RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Original Research

Harris, R. (2019), Text and Performance in the Hikmät of Yasawi, Rast Musicology Journal, 7(2), s.2152-2168. Doi:https://doi.org/10.12975/pp2152-2168.

Text and Performance in the Hikmät of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi

Rachel Harris*

Corresponding Author: *Professor of Ethnomusicology, School of Arts, SOAS, University of London, [email protected]

Abstract

In this chapter I discuss an aspect of Uyghur religious practice, which is at the time of writing under severe threat in the Uyghur homeland. I trace the patterns of circulation of sung hikmät, considering the ways that these Turkic language prayers link the Uyghur communities of Xinjiang to other parts of the Turkic speaking world through the circulation of written and published texts. I draw on recent debates on the relationship between orality and literacy, and consider how they help us to think about hikmät as they were performed in ritual contexts in Uyghur communities until very recently. I argue that oral and textual traditions of hikmät interact constantly and closely, creating "feedback loops" of transmission and performance. This perception impels a reassessment of our assumptions around projects of canonization of Central Asian performance traditions.

Keywords hikmät, yasawi, text, performance, , uyghur

The sung performance of hikmät is firmly hikmät is linked across space to traditions embedded in community life amongst maintained in Uzbek communities in the the Turkic speaking Muslim Uyghurs of Ferghana valley. All of these traditions . They play a part in rituals are believed to derive from a collection of of mourning and healing, and as part of texts which are attributed to the medieval regular spiritual practice in both men’s and Central Asian Sufi sheikh, Khoja Ahmad women’s gatherings. They are an integral Yasawi, whose shrine lies in the town of part of what practitioners term tärikät yol in southern Kazakhstan. These (the way of the tariqah or Sufi orders). texts, gathered together in collections Hikmät are maintained and transmitted named the -i Hikmät, circulated in through performance traditions which are manuscript form across Central Asia well widespread across Uyghur communities, into the twentieth century, and they have transmitted from master to apprentice more recently circulated more widely in (ustaz-shagit) in continuous chains of printed book form, released by publishers transmission through families or ritual from Istanbul and Ankara to Kazan, specialists. The Uyghur tradition of reciting Tashkent, Almaty and Ürümchi.

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In this chapter I trace the patterns of several months immobile in bed. Now she circulation of hikmät, considering the was slowly moving around the home on ways that these Turkic language prayers crutches and beginning to take back some link the Uyghur communities of Xinjiang to of the burden of household chores. She other parts of the Turkic speaking world. I was a devout woman who had completed draw on recent debates on the relationship the hajj a few years previously, but she did between orality and literacy, and consider not regularly participate in khätmä rituals. how they help us to think about hikmät On this occasion though, her sister-in-law as they are performed in ritual contexts who was a keen participant in khätmä in Uyghur communities today. I ask: to had arranged a visit from the büwi ritual what extent, and in what ways do oral specialists. It was quite normal for villagers traditions of hikmät transmission and to combine recourse to institutional performance interact with the textual medical support with religious rituals to circulation of hikmät? It has traditionally promote healing. been assumed that these oral practices were passed down through linear chains of The bulk of the khätmä ritual was devoted transmission, taught directly by teacher to to the repeated recitation of short pupil. If written texts were involved, these prayers and supplications and short ayat were assumed to be equally localized, from the Qur’an. After the completion of written by individual learners to serve as each cycle of prayers, the women blew personal aide-memories (Light 2008). I noisily into a bowl of water, “Ffsheeuw!” challenge the common assumption that This transferred the spiritual benefits and the hikmät performed in ritual contexts in healing properties of the recitation into the Uyghur communities are isolated, locally water (ayat su), which would be carefully maintained, discrete traditions. Instead, I preserved by the sick woman and sipped argue that these Uyghur traditions of ritual regularly over the coming weeks. As the performance encompass more diverse and women recited the Arabic prayers, several complex forms of circulation which bridge “came to the boil” emotionally; they wept the oral and textual spheres, and traverse noisily and one began to hyperventilate. international borders. Contemporary After around an hour the women moved Uyghur reciters of hikmät are rooted in into spoken Uyghur language prayers for the oral tradition but they also engage Hurriyät Hajim’s recovery. This section actively with circulating texts, and they of the ritual concluded with a surah from have re-appropriated the transnationally the Qur’an, and finally a melodious and circulating print tradition and re-vivified rhythmic hikmät, sung in unison by all the it within the performative context of their women present. rituals. Aghzingning nimi qashqay, amin Hikmät in a healing ritual Közum nuri öchkäy, amin One afternoon in the late summer of Tupraq ichigä köchkäy, amin 2012, twelve women including two büwi Wäyran qilur bu ölum, amin ritual specialists paid a visit a household in the Uyghur village of Yantaq in southern It will dry the saliva in your mouth Xinjiang. Their purpose was to perform a You will enter into the dust khätmä ritual for Hurriyät Hajim, who was Extinguish the light in your eyes recovering from a back operation. This was Be fearful of death her second operation, which had involved a long journey to the regional capital Qul Khoj’ Ahmäd sän oyghan, amin Ürümchi, several weeks in hospital, and Yoqtur bu sözlär yalghan, amin

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Tupraq ichidä qalghan, amin the celebrated Central Asian saint who Wäyran qilur bu ölum, amin most likely lived in the late twelfth century.2 Yasawi is popularly known Awake Khoja Ahmad, slave of God throughout Central Asia as a Sufi sheikh These words are no lies and a mystic poet, author of the Diwan-i You will be left in the dust Hikmät. His shrine lies in the town now Be fearful of death known as Turkistan in southern Kazakhstan. In the twelfth century this was the town of Saraylirini buzup, amin Yasi, the place where Yasawi is said to have Bostanlirini köchurup, amin studied under the probably mythical figure Hämimizgä barawär, amin of Sheikh Arslan . Yasawi’s shrine Kälgän ölum ämäsmu, amin has been an important religious center and pilgrimage site at least since the Palaces will be destroyed monumental mausoleum that still stands Orchards moved away today was built on the orders of Amir , It is the same for us all founder of the Timurid dynasty, at the end Death will come, will it not?1 of the fourteenth century. A smaller shrine to Arslan Baba lies outside the town. The performance of this hikmät formed a Yasawi’s biographical details are obscure great contrast to the overlapping wash of and contested in the historical record, and sound and the emotionally charged style of

Fig. 1. Transcription of a hikmät, led by Nisakhan, Yantaq Village, 2012. the preceding Arabic language recitation. even his relationship to the Yasawi Sufi The women’s voices sounded out confident order and what we know of its or and strong, easily keeping together to a spiritual genealogy is not straightforward. strong pulse. Although the lyrics reflected The Yasawi as an organized Sufi order did on the inevitability of death, and its power not survive competition from the rival to erase all earthly things, the mood was Central Asian , which restricted not one of fear and apprehension, but was Yasawi activities and later appropriated its confident and calm. Singing the hikmät legacy and subordinated it to Naqshbandi seemed to serve the purpose of bringing interests. But the Yasawi tradition has had the women back down from the excitement lasting and far-reaching influence in the of the khätmä, and providing resolution realm of popular religious practice and after the emotional upheavals they had the shaping of communal identities across experienced. Central Asia, including contemporary Xinjiang. Its broader legacy includes many Khoja Ahmad Yasawi aspects of religious practice maintained The reference in this sung text to Qul today, including styles of zikr, aspects of Khoj’Ahmad denotes Khoja Ahmad Yasawi, shrine veneration, and narratives of the

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. spread of in the region. It also had or Miskin Ahmad (Poor Ahmad). lasting influence on notions of communal identity. The Yasawi tradition’s political and The opening series of hikmät in the written social role was not expressed through a Sufi collections recount in highly formulaic order as such, but through intimate bonds fashion the life of Yasawi, listing his with local communities. In this tradition spiritual achievements in every year of his of social organization, whole villages life verse by verse up to the age of 63 (the or nomadic communities were formally age of the Prophet at his death) after which recognized as disciples of hereditary he retires to an underground existence in a sheikhs linked with the Yasawi tradition, cave. A nineteenth manuscript collection and they regarded their affiliation to of hikmät from Kashgar and one recorded such lineages as a central feature of their performance from Turpan, as well as communal solidarity and identity (DeWeese various versions published in Xinjiang, all 1996a, 1996b, 1999, 2006). Yasawi’s shrine adhere closely to this narrative structure. has historically and today served as a major According to legend, Yasawi lived on for a pilgrimage destination for Central Asian total of 125 years. In popular belief, and in Muslims. Hereditary sheikhs served as much of the relevant scholarship up to the guardians of Yasawi’s shrine and officiated late twentieth century, it was uncritically over large-scale zikr rituals there, which assumed that the Diwan was actually the continued until Stalin’s purges of the 1930s work of Yasawi (de Weese 2006; 2011). (Privratsky 2001). Pilgrimage revived in the But some hikmät are panegyrics, obviously 1990s, and Muslims from across Central written by Yasawi’s followers; there are Asia began to visit the shrine in order to anachronistic references to Yasawi’s tomb, access the saint’s miraculous powers. and scholars have now generally accepted Popular versions of the Diwan-i Hikmät in that the Diwan dates from after Yasawi’s Kazakh, Uzbek and Turkish languages were lifetime, and was likely composed by his sold at the shrine, and oral stories about disciples and later followers of the Yasawi the life and miracles of Yasawi circulated tradition. Variations in the signature, the and were retold at the shrine. style of poetic meter, the type of Turkic Chagatay language used with its extensive The Diwan-i Hikmät refers to manuscript inclusion of Persian vocabulary, and the late collections of Turkic language Sufi mystic date of surviving manuscripts, all suggest attributed to Yasawi, which have that the Diwan-i Hikmät is a compilation circulated, historically and today, in of poetry post-dating Yasawi, and probably multiple forms from Turkey to Xinjiang. The composed by multiple authors over a oldest manuscript collection is believed to substantial period of time (Light 2008: 75). date to the seventeenth century (Azmun 1994). There are significant divergences Hikmät in circulation between different extant versions of the Traditions of hikmät as a living performance Diwan-i Hikmät, in terms of content, practice have been maintained in Xinjiang number of poems, as well as aspects of to the present day and they occur in diverse wording and style. Larger collections contexts. Ethnographers in the 1990s and contain over a hundred hikmät, shorter early 2000s documented numerous groups collections include around thirty poems. performing hikmät in both women’s and They are identified with Yasawi through men’s hälqä-sohbät gatherings in rural the inclusion of his name within the poem Uyghur communities right across the in the manner of Central Asian poetry. The region (Liu 2010; Mijit 2012).3 Some of name appears in different forms, primarily these performances of hikmät, associated Qul Khoj’ Ahmad (Ahmad, Servant of God), with rituals of Sufi groups based around

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Kashgar, were absorbed into sections of early ethnographers. The Russian scholar the canonical musical repertoire of the Troitskaya described regular women’s Uyghurs, the Twelve Muqam, and recorded rituals taking place in Tashkent in the in twentieth century anthologies of Muqam 1920s: poetry (Light 2008). Hikmät texts are also found embedded within the performances The Ishan-bu, wife of an ishan, recited in a loud of dastan: sung tales of lovers, religious voice the zikr qadiri (jahariyya) accompanied by her figures and warriors from the Central Asian assistants Haifa and Otin, dressed in white. Every zikr narrative tradition, performed in bazaars ritual followed a precise structure, beginning with the and at shrines by acknowledged bards first surah of the Quran and the salavat for Ghavsuli Agzam (praise for a Muslim scholar), followed by (dastanchi) who accompany their sung zikr based on the chorzarb (« four beat »), rhythmic narratives on stringed instruments (Kadir repetition of the profession of faith, «La ilaha illa 2010: 96). In terms of their lyric structure 'llah». Then the women dance in a circle to the poems and content hikmät are also diverse. The of Mashrab and Ahmad Yasavi, before reciting from repertoire overlaps with other sung forms surah 112 to end the ritual (Troitskaya 1928, cited in such as monajat or mäshräp but there is Sultanova 2005). an identifiable core style, with a step- wise melody descending to a sustained The brief notes on style and meaning note corresponding to a single line of the contained in these quotes highlight the text, syllabic delivery and strong pulse. As similarities between practices in different the translated texts show, they typically parts of Central Asia across a period of over a feature themes of death and judgment, century. The “moral force” noted by Pasilov and are often identified within the text and Ashirov parallels my description of the by reference to the putative author, Khoja affective work done by reciting hikmät. Ahmad Yasawi. Crucially, their performance The metric formula for zikr (chorzarb or should be affectively powerful, able to four beats) noted by Troitskaya is also provoke weeping, and this affective force is found among Uyghur groups. Charzarb especially centered on the long, sustained describes the regular four beats of the notes at phrase ends, and the thrilling recited declaration of faith which begins timbre in which reciters deliver them. the zikr: LA – i – LA – ha – ILL – a’ll – AH. The oral circulation of hikmät is not confined This is followed by the duzarb (two beats): to Uyghur communities in Xinjiang. We ILL – a’ll – AH, and the gathering culminates know that hikmät are also sung as part of with the yekzarb (one beat): the repeated contemporary Sufi meetings for Uzbek men exhalation of the syllable HU (Zhou 1999). across the border in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana We have even earlier explorer’s accounts valley. Pasilov and Ashirov describe a ritual of listening to hikmät in the Uyghur region. they observed in 2004, noting that: The German explorer and archaeologist Albert von le Coq recorded a hikmät in … at the end of every zikr they say in the manner Qarakhoja town near Turpan in 1904. of a sing-song or only sing the moral-ethical verses He wrote that it probably derived from of Yassavi (d. 1162), Mashrab (d. 1711), Khazini, or the region of West , now the Mazdub Namangoni, with the purpose to give moral territory of contemporary Uzbekistan and forces to participants of the zikr (2007: 172). Kazakhstan, perhaps making the link to the shrine of Yasawi (Bellér-Hann 2000: 34). In Hikmät also form part of the contemporary fact, the patterns of circulation are more practice of Uzbek women ritual specialists complex than he imagined. (otin) in Uzbekistan’s Ferghana valley. We can trace these performance traditions Manuscript and more recently print back to the early twentieth century versions of the Diwan-i Hikmät circulate through the accounts of travelers and still more widely, part of a rich tradition

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. of hagiographical Central Asian literature it is represented as key to the journey of relating to Yasawi (De Weese 2006). the Sufi follower. In the Uyghur branch of this tradition, manuscript copies of the Diwan-i Hikmät Bir subhdäm nida käldi qulaghim were common. At least seventeen copies of Zikr et dedi zikri näytib yürdüm muna the Diwan are held in the Ürümchi archive, Ishqsizlarni kördüm ersä yolda qaldi and a nineteenth century manuscript from Ol säbäbdin dukkanin qurdum muna Kashgar resides in the archive in Lund4, One morning at dawn the Call came to my suggesting that the Diwan was one of the ears most widely circulated texts in the region, Remember God [recite zikr], it said, and I after the Qur’an. Unofficially published began to remember Him collections of hikmät still circulated in I saw those lacking in love left behind on Uyghur bazaars in the 2000s, and many the road [the Sufi path] men and women who participated in For this reason I built the shop of love khätmä or hälqä-sohbät rituals kept their own notebooks in which they transcribed On birimdä rähmät därya tolub tashti or copied versions of the hikmät that they Allah dedim shäytan mändin yiraq qashti wished to learn or remember. Hay u häwäs ma’u mänlik turmay köchti On ikimdä bu sirlarni kördüm muna The nineteenth century manuscript collected in Kashgar and preserved in the At the age of eleven, my mercy brimmed Lund archive provides a vivid example of over like the ocean pre-modern manuscript versions of the I spoke the name of Allah and Satan fled Diwan. This version adheres to the core far from me narrative structure of the Diwan-i Hikmät, Ah worldly desires, together as one wepass with its verse by verse description of the them by without pausing spiritual advances made by Yasawi in each At the age of twelve I saw these secrets … year of his life. This manuscript version is steeped in concepts and terminology drawn The emphasis on spiritual love and secret from philosophical traditions of Sufism, knowledge displayed in this text is notably and it represents the life story of Yasawi lacking in the modern print tradition of as a Sufi journey towards unity with the Yasawi. In fact, there is a yawning gulf Divine. Ishq (love or passion for the divine) between the meanings ascribed to Yasawi is a central concept in these verses, where and his poetry in the world of print and their meanings in the oral, performative tradition. Turkish scholars have shown great interest in Yasawi and the Diwan-i Hikmät since the early twentieth century, seeing in him a literary forefather of the Turks: the first known poet to have written in a Turkic language. Several versions of the Diwan derived from diverse sources from Central Asia have been published in Turkey, often with translations into modern Turkish (Azmun 1994). Much of this work fell into the Turkic nationalist framework established by the early twentieth century work of the influential scholar Mehmet Fig.2. Opening lines of a nineteenth century Fuad Köprülü. Köprülü’s life project was to manuscript copy of a hikmät.5 establish a grand narrative of the shared 2157

Text and Performance in the Hikmät of KhojaAhmadYasawi RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) cultural heritage of the , and twentieth century collections of and he situated the roots of Anatolian hikmät texts previously published in literature in these early Central Asian Turkey. The 1985 Bulaq version is based on traditions. In Köprülü’s understanding, an 1879 Ottoman publication (Muxlis 1985; the Diwan-i Hikmät was a piece of Islamic Kadir 2010: 96), while the most recent missionary literature, which promoted a Uyghur published collection (Yessewi 2012) simplified form of Sufism to suit the simple contains translations into modern Uyghur by needs of the Central Asian Turks. In this Abdureshid Jelil Qorluq of 101 hikmät from Turkic literary genealogy, Yasawi served various published versions of the Diwan-i as a precursor for the more sophisticated Hikmät from Turkey and Uzbekistan. The work of later Sufi poets such as Uyghur intellectuals who promoted Yasawi (Köprülü 2006). were much more interested in the Turkic nationalist, Jadidist vision of Yasawi The twentieth century brought a series of forged in circulation between Ankara unlikely twists in this literary history. The and Tashkent which portrayed Yasawi as figure of Yasawi also acquired symbolic literary forefather of the Turks, than they power in the writings of the Jadidists, were in the oral traditions of the tärikät yol the Central Asian Muslim modernizers of with its performative enactment of huzn the late nineteenth and early twentieth being practiced right under their noses. centuries, who depicted him as a nationalist However, this divergence of interpretation and a proletarian, and even as a socialist did not stop the followers of the tärikät yol poet. During the early Soviet period, from subsequently re-appropriating and re- Yasawi’s name became linked politically vivifying the print tradition of the Diwan-i and ideologically to the Jadidists, and Hikmät within their performative ritual when Stalin’s persecution of the Jadidists practice. began, Yasawi also fell out of favor and was officially labeled a feudal bourgeois and Text and performance an apostle of reactionary dogma. Yasawi’s If we want to understand the relationship reputation was subsequently revived in between these textual and performance post-Soviet Central Asian scholarship, but traditions of hikmät, it is instructive to in these re-readings the religious mysticism consider the wider scholarship on literacy of the tradition was downplayed in favor of and orality. Ruth Finnegan cautions a strongly nationalist and religiously diluted against the binary division of the world interpretation better fitted to the political into “oral” and “literate” societies with ideologies of the new Central Asian nations fundamentally differing social and mental (Zarcone 2000). characteristics. For Finnegan (2014), this approach is underpinned by technological Modern Uyghur scholars were also determinism, and it fails to grasp the interested in Yasawi’s hikmät. In 1984, diversity of ways in which different not long after the end of the Cultural communications technologies (speech, Revolution, an important and influential writing systems, print or digital) develop version of the Diwan-i Hikmät, edited by in different historical circumstances. More Nijat Mukhlis, appeared in the pioneering recent studies generally accept that most literary magazine Bulaq. It is remarkable literary performance traditions develop out that this edition, and all the subsequent of patterns of interaction between written published versions available in modern texts and oral performance, effectively Uyghur translation, are not based on the collapsing the opposition between these living traditions of hikmät practiced in two modes of creativity (Novetzke 2015; Uyghur communities, but on nineteenth Widdess 2015). As the early twentieth

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. century Uyghur scholar Mohammad Ali there were regular public reading of Turki Damollah explains: romances and epics at barber shops, in the bazaar, or at mäshräp gatherings, and When reading, the greatest thing is the fact that one religious Arab and Persian texts were read has to put one’s heart and soul into it and read with daily at mosques. At the shrines of the Sufi all one’s heart. If one does it only with one’s eyes, little saints, pilgrims listened to readings and comes out of it. Many times, when someone’s mind is purchased copies of tazkirah manuscripts somewhere else but his eyes are with the script, other that recounted the life of the saint. In words emerge from his mouth (Scharlipp 1998: 110- 112). many cases, the oral performance of these texts was highly musical.6 Thum’s Literacy in nineteenth century Xinjiang account builds up a picture of texts whose – or Altishahr as it is more appropriately primary purpose was to be activated in termed in that period – was more common performative contexts and which were than the views of contemporary European thoroughly embedded in social relations. travelers, and the prevalent narratives of the liberation of the region by the “For this reason I entered the cave” CCP might suggest (Bellér-Hann 2008). In summer 2009, another group of women Community schools (maktab) supported gathered in a family home in a small town by charity, shrines and mosques were near Turpan in eastern Xinjiang. They were widespread across the region, and they led a woman named Hädichäm, who was taught their pupils to read Qur’anic given the title Khälpät (from the Arabic Arabic as well as Persian and East Turki honorific title Khalifa). She sat on a (the precursor of modern Uyghur) texts. spacious raised brick bed in the courtyard Madrassahs provided higher learning in the of the house, flanked by a small group of form of Arabic-based Islamic education. her followers. They were dressed formally Mohammad Ali Damollah’s comments in white headscarves and waistcoats over immediately suggest two important things their dresses in the manner of older village about reading (oqumaq) in the Uyghur women across the region. A small table was tradition: a deep-rooted respect for placed on the bed before them, covered literacy, and an assumption that reading with a tablecloth and laden with bowls generally meant reading aloud. Both of of fresh and dried fruit, nuts, and tea, these understandings are linked broadly to and sangza: crisp, fried strands of dough Islamic norms, and they are confirmed in arranged in spirals and piled high on a the Uyghur tradition of hikmät. Similarly, platter. As always, these ritual practices when discussing their rituals, the village intersect with forms of hospitality. women I worked with always spoke of Hädichäm Khälpät recited in a low-pitched, “reading” hikmät (hikmät oquymiz) in the nasal style with a forceful, ringing delivery. same way that they always read the Qur’an She established an insistent rhythm, rocking (Qur’an oquymiz) regardless of whether slightly forwards and backwards, and an actual text is present or whether the slapping her knee to underline the regular reading is sounded or silent; there is no duple beat. The other women began to rock separation in Uyghur, as there is in English, in time with her. She sang a repeated five- between “reading” and “reciting.” line melody with a regular six measures per line, which descended consistently to the Rian Thum (2014) describes numerous same sustained repeated note. Stylistically contexts for the performance of the her performance was clearly related to the written word in early twentieth century hikmät recited by the women in Yantaq Altishahr. Professional dastanchi story- Village. After the first verse, the women tellers recited poetry from written texts, seated beside her began to recite the zikr.

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As the song unfolded, their chant became are quite different. The Sufi mysticism gradually louder, a deep, noisy inhaling and of the nineteenth century text has been exhaling: “ah - HUM - ah - - ah - HUM - ah replaced by an emphasis on daily prayer - .” They continued to rock back and forth, and the everyday duties of a pious Muslim. but maintained a relatively restrained Hädichäm Khälpät’s performance is closely decorum, conscious of the camera. related to recent published collections of hikmät. She recites: Hädichäm Khälpät’s performance has a surprisingly close relationship with the Ghar ichidä keche-kunduz ta’ät qildim textual tradition of the Diwan-i Hikmät. Neqli namaz oqup uni adät qildim She began her hikmät, singing: Härnä japa chäksä anga taqät qildim Shu säwäbtin häqtin qorqup ghargha kirdim Äya dostlar häsbi halim bayan äyläy In the cave I worshipped night and day Shu säwäbtin häqtin qorqup ghargha kirdim7 I recited my daily prayers regularly Chin därtlikte bu sözlärni bayan äyläy If I felt weary I persevered Shu säwäbtin häqtin qorqup ghargha kirdim Thus I withdrew into the cave Oh friends I will tell you about my situation Thus I withdrew into the cave This oral rendition is a very close match With painfilled words I tell my story with a 2012 collection which contains Thus I withdrew into the cave translations into modern Uyghur of hikmät from versions of the Diwan-i The core, repeated line of this verse, “For Hikmät previously published in Turkey and this reason I hid myself from others and Uzbekistan (Yessewi 2012): entered the cave” (Shu säwäbtin häqtin

Fig. 3. Transcription of a hikmätrecited by Hädichäm near Turpan 2009. qorqup ghargha kirdim) is, as we have Ghar ichidä keche-kunduz ta’ät qildim seen, an important recurring motif in the Tätäwwu namaz oqup uni adät qildim Diwan-i Hikmät denoting a key trope in Härnä japa chäksä anga taqät qildim the story of Yasawi’s life: his retreat from Ol säwäbtin häqtin qorqup ghargha kirdim the world at the age of 63. This broad structuring theme is shared with the Hädichäm’s language is virtually identical early manuscript version discussed above, with the print version, varying in some but the religious sensibilities of this text sections only where substitutes everyday

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. vocabulary for the more literary language Closer to the border a gleaming new road was of the published version, and adds refrains under construction, a project financed and (hu-Allah) to fit the rhythm of the zikr. implemented by the Chinese government. It seems evident that she has based her We pass by a newly built railway station, performance on the 2012 published text. As again constructed with Chinese expertise I noted above, this published text deviates and money, anticipating greater cross- considerably from the nineteenth century border economic activity impelled by manuscript version from Kashgar which China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This is so strongly imbued with Sufi ideals. In economic stimulus was not overtly visible contrast, the 2012 print version is almost in Zharkent, which was still an old-style completely cleansed of esoteric themes, Central Asian town. The streets were laid and portrays Yasawi’s spiritual journey out in a grid pattern; most of the houses principally in terms of adopting the regular were single story with sloping corrugated practice of a pious lifestyle. This shift in iron roofs and thick whitewashed walls, emphasis suggests its debt to the twentieth privately built and surrounded by small century literary history of Yasawi. It is plots of land where people kept hens, fascinating that Hädichäm Khälpät has sheep and noisy guard dogs. Cows and directly adapted the cleansed print version donkeys wandered untended down the – co-opting the authority of the printed town streets. The majority of the cars on word – and re-inserted it back into a Sufi- the road were the tiny, rickety Soviet-era inflected zikr ritual. It demonstrates that Lada, some of them carrying astonishing there is no simple opposition between loads of everything from cut hay and tradition and modernity; these supposedly melons to furniture. opposing poles are always in close conversation with each other, enabled by Just outside Zharkent town lay Pänjim, complex circuits of transmission involving a former Soviet kolkhoz collective farm manuscripts, print and performance. (like the communes across the border in Xinjiang), now a “pure” (sap, mono- Hikmät in the Uyghur diaspora ethnic) Uyghur village. It boasted a small The road from Almaty stretches out mosque that broadcast the azan five times eastwards in a straight line all the way to daily, and two large wedding halls – one for the border town of Zharkent. In the Soviet summer weddings, one for winter – which period it was known by the Russian name of seated up to 250 people. In this village Panfilov, and Uyghurs name it Yärkänd using lived a remarkable group of some twenty the Uyghur pronunciation. Long mountain elderly Uyghur haji women. Most of them ranges, branches of the Heaven Mountains, had arrived in Kazakhstan as children in the shadow the road on both sides. When we late 1950s during China’s communization took this road in summer 2015 there were drive, fleeing persecution under the “four frequent police speed checks close to olds” campaign. Almaty, but regulation faded as we headed further east towards the Xinjiang border Since the opening of the border in the and our driver accelerated to 130km/hour 1990s and the increase in trade between over the cracked and pitted road surface. China and Kazakhstan many Uyghur As the gravel flew it became clear why families in this area had profited from so many cars on the road had cracked the opportunities for trade and haulage. windscreens. At regular intervals I spotted The area had seen a corresponding rise in small gravestones bearing the image of a religious piety. These elderly women living young man. It took me a while to link the in a remote village accessed by a single- driving practices to the gravestones. lane road deeply pitted by potholes, many

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Text and Performance in the Hikmät of KhojaAhmadYasawi RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) of them walking with some difficulty, were from the verses of the Diwan-i Hikmät, not one-off haji; they had all been on the although it included the signature Qul hajj at least three times. As I sat with Khoj’Ahmad. Musically, with the low pitch, them and asked about their pilgrimage strong pulse, and descending melody, with experiences they shouted competitively extended melisma at end of the third line across the room, “I’ve been four times!” of each verse, it was clearly related to the “Me too!” “I’ve been six times!” They met group sung style of hikmät led by Nisakhan weekly, taking turns to host the gathering, in Yantaq Village, which I described above. to perform a kind of neo-khätmä. Like the women’s groups in Xinjiang they wore white Beshingdiki nimä digändä clothing and gathered around a tablecloth Taji döwlät digäymän heavily laden with food, but theirs was Qolungdiki nimä digändä a re-invention of the ritual. The familiar Äziz Muhämmät digäymän (häq Allah) sequence of orally transmitted repeated What is in your head, they say short Arabic prayers had been replaced The kingdom of glory, I say with reading from a published text: the What is in your hand, they say Uyghur translation of the Qur’an. Gone was Beloved , I say the musicality and emotional force of the khätmä as I had experienced it in Yantaq Aghzingdä nimä digändä Village, replaced by a dutiful engagement Kelimä shahadet digäymän with the textual content of the Qur’an. It Qolungdiki nimä digändä was a striking change. Heyri sahawät digäymän (äy Allah)

What is in your mouth, they say After reading the translated Qur’an, and Surah Fatiha and the Shahadah, I say some personal prayers offered to the host What is in your hand, they say of that week’s gathering, Adiläm Hajim led Charity I say.8 the group singing a hikmät. This text was rather childlike – indeed one could imagine The group’s leader Adiläm Hajim unusually it being taught to young children – and its for Uyghurs in Kazakhstan had retained content and lyric structure was remote the ability to read and write Uyghur in

Fig. 4. Uyghur women in Pänjim village, Kazakhstan, pause for refreshments in the middle of their neo-khätmä ritual, photo by the author.

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. the Arabic script as well as the Russian Oqur bolsa bu Qur’an Cyrillic. When we asked her how she came to participate in khätmä rituals and recite Poor foolish Khoja Ahmed hikmät she gave a familiar litany of loss know that foolishperson and grief: the persecution of her family in have no other pleasure Beside reading the Qur’an the 1950s, the disruption and hardships of migration, the deaths of loved ones, and Here again, the name of Qul Khoja Ahmad personal illness. Since the 1990s she had makes a slightly incongruous appearance – gone back to visit Ghulja several times, a passing nod to forgotten Sufi traditions in and while there she sought out women’s this otherwise fully revivalist performance. ritual gatherings. However, the zikr that This kind of close engagement with the Adiläm had adopted was a modified recited Qur’an within the Uyghur Islamic version, one that had been cleansed of revival, is something I will explore more excessive emotion: neither ishq nor huzn fully in the next chapter. were manifest in their gatherings. Adiläm explained: During her visits to Ghulja, Adiläm also collected hikmät texts. She brought to the We used to recite Allah-hu. We would crawl on the gathering a lined schoolchild’s notebook, floor and embrace and comfort each other and wish with a series of prayers and hikmät neatly that the other’s wishes would come true, but now we’ve stopped doing these things. We said to each copied in the Uyghur Arabic script. “We other if people see us it might be embarrassing. We read hikmät; we copy them from other were afraid. When you fully engage in zikr you can’t people’s books, and we learn and recite control yourself. them,” she said. Just as we found in Hädichäm Khälpät’s performance in Turpan, Adiläm’s words suggest the influence of one hikmät copied in Adiläm’s book was an reformist Islam on popular attitudes to almost identical match to the print version religious practice in this area. They had of the Diwan recently published in Xinjiang led this group of women to reject the (Yessewi 2012: no.63). Just a few subtle embodied, emotionally saturated styles of changes suggested that Adiläm had not religious practice that Adiläm remembered copied it directly from the published text, from her youth, and to replace them and that this was a text which had been with practices that emphasized textual adapted for oral performance: the addition meanings and emotional restraint. Even in of the name of Allah at line endings, a few the lyrics of the hikmät they recited, the letters altered. emphasis was fully on the centrality of reading the Qur’an in religious practice:

Qur’an tängrim hädisi Uchmaq bolur rolchisi Isra’ät otäp kuchisi Chiraq bolur bu Qur’an

The Qur’an is God’s story It is a role model for all Its followers offer prayers The Qur’an is a light

Qul Khoj’ Ahmad ghapilmän Ghapil kishini tonurmän Mundin artuq bähtim yoq Fig. 5. Page from Adiläm’s notebook, containing the lyrics of a hikmät. 2163

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Sähärlärdä qopup yighlap du’a qilsam Allah (Kadir 2010; Harris 2017). However, the Dostlar khojam meni bändäm digäymu Allah process of oral transmission and adapting Yash ornigha qanlar tukup du’a qilsam Allah these lyrics to performance meant that Dostlar khojam meni bändäm digäymu Allah there was sometimes a considerable gap between published and sung versions of I rise at dawn and pray in tears these texts. Light highlights the anxieties The Khoja is my companion Weeping tears of blood I pray of those twentieth century Uyghur scholars The Khoja is my companion as they considered the international scholarly reception of the Muqam texts This correspondence between Adiläm’s they intended to publish. How could they version and the published version offers reveal to the world that the poetic texts more evidence of the close relationship as sung in their classical Uyghur tradition between local traditions of copying and deviated from published versions based on performance, and the textual tradition other strands of the Central Asian literary that has travelled from Central Asia to tradition? Turkey and back. It seems evident that Adiläm has copied this hikmät from the The dominant perspective among institutionally notebook of another reciter in Ghulja who trained ‘experts’ was that illiterate ‘folk’ performers has taken a published text and adapted had preserved the muqam tradition, but it was time to take it off their hands and return it to the entire it for performance. Here again we find Uyghur people, to whom it rightfully belonged. In circulation and cross-fertilization between the process the distortions introduced by the folk the textual and oral traditions, and we performers should be set right. The muqam tradition find the influence of revivalist approaches was thus being treated much like a manuscript to religious practice: the emphasis on tradition: scholars thought of it as fragile and easily everyday pious practices of daily prayer lost through poor copying and limited distribution. and fasting blending seamlessly with Thus it was in need of editing to correct flaws and references to the companionship of the then publication of an authoritative edition to prevent saint. further losses. (Light 2008: 225) As I discussed at the beginning of this Circuits of transmission chapter, this notion of a “correct” or It is interesting to consider this kind of “authentic” version of an early historical movement from published texts back text is widely acknowledged to be into locally maintained traditions of deeply problematic. Much of the poetry ritual performance in the light of existing associated with the Twelve Muqam literature on the twentieth century tradition is attributed to poets for whom canonization of Uyghur literary and musical we have no single authoritative source for traditions (Harris 2008; Light 2008). their writing. In the texts attributed to Nathan Light writes extensively of the Yasawi, as we have seen, multiple versions work of twentieth century Uyghur scholars circulate transnationally and they respond who edited and revised the lyrics used to the social and political climate in which by folk performers of the Twelve Muqam, they were adapted and performed. The both for publication and for use in stage historical evidence suggests that it is performances by the new professional highly unlikely that their putative author troupes. These lyrics were drawn from the had anything to do with them other than Central Asian poetic tradition of writers serve as inspiration for their creation, and including Ali Shir Nawa’i and Baba Rahim indeed for their ongoing performance and Mashrab: a tradition soaked in Sufi imagery re-creation. and ideals, and one that frequently intersects with ritual performance practices What can the kind of ethnographic

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RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) Harris, R. research I have described contribute to in Kazakhstan and Hädichäm in Turpan our understanding of the ways in which suggest, modern print versions of the the oral circulation of hikmät interacts texts are also fully integrated into these with the textual circulation of the Diwan-i processes. Aynur Kadir provides evidence of Hikmät? Nathan Light argues that the oral the ways that another print publication has tradition of hikmät differs profoundly from provided an important interface between the written tradition ascribed to Yasawi. the printed and oral circulation of hikmät For him, the hikmät now found in the in the Uyghur tradition. She describes a verses of the Muqam were more likely part fieldwork encounter with an elderly man of a discrete oral tradition maintained by in Turpan who claimed to have followed Sufi groups in Kashgar, and quite unrelated the tärikät yol for fifty years. He told her to the published textual tradition of the that his strongest desire was to meet Nijat Diwan-i Hikmät (Light 2008: 80). Other Mukhlis, the man who had published the researchers diverge from Light’s assessment Diwan-i Hikmät in Bulaq magazine in 1984, of a gulf between oral and text traditions. a publication which had provided him with Drawing on her extensive field research a rich resource for his own ritual practice around the region, Uyghur ethnographer (Kadir 2010: 98). Aynur Kadir proposes a much more flexible Yasawi-based tradition. Hikmät occupy Many hikmätchi (reciters of hikmät) such a large percentage of the Uyghur crave “correct” versions of practice to tradition of recited poetry, she argues, strengthen their performance. They regard obviously they cannot all be attributed to the versions enshrined in the medium of one author. The early tradition established print as possessing greater authority, and by followers of Yasawi formed the basis of a therefore as having greater potential to poetic style that continues to be extended release spiritual power in performance. and enriched by numerous anonymous Their appropriation of the published poets whose creative practice has been versions is enabled and facilitated by the subsumed under the name of Yasawi (Kadir living tradition of musical performance, 2010: 97). which provides a framework into which performers can slot new texts, as long This view of a more diverse and flexible as these texts lie within the stylistic tradition is consistent with Thum’s (2014) boundaries of the tradition in terms of discussion of “community authorship” their poetic form and structure. Instead and “textual drift” in the Uyghur tazkirah of thinking of separate oral and written manuscript tradition. Thum suggests traditions then, we should recognize that through processes of copying – as the existence of more diverse, complex copyists over a period of centuries edited, forms of circulation, crisscrossing the abbreviated, corrected names, misread, oral and textual spheres, and crossing and added new praise sections into their international borders. Hikmät performers texts – a great diversity of versions of the refer to published versions as well as tazkirah manuscripts accumulated. This the handwritten notebooks of hikmät process rendered these texts flexible, and they directly inherit, and they adapt the able to change over time to reflect the published texts to the musical framework changing needs of a community of readers. that they have learned orally. I argue that in order to fully understand these historical processes of “textual The possibility of this kind of movement drift” it is crucial to take into account the from published texts back into complex interactions between text and locally maintained traditions of ritual performance. As the examples of Adiläm performance suggests that we need to

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Text and Performance in the Hikmät of KhojaAhmadYasawi RAST MUSICOLOGY JOURNAL | Special Issue 2019, 7(2) revise our assessments of the process of Khojagan: Rethinking The Links Between canonization in Uyghur literary and musical The Yasavi And Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions’, traditions. It is pleasing to think that this Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2, pp. 180-207. work of canonization – far from being a final, authoritative sealing of tradition, ___ (1999), ‘The Politics of Sacred Lineages may in fact be merely one more link in in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent the chain of oral transmission. We may Groups Linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi more productively conceive of “feedback in Shrine Documents and Genealogical loops” (Novak 2013), in which traditions of Charters’, International Journal of Middle manuscript copying and oral performance East Studies, 31/4, pp. 507-530. intersect and feed into each other in circuits of transmission. The advent of print ___ ‘Foreword’, in Koprulu, Mehmed Fuad, versions fits seamlessly into these circuits, Early Mystics in Turkish Literature, trans. not in any way disrupting the cycles of Gary Leiser & Robert Dankoff (Abingdon & movement between text and performance, New York: Routledge, 2006). but instead enabling faster moving and more far flung loops of feedback, as Turkish ___ ‘Ahmad Yasavi and the Divan-i Hikmat scholars in Ankara rework manuscripts in Soviet Scholarship’, in Michael Kemper sourced in Turkistan, Uyghur scholars in & Stephan Conermann (eds.) The Heritage Ürümchi translate these texts from the of Soviet Oriental Studies (Abingdon & New eighteenth century Turki into modern York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 262-290. Uyghur, and ritual specialists in Turpan and Ghulja adapt these translations into Finnegan, Ruth, Literacy and Orality: Studies a form that fits the musical structure of in the Technologies of Communication, 2nd their performance tradition. Texts that are edition (Oxford: Callender Press, 2014). meant by nationalist scholars to “fix and ossify” can in fact be revivified in the hands Harris, Rachel, 'Theory and Practice in of performers who retain the framework Contemporary Central Asian Maqām', in of the performance tradition, and re- Theory And Practice In The Music Of The animated with the affective power of ritual Islamic World: Essays for Owen Wright performance. Thus revised and enriched, (Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. and enshrined in a reciter’s notebook, the 215-235. hikmät is then set in motion in a new cycle of transmission. Kadir, Aynur (2010), ‘Ehmed Yessewiy she’irlirining Uyghur folklorida ishlitilishi’, References Bulaq 2010/6, pp. 93-102.

Bellér-Hann, Ildikó, The Written and the Light, Nathan, Intimate Heritage: Creating Spoken: Literacy and Oral Transmission Uyghur Muqam Song in Xinjiang (Berlin: Lit among the Uyghur (Berlin & Halle: ANOR, Verlag, 2008). 2000). Liu Xiangchen (dir.), Ashiq: The Last DeWeese, Devin (1996a), ‘Yasavī "Šayḫs" In Troubadour (Xinjiang Normal University, The Timurid Era: Notes on the social and 2010; 128min). political role of communal Sufi affiliations in the 14th and 15th centuries’, Oriente Muxlis, Nijat (1985) ‘Diwani Hikmet: Ehmet Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 15(76), 2/I, Yessewiy’, Bulaq, 16, pp. 1-35. pp. 173-188. Nelson, Kristina, The Art of Reciting the ___ (1996b), ‘The Masha'ikh-I Turk And The

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Qur’an (Cairo: American University in Cairo Open Book Publishers, 2015), pp. 231-245. Press, 2001). Yessewi, Ehmed, Diwan Hikmet, trans. Abdureshid Jelil Qorluq (Beijing: Milletler Novak, David, Japanoise: Music at the Neshriyati, 2012). Edge of Circulation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). Zhou Ji, Zhongguo Xinjiang Weiwu’erzu Yisilanjiao Liyi Yinyue (Taibei: Xinwenfeng Novetzke, Christian Lee, ‘Note to Self: What chuban gongsi, 1999). Marathi Kirtankars’ notebooks suggest about literacy, performance, and the travelling Endnotes performer in pre-colonial Maharashtra’, 1. From a hikmät sung as part of a in Francesca Orsini and Katherine Butler khätmä, Yantaq village, August 2012. Schofield (eds.) Tellings and Texts: Music, Singing led by Nisakhan. Recorded by Literature and Performance in North India Rachel Harris. Translated by Rachel (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2015), Harris and Aziz Isa. pp. 169-184. 2. There is no historical evidence to support the popularly cited date of Pasilov B. & A. Ashirov (2007) ‘Revival of his death (1166-7). Devin deWeese Sufi Traditions in Modern Central Asia: suggests that the historical Yasawi “Jahri Zikr” and its Ethnological Features’, most likely lived a half century later. Oriente Moderno, Nuova Serie, 87/1, pp. 3. We have a comprehensive picture of 163-175. performance style through the work of the musicologist Zhou Ji who recorded Privratsky, Bruce G., Muslim Turkistan: and transcribed performances of Kazak Religion and Collective Memory hikmät from dozens of locations around (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001). Xinjiang (Zhou 1999). 4. Gunnar Jarring Collection of Scharlipp, Wolfgang Ekkehard (1998), ‘Two Manuscripts from Eastern Turkestan Eastern Turki texts about reading and in the Lund Library, https://www. writing’, , 2/1, pp. 109- alvin-portal.org/(accessed 20 February 125. 2019). 5. Manuscriptcollected by Gunnar Jarring, Sultanova, Razia, From to c. 1930, believed to be of nineteenth Sufism: Women and Islam in Central Asian century origin, source unknown. Lund culture (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). Library (folio 7r),https://www.alvin- portal.org (accessed 20/02/2019). I Thum, Rian, The Sacred Routes of Uyghur am grateful to Iskandar Ding for his History (Cambridge, Massachusetts: generous help with transliterating and Harvard University Press, 2014). translating these verses. 6. See recordings made by Rahile Dawut Widdess, Richard (2014), 'Orality, Writing and her team at shrine festivals in and Music in South Asia.' Musicology Today, southern Xinjiang, http://www. 19, pp.1-17. soundislamchina.org/?p=1521. 7. Verse 1, Recited by Hädichäm. ___, ‘Text, Orality, and Performance in Recorded near Turpan 2009. A section Newar Devotional Music’, in Francesca of the recording can be accessed Orsini and Katherine Butler Schofield (eds.) here: http://www.soundislamchina. Tellings and Texts: Music, Literature and org/?p=1411. For comparison with a Performance in North India (Cambridge: printed text, seeYessewi 2012: 53.

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8. Hikmät led by Adiläm Hajim, recorded by Rachel Harris, Pänjim village, Kazakhstan, August 2015.

Uygur müzikal ve edebi yapılarında Hoca Ahmed Yesevi hikmeti

Bu bölümde kendi vatanlarında ağır tehdit altında gerçekleşen Uygur dini pratiğinin bir yönü tartışılmaktadır. Sincan Uygur topluluklarını, Türk dilinde yazılmış ve yayınlanmış dualar vasıtasıyla dünyanın Türkçe konuşan diğer bölgelerine bağlayan ilahilerde ki hikmet dolaşım desenleri incelenmektedir. Şifahi iletişim ve okuryazarlık arasındaki ilişkiye dair son tartışmalar ele alınmakta, Uygur topluluklarındaki dini tören şeklinde gerçekleştirilen uygulamaların hikmet hakkında düşünmemize nasıl yardımcı oldukları ortaya konulmaktadır. Şifahi ve metinsel hikmet geleneklerinin aktarım ve icra geri bildirim döngüleri oluşturmak suretiyle sürekli ve yakından nasıl etkileşime girdiği tartışılmaktadır. Bu algı, Orta Asya performans geleneklerini kutsallaştırma yaklaşımları hakkındaki varsayımlarımızı yeniden değerlendirmemize neden olacaktır.

Anahtar kelimeler hikmet, ahmet yesevi, metin, performans, tasavvuf, uygur

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