NATIONALITY OR RELIGION?
Views of Central Asian Islam

H. B. Paksoy, D. Phil.

[Published in AACAR Bulletin (of the Association for
the Advancement of Central Asian Research) Vol. VIII,
No. 2, Fall, 1995]

Part 1 of 4

During the past two and a half millennia, Central
Asia was buffeted by several political and religious
doctrines. Although the invasion of Alexander of Macedon
(356-323 B. C.) did not leave an enduring imprint, the
event itself might be taken as an early date marker. The
later direct participation of Central Asia in world
events did, and still continues to influence the
political and cultural events in Europe as well as the
rest of Asia.1

Locus and Labels

Today, many authors use the designation "Muslim" in
their analyses when referring to the territories or
people of Central Asia. This is a relatively new
phenomenon among a long string of classifications.
Central Asia was was labelled "Tartary," or "Independent
Tartary" by romantic European cartographers and
travellers in the 15th-17th centuries, and the
inhabitants were called "Tartar."2 Perhaps Christopher
Marlowe (1564-1593), by writing fiction about Timur (d.
1405), with a stretch of imagination calling him
Tamburlane,3 is one popular source of this peccadillo.
But Marlowe's and like-minded authors' writings also
betray the inadequate information the Western world
possessed on Central Asia despite their fascination with
the area. What they did not know, the authors created.4
Only later would the Westerners begin to learn the
Central Asian languages and dialects, in order to read
what the Central Asians had written about themselves.
With the Russian encroachments (East of the Urals,
South of Siberia) after the turn of the 18th century, the
designation began to be changed to "Kirghizia" and
"Kirghiz,"5 a tribal confederation.6 After the Occupation
by tsarist armies, when tsarist bureaucrats began to
understand the language and dialects of the region in the
19th century, they commenced employing the terms
"Turkistan," "Turk" and "Sart." However, the Imperial
Russian bureaucratic designations inorodtsy (aliens) and
"Muslim" were employed with the establishment of tsarist
Military Governorships in Central Asia, especially after
1865.7 The designation Turkistan Military District has
been in continuous use since the late 19th c. Meanwhile,
portions of the population, on some of whom tsarist
citizenship was imposed, were still regarded Turk, Tatar,
Kirghiz, Sart; including those living to the West of the
Urals (Tatars, Bashkurt), and either side of the Caucasus
mountain ranges, including Azerbaijan.8 The Central
Asians living around the Altai mountain range were
assigned still other designations, despite what they
called themselves. Moreover, those designations were
changed at various junctures. As Denis Sinor points out
in his introduction to Radloff's Proben,9 in the past 100
years, "New, artificial, names have been created and it
is not always easy to establish equivalencies."10
This tendency applied to the labels of "languages"
as well: Altai was known as Kara-Tatar, later changed to
Oirot (doubly misleading, since Oirot is a Mongolian
tribal sub-division), and back to Altai; Tuvinian was
originally Soyon and Urinkhai and sometimes Shor; Khakass
was called Abakan or Abakan-Tatar; Kachin and Sagay were
jointly converted into Khakass; Uyghur first became
Taranchi, and later Modern Uyghur; Kazakh was Kirghiz. It
should be noted that in no Turk dialect is there any such
differentiation as Turkic and Turkish. This distinction
is a new introduction into the politics of nationalities,
and exists in some Western languages, as well as Russian,
with the latter referring to the Ottoman or Turkish
republican domains and the former, to other Turks.11
With the advent of the glasnost (openness) in
Moscow's thinking, the Russian chauvinism began to gain
publicity once more. In a recent article on the potential
dissolution of the USSR, a Russian nationalist included
historically non-Russian lands (the Volga-Urals, Siberia,
the Altai) in his picture of a "new Russia."12
The designation "Altai," as Ozbek and Kazakh, are
primarily geographical, tribal or confederation names,
not ethnonyms. Those appellations were mistakenly or
deliberately turned into "ethnic"or "political"
classifications by early explorers or intelligence agents
arriving in those lands ahead of the Russian armies and
bureaucrats. Early in the 8th century, the Turks
themselves provided an account of their identity,
political order and history. These were recorded on the
scores of stelea, written in their unique alphabet and
language, and erected in the region of Orkhon-Yenisey.13
This information is corroborated in earlier written
sources, in the Byzantine and Chinese chronicles, the
Turks' Western and Eastern neighbors, respectively. Most
mountains, cities, lakes, deserts, rivers in this region,
from early historical times until the Soviet period,
carried names of Turkish origin.14 They are being
restored in the late 1980s as demanded by the Central
Asians. Turkish language and its many dialect groupings
such as Orkhon, Kipchak, Uyghur, Chaghatay, constitute a
very large portion of the Altaic family. The
dialect currently spoken in the Altai region is related to
old Orkhon and Uygur. Only since the Soviet language
"reforms," especially of the 1930s, have the dialects
been asserted to be "individual and unrelated Central
Asian languages." They are mutually intelligible.
After the dissolution of the Mongol empire, the
Chinese (Manchu) asserted control over portions of the
previous eastern Mongolian territories in the 18th c.
(approx. 1757-1912), including a part of a larger Altai
region, the "Tuva" area Altaian Turks became vassals of
the Chinese. Tuva was designated a "country" for the
benefit of the tsarist government, and in 1912, like
Mongolia, gained independence from China. It became a
Russian "protectorate" in 1914.15 During 1921, the Tuva
People's Republic was created, much like the Mongolian
Republic, theoretically not part of USSR. In 1944, Tuva
People's Republic "asked" to join the Soviet
Union. The Altaian Turks eventually were incorporated into
the Russian Empire, in the Altai okrug, about the size of
France and had a total population of 3.6 million,
including many Russian settlers. administered directly by
the tsarist Cabinet. The inhabitants were counted as
inorodtsy (aliens). The number of settlers grew,
displacing the native population from their land. During
1907-09 alone, 750,000 Russian settlers came to the Altai
region, taking land that had been declared "excess."
During the 19th c., the railroad had linked Altaian towns
to Russian markets, thus strengthening the exclusive
economic links with Russia. A Bolshevik-dominated soviet
took power in the capital, Barnaul in 1920. Thus the
greater part of Altai region was incorporated into the
ever expanding USSR.
These were and are part of the Nationalities
Policies originally designed by the tsarist bureaucrats
and put into use by Lenin and expanded by Stalin. By and
large, these policies subsequently remained in force
regardless of the changes in the CPSU leadership.16
Hence, the discussion centering on one appellation may
not provide the full understanding of events in Central
Asia. Religion --specifically Islam-- has its place in
this society as in any other, in the realm of individual
conscience or in mass politics. Whether or not
religion reached the point of a universal identity for
the Central Asians, submerging all other possible
identities, has been a matter of prolonged debate. The
tsarist era historian (of German origin) W. Barthold
(1869-1930) declared that, when asked, a Central Asian
would identify himself in a three step process: 1. local
(i.e. name of village or tribal origin); 2. regional
(Bukhara, Khorasan, etc); 3. religious (Muslim).
Bennigsen reversed that order. Later observers emphasized
a crucial fact: the identity of the questioner. The
Central Asians may indeed have answered as outlined
above, but due to considerations not immediately clear to
the questioner. The Central Asian respondent did not know
the true motivation for the outsiders' curiosity. Perhaps
he was a tsarist colonial tax collector, Bolshevik
political agent or military surveyor, none of whom was
especially welcome. The Central Asian did not have to bare
their souls to those "aliens." Bennigsen, recognizing
this phenomenon and the tendency to "conceal the true
self- identification" born out of concern for
self-preservation, later called that practice (of giving
variable responses according to the perceived identity of
the questioner) "the tactical identity."17
The Soviet apparatus had other opinions concerning
the identity issue, including the designation of
"nationalities" in the smallest possible sizes. No small
"nation" could block the creation of a new breed, the
"Soviet person" (Sovetskii chelovek) devoid of past
affiliations and allegiances.18 The Central Asians' own
expressions of identity were contained in their own
dialects in their local and regional media. These
declarations are by no means a product of the Soviet
period, for they go back centuries. Only recently have
those examples reached the attention of the outside
observers.19

Arrival of Islam in Central Asia

Islam is the latest religion to reach Central
Asia. The indigenous Tengri and Shamanism,20 which
appears to have co- existed with Zoroastrianism,
prevailed even after the arrival of other religions such
as Buddhism and Manichaeanism.21 The introduction of
Islam into Central Asia went through roughly three
stages: force of arms and alms; the scholasticist
madrasa; Sufism. But the first group to come into contact
with Islam in Central Asia were not the Shamanistic or
Buddhist Turks. It was the Zoroastrian Persians.22
Within 100 years of the death of the Prophet
Muhammad, i.e. by 750, the Muslim Arabs had expanded
their political state far beyond the Arab lands.
Consequently, the Muslim community of believers, umma,
began to encompass ethnicities beyond the Arabs
themselves. The first non-Arabs to accept Islam in large
numbers were the Persians, whose empire the Arab forces
defeated in a series of battles between 637-651.
Far more numerous than the Arabs, and with a
tradition of kingship and bureaucracy going back for many
centuries, the Persians altered the character of Islam in
southwest Asia. As Richard N. Frye has put it, the influx
of Persians into the umma "broke the equation that Arab
equals Muslim." He calls this process the
"internationalization" of Islam. The large number of
Zoroastrians in the vast Sassanian bureaucracy (scribes,
tax- gatherers, translators, civil and foreign service
officials, etc) forced the Arabs eventually to allow them
special "protected" status like those of the Christians
and Jews, though the Zoroastrians were not people of any
"book." Thus administrative practice --including the
caliph's rule when it was moved to Baghdad from Damascus
in 750-- bore an unmistakable Persian stamp. The language
of bureaucracy was Persian, though the language of
religion remained Arabic.23
From here, early in the 8th century, the Islamic
forces sought to extend their sway into Transoxania, to
the Iranian (Samanid Empire centered in Bukhara)24 and
Turkish (Uygur, Karluk)25 Empires centered in their
ancient cities.26 Beyond the cities were the Chinese. The
campaigns began around 705 and led within ten years to
the defeat or subduing of the major cities and empires of
Transoxania. This was also the time when Bilge Kagan and
Kul Tigin of the Orkhon-Yenisey stelea were rebuilding
their empire.27 But the death of the leading Arab
general in Transoxania and civil wars among the Muslims
were coupled with the rise of Chinese power in Mongolia,
ended the contests for Transoxania and gave the local
rulers some respite.28
Fighting resumed by mid-century. The execution of a
Turkish ruler in Tashkent led the people of the town to
call for aid from the Arabs and perhaps also from the
Karluk Turks.29 In July 751, the Chinese forces lost to
these combined armies ending Chinese influence in Central
Asia. According to Barthold, this day was decisive in
determining that Central Asia would be Turkish rather than
Chinese. The Chinese, however, were also diverted by an
uprising in the center of their own domains and entirely
lost Central Asia.30
Thereafter, the local rulers throughout Transoxania
and the empires built there --both Persian and Turkish--
partially professed Islam, until the Mongol conquests
of Chinggiz Khan and his armies in the 13th c. The members
of the steppe societies remained beyond the Islamic
lands, and entered into the Islamic world almost
exclusively as individuals, as military bondsmen,
or mamluks. The mamluks came to constitute an elite
cavalry (later palace guard) in many Muslim states, Arab,
Persian and Turkish, for no training in a sedentary
empire could produce a horseman and warrior equal to the
steppe nomad. There are cases in which a mamluk would
seize power from a weak ruler and found his own dynasty.
Such is the case of Alptigin, founder of the Ghaznavid
dynasty (994-1186) that ruled from Ghazna in what is now
Afghanistan.31
On the Western edges of Central Asia, other tribal
confederations --such as the Karakalpak and the Khazar--
held power "in a checkerboard pattern," as Peter Golden
points out, centuries prior to the arrival of Mongols.
Some had been converted to Judaism, others to
Christianity.32 Both groups have left Turkic language
documents using a number of alphabets, the first one
being unique to themselves.33 The European missionaries
were active among them, and one such group translated an
eulogy to Jesus Christ into their language.34
By means of the mamluk phenomenon and by conversion
of Turkish empires and populations, a third major people
began, slowly at first, to enter the Islamic community
and to alter it in their turn. The language of the Turks
became the third major language of the Islamic world by
the 10-11th centuries --the language of the military and,
in sizeable number of cases, of imperial rule:35 In the
East, the Ghaznavids (dynasty r. 994- 1186) and
Karakhanids (10th-11th c.);36 in the Center,
Seljuks/Oghuz (1018-1237)37 and the Timurids (15th-16th
c.)38; in the West, the Ottomans (13th-20th c.);39 the
Golden Horde Khanates (14th-16th c.)40 to the Northwest.
The famed North African origin traveller Ibn Battuta
(1304-1368) indicates that Islam was found to be making
inroads into Crimea by the 14th century.41
"From the 11th century onwards, the Islamic world
became increasingly ruled by Turkish dynasties until
eventually, rulers of Turkish origin were to be found in
such distant places from their homeland as Algeria and
Bengal" writes C. E. Bosworth.42 It was in the 11th c.
that Kasgarli Mahmud wrote the Kitab Diwan Lugat at Turk,
to teach Turkish to non-Turks, as he explained in his
introduction.43 Ettuhfet uz zekiyye fil lugat it Turkiyye,
a mamluk period Kipchak Turkish grammar and dictionary
appears to have been written with the same intention, but
a bit later.44 It was also under the patronage of the
11th c. Turkish Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud that the Persian
poet Firdawsi compiled the surviving fragments of the old
Persian epic and "resuscitated" Persian in his
Shahnama.45
In the 13th century, the armies of Chinggiz Khan (d.
1227), his sons and generals "reinvigorated" Transoxania
(and other places from China to the Volga and eventually
Budapest) with steppe elements, both Mongol and Turk. The
Rus were but one of their vassals. The new empire was
religiously tolerant, as were its predecessors, with the
khans (rulers) often having Christian or Muslim wives.
The khans themselves adhered to their traditional
beliefs, Shamanism and, according to at least one source,
of Tengri, the monotheistic pre-Islamic religion of the
Turks. Within one century after the conquests ceased,
however, most of the successor states, except that in
China under Kublai Khan, would also embrace Islam, and
became markedly less tolerant of other religions. Although
this conversion contributed to their own political decline,
the process strengthened the Islamic and Turkish (for the
Turkish element was greater in those armies that moved
farthest west) patterns that had existed in Central Asia
before the Chinggizid conquests.46
After the Mongol irruption, the older political
entities began a long process of fusion. Timur and his
dynasty arose after that period, uniting Central Asia
under his rule. Timur, a Turk of the Barlas clan used
Chinggizid legitimacy, even taking a Mongol wife. He and
his successors ruled Central Asia and northern India from
the 14th century until the end of the Moghul dynasty of
India in the 18th century (his direct descendant Babur
1483-1530 founded the Moghul dynasty).47 The Ottomans,
whom Timur defeated, underwent serious difficulties in
reasserting their authority in their former
territories.48 Thus the three major peoples to accept
Islam were firmly established --Arabs, Persians and
Turks-- and knowledge was preserved and literature
created in all three languages.
Scholarship in its many branches --philosophy,
theology, law, medicine, astronomy and mathematics,
poetry, manuals of statecraft-- were produced over the
centuries by native Central Asian scholars who adhered to
the new religion. Individuals such as Farabi (ca.
870-950)49, and Ibn-i Sina (d.1037)50 made original
contributions and preserved knowledge of the ancient
world when libraries were destroyed in warfare, including
the Crusades.51 Others, for example, Ibn Turk (10th
c.),52 Ulugbeg (d. 1449)53, Khorezmi (10th c.)54
contributed to the expansion of knowledge, especially
mathematics. From their translations Europe was later
able to recover that knowledge.
The post-Mongol period reflected the flexible use of
languages. Babur (1483-1530) wrote his memoirs, the
celebrated Baburname55 in Turkish, while his cousin held
his court in Herat56 and produced enduring works of both
Persian and Turkish poetry. Meanwhile, Fuzuli (d. 1556)
was creating some of the best examples of poetry of the
period in Turkish.57 In the famous correspondence of 1514
between Shah Ismail (r. 1501-1524), the Turkish founder
of the Safavid dynasty of Iran (dynasty r. 1501- 1736)58,
and the Ottoman sultan Selim I (r. 1512-20), Selim wrote
in Persian, while the Ismail wrote in his native Turkish.
Selim would defeat Ismail later that year in the famous
battle of Chaldiran in 1514 thereby preserving his hold
over eastern Asia Minor.
Political legitimacy in Central Asia always required
mass communication. Perhaps the Shibaninama59 of the
early 16th c. is a good example, seeking to convince the
population that this ruler, Shiban of the Ozbeks, was
every bit a good and capable ruler as those preceded
him.60 This task, in an age before movable type, was
accomplished through the medium of literature. Poetic
anthologies, often in manuscript, were duplicated by
copyists in palace libraries or by private savants. The
contents of these collected treasures (or single poems)
were committed to memory by individuals for later oral
recitation. The "minds and hearts" campaigns were used
more often than armed troops, for the poetry proved more
effective than the sword in convincing the Central
Asians. In this manner, the rulers also wished to
preserve the history of their reigns.
The impetus for communication also came from the
people, wishing to safeguard their heritage. The Oghuz,
also called the Turkmen,61 constituted the basis of the
Seljuk empire.62 After the fall of the Seljuk empire,
the Oghuz/Turkmen groups did not disappear. Abul-Ghazi
Bahadur Khan (1603-1663), ruler of Khiva, was asked by
his Turkmen subjects (which constituted a large portion
of the population) to compile the authoritative
genealogy of their common lineage from many extant written
variants. He prepared two, under the titles Secere-i
Terakime (probably completed in 1659) and Secere-i
Turk.63
These genealogies are quite apart from the dastan
genre. The two constitute parallel series of reference
markers on the identity map. The dastans are the
principal repository of ethnic identity, history, customs
and the value systems of its owners and composers, which
commemorates their struggles for freedom.64 The Oghuz
Khan dastan, recounting the deeds and era of the
eponymous Oghuz Khan was one of the fundamental
dastans.65 Despite their non-Turkish titles, genealogies,
histories, or political tracts belonging to the Turks
were originally written in Turkish. An example of this
phenomenon is Firdaws al-Iqbal,66 written in the
Chaghatay dialect. This is is also true of Ali Shir Navai
(1441-1501) and his Muhakemat al Lugateyn.67 Quite a few
of those original Turkish works were translated into
Persian and Arabic, and came to be known in the west
from those languages rather than the original Turkish.
Thus language alone was no sure indicator of
ethnicity, for the educated came to be versed in the
major languages of the Islamic world at --Arabic, Persian
and later, Turkish. Yet, the differences among them
remained. Many pre- Islamic values of each culture
survived the transition to Islam and was preserved in
the native language of each people. Islamic period works
of various courts reflected the retention of traditional
values. Among the "mirror for princes" works68 the
earliest is the Turkish-Islamic work of statecraft, the
11th c. Kutadgu Bilig. It calls upon the king to be a
just ruler, mindful of the needs of the people, and
thereby echoes older traditions.69
Those Central Asians farthest from the border of
Islamic lands were the last to adopt Islam and retained
their traditional beliefs to the greatest degree. The
Kazakh and Kirghiz of the steppe were converted to Islam
only in the late 18th-early 19th centuries by Volga
Tatars thanks to policies of Catherine II, of
Russia (r. 1762-96), who apparently hoped that Islam
would soften those populations and make them more
receptive to the tsarist empire. She allowed the Tatars
to represent her court in Transoxania trade. On the way,
the merchants were encouraged to form settlements and
convert nomads.70 The Kazakh and Kirghiz, even today,
retain much of their pre-Islamic way of life including
mastery of the horse, drinking kumiss71 and extensive
personal independence of women so characteristic of
steppe societies.72
Thus Arabs remained Arabs; Persians, Persians; and
Turks remained Turks. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the
non-Arabs would debate the real meaning of Islam for them
and its role in their identities. The tension, even
hostility, among them remained as well, and is documented
by the slurs and stereotypes, and by frequent warfare (up
to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s) despite the ideal and
rhetoric and dreams of Islamic brotherhood and the
indivisibility of the umma.

Sufism

Sufism, one of the forces responsible for spreading
Islam, is the "mystical dimension of Islam," as the
preeminent scholar of Sufism, Annemarie Schimmel called
her classic work on the subject.73 In each of the topics
referenced in this study, the Western reader relying only
on English-language works, must be extremely cautious.
This is true also on the subject of sufism. Over the
centuries, excesses and indulgences also took place in
the name of sufism. More than a few Western writers have
described the entire complex phenomenon of Sufism on the
basis of such exaggerated events. Schimmel remains the most
reliable, and sympathetic, source available in English. Her
approach takes account of sufism as an individual
mystical quest and as the basis for organized
brotherhoods called tariqa. Because the tariqa develop
later in history than sufism itself, she addresses them
toward the end of her volume.74 One of the earlier sufis
was Ahmet Yesevi (lived and died in current day
Kazakistan), wrote his major work Hikmet in Turkish in
the 12th c.75
Meanwhile, the other key institution responsible for
the diffusion of Islam, the madrasas (scholastic
schools), declined in quality; failing to square
themselves to the changing social and economic conditions
around them.76 They had not clarified a method of
comparing and contrasting their own methods against
the state of evolving knowledge in the world. As one
result, the rote system in use sapped the vitality of
original thinking and calcified what remained.



NATIONALITY OR RELIGION?
Views of Central Asian Islam

H. B. Paksoy, D. Phil.

[Published in AACAR Bulletin (of the Association for
the Advancement of Central Asian Research) Vol. VIII,
No. 2, Fall, 1995]

Part 2 of 4


Tsarist Expansion

The tsarist state had been expanding across Asia
since the conquest of the Volga in the 1550s by Ivan IV
"the Terrible" (r. 1530-1583). In the 19th century, it
began its southward expansion toward Transoxania from
forts on the steppe. In the south, the British East India
Company had established itself at the end of the 18th
century in India, destroying independent princedoms in
the South and the last of the Moghuls in the North. In
post 17th century Central Asia, the earlier powerful land
empires that held sway had been mortally wounded by
internal and external forces-- struggles, even civil
wars, for the thrones were fought for by an overabundance
of heirs and other claimants; and the shift to maritime
trade routes drew commerce to the coasts. After the
fallof the Timurid empires in Central Asia and the later
Safavid dynasty in Iran, the area from the
Tigris-Euphrates to the Altai mountains broke into a
number of relatively small (compared to the empires that
preceded them) states. In the 18th century, the political
landscape was marred by warfare among these states. Their
economic decline continued.
This decline of the landed empires of Asia coincided
with European expansion and accumulation of colonies. The
Russians, perhaps the most expansionist of powers and
Central Asia's nearest neighbor, was drawn to Central
Asia by the lure of reputed riches in cities along the
former Silk Road and the prestige of colonial holdings.
An arch of forts built across the steppe south of Siberia
during the 18th century was one step in the process of
expansion. Catherine "the Great" not only used the Tatars
to spread Russian influence in Transoxanian, but in an
equally subtle policy, established a "Muslim Spiritual
Board" in Orenburg. Ostensibly an instrument of "Muslim
self-government," the Board operated according to strict
state regulations. Under Nicholas II (1825-1855), two
more would be established in Tbilisi for Sunni and Shi'i
populations.77
Russian expansion in Asia would be further spurred
in the 19th century by military defeats in other
theaters. The most humiliating defeat was the Crimean War
(1853-56) in which European states successfully blocked
Russian pretensions in the eastern Mediterranean,
including the tsar's claims for privileged access to the
Holy Land as "protector" of the Orthodox in Ottoman
domains (a claim first made by Catherine in the
Treaty of Kuchuk Kaynarja [1774]). The now fragmented
Central Asian states, proved more vulnerable targets than
European rivals. The tsarist military occupation of
Central Asia was done between the 1865 invasion of
Tashkent and the massacre of the Turkmen at Gok-Tepe in
1881. Millions of Central Asians (and enormous amount of
territory containing untold amount of natural resources)
were added to the empire. The Central Asians comprised
just under 20% of the population according to the 1897
Census.
In the wake of conquest, direct military rule was
imposed (except in Khiva and Bukhara, which became
protectorates for a spell78), Christian missionary
activity strove to shape education, literature and
publishing. One tsarist missionary was ingratiating
himself to the Tashkent ulema with:
You cannot understand how I feel. Islam is the most
perfect religion on this world. What makes me most
depressed is that some of the youth of Turkistan are
inclined towards Russian schools. They are studying
in such schools. This causes them to lose their
religious feelings. They are shaving their beards and
mustaches, wearing Russian style clothes, neckties and
boots. As a result, I can see that they are becoming
Christians. This makes me melancholy.

This remorseful Christian was the advisor to the
tsarist Military Governor in Tashkent, and his known
activities suggest the existence of items other than
Christianity or Islam on his operational agenda. He was
attempting to prevent the Central Asians from learning
tsarist methods of control, to forestall the time when the
Central Asians could take a more knowledgeable stand
against tsarist colonialism.79
Perhaps, the tsarist policies showed remarkable
similarity to Roman policies in Britain. During the First
century A. D., the Roman statesman and historian Tacitus
wrote:
Once they [Britons] owed obedience to kings; now
they are distracted between the warring factions of
rival chiefs. Indeed, nothing helped us more in fighting
against their very powerful nations than their
inability to cooperate. It is but seldom that two or
three states unite to repel a common danger; thus,
fighting in separate groups, all are conquered....
Not only were the nearest parts of Britain gradually
organized into a province, but a colony of veterans
also was founded. Certain domains were presented to
King Cogidumnus, who maintained his unswerving
loyalty down to our own times --an example of the long-
established Roman custom of employing even kings to
make others slaves.... 80
Agricola had to deal with people living in
isolation and ignorance, and therefore prone to
fight; and his object was to accustom them to a life of
peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He
therefore gave private encouragement and official assistance
to the building of temples, public squares, and good
houses. He praised the energetic and scolded the
slack; and competition for honour proved as effective as
compulsion. Furthermore, he educated the sons of the
chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a
preference for British ability as compared with the trained
skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of
loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it
effectively. In the same way, our national dress
came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen.
And so the population was gradually led into the
demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths, and
sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke
of such novelties as 'civilization,' when in fact they
were only a feature of their enslavement.81

Combination of cooptation by selective rewards,
demoralization by pressure and corruption by comfort was
practiced by the Russians. Later Russian peasants were
settled in Central Asia to wage demographic battle. A
strategically important railroad leading to the Far East
was begun, employing many Russian workers who reinforced
Russian presence and would be fertile ground for socialist
agitation (some 200,000 Chinese laborers also working on
this project were later armed by the Bolsheviks against
all National Liberation Movements in Central Asia). The
Russian state extracted natural resources, and
imposed cotton cultivation to compensate for the loss of
the U.S. cotton supply in the 1860s. Russia's growing
textile and munitions industries acquired new source of
cotton;82 Central Asia lost its food crops. In the 20th
century, after a century of irrigation and the pesticides
required to fulfill repeated Soviet Five Year Plans,
Central Asia would lose the Aral Sea. After the first
shock of conquest, Central Asian resistance to the
Russians began. Initially it was limited to the literary
field. Soon, armed struggle also began.83

The Great Game

The "Great Game," the Anglo-Russian competition for
land and influence across Asia, was played in two adjacent
arenas. The main arena was Turkistan-Afghanistan, where
tsarist armies moved south to annex the former as the
British tried to keep them north of the latter, in defense
of British India. Second, but in some respects more
complex, was the Caucasus-Iran threater. Caucasia was the
place where the Great Game met the Eastern Question, the
multipower struggle over the eastern Mediterranean and
the fate of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian conquest of
the Caucasus entailed two Russo-Iranian wars (1806-1813
and 1826-1828) and one Russo-Ottoman war (1828-1829).
Russian power was now closer to the Mediterranean (and
therefore Suez, a gateway to India) and to India's
neighbor Iran. Perhaps more worrying for the British,
the Russo-Iranian Treaty of Turkmanchai (1828) granted
Russia concessions in Iran: Russian goods imported into
Iran would be exempt from internal tariffs; Russian
subjects would not be subject to Iranian law; only Russia
could maintain a fleet on the Caspian. The latter
potentially enabled Russian forces to land on the
southeast Caspian shore, closer to Herat (Afghanistan), a
possible stepping-stone to an invasion of India, or so
the British feared. England thereafter strove to gain a
foothold in Iran as both she and Russia competed for
legal and economic concessions there as a means to exert
political influence.84 The Great Game also had a Far
Eastern component manifested in its advances against
China and a series of unequal treaties signed with
Chinese rulers after 1858.85
Later in the 19th century, competition for
colonies and for influence in Central Asia grew sharper.
Political deadlocks in Europe often led the Powers to
carry their rivalry to Asia or Africa. Russian gains in
the Russo-Turkish war of 1875-1877 alarmed Europe which
feared a Power imbalance, but especially Britain, always
concerned over lines of communication with India.The
resulting Congress of Berlin (1878), hosted by German
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, deprived Russia of the
fruits of her victories and also awarded the island of
Cyprus to the British, assuring British dominance in the
eastern Mediterranean. Though this arrangement by Bismarck
and British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli soothed
British nerves, it angered the Russians, seriously
damaging German-Russian relations. To the Russians,
expansion in Central Asia promised more certain returns on
Russian "investments."
During the 1890s, the British and Russians
negotiated the Russian-Afghan border, established Afghanistan
as an official "buffer" under English influence in 1907-1909
and thereby called a halt to the Great Game, at least for
the time being.86 Perhaps Britain had been pushed to the
limit of tolerance and Russia knew that in a direct
military conflict, victory could not be assured. Certainly
both Powers feared the rise of Germany, mainly in Europe
and on the seas, but also in the scramble for African
colonies and because Germany was entering the Great Game.
German interests envisioned a railroad from Berlin to
Beijing, through the length of the Ottoman Empire and
Central Asia. Due to the political and military
conditions on the ground, the project was scaled down,
and the railroad turned south towards Baghdad --remained
entirely within the Ottoman Empire.
The Great Game was not limited even to these
political, diplomatic and economic moves. European states
systematically acquired, stored and studied knowledge of
the "Orient" in the proliferating state-sponsored
Oriental Institutes.87 European Orientalists, in service
of their governments, laid the foundation for policies
like Christian proselytization in education and
publishing, but also elaborated justifications for
Europeans' "civilizing" the peoples of Central Asia.
Among these was the notion of "Pan-Turkism."88

"Pan" Movements

"Pan-Turkism" or "Pan-Turanism" was ostensibly a
movement by Turks to establish hegemony over the world, or
at least Eurasia. In fact, this "Pan" movement has no
historical ideological precedent among Turks and has been
documented to be a creation of the Westerners. Around the
time of the occupation of Tashkent by Russian troops in
1865, the doctrine called or "Pan-Turkism" appeared in a
work by Hungarian Orientalist Arminius Vambery.
The premise of this notion was that since the overwhelming
majority of the Central Asians spoke (and still speak)
dialects of Turkish, share the same historical origins
and history, "they could form a political entity
stretching from the Altai Mountains in Eastern Asia to the
Bosphorus," where the capital of the Ottoman Empire was
located.89 This pseudo-doctrine was then attributed to
the Turks themselves, and the Russians and Europeans
claimed it was a revival of Chinggiz Khan's conquests, a
threat not only to Russia, but the whole of Western
civilization.90 In this tactic, attributing aggressive
designs to the target, seemed to justify any action
against Central Asia, a new "crusade" in the name of
"self-defense."
After the Germans joined the Great Game, to
undermine British control in Central Asia, Germans
manipulated both "Pan- Turkism" and "Pan-Islamism."91 The
Pan-Islamic Movement was an anti-colonial political
movement of the late 19th century, and must be
distinguished from the "orthodox" Islamic unity of all
believers, the umma. Jamal Ad-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897)
established the movement in its political form, striving
to achieve the political unity of Muslims to fight
against colonialism and the colonial powers. It was
popular among Indian Muslims and in north Africa.
However, the movement also served the colonial powers
well. Painted as a reverse-Crusade --without necessarily
using the terminology, but through graphic allusions--
the Colonial powers could mobilize both Western public
opinion and secret international alliances to fight the
"emerging threat." The Germans, after the death of
al-Afghani, sought to make that threat as real as
possible for the British in India.92 The manipulation of
both "Pan"s would not die with the old century.

The early 20th Century
In 1905-1906 the defeat of the tsarist Russians by
the Japanese began a new chapter against the Russian
colonial rule in Central Asia. Since the tsarist military
occupation of Central Asia, one of the inflexible Russian
policies was the imposition of limits on printed material
in Central Asian dialects by Central Asian authorship.
Beginning with 1906, this long-standing ban against
Turkish dialect publications were circumvented by
the Central Asians through various ruses.93 Thereafter,
there was a veritable explosion of periodicals and
monographic publishing. According to one catalog, in one
territory, more than one thousand different books were
issued in less than ten years.94 This activity was to be
ended by the Red Army's occupation of Central Asia. Soviet
censorship took on an additional face, employing new and
revised methods.95
Before all the elected Central Asian Delegates could
reach St. Petersburg, the First Duma (1906) was abrogated
by tsar Nicholas II.96 A number of the assembled Central
Asian Delegates signed the 1906 Vyborg Manifesto,
protesting the Duma's dissolution. The meeting was
carefully planned, with a touch of cloak-and-dagger to
escape the tsarist secret police.97 The act itself marked
a new resistance to the Russians, but the basic issues
were already articulated on the pages of the bilingual
Tercuman newspaper, published by Ismail Bey Gaspirali in
Crimea.98
The Second Duma (1907) was abrogated within three
months, and the new electoral law of 1907 utterly
disenfrenchised Central Asia. They had no representatives
in the Third and the Fourth Dumas. The memory of the
occupation and resentment of the occupiers' repressive
policies were fresh in the minds of the Central Asians,
when the tsarist decree of 25 June 1916 ordered the first
non-voluntary recruitment of Central Asians into the army
during the First World War. The Central Asian reaction
marked the beginning of the Turkistan National Liberation
Movement. Russians were to call this struggle "Basmachi,"
in order to denigrate it. The resentment was enhanced by
historical memories: Central Asian empires antedated the
first mention of the word Rus in the chronicles,99 and
some had counted the Russians among their subjects.
The Turkistan National Liberation Movement was a
reaction not only to conscription, but to the tsarist
conquest itself and the policies employed by the tsarist
state in that region. Zeki Velidi Togan (1890-1970) was
for over half a century a professor of history [and
shared similar objectives with his contemporary
colleagues Czech Thomas Masaryk (1850-1937) and Ukrainian
Michael Hrushevsky (1866-1934)]. A Central Asian himself
and a principal leader of the 1916 Turkistan National
Liberation Movement, Togan described the sources and
causes of the movement as follows:
Basmachi is derived from baskinji, meaning attacker,
which was first applied to bands of brigands. During
tsarist times, these bands existed when independence was
lost and Russian domination began in Turkmenistan,
Bashkurdistan and the Crimea. Bashkurts [in Russian language
sources: "Bashkir"] called them ayyar, by the Khorasan term.
In Crimea and, borrowed from there, in Ukraine,
haydamak100 was used. Among Bashkurts such heroes as
Buranbay became famous; in Crimea, there was [a leader
named] Halim; and in Samarkand, Namaz. These did not bother
the local native population but sacked the Russians and the
Russian flour- mills, distributing their booty to the
population. In Ferghana, these elements were not extinct at
the beginning of 1916.
.... after the proliferation of cotton planting in
Ferghana the economic conditions deteriorated further. This
increased brigandage. Among the earlier Basmachi, as was the
case in Turkey, the spiritual leader of the Uzbek and
Turkmen bands was Koroglu. Basmachi of Bukhara, Samarkand,
Jizzakh and Turkmen gathered at nights to read Koroglu and
other dastans.101 What has the external appearance of
brigandage is actuality a reflection and representation of
the thoughts and spirit of a wide segment of the populace.
Akchuraoglu Yusuf Bey reminds us that during the
independence movements of the Serbians, the hoduk; the
kleft; and palikarya of the Greeks comprised half
nationalist revolutionaries and half brigands. The majority
and the most influential of the Basmachi groups founded
after 1918 did not at all follow the Koroglu tradition, but
were composed of serious village leadership and sometimes
the educated. Despite that, all were labelled Basmachi.
Consequently, in Turkistan, these groups are regarded as
partisans; more especially representing the guerilla groups
fighting against the colonial power.
Nowadays, in the Uzbek and Kazakh press, one reads
about Chinese, Algerian and Indian Basmachi.102

The Roman historian Tacitus also records the
resistance of the Britons to the Romans, in the words of the
Britons:
We [Britons] gain nothing by submission except
heavier burdens for willing shoulders. We used to have one
king at a time; now two are set over us --the governor to
wreak his fury on our life-blood; the procurator, on
our property. Whether our masters quarrel with each
other or agree together, our bondage is equally
ruinous. The governor has centurions to execute his
will; the procurator, slaves; and both of them add
insults to violence. Nothing is any longer safe from
their greed and lust. In war it is at least a braver
man who takes the spoil; as things stand with us, it
is most cowards and shirkers that seize our homes,
kidnap our children, and conscript our men --as though it
were only for our country that we would not face
death. What a mere handful of our invaders are, if we
reckon up our own numbers! Such thoughts prompted the
Germans to throw off the yoke; and they have only a river,
not the ocean, to shield them. We have country, wives,
and parents to fight for; the Romans have nothing but
greed and self-indulgence. Back they will go, as their
deified Julius [Caesar] went back, if we will but
emulate the valour of our fathers. We must not be
scared by the loss of one or two battles; success
may give an army more dash, but the greater
staying-power comes from defeat.... For ourselves, we have
already taken the most difficult step; we have begun to
plan. And in an enterprise like this there is more danger
in being caught planning than in taking the plunge.103

Comparing Roman Britons to Russian held Turkistan,
it appears that the Russians have not been as successful
as the Romans and the Central Asians were also aware of
their predicament.
One of the first actions of the Turkistan National
Liberation movement was to establish educational
societies, and prepare for the founding of universities.
Though precedent existed in US, Europe, Togan states that
the Central Asians were not acting on such Western
examples104, as the tsarist censorship kept the Western
works out of reach. The Central Asians were simply
recalling their own past from their own sources, and
wished to proceed with the educational reforms.
Even though considerable amount of those manuscript
sources were forcibly collected by the Russians and
transported out of Central Asia.105
The Turkistan Extraordinary Conference of December
1917 announced the formation of Autonomous Turkistan,
with Kokand as its capital. Bashkurdistan had declared
territorial autonomy in January of 1918; the Tatars also
took matters in hand in forming their autonomous region.
Also in spring 1918, the Azerbaijan Republic and others
came into being in the empire's former colonies. It
seemed as if the Russian yoke had ended and freedom
reigned. However, since the overthrow of the tsar
(February 1917), local soviets were established, again by
Russian settlers, railroad workers and soldiers, for
Russians to rule over the Central Asians. These soviets
were increasingly encouraged by Lenin and the Bolsheviks,
especially after the October 1917 coup.
Soviets were often headed by professional
revolutionaries arriving from Moscow. Generous promises
were made to the Central Asians, including indemnities
for all property expropriated earlier. It proved to be a
time-buying ploy. As Togan demonstrated, the soviets had
no intention of allowing the much- touted "self-rule" in
Central Asia. This became clear when the Bolshevik forces
burned Kokand on March 1918, and again massacred the
population. The struggle not only had to continue, but
became harsher. After a final series of conferences with
Lenin, Stalin and the Central Committee of the Bolshevik
Party, Togan realized that the aims of the Bolsheviks
were not different than those of their predecessors.
Organizing a secret committee, Togan set about forming
the basis of the united resistance, the leadership of
which moved south to Samarkand and environs. A new,
large- scale, coordinated stage of organizing the
Turkistan National Liberation Movement commenced.106
From 1918 into the 1920s Central Asia declared and
exercised independence. Despite the Red Army's reconquest,
several areas continued to hold out into the late 1920s
and even the 1930s. The Turkistan National Liberation
Movement was shaped directly by the attempt of the
Bolsheviks to reconquer Turkistan. It must also be seen,
however, as a culmination of a long process of Russian
intrusion into Central Asia as reflected in the "Eastern
Question" and what Kipling dubbed the "Great Game in
Asia."

The Soviet Era

Bolshevik take-over of Central Asia occurred, like
the tsarist conquest, in stages. Bolsheviks employed a
combination of internal and external armed force,
deception, promises and political pressure, as documented
by Richard Pipes.107 Brutal conquest took another form in
the Stalinist liquidations. With forced settlement of
nomads and a man-made famine, caused by collectivization,
millions of Central Asians perished. This is not unlike
the Ukrainian experience.108
Only after defeating prolonged resistance and
establishing military, political and economic control
could the Communist regime consolidate its power by
social and cultural policies, including the
anti-religious campaigns of 1920s and 1930s. They
embellished the cultural imperialism policies of the
tsarists and used a firmer hand. The Central Asians
fighting Bolsheviks in the 1920s saw in their Russian
adversaries the sons of 19th century military
expansionists and missionaries as well as the "godless"
Marxists they proclaimed themselves to be. Echoing
tsarist claims to a "civilizing" mission in Central Asia,
and the Bolsheviks said they were "liberating" colonial
peoples. In efforts to attribute an aggressive,
expansionist character to Central Asia and their
defensive unity, both imperial and Bolshevik Russians
portrayed the Central Asians as a threat. The nature of
this threat was still said to be "Pan-Turkism" and
"Pan-Islamism."
Despite its European origins and apart from its
European goals, the Pan-Turkism notion took root among
some Central Asian emigres (in Central Asia, the idea has
had few adherents), as a means to remove the Russians
from their homelands. Yet, accusations of "Pan-Turkism"
were employed freely in the Soviet Union (and outside),
not against political action, but cultural movements or
scholarly works on the common origins and language of the
Turks.109 The latter studies are irksome to Moscow, for
they refute the Russian position that the dialects are
separate and distinct languages, a claim that the regime
has exerted much effort to propagate.110 Even the
distinction Turkic and Turkish is alien to the Turks
themselves, who before the arrival of the Russians,
communicated unhindered, apparently oblivious to the fact
that they were speaking "totally separate and distinct
languages."
The most articulate and thus dangerous opponent to
Russian hegemony under the new "Communist" label was Mir
Said Sultangaliev (1880-1939?).111