scholarly journals A Person To Be Remembered’: On the History of Acquaintance of Musa Bigeev and Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
F. R. Khusnutdinov
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Important Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

There are still many lacunae in the biographies of the Russian and Turkestan prominent religious scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries. In some cases, the biographies of their acquaintances and counterparts could provide some important data which are missing elsewhere. The present article describes two episodes from the history of acquaintance of the renowned Tatar theologian Musa Bigeev and Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi, a prominent scholar from Turkestan, who was forced to emigrate from early Soviet Central Asia and later became one of the leaders of the Turkestan diaspora in the Middle East. The author cites information from the biographies of both scholars and argues that they may have temporarily belonged to the same émigré circles, and were acquainted with each other. A research of their respective biographies indicates that Bigeev and Tarazi met in Bombay in the 1930s and also may have known each other for twenty years prior to their emigration.The subject addressed in this article is of particular significance in reconstructing the history of contacts between the Russian and Turkestan religious scholars during their emigration and in the period preceding it.Key words: Musa Bigeev, Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi, biography, emigration, Kabul, Bombay, Bukhara.

scholarly journals «ТУРКЕСТАНСКИЕ МУСУЛЬМАНСКИЕ ОБЩИНЫ... БЫЛИ ЛИШЕНЫ ЭТОГО СЧАСТЬЯ». ИСТОРИЯ БЫТОВАНИЯ ПЕРЕВОДА И ТОЛКОВАНИЯ КОРАНА ТАРАЗИ В СОВЕТСКОМ УЗБЕКИСТАНЕ

Islamology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Filipp Khusnutdinov
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Preliminary Research ◽  
Personal Library ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Among the theologians who influenced the processes of re-Islamisation in late Soviet and early post-Soviet Central Asia, the name of Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi (ca. 1895– 1991) deserves special attention. Better known by his honorary nickname Altin-khan-tura, he was an authoritative Turkestani emigrant and prominent scholar. The present article offers preliminary research on the dissemination in Soviet Uzbekistan of his most famous work: the first complete interlinear translation of the Qur’an with commentary in Central Asian Turki. In less than half a century, this work has undergone more than ten publications in various regions of the Muslim world. As archaeographic and field research indicates, Tarazi’s translation has been featuring in personal library collections of some local religious figures, including prominent “official” and “unofficial” theologians from the region, and could have impacted their own work. Since the personality of Tarazi has not yet wholly entered the academic discourse on “Soviet Islam”, the article also provides a brief biography of the scholar in the context of his direct and “secret” links to local 'ulamā. The focus of this article on the history of the dissemination of Tarazi’s Qur’an translation allows illuminating some of the re-Islamisation processes that took place in Central Asia during the period under review.

The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia

1965 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 735-736
Author(s):  
M. Hookham
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

scholarly journals Being Muslim in Soviet Central Asia, or an Alternative History of Muslim Modernity

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeeb Khalid
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Abstract The literature on Muslim modernity takes little account of the experience of the Muslim societies of the Soviet Union, even though they might have undergone some of the most radical transitions to modernity. The Soviet sought a different kind of modernity, one without markets and liberalism, and one with little place for religion in it. I argue that the Soviet project succeeded to a great extent. This article explores some of the implications for our understanding of Muslim modernity if we are to take the experience of Soviet Muslim societies seriously.

The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayfer Karakaya-Stump
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Key Players ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Folk Islam

The Kizilbash were at once key players in and the foremost victims of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict that defined the early modern Middle East today. Today referred to as Alevis, they constitute the second largest faith community in modern Turkey, making up around fifteen percent of the country’s population, with smaller pockets of related groups in the Balkans. Historians have typically treated Kizilbashism/Alevism as an undifferentiated strain within the hazy category of “heterodox folk Islam.” Several aspects of their history therefore remain little understood or explored. This first comprehensive socio-political history of the Kizilbash/Alevi communities uses a recently surfaced corpus of sources generated within their milieu. It offers fresh answers to many questions concerning their origins and evolution from a revolutionary movement to an inward-looking religious order. Among other things, it argues for a readjustment in focus from pre-Islamic Central Asia to the cosmopolitan Sufi milieu of the Middle East when exploring genealogies of popular Islam in Anatolia, and of Kizilbashism-Alevism, in particular. While the Kizilbash constitute the focus of the book, its findings may open new avenues of research in the study of other “heterodox” communities in the Islamic world by alerting historians to the potential of Sufism to provide a basis for social order and give rise to distinct communities.

The Empire of Tamerlane as an Adaptation of the Mongol Empire: An answer to David Morgan, “The Empire of Tamerlane: An Unsuccessful Re-Run of the Mongol State?”

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 281-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEATRICE F. MANZ
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Regional State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mongol Empire ◽  
David Morgan ◽  
Letters Of Recommendation

AbstractI write this article in the spirit of the Persian poetic tradition, in which an answer to an earlier work takes off from the original and charts its own course. I will suggest that Tamerlane's recreation of the Mongol Empire was symbolic, and was part of his successful creation of a regional state which was at once Turco-Mongolian and Perso-Islamic. His experiment was continued and elaborated by his successors, and the resulting state provided a highly useful model for later dynasties in the Middle East and Central Asia.Through my long engagement with Mongols and Turks, David Morgan's influence and aid have been a constant advantage and his friendship a recurring pleasure. Our acquaintance began in 1987 with a kind letter he sent me after reading the manuscript forThe Rise and Rule of Tamerlanefor the Cambridge University Press. Since then I have profited from his scholarship, have used his two books to teach generations of students, and have called on him for uncountable letters of recommendation, always generously given. I also want to thank David for asking me to write the Mongol chapter for theNew Cambridge History of Islam, and thus attracting me into the Mongol period. It may seem odd to express my gratitude by writing an answer to David's article which is not entirely in agreement with his conclusions. I trust in the well-known openness of his mind and assume that he will take this in the spirit in which it is offered, as the continuation of many years of discussion.

The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia

1965 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 285
Author(s):  
F. Kazemzadeh ◽  
Goeffrey Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Modern History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Of Saints, Shrines, and Tractors: Untangling the Meaning of Islam in Soviet Central Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-405
Author(s):  
Paolo Sartori
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Memory Space ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Continuous Interaction ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
Soviet Central Asia

Abstract In this article I suggest that in the Soviet period Central Asians cultivated and conceptualized Islam as an episteme. They did this by reaching beyond alienating (and often ephemeral) categories offered to them by the state. I argue that the constitution of an Islamic culture was made possible, among other things, by Central Asians’ encounters with the past, most notably with what they perceived as an Islamic past. We observe the curious phenomenon of Central Asians’ continuous interaction with the Islamic historical sites that escaped the bulldozers of the Soviet campaigns of religious repression. For some, encounters with the past might be accidental. For many others, the exploration of the past represented a purposive, self-conscious, and reiterated emotional act. I show that Central Asians in the Soviet period—even if at school they were taught little about, and were usually offered a distorted vision of, the Islamic history of their region—were still able to access their past through the surviving architectural presence of Islam. Monumental sites, however, were not enough for Muslims to understand the past and use it to construct their own identity. Such artifacts acquired meaning through an interpretive framework provided by Sufi narratives about saints and their miracles. Therefore, shrines represented for Central Asia a collective memory space, i.e., a place in which the past was preserved for mobilization in the present through narrative.

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