya proclaim as sinners those who, in contradiction of the laws of justice and equality, seek to take possession of significant wealth and do not distribute it among the poor. The history of the Companions [of the Prophet] shows that rich people who accepted Islam instantly adopted the rule of equality (musƗvƗt) and gave all their property to the poor peasants.” The final arguments offered by the author of this article substantiate the view that only those who cultivate land are entitled to possess it. As already noted, we shall find similar positions in the rivƗyats which we reproduce below. This last part of the article is written in keeping with the dominant ideology of the period. ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam believes that the arguments adduced should satisfy all the peasants who refused to use land belonging to wealthy landowners and were loath to violate sharƯҵa norms. Next, in order to awaken the “revolutionary spirit” of his coreligionists, the authors recalls the periods of hunger which took place in the past, as well as the duped sharecroppers who had starved to death, and to whom their wealthy coreligionists living nearby did not provide any assistance. Therefore, the author opines, the actions of the Soviet power do not contradict sharƯҵa, which, as he believes, orders that the surplus lands of wealthy landowners be given to poor and landless peasants. The author’s socialist fervor is manifest. Already in 1918, then, the land question attracted much discussion amongst religious scholars.30 During this period, the debate took place in a more or less free manner and often made their way into the pages of the Muslim press. Between 1918 and the early 1920s, however, all independent journals and other publications were shut down, and such debate among the ҵulamƗҴ received little public exposure. We can grasp the distant echo of this debate only in the pages of Bolshevik publications, which mainly voiced the criticism directed against the “backward clergy”. This critique derived advantage from those ҵulamƗҴ who, for various reasons, favored Bolshevik policies. 2. FATVƖS AND LAND REFORM The first attempt to introduce wide-scale land reform in Turkestan took place in 1920–21, and it was limited to the restoration to their previous possessors 30

See also Sartori, “Tashkent 1918,” 119–124.

242

Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov

of lands seized by Slavic settlers before 1917. However, it quickly became obvious that even the free transfer of land did not always spur the peasants to take ownership of lands or lease them on advantageous terms. The materials that were prepared for the Second Kurultai (Congress) of Soviets (6–7 December 1925) noted that the Soviet authorities were anticipating spontaneous seizures by poor peasants of lands belonging to wealthy landowners, particularly given that the Land Code (in its 1920 version) granted them that right. In practice, however, such seizures failed to occur. Bolsheviks put forth a number of hypotheses in order to explain the peasants’ reluctance to seize lands from wealthy landowners (“weakness of the peasants’ class consciousness,” the inability of peasants to till expanded plots of land with their pre-existing equipment, the “influence of the reactionary clergy,” the civil war, etc.).31 Chief among the circumstances which delayed the full-fledged implementation of the land and water reform was the prolonged civil war waged by the Basmachis, whose ranks were filled by peasants. 32 The decreased crop yield and the abandonment of arable lands, particularly during the troubled years between 1918 and 1920, also delayed the process of resolving the question of forms of land ownership.33 The process of dividing Turkestan into different Soviet republics based on the national principle, achieved in late 1924 (the so-called “national delimitation”), was also a factor, since the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture (Narkomzem) was involved in the process along with the Commissariat of Nationalities.34 In any case, the Soviet authorities did not dare to institute wide-scale changes to the forms of land ownership and land-tilling traditions in the countryside until the very end of 1925, when most of these obstacles were 31 32 33

34

Zemel’nyi vopros v Uzbekistane. Materialy ko 2-omu Kurultaiu Sovetov (Samarkand, 1927), 12. This is noted in the document, Doklad TsK Kompartii (b) Uzbekistana. Ko vtoromu s”ezdu KP Uzbekistana (noiabr’, 1925) (Samarkand, 1925), 16. These very reasons (i.e., the Basmachi movement, the troubled years and, afterwards, “ignorance of the laws of Islam” were indicated in the petitions addressed to Iu. Akhunbabaev, chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Uzbek SSR (TsIK UzSSR), which were sent by peasants who requested that they be granted land (TsGA RUz, R-222, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 21, 25, and elsewhere). Irrigation questions (e.g., the creation of regional irrigation systems or reservoirs) were centralized and did not take into consideration the borders between republics, and by the end of the USSR’s existence inconsistencies had emerged in connection with this question. The style and argumentation of these petitions have not been studied.

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overcome and two decrees were issued. These decrees were entitled “On the Nationalization of Land” and “On the Land-Water Reform.”35 Among the above-mentioned reasons formulated by the Soviet authorities in order to explain why the peasants were reluctant to take the land, “the influence of the reactionary clergy” was of particular significance. The December 1925 Kurultai noted with regret that “this reactionary class” had had a strong impact on the “laborer in the countryside.”36 According to the Bolsheviks, a certain proportion of the peasantry found it difficult to overcome social inertia and traditional peasant notions concerning the right to own land, especially when it had been confiscated by the state. The Bolshevik authorities could not ignore this reality and opted to resort to the use of the rules of the fiqh in order to encourage the use by landless peasants of “surplus land” owned by wealthy rural residents, substantiating its legality from the standpoint of sharƯҵa. The Soviet government fell back upon the assistance of its sworn ideological opponents, i.e., on some of the most loyal individuals among religious scholars and the jurists,37 who began working on the “Islamic interpretation” (or adaptation) of the decrees handed down by the Bolsheviks. At the present time it is difficult to determine the exact reasons why this group of ҵulamƗҴ and fuqahaҴ began to collaborate with the Soviet authorities,38 whose antireligious policies were apparent. It remains an open question whether scholars thus acted under compulsion or – perhaps more likely – acted freely in the hope of obtaining posts in the new strucstructures of the reestablished religious institutions (e.g., the Ma‫ۊ‬kama-yi sharҵƯya). Nevertheless, the appeal to the precepts of Islam turned out to be 35

36 37

38

Both these decrees were adopted during a session of the TsIK UzSSR, which took place on 2 December 1925 (TsGARUz, f. R–86, op. 1, d. 2396, ll. 12–18). The decrees are dripping with Bolsheviks’ class warfare ideology (in one decree private landowners are castigated for “the most disgraceful exploitation of the laboring peasantry over the centuries”) but do not offer any juridical substantiation of nationalization and expropriation. See also Zemelƍnyi vopros v Uzbekistane, 11. Doklad TsK Kompartii (b) Uzbekistana, 11. See also the above-cited articles that were published in Kizil Uzbekistan and Pravda Vostoka. This is mentioned by e.g. ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam. The names of others are mentioned in the documents cited below. Of course, loyalty to the authorities does not at all signify complete agreement with the Bolsheviks’ religious policies. The Soviet authorities called them “progressive clerics” (Doklad TsK Kompartii (b) Uzbekistana, 17). The motives of ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam, the author of the article substantiating the legitimacy of the land reform, whose journal was shut down (see above), remain incomprehensible.

244

Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov

quite effective and, as noted in the above-cited article (QƯzil NjzbƯkistƗn, issue no. 287, 26 November 1925, p. 2) it led even “doubting peasants” to seize lands en masse. It was precisely this Bolshevik tactic which led to the appearance of the first rivƗyat documents, which adduced theological arguments to seek sharƯҵa legitimization for the Soviet government’s land policies. Bolshevik land reform in Central Asia involved the transfer of property from prosperous landowners to landless peasants: and the government was at pains to establish that its pursuit of “equality” was in keeping with the spirit of Islam. In order to understand these rivƗyat documents, it must be recalled that a rivƗyat (“quotation” or “fragment”) is an extract from authoritative juristic literature. In Central Asian legal practice, a rivƗyat was equated to a legal opinion, i.e. a fatvƗ. RivƗyats were usually issued by muftƯs at request in order to substantiate a position in any kind of legal problem or the legitimation of actions in one controversial matter. The first section of a rivƗyat document is devoted to the legal question. It opens most often with an Arabic standard formula: “What is the imƗms’ view of the following problem?” The legal matter (masҴala) is, then, introduced most often in Persian or Chaghatay. This section ends with a question: is a given treatment of the legal matter in accordance with sharƯҵa? Occasionally, a “response” (javƗb) is given here.39 The second part of the document (strictu sensu, the rivƗyat itself) consisted of quotations (iqtibƗs) from legal works deemed to contain the most authoritative views on the legal case. As a rule, quotations are affirmative, i.e., they provide a positive solution to the posed question. Consequently, the question formulated in the main part of the document may have a rhetorical character.40 Sometimes a judicial decision (‫ۊ‬ukm) issued by a qƗĪƯ was added to the rivƗyat. It was occasionally recorded on the reverse side of the legal opinion, but it could also appear as a separate document. In the documents cited below, the names of those who solicited the legal opinion are not indicated. In the first case (Document Ⱥ) the record was 39

40

Naturally, this is just a general scheme which had variations, e.g., there could be only a question or only an answer. A complete and detailed description of the rivƗyat is a task for future scholars. We encountered a few similar cases while conducting research in several private archives in Namangan, especially the archive of Masudxo’ja Kalanxo’jaev in the village of Khozhavot.

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245

composed by a jurist, to whom a legal question may have been addressed by one or several peasants. Soviet authorities presented the document as the collective view of the ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ of Zerafshan. The other documents published below are in fact the product of Soviet-type religious institutions, on the basis of which articles were also written, as mentioned above. Here we will examine three such documents dating to late 1925 and early 1926, used by the organs of Soviet power to substantiate the legitimacy of the impending land and water reforms.

Document Ⱥ The first legal opinion presented below was solicited by the peasants of the village of Kha৬irchƯ (Khatyrchi), located west of Samarkand. The editors of Pravda Vostoka maintained that this rivƗyat was composed and submitted for publication by the “Zerafshan clergy”. However, the document is signed by only one individual: MullƗ KƗmil son of MullƗ QƗbil” (Pravda Vostoka mistakenly wrote “Mullah Kalymov”). There are no seals appended to the document. It can be inferred that without seals, the authority of the legal opinion would be questionable. However, it may be assumed with a certain degree of certitude that what we have here is a copy of a document that was submitted to the Central Vaqf Administration41 from Zerafshan, specifically from Khatyrchi, together with declarations written by peasants requesting that they be granted land.42 No information about the compiler of this rivƗyat is given.43 This legal opinion44 was published recently by Rinat Shigabdinov,45 who regrettably cited only part of the Russian translation of the fatvƗ, which appeared in Pravda Vostoka (issue no. 279, 3 December 1926). His essay reproduced only what had been originally included by the editors of Pravda 41 42 43 44 45

On this see Pianciola and Sartori, “Waqf in Turkestan,” 475–498. TsGARUz, f. R-225, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 19–28. Its provincialism is perceived both in the style of the casus part and in the principle governing the selection of rivƗyat. As we shall show the text was freely translated into Russian by an author identified only as “Ramzi” and commissioned by the editors of the newspaper, Pravda Vostoka. Rinat Shigabdinov, ‘“Sovetskie rivoiaty’ v Srednei Azii: reaktsiia ulemov na sotsialisticheskie reformy 1920-kh godov,” in Mir Islama: Istoriia, obshchestvo, kul’tura (Moscow, 2009), 147–52.

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Vostoka, thus, showing only a corrupted fragment of the original text. Shigabdinov’s essay includes also a brief survey of the literature on the socalled “land and water question,” which was understandably a topic of intense discussion in the mid-1920s in Soviet Central Asia. While Shigabdinov provides references to a number of publications on the subject, the brief quotations which he offers yield only very limited information about the decisions that were handed down by the Communist Party and the Soviet government bodies. Even more regrettable, though, is the fact that, by relying solely on the Russian translation of the first part of the rivƗyat46, he comes to the conclusion that “the position of those clerics47 who supported the given tendency of social development [i.e., the reform], should not be regarded as apostasy from Islamic dogmas” (p. 150). Such an opinion is in fact highly disputable. When Pravda Vostoka published the Arabic-script text of the rivƗyat, it in fact published a highly corrupt version of the original which, together with an approximate Russian translation, contrived to give the impression that the Bolshevik policies on land reform were in keeping with Islamic law and enjoyed the full support of the ҵulamƗҴ. It is perhaps worth considering here the ways in which the version of the legal opinion which we find published in Pravda Vostoka differs from the original. The editors of the newspaper gave particular weight to that part of the text comprising Arabic fiqh citations. In arranging the layout of the text, they shifted the Arabic passages from their conventional position on the right-hand side of the page to the very centre, thus obliterating three lines of the first part of the document written in Persian.48 The Russian translation, however, relates only to the Persian part of the text.49 The translation also imported an extensive body of Bolshevik phraseology (“the laboring peasantry,” “exploitation of hired and slave labor,” etc.) which is not to be found in the original.

46

47 48 49

The expression “Soviet rivƗyats” in the title of Shigabdinov’s article implies that it would be an examination and analysis of the entire corpus of the so-called “rivƗyats on land” of the early Soviet period. However, there is no such analysis in this article. Elsewhere in his article the author singles out “progressive clerics,” who supported the reform, and “conservative clerics,” who instead opposed it (148–150). The typewritten text of this approximate Russian translation can be found in TsGARUz, f. R-225, op. 1, d. 14, ll. 29–30. The Russian translation was clearly based on an Uzbek translation, TsGARUz, f. R-225, op. 1, d. 14, ll. fols. 27, 28–28ob.

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ɬʌͲģ Ȉ͇āĢģ Ȉʷ͟ ɷ͟ ɷˬʈʶͲ ɬ̋ā ĢĔ ɨ́˶͇ ȀͫLJˈ̒ ɷˬͫā Ȁ̀Ģ ƢҨҞ̵ҙҏā ɼ˳̇ā ɷͫǍ͘ LJͲ Ȁˬ͇ҙҏā ƱǨ͟Ǜ̑ LJ˶˳є ʌ̒ Ȁ̶āǍͲ ɷͲLJ͇ łLJʤ͵ ć LJ́ʓ̋ҙҏć łLJ͟Ǩ̑ ĔLJ̋Ĕģā ć ɷˬͫā Ɏˬ̥ łLJ˶ʌͲΑLJ̒ ȇʒ̵ ŷǍʌ̶ ƴǨʔ͟ć ɷˬͫā Ɏˬ̥ Ȭ̋LJ̵ΐā ć LJ΀ Ȉˠˬ˳Ͳ 50Ȁ͵ΐāĔLJ̑ΐā ƱāǨ̑ Ȁ̋āĢǍ̶ ȈͲǍˠ̤ ȇʒ̵ ɬ̋ā ģā ƱĔǍ̑ ɬʌͲģ ĺćĢ ɷ͟ ǚ˶̶LJ̑ Ȉ̵āǍʦ̑ ɨ́ͫ ɼ˙ˏ̶ āǨ˙͎ ɷͲLJ͇ łLJʤ͵ ć łҨҞ͈ ć ɷ͵āĔ ɷ͟ ƦǍ͟ĢLJ͟ ƦLJ͵LJ˙΀ǚ̑ Ȉ͇āĢǩˬͫ ΈLJ̓Ǩ̤ ć ŁāǨʦˬͫ ΈāǨͲLJ͇ Ʊǚʌʤ˶̵ ΈLJ̤ҨҞ̿ā āĢ Ȁ̫Ǩʌ˅̥ Ȉˠˬ˳Ͳ ĺLJ΀ ɬʌͲģ āĢ ɬʌͲģ ɷˠʌʶ͟ ģā ć ƱĔǍ˳͵ ɬʌʌˈ̒ Ȁ͡ ƱĔǍ˳˶ʌͲ ĢLJ͟ Ȉʷ͟ LJ΀ ĔḀ̌ Ȉ̵Ĕ ƴǍ˙̑ ģā LJ̋ ć ǚ̋LJ˳˶ʌͲ ĔLJˈʒʓ̵ā āĢĔḀ̌ Ȭ̒Ģǚ͘ LJ̑ Ȁ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ łLJʌˬ˳͇ ģā LJ̋ ć Ȉ̓āǨ̤ ģā ḳ̌LJ͇ LJ̋ ć ĔĢāǛˢʌͲ ɡ˅ˈͲ Ȁ̒ĔLJ̋ģ ĔḀ̌ ɬʌͲģ ĔḀ̌ 51ɷˬˉ̶ ĺĢLJʌʶ̑ ć ɬʌͲģ ƴǨʔ͟ Ị̏́ ɡͲLJ͇ ƦāǨʌ˙͎ ƦLJ˶ʬ˳΀ ɷ͟ Ǩˢ̋Ĕ ŷĢāǩ˳̑ āĢLJ΀ǚ͵LJͲ ɡ˅ˈͲ ć Ȁ̒ĔLJ̋ģ ĺLJ΀ ɬʌͲģ LJ΀ ůLJʦ̶ā Ʀΐā ģā ǚ̋LJ˳˶ʌͲ ƴǍ͘ ụ̈̌́ ǚʤ̑ LJ́͵ΐā ɷ͟ ǚ˶̋LJ˳͵ ɬʌˈ̒ ɬʌͲģ Ȁ̑ ƦǍ͟ ĢLJ͟ ɡˉʒ˳͟ Ȉˈ̋Ǩʷ̑ ǚ˶̋LJ˳͵ ɨʌˬʶ̒ Ȁ̋āĢǍ̶ ȈͲǍˠʥ̑ āĢ ɬʌͲģ ŸǍͫLJ̿ Ǩʷ͇ć œāǨ̥ ƱĔǨ͟ ĔLJ̑ΐā ƱĔǍ˳͵ žǨ̿ āĢLJ΀ ĔḀ̌ Ȉʌ͇Ģ ɷ̑ žǨˀ̒ ć Ȉˠˬ˳Ͳ ĢǍͲā Ǩʌ̑ǚ̒ ƦǍ̫ łĢǍ̿ ɬ̋ā ĢĔ ǚ̶ΐLJ̑ ƱĔǍ̑ ǩ̋LJ̣ ć Ȉ̵ĢĔ ȈʥˬˀͲ Ǩ̑LJ˶̑ ǨͲā ɬ̋ā ƱĔǍ̑ Ȁ̋āĢǍ̶ ȈͲǍˠ̤ ĺāǨ̑ ŰǍˏͲ ć ȈʥˬˀͲ ɷ̑ ŴǍ˶Ͳ τȀ͵ LJ̋ ɷ˅̋āǨʷ̑ Ȁˬ͈ćā ɡͲLJ͟ ҨҞͲ ɨʌ΀āǨ̑ā ҨҞͲ

Translation: “Blessings through the invocation of His [Allah’s] lofty name. What is the opinion of the imƗms of Islam on this (may Almighty Allah be pleased with them!) in connection with the following question? The sowing [and] tilling of land are a means of ensuring [the continuity of] Allah’s works and the growth of prosperity of the provinces and the salvation of all living things on the entire earth. For that reason, the Soviet government, on the path to the improvement of the 52 regions and [the securing] of harmony among the people and the increase of the quantity of grain, the salvation of all poor peasants, showing compassion to them, desires once again to cultivate the lands of Kha৬irchƯ oblast’,53 so that neglected (plots) will blossom and arable lands will be sown by laboring peasants, who will cultivate the lands with their own hands.

50 51 52 53

ĺĔLJ̑ΐā in the original. ɷˬˈ̶ in the original. LJ́ʓˠˬ˳Ͳ in the original. Judging by the context, the author meant oblast’. See n. 61 below. We are grateful to Nuregdi Toshev, who graciously assisted in the reading of this toponym and explication of certain places in the Persian text.

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Bakhtiyar Babajanov and Sharifjon Islamov Those who miss out on tilling the land will either be those who are unable to engage in the sowing or helpless to engage personally in agriculture, or [if he is the owner], as a result of an excessive amount of land, he will not be able manage its tilling by himself, then the surplus and leftover disused lands will be given to other farmers, to those of them who are poor and landless, so that they will exert their efforts with their utmost strength in tilling [the land], paying the kharƗj [tax on agricultural land], the ‫ޏ‬ushr [tax on farm yields], and the land tax (sƗlnjgh-i zamƯn) for the benefit of the Soviet power. Since the state measures, directives, and authority over the subjects [and] the benefits deriving from them are found in the Soviet government, is this issue correct according to sharƯҵa [and] in accord with [the named] conditions or not?

The RivƗyat of Document A As mentioned above, the second part of the document consists of quotations from Islamic juristic literature (in Arabic), which are meant to confer sharҵƯ legitimacy upon the matter in hand. A number of flaws in the argumentation are apparent. We shall summarize them briefly. The first quotation comes from a work entitled al-AshbƗh wa al-NaܲƗҴir al-‫ۉ‬anafƯ.54 The context of this quotation addresses the case of the murder of a man who is not subject to a Muslim ruler (imƗm), and the degree of responsibility of the person who committed this crime. For the purposes of the present rivƗyat, however, this quotation serves to justify the forcible confiscation by the state of surplus lands in favor of landless peasants or those with little land. The problematic feature of this extrapolation resides in the analogy between the notion of imƗm and the Soviet state. We know that in the early Soviet period some Bukharan ҵulamƗҴ recognized the Soviet government’s status of imƗm. In early 1924 a council of Muslim scholars issued an appeal (khi‫ܒ‬Ɨb-nƗma), thereby denouncing the behavior of the Basmachis 55 as contrary to sharƯҵa. The religious scholars considered the 54

55

A local rendering for the full title, KitƗb al-AshbƗh wa’l-NazƗ’ir li-JalƗl al-DƯn AbƯ AfĪal ҵAbd al-Ra‫ۊ‬mƗn, a ণanafƯ work by Zayn al-DƯn (Zayn al-‫ޏ‬ƖbidƯn) b. IbrƗhƯm b. Muতammad b. Nujaym al-MiৢrƯ (1519–1563). The work has been printed on several occasions, and has been the subject of numerous commentaries. See GAL II.310, 401. It circulated widely in madrasas during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and a redaction of the work was published in 1910 in Kazan’ by the Muতammadiya publishing house. The arguments put forward by the authors of the appeal are as follows: the Basmachis’ constant attacks on cities and villages for the purpose of robbing the population; the unlawful killings of Muslims, thieving, and rapes of young girls and little boys; massacres in villages, the levying of heavy taxes on the peasantry, the forcible confiscation of their

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government’s actions toward the Basmachi to be fully legitimate. By relying on quotations from the QurҴƗn (4:59; 53:31), scholars appealed to the Basmachis to obey the government (in this case, the Council of People’s Commissars of the Bukharan People’s Republic).56 It is at this point that the status of the government is equated with the status of imƗm.57 As we shall see, this argument found its way also into another legal opinion (document ȼ). It is clear, however, that the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic citations which we encounter in the rivƗyat have been taken out of context. The argument which they present in support of the Soviet practice of confiscating lands from their owners is thus a somewhat compromised one. Of even greater interest is the second quotation. This is taken from the well-known work Radd al-MukhtƗr, in which the imƗm is asked to choose how to restore lands left fallow, either by allotting them to someone and levying a tax (kharƗj) on it or by leasing them for a rent equivalent to the kharƗj. In this instance, also, the quotation has been extrapolated with little regard for its original context. As published, the citation contains only part of what we find quoted in the original document, where the author of the Radd al-Mukhtar refers to lands that had no owners or were granted as a gift, or state lands abandoned that could be leased for half the harvest, but from which the levying of the kharƗj and the ‫ޏ‬ushr was forbidden. This stands in sharp contrast with what we find in the legal opinion itself, which focuses on the transfer of these types of lands to peasants for the levying of the kharƗj and the ‫ޏ‬ushr, i.e. taxes which were legalized by the Soviet government.58 Next, in the Russian translation which appeared in the newspaper the legal question as such (mas’ala) is formulated in the form of a confirmation. Furthermore, the editors of Pravda Vostoka did not include the above-

56

57 58

properties, forcing married women to engage in prostitution, see TsGARUz, f. R-57, op. 1, d. 27). We are grateful to Paolo Sartori for alerting us to this document. These are ayat calling upon the faithful to obey Allah, the Messenger, and the “holders of power among you.” In other sections the homily, which contains references to the QurҴƗn (2: 247, 258; 3: 25, etc.), plays up the idea that the “appointment to power” is in the hands of God (“You grant power to whomsoever you desire …”). The ҵulamƗҴ acknowledged another argument in favor of the legitimacy of the government in stating that “the Republic (jumhurƯyat) was chosen by the people themselves” The authors were unable to identify the remaining arguments (similar to the preceding ones). It goes without saying that in them too we will find the habitual use of theses that are taken out of context.

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mentioned details of the original text, but interpreted the text as decisive evidence. 59 At the same time, the publication of the original text of the rivƗyat appears to be written in a form which is difficult to read for the unsophisticated reader. Document ȼ The following document 60 pertaining to the land reform is written in the form of an Uzbek-language fatvƗ, with corroborating arguments in support of the fatvƗ’s conclusion drawn from the Arabic-language Islamic juristic literature (on their content, see below). The text was written by Tashkentbased religious scholars. Beneath the main text are seals or, rather, crude imitations of them. 61 The signatures underneath the text are also obvious forgeries, clearly all made by one and the same hand (most probably by the copyist). Thus, what we have here is a copy of a document that was prepared for publication in a newspaper. The original document was stored in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and it is this which appears below in the original and in translation.62 The file was transferred to the archive from the Department of the Vaqf Directorate of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of the Uzbek SSR. The date of this document is not indicated. However, the binding of the folder63 in which the document was filed gives the following note: “Opened on 10 April 1919; completed on 14 October 1925.” Thus, the document was composed no later than the latter date, even though it was published in Pravda Vostoka nearly 59 60 61

62 63

The quotation reads: “From the standpoint of sharƯҵa this is recognized as entirely permissible and just.” TsGARUz, f. R-57, op. 1, d. 14, l. 29. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Golib Kurbanov, who supports our view (personal communication on 7.10.2010). The names which were retouched on the seals do not correspond to the row of signatures. We would also like to direct attention to the fact that, in order to create verisimilitude, the anonymous copyist retouched one of the seals with broader strokes, while other strokes were paler. The original documents reveal the exact same impressions, i.e., some of the seals are, as a rule, imprinted clearly, and others less so. TsGARUz, f. R-225, op. 1, d. 28, l. 33; illus. 3 The folder is entitled: “File no. 4. Correspondence of the P[eople’s] C[ommissariat] of Education with the Religious Department of the Vaqf Directorate on Questions of Spiritual Upbringing and Education and Requested Information concerning the Salaries of Employees of the Religious Department of the Vaqf Directorate.”

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two months later (7 December 1925, issue no. 277, p. 2.). True, the text in Arabic-script looks like an unsuccessful collage, and the main part of the extracts (iqtibƗs) in the margins was excised, while the Russian translation was shortened (the second, confirmatory, part of the casus text was used). Evidently, those who commissioned the document (i.e., representatives of the Soviet government) reckoned that the forgeries would not be so noticeable in a newspaper, considering the printing technology which existed at the time. In any case, the document was created in keeping with all the rules governing these types of deliberations. The translation and survey of the texts appear directly below:

ɬʉ˜̈ā ć Ǩ̈ǚ˙̒ Ǩ̑ ƱĔ ɷˬʈʶͲ Ǎ̑ ɬʌˈ˳̣ā ɨ́ʌˬ͇ ȀͫLJˈ̒ ɷˬͫā ƦāǍ̀Ģ ƢҨҞ̵ҙҏā ɼ˳̇ā ɷͫǍ͘ LJͲ Ȁˬ͇ҙҏā ƱǨ͟Ǜ̑ LJ˶˳є ʌ̒ ɑ˶ʉ͵ ĿĢҙҏģćā ȅ˶ˈ̈ Ɏ̒Ģΐā Ʀǚ̈Ģҙҏ Ị̏LJ̤ ȅ͵ĢҨҞʉʷ͛ ƱĔLJ̈ģ Ʀǚ̈Ģҙҏ Ȉ͘LJ̈́ ȅʬ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ ć ŁǍ͛ ĿĢҙҏ ĿLJ̣ ȅ͵Ģҙҏ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ɑʉͫǨ̈ ģΐā ć ǩʉ̵Ǩ̈ ȅ˶̈Ģҙҏ ĿLJ̣ ɬ˜̈ā ć Ǩ̈ Ɏ̒Ģΐā ƦĔǨ̈ ƦLJ͡ĢćĔ LJ͵ҨҞʷ̈ā ƦҨҞʉ̑ ĿĢҨҞ̫Ǎ͛ ƛǍ͘ ɷˉʉʷ̈ā ɑʉͫ ȅʬ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ ȅ˶ˈ̈ LJ͛Ģҙҏ ȅʷʉ͛ ȅͫǨ̈ ģΐā ć ǩʉ̵ Ǩ̈ ɷʬ̈ĢҨҞʷ΀āḀ̌ ģćā Ȉ͵Ǎ˜̤ Ɏ͎āǍͲ ɼˉ̈Ģҙҏ ȇˬ̈́ ȅ͵Ǩ̈ ĿLJ˳ˬʉ͘ ɑʉͫ ȅʬ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ Ŀģćā ĿāǨ̑ ģā τǍͲĢǍͫǍ̑ Ȉ̵ĢĔ LJ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ̵Ǩʉ̑ ŁǍˬʉ͘ ɨʉʶ˙̒ LJ͛Ģҙҏ ƢĔΐā ĢĔLJ͘ ŸǍͫćā ć ɷʓ͛ ɑ˶̈ā ɑ˶ʉ͵ ƢҨҞ̵ā ɬ̈Ĕ LJ˳ˬ͇ ĿĢҙҏ ƈLJ˳͵ҙҏ Ʊǚ̇LJ͎ ć ƈLJ˳ͫΐā ɡ̿LJ̤ ŁćĢǍʓ˜̈ā ȇ̈Ǩ̑ LJ͡ćāǨ̑ ǚˬ̣) Ʊǚʉ̑LJʓ͛ ĿĢLJʦʒͫā Țʉʥ̿ ĢćĔǚ̵LJ͎ ć ȫ˳̈ā Ȉ̵ĢĔ ҨҞ̿ā Ʊǚ̈Ģҙҏ ȇ΀ǛͲ ɨˆ͇ā ƢLJͲā łǨˁ̤ ĿĢҙҏ ŸǍͫćā ƦLJ˜̈Ĕ ȅˬ͈ćā ș̈ǚ̥ Ƚ͎āĢ ĢĔҨҞʉ͘ Ȉ̈āćĢ ȅˬ͈ćā ȫʉ͘ ɷˬˆ˶̤ Ʊǚ˶ʉ̵ (ɷˏʉʥ̿ ȅʤ͵ 719 ȫͲLJ̥ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ć ƋćĔǨ̈ā ĿLJ̑ ĢāĔ ɬʉͲģ ɑʉͫǨ̈ ŁǍ͛ Ʊǚ̈Ǩ̶́ ɷ˶̈ǚͲǩ̑ ɨʉ͛ĢćĔLJʓ̈ā Ƚ͎āĢ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ɨʉ͛ ƦĔ ɷ̑LJʥ̿ ɬ̈ ɷ̣āḀ̌ Ǩ̈ Ʀǚ˶̈Ģҙҏ ɡ̿LJ̤ Ǩ̈ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ȅ˶ˈ̈ ƋćĔǨ̈ā ĢǍͫΐā Ʀǚʉ̒ҨҞ̿LJ̤ ɑ˶ʉ͵ā ŁćǨ̑ LJ͛ĢҨҞ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ ȅ͵ĢҙҏǨ̈ ɷˬͫā ƛǍ̵Ģ ȅ˶ˈ̈ Ƌćǚ˶ʉˬʉ͘ Ƚ˶Ͳ Ʀǚ˶ʉ͎Ǩ̈́ ɨˬ̵ ć ɷʉˬ͇ ɷˬͫā ȅˬ̿ ɷˬͫā ƛǍ̵Ģ ȫ̑ ƋćĔǨ̈ā ĢǍͫΐā ȇ̈Ĕ ȅ˙̤ LJʉ̤ā ɬͲ ȉ̈ṳ̈̌) ĢҨҞ̈ǚˬʉ͘ Ƚ˶Ͳ ƦĔ ƈLJ˳ͫΐā ȇ̈Ĕ ȅ˙̤ ɬ̈ ɷ̣āḀ̌ Ǩ̈ Ʀǚʉ̒ҨҞ̿LJ̤ ɑʉͫ ȅʤ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ Ǎʒ̶ćā ȅ˶̈ǚˬ̣ ȅʤ̒ 2 ɷ̈Ǩʉ˜˳ͫLJ͇ ĿćLJʓ͎ .ĢćĔ ȅ˜ʉ͵ ƢĔΐā ƛLJ̶ćā Ǩ̈ ɷ̵Ǩ̈ǚˬ̈Ǩʉ̒ ǽ͵Ǩ̈ ɨʉ͛ Ǩ΀ ǽ˶ˈ̈ (ɷͫ ǽ͎́ ŰĢҙҏā ƛćā ȫ̑ ɷ̵LJ˳ͫLJ̈ҨҞʷ̈ā Ŀģćā ȅ͵Ǩ̈ ȅʒ̤LJ̿ Ǩ̈ ɷʓ͛ ƱĔǨ͡ā łĢLJʒ͇ ƦĔǍʒ̶ćā ɷˬʈʶͲ ȅ͡ ƱĔ ȅ̵ ɷʥˏ̿ 245 ΈLJ˶̑ LJ͡ĢҙҏģǍ̵ ƦLJˢˬʉ̒LJ̵ĢǍ͛ Ʊǚ̈ĢLJ͘Ǎ̈ ĢćǚͲģҙҏ ȅʷ̈Ǩ̑ ɷ͈ĢҨҞ͵LJ˙΀Ĕ ǩʉ̵Ǩ̈ ŁǍͫΐā Ʀǚʉʒ̤LJ̿ Ǩ̈ ȈͲǍ˜̤ ȅ͵Ǩ̈ ƦLJˢͫǍ̑ ĢĔLJ͘ ɷˉ̶ҨҞʷ̈ā ȅ͵Ǩ̈ ƦҨҞʉ̑ ȅ̫Ǎ͛ ģćā ć œLJʓʥͲ LJ͡Ǩ̈ ȇʉͫΐā ȅ͵Ǩ̈ ƦĔĢҙҏ ƢĔΐā ŁǍ͛ ĿǨ̈ ȈͲǍ˜̤ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ƦLJˢͫΐā ȅ͵ĢҙҏǨ̈ ƛLJ̶ćā ƦLJˢˬ̈Ǩ̑ ŁǍ˶ʉͫΐā Ʀǚ˶͎Ǩ̈́ ȈͲǍ˜̤ ĢćĔ ĢLJ̑ ȅ˙̤ ɷˉʷ̈Ǩʌ̑ ɷ͈Ģҙҏ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ɷˉʷʉ͵ҙҏ Ʊǚ̇LJ͎ ƦҨҞʉ̑ Ģҙҏ Ǩ̈ ƦLJˢˬ̈Ǩ̑ Ʀǚʉ͎Ǩ̈́ ȈͲǍ˜̤ τǍͲĢLJ̑ ȅ˙̤ 64Ʀǚʉ̵ģćā Ȉˈ̈Ǩ̶ ɷˉ̶ҨҞʷ̈ā ɑ˶ʉ͵Ģҙҏ ģćā ɷˉ͵LJ˳ˬʶͲ Ǩ̑ Ǩ΀ ɷˬͫā ƛǍ̵Ģ ɷʤ͵LJ˶̫ ĢLJ̑ ȅ˙̤ ǩ̵ ɷʒ̶ ć ɑ̶ șʉ΀ 65Ʀǚʉ̵āģćā Ȉˈ̈Ǩ̶ ɑ˶ʉ͵Ģҙҏ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ɷʶͫǍ̑ ƱĔ ɷ˙̈Ǩ̈́ Ǎʒ̶ćā Ǩ̈ǚ˙̒ Ǩ̑ ɷˬʈʶͲ ƦLJ͡Ǩ̑ ǨͲā ɷˉʷ̑LJ̒ ƦLJ͵ ƦҨҞʉ̑ ȅ̫Ǎ͛ģćā ć ɷˉ̶ҨҞʷ̈ā ƦҨҞʉ̑ ȅ̫Ǎ͛ ģćā ɷʶ˳ʉ͛ Ǩ̑ ɷʶ˳ʉ͛ Ǩ̑ Ʀǚ̈Ģҙҏ ȅͫLJ΀ā ƈҨҞʷ͘ ć Ǩ̶́ ɷ͇LJ˳̣ ć ɷˏ̈LJ̈́Ǩ̑ Ǩ΀ Ʀǚʉ̵ ɷˬʉʒ͘ ƦLJ˳ˬʶͲ ȅ͛ 64 65

This is a dialectal form; it should read: Ʀǚʌ̵āģǍ̋ See the preceding note.

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ɷʶ˳ʉ͛ ƛćā ȅ˶ˈ̈ ɷʶˬʉ͘ ĢāǨ͘ā LJ͡ ȅʓʉ˜ˬͲ ȅ͵ ȅ˜ˬͲ ć Ǩ̈ ƢǍˬˈͲLJ͵ ƱāḀ̌ ć ƢǍˬˈͲ ĿĢāǚ˙Ͳ ƱāḀ̌ ɷͫǨ̑ ȅʷ΀āḀ̌ ɷʬ͵ǍͲ Ǩ̑ Ʀǚʉ΀LJˢʓ͇āĢģ ć Ǩ̈ ȅ͡ Ʊǚʉ͎Ǩˀ̒ ģćā ɷʶ˳ʉ͛ Ǩ̑ ɷ˶̈ ć ɷʶˬʉ͘ ĢāǨ͘ā ɷ˶ʉ͈LJ˳̒ćā ɷˉʉ̵ Ʊǚ̇LJ͎ ć ɷˉʉ͎Ǩˀ̒ ć ɷʶˬʉ͘ ɑʉˬ˳̒ LJ͡ ȅͲĔΐā ƦLJ͡ҨҞ΀āḀ̌ ȇʉ̒āḲ̌ā ɷʬ̈ĢLJʉʓ̥ā ģćā ƦǍʶͫǍ̑ ģΐā ƱāḀ̌ ć ŁǍ͛ ƱāḀ̌ ȅ˶ʉ̵ ɷˈ˅͘ ƱĔ ƢҨҞʶͫā ɷʉˬ͇ ǚ˳ʥͲ Ȉˈ̈Ǩ̶ Ģҙҏ ɷʶˬʉ͘ ɨʉˬʶ̒ LJ͡Ģҙҏ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ǩʉ̵Ǩ̈ ć ɷ̵Ǩ̑ ć 66ɷ̵ҨҞʷʦ̑ ȅ˶ˈ̈ ɷʒ΀ ɷ͛LJ̈ ć ǚ˶̵ ɑʉͫ ƴǍ͘ ć Ƣǚ˙Ͳ ƦĔ ɷ˶ʉ̑ Ʊǚʉ˳˜̤ Ȉˈ̈Ǩ̶ Ȉ̵ĢĔ ć Țʉʥ̿ ĿĢҙҏ ɷʒ΀ ć ɑʉˬ˳̒ ć ĢāǨ͘ā ƛǍ̶ ɷ˳΀ ć Ģҙҏ ȅ̫Ǎ͡Ǩ̑ Ǩ̈ ć Ģҙҏ ȅ̫Ǎˢˬʉ͘ ĢāǨ͘ā ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ɷ˜͵Ǎ̫ ĢǍͫǍ̑ ć Țʉʥ̿ Ȉ̵ĢĔ τǍͲĢǍͫǍ̑ ɨ˜ʥʓʶͲ ƦǍ̈ΑLJͲ ǩʉ̵ Ǩ̋ ƱĢLJʬʉ̑ Ʀǚʉʶ̈Ǩ͈Ǎ̒ ĿĢҙҏ ƦLJʶ̤ā ć ƢǨ͛ ƦLJˢˬ͘ ć Ʀǚʉʒʒ̵ ĿĢҨҞʷ̈ā Ȭʉ˳ˬʉ͘ Ǎ̑ Ģҙҏ ȅ̫Ǎˢˬʉ͘ łLJʤ͵ ć ɄˀʓͲ ɷ͈ łLJˏ̿ žǨ̶ā ŁǍͫǍ̑ ƦLJˉͫLJ̵ ɑʉͫǚ˶̵Ǩ̥ ɷˉ̈Ģҙҏ ɡˢ͵Ǎ͛ Ģҙҏ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ć Ȁʷʉ͛ ɡˉʒ˳͛ :ȇ̈Ĕ ĢҙҏĢǍͫǍ̑ ɡ̿āć LJ͡ ĿćǨ̥ā ɨˬ͇ā ɷ̣āḀ̌ ǚ˳ʥͲ ɬ̑ā ... ɨˬ͇ā ɷ̣āḀ̌ ɬ̋ǚͫā Ǩʦ͎ ҨҞͲāĔ (ɬ̑ā) ɨˬ͇ā ɷ̣āḀ̌ ǚ˳ʥͲ ž(ć) ǚ˳ʥͲ ... ɨˬ͇ā ɨ̋Ǩˠͫā ǚʒ͇ ҨҞͲ ɨˬ͇ā ƢćǚʦͲ ƦLJ̥ ɷˬͫāǨˀ͵ ҨҞͲāĔ ɨˬ͇ā ƦLJ̥ ɷˬͫā Ǩʌ̥ ҨҞͲāĔ Ȁˬ͈ćā ǚ˳ʥͲ ĢǍ͵ ǚʌ˳ʥͫā ǚʒ͇ ɨˬ͇ā ƢćǚʦͲ ƦLJ̣ ȚͫLJ̿ ҨҞͲāĔ Ȁˬ͈ćā ƢҨҞ̵ҙҏā țʌ̶ ƦLJ̥ ƢćǚʦͲ ƢćǚʦͲ ƦLJ̥ ƱĢǍ̒ ɷˬͫā ƴĢ ǚ͘ ƦLJʌͲ “Blessings through the invocation of His [Allah’s] lofty name. What is the view of the imƗms of Islam (May the Almighty Allah’s blessings be upon them!) on the following question? Would it be appropriate if the [Soviet] government allocated, at its discretion, the lands and arable lands which, by judicial will are found in surplus quantities in the possession of people who are unable with their own hands to till these surplus lands and arable lands, for the benefit of peasants with little land or landless peasants (according to their need), but to those of them who are capable of tilling them? 67 In accordance with the madhhab of imƗm A‫ޏ‬਌am —the greatest of the religious scholars of the religion of Islam—it is considered utterly unacceptable and sinful to transfer land to anyone, to receive a harvest for this, and to make use of them. The book ‫܇‬a‫ۊ‬Ư‫ ۊ‬al68 BukhƗrƯ (p. 719) contains a communication in the name of Khan਌ala, the son of Qays

66 67 68

This is also a dialectal form. It would have been more accurate to write “ɷʶʓ̋ā Ʊǚʌʷʦ̑” or “ɷ̵ҨҞ̋ā Ʊǚʌʷʦ̑.” Abnj ণanƯfa an-Nu‫ގ‬man b. SƗbit (699–767)—the eponym of the ণanafite madhhab. The collection of ‫ۊ‬adƯth compiled by ImƗm al-BukhƗrƯ (810–870), entitled JƗmiҵ al‫܇‬a‫ۊ‬Ư‫ۊ‬.

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about what RƗfi‫ޏ‬, the son of KhƗdƯj recounted: ‘In Medina we were wealthy landowners. We transferred this land to the peasants, and for this we received the harvest. That is, we 69 were taking the harvest from these mentioned lands, saying that this was payment to the owner of the land. Subsequently, this [act] of ours was forbidden by the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless and greet him! That is, the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless and greet him!—outlawed taking [a portion] of a harvest from landowners under the guise of payment to the owner of the land.’ (The ‫ۊ‬adƯth: ‘Whosoever restores land, to him shall 70 it belong’). That is: ‘Whoever restores the land, it belongs to him’). The question introduced in the second volume, on p. 245 of FatƗvƯ-yi ҵƖlamgƯrƯya, consists of the following. If an owner of land is not in a position to till the land that belongs to him, then the state 71 should confiscate this land and give it to landless peasants. In keeping with the above words, the state has the right to alienate land from those who have a surplus of it and to transfer it to those who need it and who are capable of tilling it. Is the use by dihqƗn of lands that the state alienates [from the wealthy] and transfers to them legitimate from the standpoint of sharƯҵa? From the point of view of sharƯҵa, the use of lands transferred by the state to peasants is unquestionably legitimate. In exactly the same way the Messenger of Allah bade every Muslim to till land with his own hands and earn his piece of bread through his own labor. 72

The [second] question consists of the following: if any Muslim from any class, urban or rural, voluntarily wishes to decide to transfer to another his ownership of land or [other] property of a precisely defined or undefined size, that is, this same [owner] agrees that this property will be transferred to the ownership and use of another, and if, in another 73 case, someone voluntarily decides to assign to the ownership of whomsoever he desires a part of his personal land and crops in any quantity, or to give it as a gift and to give it away to landless peasants, then from the standpoint of Muhammad’s sharƯҵa—Peace be upon him!—will such a decision to transfer into the possession or in the form of a gift be true and correct [ɚs well as] firm and authoritative, issuing from the former directives of sharƯҵa? 74 It will be true and correct. For those who adopt such a decision, who sacrifice [their] land, and the donors, with these deeds of theirs, with the demonstrated generosity and

69

70 71 72 73

74

The concrete portion of a harvest for using lands is not stipulated here. In works on the fiqh the question of portions owed to the leaseholder and the owner is also interpreted inconsistently (see below). The form known as charikar was established in Central Asia. The word ‫ۊ‬adƯth is underlined. In the text the parenthesis is not closed. “Ȁ̤ā,” “Ḁ̏ā” is written instead. On the composition and true interpretation of its author, see below. In the sense of “posed question, casus, problem, juridical task.” Here, literally, “ɷʶˬʌ͘ ĢāǨ͘ā,” i.e., he acknowledges his decision according to the accepted rules of procedural practice, in the presence of witness, willingly and without compulsion, in documented form. “Ģҙҏ Ȁ̫Ǎˢˬʌ͘ ĢāǨ͘ā,” i.e., those who renounce their right of land ownership.

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accomplished good deeds, they instill happiness into the hearts of unfortunate and despairing poor people and peasants, and thereby they themselves will be gifted with noble traits and they will achieve salvation on Judgment Day. [We confirm]: 75

76

(1) Muতammad KhwƗja A‫ޏ‬lam [son] DƗmullƗ Fakhr ad-DƯn KhwƗja … b Muতammad A‫ޏ‬lam (2) MullƗ ‫ޏ‬Ⱥbd al-KarƯm A‫ޏ‬lam Ɇuতammadnjf (3) DƗmullƗ Naৢrullah-KhƗn Makhdnjm Ⱥ‫ޏ‬lam (4) DƗmullƗ Khayrullah KhƗn Ⱥ‫ޏ‬lam (5) ‫ޏ‬Abd al-ণamƯd Nnjr Muতammad njghlƯ (6) DƗmullƗ ৡƗliত JƗn Makhdnjm Ⱥ‫ޏ‬lam (7) Tura KhƗn Makhdnjm Makhdnjm KhƗn Shaykh al-IslƗm njghlƯ 77 (8) MiyƗn Qudratullah.”

The RivƗyat in Document B The selection of legal arguments contained in this document was undertaken more thoroughly and professionally than in the previous one. Yet even here the adaptation of Islamic precepts to the needs of the Soviet land reform may be noted. Here we will examine the most striking of the arguments marshaled by the compiler. The first of these is the fragment of a ‫ۊ‬adƯth (see app. 2). Its content is more completely conveyed in the main text. The text relates how the followers of the Prophet who owned lands used to lease them on contractual sharecropping terms (mukhƗbara) and did not see in this any deviation from the precepts of the Prophet. This situation lasted until such time as a follower named Rafi confirmed the veracity of a ‫ۊ‬adƯth according to which the Prophet actually banned the practice of sharecropping. The form and terms of this type of sharecropping are not entirely clear; at issue here, though, were the extremely disadvantageous terms for the lessor. Other types of sharecropping were not banned; amongst these was the above-mentioned type of lease called muzƗraҵa, 78 which, however, was based on terms that were stipulated by Abnj ণanƯfa (see below). In addition, 75 76 77 78

The names appear from right to left and from top to bottom. Some of the names are obscured by the imitation seals. In the above-mentioned issue of Pravda Vostoka the names are listed in a different order. In addition, the following name has been added: Mulla Sarymsakov MuftƯ-i-Agliam. A type of lease, according to which land is granted by the owner together with sowing material; the portion of the harvest is stipulated separately, depending on the conditions of watering, the quality of the land, etc. See Abnj Yusnjf, KitƗb al-KharƗj (Beirut, 1985), 114.

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other compilations and commentaries of ‫ۊ‬adƯth, in addition to the one we mentioned, cite other traditions supporting its content, e.g., that existing surplus lands should not lie fallow, and that such lands should be temporarily transferred or given as gifts to friends. The following fragment of the ‫ۊ‬adƯth used as an argument in this document is also taken out of context and introduced, in the name of Abnj ণanƯfa, in this manner: “Sharecropping (muzƗraҵa) is sinful.” In fact, however, the last part of the ‫ۊ‬adƯth goes on to stipulate the actual circumstances when such a practice may and may not be acceptable. Among the circumstances where the ‫ۊ‬adƯth defines muzƗraҵa as “sinful” are times of poor harvest, difficulties associated with watering (“from a well”), a shortage of instruments for tilling land, etc. This is precisely the way that the ‫ۊ‬adƯth is cited and interpreted by Abnj ণanƯfa’s disciples such as Muতammad al-ShaybƗnƯ, who similarly states that sharecropping becomes sinful in circumstances such as the above. Another of Abnj ণanƯfa’s pupils, Abnj Ynjsuf al-KnjfƯ, recognizes “sharecropping” (leasing) as legitimate, but also stipulates that any instance of such practice should be set down in writing as an agreement.79 Jurists of a much later period also stipulated the principal condition whereby a lease was considered a “sin,” namely when it was time to do watering (usually of date-palm gardens) by hand, i.e., “from a well,” in connection with terms that were extremely disadvantageous for the lessee and did not correspond to the volume of work. This is precisely why, where leases were concerned, the key issue was always about lands (gardens) which were suitable for tilling (“green lands”). However, there is no mention of a ban on sharecropping. Among the rivƗyat cited in this document the following ‫ۊ‬adƯth is encountered most often: ɷΌ ΋ͫ ǽ΋ ́΍ ΋͎ ŰĢΏ і ҙҏā LJʉ̤Ώ іā ɬΏ Ͳ΋ / “Whosoever restores the land, to him it shall belong” (in this sense: disused land belongs to the individual who tilled and sowed it). In the section of the document this ‫ۊ‬adƯth became the main argument in favor of the sharҵƯ legitimacy with regard to the transfer of land to landless peasants, i.e., the main clause of the Decree on Land. However, as could be expected, here too one encounters the usual “reasoning” device with the aid of a tradition that has been taken out of context or of a minor “redaction” of the main part of the ‫ۊ‬adƯth. In fact, the latter in its more complete form reads thus: ɷΌ ΋ͫ ǽ΋ ́΍ ΋͎ ɼΈ ʓ΋ ʉΏ Ͳ΋ LJ̀Έ ĢΏ іā LJʉ̤Ώ іā ɬΏ Ͳ΋ / “Whosoever restores dead land, to him it shall belong.” It would appear that 79

Ibid..

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the compiler (compilers?) of the document intentionally used the word “land” with the definite article “al” (al-irƗĪ) and omitted the word “dead” (mayyita).” With this type of construction the connotation of the phrase allows one to speak of land in general, including even land which is presently unused but which had been tilled in the past and still has an owner. Meanwhile, the original ‫ۊ‬adƯth refers to “dead lands” (ɼʓ΋ ʉΏ Ͳ΋ LJ̀ĢΏ ā), meaning land on which no sowing had ever taken place. Most importantly, though, the issue at hand in the complete text of the ‫ۊ‬adƯth relates to lands which do not belong to anyone else; the “restoration” of such land takes place only with the permission of the owner. It is precisely in this spirit (i.e., with the stipulation of the “full rights” of a possible owner of “disused/dead lands”) that this ‫ۊ‬adƯth is the subject of commentary in the works of Abnj Ynjsuf alKnjfƯ,80 Muতammad al-ShaybƗnƯ, and others devoted to the fiqh, with corresponding conclusions relating to concrete cases. We will now focus on the compiler’s reference to the famous compilation of fatvƗs entitled FatƗvƯ-yi ҵƖlamgƯrƯya (also known as FatƗvƯ-yi HindƯya81). According to the compiler’s interpretation (referring to this work), the government has the right to alienate lands from owners who possess large areas of land and who are not in a position to till them by themselves. The government can transfer the alienated lands to those who are capable of tilling them. Incidentally, the original text of the work casts serious doubt on such an interpretation. First of all, the author of the work clearly defines that an “imƗm”-sultan has the right to alienate disused lands. These can either be lands whose owner is not known or an owner whose heirs are unknown (or is dead), etc. Second, a landowner’s right of possession (even with regard to disused lands) is protected. Third, the original work stipulates that if an owner is not in a position to till his lands, then he is not obliged to pay the kharƗj. Fourth, an imƗm has the right to transfer abandoned lands to an individual who is in a position to till this land and pay the kharƗj. Complete alienation of land is not the issue here because the given case refers not to “dead lands” but only to disused lands that have an owner (see app. 2). The 80

81

Ibid., 111–115. To a great degree Abnj Ynjsuf focuses on possible disputes surrounding “dead lands” that have no owner and whose restoration should be carried out with the permission of the imƗm (=ruler). However, he clearly stipulates cases where the owner of neglected lands is known, and his rights are therefore protected (ibid.). For detailed discussion of this work, see Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauka Uzbekskoi SSR, VII, 337–8.

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quotation in the document is introduced in this precise form and clearly refutes the statements of the main text. Thus, even in this case the compilers of the document tried to marshal the “necessary arguments” in favor of the land reform by modifying original texts with truncations and a nearly undetectable alteration of the syntax of quotations. However, the selection of the rivƗyat was not ideal, and the citations selected even contradict the statements made in the main part of the text (mas’ala). Document “ɋ” This text is an appeal (khi‫ܒ‬Ɨb-nƗma) written by the Bukharan mɚ‫ۊ‬kama-yi sharҵƯyɚ in connection with the land reform. 82 The lower-left section is stamped with a seal that was forged.83 Thus, once again it must be assumed that this document is also a copy and was probably prepared for publication in a newspaper. The text is examined below.

Ȁ̵ ɷͲLJ˶̑LJ˅̥ ɗ˶ʉ̵ ɷʉ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ˳˜ʥͲ āĢLJʦ̑ Ʊǚ˶ʶ̈Ǩ͈Ǎ̒ Ȁ̒LJ̤ҨҞ̿ā Ǩʉ̈ Ǩʉ̈ Ʀǚ˶͎Ǩ̈́ ĿǨͫLJ˳ˬ͇ ɗ͵Ǩͫ Ȉ̈ҙҏć ĢǍ͛ǛͲ Ʊǚ˶̵LJʉ˙Ͳ ȅʓ̈ĢǍ́˳̣ ǨͫāĢǍ̶ ƦLJʓʶ˜̑ģćā Ʊǚ͵LJͲģ ȅ͡Ǩ̀LJ̤ ɷ͡ ɡ˳͇ Ʀǚ˶͎Ǩ̈́ ȈͲǍ˜̤ Łǚ̈ā Ǩʷ͵ ɷˬ̈ā ȅ̵ Ⱥ̵āć ɷʓ̈ǩ͈ ȇ̋ģLJ̈ Ǩͫ ɷͲLJ˶̑LJ˅̥ Ʊǚ˶̿Ǎˀ̥ ȅ̒LJ̤ҨҞ̿ā ȇʉ˙̫ ŁćĢǍ͛ ȅ˶̋Ǩͫ Ȉ̈āćĢ ƦLJ͡ģLJ̈ Ʊǚ̿Ǎˀ̥Ǎ̑ ɗ͵Ǩͫ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ȅ̵ ɷʉ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ˳˜ʥͲ āĢLJʦ̑ .Ʊǚ͘LJ˳ˬ̈Ǩʉ̶ΐā ɷˬʉ̑ ĿǨ͈Ǎ̒ Ȁ̵ ɷʉ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ˳˜ʥͲ āĢLJʦ̑ ƦǍ̫ćā ȅ͵LJˢͫǍ̑ ĿǨ͈Ǎ̒ ĿǨͫ łLJ̤LJˁ̈ā ƦLJ͡Ǩ̑ ɗ͵ǨͫLJ˳ˬ͇ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ .ĢĔ ƦLJ͛ ɷ˳ͫǍ̑ ɬ˜˳Ͳ ƈLJ˳ʓ̈ā Ʊǚ̈LJ͎ ȇ˜̈ā ȅ͵ǨͫǨʉ̈ ɷʬ͵ǍͲ ɷˬ̈ā ĿǨͫ śǍ͛ ģćā ŁǍͫǍ̑ ŁǍ͛ ĿǨͫ Ǩʉ̈ ƱĔ Ƚ͘āć ȅ͵Ǩͫ ȅʷ͛ ɡˉʒ˳͛ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ȇ̈Ǩʉ̑ ȇʓ̈āḲ̌ā Ʀǚ̈Ǩʉ̈ ģćā ɷ͡Ǩͫ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ɎʥʓʶͲ ć ƋǨʓ̑ ǩʉ̵ Ǩʉ̈ Ǩͫ ȅʷ͛ .Ģǚ˙̣ ɷ˶ͫćā ɡ̿āć ɷ͡ ĿćǨ̥ā łĔLJˈ̵ ɷʶˬʉ͘ ǚ˶̵ĢḀ̌ Ʀǚ̈ģćā .Ǩˬ͵LJ˜̒ā ǨͲā Ʊǚ͘LJ˳ˬʉ͘ Ǩˬʷ̈ā ȅͫǨʉ̥ ć ȅʷʦ̈ ć Ȭ̈Ǩʉ̑ ƢĔĢLJ̈ ɷ͡ Ǩͫ ɡˉʒ˳͛ ƢҨҞʶͫā ɷʉˬ͇ ǩʉ˳̈Ǩʒ˳ˉʉ̙ ɷʬ͵LJ˶̫

82

83

TsGARUz, f. R-57, op. 1, d. 28, l. 29; illus. 5. A reminder: the folder in which this document was inserted was closed on 14 October 1925. This means that the document (which, judging by its content, was created after the formation of the Uzbek SSR) appeared no earlier than this date. This is particularly noticeable when the photograph is digitally enlarged. As Golib Kurbanov has pointed out, this type of imprint in the early Soviet period always contained a date (there is none on our seal) because, according to existing regulations, a seal remained valid for one year.

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ĿǨʉ̈ ɑ͵ ȅʷ͛ Ǩ̑ ĔḀ̌LJ̈ ɷʶͫLJ͘ ɡ˅ˈͲ ƦĔ ƱĔLJˏʓ̵ā Ǩʉ̈ ƱĔǨ͡ā ɨʉ͛ĢĔĔẠ̌ǍͲ ɨ΀ ƱĔǨˬ̑LJʓ͛ ĿǍʓ͎ ƋǍʉ̑ Ʊǚ˳΀ Ɏ́ʓʶͲ ŁǍͫΐā Ʀǚ̈ǨͫǨʉ̈ ɗ͵ ȅʷ͛ ĢǍ͛ǛͲ ȈͲǍ˜̤ ɷ̵LJ˳ͫΐā ɷ˜̈ā ɷˬ̈ā ȅ̫Ǎ͛ ģćā ȅ˶ʉ̵ ɷ˳΀ ŁǍͫǍ̑ ŁǍ͛ Ʊǚ˶̈Ǩˬ̑LJʓ͛ ĿǍʓ͎ ŁǍͫǍ̑ ŁǍ͛ Ǩͫ ɷˬʈʶͲ ȅ͇Ǩ̶ ɨ΀ Ʊǚ̿Ǎˀ̥ Ǎ̑ .ĢĔǩ̈LJ̣ ɷ̵Ǩ̑ ɷ͛Ǩͫ ƦLJ˙΀Ĕ ƋāǨʓ̑ .Ģǚ͵LJˉˬ̈ģLJ̈ .ǩʉͲ ɷˬʉ̑ ȇ̈Ĕ ĿǨ͈Ǎ̒ ȅ˶̈ǨͫǨʉ̑ǚ̒ ȅ͛ Ʊǚ˶˙̤ ȅ̒LJ̤ҨҞ̿ā Ǩʉ̈ ɑ˶ʉʓͲǍ˜̤ ǨͫāĢǍ̶ ƱĔǨ̀LJ̤ .ȇ̈Ĕ ĢĔLJƼͫǍ̑ ƢĔĢLJ̈ ɷʶ˶ʉˬ͘ ɡ̤ Ʊǚ̒ĢǍ̿ Ǎ̶ ȅ̵ ɷˬʈʶͲ Ǩʉ̈ ɷ˜ʷ̈Ǩʓ̑ ȅˢʉͫ œLJʓʥͲ ɗ͵Ǩͫ ɡˉʒ˳͛ ɷ˜͵Ǎ̫

Ŀǩ͛ǨͲ āĢLJʦ̑ ɷ˳ˠʥͲ ɷʉ͇Ǩ̶ ȅ̵ ƱĢāĔā

.ĢǍ˜ʷͫā ǚʒ͇ LJƼˬͲāĔ Ʉ̈Ǩ̶ ǚ˳ʥͲ :ȫʉ̇Ģ ɷʉ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ˳˜ʥͲ āĢLJʦ̑ ȅˬ͈ćā Ƚ̵āǍͫā ǚʒ͇ ṳ̈̌ҙҏā ǚʒ͇ āģǨʉͲ :ȇ̒LJ͛Ǩ̵ .ɨʉ̤Ǩͫā ǚʒ͇ :ȅˬʉ͛ć ɷʉ˶̈Ĕ ĢǍˠʷͫā ǚʒ͇ ҨҞͲāĔ Ʉ̋Ǩ̶ ǚ˳ʥͲ : Ȁʶʌ̇Ģ ɷʌ͇Ǩ̶ ɷ˳ˠʥͲ āĢLJʦ̑ Ȁˬ͈ćā Ƚ̵āǍͫā ǚʒ͇ ṳ̈̌ҙҏā ǚʒ͇ āģǨʌͲ :ȇ̒LJ͟ Ǩ̵ Ȁˬ͈ćā ƦLJͲā ƛǍ̵Ǩͫā ǚʒ͇ ҨҞͲ :(τ) LJˁ̤ā ɨʌ̤Ǩͫā ǚʒ͇ ɬ̑ Ɏʥͫā ǚʒ͇ :Ȁˬʌ͟ć (τ) ɷʌ˶̋Ĕ

Appeal of the Bukhara [Department] of the ma‫ۊ‬kama-yi sharҵƯya in Connection with the Land Reform “At the present time within the Republic of Uzbekistan appeals of religious scholars of the 84 mentioned vilƗyat are being drafted and published in newspapers in connection with the land reform, and these findings are being implemented by the government. The SharƯ‫ޏ‬a Committee of Bukhara examined the rivƗyat that were written in this connection by the mentioned [religious scholars]. The SharƯ‫ޏ‬a Committee of Bukhara considers these conclusions to be correct because the cited commentaries of the mentioned religious scholars are true. Indeed, those people who have much land, but are not in a position to till and sow so much [a lot of] land with their own hands, and those [among them] who allocate from their land to landless farm laborers and dihqƗn who are in need [of land], providing joy to poor people, will surely attain salvation on Judgment Day. This is exactly how our Prophet—peace be upon him!—commanded [us] to help the poor, to perform good and pleasing deeds. In addition, the great books on the fatvƗ contain [precepts] [stating] that if land remains disused or if someone turns out to have much land and he does not have enough hands to till it, and if the state permits the surplus to be confiscated from such a person and transferred to hired laborers-dihqƗn, then this action will be permitted. In this connection, many sharƯҵa decisions have also been written, and [they] are recorded in books on the fatvƗ. 84

Apparently, the SharƯҵa Committee of Bukhara was shown other documents (including the ones cited above), in which concrete oblast’s/vilƗyat were mentioned.

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We consider correct the land reform measures which are being carried out right now by the Soviet power. For the resolution of the land question in this manner will help overcome the problem of want among poor peasants. Chairman of the Bukharan Maতkama-yi Shar‫ޏ‬Ưya: Muতammad SharƯf DƗmullƗ ‫ޏ‬Ⱥbd alShuknjr; Secretary: MirzƗ ‫ޏ‬Abd al-Aতad ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VƗsi‫ ޏ‬njghlƯ; Representative (?): Mulla ‫ޏ‬Abd al-Rasul ImƗn njghlƯ; Representative for Religious Affairs (dinƯya vakƯlƯ): ‫ޏ‬Abd al-ণaqq b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RaতƯm.”

This document thus merely confirmed the former decisions (in the form of rivƗyat) and the arguments presented by its compilers. However, direct references to Islamic juristic literature or the sayings of Prophet were not cited. In addition, the cautious wording relates, rather, to the voluntary transfer by owners of substantial tracts of land to poor peasants and hired laborers, or the transfer for tilling to landless dihqƗn, as opposed to complete alienation.

3. CONCLUSIONS The turbulent political events, the civil war, and the reforms introduced by the newly established Bolshevik government intensified the schism among religious scholars, which had already emerged around the new schooling method (u‫܈‬njl-i jadƯd), which had found its way in the region at the beginning of the 20th century. A new round of debates resumed in connection with the Bolsheviks’ policies of “socialization” of properties owned by wealthy citizens, above all—land. In this connection the rifts intensified both in “progressive” circles and among their opponents—conservative religious scholars. Indeed, the harsh censorship system that was introduced by the Bolshevik authorities often makes it impossible to discover the views of those who did not agree with them. But, these opposing views still held significant sway over the peasantry, a fact that even the Bolshevik government were compelled to acknowledge. Ɍhe sources which we have brought here to light were collected by Soviet institutional authorities, and filed away in their respective archives. As Adeeb Khalid has noted, “We find Muslims in these [Soviet] archives only

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when they deal with the state”. 85 Indeed, already by the beginning of the 1920s views of other religious scholars running contrary to those expressed by Soviet state organs received almost no exposure due to the closure of the independent press. Nevertheless, some religious scholars considered it feasible to cooperate with the new authorities, seeking in one way or another to adapt their views to changing circumstances. This is illustrated by the documents published here, which show a certain degree of compliance towards Bolshevik phraseology.86 It is true, however, that the Bolshevik authorities also tried, on a regular basis, to gather information about the Muslims’ “moods” and to appeal to them in the form of the articles above-cited or to “seek the opinion” of religious scholars concerning the reforms being carried out or other policies that were implemented.87 It was not the authors’ aim to offer a political or, in a wider sense, historical assessment of the Bolsheviks’ land reform. The parlous state of agriculture after the revolution and the civil war, poor harvests, and similar problems resulted in a state of affairs where large plots of land remained untilled. Thus, the gradual discrediting of the frequently violent Basmachi movement, and the Bolshevik government’s more successful economic projects (the introduction of irrigation systems, creation of a seed fund, provision of technology, etc.), among other stimuli, inclined the peasantry toward a more 85 86

87

Adeeb Khalid, “Searching for Muslim Voices in Post-Soviet Archives,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 304. Soviet-era vaqf documents are another matter entirely. As noted Philipp Reichmuth, there is a “complete absence of anything Soviet” in these documents, see his ‘“Lost in the Revolution’: Bukharan Vaqf and Testimony Documents from the Early Soviet Period,” Die Welt des Islams 50/3–4 (2010): 395. Very interesting in this respect is a letter dated 16 February 1924 written by ‫ޏ‬ƖlimjƗn Akchurin – head of Commissariat for Education – to the Bukharan jurists (fuqahƗҴ jamҵƯyatƯ). The letter contains the following questions: “Did the name of (V.) Lenin has any importance for the Muslims, and how did they perceive his death? How did the Muslims perceive Great Britain’s recognition of the Soviet Union?” The response to these first two questions was formulated in the sense that the “Muslims of the East” recognized Lenin’s importance and linked their future with his name. His death did not pass unnoticed. The response to the last question contains the following noteworthy phrase: “We, Muslims, consider our enemies those who are the enemies of the Soviet Union, and we recognize as friends those who are becoming its friends” (TsGARUz, f. R-57, op. 1, d. 28, ll. 7– 8). For more information on Akchurin, who was the former head of the NKVD of the Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic, see K. R. Rustamov, Z. K. Ashurova, and Sh. I. Babaeva, Oni byli pervymi: Plamennye bortsy za novuiu zhizn’ (Bukhara, 1990), 10–120.

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positive perception of its grandiose projects. And it is undeniable that the land reform brought about a very real improvement in agriculture during the 1920s.88 It might be observed, of course, that moves by an atheist regime to solicit religious legitimization for its actions were largely self-interested, and even cynical. According to the tenets of Islamic law, however, the interference of the imƗm (in this case the Soviet government) in cases such as those outlined above, relating to the abandonment of property, the unwillingness of owners to transfer land to others, and similar such questions, might have been regarded as largely justified, inasmuch as substantial areas of private lands were truly in a state of neglect or they were not being cultivated by their owners. Islamic juristic literature widely states that the imƗm was obliged to prevent the abandonment of lands. This might explain why patterns of landholding such as the lease (ijƗra) with rights to a stipulated portion (iqtƗҵ) came into existence. But juristic literature also insisted upon the inalienable right to land ownership and the right of owners to transfer lands for leasing. From the standpoint of Islamic jurisprudence, therefore, the forcible expropriation of lands from owners who were still alive might be considered the most illegitimate part of the reform. As it transpired, the right to confiscate fallow lands was exercised only rarely. The rules relating to confiscation which we encounter in fiqh literature could be interpreted quite inconsistently, as is reflected in Ynjsuf al-KnjfƯ’s work, KitƗb al-KharƗj (111–14). His work served as the basis (especially in the question on land use and taxes) for the majority of writings on the fiqh, in which we find a variety of statements pertaining to land issues. However, individual rights to land were not put in jeopardy under any circumstances; the rights of juridical and physical owners of lands (especially vaqf lands) also remained inviolable, except in those cases where an owner and all his heirs had died, or owners had forfeited their property rights for some exceptional reasons,89 all the more so as the Bolsheviks sought to restrict leasing and sharecropping rights, which according to the rules of fiqh were traditional and lawful. It is highly unlikely that these fiqh rules were unknown to that group of ҵulamƗҴ which had set about legitimizing the “socialization” of lands. How88

89

A.A. Golovanov, Krest’ianstvo Uzbekistana: Evoliutsiia sotsial’nogo polozheniia: 1917– 1937 gg. (Tashkent, 1992), 4, 81–84; see also the tables in the above-mentioned brochure, Zemel’nyi vopros v Uzbekistane, 12–16. Abnj Yusnjf, KitƗb al-KharƗj, 111–117.

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ever, these individuals found well-argued and substantiated arguments, even if, their legitimization of the land reform occasionally took on rather evasive guises (as in document C), or quoted the original fiqh or ‫ۊ‬adƯth texts in a distorted form. In fact, this is not a rarity in Islamic jurisprudence. One should not overlook the historical features of the local, traditional legislative system and methods of interpreting sacred texts, the selection of quotations, the concrete goal of the jurist (muftƯ, aҵlam), the wishes of the petitioner (“client”), etc.90 The established tradition of compiling rivƗyat turned out to be convenient for the religious legitimization of the land reform measures that were being undertaken by the Soviet government. The rivƗyat as an instrument and method of adaptation of fiqh rules to the needs of the community was sufficiently flexible and allowed for convenient and urgent decisions to be handed down. Eventually, the “sharƯҵa argumentation” helped resolve the question of the economic stimulation of landless peasants, which became an important aspect of the New Economic Policy (NEP). By relying on fellow-travellers, the Bolsheviks succeeded in persuading a certain number of religious scholars to act at the government’s advantage. In their turn, those scholars who decided to collaborate with the new government appealed to ordinary believers (peasants, by and large), seeking to convince them that the measures aiming at “restoring neglected lands” corresponded fully to the rules of sharƯҵa. In any event, the religious arguments employed in such documents appeared to indicate a genuine “care for subjects” and were apparently perceived as such by the peasants.91 The success of the Soviet government’s counterpropaganda, regardless of our views of it, was impressive, especially if one considers the subsequent events of the 1930s and the near-total alienation of land carried out during the total collectivization campaign in Central Asia. The published documents not only substantiate the land reform per se; they also put forward arguments in support of the ideology of egalitarianism that was proclaimed by the Bolsheviks. For the most part, it was entirely possible to adapt the precedents of egalitarianism of the Islamic tradition, 90

91

On this points see, Paolo Sartori, “Towards a History of the Muslims’ Soviet Union: A View from Central Asia,” in: A Muslim Interwar Soviet Union, ed. Paolo Sartori, [=Die Welt des Islams 3–4 (2010)]: 332–334. Golovanov, Krest‘ianstvo Uzbekistana, 87–90 and elsewhere (especially the comparative tables).

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with appropriate citations from the Prophet, to the Bolsheviks’ slogans. But this did not eliminate the problem of the legitimacy of the land reform (its “socialization”): in the view of some scholars, the implementation of the reform ran completely contrary to the precepts of Islam. Most importantly, the Soviet authorities did not fulfill the basic condition in the legitimization of the land reform, since they failed to safeguard the peasants’ right to own the lands that they were cultivating (“restoring”). The accelerated construction of collective farms, which was launched at the very end of the 1920s, contradicted some of the earlier argument seen here and secured the state’s right to land. The attitude of the Soviet state to seek for sharҵƯ legitimacy did not stop here. Instead, it remained a characteristic feature of those policies which were implemented in the framework of the Stalinist “great breakthrough”.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Periodicals al-ƮĪƗ‫ۊ‬, 1918 IܲhƗr al-‫ۉ‬aqq, 1918 Pravda Vostoka, 1925 QƯzil NjzbƯkistƗn, 1925 Tardzhuman/TarjumƗn, 1909 Njlnjgh TnjrkistƗn, 1918

Secondary Literature Brockelmann, Carl, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur: [supplement], 3 vols. (Leiden, 1937–42) Doklad TsK Kompartii (b) Uzbekistana. Ko vtoromu s”ezdu KP Uzbekistana (noiabr’, 1925) (Samarkand, 1925) Golovanov, A.A., Krest’ianstvo Uzbekistana: Evoliutsiia sotsial’nogo polozheniia: 1917– 1937 gg. (Tashkent, 1992) Ikramov, Akmal, Itogi zemel’noi reformy i perspektivy ee zakrepleniia (Samarkand/Tashkent, 1926) Khalid, Adeeb, “Tashkent 1917: Muslim Politics in Revolutionary Turkestan,” Slavic Review 55/2 (1996): 270–96 ——, “Searching for Muslim Voices in Post-Soviet Archives,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 302–12 Pianciola, Niccolò and Sartori, Paolo, “Waqf in Turkestan: the Colonial Legacy and the Fate of an Islamic Institution in Early Soviet Central Asia, 1917–1924,” Central Asian Survey 26/4 (2007): 485–91 The QurҴƗn: Arabic Text with Corresponding English Meanings, transl. by Saheeh International (Jeddah, 2007) Reichmuth, Philipp,‘“Lost in the Revolution’: Bukharan Waqf and Testimony Documents from the Early Soviet Period,” in: A Muslim Interwar Soviet Union, ed. Paolo Sartori, [=Die Welt des Islams 50/3–4 (2010)]: 362–396 Rustamov, K.R., and Ashurova, Z.K., and Babaeva, Sh.I., Oni byli pervymi: Plamennye bortsy za novuiu zhizn’ (Bukhara, 1990) Saidbaev, T.S., Islam i obshchestvo (opyt istoriko-sotsiologicheskogo issledovaniia) (Moscow, 1984) Sartori, Paolo, “Tashkent 1918: Giurisperiti musulmani e autorità sovietiche contro i ‘predicatori del bazaar,’” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, Serie Orientale XLV/3 (2006): 113–39 ——, “La nazione nella tradizione. Millat nella pubblicistica degli ҵulamƗҴ di Tashkent (1917–1918),” Rivista degli Studi Orientali LXXIX (2008), Supplemento no. 1 ——, “Towards a History of the Muslims’ Soviet Union: A View from Central Asia,” in: A Muslim Interwar Soviet Union, ed. Paolo Sartori, [=Die Welt des Islams 50/3–4 (2010)]: 315–334

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Semenov, A.A. et al. (eds.), Sobranie vostochnykh rukopisei Akademii nauka Uzbekskoi SSR (Tashkent, 1960) Shigabdinov, Rinat, ‘“Sovetskie rivoiaty’ v Srednei Azii: reaktsiia ulemov na sotsialisticheskie reformy 1920-kh godov,” in: Mir Islama: Istoriia, obshchestvo, kul’tura (Moscow, 2009), 147–152 Abnj Yusnjf, KitƗb al-KharƗj (Beirut, 1985) Zemel’nyi vopros v Uzbekistane. Materialy ko 2-omu Kurultaiu Sovetov (Samarkand, 1927) Zhurnal “Haqiqat” kak zerkalo religioznogo aspekta v ideologii dzhadidov, ed. B. M. Babadzhanov (Tokyo, 2007)

Correcting Transgressions in the House of Islam: Yang Zengxin’s Buguozhai wendu on Xinjiang’s Muslims DAVID BROPHY Canberra

For all the interest in Islam as a mobilising force in contemporary Xinjiang, research on the history of Islam in Xinjiang is limited in comparison with other parts of Turkestan. The history of Sufism among the Uyghurs is the exception to this, but it would be a mistake to conclude that we thereby gain a complete picture of the place of Islam in local politics and society.1 Other institutional bases of Islamic life, e.g. Xinjiang’s mosques, madrasas, and qƗĪƯ courts, and the interactions of these with a Chinese provincial bureaucracy, are still relatively unknown quantities. We must keep in mind, too, that Xinjiang was home to not one, but multiple Islamic communities, and while religious practice sometimes broke down communal boundaries, sometimes it did not. Apart from the nomadic-sedentary divide, paralleling divisions in Russian Turkestan, Xinjiang was also home to many Chinesespeaking Muslims, known in Chinese as Hui, or locally as Dungans. During the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), China’s last, these Hui migrants were among the first natives of China to move to Xinjiang, comprising almost 100,000 out of a total population of around two million by the fall of the dynasty in 1911. The official stance towards Islam among Xinjiang’s Uyghurs is seen as laissez-faire for much of the Qing. Elsewhere, however, the dynasty’s Chinese-speaking Muslim subjects regularly bore the brunt of the

1

See, for example, Hamada Masami, “Islamic Saints and Their Mausoleums,” Acta Asiatica 34 (1987): 79–105; Ho-Dong Kim, “The Cult of Saints in Eastern Turkistan – The Case of Alp Ata in Turfan,” in: Proceedings of the 35th Permanent International Altaistic Conference (Taipei, 1993); Alexandre Papas, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan: étude sur les Khwajas Naqshbandis du Turkestan oriental (Paris, 2005), and the works of Thierry Zarcone, some cited below.

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state’s suspicions and punitive laws. 2 We should ask, therefore, with the increasing presence of Hui Muslims in Xinjiang society during the late-Qing, did policy towards Islam preserve or overcome this bifurcation in the imperial vision? In this chapter I explore the literary legacy of the first governor of Xinjiang to take office during the Chinese Republic, Yang Zengxin (1859– 1928). Yang’s official writings stand out for the insights they provide into his approach to Islam and Xinjiang’s Muslims. During the Qing, the Xinjiang governor’s brief was largely limited to the supervision of officials, and did not extend to regulating the day-to-day affairs of local Muslim communities. Therefore Yang’s predecessors rarely intervened in disputes concerning the organisation and staffing of mosques and Islamic institutions, and one is hard pressed to find source material on such issues in the reports which they sent to the Qing court in Beijing. By contrast, Yang’s writings indicate a close engagement with religious questions, reflecting both the redefining of the governor’s role during the Republic (1911–1949), and the need to find new ways to secure the loyalty of his Muslim subjects. Yang’s decrees, letters, and instructions to subordinates collected and published as the Buguozhai wendu (Documents and Letters from the Studio of Correcting Transgressions, BGZWD below) are therefore a valuable source for our understanding of the social history of Xinjiang at this time.3 Published halfway through Yang’s sixteen years of rule (1912–1928), while he was facing pressure from rivals in neighbouring provinces to justify his position, this compilation must nevertheless be used with caution. While comparison with archives shows that documents were not subject to editing, we are still left to 2

3

James Millward and Laura Newby, “The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier,” in: Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, eds. Pamela Kyle Crossley et al. (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2006) and Jonathan N. Lipman, ““A Fierce and Brutal People”: On Islam and Muslims in Qing Law,” in: Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, eds. Pamela Kyle Crossley et al. (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2006). Yang Zengxin, Buguozhai wendu (Xinjiang zhujing gongyu, 1921; repr. Taibei, 1965); The first continuation appeared in 1926: Buguozhai wendu xubian (BGWDXB) (1926; repr. Zhongguo xibei wenxian congshu xubian. Xibei shidi wenxian juan, vol. 4. Lanzhou, 1999). The third continuation was issued posthumously: Yang Zengxin, Buguozhai wendu sanbian (BGWDSB) (1934; repr. Zhongguo xibei wenxian congshu xubian. Xibei shidi wenxian juan, vol. 4. Lanzhou, 1999). A number of important documents are translated in Richard Yang, “Sinkiang under the Administration of Governor Yang Tseng-Hsin, 1911– 1928,” Central Asiatic Journal 6/4 (1961): 270–316.

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wonder what was left out. Furthermore, statements issued from the governor’s office in the provincial capital of Ürümchi cannot be taken as evidence for actually existing practice in far-flung corners of southern Xinjiang. Despite these reservations, Yang’s normative injunctions allow us to identify which issues which were of concern to him, and give some indication as to how these were addressed—at least in districts around Ürümchi. Here I present ten documents from the BGZWD corpus which deal with local Islamic practices, with full English translations. The earliest documents date from 1918, by which time Yang had seen off challenges to his rule from independent-minded Chinese revolutionaries and secret-society members in Ghulja and the oases of the south. I first discuss in broad terms Yang’s links with Muslim society and his perspective on Islam’s place in Xinjiang. Drawing on his experience in Gansu, Yang’s primary concern was to mitigate the influence of sectarian rivalries among Xinjiang’s Hui Muslims. Yang also restricted the construction of khƗnqƗhs, which were sites not only of heterodoxy, but fraternisation between foreign and local Muslims. Finally, Yang’s efforts to restrict the formation of lateral ties between mosque communities led to a concern with the procedure of appointing Ɨkhnjnds in both Hui and Uyghur mosques. 1. YANG AND ISLAM With Xinjiang in the throes of a long-standing political and financial crisis, it was essential for Yang to build up his local basis of support, lest the province follow the example of Tibet and Outer Mongolia and pursue a path of native independence. The late-Qing transformation of Xinjiang from a patchwork of appanages administered by semi-autonomous begs and wangs into a Chinese province in 1884 had disempowered local Muslim elites, and increased the size of the Chinese bureaucracy—a bureaucracy which Yang saw as corrupt and ignorant of local conditions. To a limited extent, Yang patronised the province’s dwindling Muslim aristocracy; through a close relationship with the Uyghur prince (wang) of Hami, for example, he was able to recruit religious authorities to intervene to quell a local rebellion during the early years of his tenure.4 However, instead of allowing the political pendulum to continue its swing back towards the Uyghur begs, Yang chose 4

During the uprising of Temür KhalƯfa in Hami, a descendent of Kashgari saint ƖfƗq KhwƗja was sent as an emissary to the rebels. See BGZWD juan 3, ff. 5a-5b.

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to rely on a new influx of Hui intermediaries, some of whom were natives of Yang’s own Yunnan Province in south China. Through these, Yang recruited a Hui militia to give him the necessary military manpower to survive the chaotic first years of his rule.5 At the same time, it was necessary for Yang to limit the impact of global political trends in Xinjiang, giving his regime a highly insular quality. The exigencies of World War I, and Russian and British nervousness towards Turkish activities in the province, saw Yang issue bans on the recruitment of foreigners to teach in local schools or preach in mosques. For much of the 1920s, popular pilgrimage and trading routes between Kashgar and Russian Turkestan were shut off to traffic, and exorbitant fees levied to discourage locals making the ‫ۊ‬ajj.6 If we compare his approach with that of his predecessors, Yang’s relationships with Hui military leaders and the local Uyghur aristocracy can be seen as part of a shift in policy, informed by a more positive view of Islam. Late Qing officials had uniformly denigrated the role of Islamic learning in Xinjiang, and held out high hopes for the transformative power of the Confucian curriculum of the Chinese schools (xuetang), first brought to the province in the 1880s. For his part, Yang was sceptical of the results of the xuetang imposition, and the Sinicising impulses that lay behind it. Instead of further expanding these institutions, Yang took the opposite course, allowing the schools to die a natural death (and thereby winning the approval of locals). Yang shares with his predecessors a paternalistic approach to his subjects, often describing Xinjiang’s Muslims as “stupid” and easily led astray. Yet instead of looking to the assimilating power of Chinese civilisation, in his statements Yang upholds the role of Islamic education in cultivating morality and upright behaviour among the faithful, drawing parallels between the imƗms and Ɨkhnjnds of Xinjiang’s mosques and Confucian educators in the Han Chinese tradition (see Document 8). In doing so he aligns himself with the thinking of China’s Muslim literati, who since the late Ming had defended their faith as compatible with Confucian orthodoxy.7 Thus Yang saw Islam as a potential force for stability in the province, rather than a 5

6 7

Yang’s relationship with these Hui leaders has been studied by Anthony Garnaut, “From Yunnan to Xinjiang: Governor Yang Zengxin and his Dungan Generals,” Etudes Orientales 25 (2008): 93–125. BGZWD vol. 32, ff. 12a-12b; BGZWDSB vol. 2, ff. 45a-46a. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA, 2005).

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threat, provided that representatives of Islam could be encouraged to impart the requisite teachings. Unlike Tsarist officials in Russian Turkestan, Yang was not speaking on behalf of a confessional state, and did not view Islam through the lens of a rival monotheism. His own religious views were probably eclectic, with an intellectual interest in Daoism. 8 Ideas frequently encountered among officials in Russian Turkestan, of the inherent shortcomings of Islam as a faith and the “fanaticism” of its followers, are not to be found here. Indeed, Yang gives little indication of acknowledging insider/outsider distinctions among Xinjiang’s diverse religious communities. In missives such as the one below, he does not hesitate to cite and comment on Islamic scriptures, pointing out contradictions between (his understanding of) the QurҴƗn and its message, and everyday practice in Xinjiang’s Muslim communities. Nor did he feel the need to communicate these views through Xinjiang’s Islamic elite, the aҵlam, muftƯs, and judges of each oasis.9 Instead of relying on the authority of the ҵulamƗҴ to transmit his instructions to the mosques, he went through the county magistrates. The following letter to Xinjiang’s Ɨkhnjnds gives a taste of Yang’s hands-on approach to the mosque: Document 1: Instructions to the Ɨkhnjnds10 of every mosque to exhort the Muslims to follow the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn and be content with their lot (September 10, 1921). BGZWDXB juan 13, ff. 42a–43b Whether Heaven sends down blessings or misfortune depends on whether people’s hearts are good or not. To those who do good, Heaven sends down blessings; to those who do evil, Heaven sends down calamities. In the Islamic Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn, God inspires Muতammad to instruct the masses by telling them: “You people, do you know what the human heart treasures? What the heart treasures is focus. Your hearts are still unsettled. What the heart 8

9

10

Yang wrote commentaries on two canonical Daoist texts, the Daodejing and the Yinfujing: Buguozhai du Laozi riji, Reprint ed., Wuqiu beizhai Lao Lie Zhuang sanzi jicheng bubian vols. 5–6 (Taibei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1982); Buguozhai du Yinfujing riji, Reprint ed., Zangwai daoshu vol. 3 (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1992–1994). During this period, each town had an aҵlam (“most learned,” sometimes aҵlam Ɨkhnjnd) and muftƯ. The only evidence I have come across of the relationship between Ürümchi and these figures comes from a Soviet Uyghur source, which describes how in 1926 the aҵlam of Ghulja, and in 1927 the aҵlam of Turfan, issued fatvƗs calling on Muslims to support Yang’s government. See Abdullah Rozibaqiev, “Yängi žutdarþiliq häm kona rohanilar,” Kämbäghällär avazi 24 (1927): 2. In these texts Yang follows Hui Muslim custom and refers to all Islamic preachers and teachers collectively as Ɨkhnjnd (Ch. ahong), including people who would be referred to in Uyghur mosques as imƗm or mullƗ.

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David Brophy treasures is tranquility. Your heart is still in turmoil. Commentators take “unsettled” to mean being disturbed by frivolous matters, and confusing the guiding principle of good; “in turmoil” means the turmoil of absurd seductions, and losing the essence of tranquility. Thus those who maintain this state of mind are those who are content with my blessings. Those who abandon this state of mind are those who suffer my punishments.”11 It also says: “Obey me, and obey the prophet I have sent to you, and obey the respected people who protect and govern you. To rebel against those who protect and govern you is to rebel against the Prophet; to rebel against the Prophet is to rebel against me.”12 These glorious scriptures are the accepted teachings of Islam. Although we find ourselves in a time of manifold change, yet in the unseen world Allah abides, miraculously providing sustenance. Now, to speak of the various countries of the contemporary world, since the European War the number of people who have suffered the ravages of war has exceeded twenty six million. In Russia, the military calamities of the political struggle between the two parties, old and new, have been particularly severe. Though this may be the great punishment that Heaven has decreed, it has manifested because of people’s hearts not being good. In each of China’s provinces since the founding of the Republic, the people are poor, and finances are exhausted, so there are many places in ruins, and few remain intact. Yet in Xinjiang the local customs are simple, and for the last nine years the various races of Han, Mongol, Hui, Uyghur,13 Kazakh and Kirghiz, thanks to Heaven’s blessing, have continued to enjoy peace. This is truly an unsurpassed joy! However, in the current situation, some continue to entertain thoughts of wreaking havoc, whether Chinese or foreigners, and do not wish for the peace of the region. I sincerely hope that the people of Xinjiang will each content themselves with their lot, and not listen to the agitation and conspiracy of traitors—whether they are harbouring bad intentions, or acting in evil ways—so as to harm themselves and others. To wish for great peace is [the same as wishing for] the joy of the commoners. If there are people who are not satisfied with their station and gloat at the misfortune of others, then I permit the Ɨkhnjnds and elders to report them by name to local officials, to enact strict measures to deal with such troublemakers. In protecting the good people there is no room for leniency. Once a week after gathering for prayers and reading of the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn, the senior Ɨkhnjnds in the Muslim mosques must expound and discuss these instructions in detail, not tiring of repetition, in order that everyone understands them. All this will benefit the people’s state

11

12

13

I have been unable to identify the source of this passage, but it does not appear to be Qur‫ގ‬Ɨnic. Here Yang is clearly citing QurҴƗn 4:59, a favourite of rulers throughout the ages: “Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and those of you who are in authority” (Pickthall translation). The second line of this passage is not from the QurҴƗn. For the sake of clarity, here and elsewhere I have translated Yang’s Chan(min) “Turbanwearing Muslims” anachronistically as “Uyghur” (an ethno-national designation that was yet to come into widespread use).

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of mind and the popular mood. If local officials adopt policies that are not beneficial for the people, then I permit the commoners to report this directly based on facts. I will consider whether or not we should require improvements. To conclude, I hope that you will not obscure [the fact that] the Republican principle is beneficial to the people. I expect the senior Ɨkhnjnds, chiefs, village elders, and the Muslim commoners to obey as one and act accordingly, and not burden me with repeated exhortations.

Just as Yang held a positive view of Islam’s role in keeping the peace in Xinjiang, he was reluctant to see Xinjiang’s instability as the result of tendencies within Islam. Although he was hostile towards Hui shaykhs (see below), nowhere in Yang’s writings is the suggestion that Muslims, simply by virtue of their faith, might be suspected of harbouring “dual loyalties.” In the same year as the instructions above, Yang penned a reply to a question from Beijing on the threat of Pan-Islam (dayi Huijiao). Despite his anxiety towards the activities of Turkish Muslims, which eventually resulted in the expulsion of a number of individuals, Yang saw the underlying problems in national, rather than religious terms—and in the failure of the Chinese Republic to deliver on its promises of “five races, one family.”14 In frank terms which would sound positively seditious in the increasingly Islamophobic atmosphere of contemporary Xinjiang, Yang argued that the religious question was simply an expression of the national question. Yang’s response to Beijing was subsequently published by official and unofficial newspapers in China, including the influential Shanghai daily Shenbao.15 Document 2: Telegram response to the government on the question of Pan-Islamism (December 22, 1923). BGZWDXB juan 2, ff. 52b-54b In a telegram from the State Council we read: “Recently we have heard of Turkey sending many people to Xinjiang to make connections with the Muslim masses in preparation for establishing a Pan-Islamic Alliance, and secretly making military plans with the intention of raising revolt in Xinjiang. Is this true? We await your reply.” According to my investigations, on the question of various Muslim countries in Europe and Asia intending to form a Pan-Islamic Confederation and convene a Pan-Islamic 14

15

Early Republican imagining of the Chinese nation posited a union of five races: Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan, and Muslim. While Yang’s keen awareness of differences between Hui and Turki Muslims carries an implicit critique of the idea of “Muslims” as one nation, it was not until the 1930s that the two were officially recognised as separate nationalities (minzu). “Xinjiang shengzhang Yang Zengxin diangao Xinjiang Hui Chan jinzhuang,” Shenbao March 3 (1923): 10. The date of this article indicates that the date of the telegram given in the BGZWD must be incorrect.

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David Brophy Council, two states have been established in neighbouring Western Turkestan and Bukhara, and presently these have united to form a Pan-Islamic Republican Committee, sending representatives to Xinjiang with letters announcing the formation of a Federal Islamic Republic.16 I have frequently reported on this by telegram. According to further investigations, in Islamic countries where the question of Pan-Islamism arises, it is for other reasons. Its goals do not centre on Xinjiang, but its influence has always been felt in Xinjiang. Currently there is no secret military plot, or cases of planning to launch a rebellion in Xinjiang. This kind of agitation is simply the national question. After all, the religious question in its content is a question of rights. Regardless of how the various Islamic countries in Asia and Europe develop in the future, to speak only of Xinjiang, our only recourse is to implement the Republic, and make the racial view diminish, so that all can prosper and not do harm to one other. The most crucial thing is to raise the standard of government, not to exploit the Hui and Uyghur, and make the stand-in government of the Han outperform the autonomy of the Hui and Uyghur. Then external difficulties will have no basis to create internal chaos. Long-lasting prosperity can only be founded on this. Unfortunately, among Han officials, although there is the slogan of “five races are one family,” there is no reality of five races as one family. There is only the competition over rights, and no concern with morality. Regarding autonomy in Tibet, it is not simply the [product of] the waywardness of the Tibetan people. [It is a case of] our Han officials being unworthy and compelling Tibetans towards autonomy, and then the English subsequently taking advantage of this. Outer Mongolian autonomy is not simply the fault of the Outer Mongolians. It is due to our Han officials being unworthy, compelling Outer Mongolia towards autonomy, and then the Russians afterwards taking advantage of this. Observing the current situation—whether in Tibet, Mongolia, or among the Muslims—by adopting a religious or a racial outlook, unity is gradually emerging from division. Only we Han, by looking at things in terms of north vs. south, or by parties and factions, are moving from unity towards division. If Han cannot unite with Han, we can hardly expect the Tibetans and Mongols to live in peace with one another. As for the Hui and Uyghur in Xinjiang, I have had years of experience in managing them, and I still hold out hope for preserving the status quo and maintaining peace. To this end, I have turned Xinjiang into a place where the five races can find refuge from strife. I do not regard Xinjiang as a place to make my personal fortune. Not once in the last ten years have I increased the taxes. I have never borrowed money, and the burden on the people is still light. Therefore foreign extremists are at a loss. If we simply replace one tyranny with another, the Hui and Uyghur may be stupid, but they will not bind their hands and wait to be led to the slaughter, submitting to the oppression of Han officials. Thinking back on several decades of Xinjiang’s existence as a province, not one in ten Han officials have been talented and capable of handling affairs. Not one in a hundred has been morally up-

16

Yang here echoes misleading statements made by representatives of the Enver Pasha’s comrade-in-arms Haji Sami to Chinese officials in Kashgar in 1923, to the effect that Russia had recognised a federal Muslim state in Central Asia. British consul C. P. Skrine’s report on the subject is cited in Glenda Fraser, “Haji Sami and the Turkestan Federation, 1922–3,” Asian Affairs 18/1 (1987): 15.

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right and capable of nurturing the people. Travelling this great distance [to Xinjiang] is nothing more than a plan for individual officials to support their families and fatten themselves. What concern do they have for the survival or ruin of the land, the suffering or happiness of the people? Since there are so few good officials and many bad ones, peaceful days are few and troubled days are many. Given that the provinces of the interior are also like this, then what can be expected in frontier regions? If we do not rectify domestic affairs, then it will be impossible to fundamentally resolve the [issue of the] Hui and Uyghur perpetually accepting the rule of Han officials and avoid an eventual explosion. Currently the tide of autonomy is growing daily. It is definitely not something that can be suppressed by a single gunshot in a single day. It cannot be kept in check by abandoning good teachings and public morality. To alleviate the government’s concerns towards its western frontier, all I can do is stamp out malpractice and strictly punish corrupt functionaries, consolidate the people’s hearts and address concealed dangers. Though these may be platitudes, still there is no way to succeed other than this. I humbly submit this response for your consideration.

2. THE GANSU MODEL Yang Zengxin grew up in Yunnan, and was engaged in official duties in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces for some fifteen years before coming to Xinjiang, both regions home to large numbers of Hui Muslims.17 His model for managing Islam in Xinjiang was therefore based on the lessons he drew from his experience in dealing with these Hui communities. In Gansu and Shaanxi, the Qing made alliances with saintly lineages in local administration, drawing officials into the politics of the menhuan—Hui Sufi communities loyal to hereditary shaykhs, which first arose in the eighteenth century. According to this model of governance, Hui Muslims were both the Achilles heel of the northwest, and its solution. For Yang’s generation of officials, the defining event was the rebellion of 1895–96 in Gansu, which broke out when Qing officials intervened in a dispute within a menhuan of the NaqshbandƯya KhƗfƯya.18 In the aftermath of the Gansu rebellion, Yang was appointed magistrate of the largely Muslim Hezhou County, where he worked closely with Hui leaders who had been won over to the Qing side. While Yang’s writings show a deep concern with the influence of the Hui menhuan in Xinjiang, he does not identify any comparable division into 17

18

For a sketch of Yang’s career prior to coming to Xinjiang, see Garnaut, “From Yunnan to Xinjiang,” 100–102. See Jonathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle, 1997), 138–166.

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sects among his Turkic-speaking subjects, making their brand of Islam preferable to that of the Hui. Indeed, he praises the Uyghurs for their lack of shaykh-centred spirituality, casting the difference between the two communities in an East vs. West frame of reference: while the Uyghur Muslims follow the Prophet of the “West”, Yang criticises the Hui for adhering to the innovative teachings of “Eastern” shaykhs. Here too, Yang’s views differ considerably from the attitude of Russian officials towards Islam. Where they saw the pernicious influence of “ƮshƗnism” everywhere among the Muslims of Samarqand and Bukhara, in Kashgar and Yarkand Yang sees only devotion to the QurҴƗn and Muতammad. Here Yang no doubt betrays his lack of familiarity with Uyghur Islam, but his views also reflect the declining political role of the shaykh in Xinjiang. During the conquest of Xinjiang in the 1750s, the Qing had initially sought a way of ruling through the authority of local shaykhs, but quickly gave up this policy. While shrine pilgrimage remains a feature of social life in Xinjiang to this day, by the late Qing the province’s long-standing rivalries between factions of the NaqshbandƯya were of lessening significance in local politics. As seen in Document 1, Yang was confident speaking on behalf of Islamic orthodoxy, and he criticised the menhuan and their reverence for shaykhs as violating the key tenet of Muতammad’s once-and-for-all revelation. In practical terms, Yang’s strategy to contain the menhuan focused on limiting the further spread of new Gansu menhuan into Xinjiang, thereby isolating earlier Hui immigrants to Xinjiang from ongoing religious controversies in Gansu and Shaanxi. One way to achieve this was to restrict the construction of mosques, which he saw as clear evidence of increasing factionalism within the Hui community (Document 4). He was also concerned to restrict the movement of Hui from one menhuan to another. As will be seen, the imperative to keep people in their place, and prevent the formation of networks across mosque communities, was an overriding theme of Yang’s pronouncements on these subjects. Document 3: Comment on the report submitted by imƗms of the various congregations (fang), 19 that Ma Ahong of the Shaanxi Dafang 20 is monopolising religious authority (April 16, 1921). BGZWDXB juan 13, ff. 40a-42a 19

fang literally means “lane” or “quarter” of a city, and refers to individual mosque communities. It does not necessarily map directly on to menhuan divisions. Here and elsewhere I translate it as “congregation.” Elisabeth Allès notes that by 1949 there were between four and five hundred such fang in Xinjiang, including some seventy JahrƯya fang

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The Gansu Muslims have the tradition of menhuan;21 the so-called “Four Great Menhuan” are the Huasi, Humen, Baizhuang, and MuftƯ.22 Apart from these, there are also the various menhuan of Bijiachang and Da Gongbai,23 Zhangmen,24 and Shagou.25 They frequently fragment, which easily leads to conflict. Previously under the Qing, the Muslims of the Gansu region were continuously getting into trouble because of religious strife—it all arose from this. In fact, apart from the single province of Gansu the menhuan tradition does not exist anywhere else. The people who lead these menhuan are called “master” (jiaozhu). When the father dies, the son succeeds, or the younger brother takes the place of his elder brother. People of one sect entice people from another sect; people from the other sect entice people from the first sect. The initial establishment of different menhuan leads to struggle between these menhuan, and disasters follow. The Uyghurs in Xinjiang take only Muতammad as their master. Apart from Muতammad they do not recognise any other secondary master. As a result they are yet to have cases of sectarian struggles. Only the Hui have been led astray by the émigré Hui who have come out beyond the pass,26 and have been hoodwinked by the menhuan tradition. Still, among the Hui mosques in Xinjiang, there is only the Southern Mosque, 27 which promotes the teaching of Ma Yuanzhang of Shagou in Gansu,28 and the Kengkeng mosque that transmits the teaching of

20

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23 24 25 26 27

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(but only three JahrƯya menhuan). See “Notes sur la Zhehelinye (JahrƯya) au Xinjiang,” Etudes Orientales 25 (2008): 216. dafang “greater congregation” refers to the NaqshbandƯya-KhƗfƯya, xiaofang “lesser congregation” to the NaqshbandƯya-JahrƯya, the two major divisions within Hui Sufism. Yang uses the Chinese terms menhu and menhuan interchangeably. For consistency I have kept menhuan throughout. All sub-branches of the NaqshbandƯya-KhƗfƯya. The Baizhuang menhuan is more commonly known as Beizhuang. For these identifications, see Joseph Trippner, “Islamische Gruppen und Gräberkult in Nordwest-China,” Die Welt des Islams 7/1 (1961): 142–171; Dru Gladney, “Muslim Tombs and Ethnic Folklore: Charters for Hui Identity,” Journal of Asian Studies 46/3 (August 1987): 495–532; Michael Dillon, China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects (Richmond, 1999), 115–121. “The Great Dome” (Ch. gongbai < P. gumbaz), a branch of the QƗdirƯya ‫ܒ‬arƯqat. Belongs to the KubrƗvƯya ‫ܒ‬arƯqat. A branch of the NaqshbandƯya-JahrƯya. i.e. travelling from Gansu to Xinjiang. Located on Jiefang nanlu, constructed in 1919, and still the chief JahrƯya mosque in Xinjiang. Shagou in Gansu was an important site in the revival of the JahrƯya after the conflict and persecution of the late nineteenth century. The community’s shaykh, Ma Yuanzhang (1853–1920), was the leading JahrƯya figure in the early Chinese Republic. His life and works are the subject of Anthony Garnaut’s dissertation, “The Shaykh of the Great Northwest: The Religious and Political Life of Ma Yuanzhang (1853–1920)” (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2011).

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David Brophy Ma Hualong’s grandson Ma Er.29 Apart from these two mosques, there are no other menhuan customs here. According to this governor’s investigations, Muslims only have one religion, and they only have the Prophet Muতammad as the sole leader of the Muslims. Apart from him one cannot have a second prophet. Nor can one take a second master. Indeed, a religious system by definition precludes the existence of this or that master’s name. China’s millenniaold imperial system has already been overturned. China no longer has a monarch, it has become a democracy. People in a democratic country are all under the sovereign authority of the Great President. Besides this one cannot have another master, each establishing their menhuan and causing unrest. To speak of sovereignty implies that the name of some or other master should not exist. My understanding is that Muslims only have Muতammad as their prophet; at the head of Islam there is only Muতammad. Taking the prophet of the West [i.e. Muতammad – DB] as one’s master is the only way to ensure that the true religion will endure perpetually without corruption. By taking a man of the East as one’s master, to every menhuan there will be a master. The more masters there are, the greater the level of conflict. Intelligent Hui can see the drawbacks of this for themselves; there is no need for repetition. This governor’s desire is that among the Hui Muslims of every congregation and mosque in Xinjiang, those who are yet to be infected by the bad habit of menhuan should continue to respect the teachings of the Prophet Muতammad as before, and take the Prophet Muতammad as their master. There is no need to be misled by the custom of menhuan, lest conflicts arise. This is truly a plan for long-term stability. As regards the Shaanxi Dafang, they are mostly old émigrés beyond the pass,30 and still do not know what a menhuan is; they should not invite Ɨkhnjnds of every menhuan from inside the pass into their mosques, which would result in Hui who are yet to belong to menhuan being recruited into other sects, resulting in inevitable corruption. I have served as an official in the two provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang for a number of decades, and have a rough understanding of the origins of the various Gansu menhuan. In order to preserve the region and protect the religion, I will not hesitate to raise this with you Muslims. Document 4: Secret order to all subordinates not to allow Hui to illicitly construct mosques (October 1, 1921). BGZWDXB juan 13, ff. 44b-46a Since Islam is an ancient and holy religion, and at its inception took what is pure and true31 as its principle, there is only one teaching and no other teaching. Since then, people have split into factions, and conflicts have come about as a result. While previously serv-

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31

i.e. Ma Jinxi, viewed by the Banqiao faction of the JahrƯya as legitimate successor to Ma Hualong. The Kengkeng (“Sunken”) mosque is another of Ürümchi’s mosques, so called because of its location in a depression. i.e. earlier generations of Hui in Xinjiang. See James Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia 1759–1864 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 168–75. qingzhen, the Chinese word for ‫ۊ‬alƗl. Here Yang takes qingzhen as a guiding principle of the religion as a whole.

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ing as an official in Gansu, I learnt by experience of the basics of Islam, i.e. that those who join the Huasi menhuan recognise Ma Rubian of Bafang in Hezhou as their shaykh; those who join the MuftƯ menhuan take Ma Weihan of Didao as their shaykh; those who join the Humen menhuan recognise Ma Fushou of the Taizi Mosque as their shaykh; those who join the Shagou menhuan recognise Ma Yuanzhang of Zhangjiachuan as their shaykh.32 Each has their teachings. All those Hui who join menhuan look to a master of the East, and listen to, and act on, the commands of this Eastern master. Those Hui who do not belong to a menhuan follow the Prophet of the West, and act according to the traditions of the Western Prophet. By “master” is meant the shaykh of the menhuan. The Hui in Gansu have many menhuan, and thus there are many cases of religious disputes, like the 1895–96 Hezhou and Huangzhong unrest, which came about because of doctrinal disagreements. The Xinjiang Hui do not have many menhuan, there are only the teachings of Ma Yuanzhang and the teachings of Ma Hualong’s grandson Ma Er; when these were spread from Gansu to Xinjiang they became known as the Xiaofang, and also as the Southern Mosque. If we allow the menhuan of the interior to spread to Xinjiang, then religious disputes will be unavoidable. To prevent these ills, we must begin by not allowing the illicit construction of mosques. Henceforth in every region of Xinjiang, Hui mosques that were earlier in existence may be constructed according to precedent. In the case of mosques that did not previously exist, it is not permitted to construct without authorisation. Apart from the mosques that are already in existence, those who spread the teachings of Ma Yuanzhang and Ma Er in Xinjiang are not allowed to build new mosques. When Hui come out from within the pass each adds their own mosque, and this has a factional nature. We must take precautions against such abuses. On this occasion the case of Zhao ণƗjjƯ in Yarkand also arose from the construction of a mosque. Although on the surface it is matter for litigation, in its substance it has the makings of religious strife. Therefore I have forbidden Hui to construct new mosques. This is truly the primary method of implementing thorough reforms; we cannot compromise. As for the Uyghur of Xinjiang, they are devout believers in the teachings of the Western Prophet. They are not inclined to give credence to the habits of the Hui menhuan, or the traditions of the Hui masters or Hui shaykhs. The Hui are Hui, and the Uyghur are Uyghur. Although they commonly profess Islam, yet each have their methods of practicing, and they cannot be forced to come together. This is key to the the fact that the Uyghur of Southern Xinjiang can live in peace with one another and not create religious disputes. Yet Xinjiang’s various magistrates have not conducted the slightest investigation into the religion of the Hui and Uyghur. As soon as they run into a case that has the character of religious dispute, including the construction of new mosques, their handling of the matter completely lacks competence. [You should] clarify in detail the content of Islam, so as to nip things in the bud, and ward off conflicts and future troubles. In this matter the various magistrates must not lose their composure, and should investigate constantly, not allowing 32

Bafang is the Muslim quarter of Hezhou, Didao is now known as Lintao County, the Taixi mosque is in Yinchuan, Ningxia. See n. 20 above for references.

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David Brophy religious disputes to occur. This will bring happiness to the region. I am issuing an order together with this, and I expect compliance. Apart from circulating this order to the departments and preparing cases, you should make spare copies and review it at all times. It will surely be of benefit to officials and administration.

The following document is of interest for showing the strategy adopted by one official in dealing with a concrete case of a turf-war between menhuan in Ürümchi (known at this time by its Chinese name of Dihua). Here, the local county magistrate defuses the conflict by compelling representatives of each three of Ürümchi’s menhuan to jointly act as prayer-leader at a funeral. Following on from this, Yang outlines a policy for dealing with the transfer of allegiances from one menhuan to another. In such cases, leaders of the original menhuan are to report the matter to the local officials. They are not, however, permitted to use official channels to compel their followers to return to the flock. Such direct intervention would violate Yang’s principle of retaining a neutral stance towards the rivalry between menhuan. Document 5: A comment on the leaders of the Hezhou congregation’s petition to establish a precedent that each Hui should return to their own congregation to pray (May 20, 1922). BGZWDXB juan 14, ff. 4b-6a From your letter I learn that when Muslims have marriages or funerals, they should invite a Muslim Ɨkhnjnd to recite the scriptures. This is the common practice of Hui in every province. Only the Gansu Hui have the custom of menhuan, such as the Huasi teachings, MuftƯ teachings, Shagou teachings etc.; they split off from one another, and they all have masters. Those who accept his teachings call the master “shaykh.” Those who adhere to the teachings of the various menhuan, when they have events like weddings or funerals, invite the Ɨkhnjnds of their teachings to recite scriptures. If people from one menhuan invite Ɨkhnjnds from another menhuan to recite scriptures, then conflicts will arise. It will not be a conflict over religion, but actually a conflict over interests. Although they dispute interests, in substance it will be a religious dispute. To sum up, they simply wish to spread their influence. Now, previously under the Qing the Hui in Gansu used the custom of menhuan to lure people to their teachings, struggling with one another, which led on many occasions to great disaster. Since the establishment of the Republic, this kind of custom has become even worse in comparison with before. I wonder about this tradition of menhuan: not only does it not exist in other provinces of China—there is no precedent for it in other Islamic countries like Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan, or among the Baluch! The Hezhou Muslim Ding IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl had accepted the Nanfang [i.e. JahrƯya – DB] menhuan’s teachings. After Ding IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl died, the Nanfang menhuan’s Ɨkhnjnd and the Ɨkhnjnd of the Hezhou mosque33 fought to read the scriptures at the funeral on behalf of Ding IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl. This is nothing more than vying for influence, and the men of both mosques have 33

An Ürümchi mosque constructed in 1915.

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bad intentions, resulting in this dispute. Already the Dihua magistrate Ma34 has instructed the Ɨkhnjnds of the Nanfang and Hezhou mosques that they should not argue with each other, and that since there is also an Ɨkhnjnd of the Shaanxi Great Mosque,35 the Ɨkhnjnds of the three congregations should recite the scriptures and bury Ding IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl together, so as to bring an end to the controversy. Both parties should obey this judgement and end the case. From now on, Hui of no matter which congregation, should recite scriptures in their own congregation’s mosque. To avoid dissension they must not listen to others surreptitiously enticing them to follow another teaching. If, among the Hezhou Hui in Xinjiang, there are some who have joined another teaching, I hereby permit people from the Hezhou congregation to go to the office of the local officials in each locale and submit a report, so that afterwards, if there are any major illegal incidents, it will not implicate those who belong to the Hezhou congregation mosque itself. As for these people who have joined other teachings, the Hezhou Hui do not need to have any contact with them, and should cut all ties. Handling matters thus will be most appropriate. I will instruct the Dihua County to convey this to the Hui of every congregation, so that they obey uniformly.

3. SUPPRESSION OF SUFI LODGES As a general rule, therefore, Yang directed his criticisms of sectarian religiosity towards Hui Muslims, whose brand of Islam was more familiar to him. An exception to this is his attitude towards the activities of Sufi lodges (khƗnqƗhs; Ch. daotang) in southern Xinjiang, meeting places for Sufi masters and their followers, who remained active throughout the Republican period. Yang’s reference to singing and dancing at these khƗnqƗhs makes it clear that he is referring here to samƗҵ rituals, carried out under the direction of the various NaqshbandƯ shaykhs of the oases. Although equally an expression of Sufism, Yang did not directly link these gatherings with the menhuan of Gansu. These meetings involved, and still involve today, the chanting of popular Sufi poetry, e.g. works by SnjfƯ AllƗhyƗr and ‫ޏ‬AlƯshƝr NavƗ‫ގ‬Ư. This raises for Yang the spectre of heterodoxy, and he seems to have regarded any texts other than the QurҴƗn in this light. His fears of conspiratorial behaviour were further heightened by the fact that in Kashgar such khƗnqƗhs were built by Muslims of Russian, English, and Turkish citizenship, and nationalities mingled during the nightly gatherings. He also expresses his concern at fund-raising that was required to carry out the construction of new khƗnqƗhs. 34 35

Ma Fuqi, magistrate of Dihua County 1921–1924. Located on Heping nanlu, the largest Hui mosque in Ürümchi.

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In the following directives, Yang outlines a set of highly restrictive rules on worship in Xinjiang. Not only did he order a ban on khƗnqƗh construction, he directed officials in Kashgar to close all active khƗnqƗhs. Muslims were permitted to pray at their local mosques, and only reciting the QurҴƗn. Prayers said at home could only involve direct family members. Of course, Yang did not have the means to enforce these rules, and we lack the sources to assess the local response. The military commander in Kashgar, Ma Fuxing, was a Muslim himself, and it is hard to see him antagonising the shaykhs of Kashgar to quite this degree. Document 6: Circular to all counties on prohibiting Uyghurs from privately establishing khƗnqƗhs (August 7, 1918). BGZWD vol. 22, ff. 17a-18a36 The Ɨkhnjnds among the Uyghur are the people who impart religious teachings. The mosque is the place where they recite scriptures. The scriptures that are taught treat Muতammad’s Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn as orthodoxy. For a long time the people have lived in peace with one another, and there has not been any issue with people privately opening khƗnqƗhs and teaching scriptures in secret. Only recently I have discovered that in each district there are cases of khƗnqƗh being established, ostensibly to recite scriptures, and stirring up the ignorant people and attempting to raise funds. They disperse during the day and gather at night, inciting people to not go to the publicly established mosques for scripture reading, [but instead] to gather collectively at the unauthorised khƗnqƗh for dancing. Among them some are good, some are bad; it is hard to ensure that there are no gangsters sneaking in among them and plotting sedition, like the trouble caused previously under the Qing by the Manas Muslims Ma Yuzhang37 and Wu-lai-zi (?), which all came about because they privately opened a khƗnqƗh. At that time the Xinjiang Governor38 had the khƗnqƗhs that had been opened in all locations investigated. Muতammad ‫ޏ‬AlƯ, who recently raised a revolt in Kucha, also had collected money and established a khƗnqƗh, which was spacious enough to accommodate three or four hundred people.39 He would invite them to gatherings and his gang would recite scriptures in the mosque all night until dawn, until eventually they raised a revolt and attacked the city. If the local officials do not manage this effectively it will result in great calamity. Now that this has already been discovered in one location, other places should be on alert. If we do not conscientiously suppress this, it will be hard to avoid harm coming to the region. Henceforth no matter whether Hui or Uyghur, all Ɨkhnjnds, imƗms, and people within the religion are only allowed to go to the mosque

36 37

38

39

For a similar document, see also BGZWDXB juan 1, ff. 40a-40b. Leader of a rebellion in October 1895. See Rao Yingqi’s memorials in Xinjiang xunfu Rao Yingqi gaoben wenxian jicheng (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2008), vol. 9, pp. 24–71; vol. 10, pp. 123–159. i.e. Rao Yingqi. I have not been able to find references elsewhere to his investigation of khƗnqƗhs. Muতammad ‫ޏ‬AlƯ was the leader of a rebellion in Kucha in 1918.

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to recite scriptures, and are only permitted to read from Muতammad’s Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn. They are not allowed to privately open khƗnqƗh and be active in the hall at night, or gather people at home to recite scriptures. If it is [a case of] one person at their own home praying, then it is only permitted for members of the same family to gather, it is not allowed to extend a broad invitation to outsiders. Apparently every locale has a number of privately established khƗnqƗh. In each place they consist of several rooms. Are these private property, or have they been built mainly by collecting money? Who are the people instructing the religion? You should carry out on-the-spot investigations, create a register, and submit a report after ascertaining the facts.40 At the same time, encourage the people to close the khƗnqƗhs by themselves, and evince strict good behaviour to enlighten them, so that they are not led astray by the people who have established the khƗnqƗh into causing trouble for their family. For the sake of protecting the region and warding off threats yet to manifest themselves, I will not broach any delays. If the people who establish khƗnqƗhs have other motives and do not comply with the prohibition, then they clearly intend to agitate. I will have no choice but to uphold the law and take action. In no way will I compromise on this matter and leave a legacy of trouble for the region.

Document 7: Instructions to the Kashgar Circuit Intendant (daoyin) Zhu [Ruichi] 41 on prohibiting Aতmad and others from establishing a khƗnqƗh (August 12, 1918). BGZWD vol. 22, ff. 19a-20a This governor has learnt that in each district there are cases of people privately opening khƗnqƗhs and gathering at night to recite scriptures. Just as I was issuing a circular to investigate this, I heard of ৫Ɨhir KhƗn in Kashgar,42 a Russian citizen, who established a khƗnqƗh in the Muslim quarter of Kashgar, which has since been closed after investigation by Commander Ma.43 There is also the case of the Uyghur Aতmad KhalƯfa establishing a khƗnqƗh in the Han city of Kashgar, including Hui Muslims [among his followers], which was previously investigated by Commander Yang Desheng, 44 who sealed the khƗnqƗh’s door. Now he has again started construction. There is also Shaykh Er-ze-ti (?) who has established a khƗnqƗh in the Muslim quarter that can hold fifteen or sixteen hundred people. Jiang Kewang in the Muslim quarter has established a khƗnqƗh that can accommodate seven or eight hundred people. As I see it, this matter of khƗnqƗhs takes recit-

40

41 42

43 44

In November a province-wide investigation of khƗnqƗh property was ordered. See BGZWD juan 22, ff. 25a-b. Appointed Kashgar Circuit Intendant in 1917. ৫Ɨhir KhƗn (d. 1947), a representative of the NaqshbandƯya-MujaddidƯya. See Thierry Zarcone, “The Sufi Networks in Southern Xinjiang during the Republican Regime (1911– 1949), An Overview,” in: Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries), eds. Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (London, 2001), 119–132. Ma Fuxing, Kashgar Commander-in-Chief (tidu) 1915–26. Kashgar Commander-in-Chief 1912–15.

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David Brophy ing scripture as a pretext to collect funds, gathering at night and dispersing during the day—it truly has a bad quality. There are many mosques in the towns and villages of each district. The Hui and Uyghur people are supposed to go to the mosque to recite scriptures. Why must they establish khƗnqƗhs beyond this? Indeed, there is no such thing in the Islamic scriptures. I honestly fear that if large numbers of people assemble at the khƗnqƗhs, there will be treacherous people concealing themselves and inciting the ignorant people to cause trouble. I also hear that in these newly constructed khƗnqƗhs there are English, Russian, and Turkish subjects. The Turks have the same customs and religion as the Uyghur. If we allow them all to gather in a single khƗnqƗh without distinguishing Chinese from foreigner, clearly using the empty excuse of reciting scriptures and secretly implementing plots to cause disturbances, the harm will be unimaginable! This must be urgently suppressed to avoid hidden dangers and preserve public order. Apart from communicating with Commander Ma on handling this, I will also issue an order to the Circuit Intendant to cooperate with Commander Ma to quickly shut the khƗnqƗh established by Aতmad KhalƯfa and others, and those that I have yet to hear of without exception, and at the same time carry out instruction. Henceforth it is only permitted to go to the mosque to recite scriptures, it is not permitted to disobey the prohibition and again establish a khƗnqƗh.

4. ƖKHNjND APPOINTMENTS AND THE AUTONOMY OF MOSQUE COMMUNITIES On more than one occasion, Yang directs local officials to use the Ɨkhnjnds as intermediaries to impart his sage advice to the people. Yang’s interest in supervising the messages conveyed in Xinjiang’s mosques drew his attention to the appointment of Ɨkhnjnds. Recruiting Ɨkhnjnds to do political work depended on their legitimacy as spokespeople for Islam, legitimacy that could be compromised if the Ɨkhnjnds were not respected members of the community. In theory, these Ɨkhnjnds were chosen by local election. The exact procedures of the elections are unclear, but Document 10 suggests a practice of three-year terms—the same as native office-holders in Russian Turkestan. In the early Republic, however, buying and selling of offices of all kinds was rampant, and the budgets of county yamens often relied on cash payments made by subordinates to secure their positions. The appointment of mosque Ɨkhnjnds was evidently no exception to this rule. Yang’s overall attitude towards democratic processes that sprung up locally in the early Republic was hostile. Responding to reports of elections of county magistrates in Ili and Kashgar, Yang argued that Xinjiang’s ethnic and factional differences ruled out any widespread application of elective processes, otherwise “it would only be a matter of months before Xinjiang is

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in ruins.”45 However, the right of village communities to choose their own Ɨkhnjnds, without intervention from local officials, was something to be defended. Document 8: Circular instructions to all counties that village Ɨkhnjnds are not to be appointed by local officials (March 22, 1917). BGZWD vol. 21, ff. 41b-44a Like teachers among the Han citizens, the Ɨkhnjnds of the Muslim religion are the ones who give instruction to the young. Someone who is not distinguished in learning is not qualified to educate the new generations. The Ɨkhnjnds are the ones who enlighten the Muslims. Someone unacquainted with scriptures will not be worthy of popular esteem. Therefore the position of Ɨkhnjnd is of the utmost importance. Unless it is someone whose conduct is upright, with a deep knowledge of the Muslim scriptures, they will struggle to fulfil their duties. Now I hear that in villages in each county the Ɨkhnjnd is not chosen through election by the commoners, but appointed by local officials. This is most inappropriate. As I see it, the Ɨkhnjnd is the chief propagator of religion locally. The teachings of religion are intended to enlighten people and induce them to do good. Good and bad in religion depends on the character of the Ɨkhnjnd. With a competent Ɨkhnjnd, what he teaches will all be based on genuine scriptures, teaching people to be good, and as a result the people of the religion will do good. But in the case of a incompetent Ɨkhnjnd, what he teaches will be his own absurd views, leading people in a bad direction, and thus the people of the religion will behave badly. These questions of religion are the first reason that the commoners should choose someone who is moral and trustworthy to the position, and they should not be appointed by officials. In the past, Muতammad was the first person to expound the religion in Arabia. The thirty books46 of his Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn are what later generations of Muslims have commonly revered and handed down. In the course of time, there have been splits into factions, each with their differences. Because of the differences between one set of teachings and others, e.g. between the Dafang and Xiaofang factions, those who have transmitted the religion have also had their differences. Though they all adhere to Islam, each village has its village mosque, and each congregation has its congregation’s mosque. People from this mosque cannot go to that mosque to recite scriptures, and people from that mosque cannot come to this mosque to teach the religion. With such inveterate habits firmly entrenched, it is just like in China during the earlier Qing examinations: although they were all Chinese scholars, [someone from] one province could not claim registration in another province. If one relies on official power to compel the appointment of Ɨkhnjnds, what will happen if the people who teach religion cannot get along with those who are receiving the teaching? Religious disputes will break out from this. These issues of people and place are the second reason why [Ɨkhnjnds] should not be appointed by officials.

45 46

BGZWD juan 20, ff. 1a-1b. Referring to the customary division of the QurҴƗn into thirty sections (juzҴ).

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The Ɨkhnjnds are leaders in educational matters. Such a standing cannot be attained in a single day. Muslims who teach religion must first thoroughly know the scriptures; then they are made mullƗ, or from mullƗ promoted to Ɨkhnjnd, or from second-degree Ɨkhnjnd to senior Ɨkhnjnd. Although it is not always entirely this way, still there has not been any case of someone without learning or morality being chosen by the people as Ɨkhnjnd. Consequently the Muslims’ respect towards the Ɨkhnjnd is most earnest, and their obedience is also most sincere. If they are assigned by officials, and are not endorsed by the people, when [the officials] force matters it will easily create conflicts. The fact that people will surely not obey them is the third reason why they should not be appointed by officials. Generally speaking people of upright morals do not lightly go to the yamen.47 Those who hang around the yamen are people who are seeking personal gain, and the type who secretly spread heretical teachings. Previously the Ɨkhnjnds were elected by the people; though limited in their knowledge of the principles of righteousness, they were able to show diligence in following the scriptures. Once the trend of officials appointing Ɨkhnjnds starts, then they will pay no attention to the scriptures, they will only acquire their position through purchase and not be concerned if the people do not obey. Thus if the people from one mosque have a strong Ɨkhnjnd, then the people from another mosque will all adhere to that mosque. If the Xiaofang people have a strong Ɨkhnjnd, then the people of the Dafang will all join the Xiaofang. As factional prejudices lead to further splits, religious disputes and attacks on officials will all arise. When officials encounter an issue that is hard to resolve, they will use the Ɨkhnjnd as a shield to resolve it by criticising the mosque. The Ɨkhnjnds will profit from their insider status and gang together for evil purposes. This invitation to favouritism is the fourth reason why they should not be appointed by officials. While serving as an official in Gansu I had already familiarised myself with the positives and negatives in all these various circumstances. Recently I have heard of the corrupt practice of magistrates in counties of Xinjiang selling the position of aqsaqal. As if that were not enough, they also sell the position of Ɨkhnjnd, so as to satisfy their voracious appetite. If this is left to carry on without check, it is hard to imagine where things will end. Henceforth the Ɨkhnjnds in each county each village must be appointed by the locals themselves, carrying out elections and choosing a native with learning and good character. I will not allow local officials to appoint them in order to win over people’s compliance. After circulating these instructions, if there are any cases again of local officials on their own initiative appointing Ɨkhnjnds, as soon as it is found out they will be punished accordingly. Now, according to the department’s regulations, whether in a public or private school, all foreigners employed to teach must be approved by the department. The Ɨkhnjnds’ instructing in the scriptures is the same as teaching. Henceforth, mosques must not privately employ foreigners as Ɨkhnjnds of Chinese subjects, lest hidden dangers multiply. This is in order to prevent corrupt practices. Each magistrate should obey this without delay. If the

47

The county magistrate’s office.

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Ɨkhnjnds evince illegal behaviour and are under legitimate accusations, then the case should be presented by the magistrate, and a replacement ordered as appropriate.

Apart from decreeing against the appointment of Ɨkhnjnds by officials, Yang also weighed in against requests by Ɨkhnjnds to provide them with official documents confirming them in office. Such documents would not only facilitate the buying and selling of office, it would also provide Ɨkhnjnds with the authority to travel beyond their own mosque community. Such inspection tours appear to have been common practice in late-Qing Xinjiang. One description of Ghulja describes the office of superintendant (mu‫ۊ‬tasib) Ɨkhnjnd, who regularly visited mahalla mosques to check attendances and collect donations.48 Requests for greater official recognition of Ɨkhnjnd status may have also come about through familiarity with the Russian system, where mullƗs were subject to examinations. As part of this system, religious officials among the Russian citizenry in Xinjiang were tested and confirmed in office by the Russian consuls—giving locals an alternative model for the recruitment and recognition of religious functionaries. Document 9: Instructions to each Circuit Commissioner to withhold the distribution of official certificates to Ɨkhnjnds (August 22, 1918). BGZWD vol. 22, ff. 20b-21b According to a letter from the Aqsu Uyghur Shaykh SalƯm, hitherto Islam has required that someone with learning and upright behaviour be chosen as Ɨkhnjnd, who is provided with a seal to tour each town and village mosque to preach the holy scriptures and exhort people to do good. Presently the Aqsu Ɨkhnjnds, aqsaqals, begs and commoners, according to the long-established custom, have elected ‫ޏ‬Abd al-HƗdƯ Ɨkhnjnd to go to each locale and preach the scriptures, and earnestly request that he be issued with an official document. As I have established, only the single name of Shaykh SalƯm was attached to the original report—this is not a public petition. Mosques everywhere all have Ɨkhnjnds, and they can all preach the scriptures. The prohibition on Ɨkhnjnds of one mosque going to another mosque to preach scriptures is common knowledge. If they now send someone to go to other mosques and preach, monopolising the rights of these mosques, this is hardly innocuous. Their request to issue an official document to go to different mosques to preach clearly shows their desire to rely on official pressure to extend their religious influence. Suppose there is a heterodox Ɨkhnjnd who requests an official diploma and widens his gaze to entice ignorant people to follow his teachings, just like previously in Gansu when Muslim leaders secretly sent their Ɨkhnjnds to lure people to their teachings, calling them menhuan; the hidden dangers are truly endless! The Hui and Uyghur of Xinjiang province are numerous, and there is not equal measure of virtuous and stupid people. This must not be allowed to begin. To this end, Ɨkhnjnds should fulfil their duties by preaching scriptures and exhorting the people to good deeds. Each place has its own Ɨkhnjnd, every mosque has 48

SelƯm, “Qi৬Ɨy তöknjmetine tƗbi' olan 'öulja' šehriniƾ eতvƗl,” Vaqt 14 (1 May 1908): 4.

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David Brophy its mosque Ɨkhnjnd, and generally speaking they can all teach the scriptures. According to reports, this ‫ޏ‬Abd al-HƗdƯ is learned, upright, and qualified. Naturally he should be invited to enter the mosque and serve as Ɨkhnjnd, and carry out preaching, [but] there is no need for him to travel to other places, lest it create religious disputes. The request to issue an official document should be dismissed without further consideration, and instructions should be issued for the circuit intendant to immediately convey to every locale. Henceforth if there are Hui or Uyghur Ɨkhnjnds who request the authorities to issue official documents allowing them to travel somewhere to preach, or teach scriptures, then they should be restricted from doing so as far as possible, and it should be ascertained whether there is any suggestion of personally establishing a faction and secretly spreading new teachings. You must definitely not issue official diplomas without authorisation, lest the region be disturbed.

It was not only Han Chinese officials who had the means and incentive to interfere with the smooth election of virtuous Ɨkhnjnds. By 1925, when the following decree was issued, Yang was aware of the power of rich local bays to influence religious matters. Construction of mosques was a popular philanthropic endeavour among Xinjiang’s wealthy. This document, one of the most interesting in the collection, takes as its premise a dispute over the appointment of Ɨkhnjnds in the congregational mosque built by migrants from southern Xinjiang in Ghulja. The dispute has its origins in the rivalry between the Kashgar and Artush sections of Xinjiang’s commercial elite, a conflict that played an important role in the politics of southern Xinjiang. Document 10: Instructions to the Ili Circuit and Counties on handling the case of Kashgari factions competing over the election of Ɨkhnjnds (December 1925). BGZWDSB juan 2:39b–43b Among the Uyghur groups in Ghulja a dispute has suddenly arisen over replacing imƗms and Ɨkhnjnds. According to the investigations in the circuit and county, it is because the two men ণusayn49 and Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb50 have intervened, each wishing to have men of their own faction elected as Ɨkhnjnd in order to protect their personal interests. Then, because each side were stalemated, Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb preferred to independently establish a mosque, for the use of people from the six counties of Kashgar, Aqsu, Khotan, Ush, Kucha and Yarkand, thereby separating from the Artush Great Mosque, with each selecting an Ɨkhnjnd, and each managing their own affairs, so as to never come into conflict. After close investigations into the situation by the circuit and county, this was deemed permissible, and they have asked for instructions as to how to proceed. Since this reached me, I have looked in49 50

Probably ণusayn MusƗbayev, scion of the wealthy MusƗbayev trading family of Artush. Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb Ɩkhnjn ণasan Babashev, a wool merchant who traded with the USSR and collected customs tolls in Ili. British consul N. Fitzmaurice wrote in 1922 that “he is a sort of ‘uncrowned king’ in Ili, and is amassing enormous wealth.” India Office Records L/P&S/10/976: 249 (Kashgar diary for July 1922).

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to it closely and determined that there are some inappropriate aspects to this. I have pointed these out individually below. The Uyghur of Xinjiang do not have menhuan divisions in their religion. Herein lies their superiority to the Hui. Herein also lies their ability to get along peacefully. Now if on the basis of differences of opinion they are permitted to build separate mosques and establish factions, then subsequently anyone who has the strength to do so will see this as a precedent. One after another they will each run up their own flag and confront each other. Thus the Uyghur religion, which up till now has been free of factional divisions, will come to the point of establishing separate factions. Moreover, these factional divisions are not arising at the hands of the Ɨkhnjnds, but at the hands of the bays. This is most unheard of! If the bays on either side divide their mosques because of their differences of opinion, then in future the Ɨkhnjnds must of necessity produce their own opinions, because they belong to different factions. Thus a division of mosques today will lead to the gradual divergence of teachings, just as frost accumulates and becomes ice. This is the first point to pay attention to. The mosque is a place for reciting scriptures and saying prayers, with the Ɨkhnjnd at the centre, not with the bay at the centre. According to the scriptures, the bays should follow the Ɨkhnjnds. There are definitely no grounds for the Ɨkhnjnds to obey the bays. For the imƗms and Ɨkhnjnds of Ghulja to yield before the power of the bays does not accord with principle. If, now, because of the strength of the bays who control them, they split into factions, then this will only exacerbate the problem. This is nothing short of turning a place of prayer and study into a place of selfish conspiracy. The state encourages the former, but people naturally tend towards the latter. If the Ɨkhnjnds pander to the wishes of the bays, then when they encounter some incident they will refer it to the bay, and pay no heed to the scriptures. If this persists, then the people will simply follow the Ɨkhnjnd’s lead, and when they run into trouble, they will think only of the bay, and disregard the Ɨkhnjnd. The Ɨkhnjnds will take the bays as their patrons, and the bays will use the Ɨkhnjnds as their puppets. This is not only a case of disregarding religious instructions; it also has implications for the popular mood and morality. This is the second point to pay attention to. Among the mosques of Ghulja, on the Hui side there has always only been the ShaanxiGansu Great Mosque. No matter where they are from, Hui all go to the Shaanxi-Gansu Great Mosque to pray. Among the Uyghur, until now there has only been the Taranchi51 Great Mosque. Regardless of their origins, the Uyghur all go to the Taranchi mosque to pray. Up until now this has been the traditional practice. Since the establishment of the Republic, public morality has declined, and religion has also been influenced. The beginning of this was when You Huating, on the pretext of being a Russian Muslim, established the You Family mosque apart from the Shaanxi-Gansu Great Mosque. From this point onwards, the Shaanxi-Gansu mosque split into branches. In the same way, BahƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn52 because of his influence founded a Kashgari Great Mosque separate from the Taranchi

51 52

Local Turkic-speaking Muslims in the Ili Valley were known as Taranchis at this time. BahƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn MusƗbayev, ণusayn’s brother.

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David Brophy Great Mosque. Thus the Taranchi Great Mosque split into branches. Besides these, [there are] the Noghays [Tatar – DB] and the Andijanis, none without their faction, and none without their mosque.53 The mosques of Ghulja, from beginning to now have reached their limit. Now, if because the power of the bays cannot be contained, a split occurs into a Ya‫ޏ‬qub Great Mosque apart from the Kashgari Great Mosque, then ণusayn will likewise have to found a ণusayn Great Mosque. It will reach the point that if NiyƗz is strong, then he will build a NiyƗz Great Mosque; if IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl is strong, he will build an IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl Great Mosque. The more mosques, the greater the burden on the people, and incidents will proliferate in the region. This is the third point to pay attention to. It appears that while the current Kashgari Great Mosque was nominally established solely by BahƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn, according to what I have heard, there were many people who made donations of funds. Now, whether or not Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb intends to build a great mosque on his own, or if he still secretly collects funds from the people, even if Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb can provide the means by himself, who will belong to the new mosque? Which county will belong to the old mosque? From this on-the-spot division conflicts are bound to arise, and treacherous followers will surely go for whatever is new, and engage in sectarian squabbles. Increasing the number of places to pray will in fact be opening the door to discord. The confusion of right and wrong and the fabrication of black and white will only increase. If now they divide mosques on the basis of differences of view, subsequently their views will increasingly diverge on the basis of the division of mosques. Thus what the circuit and county have described as “settling the matter,” I see as opening the door to many problems in the future. This is the fourth point to pay attention to. Regarding the method of choosing Ɨkhnjnds at the Kashgari Great Mosque, the natives of Kashgar and Artush take turns every three years, alternating chief and deputy between themselves. Although this was at first designed because of the conflict between ণusayn and Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb, still it was fair and permissible. On this occasion, the Ɨkhnjnd Turdï ShƗh ণƗjjƯ is from Artush. Now that his three-year term is complete, then according to the principle they should choose a Kashgari to replace him as Ɨkhnjnd. Only then will it accord with the procedure. How can this ণusayn go against the old practice and resist complying? It is most inappropriate! The preceding Ɨkhnjnd’s term is over, but ণusayn does not follow the custom and choose an Ɨkhnjnd. On this basis, Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb would be justified in himself bringing a suit in order to resolve it properly. What need is there is to cause a split and act impulsively? If they cannot reconcile, then the circuit and county should summon each party to the office and straighten out matters, and they should explain this governor’s instructions point by point, so that they become public knowledge. Since there are old practices that they can follow, they should still handle it according to precedent. ণusayn should not willfully violate the established rule, and Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb does not need to establish a

53

According to the Vaqt article cited above (n. 48), there were seven congregational mosques in Ghulja in 1908. The Kashgari mosque was built in the middle of the bazaar, next to it was the Musabayev school. Other Mosques were built by KhwƗja Bay from Namangan, and another was renovated by the Tashkenti ‫ޏ‬Ayn al-DƯn Bay. “öulja” TercümƗn, December 19, 1913 (January 1, 1914): 3.

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separate mosque. If there really is some reason requiring the tenure of the current Ɨkhnjnd to be extended, then the tenure of the next Kashgari Ɨkhnjnd should also be extended in the same way. This is fair. In sum, there is past precedent in this matter, and it is fitting to act as before. Although the tenures can be adjusted, the actual procedure of alternating turns should not be disrupted, and divisions need not be created. I hope that you will act accordingly at once, and prepare a full report looking into the circumstances and measures taken. I have also received a document on issuing licenses from the county after the election of Ɨkhnjnds. As I understand it, the Ɨkhnjnds up until now have been chosen by popular election, there is no need to confirm the Ɨkhnjnds in office. If this is commenced, not only will name and reality not be in accord, but corrupt practices will multiply. From now on in every county of this circuit if there is a request to provide the Ɨkhnjnds with official diplomas, they should refuse it, so as to avoid setting a precedent which would result in abuses increasing over time, leading to the corrupt practice of buying and selling the office of Ɨkhnjnd. This is most important. I have already submitted a petition to the government to put this on record. If there is anyone who disobeys and does not comply, then they will be strictly punished without any indulgence. I am combining these two directives, and I expect each circuit commissioner to inform all concerned.

5. CONCLUSION Poking fun at his interest in Daoism, one scholar has characterised Yang Zengxin’s style of rule as “ruling by doing nothing” (wuwei er zhi).54 Generally the period of his tenure is seen as one in which Xinjiang was cut off from all outside influences and transformative processes. With hindsight, patriotic Chinese scholars have come to admire Yang’s success in holding together a province with more than its fair share of fissiparous tendencies, though he remains reviled by Uyghurs, and fares little better at the hands of foreign scholars, as “the last of the mandarins.” Yet maintaining the status quo is not the same thing as inactivity, and Yang’s cultural continuities with the province’s Qing governors should not be allowed to conceal his distinctive approach to Xinjiang. Yang’s writings show an overriding interest in maintaining boundaries: between natives and foreigners, among the province’s various menhuan and mosque communities, and between religious practice and other forms of social life. In his vision of a stable Xinjiang, Islam was to be confined spatially to the mosque, and doctrinally to the QurҴƗn. While seeking out allies among Xinjiang’s Muslim elite, Yang’s project was at all times to maintain 54

Chen Ruifang, “Lun Yang Zengxin 'wuwei er zhi' de zheng Xin zhengce,” Kashi shifan xueyuan xuebao 27/4 (2006): 38–40.

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Han dominance in Xinjiang, to which end he sought to enhance the role of the mosques as part of a network of intelligence and surveillance. For this reason he inveighed against needlessly antagonising Muslims, and sought to preserve organic links between mosque preachers and the laity. The “tolerance” that resulted from such policies was only selective, however. Without question his policies towards Sufi lodges can only be described as repressive. Yet in this he unwittingly made common cause with at least some Central Asian Muslims, who were committed to stamping out khurƗfƗt (superstition) from their communities. These, too, saw the shaykhs of Xinjiang as purveyors of potentially corrosive ideas. Hence in the pages of Central Asia’s reformist press, it is rare to find complaints directed towards religious policy in Xinjiang—or in China for that matter.55 Despite Yang’s frequent claims to deep knowledge of Islam, his learning consists of a set of practical insights built up through experience governing Chinese Muslims, and not the book learning of a scholar of the religion. Alongside these decrees it is worth considering what his silences also tell us. Yang was seemingly unaware of the role of Xinjiang’s saintly khwƗja lineages, who still commanded the loyalties of many. In general, Yang does not appear to have a concept of Sufism, treating Hui menhuan and Uyghur khƗnqƗhs as two distinct issues. Nor does he address the issue of Islamic (sharƯҵa) law and the functioning of Xinjiang’s qƗĪƯ courts. While British and Russian colonial rule in Muslim areas were both committed to some level of supervision over the functioning of local Islamic courts, Chinese officials in Xinjiang largely left these to their own devices. Nor is there any mention of the issue of vaqf property, which was untouched until the 1930s, when income from charitable donations was turned over to the warlord Sheng Shicai’s Soviet-style educational organisations. It makes sense that the unique social conditions of late-Qing and Republican Xinjiang gave rise to distinctive patterns of religious behaviour. It is also clear that Chinese discourse on Islam and the province’s Muslim people(s) was still sui generis through the 1920s. Only in the 1930s did Xinjiang’s ethnic policy begin to run parallel to that of the Soviet Union. Unfor55

This is not directly attributable to Yang Zengxin, such observations can be found in the late Qing, e.g. MünƗdƯ, “Qi৬Ɨy memleketinde: öuljadan,” Vaqt, August 22 (September 4, 1906): 4: “Although Chinese and Manchus are at the head of the government, in matters of religion and education there is complete freedom” (‫ۊ‬öknjmet bašnda QitƗy ve Manjnjlar olsada, dƯn ve meҵrifet bƗbnda kƗmil hörrƯyetdür).

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tunately our knowledge of Xinjiang in the 1920s pales in comparison with what we know about the first decade of Soviet rule in Central Asia. While perhaps not as rich as Russian sources, these translations have hopefully shown that Chinese-language materials can shed light on local religious life in this period.

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GLOSSARY Ɨkhnjnd aqsaqal circuit intendant commander(-in-chief) congregation imƗm khƗnqƗh (Sufi lodge) Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn senior Ɨkhnjnd shaykh

ahong xiangyue daoyin tidu fang zhangjiao daotang tianjing kaixue ahong laoren(jia)

㜿ὥ 悱䲬 㐨ᑺ ᥦ╩ ᆓ ᤸᩍ 㐨ᇽ ኳ⥂ 㛤Ꮵ㜿ὥ ⪁ே(ᐙ)

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources TercümƗn, 1913. Vaqt, 1906–1908. Kämbäghällär avazi, 1927. Shenbao, 1923. Rao Yingqi, Xinjiang xunfu Rao Yingqi gaoben wenxian jicheng, ed. Li Delong (Beijing, 2008). Yang Zengxin, Buguozhai wendu, 32 vols. (Xinjiang zhujing gongyu, 1921; repr. Taibei, 1965) –––––, Buguozhai wendu xubian, 14 juan. (1926; repr. Zhongguo xibei wenxian congshu xubian. Xibei shidi wenxian juan, vols 1–3. Lanzhou, 1999) –––––, Buguozhai wendu sanbian. 6 juan. (1934; repr. Zhongguo xibei wenxian congshu xubian. Xibei shidi wenxian juan, vol. 4. Lanzhou, 1999) –––––, Buguozhai du Laozi riji, Wuqiu beizhai Lao Lie Zhuang sanzi jicheng bubian, vols 5– 6. Edited by Yan Lingfeng. (Taibei, 1982) –––––, Buguozhai du Yinfujing riji, Zangwai daoshu vol. 3, ed. Hu Daojing. (Chengdu, 1992– 1994), 679–703

Secondary Literature Allès, Elisabeth, “Notes sur la Zhehelinye (JahrƯya) au Xinjiang,” Etudes Orientales 25 (2008): 211–220 Ben-Dor Benite, Zvi, The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, MA, 2005) Chen Ruifang. “Lun Yang Zengxin ‘wuwei er zhi’ de zheng Xin zhengce,” Kashi shifan xueyuan xuebao 27/4 (2006): 38–40 Dillon, Michael, China’s Muslim Hui Community: Migration, Settlement and Sects (Richmond, 1999) Fraser, Glenda, “Haji Sami and the Turkestan Federation, 1922–3,” Asian Affairs 18/1 (1987): 11–21 Garnaut, Anthony, “From Yunnan to Xinjiang: Governor Yang Zengxin and his Dungan Generals,” Etudes Orientales 25 (2008): 93–125 –––––, “The Shaykh of the Great Northwest: The Religious and Political Life of Ma Yuanzhang (1853–1920),” (PhD dissertation, Australian National University, 2011). Gladney, Dru C, “Muslim Tombs and Ethnic Folklore: Charters for Hui Identity,” Journal of Asian Studies 46/3 (1987): 495–532 Hamada Masami. “Islamic Saints and Their Mausoleums.” Acta Asiatica 34 (1987): 79–105 Lipman, Jonathan N, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle, 1997)

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Lipman, Jonathan N, ““A Fierce and Brutal People”: On Islam and Muslims in Qing Law,” in: Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, eds. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2006), 83–110 Millward, James, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia 1759–1864 (Stanford, 1998) ––––– and Newby, Laura, “The Qing and Islam on the Western Frontier,” in: Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, eds. by Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 2006), 113–134 Papas, Alexandre, Soufisme et politique entre Chine, Tibet et Turkestan: étude sur les Khwajas Naqshbandis du Turkestan oriental (Paris, 2005) Trippner, Joseph, “Islamische Gruppen und Gräberkult in Nordwest-China,” Die Welt des Islams 7/1 (1961): 142–171 Yang, Richard, “Sinkiang under the Administration of Governor Yang Tseng-Hsin, 1911– 1928,” Central Asiatic Journal 6/4 (1961): 270–316 Zarcone, Thierry, “The Sufi Networks in Southern Xinjiang during the Republican Regime (1911–1949): An Overview,” in: Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries), eds. Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (London, 2001), 119–132

Interpreting an Insurgency in Soviet Kazakhstan: The OGPU, Islam and Qazaq “Clans” in Suzak, 1930 NICCOLÒ PIANCIOLA* Hong Kong

The social and political relevance of categories such as “tribes” and “clans” in Central Asian societies supposedly organized around segmentary lineage systems is one of the most influential social sciences paradigms applied to the region.1 The present paper will assess the relevance of “tribal” identification, and the mobilization of tribal categories, during the forced collectivization campaign in 1930, the last period in which it is possible to find, in the documentation produced by the Tsarist/Soviet state, an extensive reference to the tribal/segmentary discourse in the description of Qazaq society. To this end, I will focus on a case-study of an anti-Soviet insurgency in Southern Kazakhstan in and near the town of Suzak during February 1930. The main documentary basis of the study is provided by OGPU2 reports and interrogations of insurgents, a source rarely used by historians because of the *

1

2

I would like to thank Paolo Sartori and two anonymous referees for comments on previous versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Maureen Buja for helping me improve my English. See Nurbulat Masanov, “Kazakhskaia politicheskaia i intellektual’naia elita: klanovaia prinadlezhnost’ i vnutroetnicheskie sopernichestvo”, Vestnik Evrazii 1/2 (1996): 46–61; Edward Schatz, Modern Clan Politics. The Power of “Blood” in Kazakhstan and Beyond (Seattle/London, 2004); Kathleen Collins, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge, 2006); Bhavna Dave, Kazakhstan. Ethnicity, Language and Power (London/New York, 2007), 84–91; for a convincing critique to the thesis of a continuity in “tribal/clan” groupings and their political relevance in the post-Soviet period, cf. Marie Dumoulin, Les élites politiques kazakhstanaises. Faire carrière dans un Etat en formation (Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris: Thèse doctorale, 2008), 229–265. The Soviet political police was called Obedinennoe Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie (OGPU), “Unified Political State Directorate”, from 1923 to 1934, when it was reorganized and put administratively under the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD).

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difficult accessibility of the former political police archives in many postSoviet states. The paper will assess the usefulness of this documentation for the social history of the region during the early Soviet Union, arguing that this kind of source cannot be easily dismissed as a mere refraction of ideological categories produced by the Communist state. In the specific casestudy at hand, I will try to show how “tribal” categories and alleged groups cannot explain the patterns and the leadership of the anti-Soviet revolts, even if those categories were used both by Qazaqs as categories of practice, and by the OGPU as an interpretative tool in order to understand the events unfolding in the countryside on the eve of the great famine of 1931–33. At the same time, I will show how forms of Islamic authority informed insurgents’ actions, and how the OGPU interpreted the connection between religious motives, (alleged) networks, and the insurgency. In line with some of the findings of the most recent anthropological research about other pastoral regions of Central Asia, this paper argues that tribal and clan names cannot be considered as corresponding to corporate groups and to social actors, and that the legacy of Tsarist administrative practice, and its influence on the socio-political relevance of “tribal” categorization, should be taken into consideration as an important factor in the social history of early Soviet Kazakhstan. 1. SOURCES For important events in the history of modern Central Asia, scholars have to rely on scanty or very biased sources produced by different apparatuses of the Tsarist and Soviet states. This is especially true for the period during and after the Stalinist “revolution from above” (1928–1933). One of these underdocumented events is the wave of peasants’ and herders’ revolts during the total collectivization campaign in 1930–1931. Kazakhstan was one of the Soviet areas most involved in the conflict between the Bolshevik state and the population of the countryside. The collectivization of agriculture, increased requisitions of grain and livestock, deportation of peasant and pastoral elites were the main factors triggering violent reactions from the population. The repression of religious practices, the incarceration of religious local authorities, the closing of religious sites in the framework of the Stalinist “cultural revolution” was also a major factor in pushing peasants and herders

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into revolt.3 The wave of uprisings of 1930 and 1931 has been interpreted in the historiography in Kazakhstan as a movement of national resistance against Stalinist state-building in the Soviet Union, in continuity with the 1916 revolts against the drafting of Central Asians for labor duties at the service of the army during World War I. The other main interpretative framework is about the resistance of “society” against the extractive and exterminatory policies of the early Stalinist state, in analogy with what was happening all over the Soviet Union (the beginning of the 1930s witnessed the biggest wave of peasant revolts against the Soviet state).4 The fact that, for a number of important events and personalities of the 1920s and 1930s, the only information comes from Soviet sources and, in some cases, from documents produced by the political police, is obviously a major interpretative problem,5 since the limitations and biases of these kinds of sources are obvious. The most extreme position claims that this kind of documentation cannot be used as anything but the study of the biases of the institution that produced such documents. Therefore, the materials produced by the OGPU-NKVD could constitute valuable historical evidence only for the history of the political police, the mentality of the police officers, or the ideas about society emanating from the political leadership. That stateproduced documents should be subject to strict textual criticism is even more necessary in the case of the regions in the Soviet Union more culturally distant from the European core of the state and from the Russian culture and language dominant in its bureaucracy, especially the repressivetransformative bureaucracies we are analyzing here. Most famously with the works of the Subaltern Studies school, documents regarding counterinsurgency are a locus classicus of debate among historians about the possibility 3

4 5

K.S. Aldazhumanov, “Krest’ianskoe protestnoe dvizhenie,” in: Istoriia Kazakhstana s drevneishich vremen do nashikh dnei v piati tomakh. Tom 4, eds. Zh. B. Abylchozhin, K.S. Aldazhumanov, K.N. Burkhanov, A.T. Kapaeva, S.F. Mazhitov (Almaty, 2010), 293; Lynne Viola, Peasant Rebels under Stalin. Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (Oxford, 1996), 38–44. See Aldazhumanov, “Krest’ianskoe protestnoe dvizhenie”, 290–321. Studying the Tashkent ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ in the 1920s and 1930s, Paolo Sartori highlighted that “the paucity of both hagiographical sources” and local histories “prompted scholars to reconsider the usefulness” of interrogation transcripts of arrested ‫ޏ‬ulamƗҴ carried out by the NKVD during the Great Terror of 1937–1938. Cf. P. Sartori, “The Tashkent ҵUlamƗҴ and the Soviet State (1920–38): A Preliminary Research Note Based on NKVD Documents”, in: Patterns of Transformation in and around Uzbekistan, eds. P. Sartori and T. Trevisani (Reggio Emilia, 2007), 162–163.

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of using documents produced by repressive institutions to study the society victim of those same repressive policies. 6 Those debates followed similar discussions about the use of Inquisitorial records as sources for the history of cultural practices repressed during the counter-Reformation in early modern Europe or in Latin America.7 The main body of the present paper’s documentary basis was collected by Kaidar Aldazhumanov in the Kazakhstan Committee of National Security (KNB) archive in 1992 (KNB is the institutional heir of the Soviet OGPU/NKVD/KGB in Kazakhstan). 8 The documents collected by Aldazhumanov, and already utilized by him in a series of publications,9 concern the military repression of one of the most important uprisings broken out in Soviet Kazakhstan during collectivization, the Suzak revolt in Southern Kazakhstan of February 1930. These documents are Russian translations of interrogations of insurgents and of documents produced by the insurgents themselves, along with OGPU operational communications. Suzak OGPU papers – along with similar documentation used by other authors10 – shed some light on the issue of local authority in Qazaq society at the watershed moment when the social fabric was torn apart by the policies of deportation, resource extraction, and violent repression of the Stalinist “revolution from above”. They also help put into question the usual state/society divide, so commonly used in the historical literature concerning repressive policies during Stalinism. The organization of the uprising in Suzak, with the production of documents by the insurgents to mobilize men and resources; and the presence of 6

7

8

9

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Ranajit Guha, “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency,” in: Selected Subaltern Studies, eds. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (New York/Oxford, 1988), 45–86. See the reflections by Carlo Ginzburg, Miti emblemi spie. Morfologia e Storia (Turin, 1986). I am very grateful to Kaidar Aldazhumanov for his generosity and the opportunity he gave me to use this material, retrieved in an archive now closed to foreign scholars and to most Kazakhstani historians as well. Especially for his “Krestianskoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia,” in: Kaidar Aldazhumanov, Deportirovannye v Kazakhstan narody: vremiia i sudby (Almaty, 1998): 66–93 and his “Krest’ianskoe protestnoe dvizhenie,” 294–297. See especially the works by Turkganbek Allaniiazov. A good example of a micro-history of the repression of a Qazaq uprising during collectivization based on OGPU documents is Turganbek Allaniiazov, Amangeldy Taukenov, Shetskaia tragediia (iz istorii antisovetskikh vooruzhennykh vystuplenii v Tsentral’nom Kazakhstane v 1930–1931 gg.) (Almaty, 2000).

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both a religious form of legitimization and the use of “tribal” categories functional to this very organization are characteristics that make the Suzak event different from other revolts that have been studied by historians using OGPU materials. Future local studies of specific uprisings can change the picture, but from what we know now it seems that the OGPU was not applying a blueprint in interpreting every uprising in the same way.11 As I will try to show, OGPU officers tried, to a certain extent, to understand which local dynamics led to every specific revolt. The question about who were the leaders of the uprising (as of similar uprisings in the same period in Kazakhstan) is therefore crucial to understand the relevant social networks used in order to mobilize the local population. Reflecting the use of the same categories of legitimization used by the insurgents, the political police saw the insurgency as driven by “Islamic” and “tribal” networks. The categories used by OGPU officers are mirrored in the most recent analyses of the authority in “stateless” societies in the Muslim world, especially during periods of insurgency or armed resistance against state policies or military occupations. Islamic authority and “tribal” authority are usually the two social forces invoked, sometimes in opposition and sometimes in parallel, in order to explain social mobilization in Central Asia and the “Greater Middle East,” where the very anthropological theory of segmentary lineage systems originated.12 With the words of a contemporary “military anthropologist” who is referring to North-East Pakistan and Afghanistan, we could say that the OGPU interpreted the uprising as a case of “advancement of religious justification for tribal militancy”. 13 The OGPU documents produced around the Suzak event are therefore an example of 11

12

13

See Turganbek Allaniiazov, Amangeldy Taukenov, Poslednyi rubezh zashitnikov nomadizma. Istoriia vooruzhennykh vystuplenii i povstancheskich dvizhenii v Kazakhstane (1929–1931 gody) (Almaty, 2008); Zhaugashty Nabiev (pod red.), Stepnaia tragediia: Adaiskoe vosstanie 1929–1931 gg. (Almaty, 2010). For a concise exposition of the model, and its application to a specific case, cf. Charles Lindholm, “The Segmentary Lineage System: Its Applicability to Pakistan’s Political Structure” (1977), in: Id., Frontier Perspectives. Essays in Comparative Anthropology, (Karachi, 1996), 121–44. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla. Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Oxford, 2009), 229. Kilcullen, an officer of the Australian army and Senior Advisor of General David Petraeus in Iraq, is one of the world’s leading experts in global counterinsurgency. He contributed to develop US counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan in the wars of the last decade.

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anti-insurgency discourse that goes beyond the concrete case at hand here, and also beyond the history of Soviet counterinsurgency. 2. WHAT HAPPENED IN SUZAK? According to the first Soviet census of 1926, Suzak volost’ had a population of 39,993 (93.9% Qazaqs, 5.9% Uzbeks, and 0.2% Russians and others). The population was mostly rural, living in 1,179 auls, except for the small town (or big village) of Suzak, inhabited by around 4,000 people, Uzbeks and Qazaqs.14 The revolt in Suzak at the beginning of 1930 was one of the most important revolts during the first year of collectivization in Kazakhstan and in the entire Soviet Union. 15 Already by November 1929 the first reports started to reach the OGPU headquarters in Moscow, according to which in Suzak “an agitation about a Holy Muslim war is going on”.16 From the first reports coming from the region, it was emphasized that the leader of the revolt had been proclaimed khƗn.17 Dr. A. Doganovskii, a physician and director of Suzak district hospital, was taken prisoner by the rebels along with Dr. Savelëva, his wife. Doganovskii was a new arrival in Suzak and he had joined the hospital in November 1929. On Friday, 7 February 1930, the insurgents, armed only with cold weapons except for some revolvers, attacked Suzak (according to one report, the rebels had hidden themselves in the small town beforehand, one or two

14

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Tama. I Tom. Ishinshi kitap, eds. Kh. M Gabzhalilov, T. Omarbekov, B.B. Keribaev, A.B. Kalysh (Almaty, 2005), 234–5. Suzak volost’ was comparatively big, since the average population for one volost’ in Kazakhstan in the second half of the 1920s was ca. 15,000 inhabitants. For an overview of the different uprisings in Kazakhstan from 1929 to 1931, see Isabelle Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’Urss de Staline. Collectivisation et changement social (1928–1945) (Paris, 2006), 179–221. The revolt with the most similar dynamics compared the one in Suzak was the uprising in Irgiz (between Kustanai and Aktiubinsk okrug), also broken out in February 1930 (ivi, 186–188). “Report by the OGPU on kulak resistance to the policy of collectivization and their deportation in 1929 and 1930”, dated November 17, 1930, in: Tragediia sovetskoi derevni: kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie; dokumenty i materialy v 5 tomakh, 1927–1939, t. 2, Noiabr’ 1929- dekabr’ 1930, ed. V.P. Danilov (Moscow, 2000), 703–5. Archive of the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter AKNB), 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, l. 4.

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in every house).18 The “Russian” hospital was seized at dawn. The rioters looted the building, particularly the pantry with food for the patients. The two doctors were captured; a chapan was put on him, a shawl on her head, and they were kept as prisoners in a yurt at the headquarters of the khƗn. During the taking of the hospital, Bejken Utibaev, a Qazaq who had been treated by the two doctors in the past, asked that they be spared and thus saved their lives. The doctors were visited in captivity by the Koshchi Union representative in the district. The Koshchi Union was the state-sponsored organization of poor peasants in the Qazaq countryside (a largely ineffective organization in the 1920s). That their local representative was with the insurgents is another example of the defection of members of the local state institutions. The Koshchi Union man told Doganovskii and Savelëva that Tashkent, Turkistan, and Chimkent were already under the control of the rebels, and that 800 armed men had arrived from the Chu river region to join the revolt. According to the transcript of Doganovskii’s interrogation, the two Russian doctors were forced to repeat the words of “a Muslim prayer”. At 10 or 11 in the morning of the same day, the owner of the yurt where they were being held, aided by his son, brought Doganovskii and Savelëva in front of the khƗn. In a field near Suzak, a crowd of about 300 Qazaqs was standing in a semicircle, on foot or on horseback, armed and unarmed. The crowd stood up waving white flags and shouting in Qazaq to the two Russians. The doctor saw the khƗn, of an estimated age of 40–45, wearing a white robe. Beside him sat his assistant, who was wearing a black padded and quilted chapan held by a belt of red cloth, and a hat with earflaps. Doganovskii recognized a number of people he knew, from the small town of Suzak, standing next to the khƗn. In front of the Qazaq khƗn sat a young man (Doganovskii emphasized that he was shaved, since the majority of other man were bearded) wearing a red tiubeteika (Central Asian round cap). The young Qazaq was taking down the khƗn assistant’s dictation. The two Russian doctors had been brought to the gathering because their help was needed: they were asked to bandage two Qazaq workers from the district finan18

Report of the plenipotentiary of the Kazakhstan committee of the Communist Party, Idel’son, on the situation in the Suzak district, April 1930, in: Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane 1931–33 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, ed. K. S. Aldazhumanov, M.K. Kairgaliev, V.P. Osipov, Iu.I. Romanov (Almaty, 1998), 69. This report was therefore indirectly implying that the entire population of the town helped the insurgents.

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cial department who had been severely injured (broken teeth, head injuries) by the rebels during the attack on Suzak. With the help of the barber of Suzak, the Qazaq Abdullah Ashirov, who spoke Russian, the two doctors were able to complain to the khƗn that the mob had destroyed the hospital and the pharmacy. The khƗn gave instructions orally that the two Russian doctors should no longer be harassed, and they could go wherever they wish, provided they stayed inside the camp. This partial freedom of movement allowed the doctors to observe that the Qazaqs were distributing clover and barley seized from the state warehouse. In the market square of Suzak, the insurgents distributed tea, cigarettes, and sugar found in the town’s stores. Qazaq acquaintances told the doctors that the rebels numbered around one thousand men, all of them Qazaqs except for 40 or 50 Uzbeks, and that their plan was to conquer the town of Turkistan. Doganovskii recognized among the rebels the head of the Suzak militsiia (criminal police), Besembaev. The doctor also saw another policeman (militsioner) in the Suzak bazaar square, in the company of the rebels. According to the doctor, the whole Suzak militsiia had switched to the rebel side: this could explain why the OGPU was so taken by surprise by the events in the small town. On 12 February, camels were loaded with sugar, tea, and papirosy to follow the rebel detachment heading to Turkistan. Before the departure, according to the doctor, “in the streets of Suzak walked a crowd headed by a mullƗ. The crowd sang prayers, accompanying them with Oriental musical instruments, and shouted ‘Allah’”. It was said that the khƗn had given all the money he found in the case of the Executive Committee of the district, 5,000 rubles, “to the mullƗ”, while all the papers and books were burned.19 What the Russian doctor saw was a microcosm of the widespread conflict in the countryside. In Kazakhstan, the reaction to collectivization, the requisition of wheat and cattle, and the deportations were particularly violent. Although the majority of the disturbances were local uprisings not extending beyond the border of single villages or aul, there were cases in which they managed to mobilize thousands of people. The Suzak revolt was one of the three largest in Kazakhstan. According to the OGPU documentation, about 2,000 people participated in the uprising. In general, the targets of violence were party members, state officials, and all the Europeans. This was not a common feature: in other revolts in Kazakhstan Europeans were not systematically targeted; some of the revolts mobilized both Qazaqs and Slavs, espe19

AKNB, 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, ll. 533–8 (Interrogation of Doganovskii).

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cially Cossacks. In Suzak, 34 members of the district (rayon) party and the state administration were killed along with their families by the rebels; of these, five were Qazaqs. According to the first OGPU report sent from the site, the insurgents had committed atrocities such as beheading their victims, or cutting their hands and ears.20 All the Russians living in the small town of Suzak were killed, except doctors Doganovskii and Savelëva. After the extermination of the local representative of the state and the destruction of state documentation, the Suzak population enacted performative actions signaling a sort of “statehood shift,” such as the immediate search for a new legal basis for the new local power (as we will see) or the public rituals performed by the insurgents confusedly described by the captive doctor. Behaving and organizing themselves as if the Soviet state was no more, and retelling the rumors they referred to Doganovskii, according to which all the major cities of the region had fallen, the insurgents reinforced their will to expand the revolt. Unlike even the largest peasant insurgencies from the period of the Civil War in Russia and Siberia,21 Suzak rebels had no requests for the Soviet state: they were just attempting to deny – primarily to themselves – its continuing existence. At the beginning of February, after the preparations witnessed by Doganovskii, the rebels marched towards the town of Turkistan. On 8 February, an insurgents’ detachment moved from the Sary-Su to 120 km from Turkistan. On 12 February, a second detachment of insurgents was stopped near the village of Kogashik in a clash with with two detachments of urban volunteers (kommunary) sent from Kzylorda and Chimkent.22 Red Army infantry and cavalry units – 182 horsemen and 830 infantrymen – had been sent against the insurgents. The only Qazaq in the first Red Army expeditionary force was an officer (the entire force was made of Russians and Ukrainians). 20

21

22

Telegraphic report from OGPU plenipotentiaries Martynenko and Gushchin to the OGPU plenipotentiaries in Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Bel’skii and Vollenberg (Suzak, 18 February 1930), in: Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane, 62. Cf. Nicolas Werth, Le terreur et le désarroi. Staline et son système (Paris, 2007), 146– 147. Detachments of militiamen coordinated by troops of the political police had been a Bolshevik counterinsurgency tool during the anti-peasant war in the period 1918–1921 already. At the end of the Civil War more than 323,000 militiamen were in arms as an integral part of the Cheka’s Special Task Force (chasti osobogo naznacheniia). Cf. Alexander Statiev, The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands (Cambridge, 2010), 25–26.

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The revolt was quickly and conclusively repressed on 16 February 1930, when the military force from Tashkent, with OGPU assistance, killed 316 rebels (among them, the leader of the uprising, the khƗn), arrested 276 people, and seized 120 weapons. The OGPU registered the presence of only 7 wounded, which probably signals that many wounded insurgents were killed after the battle.23 Hundreds of rebels managed to escape. Fifteen Soviet soldiers were killed during the battle, ten were wounded. The Red Army National Qazaq cavalry unit arrived on the spot only on 17 February, along with two detachments of kommunary.24 It is likely that the repression entailed also the requisition of most of the livestock from the population. The number of livestock in the district decreased by 75% between 1930 and 1931, one of the worst figures for any district in Kazakhstan.25 On 24 February, local OGPU officers telegraphed to Genrikh Iagoda in Moscow, then the Deputy Chairman (but de facto chief) of the OGPU,26 that in the “headquarters” of the leader of the revolt, Sultanbek khƗn, documents had been retrieved containing lists of communists and officers in the area, who would probably have been eliminated if the insurgents succeeded.27 All in all, after the end of the violence, the political police found 123 different documents written by the anti-Soviet “micro-administration”. These documents were important evidence for the OGPU to understand how the revolt had been organized. The documents could be roughly divided between (1) texts aiming at the “public” and (2) texts with an administrative rationale, aiming to regulate the governance of the population by the khƗn and his collaborators for military purposes. Of the first kind were (1a) proclamations aimed at mobilizing the population, or (1b) legal opinions (fatvƗ) on specific issues (regarding the behavior that the rebels had to follow during the uprising, for instance, on economic matters). A document, for instance, called for “holy war” (gazavat) and called everyone to fight “for the religion”. The second group of papers were typical of the documentation produced by an administration for its own functioning: (2a) collection of data about the pop23 24

25

26

27

AKNB, 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, l. 411. Telegraphic report from OGPU plenipotentiaries Martynenko and Gushchin, in: Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane, 63–64. Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (TsGARK), f. 141, o. 1, d. 4839, ll. 76ff. (1931). The Chairman of the OGPU, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (in charge from 1926 to 1934), was seriously ill at that point. AKNB, 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, l. 433.

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ulation and its resources (livestock and a rudimentary people’s “census”, data about the weaponry in the hands of the population which could be utilized by the rebels – typically very few – etc.); (2b) paper-trail having “legal” validity in the relation between the rebels’ “administration” and the population, which was expected to join the revolt. The best example is given by the “confiscation’s receipts” handed down by the khƗn and his collaborators. These documents indicate the amount of fodder, food, cattle, and weapons that had been seized from villages, families, and individuals. The latter were to be compensated in due course, should the khƗn and his followers would be able to free the territory from the Soviet administration. In chronological terms, the documents belonging to the second group had been produced before the documents of the first one, since they were instrumental in preparing the revolt (the organization of the revolt went on from November 1929 at least, if we have to believe to the observations of the OGPU). Finally, there were documents (2c) delineating the rebels’ organization itself. A list of 20 “advisers” of the khƗn and 15 military commanders was found. These “organizational charts” were connected to the documents of the subgroup (2a), since there was a direct connection between the division of the population in different groups or communities (invariably classified as “clans,” rody, or “sub-clans,” podrody, by the OGPU),28 and the management of resources and manpower provided for the common cause. Be that as it may, according to the OGPU each commander represented one clan (rod). OGPU found a list of different clans that had provided livestock to the rebels, with the indication of the number of people for each rod, the name of its headmen (glavar), and the number of cattle available. According to the same documentation requisitioned by the OGPU, each rod also sent armed men, in total 262 men from six different rody.29 Another document indicated the quantities of fodder and horses that each family should have provided for the rebels (quantities were allocated in proportion to the extension of the group). One type of “receipts” included those issued for the weapons collected from the population (OGPU officers for instance found in the khƗn’s 28

29

The terminology used by the OGPU does not make clear if those were in fact considered ‘sub-clans’ of the Tama ‘umbrella-clan’, or member of others ‘umbrella clans’, or both, depending on different groups living in the district. Since subdivisions of the Tama clan were usually defined ‘sub-clans’ (podrody), one can reach the tentative conclusion that also members of ‘clans’ other than Tama took part in the revolt. AKNB, 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, ll. 438–444.

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headquarters receipts for the pikes provided to the rebels, and receipts for the blades produced by a single craftsman; the khƗn “administration” had left a copy of the receipt to the craftsman). As mentioned above, rebels had also organized a livestock census in the region, for future requests of livestock and food from the population. The khƗn “micro-administration” also possessed long lists of names of people from each particular rod that could be mobilized for militarily purposes. Each “clan” or “sub-clan” had a responsible person (a military commander, in Qazaq sardar) who signed a document in which he assumed liability in case of desertion by members of his group. For example, a sardar named Utem was responsible for 97 “soldiers”. The khƗn planned to mobilize all men between 18 and 35 years of age in the Suzak area. The leader of the revolt was Sultanbek Sholakov/Sholaq, who, according to the interrogations of the OGPU, had been chief of a county (volost’) in the Tsarist period. His right hand was a foreigner, Safar Ali Asadullah Ibrahim, who had arrived in the region ten years earlier. One of the men under interrogation, Safar-Khodzha Dzhakip, a 69-yearold Qazaq peasant and mullƗ (and another leader of the revolt), claimed under interrogation that at the end of 1929, five dzhigity of one aul of Suzak district arrived, carrying an order with “Ibragim khƗn”’s (Asadullah) signature, and the seal of Sultan khƗn (Sultanbek Sholaq) . The men also delivered him another paper signed by Asadullah, which showed that Safar-Khodzha Dzhakip was appointed as the khƗn’s representative in the district, and requested to mobilize the population for the uprising in his territory. Under OGPU interrogation, Dzhakip claimed that he refused this appointment, on the basis of his old age and large family. A document seized by the political police, however, showed that the khƗn had been appointed Safar-Khodzha as supreme military commander of the insurgents.30 The first act of rebellion was an appeal addressed to “people of authority” in the towns of Suzak, Karnak (in Turkistan district), and Turkistan.31 The organization of the revolt was hastened by the arrests carried out by the OGPU in November 1929, when an unspecified number of “bais” was imprisoned for not paying the “individual tax”. Most probably the OGPU itself, not the militsiia, carried out the arrests. In October 1929, the Politburo had ex30 31

AKNB, 10-i otdel’ KGB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 39, l. 447. A copy of the appeal was found among the seized documents.The transcript of the interrogation used the usual misleading Tsarist/Soviet wording (dukhovenstvo) and therefore it is hard to say who in fact the addressees of this document were.

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panded OGPU’s extrajudicial prerogatives, authorizing the political police to execute without trial peasants and herdsmen who took part in “terrorist attacks” or in mass uprisings. During the initial period of the grain procurement campaigns between August and early November 1929, the OGPU arrested more than 28,300 peasants in the whole of the Soviet Union, more than half of them for economic crimes.32 Of these, around 3,000 had been arrested in Kazakhstan.33 On 15 November, after a meeting of 50 people in an undefined location of the Suzak district, six other meetings took place the same day, convened by the different sub-clans (podrod) of the Tama clan (rod) that constituted the bulk of the men who revolted. According to the accepted chart of Qazaq tribal structure, Tama clan was a genealogical division of the Junior zhüz (one of the three higher-level genealogical divisions of the Qazaq people along with the Middle and Senior zhüzes). It was one of the seven “umbrella clans” that formed the group called Zhetyru, which means “seven clans”; the Zhetyru was one of the four “tribes” (plemia, according to Russian ethnographers) of the Junior zhüz. The “genealogical borders” of the Tamas went far beyond the Suzak area. Members of the Tama “umbrella clan” were also found in seven different oblast’s of the Steppe General-Governorship and of Turkestan, and even in the Bukey horde, the fourth additional zhüz formed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, created from a split from the Junior zhüz. Some estimates put the total number of Tama around the year 1900 at more than 100,000.34 On 16 November, a meeting convened by the podrods’ heads brought together about 400 people. In this meeting, Sholaq suggested that the ghazavat (Holy War) should be declared under the banner of Karabura, a Sufi saint particularly worshipped among the Tama. The khƗn and his advisors, the vaziry, were selected during this meeting (the procedure of selection is un32

33

34

Paul Hagenloh, Stalin’s Police. Public Order and Mass Repression in the USSR, 1926– 1941 (Washington, D.C./Baltimore, 2009), 54. Gul’nar Moldakhanova, “Deiatel’nost’ organov OGPU v Kazakhstane (1922–1934 gg.)” in Istoriia organov bezopastnosti Kazakhstana. Kniga pervaia, ed. M.K. Kozybaev (Almaty, 2003), 85. For the geographical extension of the Tama, cf. Tama. I Tom. Ishinshi kitap, 275–6 and passim. Cf. the letter written in 1929 to the Soviet administration by a bai and former volost’ chief of the Tama clan living in the Aktiubinsk region, some 1500 km north-west of Suzak, in my Stalinismo di frontiera. Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi e costruzione statale in Asia Centrale (1905–1936) (Rome, 2009), 326.

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known). Sholaq was elected khƗn, a number of vaziry and qadi were also appointed, along with a muftƯ, Ulmaraq Urazbay. Judging from other OGPU interrogations, Urazbay was replaced by Asadullah as muftƯ sometime later, before the revolt. The action was organized in haste and as a response to the increasing pressure from the authorities, during the fiscal/requisition campaign of autumn 1929. During his interrogation, Asadullah told the OGPU that the entire 400-person group convened on 16 November carried only seven guns. The currency used in the community was the Soviet ruble, based on an explicit decision of the khƗn, who ordered the rebels to use Soviet currency until the khƗn could mint his own coinage. A legal opinion (fatvƗ) issued by the new muftƯ conferred authority upon this decision. This is a telling particular: again, the insurgents behaved as if the Soviet state had already collapsed, as the rumors widespread in the countryside were asserting. It has to be kept in mind that these events unfolded only thirteen years after the Tsarist Empire and its administrative and economic institutions had crumbled: between 1918 and the beginning of the 1920s different currencies were printed by local powers in former Tsarist Central Asia. This makes more understandable the necessity of an authoritative opinion convincing people to keep using Soviet rubles for the time being. The OGPU was interested to know precisely why Sultanbek had been chosen as the leader of the revolt. Under interrogation, the above-mentioned Safar-Khodzha Dzhakip gave a plain answer. He claimed that Sultanbek was a person of authority, who spoke a little Russian. The main factor behind his election, however, was the experience he had made while working for the Tsarist administration in Turkestan: he first had been village headman (starshina) and later became chief of the Kurchui volost’ (Cherniaev uezd);35 he was, thus, “perfectly acquainted with the previous state order (poriadok prezhnego gosudarstvennogo upravleniia)”. “At that point, we needed exactly this kind of person”, Dzhakip added. That the rebellion failed to expand beyond the boundaries of the former volost’ suggests that indeed Sultanbek might have enjoyed authority almost exclusively within the territory of that administrative unit. When the insurgents tried to expand the reach of the

35

Kaidar Aldazhumanov put this information into doubt in his “Krestianskoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia” (in: Deportirovannye v Kazakhstan narody: vremia i sud’by, ed. G.K. Anes [Almaty, 1998], 69), but without providing evidence of the contrary.

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uprising from Suzak to Turkistan, they failed. People under interrogation explained to the OGPU that in Turkistan, “there was another leader”.36 3. CATEGORIZING THE INSURGENTS The narratives used by the political police in order to explain the insurrection were threefold. The first was the “class war” narrative: the class enemy, i.e. the bai (“rich” in Qazaq, the herders who owned most of the livestock of the Qazaq communities), were resisting the attack of the Soviet state and mobilizing the population; the second narrative concerned the “resistance of the backwardness”, as embodied in “tribal resistance”: according to this interpretation the main clan of the Suzak region, the Tama, organized by their leaders, were resisting the modernizing effort of the Soviet state. The reference to the tribal structure from the very first reports from the ground, and to the fact that the leader of the revolt had been proclaimed khƗn, was functional to this explanation. The third narrative focused on “religious resistance”: according to the OGPU, people of Islamic authority were mobilizing the “superstitions” of the populace and turning them against the Soviet state. As the following pages will make clear, the organizers of the revolt used a form of Islamic legitimization. However, the role of the main Islamic “authority” figure among the insurgents required explanation, not least because he was a foreigner and embedded in ambiguous networks both inside and outside the Soviet Union. Suzak OGPU documents were very likely produced mainly by European officials, aided by Qazaq translators. In the steppe at the beginning of 1930s, the control over the territory and the population was primarily maintained by the OGPU. The militsiia in Suzak defected with the rebels (in general the militsiia network was weak in the region). The Red Army could be mobilized, but the initiative for the mobilization was largely left to the political police. State control of the territory during collectivization was very similar to a military occupation: control of urban centers, deployment of OGPU troops and of the army in the countryside to repress the revolts, presence of only one regiment of Qazaq soldiers in the entire Red Army. As David

36

AKNB Archive, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 011107, l. 21.

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Shearer explained, the OGPU underperformed in surveillance in the 1920s and early 1930s, the more so in the pastoral regions of Central Asia.37 The number of Qazaqs among OGPU personnel was very small. In September 1929 only one Qazaq occupied one of the top 84 positions (the OGPU positions included in the nomenklatura of the regional committee of the Party), compared to 56 Russians.38 This can be explained by different reasons. Kazakhstan was a peripheral region that had been conquered by the Bolsheviks during the Civil War; it was therefore a region where the institutions of the new state had expanded from the Bolshevik state’s geographical core: in the 1920s and early 1930s the number of local trusted cadres to be enrolled in a crucial institution for the control of region by Moscow was inevitably small. Two more possible factors at play could have been the low degree of knowledge of the Russian language among the Qazaq population (the OGPU was a Russian-language institution), and the practice of sending political police personnel to work in regions far from the region of origin. Qazaqs were also a minority in the state central and oblast’ executive and economic institutions (20.1% in 1926 – Qazaqs were 58.1% of the total population of the republic according to the Soviet census of the same year).39 We know that in the first months of 1930 the OGPU top cadres and officials were Europeans: the OGPU chief in Kazakhstan in February 1930 was Nikolai Vollenberg;40 the two chiefs of the administrative regions affected by the revolt (the OGPU sectors of Syrdarya and Kzylorda) were respectively called Zhuravliev and Nikol’skii. The head of the operative group in Tur37

38

39

40

Cf. David R. Shearer, Policing Stalin’s Socialism. Repression and Social Order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953 (New Haven/London, 2009), 130–180. The Kazakhstan OGPU nomenklatura in late 1929 comprised also 6 Belarusians, 6 Latvians, 4 Tatars, 4 Jews, 3 Ukrainians, 1 German (the OGPU chief in the republic), 1 Finnish, 1 Pole, 1 Mordvinian (APRK, f. 141, op. 1, d. 2703, ll. 5–8, 1 September 1929). I owe this information to Gul’nar Moldakhanova, who also worked in the KNB archive for her doctoral dissertation at the Academy of the KNB of the Republic of Kazakhstan. According to Moldakhanova, figures about OGPU “nativization” present in the KNB archives confirm the data reported above (personal communication, 28 November 2012). René Houle, “Russes et non russes dans la direction des institutions politiques et économiques en URSS. Un étude des recensements, 1926–1979”, Cahiers du monde russe 38/3 (1997): 359. Nikolai L’vovich Vollenberg was a Soviet German born in 1892. He studied in an agricultural school, served during World War I as a telephonist, and entered the Cheka in 1918; he was the OGPU chief in Kazakhstan from 1928. His deputy was Anatolii Alshanskii, a Soviet Jew born in 1896 who occupied his position in Kazakhstan from 1927.

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kistan was a man called Alekseev. A man called Martynenko was the head of the OGPU plenipotentiary for the Central Asian military district. Martynenko was the officer who inspected the khƗn’s headquarters after the repression, and who seized the documents produced by the khƗn’s administration. 41 OGPU officials were not particularly educated. Of the 84 top officials mentioned above, only one had a university degree; 9.5% graduated from the military academy, 3% completed the special political police academy, while 18% had a secondary school degree, and 68.5% only a primary school degree.42 A point to bear in mind in reading the Suzak OGPU papers is that the problem of how to interpret the revolt was important also for the OGPU. This is the crucial difference between the context of production of political police documentation in 1930 and the documents produced by the political police during the “mass operations” of the Great Terror in 1937–38, especially interrogations. The latter have become the example par excellence of police documentation almost devoid of any informative usefulness as historical evidence about the victims of state violence. 43 The files produced in earlier periods in connection with fabricated cases against groups of alleged conspirators (former members of late Tsarist political parties, nationalists, anti-Stalinist Bolsheviks, etc.) can be assimilated, to some extent, to the Great Terror interrogations. Fabricated cases against “nationalist” Qazaq intellectuals and other alleged “anti-Soviet groups” started to be engineered by the OGPU in Kazakhstan in the late 1920s; this activity intensified after 1931.44 A case-by-case analysis of the different “affairs” would be needed, but the key difference is that in the “fabricated cases” the OGPU-NKVD had the task of destroying groups of people that the Party had preemptively decided it was politically expedient to repress. (As it is now well-known, the Great Terror brought to the extreme the preemptive character of the repressions, with the system of regional quotas and the categories of the population to be exterminated.)45 On the other hand, in the case of the uprisings against collectivization, the peasantry had the initiative and the OGPU reacted 41 42 43

44 45

KNB Archive, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 39, ll. 140, 411. Moldakhanova, “Deiatel’nost’ organov OGPU”, 82. On the 1937–38 the most recent and valuable synthesis is Nicolas Werth, L’ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs. Autopsie d’un meurtre de masse. 1937–1938 (Paris, 2009). Moldakhanova, “Deiatel’nost’ organov OGPU”, 97–103. Werth, L’ivrogne et la marchande de fleurs, 75–146.

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against groups of insurgents. The perimeter of the group subject to state retaliation, the reasons of its very real – unlike the “fabricated cases” – antiSoviet activity, and the organization of the uprisings, was important operational information to be collected. To this respect, even if the standard class explanation was the ideologically correct version (“Kulak resistance”: i.e., the class enemy, the elite in the countryside, would have led the revolts against the workers’ state), OGPU officials genuinely tried to understand what mechanisms caused disorders and uprisings, which were limited, after all, to a minority of Soviet villages. Singularity required explanation. Explanations begged for specific causes going beyond the mere reproduction of schematic social models. Moreover, at this point the leadership in Moscow did not have the political will to carry on the repressive campaign at any price; unlike the second year of the collectivization campaign, in 1931, the situation in 1930 was still fluid. Less than one month after the events in Suzak, Stalin made a tactical retreat with the publication of his famous article on the Pravda about “dizziness with success”, blaming the lower state and party apparatuses for the “excesses” of the collectivization campaign and allowing many collective factories to be disbanded. This move was aimed at saving the spring sowing and the 1930 harvest (which as a matter of fact proved to be a boom harvest, thanks as well to the exceptionally favorable weather conditions, and made the choice of the total collectivization appear legitimate to the Bolshevik leadership). 1930 was therefore a transition year not only for the peasants but also for the leadership. The peasantry hoped that the collectivization could be stopped: rumors spread around that the kolkhoz system would be soon dismantled together with rumors predicting the arrival of a savior from abroad in the form of the attack of a foreign country (Poland and Japan, both with common borders with USSR and which both invaded Soviet Russia during and just after the Civil War, were the most mentioned). Among the peasantry the idea that the kolkhoz system was on its way out was ripe at least in the first half of the 1930s.46 If this is well-known to historians, insufficient attention has been devoted to the fact that also for parts of the repressive organs of the state the final outcome of the policies in the countryside were not foregone conclusions, at least in 1930. The violence and magnitude of the first wave of violent resistance to state policies in 1930 not only signaled a need for repression by 46

Werth, Le terreur et le désarroi, 156.

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the state but also signaled the need for information and analysis of the events unfolding in the countryside. Stalin’s spring retreat opened the possibility not only of a change in policy but also of interpretation. Once the dictator had partially justified peasant resistance against the “excesses” of local administrators during the collectivization campaign, ideological frameworks focusing on “kulak resistance” were no longer the only politically legitimate explanation for interpreting the wave of revolts. The interrogation transcripts of the political police for the case of Suzak reveal this need of information. In particular, the OGPU was interested to better understand the formation of the leadership of the rebellions, since their “causes” were personified by their military and political leaders. As mentioned above, according to at least one interrogation, Sholaq, the leader of the revolt in Suzak, had been chosen as the leader of the revolt because he was a former volostnoi upravitel’, the elected chief of the smallest administrative division under the Tsarist empire in the nomadic regions of Kazakhstan. This information was not contradicted in other interrogations. In a number of other revolts in Kazakhstan in 1930, the former volostnye upraviteli had been the leaders of the uprisings, especially the most organized and the largest ones. The revolt among the population of the BienAksuisk and Sarkand districts of the Alma-Ata region, which started on 27 March and lasted until the beginning of May 1930 was one of the biggest of that year (according to the OGPU, around 5,000 persons took part in the revolt).47 The revolt was led by the former volost’ chief Bisetai Kylyev. Just as in Suzak, the revolt was not limited to the Qazaq population, or to some tribal units among them; some Cossacks of the region also joined the uprising in the Bien-Aksuisk and Sarkand districts. The OGPU repressed the revolt at the beginning of May, arresting approximately 500 people and shooting 108 of them.48 On the uprising in the Kzyl-Orda region (one of the biggest in Kazakhstan in 1930, with 4,500 insurgents) we do not have enough information about the leaders and participants. Of the seven main uprisings of 1931, at least one, that of the Kyzyl-Kum district, was led by two former

47

48

It has to be emphasized that the OGPU tended to include among the “participants” (uchastniki) the entire population of area interested by the revolt, children and women comprised. Allaniiazov, Taukenov, Poslednyi rubezh, 312–321.

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volost’ chiefs.49 It should not be overlooked that some of the events that the OGPU categorized as “uprisings” were in fact the movement of thousands of Qazaqs with their livestock in order to avoid the requisitions of grain and livestock; these events therefore require a case-by-case analysis. 4. ISLAM AND INSURGENCY One of the narratives put forth by the political police to explain the insurgency was linked to religious Islamic authority. Suzak, which was an important urban centre up to the mid-eighteenth century, is positioned just north of the the Karatau mountains and, further south, the Syr Darya valley. The valley is the geographical centre of Qazaq hagiolatry.50 Inside the small town of Suzak and in its vicinity it is possible to find a number of mazar (saintly tombs), inserting Suzak in the sacred topography of Southern Kazakhstan, centered around the mausoleum of Aতmad YasavƯ in Turkistan (the direct distance between Suzak and Turkistan is just around 100 km). According to Raushan Mustafina, one characteristic of the territory around Suzak is the unusually high concentration of mazar of saints who died fighting against unbelievers. The territory contains other saints’ tombs. One of the figures linked to saintly sites in Central Asia was ‫ޏ‬AlƯ, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet. It is possible to find a number of tombs of ‫ޏ‬AlƯ in various parts of the Central Asian region (often under the name ShƗh-i MardƗn, “king of the braves”). One of those tombs was in the area around Suzak. In the same Suzak district, there is also the mausoleum of Baba-ata (IsতƗq BƗb), connected with an adjacent madrasa. The most important religious site in Suzak is the Karabura mausoleum.51 As those of other local saints, popular biographical narratives about Karabura (in Qazaq “black camel”), or Burakhan-aulie, are linked to the figure of Aতmad YasavƯ (ca. 1093–1166), founder of the Sufi 49

50

51

Cf. “Spravka o bandvosstaniiakh i bandvystupleniiakh na territorii Kazakhstana v period 1929–1931 gody”, Archive of the President of Kazakhstan (hereafter APRK), f. 141, op. 1, d. 5052, ll. 315–319, included in T. Allaniiazov, A.Taukenov, Poslednii rubezh, 418– 424. See Ashirbek K. Muminov, “The Veneration of Holy Sites of the Mid-Syrdar’ya Valley: Continuity and Transformation,” in: Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, Vol. 1, eds. Michael Kemper, Anke von Kügelgen, Dmitriy Yermakov (Berlin, 1996), 355–367. The present-day mausoleum has been built in 1997, incorporating an older mausoleum built in 14th century.

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YasavƯya order. YasavƯ’s mausoleum in Turkistan, the construction of which started under Amir Timur, is the most important pilgrimage site of the whole Central Asia. According to local narratives, Karabura is linked to YasavƯyan tradition since he performed the mortuary ablutions over the master’s corpse (following the will of YasavƯ, who had requested that his corpse be washed by a man arriving on a black camel – hence the name of the saint).52 At some point in time Karabura became linked with the Tama Qazaq group of the Junior zhüz that settled in the region; his memory was appropriated by the Tamas: he “became” a member of the clan, and “Karabura” was adopted as the group’s uran (battle cry), which was unusual for Qazaq “clans” (most commonly battle cries referred to non-Islamicate common ancestors of the group).53 According to the OGPU papers, the “fight under the banner of Karabura” was the expression used in appeals to mobilize the population. The central religious authority figure of the uprising was Safar Ali Asadullah Ibrahim, called “the Afghan” in the region. Captured by the OGPU in the aftermath of the revolt, he was put under interrogation at the end of March. The police also collected information about him from other sources. Alimkhan Organbaev, another arrested insurgent, related that Asadullah lived in one of the auls of the region, close to the Chu river north of Suzak; that he had arrived in the region at beginning of the 1920s, and had married two Qazaq women; he had also a daughter. One crucial fact is that he was the most prestigious doctor/healer (‫ܒ‬abƯb) of the area. In 1929, though, a state plenipotentiary (his identity was unknown to Organbaev) arrived in his aul, requisitioned his medicines, and notified him of an interdiction against the practice of “traditional medicine” (tabibstvo).54 The eradication of popular medical practices, to be substituted by European biomedi52

53

54

Raushan M. Mustafina, “Bytovoi Islam u Kazakhov (XIX-XX vv.). Istorikoetnograficheskoe issledovanie” (dissertatsiia, Institut istorii i etnologii imeni Ch. Ch. Valikhanova [Almaty], 2006), 145–148, 152–153. For a list of the urans of the different Qazaq tribal groups, cf. Tama. I Tom. Birinchi kitap, 48–9; L. Meier, Materialy dlia geografii i statistiki Rossii, sobrannye ofitsieram general’nogo shtaba (St.Petersburg, 1865), 89–92, reproduced in Tama. I Tom. Ekinshi kitap, eds. Kh. M Gabzhalilov, T. Omarbekov, B.B. Keribaev, A.B. Kalysh (Almaty, 2005), 360–362. AKNB, op. 189, arkh. 2, d. 011107, l. 1. Interrogation of Organbaev, 26.02.1930. Medicine was a common occupation of people of religious authority in the steppe, see Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001), 144.

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cine, was one of the aspects of Stalinist “cultural revolution” in Central Asia.55 Asadullah was put under interrogation by the OGPU on 27 and 28 March 1930, and questioned by Shumilov, one of the OGPU plenipotentiaries for Kazakhstan. During his first interrogation he explained how the uprising had been organized. He said that the organization of the revolt started in November 1929, when “representatives of a number of clans (rody)” met: Sultanbek Sholaq, Atamish Doshkhanov, Mirzakhmet Bazkiev, Sagyndyk Shil’mabetov, Ultaran Urazbaev, Imambek Alipbaev. The crucial role was played by Sholaq, while Doshkhanov, who was the son of a khalifa (or khalpe, the assistant of a madrasa teacher) was his “secretary”. According to Asadullah’s deposition, they issued a fatvƗ to what the OGPU compiler of the interrogation transcript called “Muslim clergy,” in order to prepare the believers for the uprising. The OGPU bureaucrat noted that a copy of this document was retrieved after Suzak’s conquest. The original Russian transcription called it fetva (fatvƗ, “legal opinion”), translating then into vozzvanie (literally: “appeal”). It is impossible on the basis of this source only to decide if the word fetva was an OGPU interpolation, or genuinely reflected Asadullah’s usage. The appeal was then sent to generic “persons of authority” in the villages of Suzak and Karkak, and in the town of Turkistan. Copies of the document were given to a mullƗ called Musali in Suzak, and to the ƯshƗn Kanafiia in Karnak. Arrests of bais at the end of 1929 and the beginning of 1930 led to the acceleration of the revolt planning. Three weeks before the uprising, around fifty people met near the house of Kangeldy Manakov (defined, as usual, “a bai”). The same day there were another six meetings in six places in three different “administrative auls” of the Suzak district (after the creation of districts – raiony – in 1928, “administrative auls” remained the lowest administrative territorial units). According to Asadullah’s interrogation transcripts, the meetings were organized by the “chiefs of the sub-clans (podrody)” of the Tama rod. The next day, a bigger meeting was held, with approximately 400 participants. In this meeting Sul55

See Cassandra Cavanaugh, “Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia: 1868–1934” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001), 324–84; Paula Michaels, Curative Powers: Medicine and Empire in Stalin’s Soviet Central Asia (Pittsburgh, 2003). Cavanaugh covers also the Tsarist period, about which cf. as well Anna Afanasyeva, “‘Osvobodit’… ot shaitanov i sharlatanov’: diskursy i praktiki rossiiskoi meditsiny v Kazakhskoi stepi v XIX veke,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 113–150.

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tanbek Sholaq proposed that ghazavat should be proclaimed, “under the flag of Karabura”. The OGPU transcript explains: “He was a Qazaq “saint,” member of the Tama rod, worshipped by all the Tamas”. During the meeting, the operative council of the uprising was “chosen/elected” (Asadullah did not explain the procedure): Sholaq was the khƗn; Sagyndyk Shilmanbetov and Atamish Doshkhanov were vaziry (counselors) and qƗĪƯs (judges); Ulmarak Urazbaev was muftƯ; Asadullah and other two people as deputies of the latter three. It is possible, however, that here Asadullah was downplaying his role, and that he had been chosen as muftƯ from the beginning. According to his deposition, this group of 400 Qazaqs had only 7 rifles (as Safar-Khodzha Dzhakip already claimed in his interrogation, one month earlier). After the attack and the seizing of Suzak (Asadullah predictably denied he took part in it, in order to distance himself from the atrocities committed after the conquest), the insurgents moved south, towards Turkistan. The first village to be attacked was Kugashyk, by 1,100 insurgents organized in 11 detachments of one hundred people (soten). Sholaq led the attack from the north of the village, while Asadullah and the Uzbek Khodjar had the command of military operations from the south. The attack had the aim of seizing the weapons of the detachment of kommunary (volunteers sent from the administrative centres of the region, most probably from Turkistan, to face the insurgents), since the seizing of Suzak had given the insurgents only 50 rifles. However, the kommunary were able to repel the attack thanks to their guns and one small artillery piece. When the Red Army re-conquered Suzak and exterminated the insurgents, Asadullah tried to reach the nearest railway station, Tashkent being his final destination. Under OGPU questioning, Asadullah admitted that he aimed to reach the Persian consulate and to get a certificate of Persian citizenship, since he planned to flee USSR for Persia.56 At this point, he admitted he was a Persian citizen, and to have lied about his Afghan origin, both to the Qazaq population (captured Qazaq insurgents kept calling him “the Afghan”, during their interrogations)57 and to the OGPU. He did not reach Tashkent, however, since his 56

57

In the very same month of March 1930 all the Persian subjects living the collective farm “Soviet Persia” of the Irdzhar district of Syr Darya region, Southern Kazakhstan, traveled to Tashkent applying for documents that would have allowed them to expatriate back to their homeland (OGPU report of 25 March 1930, in: Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane, 65–67). AKNB Archive, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 09923, l. 18.

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family was still in Suzak. He decided to go back to get them, rejoined them mid-way, but then had run into a Red Army patrol, and was arrested. The fate of his family is unknown, but a considerable number of insurgents managed to escape. They went east (the plan, according to Asadullah, was to reach the border with China). The following day, 28 March, Asadullah provided the OGPU with the final version of his life. 58 He said that when he was 25 years old (around 1912), he traveled with other nine Persians to Baku to be employed as a menial worker. Stable or seasonal work migration from Persia to the Tsarist Empire was a mass phenomenon during the first years of twentieth century: it has been estimated that in 1913 between 450,000 and 500,000 Persians worked in the Tsarist Empire. The overwhelming majority came from Persian Azerbaijan (Tabriz region). 59 After one year of work in Baku, he crossed the Caspian Sea and went to Krasnovodsk in Transkaspiia (then part of Turkestan, present-day Turkmenistan). The following year, he moved to Turkestan’s capital Tashkent and then, after some time, to Suzak (according to other interrogations, he arrived in Suzak at the beginning of the 1920s). “I never studied in Afghanistan, I made this up,” confessed. He, however, became ‫ܒ‬abƯb among the Suzak-area population, and pretended to be an Afghan, “since there are many good ‫ܒ‬abƯbs among Afghans, and I wanted to acquire authority”. Asadullah then revealed that in May 1929, a Sufi from Ferghana arrived in the Sary-Su district (bordering with the Suzak district). The ƯshƗn Safa-KhƗn Tiure came from Kokand, or its district, to collect donations from the Qazaq population. He went to Konur, where the Tamas of three auls have their summer pastures. According to Asadullah, here SafaKhƗn Tiure met Sultanbek Sholaq. At this point in the OGPU transcripts there is a logical leap: Asadullah says that the ƯshƗn dictated the fatvƗ/appeal to Doshkhanov in November 1929 – this sounds like an OGPU interpolation: a connection with a Sufi networks collimated with old and well-ingrained 58

59

The previous day he had declared he was born in 1887, and was an Afghan peasant (dehkan) who had acquired Soviet citizenship. He also declared that he studied three year with a “religious teacher” (religioznyi uchitel’) in Auliya Ata. He claimed that his medical expertise derived from the fact that he studied in 1907–1908 with an Afghan doctor who had graduated in medicine in England, and that he had practiced medicine in Suzak area from 1908 (it is noteworthy that in this first interrogation Asadullah tried to connect his knowledge with the Western medical tradition). Hassan Hakimian, “Wage Labor and Migration: Persian Workers in Southern Russia, 1880–1914,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17/ 4 (1985): 447–448.

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colonial counterinsurgencies narratives, common also during Tsarist times, and in other European colonial empires as well.60 However, Asadullah resisted the attempt by OGPU officers to connect him with other names that were made by the officers. He denied he knew them. In October 1929, the son of Safa-KhƗn Tiure arrived in the Suzak district, in order to collect zakat. He carried a document signed by his father, who encouraged the wealthy to pay the contribution. Safa-KhƗn’s son slept in Asadullah’s house, as did Makan-Sufi, who was a murƯd of Safa-KhƗn.61 This is the information, distorted and incomplete, in some passages plainly false (as Asadullah acknowledged), that the OGPU extracted from Asadullah, and which was transcribed. After a while, on 10 April, Asadullah had another round of interrogation. This time he seemed desperate, probably thinking he would have been soon brought to trial and executed. He tried to turn to his advantage the Orientalist stereotypes about Muslim fanaticism and irrationality he evidently attributed to OGPU European officers. Instead of downplaying his role and influence among the population, as he did in the first interrogations, this time he magnified it. I am actually the organizer and the chief of Suzak band. From the beginning Sultanbek Sholaq contacted me and asked me to write an appeal to Muslim and a call for Holy War [this contradicted the previous version about the role of the ƯshƗn from Kokand], since I had a great authority among the population: they believed I was an Afghan and they consider me a good ‫ܒ‬abƯb. Qazaqs respect Afghans, and they believed me as I was a God for 62 them.

Asadullah suggested that, thanks to his influence, he could easily convince the fugitive insurgents to surrender without fighting. They consider me a avliyƗ, which is a prophet [sic]. At the moment of the uprising in the Suzak district, and during the flight as well, they swear on the Qur‫ގ‬Ɨn that they would have followed me until death, and that they would have carried out any order of mine. Therefore I ask you to test my loyalty to Soviet power and to send me to the Tama mountains [where the rebels had hidden], so that I can hand over to you all the basmachi who 63 are hiding there. I can do this in twenty days.

60

61 62 63

Cf. Alexander Knysh, “Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm: The Issue of the Motivations of Sufi Resistance Movements in Western and Russian Scholarship,” Die Welt des Islams 42/2 (2002): 139–73. AKNB, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 39, ll. 430–431. AKNB, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 39, l. 420. AKNB, op. 189, arkh. 2, delo 39, l. 421.

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The interrogation was led by the OGPU deputy plenipotentiary for the Syrdarya oblast’, Uteshev – a much lower-level officer in comparison with those who led the March interrogations. Perhaps Asadullah himself had requested this meeting. Asadullah’s desperate attempt was obviously doomed. He was shot after the trial in May 1930 of the participants of the uprisings in the Suzak, Chayanov, and Sarysu districts (of 311 people sentenced, 88 were shot).64 The Islamic approach to the puzzle the OGPU was handling did not succeed. We don’t know if the connection with Sufi networks stemming from the Ferghana valley were real: it is plausible, but OGPU transcripts of Asadullah’s depositions are not enough to prove it. In any case, even if some feeble attempts were made by the OGPU to sketch the familiar face of the “Sufi conspiracy,” Asadullah’s interrogations did not provide sufficient evidence even for the political police that those Suzak-Kokand links had some role in the organization of the uprising, which remained highly localized. 5. THE “TRIBAL” FACTOR The other main police “insurgency narrative” was the role of the “tribal structure” in the organization of the uprising. If in fact the Sufi networks identified by the OGPU did not provide the political police with a sufficient organizational agency, the documents retrieved in the khƗn headquarters revealed the importance of the Tama clan (rod) on the territory. Was this therefore another case of “tribal militancy”, embedded in “religious justifications”, to quote David Kilcullen? Was, in other words, the Tama clan the existing “social structure” behind the organization and the uprising, to be activated politically and militarily against the attack of the state? How we should interpret the documents produced by the khƗn micro-administration, in which the tribal divisions seemed to be “activated” in the military organization of the revolt? How important was the fact that Sholaq had been chief of a volost’ during the previous administration? And how this was related to Qazaq “tribal structure”? In order to understand the documents produced by the OGPU, it is necessary to take a step back and briefly describe the current state of the research about Qazaq “tribalism” and its relation with the local Tsarist administrative structure, which was significantly reformed by the Bolsheviks only at the 64

Kaidar Aldazhumanov, “Krestianskoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia”, 71–72.

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end of the 1920s, at the eve of total collectivization campaign. The partial deportation of the Qazaq “pastoral elite” was an aspect of this reform, as we will see. 5.1. Qazaq genealogies and Tsarist/Soviet administrative systems The historiography is almost unanimous in describing Central Eurasian societies economically and culturally centered on pastoral production as divided both “vertically” into unilineal descent groups, and “horizontally” between nobility and commoners: respectively called “white bone” – aq suiek, tore – and “black bone” – qara suiek – among Qazaqs, Mongols, and other Central Eurasian populations. The “white bone” stratum claimed descent from the group of conquerors which had the biggest impact on the social and political landscape of Central Eurasia in the last one thousand years, the Chinggisids. With sayyids and khwƗjas, claiming descent respectively from the Prophet Muতammad and from Islamic saints often linked to Sufi traditions, Chinggisids stayed outside of the lineage system of Qazaq rus (usually translated with “clans”).65 “Vertical” genealogical divisions (tribes, clans) would have been functional in (and dependent upon) the exploitation of scarce resources (pastures, water) in the arid environment of Central Eurasia.66 They would also provide a sub-national corporate identity and a strong network of social relations to be mobilized against state policies.67 65

66

67

Chinggisids, sayyids and khwƗjas had their own genealogical charters. Cf. Irina V. Erofeeva, Rodoslovnye kazakhskikh khanov i kozha, XVIII-XIX vv. (istoriia, istoriografiia, istochniki) (Almaty, 2003). For this approach cf. S.E. Tolybekov, Kochevoe obshchestvo kazakhov v XVII-nachale XX veka. Politiko-ekonomicheskii analiz (Alma-Ata, 1971); G.E. Markov, Kochevniki Azii. Struktura khoziaistva i obshchestvennoi organizatsii (Moscow, 1976); A.M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Cambridge, 1984); Nurbulat Masanov, Kochevaia tsivilizatsiia kazakhov (Moscow, 1995); P.G. Geiss, Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia : Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change (London, 2003); Zhanar Dzhampeisova, Kazakhskoe obshchestvo i pravo v poreformennoi stepi (Astana, 2006). David Sneath claims instead that (1) functions usually attributed to (and only to) centralized ‘states’ (fiscal extraction, military mobilization) were present among nomadic populations of Central Eurasia thanks to the presence of a closely knit network of aristocratic households, and (2), reversing the traditional interpretation, “the organization of people into named unilineal descent groups with political functions was an act of state administration in much of Inner Asia. Comprehensive kinship organization, where it appeared, seems to have been a product of the state”. Cf. David Sneath, The Headless State. Aristo-

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From the 1820s, the administrative grid of the empire was put in place in the steppe, when the title of khƗn of the Middle Horde (or zhüz) was formally abolished. The “Rules for the Siberian Kirgiz” [Qazaqs] (in Russian Ustav o Sibirskikh Kirgizakh), worked out under the impulse of Tsarist reformer Mikhail Speranskii,68 created the administrative divisions and the principles under which those divisions where created. Under the level of GeneralGovernorship okrugs (regions) were introduced. In every region a Qazaq headed, with the position of Senior Sultan (starshii sultan, agha sultan), an okrug administrative office staffed both by Russians and Qazaqs. Each okrug was divided into a number of counties, or volost’s (from 15 to 20), which, in their turn, where divided into 10–12 administrative auls (village or encampment), each formed by 50–70 nomadic tents (the administration counted one household for each nomadic tent). A hereditary sul‫ܒ‬Ɨn was elected to head the volost’, and confirmed in its position by the Russian military administration. Only if his lineage was discontinued another election should have been held. The volost’ sul‫ܒ‬Ɨns of each okrug elected the latter’s Senior Sultan.69 Further administrative reforms were put in place in 1867–1868, after the Tsarist conquest of the southern Qazaq steppe and “sedentary” Central Asia. Administrative auls were enlarged to include from 100 to 200 yurts; each volost’, headed by a volostnoi upravitel’, now comprised from 1000 to 2000 yurts/households. The upravitel’ was in charge of keeping order in the volost’, had to implement judiciary decisions and, most importantly, was in charge of collecting taxes. In the absence of reliable data about the population wealth, this amounted to give to the volostnoi upravitel’ the power to allocate taxes among the population according to allegiance to him and his patronage networks. Above the volost’ level, okrugs were abolished and

68

69

cratic Orders, Kinship Society and Misrepresentation of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York, 2007), 3. Sneath applies his interpretation, derived from his studies about Mongol nomadism and history, to the Qazaqs at pages 71–84 of the book. Sneath writes that it is “entirely clear that the “tribes” were actually administrative divisions or appanages created by a top-down process of political demarcation” (p. 80), a process unfolding during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries after the consolidation of the Qazaq khanate. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this process was influenced by the different states that were expanding their influence on sections of the Qazaq society: the Tsarist and Chinese (Qing) Empires, and the Kokand khanate. On Speranskii in English, see the biography by Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 (The Hague, 1957). “Ustav o sibirskikh kirgizakh (22 iiunia 1822)”, in: Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana. Tom I, ed. M.G. Masevich (Alma-Ata, 1960), 93–112.

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replaced by large oblast’s, dived into smaller uezds; both oblast’ and uezd chiefs were Russian administrators appointed by the General-Governor. 70 According to Khazanov, the Tsarist administration to a certain extent engineered the raising of a “black bone” elite. However, the administration was careful not to let the new elite consolidate forms of hereditary power (the uezd chief had the power to remove volost’ heads from their position).71 However, the extent of the aristocracy’s social and economic hegemony in the 19th-century Steppe does not appear very solid. The Chinggisids were a privileged group in pre-colonial Qazaq society (only Chinggisids could be chosen as khƗn of one of the three zhüzes) but, as Virginia Martin pointed out, “at an individual level no Chinggisid was guaranteed by birth a claim to positions of power and authority”.72 According to Martin, their position of authority was obtained through patronage, which, in its turn, could be wielded thanks to the amount of wealth they controlled. Hereditary pasture lands and a sufficient amount of livestock were crucial in this sense. The majority of Chinggisid “were not in a position to claim any hereditary lands nor any power over social substrata of nomads”.73 At least from the beginning of the nineteenth century non-nobles were also able to wield patronage and power over large groups of nomadic households (sometimes hundreds of them). It seems that when Tsarist administration consolidated in the Steppe, Chinggisids’ power was already weak, contested and declining.74 Unlike Martin re70

71 72

73 74

“Proekt polozheniia ob upravlenii Semirechenskoi I Syr-Dar’inskoi oblastei” (1867); “Vremennoe polozhenie ob upravlenii v Ural’skoi, Turgaiskoi, Akmolinskoi i Semipalatinskoi oblastiakh” (1868), in: Materialy po istorii, 282–316; 323–40. Cf. also Dzhampeisova, Kazakhskoe obshchestvo, 162–170. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, 177. Virginia Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids, Land and Political Power in the Nineteenth Century: a Case Study of Syrymbet”, Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 81. Virginia Martin’s article focuses on the attempt by an important family of Chinggisids, initially led by the widow (Aghanym) of one the last important khƗns, Vali, to preserve – without much of success – their power and wealth over the course of the nineteenth century. Ibid., 95. Perhaps the shift in Qazaq Chinggisid power occurred with the collapse of the Qazaq khanate in the first half of 18th century, at the moment of Qalmaq invasion. The war between Qazaqs and Qalmaqs opened the door to the progressive inclusion of Qazaq society into the Tsarist Empire. See Allen J. Frank, “The Qazaqs and Russia”, in: The Cambridge History of Inner Asia. The Chinggisid Age, eds. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank, and Peter B. Golden (Cambridge, 2009): 363–379. Referring to this period Frank writes about the “political collapse of Chinggisid authority” (367). This was paralleled with events in

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cently claimed,75 the letter of the 1822 Ustav did not limit to Chinggisids the volostnoi upravitel’ position (the Ustav did not mention Chinggisids at all, nor the division “white bone”/”black bone”). In any case, as Martin remarks, from the very beginning “black bone” Qazaqs were also appointed to the position. At the beginning of the 20th century Chinggisid aristocracy was not a group with which the late Tsarist officials and early Bolshevik administrators had to reckon with, even if single Chinggisids could still be influential figures in different regions of the Steppe. The relation between the administrative units and the alleged Qazaq “tribal structure” remains in need of further study.76 In the Russian administrative discourse on the steppe, used both by Russian officers and by representatives of the Qazaq elite in dealing with the administration, terms such as volost’ (the smallest territorial administrative unit in the Tsarist Empire), rod (“clan”), and plemia (“tribe”) were sometimes used interchangeably.77 Ideally, it was assumed that the territorial administrative division of the volost’s was based on the “tribal structure”: there should have been an exact correspondence between the territorial division and the tribal units (whatever these units could be, a system of noble houses and their dependant people, or actual unilineal groups based on descent). Martin recently noted that it is not clear how much actual coincidence was present: “the question of the genealogical integrity of such units [the volost’s] is completely open”.78 Even if a study on the local power relations at the volost’ level for the Tsarist period is still lacking for any part of the Steppe, the information we have for some regions, such as that regarding 19 volost’s of the Chimkent uezd (Syr Darya

75

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78

Mavarannahr, as Wolfgang Holzwarth beautifully detailed in his studies about the region during the first half of the 18th century. Holzwarth identified the second quarter of the century as the crucial period of the breaks of Chinggisid steppe traditions in “Uzbek Central Asia”, under the double pressure of Qalmaq and Nadir Shah Afshar’s expansionist empires. See, Wolfgang Holzwarth, “Relations between Uzbek Central Asia, the Great Steppe and Iran, 1700–1750,” in: Shifts and Drifts in Nomad-Sedentary Relations, eds. Stefan Leder and Bernhard Streck (Wiesbaden, 2005), 179–216; Id., “The Uzbek State as Reflected in Eighteenth Century Bukharan Sources”, Asiatischen Studien LX/2 (2006): 321–354. Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids,” 84. Cf. “Ustav o sibirskikh kirgizakh (22 iiunia 1822),” in: Materialy po istorii, 94–95, 98. Cf. Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids,” 96–97 (notes 14, 19 and 26). Cf. Virginia Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe.The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond, 2001), 82. Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids,” 97 (note 19).

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oblast’) at the end of nineteenth century on the basis of Nikolai Grodekov’s study,79 seems to rule out the presence of any coincidence between genealogical representations and volost’s grid (Chimkent uezd was close to Suzak, in what is now Southern Kazakhstan – the situation for the northern Steppe studied by Martin could have been different). In any case, this correspondence is in general highly unlikely, since even the smallest units of nomadism among Qazaqs did not necessarily include only people of the same genealogical unit.80 The volost’ remained the smallest administrative division in the Soviet Union until the end of the 1920s. In Kazakhstan only in September 1928 were the existing 411 volost’s officially abolished; a much smaller number (193) of larger districts (raiony) were introduced.81 Reflecting the majority opinion inside the Kazakhstan Communist party in the twenties, Edward Schatz claimed that the only administrative level where tribal differences were politically relevant from the second half of the nineteenth century to 1928 was the volost’, which was the lowest-level administrative unit with a bureaucratic structure.82 In Schatz’s words: “most competition centered on local clan, rather than umbrella clan divisions. Umbrella clans had no arena for political expression. They were too high-level for most cadre-selection decisions”.83 However, the argument fails to explain why “umbrella clans” and “hordes” (zhüzes) were not politically relevant at higher levels of the administrative pyramid, at oblast’ or republican level (hardly “most cadreselection decisions” were taken at volost’ level). A number of elections for volost’ soviets were held during the period of the New Economic Policy. Local political dynamics and the role of the “tribal structure” were of great interest also for the regional Communist Party 79

80 81

82 83

Nikolai I. Grodekov, Kirgizy i karakirgizy Syr-Dar’inskoi oblasti (Tashkent, 1889), 17– 20. Cf. Masanov, Kochevaia tsivilizatsiia, 136. The “raionization” policy was primarily linked to Soviet nationalities policies. Its aim was to create nationally homogeneous districts. On the general Soviet policy see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (Ithaca, NY, 2001); on the creation of national districts in Kazakhstan see my Stalinismo di frontiera, 332–337. The ‘administrative aul’ was even smaller but did not have a bureaucratic structure. Schatz, Modern Clan Politics, 39. Schatz relies also on one of the best work of Soviet historiography about early Soviet Kazakhstan: Andrei P. Kuchkin, Sovetizatsiia Kazakhskogo aula: 1926–1929 gg. (Moscow, 1962).

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leadership, especially the new one that arrived in September 1925 in Kazakhstan (the new party secretary was Filipp Goloshchëkin, who remained in this post until 1933). Just after his appointment as the Communist Party chief in Kazakhstan, Goloshchëkin started a survey among provincial administrators about the salience of the “tribal factor” in the Communist Party and state apparatuses. The OGPU was also mobilized in the collection of information. Most probably the survey was aimed especially at understanding the dynamics of Qazaq factionalism inside the party, and the connections linking figures of authority in the society and Qazaq representatives in the party and the state. The conclusion of the inquiry was that only at the volost’ level did the “tribal factor” play a role; and that in each volost’, different segmentary units were present.84 OGPU reports, such as the one written by a Russian officer of the political police called Klopov in October 1925, warned against the “progressive growth of clan-party groups (partinno-rodovye gruppirovki) and the exacerbation of the struggle among them in order to control the Soviet lower apparatus”. They then described concrete examples of competition between different “clans” in the Semipalatinsk governorship.85 The analytical and informative quality of these reports was in general quite low, but the emerging picture was that in any single volost’, the division was regularly between two different opposing “parties,” not clans, that competed for the elected position of volost’ chief. In a report about the organization of the party in Aktiubinsk, Kazakhstan Communist Party secretary Goloshchëkin himself noted this phenomenon, and referred to field notes.86 When the report was discussed by the leadership of the Communist Party, the Qazaq communist Abrakhman Baidil’din87 noted that if the division in each volost’ during the election was between two parties, this did not reflect the divisions between clans, since those were more than one for every volost’: “Esli schi84

85

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According to Kuchkin from 4 to 7 clans were present in each volost’ (Kuchkin, Sovetizatsiia Kazakhskogo aula, 77, quoted by Schatz, Modern Clan Politics, 39). APRK, f. 719, op. 1, d. 66, l. 19, “To the secretary [of the Communist Party] for the Semipalatinsk oblast’” (27.10.1925). APRK, f. 719, op. 1, d. 68, l. 48 e ssgg., “Doklad o sostoianii Aktiubinskoi organizatsii, tov. Goloshchëkina” (without year, but 1926). Abrakhman Baidil’din (1891–1931), native to Northern Kazakhstan, between 1925 and 1926 was the head of the press department of the Qazaq Regional Committee of the Communist Party. He was expelled from the party in 1929, during the repressions against Qazaq intellectuals, and executed in 1931.

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tat’ po rodam, to rodov ved’ ne dva tol’ko?” (“If you take the clans [of a single volost’], they are in fact not only two, isn’t it?”).88 Goloshchëkin was similarly puzzled by this phenomenon, but did not have a satisfying explanation: It is difficult to tell why the voters split up only in two parts [chasti]. […] I asked: on the basis of which principle they split up? It has emerged that not a single plenipotentiary [sent to supervise the elections of the representatives of the aul soviets] cared to investi89 gate the question.

The representatives elected in the volost’ soviet in their turn elected the president of the volost’ soviet itself, the Soviet version of the Tsarist volost’ chief. If one forgets for a moment the alleged division of the Qazaq society into unilineal descent groups, it was perfectly rational that the electors would split only into two factions, since the division into a bigger number of “parts” would have made the victory less likely – it is, of course, the logic of uninominal constituencies of modern political systems. Genealogical divisions, if they played a role, were, in any case, not enough to explain the electoral (political) behavior at the local level. At the very least, each election implied alliances between different clans. Segmentary lineage theorists could perhaps object that Qazaq electoral behaviour is, in fact, explainable by balanced opposition, one of the main features of the segmentary system, and that the split into two factions could have been the result of merging of lineages which were genealogically closer. We do not have a documentary base of such quality that would allow us to settle the problem conclusively. However, anthropological literature about pastoral societies from the late 1950s showed that, even when the segmentary lineage system is the explicit selfdescriptive ideology of local communities, it is seldom followed closely in social action.90 88

89 90

APRK, f. 719, op. 1, d. 68, ll. 53–53ob. Allegedly, each of the two “parties” was led by different bais. APRK, f. 719, op. 1, d. 68, l. 54. Frederick Barth, Political Leadership among the Swat Pathans (London, 1959); Emryn Peters, “Some Structural Aspects among the Camel-Herding Bedouin of Cyrenaica”, Africa 37 (1967); Philip C. Salzman, “Does Complementary Opposition Exist?”, American Anthropologist 80 (1978). For a critical synthesis of the recent literature on Central Eurasia, see Sneath, The Headless State, 39–119; cf. also Dale F. Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia. An Anthropological Approach (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002), 115–139. To my knowledge, the best historical-anthropological study of a Central Eurasian pastoral population, with a compelling micro-history of the interaction between

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5.2. Qazaq Segmentary Discourse and Soviet Repressive Policies Qazaq tribal divisions were invoked both as a category to reckon with during early Stalinist repressive and extractive policies in Kazakhstan, and in later assessments about the actual implementation of those policies. To show this point, I will recall two episodes: the first is the deportation of hundreds of members of Qazaq “pastoral elite” in 1928 and 1929; the second, the allocation of grain and livestock requisitions in a district of the Alma-Ata region in 1930. In the first case, genealogical division were targeted for repression; in the second, “genealogically-blind” policies were hijacked by tribal groups in the local Qazaq administrators, according to a later report by an important Qazaq communist. A repressive technique of the Soviet political police was the preventive elimination (through deportation or extermination) of the elites of a targeted society or ethnic group. One of the first examples of this practice was the expropriation and deportation of Qazaq pastoral “social elite” in 1928 and 1929.91 The state targeted the Qazaq elite in a piecemeal deportation of 696 individuals with their close relatives; 152 out of 696 were deported from the Syr Darya okrug; of these, 7 had been deported from the Suzak district, 10 from the Turkistan district.92 The ambiguity in the identification of Qazaq social elites was mirrored in their repression. As Isabelle Ohayon has shown, the targeted categories merged class (the bais, “rich”), “tribal authority” (the implementation decree of August 1928 mentioned “clan chiefs”), and the occupation of a Tsarist local administrative position (the former volostnye upraviteli). Chinggisid aristocracy was not singled out for repression. The instructions for the commissions that had to requisition the bais’ livestock and to redistribute it among the poor members of the auls explicitly prohibited the redistribution to members of the same clan of the expropriated animals, implicitly implying that clan divisions were stronger than class divi-

91

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genealogical models and the tsarist and Soviet states is Svetlana Jacquesson’s Pastoréalismes. Anthropologie historique des processus d’intégration chez les Kirghiz du Tian Shan intérieur (Wiesbaden, 2010). The question of “volost’ politics” and the lineage system is treated especially at pages 81–92. A very small number of manaps (only 21) were deported in Kirghizia in 1927; other 43 in February 1929 (ibid., 123–125). In relation to analogous repressive policies against the Kyrgyz pastoral elite, Jacquesson wrote of “parenté et généalogie comme outils de repression” (p. 123). For a discussion about the category of manap: ibid., 23–52. Tama. I Tom. Ishinshi kitap, 283–7.

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sions in Qazaq society (since poor herders would have sabotaged the policy aiming at “their” bais).93 Given that rich herdsmen did not look after their herds by themselves but “leased out” part or all their herds to poorer clan members,94 livestock redistribution during the 1928–29 “debaization” campaign effectively amounted to requisitioning the livestock of a pastoral group genealogically named (a “clan”) and to bestowing it to another group. Let’s now move to the Balkhash district (Alma-Ata region), where a revolt broke out in April 1930, just after the Suzak uprising. The events in Balkhash are an example of the use of genealogical discourse in the application of “genealogically-blind” Soviet policies. The district, with Lake Balkhash to the north, had a population of approximately 33,000 and had an almost pure pastoral economy. In 1927, in Balkhash volost’95(which comprised approximately 16,000 (50%) of the total population of the district) a single cell of the Communist Party was present, with four members and eleven candidate members. All the members and the candidates of the Communist Party in the volost’ were concentrated in one aul (aul number 3), inhabited by a group called the Kara (defined in the state documentation as “a sub-clan division,” or podrod). According to state bureaucracy, the entire Qazaq population of Balkhash volost’ was inhabited by the upper lineage division called the Sty, divided in sub-clan divisions that occupied different auls.96 Aul soviets had been organized there only in 1928, at the time and with the aim of implementing the first campaigns of forced requisitioning that put an end to the New Economic Policy. After the uprising of April 1930 and its repression, Qazaq communist Uraz Dzhandosov had been sent to Balkhash district in order to collect information about its causes, and to “correct excesses”. The crucial “excesses” had been the “collection of grain among a population which was not engaged in agriculture and which was 93

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Ohayon, La sédentarisation des Kazakhs dans l’Urss de Staline, 75–79. This directive was not, however, consistently applied (see Pianciola, Stalinismo di frontiera, 320–330). This was a practice (and an institution creating social bonds) present in all the major Central Eurasian pastoral peoples. Among Qazaqs it was called saun. Cf. Sneath, The Headless State, 17. The rayon (district) administrative units were introduced in 1928. In aul no. 1 the “sub-clan division” (mel’kii rod in the language of the bureaucrat who compiled the document) of Sarykemper; in aul no. 2 Taz-Karakemper; in aul no. 3 Kara (the already mentioned ‘Bolshevik’ “sub-clan”); in aul no. 4 Dzhantugel’; in aul no. 5 Sujunduk; in auls 6, 7, 8, 9 Isim (APRK, f. 1, op. 1, d. 653, ll. 39–39ob, Report on the work of Party cells in Ili and Balkhash volosts, 1927).

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devoted only to livestock breeding; the pressure of the sedentary centres of the district on the nomadic periphery”.97 Dzhandosov concluded that the man responsible for the wild requisitions of grain was the requisitions plenipotentiary Sankevich, who was in charge in the area where the revolt first broke out.98 Requisitions were carried out by plenipotentiaries coming from outside, who had to fulfil grain and livestock requisition quotas for the whole district. However, according to Dzhandosov, the division of the quantity of grain to be collected in each areas of the district followed the segmentary lignatic structure of the local population. From the district (rayon) centre, requisition orders were transferred in the countryside by the “activists in the auls” (the above-mentioned members of the Kara podrod), especially poor nomads or peasants united in the bednota organizations – although most probably an amount of military force, or threat of it, was present. From this level of Soviet bureaucracy, at the watershed of what historiography on the Soviet Union used to call “state” and “society,” the order of requisition went to what Dzhandosov called the “clan groups” (rodovye gruppy). According to Dzhandosov’s investigation, from these larger segmentary units, implementation orders passed to the sub-clan units, then to individual families.99 Also in the Balkhash area, during the uprising, the insurgents’ organization followed lignatic divisions. Dzhandosov wrote that in Chokpar, in aul no.2, the insurgents had organized a provisional “local power” in the form of a council of six persons representing the three “clans” in the locality (two representatives for each “clan”).100 These notations do not allow us to go much beyond a generic appreciation of the saliency of genealogical representations in the description of interactions at the local level. Keeping in mind the deportation of Qazaq social elite and the events in Suzak and in Balkhash, their relevance seem evident both in the implementation of state policies, and in the resistance to them.

97

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Ibid. For the crucial role of grain requisition in triggering the catastrophic famine of 1931–33 in Kazakhstan, I refer to my Stalinismo di frontiera, 362–396 (in particular about the Balkhash district at 362–3). APRK, f. 2, op. 1, d. 392, l. 21 (May–June 1930), Letter of Uraz Dzhandosov to the Kazakhstan communist party committee. APRK, f. 2, op. 1, d. 392, ll. 22–23 (May–June 1930), Report of Uraz Dzhandosov from Balkhash district. APRK, f. 2, op. 1, d. 392, l. 24 (May–June 1930), Report of Uraz Dzhandosov from Balkhash district.

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6. CONCLUSION It seems apparent that Qazaq society at the beginning of the twentieth century was not characterized by the predominance of any social group grounding its authority on different forms of legitimization (Chinggisid genealogies, Islamically legitimated authority); this is also mirrored by the vagueness of the categories used by the state in the piecemeal deportations of Qazaq elites in 1928 and 1929. Not only influential people at the local level cannot be aggregated into Steppe-wide general categories; for all we know, the spatial range of their influence was often not related to the geographical distribution of “tribal” names. Genealogical representations and the language of the segmentary lineage system were politically relevant, and could explain why a former volost’ chief of another region, like Sultanbek Sholaq, could have been accepted in the Suzak region as a figure of authority. However, their mobilization potential was largely limited to the volost’ level, the level to which the Tsarist administration had confined political competition among Qazaqs in the previous seventy years. No uprisings (or any other autonomous political initiative) going significantly beyond the geographic scale of former volost’s seemed to have occurred during the collectivization campaign in Kazakhstan. The territorial grid of the Tsarist administration seems to have provided the framework, or the grammar, into which the language of Qazaq “tribalism” was articulated,101 even if the emic model of genealogical pyramid used by the Qazaqs to describe their society still transcended this same grid: Tama was one of the higher-level “umbrella clan” in the Qazaq alleged segmentary pyramid, and its genealogical borders (or, more precisely, networks) went much beyond the Suzak region. These conclusions are reached mainly on the basis of materials produced by the political police, but can we believe OGPU documents? The distorting mirror of the OGPU interrogation minutes reflects an incomplete picture. The most relevant feature of the OGPU documentation is that it did not crystallize into an ideologically consistent narrative of the revolt – unlike the interrogations produced for political trials or in the context of “mass operations” during the late 1930s. Clearly, we remain far away from a satisfactory 101

For a study underscoring instead the political salience of the higher divisions of the Qazaq segmentary lineage system, cf. Xavier Hallez, “Le rôle des relations tribales dans la constitution des mouvements politiques kazakhs entre 1905 et 1918,” in : Anthropologie des réseaux en Asie Centrale, sous la direction de Anne Ducloux, Svetlana Gorshenina, Anna Jarry-Omarova (Paris, 2011).

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grasp of the social dynamics in South Kazakhstan: OGPU officials lacked the background to fully understand the information they actually managed to obtain or to edit it into a coherent narrative. However, these documents carry information that is unattainable elsewhere. The OGPU documentation helps us to shed light on crucial questions about the leadership of the revolts. The language of tribal affiliation was certainly important in organizing the power of the khƗn over different population groups that provided soldiers, weapons, food, and other material. On the other hand, the border of the social group defined as ru did not coincide with the population mobilizing against the Soviet state. The political and military leadership of the uprising was legitimized by a figure such as Asadullah Ibrahim, who was a local ‫ܒ‬abƯb and therefore trusted by the population. His knowledge was sufficiently respected for him to be named muftƯ of the khƗn’s micro-administration. The historiography about Central Asia of the last fifteen years has analyzed the characteristics of the early Soviet state in the region focusing on its colonial or imperial character, and its comparability with other cases – British and the French colonial empires, Kemalist Turkey, Pahlavi Iran, postWWI European “nation-states”. 102 Along with ideal-typical comparisons between different “kinds of states,” a potentially fruitful line of research would be a comparative social micro-history of the state(-s), crossing the divide between successive political regimes. The materials I used in this paper allow an attempt in this direction, albeit only for the Soviet period. This kind of study requires a specific hermeneutical effort because of the characteristics of the Tsarist and Soviet administration in these regions, the short-term transformation of the functions of the state apparatus, and the kind of documentation it left behind. Ideally, this approach should focus on the “intermediary group” over a long period: a group that cannot be easily categorized in terms of a supposed “tribal structure”, nor in terms of an aristocratic layer, or in terms of religious authority, allegedly eradicated by the new Soviet state. The “breaking moments” in the administrative chain linking power at the local level and the structure of the state, as in 1916 and 1930, clearly show the quasi-state practices of the rebels (taxes, micro-conscription, production 102

See the forum “The Multiethnic Soviet Union in Comparative Perspective”, Slavic Review 65/2 (2006): 231–303, with contributions by Adeeb Khalid, Adrienne Edgar, Peter A. Blitstein, Mark R. Beissinger; and Adeeb Khalid (ed.), “Locating the (Post-) Colonial in Soviet History,” special issue of Central Asian Survey 26/4 (2007): 465–623.

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of pseudo-bureaucratic documents, and the creation of authority figures trying to set up a system of norms alternative to those of the state). In its turn, this sheds light, in an indirect way, on how much state practices were rooted in the region. The creation of the Tsarist administrative grid in the Qazaq lands was achieved along the nineteenth century. Qazaq society successfully seized Tsarist lower administration to a degree that when in 1916 the government attempted for the first time policies of transformative extraction (of people and resources) typical of twentieth-century centralized states, the response of the population was a wave of uprisings having at the same time anti-state and micro-state characteristics.103As the OGPU documents about the 1930 revolts suggest, at least for some of the biggest and most organized among them, the authority networks which resisted the policies of plundering of resources and men were those of the ancient Tsarist volost’ chiefs, whose authority cannot be easily deducted from other sources of legitimacy, whether “religious” or “tribal”. The presence of an alternative idea of state and of legal order makes the application of E.J. Hobsbawm’s categories of “primitive rebels” and “social bandits”, recently proposed by Nicolas Werth to describe anti-Soviet rural “banditism” from the 1920s to the 1950s, not really useful for explaining anti-Soviet insurgencies in Southern Kazakhstan during collectivization.104 The Stalinist “etatization” project, often described as a process of repression of “society” – or of specific social groups – was, even among the “stateless societies” par excellence, the pastoral populations, also a process of de-etatization of communities which had successfully integrated the lower layer of the previous state administration. However, the dynamic of different revolts in Kazakhstan suggests that the shadow of the past Tsarist administrative structure cannot take the place of the “Islamic,” “tribal”, “aristocratic”, or “class” missing structure, once the absence, weakness or inconsistency of these bonds have been proven. It is very likely that different networks and different discourses of legitimization played a role specific to each of the insurgency events in the Steppe. Only local histories will, we hope, be able to free us from the very preoccupation 103

104

Cf. Uyama Tomohiko, “Two Attempts at Building a Qazaq State: The Revolt of 1916 and the Alash Movement,” in: Islam in Politics in Russia and Central Asia (Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Centuries), eds. Stéphane A. Dudoignon and Komatsu Hisao (London, 2001), 77–98. The “Qazaqness” of this imagined state remains to be proven. Werth, Le terreur et le désarroi, 135–169 (chapter 8, “Les « rebelles primitifs » en URSS”). Cf. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester, 19712).

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of the Soviet leadership: to find a coherent theory explaining the behaviour of the whole society they were determined to subdue.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Aldazhumanov, K.S., Kairgaliev, M.K., Osipov, V.P. and Romanov, Iu.I., (eds.), Nasil’stvennaia kollektivizatsiia i golod v Kazakhstane 1931–33 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Almaty, 1998) Danilov, V.P. (ed.), Tragediia sovetskoi derevni: kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie; dokumenty i materialy v 5 tomakh, 1927–1939, t. 2, Noiabr’ 1929- dekabr’ 1930 (Moscow, 2000) Grodekov, Nikolai I., Kirgizy i karakirgizy Syr-Dar’inskoi oblasti (Tashkent, 1889) Masevich, M.G. (ed.), Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana. Tom I (AlmaAta: Izdatel’stvo AN Kazakhskoi SSR, 1960)

Secondary Literature Afanasyeva, Anna, “‘Osvobodit’… ot shaitanov i sharlatanov’: diskursy i praktiki rossiiskoi meditsiny v Kazakhskoi stepi v XIX veke,” Ab Imperio 4 (2008): 113–150 Aldazhumanov, Kaidar, “Krestianskoe dvizhenie soprotivleniia,” in: Id., Deportirovannye v Kazakhstan narody: vremiia i sudby (Almaty , 1998), 66–93 –––––, “Krest’ianskoe protestnoe dvizhenie,” in: Istoriia Kazakhstana s drevneishich vremen do nashikh dnei v piati tomakh. Tom 4, eds. Zh. B. Abylchozhin, K.S. Aldazhumanov, K.N. Burkhanov, A.T. Kapaeva, S.F. Mazhitov (Almaty, 2010), 290–321 Allaniiazov, Turganbek and Taukenov, Amangeldy, Shetskaia tragediia (iz istorii antisovetskikh vooruzhennykh vystuplenii v Tsentral’nom Kazakhstane v 1930–1931 gg.) (Almaty, 2000) –––––, Poslednyi rubezh zashitnikov nomadizma. Istoriia vooruzhennykh vystuplenii i povstancheskich dvizhenii v Kazakhstane (1929–1931 gody) (Almaty, 2008) Barth, Frederick, Political Leadership among the Swat Pathans (London, 1959) Cavanaugh, Cassandra, “Backwardness and Biology: Medicine and Power in Russian and Soviet Central Asia: 1868–1934” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2001) Collins, Kathleen, Clan Politics and Regime Transition in Central Asia (Cambridge, 2006) Dave, Bhavna, Kazakhstan. Ethnicity, Language and Power (London/New York, 2007) Dumoulin, Marie, “Les élites politiques kazakhstanaises. Faire carrière dans un Etat en formation” (Thèse doctorale, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, 2008) Dzhampeisova, Zhanar, Kazakhskoe obshchestvo i pravo v poreformennoi stepi (Astana, 2006) Eickelman, Dale F., The Middle East and Central Asia. An Anthropological Approach (Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002) Erofeeva, Irina V., Rodoslovnye kazakhskikh khanov i kozha, XVIII-XIX vv. (istoriia, istoriografiia, istochniki) (Almaty, 2003) Frank, Allen J., Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia. The Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden, 2001)

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INDEX Index of Persons Abay Qunanbayulï (Qǎnanbaev, Abay) 99–100, 103, 105–111, 115, 213 Abbasid, dynasty 166 ‫ޏ‬Abd al-HƗdƯ 287–288 ‫ޏ‬Abd al-La৬Ưf KhƗn 37, 39 ‫ޏ‬Abd al-Qayynjm BadakhshƗnƯ 225 ‫ޏ‬Abd al-RafƯ‫ ޏ‬Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ 48, 50– 56, 58, 60, 62 ‫ޏ‬Abd al-ৡamad BƯy Kenäges 44 ‫ޏ‬Abd ar-RashƯd IbrƗhƯm 86n61, 88n68 ‫ޏ‬Abd as-SattƗr b. KhalƯfa ণusayn 226 ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh al-Mu‫ޏ‬ƗdhƯ 225 ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhƗn b. Iskandar (‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhƗn II) 39, 41, 44, 76 ‫ޏ‬AbdullƗh KhwƗja 55, 59 Abïlay KhƗn 98 Abnj ণƗmid al-GhazƗlƯ 108 Abnj ণanƯfa an-Nu‫ގ‬man b. SƗbit 252n67, 254–255 Abnj Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd b. Köchkünji 32, 37 Abnj Ynjsuf al-KnjfƯ 255–256, 261 Abnj’l-GhƗzƯ 81 Abnj’l-Khayrid elite 32 Abnj’l-QƗsim KhƗn 221, 226 Äbubäkír Kerderí (Boranqǎlov) 98–99, 99n17, 103 ƖfƗq KhwƗja 269n4 Afghans 320 AghƗ-yi Buzurg 35 Aতmad BarangavƯ 222 Aতmad KhalƯfa 283 Aতmad YasavƯ 16, 27–30, 38n23, 44, 46, 49n43, 51n51, 57–58, 71, 73, 77, 83, 86, 316–317 Akchurin, ‫ޏ‬ƖlimjƗn 260n87 Akhunbabaev, Iu. 242n33 Ɩkhnjnd Azbakevich 81n42, see Shükür b. ‫ޏ‬AvvƗs-BƗqï Ɩlchïn 56n60

Alexander I 195 al-ণallƗj 111 ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh 71n7 ‫ޏ‬AlƯ, son-in-law of Muতammad 316 ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim QavghƗn Ata (Alïm Shaykh) 51n51 ‫ޏ‬Ɩlim Shaykh 31–33, 36, 43–48, 50–58, 61–62 ‫ޏ‬AlƯshƝr NavƗ‫ގ‬Ư 281 Alshanskii, Anatolii 312n40 Altïnsarin, Ibrahim 101–102 AmƯr ণusayn 85 Andijanis 290 Andreev, Ivan 227 Aqbura, clan 229 Aqközi Batïr 228 Aqmolla 103–104 Aqtiles, clan 227 Arghïn, tribe 215–216, 223, 225, 229 Armenians 131 Arstanbek 97n6 Ashtarkhanids, dynasty 43 ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ BaৢƯr KƗghadh-furnjsh 55, see ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ-Muতammad BaৢƯr ‫ޏ‬AvvƗz BƗqï Shaykh 79 Äwezov, Mǎkhtar 105–106 Aydabol, clan 229 ‫ޏ‬Ayn al-DƯn Bay 290n53 BƗbƗ AbdƗl Shaykh 76–78 BƗbƗ MachƯn 71n7, 78 Baba Tükles 228 Babashev, Ya‫ޏ‬qnjb Ɩkhnjn ণasan 288n50 BƗbƗy 218 Baghanalï, clan 100 BahƗ’ ad-DƯn Naqshband 84 Baidil’din, Abrakhman 328 BakhshƗyish Shaykh 36–39 Balkashin, N.N. 147

342 Baluch 280 Baqsayïs 38, see BakhshƗyish Shaykh BƗqsƗyis Ata 38n23, see BakhshƗyish Shaykh Basantiyin 223 Bashkir 218 Batïr Divana 229 Bavïr 226 Bayazitov, Ataullah 101 Bayqonaq, clan 225 Baytorï 226 Baytǎrsïnov, Akhmet 103, 109, 112 Bayzhan ণazrat 222 Bek Sultan Törä b. Aghaday KhƗn 217 Belarusians 131, 312n38 BighƗch Ata 78–79 Biktimirov, Munir 87n65 Bludov, Dmitrii 127n30 Bogoslovskii 171, 173 Bökeykhanov, Älikhan 109, 112–115 Boranqǎlov see Äbubäkír Kerderí Bukey (Inner) Horde 17, 128n34, 132n42, 154–156, 222, 309 Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic 249, 260, 274 Bukharans 145, 154, 159, 167, 173 Bukharans, Siberian 71, 77, 88 BurhƗn al-DƯn al-MarghƯnƗnƯ 236n15 Buriats 119, 123–125, 127, 129, 131, 134–135, 137–138 Catherine II (the Great) 122, 127n27, 128, 134n50, 144–145, 188–189 Cheregei Saltan 227 Chinese 168, 270, 284, 286, 291–292 Chinggisids 32, 43–44, 45n37, 216, 217, 222, 323, 325–326, 330, 333 Chormanov, Musa 218n15 see Musa Shormanulï Cossacks 305, 315 DarvƯsh Muতammad 34 DarvƯsh Shaykh 32n10, 39–40 Dasht-i QïpchƗq 27–63, 72, 81

Index DavlatshƗh b. ShƗh ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb alIspichƗfƯ al-ণusaynƯ (QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh) 59–62, 80–82, 88 DƯn ‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhwƗja 76–78 Ding IsmƗ‫ގ‬Ưl 280–281 Dostoevskii, Fedor 100n23 Dulat Babatayǎlï 96, 98 Dulatov, Mir-Ya‫ޏ‬qub (Mírjaqïp) 100, 103–105, 109, 112–113, 213 Dungans 267, see Hui Dzaiaev, Damba Dorzha (Jaya) 127, 134n50 Dzhandosov, Uraz 331 Enver Pasha 274n16 Eshizhamsuev, Choivan Danzan 134 Eskendir Divana 229 Europeans 304 FatতullƗh 43–44 Fayzolla ƮshƗn 219, 222, 225 Finnish 312n38 Gasprinski, Ismail Bey 234 Geins, A. 184 Germans 312n38 Ghaysabek ƮshƗn see Isabek ƮshƗn GhƗzƯ-Muতammad al-QazƗqƯ 225 Gloriozov, N.P. 151n17 Golden Horde 30 Goloshchëkin, Filipp 328–329 ণƗfi਌ 111 ণƗfi਌ BaৢƯr 34–36 Haji Sami 274n16 ণƗjjƯ ShƗhƯ NnjqƗyƯ 39 ণakƯm Ata 73, 78–79, 82 ণakƯm JƗn MullƗ 218 ণamza KhwƗja 221 Han 270, 273n14, 274, 288, 292 Haupt, tsarist official 134–135 ণazƯnƯ 40 ণnjbbƯ KhwƗja 78 Hui 267–270, 273–281, 283–284, 287, 289

Index of Persons ণujjat al-ণakƯm b. Davnjd at-TƗrƗvƯ 88n68 ণusayn KhwƗrazmƯ 36 ণusayn SarakhsƯ 41 ণusayn Shaykh (Ɩq-qnjrghƗnƯ) 48–50, 52–56, 62 ণu਌njr Boldï ৡnjfƯ 39 Iagmin, A. 143, 150, 171 Iagoda, Genrikh 306 Iarotskii, S. 170 Ibn ‫ޏ‬ArabƯ 111 Ibn TaymƯya 237 IbrƗhƯm b. Muতammad SamarkandƯ 85 IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ (MavlƗnƗ IbrƗhƯm TurkistƗnƯ QavghƗnƯ) 49, 51–56, 60, 62 IbrƗhƯm Shaykh (Oqshï Ata) 51n51 IbrƗhƯm Shaykh QnjrghƗnƯ 48, 52, see IbrƗhƯm QavghƗnƯ Il’minskii, Nikolai 101–102 IlyƗs b. RaতƯm BƗqï 85 ImƗm al-BukhƗrƯ 252n68 ImƗm QulƯ KhƗn 43–46 Isabek ƮshƗn Muratqozhaulï (Ghaysabek ƮshƗn) 226–227, 229 Isaqbay Qazhï 229 ƮshƗn ImlƗ 56 ƮshƗn Iskandar al-KhwƗrizmƯ al-MamlƗnƯ 82 ƮshƗn KhalƯfa NiyƗz Muতammad alBukhƗrƯ (Akhnjnd DƗmullƗ NiyƗzMuতammad Shaykh ChnjqmƗqƯ, NiyƗz-Muতammad ChnjqmƗqƯ) 54, 56 ƮshƗn Muতammad-ণarrath AydƗrof alQƗrghƗlƯ 224n37 IsতƗq BƗb 38n23, 51n51, 77, 83, 316 Ishim KhƗn (Sul৬Ɨn) 44–45 IsmƗ‫ޏ‬Ưl Ata 30 Ja‫ޏ‬far ƮshƗn UfavƯ 225 Jahangir KhƗn Bükeykhanulï 222 JalƗl ad-DƯn 71n7, 78 JƗn Davlat ণƗjjƯ NaymƗn 39 Janataev, Kökbay 114 Jänggírov, Shädí 99, 102

343

Jews 123, 312n38 Jum‫ޏ‬a-‫ޏ‬AlƯ al-OrinbnjrghƯ al-QazƗq 225 Jümantük 218 Junghars 80 Kalïgul 97n6 Kalmyks 121n4, 123, 124n18, 125n21 KamƗl Shaykh 30 Kara 332 Kara, clan 331 Karabaev, M. 149 Karabura 309 Kardzhasov, Kh. 149 Karnilov, Senator 194–195 Katarinskii, V. V. 101n25 Kenigsberg, M. 150 Kerey, tribe 56, 219, 222, 224 KhƗdim Shaykh 30 KhƗfizƯ 85 KhalƯfa ণusayn 225 KhalƯlov KhalƯl ƮshƗn 86–87 KhƗn Küchüm 76–78 KhudƗydƗd 31–40, 43–44, 58, 71 KhudƗydƗd b. TƗsh-Muতammad 51n49, 59 KhwƗja AতrƗr 30 KhwƗja Bay 290n53 KhwƗja FuĪayl 55, 58–59 KhwƗja Muতammad HnjzmnjzƯ 85 KhwƗja Muতammad IslƗm 41 KhwƗja Sa‫ޏ‬d 41–42 KhwƗja Ynjsuf 85 Kirey ƮshƗn see Manৢnjr Muতammad ƮshƗn Kirghiz 272 Kirghiz, Kirghiz-Kaisaks (Qazaqs in Russian terminology) 147, 154, 156, 159, 161–162, 170, 173, 184, 189, 194, 199, 201–204, 207 Kolbasenko, I. 163 Konur-kul’dzha Khudaimendin 219n20 see Qongïr Qozha Qudaymendeulï Köpey 221 Kruzhilin, A. 154 Külik, clan 214, 225 Kün Qozha 226

344 Küshik-Basentiyin, clan 227 Kylyev, Bisetai 315 Kyrgyz 97n6 Lapin, Seralï 113 Latvians 312n38 Lenin 260n87 Litunovsky, N. 150 Los’ev, I. 162 Lu৬fullƗh 59 Ma Ahong 276 Ma Er 279 Ma Fuqi 281 Ma Fushou 279 Ma Fuxing 282–283 Ma Hualong 278 Ma Jinxi 278n29 see Ma Er Ma Rubian 279 Ma Weihan 279 Ma Yuanzhang 277n28, 279 Ma Yuzhang 282 Makhdnjm-i A‫ޏ‬਌am 49 Manchu 273n14 Manghïts 34, 39, 56 Manৢnjr Muতammad ƮshƗn (Kirey ƮshƗn) 224 Manteuffel, von 227 Maqïsh Qaltayǎlï 99n17 Marakhovets, I.Z. 151n17 Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï 103, 213–30 Matskevich, V.G. 155 Mavdnjd Shaykh 30 MavlƗnƗ ‫ޏ‬AvaĪ-Muতammad BaৢƯr 54– 56, 58 MavlƗnƗ KhwƗja Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ 48– 50, 52, 54–56, 58, 62 MavlƗnƗ Muতammad SharƯf 47–48, 50– 62, 81 MavlƗnƗ Shams ad-DƯn 85 MavlƗnƗ Shams NjzgandƯ 30 MavlƗnƗ ValƯ Knjh-i zarƯ 39 Menzhinsky, Vyacheslav 306n26 Middle Horde 214–216, 225, 324 Miller, Gerard F. 77, 81 Ming, dynasty 270

Index Minor Horde 317 MƯr ‫ޏ‬AlƯ BƗbƗ 79n36 MƯr SharƯf KhwƗja 82 MƯr-i ‫ޏ‬Arab 35 MƯrzƗ ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh TurkistƗnƯ 48, 52–56, 62 MiyƗn MƗlik b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-QƗdir SƗhibzƗda ƮshƗn 221 MiyƗn-MƗlik b. ‫ޏ‬Abd al-QƗdir (ৡƗতibzƗda ƮshƗn) 225 Moghul KhƗnïm, wife of ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh KhƗn 35 Moldo Kïlïch 97n6 Monchaq ণƗfi਌ 34–36, 39 Monchaq ণƗfi਌’s wife 34 Mongols 273n14, 323 Mordvinians 312n38 MubƗshƯr KhƗn 235 Muতammad ‫ޏ‬AlƯ 282 Muতammad al-ShaybƗnƯ 255–256 Muতammad A‫ޏ‬਌am 59 Muতammad KhƗfiz 85 Muতammad KhwƗja al-TarƗzƯ 55, see Muতammad NjtrƗrƯ Muতammad NaqshbandƯ 85 Muতammad OtrƗrƯ see Muতammad UtrƗrƯ Muতammad ৡƗdiq 36 Muতammad, prophet 165, 170, 276–278, 282–283, 285 Muhammad-Salih Babadzhanov 216 MullƗ TƗsh QƗrƯ 234 MurƗd Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq 46 Mǎrat Möngkeǎlï 97 Musa Shormanulï (Chormanov, Musa) 218–219, 222, 229–230 MusƗbayev, BahƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn 289–290 MusƗbayev, ণusayn 288n49 Nadir Shah Afshar 326n74 Najm al-DƯn ণazrat 221–222 Nawshabaev, Nǎrjan 99n17, 103 Nayman, clan 218 Nazar ƮshƗn 226 Nazar Shaykh 78 Nicholas I 133

Index of Persons Ni‫ޏ‬matullƗh Qarïmshaqov 80 NƯyƗz BƗqï b. Biktemir 86–87, 87n66 NƯyƗzqulƯ at-TurkmƗnƯ 87 Noghays 34, 97n7, 290 Nnjrnjm KhwƗja 53 Oirats 215 Oqshï Ata see IbrƗhƯm Shaykh Organbaev, Alimkhan 317 Orïnbay 103 Ormanshï, clan 229 Öskenbaev, Qǎnanbay 100 Özbek 33, 36, 38–39 PƗdshƗh MƗlik BƗbƗ 79, 79n36, 86 Persians 319n56, 320 Peter I 185 PƯr MunjƗqƯ (Monchaq ণƗfi਌?) 35–36 PirƯ Shaykh 78 PƯrim Shaykh 33, 53–55 Poles 131, 312n38 Potanin, Grigorii 227 Qalmaqs 60n66, 80, 326n74 Qamaraddin ণazrat 219, 222–223 Qanbar Shaykh (Qanbar ৡnjfƯ) 33, 37, 39 Qanzhïghalï 226 Qarabuzhïr, clan 226 Qarakesek, clan 226 Qarashev, Ghǎmar 114 Qarataev, Baqïtjan 113 Qarzhas, clan 229 QƗsim Shaykh 33, 38n23, 39–42, 54, 58, 71n7 Qasïmov, Kenesarï 96 QavghƗndïq 51n51 Qazaq princes 41, 44 Qazha Kel 226 Qazhï Qozha 226 QƗĪƯ DavlatshƗh see DavlatshƗh b. ShƗh ‫ޏ‬Abd al-VahhƗb Qïghash Qozha 226 Qing, dynasty 267–268, 270, 275–277, 280, 282, 285, 287, 291–292 Qïpshaqbay 103 Qïpshaqs (QïpchƗqs) 37, 216, 222

345

Qïrghïz 45n37 Qïstabay b. Sarïqusan Abïz 226 Qïzïltas 226 Qonghrat, tribe 33 Qongïr Qozha Qudaymendeulï (Konurkul’dzha Khudaimendin) 219, 222 Qongïrbay Khalfa 226 Qǎdayberdíev, Shäkärím 105, 109–112, 114–115 Qǎnanbaev, Abay see Abay Qunanbayulï Qunanbay Öskenbayulï 219n16 QurbƗn-‫ޏ‬AlƯ KhƗlidƯ 10n3, 215, 217, 222–224 Qurmanbay Abïz Bayqonaq 219, 225 RaতmatullƗh YƗnghnjrƗzƯ 88n68 Remezov, Semen U. 78 RiĪƗ ad-DƯn b. Fakhr ad-DƯn 80, 87n63 RiĪƗ‫ ގ‬al-DƯn Shakirnjf 238 Rybakov, Sergei 134n47, 134n50 ৡadrƯ Ata 71n7 Safa-KhƗn Tiure 320 Safar Ali Asadullah Ibrahim 308, 310, 317–321, 334 Safar-Khodzha Dzhakip 308, 310, 319 Samay Toqpanulï 225 Sarts 159, 216 SayfullƗh b. ÜtagƗn 225 Sayyid Ata 30, 38, 77–78 Sayyid BƗrhƗmƯ 85 Sayyid Zinda-‫ޏ‬AlƯ 48 Seralin, Mǎkhamedjan 112 Severtsov 228n52 Seydalin, Jihansha 113 ShƗh MurƗd 56 Shalbay Divana 229 Shalqïman Divana 229 Shams DƯvƗna 40 SharbatƯ Shaykh 76–78, 83 SharƯf KhwƗja Muতammad PƗrsƗ 85 Shaykh MurƯd 71n7 Shaykh Sa‫ޏ‬Ưd-i QurghƗn 61–62 Shaykh ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh BukhƗrƯ 60 Sheng Shicai 292 Shestakov 228

346 ShïbƗnid, dynasty 32, 39, 215 Shihabbadin Marjani 104 Shöje 103 Sholaq, Sultanbek (Sholakov, Sultanbek KhƗn) 308, 310, 315, 319–321, 333 Shong Biy Edigeulï 218, 222 Shormanov, Mǎsa 100 Shortanbay Qanayǎlï 97–98, 102, 115 ShujƗ‫ ޏ‬al-DƯn RaতƯm Bek 44 Shükür b. ‫ޏ‬AvvƗৢ-BƗqï (KhwƗjam Shükür) 80–83 SirƗj ad-DƯn see Abnj’l-AkrƗm DamullƗ SirƗj ad-DƯn al-ৡƗritaghƯ Sïrïm, clan 227 Skrine, C. P. 274n16 Slavs 241, 304 Sopaq 228–229 Speranskii, Mikhail 189, 324 SqƗq BƗb 38n23, see IsতƗq BƗb ৡubnjr KhwƗja 49 SnjfƯ AllƗhyƗr 281 ৡnjfƯ Miৢr ‫ޏ‬AlƯ Shaykh 56 ৡnjfƯ Miৢr-‫ޏ‬AlƯ QazƗq 55, 58, 62 ৡnjfƯ Muতammad DƗnishmand 29 Sufi ShihƗb al-DƯn ‫ޏ‬Umar SuhravardƯ 43n32 Süksük Ata 29 Sultanbek khƗn see Sholaq, Sultanbek Süyindik, clan 226 Suynjnch BƗqï b. Qarïmshaq 85

Index Timur 317 Treillé 158 Tungus 134n50 TupchƗq KhwƗja (TupchƗq Sayyid) 41– 42 TnjrƗ KhƗn b. ‫ޏ‬A਌Ưm KhƗn 85 Turdï ShƗh ণƗjjƯ 290 Turks 42, 101–102, 154n25, 284 Turlïbek (Koshenov) 219, 222 Tnjrsnjn BƗqƯ NamangƗnƯ 50n46 Tursnjn Sul৬Ɨn QaĪƗq (Tursnjn Muতammad KhƗn) 43–44 ‫ޏ‬UbaydullƗh KhƗn 35 Ukhtomskii, Esper 135n53, 136 Ukrainians 131, 305, 312n38 Ulmaraq Urazbay 310 Uyghurs 267, 272, 272n13, 274–277, 279, 282, 284, 287–289, 291 Uysun Oshaqtï, tribe 226 Uzbeks 31–32, 33n13, 39, 42, 302, 304 ValƯ Muতammad KhƗn 46n39 Valikhanov, Chokan 100, 132, 137, 213, 216, 218n15, 220, 223 Vanchikov, Sandeleg 134 Veniamin 134 Volkonskii 198–199 Vollenberg, Nikolai L’vovich 312 Wu-lai-zi 282

৫Ɨhir BƯy QïrqƯz 45 ৫Ɨhir ƮshƗn 48, 51–52, 55, 57–58, 60 ৫Ɨhir KhƗn 283 ৫Ɨhir Sul৬Ɨn 45n37 Tama, clan 309, 311, 317–318, 322, 333 Taranchis 289n51 TashkhwƗja ‫ޏ‬ƖshnjrkhwƗja-ughlƯ 235, 237 Tatars 101, 129, 132n42, 145, 154, 159, 216, 312n38 Tatars, Siberian 69 Taymanov, Isatay 96 Temür KhalƯfa 269n4 Tentek, clan 226 Tibetans 273n14, 274

YaতyƗ b. RamaĪƗn Ɩkhnjnd (Zhaqay Akhun) 223 Yang Desheng 283 YƗr Muতammad Dih-darƗzƯ 49 Yarïm Sayyid 76 Yashlïgh Ynjnus Ata 29 You Huating 289 Yusip Qïyghash Qozha see Zhüsip ƮshƗn b. Qïghash Qozha ਋Ɨhir al-DƯn A‫ޏ‬lam 239–240, 243n37, 243n38 ZangƯ BƗbƗ 78

Index of Persons Zayn al-DƯn (Zayn al-‫ޏ‬ƖbidƯn) b. IbrƗhƯm b. Muতammad b. Nujaym al-MiৢrƯ 248n54 ZaynullƗh RasnjlƯ (Rasulev) 86 Zeland, N. 143, 150, 163 Zeynulghabiden al-Jawari 104

347

Zhaqay Akhun see YaতyƗ b. RamaĪƗn Ɩkhnjnd (Zhaqay Akhun) Zhetyru, tribe 309 Zholbarïs Divana 229 Zhüsip ƮshƗn b. Qïghash Qozha (Yusip Qïyghash Qozha) 226 ĩiyƗ‫ ގ‬ad-DƯn GumushkhƗnavƯ 225

Index of Place Names Afghanistan 280, 301, 301n13, 320 Akmolinsk (Akmola, Astana) 198, 201, 203–205, 214, 216, 219, 222 Aktiubinsk 302n15, 309n34, 328 Algeria 158 ‫ޏ‬AlƯyƗbƗd 31, 52n51 Almaty (Alma-Ata) 200–201, 213, 315, 330–331 Altay 217–218, 224 Amur 135 Aqköl 226 Ɩq-qnjrghƗn 49n43, 57 Aqsu 287–288 Aral Sea 34 Arqa Zhurt see Sarï Arqa Artush 288, 290 Arnjs 60 Arys 59 Astana see Akmolinsk Astrakhan’ 123 Atïghay 219 AtyƗl 86–87, 87n66 Auliya Ata 320n58 Ayaguz (Sergiopol’) 217 Azerbaijan 320 Baikal 119, 125, 129, 136 Baishevo 73, 78–79, 82 Baku 320 Balkhash 331 Balkhash, lake 331 Baltic region 120 BaqïrghƗn 79, 82 Barnaul 197 Bashkiria 104 Bayanaul 213–214, 216, 218–223, 225– 226, 230 Beijing 268, 273 Bien-Aksuisk 315 Biisk 197 Boghrüdelik 79n35, 86

Bukhara 22, 30, 35, 40–41, 47–50, 52– 53, 55–58, 60, 80–82, 87, 100, 168, 214, 221–226, 230, 258, 276 Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic 249, 260n87, 274 Caspian Sea 34, 320 Caspian steppes 152 Caucasus 124, 138 Chayanov 322 Cherniaev 310 Chernorechenskaia 191 Chiili see ShielƱ Chimkent 303, 305, 326 China 10, 126, 225, 267, 270, 273, 278, 280, 285, 292, 320 China (People's Republic) 10 Chokpar 332 Chu, river 303, 317 Chumashki 200 cis-Baikal 17, 119, 129, 131, 137–138 Crimea 122–123, 128 Daghestan 87 Delhi see ShƗh jahƗnƗbƗd Didao (Lintao) 279 Dihua see Ürümchi Ekibastuz 227 Emba 225 England 320n58 Ereymen 226 Europe 104, 105, 167, 273, 300 Ferghana (city) 20, 320 Ferghana valley 50n46, 322 Finland 120, 122 Gansu 269, 275–281, 286–287, 289 GhazƯra 31, 34, 44 Ghulja 269, 271, 287–289 Goose Lake 127–128

350 Herat 31 Hezhou 275, 279–281 Huangzhong 279 Hüree 126n24 see Urga Hyderabad 43n32 Ialutorovsk 87n65 Ikonnikovo 201 Ili valley 289n51 Ili, county 284, 288 India 60 ƮqƗn 30, 58 Irdzhar 319n56 Irgiz 302n15 Irkutsk 127, 129, 131, 136 Irtysh 193n45, 224 IsfƯjƗb (IstƯjƗb) see SayrƗm Iske Räjäp 71n7 Isker 77 Issyk-Ata 163–164, 169

Index Kokand 22, 97, 168, 224, 237, 320–322, 324n67 Konur 320 Konya 79n35, 86 Krasnovodsk 320 Krestinskaia 193 Krivoi 204 Kucha 282, 288 Kugashyk 319 Kulikovka 202 Kümüshkent 36 Kümüshle 75n18 Kurchui 310 Kustanai 302n15 Kyrgyzstan (Kirghizia) 163, 169, 330n91 Kyzyl-Kum 315 Kyzyl-Orda (Kzylorda) 305, 312 Latin America 300 Lhasa 127n29 Lintao 279n32 see Didao

Japan 314 Karatau 316 Karkak 318 Karkarala district 204–205 Karkaralinsk see Qarqaralï KarmƯna 39 Karnak 308, 318 KƗshghar (Kashgar) 60, 270, 274n16, 276, 281–284, 288, 290 KashmƯr 60 Kazan 55–56, 72, 100, 102, 125, 149, 159, 188, 225 Kha৬irchƯ (Khatyrchi) 245, 247 Khiva 22 Khodzhent (Khujand) 160, 160n45 Khorezm see KhwƗrazm Khotan 288 Khozhavot 244n40 Khujand see Khodzhent KhurƗsƗn 32 KhwƗrazm 16, 30, 73, 225 Kizläw 54 Kogashik 305

Madagascar 164 Malay Archipelago 164 ManghïtistƗn 34–35, 37 Mavarannahr 30–34, 36, 39–40, 42, 47, 59, 62–63, 326n74 Mecca 82, 100, 112, 165 MiyƗnkƗl 36 Mongolia 125–126, 136, 269, 274 Moroshikha 197 Moscow 302, 306, 312, 314 Nagaibatskaia 199 NamangƗn (Namangan) 50n46, 244n40, 290n53 Nerchinsk 126 Ningxia 279 Okopishechevskaia 198 Omsk 76, 78–79, 83, 183, 193, 195–196, 198, 200–204, 216, 219, 222–223, 226, 228 Orenburg 15, 133n43, 137, 151, 156, 190, 198–199, 203, 223 Orsk 217, 225

Index of Place Names OtrƗr 57 Ottoman Empire 86, 109, 122, 123n10, 128 Özkent see Njzgand Pakistan 301 Pavlodar 213 Persia 123n10, 280, 319–320 Petropavlovsk 221, 224–225 Poland 120, 122, 131, 314 QarƗghƗy 72, 75n18, 83n51, 84n55, 85– 86 Qarqaralï (Karkaralinsk) 112, 216, 218 QavghƗn 57 QazƗqïstƗn 33, 34, 38 Qomirguja 225 Samarqand (Samarkand) 30–32, 35n17, 37–38, 40, 59, 159, 168, 245, 276 Sarï Arqa (Arqa Zhurt) 216–217, 226– 227 Sarkand 315 Sarpul 36 Sary-Su 305, 320, 322 SayrƗm (IsfƯjƗb) 30, 59–61, 71, 79, 81, 86, 88 Semipalatinsk 15, 88n68, 106, 183, 207, 214, 217, 224, 227, 328 Sengelinsk 134 Sergiopol’ see Ayaguz Shaanxi 275–276, 278, 281 Shagou 277 ShƗh-jahƗnƗbƗd (Delhi) 60 ShahrukhƯya 45 Shanshan 226 ShielƱ (Shieli, Chiili) 38n23, 51n51 SïghnƗq 51n51 Sileti, river 226 Simbirsk 188 Srinagar 60 St. Petersburg 77, 101, 120, 123–124, 126, 127n27, 135, 205, 223 Suzak 297–336 Syr Darya valley (basin) 16, 27, 29–30, 39, 43, 47, 49–51, 53–63, 316, 319

351

Syr Darya, district 322, 326, 330 Syr Darya, river 31, 44, 46 TƗb 80 Tabriz 320 Tabynskaia 199 Tajikistan 160n45 Tara 79, 88n68 Tashkent 15, 20, 30, 35n17, 40–41, 43– 45, 50n46, 53, 55–56, 152n19, 214, 221, 223–227, 230, 234–235, 240, 250, 299, 303, 306, 319–320 Tatarstan 54, 71n7 TaylƗq 85 Tian-Shan 130 Tibet 126n24, 127n29, 269, 274 Tiumen’ 73, 78–79, 83n51, 87n65 Tobol 80, 86 Tobol’sk 60n66, 72, 77–78, 80, 82, 85– 87, 198, 201 trans-Baikal 125–127, 129, 135 Troitsk 87, 224 Turbï 86 Turfan 271n9 Turgay 101, 155 Turkestan 206, 241–242, 267, 270–271, 274, 284, 309–310, 320 Turkey 79n35, 280 TurkistƗn district 30, 40, 56–57, 60, 82 TurkistƗn, city (Yasï) 27, 30–31, 35, 41, 44, 49n43, 51n49, 51n51, 57–58, 83, 97, 219, 229, 303–305, 308, 311, 313, 316–319, 330 Ufa 17n18, 103, 128, 188 Ulanbaator see Urga Ulnjgh BurƗn 76, 78 Ural 184 Ural, river 199 Urga (Hüree, Ulanbaator) 126n24, 127n29 Urgench 71, 76–77, 88 Ürümchi (Dihua) 269, 271n9, 278n29, 280–281 Ush 288 Uzbekistan 9, 11, 19

352 Uzbekistan, Soviet Republic 242n33, 250, 257n82, 258 NjzgƗnd (NjzkƯnt, Özkent) 31, 49n43 VƗghƗy 86 Volga 74, 126, 130–131, 182n2 Volga-Ural region 17, 70, 73, 75, 83, 86, 88n69, 95, 99, 105, 114, 128, 215, 220, 222, 224n38, 225, 230

Index Xinjiang 9, 11, 19, 267–293 Yarkand 276, 279, 288 Yasï see TurkistƗn Yinchuan 279n32 Yunnan 270, 275 Zerafshan 245 Zhangjiachuan 279 Zhar avïlï 222 Zhayïlma, river 226

VERÖFFENTLICHUNGEN ZUR IRANISTIK HERAUSGEGEBEN VON BERT G. FRAGNER UND FLORIAN SCHWARZ (Nr. 1–21: Veröffentlichungen der Iranischen Kommission, Nr. 22–29: Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Iranistik, Nr. 30–31: Herausgegeben von Bert G. Fragner Nr. 32–68: Herausgegeben von Bert G. Fragner und Velizar Sadovski)

Nr. 1: Manfred Mayrhofer, Onomastica Persepolitana. Das altiranische Namengut der Persepolis-Täfelchen. Unter Mitarbeit von János Harmatta, Walter Hinz, Rüdiger Schmitt und Jutta Seiffert. 1973 (SBph, 286. Band) Nr. 2: Karl Jahn, Die Geschichte der Kinder Israels des RašƯd ad-DƯn. 1973 (Dph, 114. Band) Nr. 3: Manfred Mayrhofer, Zum Namengut des Avesta. 1977 (SBph, 308. Band, 5. Abhandlung) Nr. 4: Karl Jahn, Die Frankengeschichte des RašƯd ad-DƯn. Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar. 1977 (Dph, 129. Band) Nr. 5: Ronald Zwanziger, Zum Namen der Mutter Zarathustras. (Sonderdruck aus Anzeiger, 114/1977) Nr. 6: Rüdiger Schmitt, Die Iranier-Namen bei Aischylos. (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. I). 1978 (SBph, 337. Band) Nr. 7: Manfred Mayrhofer, Supplement zur Sammlung der altpersischen Inschriften. 1978 (SBph, 338. Band) Nr. 8: Karl Jahn, Die Indiengeschichte des RašƯd ad-DƯn. Einleitung, vollständige Übersetzung, Kommentar und 80 Texttafeln. 1980 (Dph, 144. Band) Nr. 9: Oswald Szemerényi, Four Old Iranian Ethnic Names: Scythian – Skudra – Sogdian – Saka. 1980 (SBph, 371. Band) Nr. 10: Rüdiger Schmitt, Altpersische Siegelinschriften. 1981 (SBph, 381. Band) Nr. 11: Kaikhusroo M. JamaspAsa, AogԥmadaƝcƗ. A Zoroastrian Liturgy. 1982 (SBph, 397. Band) Nr. 12: R. E. Emmerick and P. O. Skjærvø, Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese I. 1982 (SBph, 401. Band) Nr. 13: Manfred Mayrhofer, Lassen sich Vorstufen des Uriranischen nachweisen? (Sonderdruck aus Anzeiger, 120/1983) Nr. 14: Reinhard Pohanka, Zu einigen Architekturstücken von Tell-e Zohak bei Fasa, Südiran. (Sonderdruck aus Anzeiger, 120/1983) Nr. 15: Wilhelm Eilers, Iranische Ortsnamenstudien. 1987 (SBph, 465. Band) Nr. 16: Reinhard Pohanka, Die Masdjed-e Djoume in Darab, Südiran. (Sonderdruck aus Anzeiger, 121/1984) Nr. 17: R. E. Emmerick and P. O. Skjærvø, Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese II. 1987 (SBph, 458. Band) Nr. 18: Wolfgang Felix, Antike literarische Quellen zur Außenpolitik des SƗsƗnidenstaates. Erster Band (224–309). 1985 (SBph, 456. Band) Nr. 19: Reinhard Pohanka, Burgen und Heiligtümer in Laristan, Südiran. Ein Surveybericht. 1986 (SBph, 466. Band) Nr. 20: N. Rastegar und W. Slaje, Uto von Melzer (1881–1961). Werk und Nachlaß eines österreichischen Iranisten. 1987 (SBph, 477. Band)

Nr. 21: Ladislav Zgusta, The Old Ossetic Inscription from the River Zelenþuk. 1987 (SBph, 486. Band) Nr. 22: Wolfram Kleiss, Die Entwicklung von Palästen und palastartigen Wohnbauten in Iran. 1989 (SBph, 524. Band) Nr. 23: Nosratollah Rastegar, Zur Problematik einiger handschriftlicher Quellen des neupersischen Namenbuches. 1989 (SBph, 525. Band) Nr. 24: Dorit Schön, Laristan – eine südpersische Küstenprovinz. Ein Beitrag zu seiner Geschichte. 1990 (SBph, 553. Band) Nr. 25: Rüdiger Schmitt, Epigraphisch-exegetische Noten zu Dareios’ BƯsutnjnInschriften. 1990 (SBph, 561. Band) Nr. 26: Jost Gippert, Iranica Armeno-Iberica. Studien zu den iranischen Lehnwörtern im Armenischen und Georgischen. Band I–II. 1993 (SBph, 606. Band) Nr. 27: R. E. Emmerick and P. O. Skjærvø, Studies in the Vocabulary of Khotanese III. 1997 (SBph, 651. Band) Nr. 28: Xavier Tremblay, Pour une histoire de la Sérinde. Le manichéisme parmi les peuples et religions d’Asie Centrale d’après les sources primaires. 2001 (SBph, 690. Band) Nr. 29: Rüdiger Schmitt, Die iranischen und Iranier-Namen in den Schriften Xenophons. (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. II). 2002 (SBph, 692. Band) Nr. 30: Rüdiger Schmitt, Meno-logium Bagistano-Persepolitanum. Studien zu den altpersischen Monatsnamen und ihren elamischen Wiedergaben. Unter redaktioneller Mitwirkung von Velizar Sadovski. 2003 (SBph, 705. Band) Nr. 31: Antonio Panaino, Rite, parole et pensée dans l’Avesta ancien et récent. Quatre leçons au Collège de France (Paris, 7, 14, 21, 28 mai 2001). Edité par Velizar Sadovski, avec la collaboration rédactionnelle de Sara Circassia. 2004 (SBph, 716. Band) Nr. 32: Roman Siebertz, Die Briefmarken Irans als Mittel der politischen Bildpropaganda. 2005 (SBph, 722. Band) Nr. 33: Rüdiger Schmitt, Iranische Anthroponyme in den erhaltenen Resten von Ktesias’ Werk. (Iranica Graeca Vetustiora. III). 2006 (SBph, 736. Band) Nr. 34: Heiner Eichner, Bert G. Fragner, Velizar Sadovski und Rüdiger Schmitt (Hrsg.), Iranistik in Europa – gestern, heute, morgen. Unter redaktioneller Mitarbeit von Hannes Hofmann und Vera Giesen. 2006 (SBph, 739. Band) Nr. 35: Uto v. Melzer, FarhangnevƯs. Materialien zu einem Persisch-deutschen Wörterbuch. Hrsg. von Nosratollah Rastegar. Band I–IV. 2006 (Dph, 339. Band) Nr. 36: Manfred Mayrhofer, Einiges zu den Skythen, ihrer Sprache, ihrem Nachleben. 2006 (SBph, 742. Band) Nr. 37: Siegfried Weber, Die persische Verwaltung Kaschmirs (1842–1892). Band 1– 2. 2007 (SBph, 754. Band) Nr. 38: FarhangnevƯs. Datenbank zu Uto von Melzers lexikographischen Materialien: Persisch-Deutsch/Deutsch-Persisch. Hrsg. von Nosratollah Rastegar. 2007 (CD-ROM) Nr. 39: Rüdiger Schmitt, Pseudo-altpersische Inschriften. Inschriftenfälschungen und moderne Nachbildungen in altpersischer Keilschrift. 2007 (SBph, 762. Band) Nr. 40: Thamar E. Gindin, The Early Judaeo-Persian TafsƯrs of Ezekiel: Text, Translation, Commentary. Vol. I: Text. 2007 (SBph, 763. Band)

Nr. 41: Antonio Panaino und Velizar Sadovski, Disputationes Iranologicae Vindobonenses, I.: Antonio Panaino, Chronologia Avestica. Velizar Sadovski, Epitheta und Götternamen im älteren Indo-Iranischen. 2007 (SBph, 764. Band) Nr. 42: Helmut Slaby, Bindenschild und Sonnenlöwe. Die Geschichte der österreichisch-iranischen Beziehungen bis zur Gegenwart. Nachdruck. 2010 (SBph, 770. Band) Nr. 43: Tommaso Gnoli, The Interplay of Roman and Iranian Titles in the Roman East (1st–3rd Century A.D.). 2007 (SBph, 765. Band) Nr. 44: Thamar E. Gindin, The Early Judaeo-Persian TafsƯrs of Ezekiel: Text, Translation, Commentary. Vol. II: Translation. 2007 (SBph, 766. Band) Nr. 45: Thamar E. Gindin, The Early Judaeo-Persian TafsƯrs of Ezekiel: Text, Translation, Commentary. Vol. III: Commentary (in Vorbereitung) Nr. 46: Bert G. Fragner, Ralph Kauz, Roderick Ptak und Angela Schottenhammer (Hrsg.), Pferde in Asien: Geschichte, Handel und Kultur / Horses in Asia: History, Trade and Culture. 2009 (Dph, 378. Band) Nr. 47: Giorgio Rota, La Vita e i Tempi di Rostam Khan. Edizione e traduzione italiana del Ms. British Library Add 7,655. 2009 (SBph, 790. Band) Nr. 48: Fridrik Thordarson, Ossetic Grammatical Studies. 2009 (SBph, 788. Band) Nr. 49: Rüdiger Schmitt und Gerhard Brugmann (Hrsg.), Aus Karl Brugmanns Jugenderinnerungen. Eingeleitet und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Rüdiger Schmitt. 2009 (SBph, 786. Band) Nr. 50: Velizar Sadovski, Untersuchungen zu Sprache und Stil des ältesten IndoIranischen (Veda und Avesta). (Stilistica Indo-Iranica, II.) (in Vorbereitung) Nr. 51: Velizar Sadovski und David Stifter (Hrsg.), Iranistische und indogermanistische Beiträge in memoriam Jochem Schindler (1944–1994). 2012 (SBph, 851. Band) Nr. 52: Ralph Kauz, Giorgio Rota und Jan Paul Niederkorn (Hrsg.), Diplomatisches Zeremoniell in Europa und im Mittleren Osten in der frühen Neuzeit. 2009 (SBph, 796. Band) Nr. 53: Giorgio Rota, Under Two Lions. On the Knowledge of Persia in the Republic of Venice (ca. 1450–1797). 2009 (SBph, 793. Band) Nr. 54: Manfred Mayrhofer, Indogermanistik: Über Darstellungen und Einführungen von den Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart. 2009 (SBph, 787. Band) Nr. 55: Ela Filippone, The Fingers and their Names in the Iranian Languages. (Onomasiological Studies of Body-Part Terms, I). 2010 (SBph, 811. Band) Nr. 56: Olav Hackstein, Apposition and Nominal Classification in Indo-European and Beyond. 2010 (SBph, 798. Band) Nr. 57: Geschichte Wassaf’s. Persisch herausgegeben und deutsch übersetzt von Hammer-Purgstall. Neu herausgegeben von Sibylle Wentker nach Vorarbeiten von Klaus Wundsam. Band 1. 2010 (SBph, 802. Band) Nr. 58: Gisela Fock, Die iranische Moderne in der Bildenden Kunst: Der Bildhauer und Maler Parviz Tanavoli. 2011 (SBph, 815. Band) Nr. 59: Geschichte Wassaf’s. Deutsch übersetzt von Hammer-Purgstall. Herausgegeben von Sibylle Wentker nach Vorarbeiten von Elisabeth und Klaus Wundsam. Band 2. 2010 (SBph, 803. Band)

Nr. 61: Yuri Stoyanov, Defenders and Enemies of the True Cross. The Sasanian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614 and Byzantine Ideology of Anti-Persian Warfare. 2011 (SBph, 819. Band) Nr. 62: Barbara Karl, Treasury ௅ Kunstkammer ௅ Museum: Objects from the Islamic World in the Museum Collections of Vienna. 2011 (SBph, 822. Band) Nr. 63: ùevket Küçükhüseyin, Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung im Prozess kultureller Transformation. Anatolische Quellen über Muslime, Christen und Türken (13.௅15. Jahrhundert). 2011 (SBph, 825. Band) Nr. 64: Geschichte Wassaf’s. Deutsch übersetzt von Hammer-Purgstall. Herausgegeben von Sibylle Wentker nach Vorarbeiten von Elisabeth und Klaus Wundsam. Band 3. 2012 (SBph, 827. Band) Nr. 67: Luke Treadwell, Craftsmen and coins: signed dies in the Iranian world (third to the fifth centuries AH). 2011 (Dph, 423. Band, gleichzeitig: Veröffentlichungen der Numismatischen Kommission, Band 54) Nr. 69: Amr Taher Ahmed, La « Révolution littéraire ». Étude de l’influence de la poésie française sur la modernisation des formes poétiques persanes au début du XXe siècle. 2012 (SBph, 829. Band) Nr. 70: Roman Siebertz, Preise, Löhne und Lebensstandard im safavidischen Iran. Eine Untersuchung zu den Rechnungsbüchern Wollebrand Geleynssen de Jonghs (1641–1643). 2013 (SBph, 835. Band) Nr. 71: Walter Posch, Osmanisch-safavidische Beziehungen 1545–1550: Der Fall Alলâs Mîrzâ. Teil 1 und Teil 2. 2013 (SBph, 841. Band)

IRANISCHE ONOMASTIK HERAUSGEGEBEN VON BERT G. FRAGNER UND FLORIAN SCHWARZ (Nr. 1–10: Herausgegeben von Bert G. Fragner und Velizar Sadovski)

Nr. 1: Rüdiger Schmitt, Das Iranische Personennamenbuch: Rückschau, Vorschau, Rundschau (mit einer Bibliographie zur Iranischen Personennamenkunde). 2006 (SBph, 744. Band) Nr. 2: Sonja Fritz, Die ossetischen Personennamen. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band III, Faszikel 3). 2006 (SBph, 746. Band) Nr. 3: Ulla Remmer, Frauennamen im Rigveda und im Avesta. 2006 (SBph, 745. Band) Nr. 4: Ran Zadok, Iranische Personennamen in der neu- und spätbabylonischen Nebenüberlieferung. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band VII, Faszikel 1B). 2009 (SBph, 777. Band) Nr. 5: Philippe Gignoux, Christelle Jullien, Florence Jullien, Noms propres syriaques d’origine iranienne. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band VII, Faszikel 5). 2009 (SBph, 789. Band) Nr. 6: Rüdiger Schmitt, Iranische Personennamen in der neuassyrischen Nebenüberlieferung. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band VII, Faszikel 1A). 2009 (SBph, 792. Band) Nr. 7: Nicholas Sims-Williams, Bactrian Personal Names. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band II, Faszikel 7). 2010 (SBph, 806. Band) Nr. 8: Pavel B. Lurje, Personal Names in Sogdian Texts. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band II, Faszikel 8). 2010 (SBph, 808. Band) Nr. 9: Rüdiger Schmitt, Iranische Personennamen in der griechischen Literatur vor Alexander d. Gr. (= Iranisches Personennamenbuch, Band V, Faszikel 5A). 2011 (SBph, 823. Band) Nr. 10: Rüdiger Schmitt, Manfred Mayrhofer: Leben und Werk. Mit vollständigem Schriftenverzeichnis. 2012 (SBph, 828. Band) Nr. 12: Olav Hackstein and Ronald I. Kim (Hrsg.), Linguistic Developments along the Silkroad: Archaism and Innovation in Tocharian (= Multilingualism and History of Knowledge, Volume II. Hrsg. von Jens E. Braarvig, Markham J. Geller, Gebhard Selz und Velizar Sadovski). 2012 (SBph, 834. Band)

IRANISCHES PERSONENNAMENBUCH BEGRÜNDET VON MANFRED MAYRHOFER HERAUSGEGEBEN VON RÜDIGER SCHMITT, HEINER EICHNER, BERT G. FRAGNER UND VELIZAR SADOVSKI Bisher erschienen: Band I: Die altiranischen Namen Von Manfred Mayrhofer. 1979 (Sonderpublikation). Faszikel 1, 2 und 3 in einem Band: Faszikel 1: Die avestischen Namen. Faszikel 2: Die altpersischen Namen.

Faszikel 3: Indices zum Gesamtband. Band II: Mitteliranische Personennamen Faszikel 2: Noms propres sassanides en moyen-perse épigraphique. Von Philippe Gignoux. 1986 (Sonderpublikation) Faszikel 3: Noms propres sassanides en moyen-perse épigraphique. Supplément (1986– 2001). Von Philippe Gignoux. 2003 (Sonderpublikation) Faszikel 7: Bactrian Personal Names. Von Nicholas Sims-Williams. 2010 (SBph, 806. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 7) Faszikel 8: Personal Names in Sogdian Texts. Von Pavel B. Lurje. 2011 (SBph, 808. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 8) Band III: Neuiranische Personennamen Faszikel 3: Die ossetischen Personennamen. Von Sonja Fritz. 2006 (SBph, 746. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 2) Band IV: Materialgrundlagen zu den iranischen Personennamen auf antiken Münzen: Nomina propria Iranica in nummis Von Michael Alram. 1986 (Sonderpublikation) Band V: Iranische Namen in Nebenüberlieferungen indogermanischer Sprachen Faszikel 4: Iranische Namen in den indogermanischen Sprachen Kleinasiens: Lykisch, Lydisch, Phrygisch.Von Rüdiger Schmitt. 1982 (Sonderpublikation) Faszikel 5A: Iranische Personennamen in der griechischen Literatur vor Alexander d. Gr. Von Rüdiger Schmitt. 2011 (SBph, 823. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 9) Faszikel 6a: Iranische Namen in den griechischen Dokumenten Ägyptens. Von Philip Huyse. 1991 (Sonderpublikation) Band VII: Iranische Namen in semitischen Nebenüberlieferungen Faszikel 1A: Iranische Personennamen in der neuassyrischen Nebenüberlieferung. Von Rüdiger Schmitt. 2009 (SBph, 792. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 6) Faszikel 1B: Iranische Personennamen in der neu- und spätbabylonischen Nebenüberlieferung. Von Ran Zadok. 2009 (SBph, 777. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 4) Faszikel 5: Noms propres syriaques d’origine iranienne. Von Philippe Gignoux, Christelle Jullien, Florence Jullien. 2009 (SBph, 789. Band/Iranische Onomastik, Nr. 5)