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470 Jeff Eden, Paolo Sartori, and Devin Deweese, Eds. This Volume 470 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus Jeff Eden, Paolo Sartori, and Devin DeWeese, eds., Beyond Modernism: Rethink- ing Islam in Russia, Central Asia and Western China (19th–20th Centuries). Special Issue of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59/1–2 (2016). This volume is a first-rate product of academic insight into the re-evaluation of modernity in Central Eurasia. The theme of the work is Jadidism, which K. Hitchins defines broadly in the Encyclopaedia Iranica as “a movement of reform among Muslim intellectuals in Central Asia … from the first years of the 20th century to the 1920s,” though others use the term more broadly to include its clear antecedents in the intellectual Muslim elites of the urban cen- ters of late-nineteenth-century Islam in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, and the regional capital of the CrimeanTatars in the Russian Empire, Bakhchisaray.The contrib- utors do not simply challenge Jadidism, but satisfyingly dissect, deconstruct, and then repurpose it for use outside the hallowed sphere of intellectual his- tory. The contributors generally succeed in their efforts to speak cogently and directly to the problems of studying modernity in a field so often labeled Euro- centric. Rather than dismissing the term outright, the authors wholly defang the sometimes-poisonous rhetoric that separates historians arbitrarily divided by questions of competence and privilege over whom, exactly, has the right and ability to speak for the long-dead Jadidists of the nineteenth and early twenti- eth centuries. The essay by Paolo Sartori (“Ijtihād in Bukhara: Central Asian Jadidism and Local Genealogies of Cultural Change,” pp. 193–236) offers a representa- tive sample of the quality of the overall work. Like its cohort, it is expertly argued and accompanied by archival and pertinent secondary material, with a clear eye on its potential controversies. The swiftly-shifting landscapes of Bukhara during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and into the twentieth centuries and Bukhara’s role as the crucible for a dynamic cast of educated, Muslim elites offers Sartori the setting for his challenge to traditional descriptions of Cen- tral Asian Jadids. Using a collection of documents from the central archives of the Republic of Uzbekistan and lesser-known Jadidist publications, Sar- tori “explores the cultural environment in which [Jadid] texts were produced,” specifically challenging which elements of Jadidism were unprecedented and which “manifestations of cultural change” should be associated with them (229). In short, Sartori argues against Euro- or even Tatar-centrism and for an indigenous character to Central Asian Jadidism. The argument also bears unex- pected fruit for political theorists, including descriptions of “the rotation of legists” and politically-active members of the local elites by the early mod- ern Manghits, foreshadowing the similar practice of shifting bureaucrats and administrators in the Uzbek SSR and Uzbekistan today. Sartori also suggests Canadian-American Slavic Studies © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/22102396-05204004 Book Reviews/Comptes rendus 471 that current Jadid scholarship owes many unfortunate debts to the decades of Soviet historiography predating it, portraying Jadidism in classist, modernist, or progressive terms. These studies struggle to appropriately handle the com- plicated and multifaceted character of Muslim clergy and scholars of the era while oversimplifying “traditional” society in service to a long-defunct Soviet strawman. Sartori also notes the problem of defining Jadidism as an epiphenomenon of colonialism, which misleads its observers into thinking that the most rel- evant “cultural realignments” in Central Asia’s recent history were a result of Russian conquest. The rootedness of these traditions in the Muslim communi- ties untethered to the Soviet state explains why Sartori can find manuscript material in private hands throughout the region; indeed, this is a common occurrence for researchers in the region, speaking from personal experience. The same characteristics of archival material, rarely-mentioned publica- tions, and astute rebuttal of much of recent Jadidist scholarship abound in the other essays, each impressive in their focus. Eren Tasar’s essay, “The Offi- cial Madrasas of Soviet Uzbekistan,” (265–302) turns away from manuscripts and Jadidist publications and towards an inspection of Soviet-era institutions and the increasing role of Saudi-funded Salafism in the USSR from the 1960s onward. Salafism typically refers to the revival within Sunni Islam, roughly contemporary with Jadidism, though seemingly running counter to it; namely, adherents of Salafism advocate for a return to the world of the al-salaf al- ṣāliḥ (“the pious predecessors”), meaning the early generations of Islam. Tasar illustrates how the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM) responded to this globalizing influence, even as it negotiated and compromised with Salafist teachings. SADUM gave the Soviet leadership an unprecedented control over Central Asian Muslims, reopening mosques and religious colleges (madrasas) throughout the Soviet Union and giving the government direct observation of and tacit control over the certi- fication of new Muslim leadership, all initially in response to the pressures of the Axis occupation of the western portions of the Soviet Union during WWII. However, with these compromises between SADUM and Salafist Islam, especially after WWII, the most popularly understood aspects of Salafism were maintained: scripturalist, puritanical orientations set in direct opposition to the traditional Islamic education and practices in Central Asia. “The study of Turkic and Persian poetry … vanished in favor of the science of Hadith, Qurʾanic recitation, and Modern Standard Arabic,” not simply because of Saudi influ- ence, but rather as the result of a “common ground shared by communism, Jadidism, and Salafism” (268). The fertile common ground bore fruit for the foreign policy actors in the Soviet Union, eager to speak to Muslims outside Canadian-American Slavic Studies 52 (2018) 457–493.
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