Explorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19Th- Early 20Th Century) Ii Introduction Brill’S Inner Asian Library

introduction i

Explorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19th- Early 20th Century) ii introduction Brill’s Inner Asian Library

Editors Michael R. Drompp Devin DeWeese

VOLUME 29

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bial introduction iii Explorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19th- Early 20th Century)

Edited by Paolo Sartori

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 Coveriv illustration: Threshing. Harvesting kheradzhintroduction (khyrmenberdari). Source: Turkestanskii al’bom. Po rasporyazheniyu turkestanskago general-gubernatora general-ad″yutanta K. P. fon Kaufmana 1-go. Chast′ promyslovaya u tuzemnago naseleniya v russkikh vladeniyakh Srednei Azii. Sostavili A. L. Kun i M. I. Brodovskii (Tashkent: Lit. A. Argamakova, 1871-1872), pl. 34 no. 160 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2007681400/

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Explorations in the social history of modern Central Asia (19th-early 20th century) / edited by Paolo Sartori. pages cm. -- (Brill's Inner Asian library, ISSN 1566-7162 ; volume 29) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-24843-4 (hardback : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-25419-0 (e-book) 1. Asia, Central--History--19th century. 2. Asia, Central--History--20th century. 3. Asia, Central--Social life and customs. 4. Asia, Central--Social conditions. I. Sartori, Paolo, 1975-

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. introduction v

Contents

A Note on Conventions...... vii List of Figures...... ix List of Contributors...... xi

Introduction: On the Social in Central Asian History: Notes in the Margins of Legal Records Paolo Sartori ...... 1

1. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land in the Zarafshan Valley after the Russian Conquest Alexander Morrison ...... 23

2. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan: A View from the Margins Beatrice Penati...... 65

3. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? Contro- versy over Irrigation Concessions between Russia and Khiva, 1913–1914 Akifumi Shioya...... 111

4. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz: Terms and Their Problems, 1845–1864 Daniel G. Prior...... 137

5. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts: The Dis cursive Construction of Identity Categories Svetlana Jacquesson...... 181

6. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters to Reconstruct Local Politi cal History of the 1820s-30s Virginia Martin...... 207

7. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara: Obser vations on Islamic Knowledge in a Nomadic Environment Allen J. Frank...... 247 vi introduction 8. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State: On Āqsaqāls in Late 19th-Century Bukhara Andreas Wilde...... 267

9. Fathers and Sons: Re-Readings in a Samarqandi Private Archive Thomas Welsford ...... 299

Index of Islamicate Terminologies...... 325 Index of Persons and Social Groupings ...... 327 Index of Places...... 331 a note on conventions vii

A Note on Conventions

Transliterations and References

Historians of Islamic Central Asia are wary of just how unsatisfactory may be the conventions adopted while attempting at consistency in translite rating languages as phonetically diverse as Iranian and Turkic. I am thus fully aware that the system of transliteration which I have adopted in this book is far from being adequate to fully represent the variations in spelling which the students of Central Asian history are all-too familiar with. While I have rendered Arabic, Persian, and Chaghatay (Turki) according to the system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the contributors to this volume have been equally left with ample space to adopt their preferred system of transliteration from Arabic-script Kazak, Kyrgyz, and Tatar. However, I have asked contributors in the main body of their texts to transliterate a number of well-known ascriptions of status or office (e.g. Khan, Sultan, Biy, Manap) without diacritics. Less well-known terms are rendered with diacritics; they are also italicised (e.g. āqsaqāl), except in instances when they constitute an element of personal titulature (e.g. Bīk Muḥammad Āqsaqāl). One complicating factor for the transliteration system employed here is the variety of orthographic forms for certain names (e.g. Murād, Murat). In attempting to avoid a normative approach to the rendering of such variations which would necessarily distort the specific texture of the sources in hand, the authors were allowed to reproduce what they found in the texts they consulted. However, for purposes of clarity, I have taken the editorial move of rendering all elements of Islamic terminology as they would appear when transliterated from Arabic-script material; I thus give no account of how they are rendered, say, in Russian (e.g. mulk and sharīʿa instead of myulk and sharigat). The reader is also alerted that along with ‘Kyrgyz’, the historicized spelling ‘Kirghiz’ has been also retained so as to mark a difference between colonial-era sources and those which were published in post-1991 Kyrgyzstan. The bulk of the unpublished material on which the chapters of this volume are based comes from post-Soviet archives and the citation of archival materials thus follows the standard system in the field of Russian studies. The archival collection, the inventory, the file and the folio are thus viii a note on conventions indicated respectively with the following Russian abbreviations: f. (fond), op. (opis’), d. (delo), and l. (list). Finally, I have left to the discretion of individual authors to choose between British and American spelling systems, and have divided biblio graphies between primary sources and secondary literature. This last distinction is perhaps an arbitrary one, but then so are conventions in general. list of contributors ix

List of figures

4.1.. Signature and seal of ‘Manap Borombay Bekmurat uulu’, 1845. Central State Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereafter, TsGARK), f. 374, op. 1, d. 1574, l. 15ob. The seal reads Būrānbāy Bī ibn Bīkmurād ...... 149 4.2.. Partial signature of ‘Manap Qalıghul Alıbek uulu’ and seal of Ïrısqulbek, on a letter dated inductively to 1861. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, l. 31. The seal reads Irīs Qul Bek Dādkhwāh ibn ʿAlī Bek Bī ...... 159 4.3.. Seals of Alghazı Sheralı uulu (top) and Baybughra Ajıbay uulu, and finger-blots of Nıysha Sheralı uulu and Yunus Sheralı uulu, on a letter dated inductively to 1861. The top seal reads (in Russian) Pechat’ Algazy Shiralina and (in pseudo-Persifying Chaghatay, and in reverse order from the Central Asian norm) muhr-i bī Alghāzī bin Shīr Alī; the bottom seal reads (in reverse order from the Central Asian norm) Bāy Būghrā bātūr ibn Ḥajjī Bāy Bī, and bears a Hijri date of 1267, or ad 1850/51. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 516, ll. 1–1ob ...... 163 4.4.. Seals of Balbay Ishkhoja uulu (top left: Manāb Bālbāy bin Ishkhūjah), Muratalı Pirnazar uulu (right: Turki not completely legible; Russian Manapa Murataliya) and Tilekmat Pirnazar uulu (bottom: Tīl Aḥmad ibn Bīr Naẓar Bī), on a letter datable by induction to around 1861. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 498, l. 8 . . 164 4.5.. Seal of Ümötalı Biy (Ummet ʿAlī Bī ibn Ūrmān Dādkhwāh) on a letter dated inductively to 1859–1861, the date range of the file (TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d.365); the seal is on l. 12ob ...... 167 6.1.. Letter from Ayghanïm to Senators Kurakin and Bezrodnyi, May 1828. Historical Archive of Omsk Region (hereafter, IAOO), f. 3, op. 1, d. 422, ll. 30-30ob ...... 239 6.2.. Letter from Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi-oghlï to Lieutenant Shubin, June 1830. IAOO, f. 3, op. 12, d. 17673, ll. 12-12ob ...... 241 6.3.. Letter from Sultan Chinggis Wali Khan oghlï to General Lieutenant de Sent Loran, June 1832. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 690, l. 148 ...... 242 x list of contributors

Contents

Contents v

A Note on Conventions vii

List of figures ix

List of Contributors xi

Introduction On the Social in Central Asian History: Notes in the Margins of Legal Records∗ 1 Paolo Sartori 1

CHAPTER ONE 23 Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land in the Zarafshan Valley after the Russian Conquest* 23 Alexander Morrison 23

CHAPTER TWO 65 Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan: A View from the Margins* 65 Beatrice Penati 65

CHAPTER THREE 111 Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? Controversy over Irrigation Concessions between Russia and Khiva, 1913–1914* 111 Akifumi Shioya 111

CHAPTER FOUR 137 High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz: Terms and Their Problems, 1845–1864* 137 Daniel G. Prior 137

CHAPTER FIVE 181 Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts: The Discursive Construction of Identity Categories* 181 Svetlana Jacquesson 181

CHAPTER SIX 207 Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters to Reconstruct Local Political History of the 1820s-30s 207 Virginia Martin 207

CHAPTER SEVEN 247 A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara: Observations on Islamic Knowledge in a Nomadic Environment 247 Allen J. Frank* 247

CHAPTER EIGHT 267 Creating the Façade of a Despotic State: On Āqsaqāls in Late 19th-Century Bukhara 267 Andreas Wilde 267

CHAPTER NINE 299 Fathers and Sons: Re-Readings in a Samarqandi Private Archive* 299 Thomas Welsford 299

index of Islamicate Terminologies 325

index of Persons and Social Groupings 327

index of Places 331 list of contributors xi

List of Contributors

Allen Frank received his Ph.D. in Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University in 1994. His publications include Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: the Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde (Leiden: Brill 2001) and Bukhara and the Muslims of Russia: Sufism, Education and the Paradox of Islamic Prestige (Leiden: 2012). He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Svetlana Jacquesson holds a Ph.D. in ethnology (2000) from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and the School for Advanced Social Studies in Paris, France. Her research interests focus on ‘identification’ and ‘categorization’ as crucial social and political phenomena. During the last three years she has been working on the role of history and genealogy in the construction of collective identites in Kyrgyzstan and, more broadly, on the narrative and discursive construction of identities. Her most recent publications include Pastoréalismes: anthropologie historique des processus d’intégration chez les Kirghiz du Tian Shan (Wiesbaden, Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2010) and Local History as an Identity Discipline (special issue of Central Asian Survey 31/3 (2012), co-edited with Ildikó Beller-Hann). She is currently the director of the Central Asian Studies Institute at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Virginia Martin (Ph.D. 1996, University of Southern California) is a historian specializing in the Kazakh steppe in the 19th c. and the author of Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001). She currently works as manager of a consultancy project for Nazarbayev University at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Alexander Morrison is Lecturer in Imperial History at the University of Liverpool. From 2000–2007 he was a Prize Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he wrote his doctorate on “Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India.” This was published under the same title by Oxford University Press in 2008. He is currently writing a history of the Russian Conquest of Central Asia. xii list of contributors Beatrice Penati is assistant professor of History at Nazarbayev University, Astana (Kazakhstan), and a Newton Fellow of the British Academy at the University of Manchester. From 2009–2011 she was a post-doc of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Sapporo. She is working on the economic and rural history of Central Asia from the conquest to the collectivisation drive.

Daniel Prior (Ph.D. Indiana University, 2002) researches the oral traditions and history of the Kirghiz from the 18th to the early 20th century. He has held appointments at Ohio State University and at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA, where he is now an assistant professor in the Department of History. His latest monograph, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: Epic and the Writing of Northern Kirghiz History (Leiden: Brill, 2013), is an edition, translation, and interpretation of a unique manuscript of early twentieth-century Kirghiz epic-like poetry on historical themes. His research has been supported by fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the International Research & Exchanges Board. He served as executive director of the Central Eurasian Studies Society from 2007 to 2011.

Paolo Sartori (Ph.D. University of Rome ‘la Sapienza’, 2006) is Research Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies in Vienna. From 2007–2011 he was VolkswagenStiftung Fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Martin-Luther University in Halle. He has published extensively on the legal history of 19th- and early 20th-century Central Asia. He is the editor- in-chief of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Brill). In 2013 he was awarded the START Prize by the Austrian Science Fund for the project “Seeing Like an Archive: Documents and Forms of Governance in Islamic Central Asia”.

Akifumi Shioya (Ph.D. University of Tokyo, 2012) is conducting research on the modern history of Central Asia, especially on the history of the Khanate of Khiva (1511–1920). He is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. His latest article (“Irrigation Policy of the Khanate of Khiva regarding the Lawzan Canal [1], 1830–1873.” Area Studies Tsukuba 32 [2011]: 115–36) deals with the interaction of environmental change with social and political upheavals in the sedentary oases of Central Area during the period of transition to modern times. His research is supported by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) KAKENHI (22720263) (2010–2013), the Comprehensive Studies on Slavic list of contributors xiii Eurasian Regions (Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University) (2010– 2013), and the Central Asian Archival Research Project (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies).

Thomas Welsford is a VolkswagenStiftung Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies in Vienna and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of Four Types of Loyalty in Early Modern Central Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2012) and, with Nouryaghdi Tashev, A Catalogue of Arabic-Script Documents from the Samarqand Museum (Samarqand: IICAS, 2012).

Andreas Wilde graduated with a Master’s degree in Iranian Studies, Arab Literature and Islamic Studies from the University of Bamberg. Afterwards, he worked on the project ‘Local Governance and Statehood in the Amu Darya Borderlands’ that ran from 2006 to 2010 at the Center of Development Research in Bonn. During that time, he conducted extensive archival and field work in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In 2011, he completed his Ph.D. thesis on power, authority and social order in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Bukhara. He is currently an assistant professor at the Chair of Iranian Studies in Bamberg. xiv list of contributors Introduction 1

Introduction On the Social in Central Asian History: Notes in the Margins of Legal Records∗

Paolo Sartori

‘We live in post-modern times’1 say those who acknowledge the merits of the linguistic turn in history-writing. Indeed, many practitioners of the historical craft today share the conviction that post-modern cultural criticism has taught social historians a salutary lesson. It appears that treating historical sources as linguistic constructions has not only gained respect in established fields of historical enquiry such as imperial history or the studies of the Ancien Régime; it has also made its way into Islamic and Oriental Studies, disciplines which in the past were regarded as benighted bastions of essentialist thought. It is only fairly recently, however, that students of Central Asian history have become fully alert to the possibilities and dangers of using documentary records, and have begun to consider the conventions and praxiologies which inhered in the production of these materials. Studies based on purely quantitative analysis, which ignore the contexts of and the intentions behind the production of the sources they rely on, find it difficult to escape the severe scrutiny of peers, be these in economic or legal history.2 Though post-modernism enjoys great popularity in history writing, the paradigms of post-modern epistemology should not necessarily be left unquestioned. It is one thing to agree that written records are linguistic constructions reflecting discursive practices, but quite another to suggest

* This essay is a revised version of a talk I delivered at the IFI-Colloquium, Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. I thank the participants to this event for their suggestions then. Special thanks are due to Alexander Morrison, Christine Nölle- Karimi, Florian Schwarz, Tom Welsford, and an anonymous reader at Brill for their insightful observations on an earlier draft. 1 Q. Skinner, Vision of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method (Cambridge: CUP, 2002): 90. 2 Z. Ghazzal, “Review of Colette Establet and Jean-Paul Pascual, Familles et fortunes à Damas (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1994).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28 (1996): 431–32; L. Peirce, “Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries.” Mediterranean Historical Review 19/1 (2004): 12–13; B.A. Ergene, “Why did Ümmü Gülsüm Go to Court? Ottoman Legal Practice between History and Anthropology.” Islamic Law and Society 17/2 (2010): 215–44. 2 Paolo Sartori that written records reveal nothing about the past beyond its cultural representations. I want to suggest that a deep awareness of the rhetorical aspect of any text does not exclude the possibility of going beyond what we might term ‘the cultural’, and beginning to interrogate ‘the social.’ Thus, my argument maybe summarized in the following manner: besides being cultural arte-facts, documents can be viewed as the inscriptions of social facts.3 Let us take for example a promissory note. This is the inscription of a social fact since it embodies the promise made by a payer to a payee. It is also the construction of an object which lasts beyond the moment of the promise and the life of the person who undertakes to fulfill the promise, and which generates a number of consequences such as debts, claims for restitution, rights of inheritance, etc.4 A promissory note might thus confer factual attestation upon a promise which, in a particular context, required certification. Without this kind of inscription, the promise would be mere hearsay, not a fact. The reader could object that there is little merit in taking documents at face value as I do here. Prudence while handling archival records is recom- mendable, since the materials do not usually provide for a verbatim account of facts. The scribes who produced written texts seem often to have been at greater pains to comply with established compositional genres―be these bureaucratic or juristic―than to reflect the particularities of the case in question. Adopting the vocabulary as well as the formulae of a certain genre may primarily allow for painting a picture of normality, obliterate deviant behavior and thus avoid charges of, say, misconduct. Ultimately, one could argue that the production of written records is instrumental in endowing with historicity events which in fact never occurred. It may well be that a promissory note was extorted and actually conceals an instance of deceitful behavior. The promissory note may thus have conferred upon a fraud the sham credentials of a fact. The awareness of a number of possible scenarios behind the craft of a written record leads us simply to infer that a document accounts for the existence of a fact, unless one can produce counter-evidence showing that the record is not what it looks like and, hence, reasonably questions the veracity of its content. It happens fairly often that we stumble across cases of forgery and retroactive attempts to create facts, especially legal facts, where somebody seems to have extorted a record from a court or to have

3 I draw much of this terminology from M. Ferraris, Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciare tracce (Bari: Laterza, 2009). 4 I elaborate on Ferrari’s argument, Ibid.: 40. Introduction 3 substituted one name in a document for another.5 That behind written texts there should be facts may also hold true for those records which do not have legal force or which, more simply, were not produced by formal institutions nor for legal purposes.6 The addressee of a love letter, for example, would most probably dismiss as counterintuitive the interpretation that the missive s/he has received does not prove the existence of a true sentiment. As I hope to show in this Introduction by yoking together some obser vations on the application of Islamic law in modern Central Asia, a commitment to social history today does not blind us to the implications of the linguistic turn.7 Equally, I do not advocate the epistemologically defeatist idea that to deploy the methodological arsenal which the historian acquired after this and subsequent turns (cultural, archival, etc.) should lead us to conclude that ‘there is nothing outside the text.’8 What I set out to do here is not a mere intellectual exercise but a vital accounting for the method adopted in this book.

5 The reader may find instructive to consider the following case: In May 1861, a group of water proprietors (mālikīn) decided to access the sharīʿa court in Ura-Tepe in order to include other three shares to their water measure. They thus transferred the ownership (tamlīk) of one water share (yak āb) to Mullā Rustam, Subḥānqulī and Savīr Qulī Bāy, TsGARUz, I-21, op. 1, d. 56, l. [8]. It was only the Tatar translator working for the Russians who found out that one water share had been sold to Rajab ʿAlī Bāy and that the latter’s name was cancelled in the legal record and replaced with the name of Mullā Rustam, 02.05.1884, TsGARUz, I-21, op. 1, d. 56, ll. 3–4. On Ura-Tepe and its changing administrative status in the 19th century, see W. Holzwarth, “Ura-tepe.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 2004), vol. XII (supplement): 819–20. 6 James E. Montgomery urges ‘to persist with a hermeneutic of “facticity”’ with regard to ʿAbbasid poetry in his “Abū Nuwās, The Justified Sinner?” Oriens 39/1 (2011): 109. 7 I here follow S. Gylfi Magnússon, “The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory Within the Postmodern State of Knowledge.” Journal of Social History 36/3 (2003): 704–9. 8 J. Derrida, Of Grammatology, corrected edition translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 158. I here risk the disapproval of Gary Wilder who, in his “From Optic to Topic: The Foreclosure Effect of Historiographic Turns.” American Historical Review 3 (2012): 729, laments what he regards as the unwarranted epistemological optimism of scholars who, disregarding the lessons of the linguistic turn, still retain an unreconstructed interest ‘in rational actors, individual intentions, immediate causality, short time spans, and small scale unity of analysis’ (Ibid.). Pace Wilder, I would suggest that it is the linguistically-informed awareness of our sources’ textuality that allows us an insight into the closer textures of people’s lives. An awareness of the fact that love letters, for instance, follow certain generic conventions scarcely precludes us from deeming such a letter meaningful when we find it in somebody’s private archive; indeed, it is in the author’s employment of said linguistic codes as a vehicle of self-expression that the document’s ‘private’ meaning becomes most transparent, and its placement in an individual series of events become most discernible. 4 Paolo Sartori I. Social History Today

To be a social historian is to be engaged in one of the less fashionable intellectual enterprises of these days. Only five years ago, in a splendid book called the Crooked Line, the distinguished historian of Germany Geoff Eley argued that social history, as practiced in the 1970s, is dead, victim to the machinations of postmodernists and practitioners of the new cultural history.9 He further argued that any attempt to resuscitate social history would be as futile as re-inventing the wheel. Social history―he holds―had a political value: its craft responded to the need to move away from notions of cultural progress and social stability, to put into question the teleology of state-building and to test the monolithic representations of its ruling classes. This cultural mood reflected the political climate of those years. Then, in the 1980s, the wind changed; optimism was replaced by defiance and reflectiveness. History was equated with fiction and historians―that is, social historians―were accused of being positivists, determinists and idealist dreamers.10 Though it has been said, by now many times, that the enthusiasm for postmodernism has become less intense, many among the practitioners of history seem to be devotedly siding either with one trend―cultural history―or another―social history. To find a way out of this confrontation (or systematic disinterest) is not an easy task, and some have recently started to suggest that a reconciliation if not a merging of the social with the cultural is lying in wait for us.11 For somebody who, like the present author, was brought up in the Foucault-dominated age of discourse and bio-politics the polarization of social and cultural history might appear a rather a strange idea; to put it simply, I take for granted that behind a text there is a subject who writes,12 and hence I have little difficulty with the idea that the past does not exist

9 G. Eley, A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2005). 10 M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995): 6. 11 S. Cerutti, “Microhistory: Social Relations versus Cultural Models? Some Reflections on Stereotypes and Historical Practices.” In Between Society and History. Essays on Microhis- tory, Collective Action, and Nation-Building, ed. A.M. Castrén, M. Lonkila & M. Peltronen (Helsinki: SKS, 2004): 17–40; Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing After the Linguistic Turn, ed. G.M. Spiegel (New York & London: Routledge, 2005): 22–5 and chapter 13. 12 C. Ginzburg, Threads and Traces: True, False, Fictive, translated by A. Tedeschi and J. Tedeschi (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012): 2. Introduction 5 outside of its textual representations. But the view that the past is in fact unintelligible through its representations is a postulate which I think needs to be demonstrated case after case, document after document, evidence after evidence. I still, perhaps naively, think that a telegram approved by Stalin allowing the quota of arrests and executions to be raised is indeed a proof for the causality in the historical process called the Great Terror.13 Pace those waiting to reconcile the social with the cultural, it seems that a sort of merging has already taken place. After all, we are all aware of the need to read the sources both with the grain and against it and to question the intentions which led an author to produce a text if we want to grasp all its meanings, yet we all still speak of remote events and create accounts of the past as it actually was, as it essentially was. Similarly, we all agree that history-writing is a form of fiction and we are extremely careful to put the adjective ‘traditional’ always between inverted commas, and yet we want to persuade our readers that what we write is true, historically true, and that they should ultimately believe the story we tell. Apparently, even the most fine-grained methodological awareness does not overcome the need to engage with the past and ‘to grasp the society as a whole, to theo- rize its bases of cohesion and stability, and to analyze its forms of notions.’14 A social historian today may be less enthused by questions of class, the state and the economy than social historians were in 1970s; on the other hand, like the social historians of those time did, one may still have sym- pathy for those in the past whom we regard as the subordinated and the dispossessed, and want to make sense of their pervasive presence in the history of human interactions. Many have warned that the subordinated do not speak in history, and are instead spoken of or, at best, spoken for, their words filtered, translated, distorted or simply omitted by those speaking on their behalf. I can quite see that to give voice to the less powerful means to struggle against the paternalistic gaze of the sources and the folklorisation of the popular. And I recognise that lacunae will make things even more difficult. Yet the urban servants and the rural villagers are there: they appear, even against their will, in a vast number of sources as the irreducible protagonists of social dramas, as affirmative actors who stake their claims and face hard talks. Official documents from courtrooms and

13 As for Stalin’s instrumental intervention in the Great Terror, the reader may consider, among a now very rich bibliography, O.V. Khlevnjiuk, The History of the Gulag: From Col- lectivization to the Great Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004): 162; see also the quotation no. 85 in A. Graziosi, L’Unione Sovietica in 209 citazioni (Bologna: il Mulino, 2006): 85. 14 Eley, A Crooked Line: 201–2. 6 Paolo Sartori chanceries illustrate societies, in which the ability to take an official course of action, to make a financial investment in a scribe or a lawyer, and to articulate dissatisfaction does not depend on the level of literacy. By now many stories from early modern Europe have been collected in support of this view; the same can be done for Central Asia. This conviction is what ushers me to say that after the cultural turn, is still possible to see the agents, even the small ones, in history.

II. Agency

If I had to offer my own understanding of social history, I would start from the general observation that people organize their life and make sense of their experiences by referring to a set of institutions, formal and informal alike. Thus, social history, as I see it, is at its minimum the study of the interaction and behavior of individuals within institutions. Consequently, any institution is deserving of study, as long as it produces documentation, and any agent deserves attention as long s/he appears in a document. To engage with social history thus leads us to consider the social significance of institutions in the first place. The main assumption behind this tentative definition is that the social is primarily located in the actors and networks.15 In turn, this brings to the fore the analytical concept of agency, namely the capacity of individuals to make a rational choice, to initiate a course of action, and to project their self into the social space.16 When I refer to the concept of agency, however, I should like to be very specific about one point: I endow the individual with the capacity of acting creatively only within existing social relations, and I see the possibility of performing rational choices as bounded by the cultural context in which the agent is situated. Proceeding from this assumption, one could argue that law embodies the agency of unimportant actors, it acquiesces in the plans of ordinary individuals, it appeases the demands of forgotten men, and it voices the desires of illiterate people whose names might otherwise never have entered the historical record. In other words, one could attempt to rescue a past in which legal institutions and societies were mutually constitutive, in which the subordinate can claim historical necessity rather than just

15 P. Joyce, “What is the Social in Social History?” Past and Present 206 (2010): 213–48. 16 Much has been written on both agency and the philosophy of agency. On the historical side, see C. Hughes Dayton, “Rethinking Agency, Recovering Voices.” American Historical Review 109/3 (June 2004): 827–43. Introduction 7 contingency: if it were not for these unimportant men, for example, the institutions performing Islamic law would have hardly left a single story to tell. Strange as it may be, the history documented by legal institutions appears strikingly egalitarian: far more egalitarian, indeed, than we might have assumed. In this past sharīʿa courts and royal chanceries were almost exclusively busy with listening to the minuscule voices of the populace, conferring legitimacy upon the plebeian murmur and translating the blab- ber of the illiterate. Let us consider, for instance, the case of a young woman living in the periphery of the Bukharan Emirate in the 19th century whose name was Qurbān Āy; she was kidnapped by two individuals, who broke at night into her house; imagine that they took her by force somewhere and married her against her will; after two weeks of vexation she was left free. She then turned alone to the royal chancery and filed a complaint about what had happened. She lamented that the abduction had injured her reputation.17 She asked that the Emirate provide her with a trustee,18 namely someone to oversee the case when heard by the qāżī. Instead of ignoring this request coming from the wilds of nowhere, the royal chancery assiduously complied with the woman’s wish: it appointed a trustee and instructed a qāżī to ascertain the truth about the case with the assistance of the third party.19 The woman most probably knew that she had to file her grievance with the highest authorities of the Emirate if she wanted to seek reparation for the injustice; no matter how ‘traditional’ the institution of bride-kidnapping in Islamic Central Asia was, she knew that someone would listen to her humble voice and that her words would be explained to other state officials. She did not need a proxy (a vakīl) to take this course of action, but most probably she employed a scribe who knew how to craft a plea to the royal chancellery. She therefore undertook a substantial economic as well as emotional investment. These kinds of stories might seem uninteresting in comparison with those of, say, Tamerlane or Lenin: to blame a neighbor for the theft of a donkey, to take revenge against a cousin, to promote the career of one son at the expense of another, to revoke a vaqf in order to accumulate more

17 shab ba-khāna-am dar āmada dahānam rā bar basta bar dāshta ba-jāy-i dīgar burda pānzdah shab va rūz nikāh dāshta īẕā va ḥaqārat-i bisiyār rasānīda bad-nām karda, see Mubārak-nāmajāt-i Amīr Muẓaffar ba-Qāżī Muḥyī al-Dīn, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 407, unnumbered folio [95a]. 18 amīn ṭalab shuda, Ibid. 19 I have illustrated this judicial procedure in my “The Evolution of Third-Party Media- tion in Sharī’a Courts in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Central Asia.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54/3 (2011): 311–52. 8 Paolo Sartori wealth, is in each case a delimited exercise of personal ambition, scarcely comparable with the siege of Baghdad or the declaration of Bolshevik revolution among the toiling masses of the East. However, such a contrast would obviously be misleading. It is misleading because the past is always more pluralistic and less hegemonic than we think: lobby groups, groups of power and solidarity groups are in a favorable position to impose trends and rules, but such a position does not secure the internalization of a behavior nor its normalization.20 Consider, for instance, that some Qaraqalpaqs could simply reject the authority of Islamic law as it was represented by a qāżī or a governor21 and insist that concessions be made for the implementation of customary law.22 This does not prove that the people I mentioned were only superficially Islamized nor that they did not follow sharīʿa. Loopholes, exceptions, and cracks lie always in wait for the historian who trusts the coherence of a system and relies on the repetitive- ness of human activity. In this respect, the unimportant men who populated the courtrooms of Islamic Central Asia can provide a good example of the role of chance, hazard and opportunism: people jostled jurists, they accused judges, from time to time even succeeded in molding legal procedure to their own advantage; above all they seem to have liked to play at high stakes, to place the ball near to the end-line. Think for example of those cases driven by malice in which judges were accused of bribery: the

20 In “By Grace of Descent: A Conflict between an Īšān and Craftsmen over Donations.” Der Islam 88/2 (2012): 279–307, Jeanine Elif Dagieli has shown how silk workers in Tsarist- and early Soviet-era Margilan refused to offer donations to an individual claiming religious authority on their guild. 21 02.06.1885, TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, 29, l. 70ob. The record accounts for a Qaraqalpaq named Muḥammad Niyāz Tūra Khan ūghlī, resident in Chimbay (Amu-Darya Department) who reportedly did not recognize the authority of Islamic law courts as he stated: sharīʿatgha bārmāyman, sharīʿatgha tūrmāyman. The latter expression is also used by a certain Ḥasan ʿAlī Māshtdam [?] ūghlī from the canton of Turtkul (Amu-Darya Department) when he refused to access the local Islamic law court, TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, 29, l. 185ob. 22 25.02.1906, TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 190, ll. 2–2ob. This is a rescript penned by the Governor of Kunia-Urgench and addressed to the Khivan chancellery. It accounts of a dispute concerning the payment of customary dowry in the face of a marriage which was later not contracted. The lawsuit had been first lodged in Petroaleksandrovsk by a certain Khwāja Aḥmad Tīlāv ūghlī, a Qazaq from the Manghishlaq province; the defendant, instead, lived under the jurisdiction of Kunia-Urgench. The claim was then passed on to Khiva. At this point the royal chancellery communicated to the Governor of Kunia-Urgench that the claim should be heard either according to sharīʿa or Qazaq customary law (qazāq ʿādatī bila) if the parties do not agree for the marriage. For further information on administrative and legal practices across the border between the Protectorate of Khiva and the Amu-Darya Department, see P. Sartori, “Murder in Manghishlaq: Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva (1895).” Der Islam 88/2 (2012): 217–57. Introduction 9 plaintiffs knew that people were more likely to assume a judge was corrupt than that a claimant was lying. And it was this conviction which led them to concoct machinations against authoritative men, to forge evidence and stoutly to defend claims which in fact were wholly unfounded.23 But even the ruling houses and their representatives, the so-called elite, are no less indicated as an example of haphazard and unpredictable behavior: long ago it has been noted that in the Islamicate world justice can be dispensed with a great respect for social circumstances and the singularity of events, sometimes even at the expense of doctrine.24

III. On Method

If we agree that reality (and the past) is discontinuous and heterogenous, unpredictable and incoherent, why should we content ourselves with linear narratives and the teleology of human actions? What would be the cognitive value of a history that betrays its subject matter by presenting the past in a way in which it never was? A social history which aims at telling something new, the untold, has to find a new way to say things. This requires examining the problem of method. As I have explained, the social history which I advocate aims to unfold and question the agency of any actor in relation to any institution which produces documentation. By focusing in on confined theatres of human interaction, we can apply a finer grain of analysis than would be possible in a larger case study. By pursuing this approach we are practicing what might be termed ‘microhistory.’ In the not too distant past, Peter Burke argued that microhistorians can easily be accused of trivializing history as they concern themselves with the unknown and with the unimportant.25 In principle, I cannot see how one can make history more trivial than it actually is, unless one still believes in the superior ethical value of some cases, which exclude others from the stage of exemplarity. How to establish such exemplarity is highly debatable: For example, if I were to examine only the output of, say, Abū Ḥanīfa or al-Marghīnānī, it would hardly be possible to study Islamic law without

23 I have devoted a separate study to this subject in my “Authorized Lies: Colonial Agency and Legal Hybrids in Tashkent, ca. 1881–1893.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55/4–5 (2012): 688–717. 24 L. Rosen, The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society (Cambridge, CUP, 1989): especially chapter 2. See also I. Agmon, Family and Court: Legal Culture and Modernity in Late Ottoman Palestine (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006): 169–71. 25 P. Burke, History and Social Theory, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005): 40. 10 Paolo Sartori the risk of idealizing its uptake and of accordingly being accused of essen- tialism. It is only by looking into the ostensible trivia of history, in the ledger of a secondary scribe and on the shelves of a provincial jurist, that one can question how a juristic literature was produced and which local changes it underwent. But how to do microhistory? Microhistory is not grounded on a precon- ceived method, on an approach that can be applied to any research area or to any historical period. On one thing, however, microhistorians seem to agree: if one wants to keep faith with a heterogeneous reality and to do justice to the agency of ubiquitous unknown men, one should be concerned to reconstruct the complexity, rather than the narrative, behind the causality of historical processes.26 To achieve that is the most challenging undertaking of the historian. Carlo Ginzburg once revealed that the inspiration to write The Cheese and the Worms came from reading Tol’stoi’s War and Peace. Ginzburg explains how he was fascinated by the ‘conviction that a historical phenomenon can become comprehensible only by reconstructing the activities of all the persons who participated in it.’27 It is no wonder that there are precursors and followers of this approach among professional and non-professional historians. I should first mention Walter Benjamin and his Arcades Project. Benjamin dedicated his entire life to a monumen- tal history of Paris, to be written on the basis of a collection of minor anec- dotes, press clippings, portraits of unimportant men, which he assembled in a bricolage, without apparent order. Among professional historians, I would like to recall the work of Theodore Zeldin, who argued that: To attempt to incorporate the whole life into history is to attempt the impossible, but it is the ideal that social historians have repeatedly set themselves. I share this ideal. […] To me the culmination of history must be total history and that must include individuality, mentality, and society all at once.28 Needless to say, I share the ideal of a history in which the order and the disorder of a society can be grasped by looking at how people inhabit institutions and change them, how they partake of the production of cultural artifacts and the use they make of them. The notion of people on which I am now relying is as inclusive as possible and at the same time

26 S. Cerutti, Giustizia sommaria. Pratiche e ideali di giustizia in una società di Ancien Régime (Torino XVIII secolo) (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003): 208. 27 C. Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It.” Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 24. 28 T. Zeldin, “Social History and Total History.” Journal of Social History 10/2 (1976): 233–4. Introduction 11 I tend―albeit implicitly―to question the utility of the historical categories which convey strong cultural assumptions: the categories of ‘elite’ or ‘popular’, to start with, might not be the most successful to apply if one studies a society from the point of view of mobility and economic change: a peasant might today be bound to the soil of the local ruler; ten years later he will be able to adopt a strategy of aggregate investment allowing him to buy in partnership the land from his master;29 after a generation the heirs to this new landowner will establish an endowment and thereby succeeded in creating a descent group. It might instead happen that in the same locality and in the same period a story analogous to this one never occurred; it could also be that a similar story took place with interesting variations or with unintelligible anomalies. For a history of property relations all these stories would be meaningful in principle, none should be silenced. But the choice should then fall on the cases which required extensive documentation and hence provide more social facts. Only the case-studies, only the past captured in a process of singularization of the human experience can claim to represent the complexity of the social, and thus highlight the differences behind the apparent similarities. But to follow this line of thought leads us to infer that social history should develop independently from metanarratives, as a way to test them and perhaps to move on, away from them. This also implies that we should take microhistory very seriously and pursue it to its most extreme conclusion. The ultimate result cannot be anything other than a total history. Total history consists in bringing into the picture each and every fragment connected with the matter in hand and for which there are sources, and in bringing up for consideration all possible means of interpretation that bear directly upon the material. In addition, the historian should take care to account for the missing parts, questioning the lacunae, and including the anomalies of the documentation at hand―an hermeneutic exercise which excludes per se that the kind of total history I am suggesting here be equaled to the ‘total acquaintance’ of Sir Geoffry Elton.30 In sum, the social historian should treat written records in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which an archaeologist would operate in a site of excavation. The totality of all these fragments and of all their interpretations, which we

29 Cf. TsGARUz, f. I-1047, op. 1, d. 18, l. 1. A facsimile edition of the text and its Russian translation appeared in A.L. Troitskaya, Materialy po istorii Kokandskogo khanstva XIX v. po dokumentam arkhiva kokandskikh khanov (Moscow: Nauka 1969): 72–3). I have discussed this case in my “Colonial Legislation Meets Sharīʿa: Muslims’ Land Rights in Russian Turke- stan.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (March 2010): 43–60. 30 Skinner, Visions of Politics: chapter 2. 12 Paolo Sartori might be able to produce, will not correspond to the past as it really was, but it would certainly be the best that we can offer to a readership. The total approach to history should thus not hide its ambition―that is, to be experimental as it aims to test the nature of reality in the past. What we will then achieve is not a narrative, but a series of tests, a collection of singular stories. The history of property relations in Tsarist Central Asia is a good case in point. It seems that there is not a single narrative under which the historian could present this topic (as the first three chapters clearly show). There are instead, a number of hypotheses; each of them can in principle be tested by referring to different localities. One could, for instance, assess the possibility that in the wake of the Russian conquest Muslim peasants could easily usurp the land which formerly belonged to the Bukharan Emirate and turn it into private property (milk). Research exclusively centered on the mountainous province of Jizzakh, which is characterized by short-range pastoral mobility, and where agricultural labor was mainly applied to rain-fed lands, has shown that indeed peasants not only attempted, but also successfully accomplished the usurpation of former state land and turned pastures into private property.31 This picture changes completely as we leave Jizzakh and enter the province of Samarqand, an area which is almost exclusively inhabited by a settled population, where the irrigation system is highly developed and private landownership is fairly widespread. The reasons for this major difference are far from clear― though one could assume that this situation obtained in Jizzakh precisely because it served as the hinterland of Samarqand. Only two micro-studies on Jizzakh and Samarqand, which would need to be equally deep, and the application of a total approach to the sources available, can account for the complexity behind this major discrepancy.

IV. The Essays

The manuscript is a collected volume, which assembles a selection of papers presented at a workshop convened in Halle/Salle (Germany) in December 2009 under the title ‘Social History of Early Modern and Colonial Central Asia: A Focus on Arabic-Script Documents (18th-20th Centuries).’ It brings together the studies of students of social history and historical anthropology of modern Islamic Central Asia (19th-early 20th centuries).

31 TsGARUz, f. I-21, op. 1, d. 634. Introduction 13 The volume consists of nine chapters which are based on a careful assessment of primary sources retrieved from post-Soviet archives and libraries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russian Federation, Uzbekistan), with a special― albeit not exclusive―focus on Arabic-script documents. Post-Cold War historiography of Central Asia has so far been characterized by a focus on cultural history. Most of this scholarship either rests on a set of assumptions about ‘traditional’ institutions and social practices which were never studied at all or merely reflects the bias of Soviet or even Tsarist-era historiography. This volume addresses the need for a remedy to this state of affairs and thus offers new insights on a number of subjects relating to the social history of the region, which have received little if any attention at all, hence the exploratory character of these studies has been emphasized in the title of this collected volume.32 It includes essays dealing with property relations, resource management, forms of local administration, the constitution of new social groups, the construction of identity categories, and an enquiry into the landscape of Islamic practices among the nomads. In Chapter One Alexander Morrison reconstructs the vicissitudes and the impasses experienced by Russians officials while interpreting the patterns of landholding in the region. His essay is a fascinating review of the multiple and oft contrasting meanings which Russians attached to the Islamic legal concept of milk (private property)―mulk in the Central Asian vernacular languages. Morrison rightly claims that Russians were actively engaged in ‘the politics of mulk’, i.e. a discussion involving various levels of the civil-military administration of the Turkestan Governorship-General, which was mainly directed at eliminating a local class of rentiers. This policy led the colonial authorities to disband the local offices of tax-collector (sarkār, amlākdār), which were closely associated with the Khoqandi and Bukharan ruling houses, as well as to remove the fiscal privileges which descent groups, namely sayyids and khwājas, had enjoyed under the protection of Muslim principalities and Sufi leaders.33 The Russian intervention ignited an overhaul in the social and economic landscape of the region. It did so ex cathedra―that is, by exercising leverage on an apparent mis- reading of Islamic law. The illustrations provided by Morrison suggest that

32 Social history was not on the agenda of Central Asian studies until recently, see Research Trends in Modern Central Eurasian Studies (18th-20th Centuries). A Selective and Critical Bibliography of Works Published between 1985 and 2000, Part 2, ed. S.A. Dudoignon & H. Komatsu (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 2006). 33 See, on this subject, J. Paul, “Forming a Faction: The Ḥimayat System of Khwaja Ahrar.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23/4 (1991): 533–48. 14 Paolo Sartori the Russians’ interpretation of the term mulk embodied (and sometimes blurred) two rather substantially different things, namely mulk-i hurr-i khāliṣ and tarkhān status. The first one is a legal category denoting permanent tax-privileged landownership, whereas the second is a fiscal term implying temporary immunity from taxation. Obviously, these two notions bring about patterns of property-relations which are substantially different. The essay of Beatrice Penati (Chapter Two) is an inquiry into the economic and environmental history of the rural landscape of Russian Turkestan. If Chapter One focuses on the initial period of the Tsarist rule over Central Asia, in Chapter Two Penati offers an account of the decision- making process on the management of marginal lands during a later period, at the beginning of the 20th century. This study should be rightly seen as a first major attempt to situate the cotton-boom of Russian Central Asia within a broader picture and unpack the complexity of rural economy by looking at the case of forested areas. This study makes a further step into the investigation of the colonial policy of exploitation of marginal lands which were seen instrumental both to enhance tax revenues34 and to provide European settlers with new resources. Penati reconstructs the attempts of a number of colonial agencies to treat woodlands under the juridical category of state land property. Wild woods were thus destined― in the minds of a number of Russian policy-makers―to become the object of confiscation which had to be accomplished by endorsing a number of measures which would ultimately lead to the dispossession of Muslim landholders. The Russian administration, multi-faceted as it was, incorporated bureaucrats and local cliques who did not support these measures. Penati offers a convincing interpretation of the reasons why Russian officials in the colony ruled out the possibility of including most untilled land in the domain of state property. She argues that within the civil-military administration of Turkestan there was ‘first, a sincere belief in the land rights enjoyed by Turkestan native subjects living in rural areas; second, the fear of social turmoil, alimented by economic and social reasons but sometimes articulated in religious terms; third, some twenty-five years after they had begun, the wish to bring to a close the land assessment works, that had occupied an immense amount of administrative time and effort and had surely cost much more than had been expected at the beginning.’ In Chapter Three, Akifumi Shioya takes us to Khorezm, and to the Protectorate of Khiva. The paper discloses a few aspects of Russian private

34 B. Penati, “Swamps, Sorghum, and Saxauls. Marginal Land and the Fate of Russian Turkestan, ca. 1880–1915.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 61–78. Introduction 15 economic penetration of the Muslim society of Central Asia by adducing some new details on the activities of non-indigenous investors in agriculture and the introduction of new technologies of irrigation. Shioya’s case study revolves around a rural settlement (dacha) called Lavzan and a new irrigation project, the purpose of which, the author suggests, was to ‘produce and export commercial plants, such as cotton and alfalfa’ This was an ambitious project which involved three main actors on the Russian side: a nobleman (Duke Andronikov), an engineer experienced in irrigation projects (Ermolaev) and an investor (Putilov) who was at the head of the Russo-Asiatic bank which had a branch in Khorezm in the city of Urgench. The Khivan ruler―Isfandiyār Khan―was also a major actor in this project as he backed the plans of the Russian entrepreneurs: by selling state land (mamlaka-yi pādshāhī) to Andronikov and Putilov, he effectively favoured a first large-scale penetration of foreign investors in the Protectorate in 1913. The project failed, though, after two years, when a raid by the Yomut Turkmen destroyed the dacha. Akifumi argues that the project was doomed to fail at its outset: the Russian authority at the head of the Amu-Darya Department put into question Isfandiyār Khan’s rights on the waters of the Amu-Darya, and doubted the very possibility that the Khivan ruler could expand the cultivated areas on the left bank of the river. The Russian authority in Petroaleksandrovsk was giving precedence to the idea that the state should enjoy the supreme disposal of the water of the Amu-Darya, and hence provide entrepreneurs with concessions on water rights. This is a line of thought which closely resembles the juristic principles followed by the colonial agencies which conceived of woodlands as state properties (Chapter Two). The controversy over water-rights between Khivan and Russian authorities led in fact to the acceptance of the existence of private investment in the Protectorate, but it truncated every ambition of the Khivan ruling house: a different set of norms regulating the use of the Amu- Darya waters for purpose of irrigation of new lands sanctioned that the Russian Empire retained all the rights on the river. As he found himself ousted from the game, Isfandiyār Khan turned his face away from the Lavzan dacha and, thus, somehow encouraged the Turkmen raid. Chapters Four to Seven provide a pointed evaluation of the major shifts which occurred in the composition of the Muslim societies in the wake of the Russian conquest. The essay of Daniel Prior (Chapter Four) sheds light on the process of emergence of a new leadership among the Kyrgyz of the Tian-Shan called the ‘Manaps’. The exploration of the pre-history of this elite leads Prior to question the composition of Kyrgyz society. Based on a 16 Paolo Sartori minute reconstruction of the authorship, patronage and textual factors of the sources at hand, Prior persuasively demonstrates that the Kyrgyz Manaps came out from a handful of local leaders (biys), who instrumentalized the Russians’ search for a hierarchy of interlocutors among the pastoral groups of northern Central Asia. This process took shape during a period in which the northern Kyrgyz were progressively integrated, by taking oath of submission, within the political and administrative edifice of the Empire. The coinage of the term manap is owed primarily to the attempt by a few Kyrgyz leaders to provide Russian state officials with a local (read Kyrgyz) equivalent of the Kazakh Sultans. Prior interprets this instance of poiesis as ‘something like an ‘observer effect’ or colonial feedback in the decades of political negotiation and accommodation between 1845 and 1864.’ On this basis, he goes on to argue for the essentially aristocratic nature of the resulting social ‘estate’, in which ‘descent groups of patrilineally related kin’ revealed ‘the effects of a range of creative political impulses in the actions of high-ranking leaders and their supporters.’ This argument finds further substantiation in the essay of Svetlana Jacquesson (Chapter Five), who investigates the poetic and performance of identity categories among northern Kyrgyz and their discursive construction in indigenous sources. Unlike the other contributors to this collected volume, she uses ethno-historical accounts and oral poetry to tease out the historical dynamics of identity categories. More specifically, the analysis of cultural performances during memorial feasts (ash) allows Jacquesson to present how identity categories were used by local actors and the ways in which they were made meaningful in social interactions. Her study demonstrates conclusively that the various forms of collective belonging in place― whether descent-related or based on locality―are not stable categories. Instead, they only exist through the diverse acts of their discursive deployment. The representation of relatedness and belonging is historically situated and it can change over time in response to social and political circumstances. Jacquesson thus pleads for a processual approach to the discursive construction of identity categories and for an ethnography of their historical dynamics. The essay of Virginia Martin (Chapter Six) offers a suggestive inquiry into the political culture of the Qazaqs. Underlying this study is the idea that 19th-century Qazaq history has been mainly ‘analyzed against the backdrop of developments of Russian Imperial history’ and that what we know of the social and cultural practices of the Qazaqs reflects necessarily the gaze of those institutional agents who interacted with them. Martin Introduction 17 thus proposes a new analytical move within the historiography of Tsarist- era Central Asia by adopting an emic viewpoint on the societal issues in the steppe, one which cautiously recovers ‘Qazaqs’own voices’ and pays particular attention to the terminology employed therein. She exemplifies this new approach to Qazaq political culture in reading three letters in Turki, which different Chinggisid personalities addressed to representatives of Russian imperial institutions. In the first missive, Ayghanïm, the widow of a khan, complains before the Russian authorities that Qazaq commoners have reached positions of authority following the imperial administration’s refusal to confirm the Chinggisids in their former long-standing privileges. This is not only a source for political history of the Qazaqs, as it clearly shows how an educated representative of the töre conceived of the community of people she belonged to. In her representation of the Chinggisid groups which constituted the Middle Horde, kinship was not a significant concept. As Martin emphasizes, instead, Ayghanïm viewed herself as representing various named groups as her people (el). The second letter exemplifies how a Chinggisid nomadic leader conceived of the Russian administrative apparatus as a supplementary source of authority. He is clearly a patron acting between the ‘new order’ and his people and it is by acting in this capacity that he secures the Qazaqs’ allegiance to the Russians. The letter also unfolds the preoccupation of this leader ‘as his ability to protect his own was regularly questioned by other Middle Horde elites in the region.’ As he was caught in the midst of social turbulence which materialized in land disputes, this Qazaq middleman was not able to safeguard the interests of his people from the claims made by Qazaqs who had become Russian subjects. The third letter accounts for the story of a young man named Chinggis, Ayghanïm’s son (b. 1811), who would later become Senior Sultan of the Aman-Karagain outer region. The addressee of this communication is a certain De Sant Loran, an official in Omsk, to whom Chinggis wrote in the wake of the returning to his mother’s native summer pasture, Syrymbet. Clearly, Chinggis was expected in Omsk after a month from his departure, an expectation which he was unable to meet after he fell ill; the purpose of this message, however, was to requesting a prolongation of his absence in order to meet his tölenguts (servitors). What transpires from this document is the embarassment of a Qazaq who is caught between the duties of a new social order and the moral weight of family obligations. In discussing this rather unedifying story, Martin suggests that, though showing deference to the official in Omsk and a certain degree of compliance, albeit formal, with the Russian authorities, Chinggis 18 Paolo Sartori managed ‘to absent himself from official oversight.’ By piecing together these three letters and by conceding to an exercise in microhistory, Martin offers a lucid description of everyday life of a society captured during a process of recomposition. Chapters Four to Six all react, in a way or in another, to the recent revisionist attempt to interpret nomadic tribal structure in the Eurasian history. In his book The Headless State,35 David Sneath has urged a reconsideration of the heuristic value of the concept of kinship and suggested that the political history of pastoral groups of Inner Asia should be told by referring to ‘houses’ and ‘aristocratic orders.’ Though Sneath’s work has been severely criticized for its lack of historical rigour,36 his thesis finds some support from among the Qazaqs of the Middle Horde and the Northern Kyrgyz presented in this collected volume. The emergence of new political actors, the discursive construction of identity categories and their historical dynamics, the eclipse of status groups together with the individual stories echoed in the documents, which all come from nomadic-majority regions of Central Asia, cannot be mapped by employing a representation of power relations squarely centered around the static concepts of kinship and descent. The present volume looks also at Muslim societies in isolation. Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine reveal the everyday life among the indigenous groups living on the southern fringes of Russian Central Asia and within the Protectorate of Bukhara: the strategies of a family to accumulate and con- serve wealth in the Zarafshan Valley, a day spent by a Tatar mullā among the Qazaqs of the Bukharan steppe, and the career path of village administrators south of Bukhara account for life-stories which never encroached on those of Russian officials. It appears that there were social environments of Islamic Central Asia in the modern period on which Tsarist colonialism had little if any impact at all. Allen Frank’s essay is a further contribution to a growing body of scholarship addressing the study of Islamic institutions and Muslim culture among the Qazaqs and revising the Tsarist and Soviet view that Qazaq nomadism was incompatible with Islamic culture. This chapter offers the English translation of an excerpt from the memoirs of a Tatar mullā named Aḥmad al-Barāngavī who had the occasion to spend some time among the

35 D. Sneath, The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresen- tations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 36 See the review of The Headless State by Devin DeWeese in the International Journal of Turkish Studies 16/1–2 (2010): 142–51. Introduction 19 Qazaqs living in the Bukharan steppe. The circumstances under which the Tatar mullā approached the Qazaqs are noteworthy: at the turn of the 20th century Aḥmad al-Barāngavī was receiving his education in a madrasa in Bukhara. Since he could not afford to travel back home during the summer break, Aḥmad al-Barāngavī, like other Tatar students installed in Bukhara used to, stayed in Bukhara and made a living by instructing Qazaqs who lived nearby. It is known that Tatar observers of the time, especially those individuals committed to the advancement of reformist religious ideology, viewed Qazaqs as ‘uncivilized.’ Frank rightly emphasizes the way in which this view was instrumental to upholding the civilizing mission of the Russians. By contrast, it appears that there were Tatars who lived among the Qazaqs, and who might occasionally regard ‘the Qazaqs’ commitment to Islamic practices and institutions as superior to that of the Tatars.’ Aḥmad al-Barāngavī should be considered one of these precious voices providing for a vivid account of Qazaqs’ Muslimness. The reader will sense a true fascination for ‘real’ nomads behind the notes left by al-Barāngavī. His ethnography of the Qazaqs, however, is more concerned with the performances of piety and the curricula of Islamic education than the eccen- tric character of their customs. Indeed, al-Barāngavī’s report is all about ablutions and prayers in the desert, fondness for the Persian literature, and references to Ḥanafī juristic texts. It might be, perhaps, argued that the source around which Frank centered his essay is not immune from the bias of mullā’s own interests in religious practices. Be that as it may, al-Barāngavī’s account of a few days spent in the Bukharan steppe among the Qazaqs reveals new, so far largely unexpected, features of the everyday literacy of Central Asian nomads. In Chapter Eight Andreas Wilde investigates the dynamics of appointment of village representatives to the position of ‘white-beards’ (āqsaqāls). Wilde presents these people as ‘members of the local elite, as local notables and strongmen, who acted as spokesmen of their communities and as mediators between higher echelons of the society, the central government and their own clientele.’ A close reading of royal warrants and rescripts to the chancellery of the Emirate, which illustrate how local communities supported the appointment of a given candidate, allows Wilde to show that the position of āqsaqāl―and ab extenso that of amīn (trustee)― should not be conceived as systematised offices within a fixed hierarchy of power. Instead, Wilde shows that the post of ‘whitebeard’ displayed a sort of administrative flexibility and that āqsaqāls enjoyed enough scope to manoeuvre their authority which, though conferred officially by the 20 Paolo Sartori centre, depended ultimately on the support of local groups. This study adds to a rather limited body of scholarship exploring the social duties performed by brokers in the Bukharan Emirate of the 19th century.37 It brings a corrective to the state-centred view of the administration of the Emirate, which is usually seen as an over-reaching despotic polity. It also suggests that the Emir and his cohorts of office-holders had little control over the ‘peripheries’ of his domains, or even outside the city of Bukhara itself. Wilde thus argues that the deluge of records produced by the administrative centre of the Emirate should be interpreted as ‘reflect[ing] a gap between the demand (aiming at full administrative control) and the political realities in Bukhara.’ A small-scale analysis focused on the appointment of āqsaqāls allows Wilde to examine the mechanics of Aushandlung applied by Muslims principalities in Central Asia from a long durée perspective, and thus to suggest that 19th-century Bukhara in fact displayed features of power relations strikingly similar to those in place during the pre-Mongol period. Chapter Nine brings us back to where this Introduction started, namely the discussion of the relation between the past, individual agency, and the instrumentality of documentation. Thomas Welsford’s essay joins the dots in a story of a Samarqandi family punctuated by events which determined the devolution of the family’s wealth. These events were apparently recorded at the instigation of two members of the family, the father and the older son. As Welsford argues, the documents assembled by these individuals can ‘be conceptualised as what we might term instruments of utility: a utility perhaps best evoked in contemporary English usage by conceiving of them not as ‘documents’ at all, but instead as items of ‘documentation’.’ The story―as it is reconstructed in this chapter― tells how individual actors can create facts, secure their existence for posterity and affect substantially their legal significance by relying on the production of documents. Welsford’s study confirms that there are facts whose legal consequences and social implications require documentation. They are not just a usable past, but they are the past as it was purportedly created by those individuals who instigated the production of those records which we as historians must now try to make sense of.

37 Sartori, “The Evolution of Third-Party Mediation in Sharī’a Courts in 19th- and early 20th-century Central Asia”, and W. Holzwarth, “Community Elders and State Agents: Īlbēgīs in the Emirate of Bukhara around 1900.” Eurasian Studies, IX/1–2 (2011): 213–62. Introduction 21 Bibliography

Abbreviations IVANRUz: Institut vostokovedeniya im. Abu Raikhana Biruni Akademii nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan. TsGARUz: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan.

Primary Sources Mubārak-nāmajāt-i Amīr Muẓaffar ba-Qāżī Muḥyī al-Dīn, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 407. Troitskaya, A.L. 1969. Materialy po istorii Kokandskogo khanstva XIX v. po dokumentam arkhiva kokandskikh khanov. Moscow: Nauka.

Secondary Literature Agmon, I. 2006. Family and Court: Legal Culture and Modernity in Late Ottoman Palestine. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Burke, P. 2005. History and Social Theory, 2nd edn. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Cerutti, S. 2003. Giustizia sommaria. Pratiche e ideali di giustizia in una società di Ancien Régime (Torino XVIII secolo). Milano: Feltrinelli. ____. 2004. Microhistory: Social Relations versus Cultural Models? Some Reflections on Stereotypes and Historical Practices. In Between Society and History. Essays on Microhistory, Collective Action, and Nation-Building, ed. A.M. Castrén, M. Lonkila & M. Peltronen. Helsinki: SKS: 17–40. Dagieli, J.E. 2012. By Grace of Descent: A Conflict between an Īšān and Craftsmen over Donations. Der Islam 88/2: 279–307 Derrida, J. 1997. Of Grammatology, corrected edition translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. DeWeese, D. 2010. Review of DAVID SNEATH, The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, & Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Pp. xi + 273. Cloth. International Journal of Turkish Studies 16/1–2: 142–51. Dudoignon, S.A. and H. Komatsu. 2006. Research Trends in Modern Central Eurasian Studies (18th-20th Centuries). A Selective and Critical Bibliography of Works Published between 1985 and 2000, Part 2. Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko. Eley, G. 2005. A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Ergene, B.A. 2010. Why did Ümmü Gülsüm Go to Court? Ottoman Legal Practice between History and Anthropology. Islamic Law and Society 17/2: 215–44. Ferraris, M. 2009. Documentalità. Perché è necessario lasciare tracce. Bari: Laterza. Ghazzal, Z. 1996. Review of Colette Establet and Jean-Paul Pascual, Familles et fortunes à Damas (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1994). International Journal of Middle East Studies 28: 431–2. Ginzburg, C. 1993. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It. Critical Inquiry 20: 10–35. ____. 2012. Threads and Traces: True, False, Fictive, translated by Anne Tedeschi and John Tedeschi. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Graziosi, A. 2006. L’Unione Sovietica in 209 citazioni. Bologna: il Mulino. 22 Paolo Sartori

Holzwarth, W. 2004. Ura-tepe. Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill, vol. XII (supplement): 819–20. ____. 2011. Community Elders and State Agents: Īlbēgīs in the Emirate of Bukhara around 1900. Eurasian Studies IX/1–2: 213–62. Hughes Dayton, C. 2004. Rethinking Agency, Recovering Voices. American Historical Review 109/3: 827–43. Joyce, P. 2010. What is the Social in Social History? Past and Present 206: 213–48. Khlevniuk, O.V. 2004. The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror. New Haven: Yale University Press. Magnússon, S.G. 2003. The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory within the Postmodern State of Knowledge. Journal of Social History 36/3: 701–35. Montgomery, J.E. 2011. Abū Nuwās, The Justified Sinner? Oriens 39/1: 75–164. Paul, J. 1991. Forming a Faction: The Ḥimāyat System of Khwaja Ahrar. International Journal of Middle East Studies 23/4: 533–48. Penati, B. 2010. Swamps, Sorghum, and Saxauls. Marginal Lands and the Fate of Russian Turkestan, ca. 1880–1915. Central Asian Survey 29/1: 61–78. Peirce, L. 2004. Changing Perceptions of the Ottoman Empire: The Early Centuries. Mediterranean Historical Review 19/1: 6–28. Rosen, L. 1989. The Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartori, P. 2010. Colonial Legislation Meets Sharīʿa: Muslims’ Land Rights in Russian Turkestan. Central Asian Survey 29/1: 43–60. ____. 2011. The Evolution of Third Party Mediation in Modern and Colonial Central Asia. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54/3: 311–52. ____. 2012a. Authorized Lies: Colonial Agency and Legal Hybrids in Tashkent, ca. 1881–1893. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55/4–5: 688–717. ____. 2012b. Murder in Manghishlaq: Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva (1895). Der Islam 88/2: 217–57. Skinner, Q. 2002. Vision of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sneath, D. 2007. The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresen tations of Nomadic Inner Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Spiegel. G.M., ed. 2005. Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn. New York & London: Routledge. Trouillot, M.-R. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press. Welsford, T. 2012. The Rabbit, the Duck, and the Study of Central Asian Legal Documents. Der Islam 88/2: 258–78. Wilder, G. 2012. From Optic to Topic: The Foreclosure Effect of Historiographic Turns. American Historical Review 117/3: 723–45. Zeldin, T. 1976. Social History and Total History. Journal of Social History 10/2: 237–45. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 23

CHAPTER ONE

Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land in the Zarafshan Valley after the Russian Conquest*

Alexander Morrison

Introduction

A crucial question when considering the transition to colonial rule in any non-settler colony (as most of Russian Turkestan was until the early 1900s) is the relationship with pre-existing elites, whether landed, commercial, religious, rural or urban. No colonial regime can survive by means of force alone, and the form it takes will often be determined by the nature of the groups it chooses to co-opt and co-operate with.1 This question is usually intimately linked with revenue collection, the most basic and fundamental activity of the state. In their early years, at least, colonial regimes rarely seek to do a great deal more than collect taxes, whether at the same level as or at a higher level than their predecessors.2 In agrarian societies these are usually taxes on the land or on the harvest, necessitating either very good local connections or detailed knowledge of patterns of landownership, irrigation and crops in order to be effective.3 In British India, for instance, until at least the mid-19th century the military-fiscal garrison-state was much more concerned with maintaining the flow of agrarian tribute than with opening up the country to trade and investment, and in this

* The research for this article was funded by the Warden and Fellows of All Souls Col- lege, Oxford. I would like to thank Olga Berard, Marios Costambeys, Philipp Reichmuth, Jürgen Paul, Beatrice Penati, Paolo Sartori, Tom Welsford and Andreas Wilde for their comments and assistance. 1 R. Robinson, “Non-European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration.” In Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. R. Owen and R. Sutcliffe (London: Longmans, 1972): 132–7; C. Newbury Patrons, Clients and Empire (Oxford: OUP 2003): 47–76, 256–84. 2 E. Stokes, “Northern and Central India” and D. Kumar, “The Fiscal System.” In The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. II (Cambridge: CUP, 1983): 45–9, 67, 917. 3 See C. Dewey, The Settlement Literature of the Greater Punjab (New Delhi: Manohar, 1991): 21–32 for a brief description of the elaborate ‘science’ of land assessment in British India which reached its peak in Punjab in the 1870s and 80s. 24 Alexander Morrison respect bore some resemblance to its Mughal predecessor.4 The removal or reinforcement of existing elites, and transformations in the system of tax collection are often the first changes to affect the mass of the population after the initial period of military conquest. For the new rulers the immediate priorities are understanding how and by whom taxes are collected, and who wields influence in local society and why. This paper attempts to examine the transition from Bukharan to Russian rule in the Zarafshan Valley, and early Russian attempts to understand and adapt Bukharan systems of taxation and land tenure to their purposes. It concentrates in particular on the decision to abolish an important Bukharan tax-collecting office, that of amlākdār, and the refusal of the Russians to recognise the tax privileges attached to certain types of mulk land in the region, a related but (as I now belatedly realise) a separate question.5 What links them, however, is precisely this issue of how the newly-introduced Russian military administration related to pre-existing elites, whether landholders who claimed exemption from taxes (often on religious grounds) or officials of the Bukharan administration. However, in order to judge how the Russians responded to and altered (or sought to alter) the status of these groups, we need to have at least some idea of the status quo before the conquest, and this presents many difficulties even for historians who (unlike me) have the requisite linguistic and palaeographical skills. As Florian Schwarz has recently noted, we still know very little about the nature of taxation and land tenure in the nineteenth-century Bukharan Emirate.6 The Persian and Chaghatai chronicles which are the focus of most existing work on Islamic Central Asia contain little information on such questions;7 many of the standard Soviet authorities have proved to

4 D. Peers, “Gunpowder Empires and the Garrison State: Modernity, Hybridity, and the Political Economy of Colonial India, circa 1750–1860.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27/2 (2007): 245–58. 5 And here I should note that in this paper I intend to revise and correct some of my earlier conclusions in A.S. Morrison Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910. A Comparison with British India (Oxford: OUP, 2008): chapter 3, in which I failed to recognise that an amlakdār and an owner of mulk land were two different things. I include some of the same source material here, but it is interpreted differently. 6 F. Schwarz, “Contested grounds: Ambiguities and Disputes over the Legal and Fiscal Status of Land in the Manghit Emirate of Bukhara.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 33–42. 7 The best-known and most easily-accessible 19th-century Bukharan chronicles are by anti-Manghit intellectuals, and have little to say about fiscal or commercial matters: Aḥmad Makhdūm Dānish, Risāla yā mukhtaṣarī az tāʾrīkh-i sulṭanat-i khānadān-i Manghītiyya, ed. A. Mirzoev (Stalinabad: Nashriyāt-i Daulati-yi Tajikistan, 1960) and translated as Istoriya mangitskoi dinastii, trans. I A. Nadzhafova (Dushanbe: Donish, 1967); Mirzā ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm Sāmī, Tāʾrīkh-i salāṭīn-i Manghītiyya. Istoriya mangitskikh gosudarei pravivshikh v stolitse, Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 25 be unreliable,8 and only with large-scale quantitative research on documents recording land transactions, mortgaging agreements and tax payments from the exceptionally rich archives of the region will it become possible to say anything definitive about the administration of the Emirate.9 Nevertheless, however inadequate it may be, some brief description of the situation before the conquest is necessary to make sense of the policies the Russians pursued subsequently. Most historians of the late Bukharan state seem to agree that it had become increasingly strong and centralised since at least the reign of Amir Naṣrullāh (1826–1860), and that, although the bīks and ḥākims (regional governors) in more remote areas such as Hissar and Shahrisabz preserved considerable autonomy, in regions within easy reach of the capital (such as the Zarafshan Valley) official appointments and the right to collect taxes were firmly under the control of the Amir, not least because of the creation of a Persian Shiite administrative and military class which made the Manghit dynasty less dependent on the Uzbek tribal nobility.10 By the 19th blagorodnoi Bukhare, ed. L.M. Epifanova (Moscow: Izdatel’tsvo Vostochnoi Literatury, 1962); ʿAbd al-‘Aẓīm Bustānī [Sāmī] Bukharāyi, Tuhfa-yi shāhī, ed. N. Jalālī (Tehran: Anjuman-i asār va mafākhir-i farhangī, 2010). 8 The unadorned list of different taxes in Bukhara in A.A. Semënov, Ocherk pozemel’no- podatnogo i nalogovogo ustroistva byvshego Bukharskogo khanstva, Trudy Sredne-Aziatskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta Seriya II Orientalia, Vyp.1 (Tashkent: SAGU, 1929) raises almost as many questions as it answers, and much of it appears to be based on N.A. Khanykov Opisanie Bukharskogo khanstva (St. Pb.: Tip. Imp. AN, 1843): 114–20 or, in translation N.A. Khanikoff Bokhara, its Amir and People, trans. C. de Bode (London: James Madden, 1845): 148–54. 9 Philipp Reichmuth, Semantic Modeling of Islamic Legal Documents: A Study on Central Asian Endowment Deeds, unpublished PhD diss. (Institut für Orientwissenschaft/ Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Saale, 2010): 7–8. See also Andreas Wilde’s contribution to this volume, and his What is Beyond the River? Power, Authority and Social Order in 18th and 19th Century Transoxania, unpublished PhD diss. (Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung/ University of Bonn, 2012), whose publication is eagerly anticipated. 10 O.D. Chekhovich, “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii Srednei Azii XVIII–XIX vekov.” Voprosy Istorii 3 (1956): 84–95; A.F. Faiziev, Istoriya Samarkanda pervoi pol. XIX veka (Samar- kand: Izd. SamGU, 1992): 12–16; W. Holzwarth, “Relations between Uzbek Central Asia, the Great Steppe and Iran, 1700–1750”. In Shifts and Drifts in Nomad-Sedentary Relations, ed. S. Leder and B. Streck (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2005): 179–216; Id., “The Uzbek State as Reflected in Eighteenth-century Bukharan Sources.” Asiatische Studien LX/2 (2006): 321–53; Yuri Bregel, “The New Uzbek States. Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand c.1750–1886”. In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chingissid Age, ed. N. Di Cosmo, A.J. Frank, and P.B. Golden (Cambridge: CUP, 2009): 403; Kimura Satoru, “Sunni-Shi’i Relations in the Rus- sian Protectorate of Bukhara, as Perceived by the Local ‘Ulama.” In Asiatic Russia. Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. T. Uyama (London: Routledge, 2012): 192–4. For a contrasting point of view see R. Sela, The Legendary Biographies of Tamerlane. Islam and Heroic Apocrypha in Central Asia (Cambridge: CUP, 2011): 117–40, however Sela 26 Alexander Morrison century one of the most important Bukharan tax-collecting officials was the amlākdār, whose precise status and role has attracted little scholarly attention and presents the historian with numerous problems. An early reference to this title, (if such it then was) can be found in a document establishing the boundaries of a vaqf in the Samarqand tumān of Shavdor in 1686, in which the signatories described themselves as ‘Niyazbek amlākdār’ and ‘Ashurbek amlākdār’, but it is unclear what meaning the term had at this date.11 The title is mentioned in the appendix to the Majmaʿ al-arqām, a late-eighteenth century Bukharan ‘manual of administration’ but without any explanation of the precise role or status which attached to it.12 M.A. Abduraimov, basing his assertion on the late 18th-century Risāla-yi Habībiyya of ʿIbadullāh b. Khwāja ʿĀrifī Bukhārī, writes that the amlākdār was a senior tax-collector responsible for collecting kharāj and other taxes on the land through local officials (āqsaqāls and amīns) which the amlākdār was then responsible for remitting to the local bīk, something echoed by Saidqulov on the basis of colonial sources.13 Semënov wrote that in the last years of the Bukharan protectorate an amlākdār was a salaried tax-collecting official, earning the equivalent of 2,500 rubles a year, but frustratingly he did not devote any more attention to this office, preferring instead to concentrate on the judicial branch of the Bukharan administration.14 More recent work suggests that in the late 19th-century Bukharan protectorate amlākdārs were usually members of the Uzbek tribal nobility, and were amongst the most powerful officials of the fiscal administration, although their appointment and dismissal remained within the power of the Amir.15 is referring to the early eighteenth century, and does not appear to appreciate that the political situation had stabilized somewhat from the late 1700s. 11 Dokumenty k istorii agrarnykh otnoshenii v Bukharskom khanstve, ed. A.K. Arends and O.D. Chekhovich, Vyp. I (Tashkent: Izd. AN UzSSR, 1951): 66, 68. 12 B.A. Vil’danova, “Podlinnik Bukharskogo traktata o chinakh i zvaniyakh.” Pis’mennye Pamyatniki Vostoka 1968 (Moscow: Nauka, 1970): 43; Yuri Bregel has pointed out that the date of composition of this text, and the identity of its author are still obscure, and it cannot be considered reliable. Y. Bregel, The Administration of Bukhara under the Manghits and Some Tashkent Manuscripts, Papers on Inner Asia No.34 (Bloomington, IN: RIFIAS, 2000): 16–18. 13 M.A. Abduraimov, Ocherki agrarnykh otnoshenii v Bukharskom khanstve v XVI–pervoi polovine XIX veka, vol. II (Tashkent: FAN, 1970): 11–12, 25; T.S. Saidkulov Samarkand vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachalo XX vekov (Samarkand, 1970): 37–42. 14 A.A. Semënov, Ocherk ustroistva tsentral’nogo administrativnogo upravleniya Bukhar- skogo khanstva pozdneishego vremeni (Stalinabad: Izd. AN TadzhSSR, 1955): 11. 15 S.A. Dudoignon, “Les “tribulations” du juge Ziya. Histoire et mémoire du clientelisme politique a Boukhara (1868–1929).” Annales: Historie et Sciences Sociale 59/5–6 (Sept.-Dec. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 27 Another element of confusion concerns the apparent overlap between the roles of the amlākdār and another tax-collecting official, the sarkār, a shadowy figure in the literature on Bukhara but more commonly mentioned in that on the Khanate of Khoqand, where this official was apparently responsible for collecting kharāj.16 The Soviet scholar R.N. Nabiev, who worked extensively with documents relating to the patrimonial estates of the khans of Khoqand, asserted that the sarkārs were the most important officials in Khoqand, renters of Government revenue on a large scale and with an additional ‘roving’ judicial remit, although this last observation seems to be based on just a single example.17 As well as collecting kharāj, they could settle disputes over land and water, acted as confidential advi- sors to bīks when they were posted in towns and directed construction projects for the khan. Thus Nabiev argues that it was the sarkār who in Khoqand provided the mobile link between the rural officials on the land, and the ḥākims and bīks in the towns—in other words, who performed the role of a Bukharan amlākdār.18 However, Nabiev’s work was based solely on documents relating to the Khan’s own estates, and it seems unlikely that the division of titles neatly followed the political division between the Khanates (which was itself blurred and contested), even if the title of amlākdār does seem to have been less commonly used in Khoqand than in Bukhara. According to Beisembiev’s work on the Tāʾrikh-i Shahrukhī, the hierarchy of titles and duties in Khoqand was extremely confused, but most positions in the state administration were based on Bukharan precedent,19 whilst Nabiev himself refers to the collection of kharāj by amlākdārs in Khoqand.20 Beisembiev’s index to the Khoqand chronicles lists only four occurrences, two of which are in the Tāʾrīkh-i ʿĀlimqulī Amīr-i Lashkar, where they refer to the collectors of kharāj, although this is a late

2004): 1112; Franz Wennberg, An Inquiry into Bukharan Qadimism. Mirza Salim-bik (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2002): 24–5. 16 A.L. Troitskaya, Materialy po istorii Kokandskogo khantsva XIX v. po dokumentam arkhiva kokandskikh khanov (Moscow: Nauka, 1969): 33; V.M. Ploskikh, Kirgizy i Kokandskoe khanstvo (Frunze: Izd. Ilim, 1977): 152, 192, 259; Kh. Bababekov Istoriya Kokanda (Tashkent: FAN, 2006): 119–39. B.M. Babadzhanov Kokandskoe khanstvo: vlast’, politika, religiya (Tokyo- Tashkent: TIAS, 2010): 609. 17 R.N. Nabiev, Iz istorii Kokandskogo khanstva. Feodal’noe khozyaistvo Khudoyar Khana (Tashkent: FAN, 1973): 228. 18 Ibid.: 229–34. 19 T.K. Beisembiev, Tarikh-i Shakhrukhi kak istoricheskii istochnik (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1987): 67–8. 20 Nabiev, Iz istorii Kokandskogo khanstva: 101–2. 28 Alexander Morrison source composed thirty years after Khoqand’s dissolution.21 Another mention, overlooked by Beisembiev, occurs in the Khoqandi Tāʾrīkh-i Jadida-yi Tāshkand (composed ca.1867–1883), where the term is being used in connection with tax-collection around Ura-Tepe, a region which had long been contested between Bukhara and Khoqand.22 Ultimately these terms are generic (in principle an amlākdār can mean anyone with control over property, a sarkār anyone in authority), and by the 19th century, at least, they seem to have become interchangeable, at least in Russian usage. In the absence of detailed work on taxation registers, yārlīqs of appointment and other documents, it is difficult to say anything more definitive about the role of the amlākdār or sarkār: as we shall see, however, in the 1870s the Russians came to associate it with what they saw as a particularly corrupt and inefficient method of collecting kharāj. The question of what was or was not mulk land is if anything even more difficult to establish than the precise role of the amlākdār. This is partly because it has proved particularly hard to disentangle questions of taxation from those of land tenure in Central Asia. Much the most vexed question for Tsarist scholars and their Soviet successors was the existence (or not) of separate categories of private property (mulk) and state land (usually referred to as mamlaka-yi padshāhī or amlāk), their respective levels of fiscal liability and the relative proportions of each (together with religious endowments or vaqf) within the overall quantity of arable land. One reason for this is that from their arrival in the region the Russians usually referred to state land as amlyak, creating a number of semantic traps for the unwary. One of these is the apparent link between amlak and amlākdār, which is probably coincidental. It is quite possible that an amlākdār could collect taxes on all forms of land, making no distinction between different forms of tenure. Another misleading point is that grammatically, amlāk is simply the Arabic plural of mulk, and when applied to land it can indeed function as a simple plural. O.D. Chekhovich, in her publication of fifteenth and sixteenth century vaqfnāmas relating to the vast estates of the 15th-century

21 T.K. Beisembiev Annotated Indices to the Kokand Chronicles (Tokyo: ILCAAS, 2008): 724; Id. (ed. & trans.) The Life of ‘Alimqul. A Native Chronicle of Nineteenth Century Central Asia (London: Routledgecurzon, 2003) trans. 60, 68, text ff. 62a, 75a; On page 91 Beisembiev suggests that in Khoqand the sarkār only collected the minor cesses of nikāḥāna (marriage) and tarīkāna (inheritance) tax, and that amlākdārs collected all taxes on the land, but this contradicts Troitskaya and Nabiev, and indeed his own earlier work on the Taʾrikh-i Shah- rukhi. 22 Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Khwāja Tāshkandī, Tāʾrīkh-i Jadīda-yi Tāshkand ff.57b-58a http:// zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/t386.html (accessed 17/11/2009). Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 29 saint and landowner ʿUbaydullāh b. Maḥmūd Khwāja Aḥrār,23 writes that the standard formula which many of the documents use refers to the conversion of Khwāja Aḥrār’s ‘estates’―amlāk―into vaqf for charitable purposes.24 Throughout the volume she translates amlāk simply as the plural of mulk (milki, in Russian), and the context in which the term is used makes it quite clear that these are personal, private possessions of the Khwāja. For instance, in one vaqfnāma of 1490 transforming some of his property around Samarqand and Tashkent and the Kashka-Darya region into a vaqf for the use of himself and his descendants and for the support of the Suzangaran madrasa in Samarqand, the term used for Khwāja Ahrar’s estates is amlāk-i khwudash (‘his own property’).25 It was probably this kind of usage of the term which led V.V. Barthold to claim that even in the nineteenth century amlāk and mulk were simply greater and smaller quantities of the same thing: he gave the following definition which he said applied to both. A common form of land tenure, that is land, which in theory is considered to be the property of the state, but is held in permanent and hereditary use by those landholders who have converted it, who have the right to sell their plots […] that is in practice they can dispose of it as their own property.26 Other than this brief passage, Barthold paid little attention to mulk land in Central Asia and as early as 1928 his conclusions were being questioned by Soviet historians, who argued that, at least by the nineteenth century, there was in fact a clear difference in the terms of tenure between amlāk and mulk land, the latter owing far fewer obligations to the state.27 Whilst this conclusion, informed as it is by the ideologically-driven search for forms of ‘feudal’ landholding in Central Asia, must be viewed with some caution, it is supported by other evidence. Abduraimov writes that although grammatically amlāk is simply the plural of mulk, in Bukhara by the early nine-

23 On Khwāja Aḥrār, his life, possessions and descendants see further N.I. Veselovskii, “Pamyatnik Khodzhi Akhrara v Samarkande.” Vostochnye Zametki (St. Pb.: Tip. Imp. AN, 1895): 321–6; J.-A. Gross, Khwāja Ahrar: a Study of the Perceptions of Religious Power and Prestige in the late Timurid Period (New York University Ph.D. Thesis, 1982); J. Paul, “Form- ing a Faction: The Ḥimāyat System of Khwaja Ahrar.” International Journal of Middle-East Studies 23 (1991): 533–48; M. Kadyrova, Zhitiya Khodzha Akhrara (Tashkent: IFEAC, 2007). 24 She uses the term imenie: O.D. Chekhovich, Samarkandskie Dokumenty XV-XVI vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1974): 35. 25 Chekhovich, Samarkandskie Dokumenty: 238 (text), 265 (trans.). 26 V.V. Bartol’d, Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni Turkestana (Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1927): 193. 27 I. Khodorov, “K voprosu ob istoricheskoi evolyutsii zemlevladeniya v Turkestane.” Istorik-Marksist 10 (1928): 137–40. 30 Alexander Morrison teenth century it had a particular juridical meaning, and was state land subject to heavier taxation than that which was privately owned.28 In the late 1950s the ethnographer K. Shaniyazov questioned elderly inhabitants of the former Bukharan Emirate on the subject of the pre-revolutionary system of taxation. All his interviewees were in agreement that amlāk and mulk were two different things, the former state, the latter private land. The rate of kharāj on amlāk could be as much as ½ the value of the crop, and it constituted the principal source of income for the Amir. Mulk estates were apparently much smaller than amlāk, carried a lower tax burden (no more than 20% of the value of the crop), and were usually farmed by the beneficiary himself.29 Barthold was thus in error on this point: full private property clearly did exist in Central Asia.30 As Schwarz explains it, both Islamic legal theory and local practice in Central Asia presupposed a clear distinction between state land (mamlaka or amlāk) and full private property (milk or mulk).31 Chekhovich wrote that Barthold had also failed to appreciate that not only were all forms of mulk private property, some also carried significant exemptions from tax. She further argued that those payments which were made on mulk land in Central Asia were simply a tax paid by private property owners, but E.A. Davidovich disagreed, instead interpreting them as rent paid to the state as the ultimate owner.32 They did both agree, however, on a fairly rigid schema which classified mulk land into three different types: the most common, mulk-i kharāj, was land subject to the normal tax of 20%; mulk-i ʿushrī was subject to a lower rate of kharāj because it notionally belonged to the descendants of the Arab invaders or other religious elites and was subject to half the usual rate of

28 Abduraimov, Ocherki agrarnykh otnoshenii, vol. II: 11–12, 25. 29 K. Shaniyazov, “Ob osnovnykh vidakh zemel’noi sobstvennosti i razmerakh kharadzha v Bukharskom khanstve v kontse XIX—nachali XX veka (po etnograficheskim dannym).” Obshchestvennye Nauki v Uzbekistane 3 (1962): 51–6. 30 J. Paul, “Review Essay: Recent Monographs on the Social History of Central Asia.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (March 2010): 126. 31 ‘Legal tradition and legal practice are unequivocal about one thing: milk of any kind is full ownership, independent from fiscal and other financial obligations of the title holder or the fiscal or legal status of the peasants. Private land (milk) could however become state land (mamlaka) as the result of a historical process, and in this process the peasants who had been tax-paying owners would have become rent-paying tenants. It was also common practice that state land was (re)converted to milk, usually in combination with the granting of tax privileges. But the legal distinction between milk and mamlaka remained clear’, Schwarz, “Contested Grounds”: 35. 32 O.D. Chekhovich, “V.V. Bartol’d i puti dalneishego issledovaniya problemy mil’ka.” In Formy feodal’noi zemel’noi sobstvennosti i vladeniya na Blizhnem i Srednem Vostoke. Bartol’dovskie chteniya 1975 g., ed. B.G. Gafurov (Moscow: Nauka, 1979): 146–58. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 31 kharāj, i.e. 10%; finally mulk-i ḥurr-i khāliṣ was not subject to taxation at all.33 Schwarz notes that these distinctions were probably less rigid in practice, but a more significant problem is that Chekhovich and Davidovich’s work is based on documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is far from clear whether these categories were still in use in the nineteenth century, or if they were, whether they still meant the same thing. Some forms of tax-exemption or reduction on mulk land clearly did still exist: Schwarz’s research suggests that mulk-i ʿushrī was still widespread in the early nineteenth century, although in legal documents its title was Persianised to mulk-i dah-yak (i.e. one in ten).34 The Samarqandi topographer and historian Abū Ṭāhir Khwāja wrote in the 1840s that the lands in the hills around the Chupan-Ata mausoleum to the north of Samarqand were subject only to ʿushr because the inhabitants had converted to Islam voluntarily at the time of the Arab conquests and had later heroically resisted the infidel Mongols.35 As this suggests, there was a connection between the enjoyment of tax privileges and high religious status, although the extent of this correlation is still unclear. Barthold and Nabiev both argued that much tax-exempt mulk land was in the hands of khwājas,36 members of a religious elite on which there is a growing literature.37 The term is often taken as more or less synonymous with sayyid, i.e. claiming descent from the Prophet’s kin, and the originating figure in most khwāja genealogies was Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya, a son of ʿAlī whose heirs had briefly had claims on the Shi’i imamate, although khwāja groups are firmly Sunni.38 However, Central Asian khwājas derived their

33 E.A. Davidovich, “Feodal’nyi zemelnyi milk v Srednei Azii XV- XVIII vv: sushchnost’ i transformatsiya.” In Formy feodal’noi zemel’noi sobstvennosti, ed. Gafurov: 40–1; O.D. Chekhovich, “K probleme zemel’noi sobstvennosti v feodal’noi Srednei Azii.” Obshchest- vennye Nauki v Uzbekistane 11 (1976): 38–9. 34 Schwarz, “Contested Grounds”: 35. 35 Samariya-Sochinenie Abu Takhir Khodzhi, ed. N.I. Veselovskii (St. Pb.: Tip. I Boragan- skogo, 1904): 9. 36 Bartol’d, Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni: 192–3; Nabiev, Istoriya Kokandskogo khanstva: 101–2. 37 See A.A. Khismatulin, “Khvadzhagan.” Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii, Tom I (Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, 2006): 417–25; D. DeWeese, “The Masha’ikh-i Turk and the Khwājagan.” Journal of Islamic Studies 7/2 (1996): 180–207; Id., “The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-century Central Asia: Descent Groups Linked to Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters.” International Journal of Middle-East Studies 31 (1999): 507–30; J. Paul, Die Politische und Soziale Bedeutung der Naqşbandiyya in Mittel- asien im 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991). 38 M.F. Köprülü, Early Mystics in Turkish Literature, ed. and trans. Gary Leiser and Robert Dankoff (London: Routledge, 2006): 70 n.1; D. DeWeese, “Foreword.”; A. von Kügel- gen and M. Kemper, “Preface.”; ‘Prilozheniya 1.’ In Islamization and Sacred Lineages in 32 Alexander Morrison authority and influence in large part from belonging to local Sufi lineages within the three principal Sufi brotherhoods: the Naqshbandiyya, Yasaviyya and Kubraviyya. Of these the Naqshbandiyya had become dominant by the 16th century, and within the Naqshbandiyya one of the most important lineages was that of khwājas claiming descent from Aḥmad Kāsānī Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, the pupil and spiritual heir of Khwāja Aḥrār.39 Although he was born in Fergana, Kāsānī spent most of his life in Samarqand and was buried in the nearby village of Dahbid, where in the 1890s there were still at least fifty households of khwājas claiming descent from him, some of whom still owned substantial amounts of land.40 The true extent of landholdings in the hands of khwājas by the 19th century was probably less than it had been in heyday of Khwāja Ahrār or the Juibari Sheikhs of Bukhara (and certainly more fragmented).41 What is more important, as we shall see, is that the Russians came to believe that mulk land was predominantly used to support these and other religious elites. The historiographical confusion surrounding these questions has its roots in the first attempts by the Russians to understand the nature of land tenure in the Zarafshan Valley immediately after the conquest. Erroneous as many of their conclusions will probably prove to have been, they nevertheless informed colonial policy on administration, taxation and attitudes towards Bukharan elites. Hence I am principally concerned with the Russian understanding of these subjects in the years immediately following the fall of Samarqand in 1868, and the perceptions, reasoning and motiva- tions which led them to annul the privileges of groups who could potentially have been very useful collaborators in the construction of a colonial administration. As we shall see, for the Russians the key difference between amlāk and mulk lay in the tax privileges which they believed the latter enjoyed, not the fact that it was private, hereditary tenure. Whether this view was justified or not, it would form the core of the debate amongst Russian officials in the immediate aftermath of the conquest of Samarqand

Central Asia. The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions. Vol. 2: Genealogical Charters and Sacred Families: Nasab-namas and Khwāja Groups Linked to the Ishaq Bab Narrative, 19th-21st Centuries, ed. A.K. Muminov, A. von Kügelgen, D. Deweese, and M. Kemper (Almaty: Daik Press 2008): 14–16, 37–8, 277. 39 Veselovskii, “Pamyatnik Khodzhi Akhrara v Samarkande”: 321–6. 40 N.I. Veselovskii, “Dagbid.” Zapiski Vostochnago Otdeleniya Imperatorskago Russkago Arkheologicheskago Obshchestva II (1888): 85–7. 41 On the Juybari Shaykhs, who also had vast landholdings (and who occupied hereditary positions at the Bukharan court) see P.I. Ivanov, Iz arkhiva sheikhov dzhuibari (Moscow- Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1938) and Id., Khozyaistvo dzhuibarskikh sheikhov (Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1955). Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 33 and the Zarafshan Valley. Central to this is the correspondence between the two officials who took the decision to reform the taxation system, namely Governor-General Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman and the Military Commandant of the Zarafshan okrug (military district), Major- General Alexander Konstantinovich Abramov. I argue that their decision was partly fiscally motivated, as they struggled to understand and manage a tax-collection system based around the amlākdār and with apparently myriads of special exemptions, and that it also stemmed also from a deep suspicion that all Bukharan landowners belonged to religious descent groups, and were thus fosterers of ‘Muslim fanaticism.’

I. Russian Encounters with Amlākdārs and Kharāj

Fifty years after the Russian conquest, Senator Count Pahlen, the leader of an imperial commission enquiring into Turkestan’s administration, wrote that to begin with the Russians introduced little by way of reforms to the land-tax system in Turkestan: At first our power was not yet acquainted with the native revenue system and did not have the essential organs for the assessment of data, because of which the revenue was remitted to the treasury in very modest amounts. Out of a feeling of solidarity with the native population, and in accordance with their own interests, both sarkārs and the zakātchīs took the side of the payers, which they were able to do without any danger to themselves, as the Russian power was unable to have any real control over them.42 Von Kaufman had made a similar assertion, stating that for four and a half years after the conquest the administration of the Zarafshan okrug in particular was left unchanged from Bukharan times as far as taxes and their collection were concerned.43 Although Pahlen was quite right about the small amount of revenue the Russians were able to collect immediately after the conquest, both were exaggerating the degree of continuity with the Muslim regimes even at this early stage. Despite the fact that the Zarafshan okrug was only formally annexed to the Russian Empire in 1886, eighteen years after the conquest, the Russians set about reorganising and altering its administration in 1871, though they continued to hint to Bukhara

42 Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, Otchet po revizii Turkestanskago Kraya, proi zvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU poveleniyu. Sel’skoe upravlenie, russkoe i tuzemnoe (St. Pb.: Senatskaya Tip., 1910): 6–7 43 Gen.-Ad’t. K.P. fon-Kaufman, Proekt vsepoddanneishego otcheta Gen.-Ad’yutanta fon-Kaufmana po grazhdanskomu upravleniyu (St. Pb.: Voennaya Tip., 1885): 68. 34 Alexander Morrison and to the British that they might be willing to hand it back.44 The local bīks and ḥākims were immediately removed from the equation as most of them had fled to Bukhara or Khoqand before the Russian advance, and Samarqand was no exception, as General von Kaufman symbolically occupied what he described as the ‘khan’s palace, known in Asia under the name of the ‘Kök-Tash’ (blue stone)’, which had once been part of the throne of Tamerlane.45 Whilst some members of the old elite, notably Jura-Bek and Baba-Bek, the former ḥākims of Shahrisabz and Kitab, were eventually allowed to join the Army in largely honorary positions (one a major-general, the other a colonel),46 they were not given any further role in the collection of land revenue or local administration. The Russians do not seem to have made any attempt to find substitute local dignitaries whom they could co-opt to their side. Accounts of the fall of Samarqand tend to concentrate on the military campaign,47 and by the time a chancellery had been established there and had begun producing documents the expropriation and expulsion of the Bukharan bīks was already a fait accompli . However the Russian attitude towards these governors or petty rulers, and the means by which they stripped them of their powers, can be gauged quite well by a decree from Major-General Abramov, conqueror of Samarqand and Commandant of the Zarafshan military district, issued after the brief Iskander-Kul campaign in August-September 1870 which resulted in the annexation of three mountainous bekstvos in the valley of the Upper Zarafshan. This reads as follows: To all inhabitants of Magian, Farap and Kshtut. By order of the Governor- General, all the lands of Magian, Farap and Kshtut are united to the lands

44 G.N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1889): 215–6. 45 Von Kaufman to Alexander II 02.05.1868, RGVIA, f. 1396, op. 2, d. 46, ll. 53–4ob; Ron Sela has suggested that both the idea of the Kök Tash as a symbol of sovereignty and its association with Timur were of relatively recent origin, as he has not found any explicit reference to it before the 18th century, R. Sela, “The “Heavenly Stone” (Kök Tash) of Samar- qand: A Rebels’ Narrative Transformed.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 17/1 (2007): 21–32; Von Kaufman’s understanding of it was almost certainly based upon the account by Nikolai Khanykov, who visited Samarqand in 1841 and wrote that every khan needed to sit on it in order to be legitimised: Khanykov Opisanie: 101–2; Khanikoff Bokhara: 131. 46 Bartol’d, Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni: 190; G.A. Akhmedzhanov, Rossiiskaya imperiya v Tsentral’noi Azii (Tashkent: FAN, 1995): 28–9; Baba-Bek was the last independent Governor of Shahrisabz, Jura-Bek his relative and ḥākim of nearby Kitab. Both fled to Khoqand in 1870 but were extradited by Khudāyār Khan. Beisembiev Life of ‘Alimqul: 26. 47 See e. g. M. Lyko Ocherk voennykh deistvii 1868 goda v doline Zaryavshana (St. Pb.: Tip. Dep. Udelov, 1871); A.P. Kh[oroshkhin], “Vesna 1868g v Srednei Azii.” Voennyi Sbornik 9 (Sept. 1875): 154–87. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 35

of the Zarafshan okrug and henceforth will be ruled by the Russian Govern- ment. The former bīks Hussein Bek, Shady Bek and Seid Bek are banished from this land for ever. The population must submit to its Government and pray to God for the White Tsar, who in his mercy has taken them under his high patronage. All āqsaqāls, qāżīs and amlākdārs are commanded to appear in Samarqand within a month in order to receive their marks of office. Those who do not appear within this time will be removed from their posts.48 Hussein Bek and Shady Bek were the sons of the former bīk of Samarqand, who had fled to the mountains after the Russians took the city, and were still viewed as a potential subversive threat.49 In response to this appeal several qāżīs and āqsaqāls appeared at Penjikent, swore allegiance to the White Tsar and were rewarded with khalats at a ceremony presided over by Von Kaufman, who was visiting the Zarafshan okrug at the time.50 There was no further mention of the amlākdārs, who both here and elsewhere in the Zarafshan Valley were less fortunate. Although on the face of it they could have continued to play a key role in revenue-collection and constituted an important collaborative elite, rather like the zamīndārs of Bengal, within three years of the conquest of Samarqand their function had been abolished. All thirty-two amlākdārstvos in the Zarafshan okrug were absorbed, and revenue-collection was decentralised and devolved to a lower level of the administration, the so-called sel’skoe obshchestvo or agrarian community, which as in European Russia was meant to constitute the basic unit of taxation.51 Whilst there it was a formalisation of the existing peasant commune,52 in Central Asia, where this institution did not exist, the consequences were rather different. This was the earliest, and also perhaps the most profound change which colonial rule brought about in the Central Asian countryside, but both its inception and its long-term consequences remain little-studied and poorly understood. The first Russian scholar to examine the complex question of land rights and tax collection in the Zarafshan region in the immediate aftermath of

48 Decree from Abramov 03.09.1870, TsGARUz, f. I-5, op. 1, d. 35, l. 20. The document is available at http://zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/t1384.html (accessed 09/12/2009). 49 A. Fedchenko, “Zametki o Magianskom bekstve.” In Materialy dlya statistiki Turke stanskogo Kraya, ed. N. Maev Vyp. II (St. Pb.: n.p., 1873). In TS 60 (1873): 53. 50 N. Maev, “Poseshchenie g. general-gubernatorom Zaravshanskogo Okruga.” TV 17 (24th May 1871). 51 Bartol’d, Istoriya Kul’turnoi zhizni: 193; von-Kaufman, Proekt vsepoddanneishego otcheta: 69. 52 J. Burbank, “Thinking like an Empire: Estate, Law, and Rights in the Early Twentieth Century.” In Russian Empire. Space, People, Power 1700–1930, ed. J. Burbank, M. von Hagen, and A. Remnev (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2007): 201. 36 Alexander Morrison the conquest was the orientalist Alexander Ludwigovich Kun, and his conclusions seem to have informed most subsequent Russian understandings of the amlākdār and his role. Kun had graduated from the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1864, was assigned to assist Von Kaufman in Turkestan in 1867, and sent to the newly-established Zarafshan military district in 1868, where he participated in the Shahrisabz and Iskander-Kul expeditions under General Abramov.53 He gave the following definition of the amlākdār’s office: Amlākdār (one who has mulk—a literal translation)—in reality means: a tax-collector. The amlākdārs are appointed by the bīks, from whom they receive yārlīqs (deeds of appointment): they constitute the administrative power in the tumans and have a number of assistants, called dārūghas.54 Their duties are, at the time of the collection of grain, to seal up the portion of grain collected. His detailed description of the amlākdār’s functions was composed and published in 1873, and I will attempt to summarise it here.55 Depending on the size of the tumān (district) concerned, a newly- appointed bīk would in turn appoint one, two, three or more amlākdārs to collect the land taxes there. Occasionally he would leave the existing ones in place, but Kun’s local informants assured him that this was a rare occur- rence, and that very few amlākdārs remained in their posts even for two or three years. These amlākdārs would be issued with tanap registers for their tumān, collected by the bīk from their predecessors in the post, which recorded the fixed amount of tax to be paid per tanap of land under valuable cash crops such as fruit or cotton.56 Occasionally the registers would need to be revised to remove inaccuracies, a task normally undertaken by a muftī (a member of the judicial branch of the administration), who would consult with the local āqsaqāls and amīns to draw up new registers indicat- ing the ownership of land and the crops it carried. In early spring at the time of the first sowing, the amlākdār would proceed to collect the qush-

53 AV: f. 33, op. 1, d. 33, ll. 12ob–14ob; N.A. Maev, “A.L. Kun.” TV 46 (22nd Nov. 1888). 54 A superintendent or manager. The word appears to be derived from a Mongol term meaning ‘Governor’. 55 Part of the manuscript is to be found in AV, f. 33, op. 1, d. 20, ll. 1–2ob. It was published as A.L. Kun, “Bukharskie poryadki. Zametki o poryadke vzimaniya pozemel’nykh podatei.” TV 32 (14th August 1873). 56 Ṭanāb, which the Russians wrote as tanap, was both a measurement of land (which varied widely between different regions, and was probably determined by the amount of water needed to irrigate it) and a Bukharan tax levied as a fixed charge by area rather than as a proportion of the harvest. It was applied to market-gardens, orchards, cotton and other particularly valuable crops, often in areas near cities. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 37 pul.57 He would be accompanied by his mirzās and dārūghas, and it was the responsibility of the local āqsaqāls and amīns to provide hospitality for him and his suite. The collection of kharāj on the grain crop from ābī (irrigated) land would not take place until midsummer. Crucially, Kun writes that, unlike the tanap tax, there were no pre-existing registers for this tax, because the size of the harvest and grain reserves varied so much from year to year. Thus the register of those on whom the kharāj levy fell was drawn up anew every year, usually at the time when the crop was harvested. This was done under the supervision of the amlākdār and his assistants. The dārūghas would place their seals on pieces of damp clay attached to some of the kharmān (stooks or piles of grain)58 in order to ensure that none of it was disposed of before the kharāj was collected.59 All the men involved (who included a nānwāy or baker, who placed loaves of bread on the kharmān to wish a prosperous year ahead) were entitled to take a proportion of the grain away in the tails of their shirts or the skirts of their khalats as payment in kind, known as the kifsen.60 The collection of tax on the harvest would finish at the end of October. The amlākdār would draw up a register in consultation with local āqsaqāls, stating from whom and in what quantities tax had been collected, and took these, together with all the tax (both in kind and

57 A money tax on the area of ploughed land. Qush means ‘pair’ or ‘couple’. Here it is a measurement unit, probably the notional amount of land that could be ploughed by a yoke of oxen, known as juft-i gāv in Iran, and in medieval and early-modern Europe as ‘oxgang’ or ‘bovate’. I am grateful to Beatrice Penati for providing me with this explanation. 58 Steingass defines this as ‘reaped corn, but unthreshed, and piled up in a large circular stack.’ Lambton writes that in Iran ‘the word kharman, which means harvest in general, is also applied in particular to a heap comprising the grain harvest for a particular piece of land.’ A.K. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (Oxford: OUP, 1953): 361, 431. Kun refers to the grain already being threshed at the point when taxes were collected, and also employs the Russian term gumna, so it is probable that here it refers to threshed grain heaped on a threshing-floor. Kun was also the editor of Turkestanskii Al’bom, where in Part 3, pl. 34, no. 160, a photograph purports to show an official (an amlākdār?) measuring a pile of grain with a wooden implement, and the caption ‘khirmenberdari.’ It is unclear from the text of the article, but it seems probable that only a certain proportion of the kharmān (presumably 1/5 in most places) were set aside for the payment of tax. 59 O.D. Chekhovich also describes the ‘archaic’ practice in the 19th century whereby the amlākdār placed a seal upon the new season’s harvest on what she refers to as amlāk (state) land to prevent the peasantry from disposing of any of it before taxes had been collected, Dokumenty k istorii agrarnykh otnoshenii, ed. A.K. Arends and O.D. Chekhovich: xiv-xv. According to Lambton a similar system of collecting taxes in kind from the threshing-floor existed in Iran and dated back to Sassanian times. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia: 40–2. 60 Derived from kif, which according to Steingass can mean both a ‘handful’ and ‘hem- ming a garment.’ 38 Alexander Morrison that which had been commuted into money) to the bīk. He gave a full account of that which had already been disbursed to members of the fiscal administration in payment for their services, which was also his responsibility. Kun claimed that the tax on lalmī or bahārī (unirrigated, rain-fed) land was collected in the same way, although this seems doubtful given the greater variations in crop. Kun’s article is the most comprehensive account I have yet seen of the role of the amlākdār in the collection of taxes in Bukhara, but for the purposes of this paper it is useful primarily because it tells us how the Russians had come to understand a system of tax-collection which by the time he was writing had already been abolished. On this score the main points to take from Kun’s account are first, that the amlākdār was the single most important Bukharan tax-official (which may or may not have been true), but above all his statement that under the amlākdāri system the assessment for kharāj was carried out afresh every year. This was the aspect of Bukharan land-tax collection which the Russians would find most difficult to deal with, and which appears ultimately to have led to the system’s abolition.

II. Pressures on the Fiscal System in the 1870s

Von Kaufman was under considerable pressure to raise revenue in Turke stan because of the immense cost of the annexation, and the degree to which the administration and military presence there was being subsidised by St. Petersburg. In 1868 the Steppe Commission had complained that at least a half of the potential revenue from Turkestan was being lost through inefficiency, corruption and lack of control over collection, something the metropolitan press quickly seized upon.61 A year later Russian expenditure in Turkestan amounted to 4,233,482 roubles, and receipts to just 2,356,241 roubles. In the period 1868–1872 the revenue in Turkestan fell short of costs by 19,600,000 roubles,62 and this ratio of income to expenditure would if anything grow worse over the next ten years.63 Von Kaufman was acutely aware that his enemies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, led by the disgruntled General Chernyaev, were using these figures to mount bitter political

61 “Po povodu uchrezhdeniya novogo Turkestanskogo General-Gubernatorstva i Voen- nogo Okruga.” Golos 194 (1868). In TS 1 (1868): 171. 62 M.A. Terent’ev, Rossiya i Angliya v Srednei Azii (St. Pb.: P.P. Merkulev, 1875): 323. 63 F.K. Girs, Otchet, revizuyushchago, po vysochaishemu poveleniyu, Turkestanskii Krai (St. Pb.: n.p., 1884): 366. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 39 attacks on him.64 The Governor-General spent most of 1868 complaining about low kharāj returns from Samarqand and the fact that very little zakāt was being collected at the border with Bukhara. Abramov explained rather sheepishly that: ‘As the region was finally taken in June, a part of the ṭanāb and qush-pul levies, which in some areas are collected early—were demanded and carried off by the Bukharan officials.’65 The Russians found considerable difficulty in collecting taxes using the personnel they had inherited from the previous regimes. Not only did they decide that these agents were unreliable, the lack of any comprehensive survey of agricultural land in the region meant that the authorities had very little idea of what area was being harvested each year, and with what crop. This information was essential if they wanted to maintain a revenue system based largely on kharāj, which was now meant to be paid wherever possible in cash. An early example of such complaints comes from the region of Ura-tepe near Khujand, a few months before the Zarafshan Valley was annexed, in a region which by then had been under Russian rule for two years. Captain A.P. Chaikovskii, the then sub-commandant of the Ura- tepe division explained: The kharāj cess […] presents really the most equitable system of taxation,— since the people pay according to the goods they actually possess, taking into account the harvest,—but given the unsatisfactory result, gross abuses and the lack of control, we are forced to wish that the kharāj cess be replaced by a different tax, and in that case a land tax would be the most satisfactory […] At the same time the kharāj cess requires an endless number of eyes and hands, in order to ensure that movable objects subject to tax should not be hidden, unpaid for etc.66 He claimed that under the ancien régime (which in Ura-tepe could have been either Bukhara, Khoqand or local rulers at different times) kharāj had been collected primarily to support the military, and that because the tax- collectors were also drawn from the military, they had a direct interest in

64 D. Mackenzie, “Kaufman of Turkestan: an Assessment of his Administration 1867– 1881.” Slavic Review 26/2 (June 1967): 265–85; I disagree with Mackenzie’s suggestion that it was only owing to malice inspired by Chernyaev that the figures for military expenditure were included on the debit side of Turkestan’s balance-sheet. The military geographer M.I. Venyukov dismissed this argument at the time, calculating that the annexation of Turkestan had necessitated the stationing of at least 35,500 additional troops ‘beyond the Urals’ (i.e. in Asia). M.I. Venyukov, “Postupatel’noe dvizhenie Rossii v Srednei Azii.” Sbornik Gosudarstvennykh Znanii, vol. III ed. V. Bezobrazov (St. Pb.: Tip. V. Bezobrazova, 1877): 82–3. 65 Abramov to von Kaufman, (?.06.1869), TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15, l. 102; von-Kaufman, Proekt Vsepoddanneishego Otcheta: 69–70. 66 Chaikovskii to Abramov, 01.03.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, ll. 1–2. 40 Alexander Morrison maximising receipts.67 This was no longer the case, and now he thought the whole system should be replaced with a simple charge on the area of cultivated land, on the model of the tanap cess, as the Russians simply did not have the knowledge or the personnel to carry out the annual harvest assessments necessary for the maintenance of kharāj. The tax proposed by Chaikovskii was to be levied on all cultivated land, at a rate of 10% of the average harvest. As he said, this would require a comprehensive land survey (of a kind that would be unsuccessfully attempted in Fergana in the late 1870s).68 He calculated that 20 ṭanābs of wheat would produce an average crop of 21 poods, worth 6 roubles and 30 kopeks, of which 63 kopeks would be due in cash. Chaikovskii estimated that on this basis (and ignoring more valuable crops, such as rice), such a tax would bring in 249,000 roubles a year, or three times the current receipts. Finally, using this means, we will do away with the abnormal position of our power, when—so far as tax is concerned—we do not have control in our hands, and have to be satisfied with what they give us. In this instance we will benefit in two ways, materially and morally, since the natives clearly see our failure and the ease with which they can deceive the authorities. This situation cannot be prolonged, we must, and are obliged to take into our hands that control, which at the moment, I can confirm we do not have. The sole means of verifying the current system of revenue collection, is to conduct a poll of names of all the inhabitants. It is necessary only to recall our religious difference, a few verses of the Koran, asiatic cunning—to see that the method outlined above has become a comedy, in which, once again, the comic role is played by us.69 Chaikovskii’s suggestions were not heeded immediately, but from 1871 the Russians began to make some sweeping changes in the structure of local government they had inherited from Bukhara. In 1874 Kun published a retrospective article about the amlākdārī system of tax-collection, saying that whilst he was unaware how well or badly the system had worked under the Bukharan regime, since the Russians had taken over the Zarafshan Valley in 1868 problems of corruption had become so acute that in 1872 a

67 This offers some independent confirmation of Semënov’s claim that the revenue from amlāk was used to pay the Bukharan military, although the connection is somewhat unclear. Semënov, Ocherk pozemel’no-podatnogo i nalogovogo ustroistva: 54. 68 On this see B. Penati, “Notes on the Birth of Russian Turkestan’s Fiscal System. A View from the Fergana oblast’.” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 53/5 (2010): 739–69; in the same article she notes that A.P. Chaikovskii (1841–1903) had participated in the 1866 military campaigns in Central Asia and in 1898 would become military governor of the Fergana oblast’. 69 Chaikovskii to Abramov, 01.03.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, ll.5ob–6. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 41 commission (of which he was a member) had been set up to look into their activities. This concluded that most amlākdārs, even if honest, had so many kharmans to assess (80–100 per day) that it was impossible for them to judge accurately how much grain they contained, and that peasants were withholding much of the harvest and avoiding assessment altogether. In many cases the amlākdārs and their assistants, the dārūghas and amīns, were taking a larger share of the harvest for themselves than was reaching the treasury. This was because, Kun wrote, the peasants considered the kifsen―the perquisite to which tax officials were entitled as their payment―to form a part of the kharāj tax, and deducted it from the amount they gave to the state. Furthermore, whilst the size of the kifsen was determined by the amount an official could carry away in the skirts of his khalat, the kharmān from which they were taken varied widely in size, so that sometimes the kifsen comprised the state’s entire share of that particular pile. He gave a series of examples uncovered by the commission in Aforinkent and Aq-tepe: in the latter case, a kharman of grain belonging to Mullah Raḥmat Raziqulov had been assessed by the amlākdār at eight poods. On being weighed it turned out to contain 9 ½ poods. The state’s share of this amounted to 1 pood 36 funts. However, the dārūgha took 1 pood 7 ½ funts, the serker70 13 funts, and the amīn 10 funts, making two poods 13 funts altogether, the officials pocketing the difference. The further away from Samarqand, the more common such problems became. When the commission questioned the inhabitants in the bazaar of Aq-tepe as to why they had not petitioned the authorities about this abuse, they replied that they did not know that Samarqand was the seat of government, and that the amlākdārs had threatened them that the Russians would send them to Siberia if they petitioned: ‘how can we petition against the

70 This is the first mention of a sarkār in Kun’s writings on the Bukharan tax system, and in the other examples he cites in this article the equivalent official is an amlākdār. For him, at least, the terms seem to have been interchangeable. One article in the liberal St. Petersburg daily, Golos, which seems to be at least partly based on Kun’s work, explicitly notes that a sarkār is ‘the same thing as an amlākdār’: “Podatnaya sistema v Turkestanskom krae.” Golos 134. In TS 152 (1875): 38; the term sarkār seems to have been more current among Russian officers before Kun conducted his researches, and amlakdars are not even mentioned in the description of the Bukharan tax system given by General Staff Officer L.F. Kostenko in Srednyaya Aziya i vodvorenie v nei russkoi grazhdanstvennosti (St. Pb.: Tip. V. Bezobrazov, 1871): 65, which bizarrely has mīrābs (irrigation officials) acting as the sarkār’s subordinate. Kun himself would write about sarkārs in more detail a few years later when he was assigned to survey the newly-annexed lands of the Khoqand Khanate, where he described them as tax collectors, selected predominantly from amongst former slaves of the khan: A.L. Kun, Ocherk Kokanskogo khanstva. Otdel’nyi ottisk iz Izvestii Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva, vol. XII (SPb.: n. p., 1876): 6. 42 Alexander Morrison amlākdārs, they are powerful people.’71 Babajanov notes that in Khoqand before the Russian conquest many of the Khan’s fiscal practices were contested by the ʿulamāʾ as arbitrary and contrary to the sharīʿa, whilst some zakātchīs seem to have been very successful at enriching themselves, so this emphasis on corruption may have been more than just a Russian trope.72 After 1870–1 in Samarqand I have found no further references to amlākdārs, sarkārs and zakātchīs in Russian territory except as agents of the Bukharan Government, and the Pahlen report suggests that all these Bukharan-era posts were abolished in 1871.73 In 1872 the Russians also began to simplify the tax-system itself, as von Kaufman recalled Notwithstanding the more developed and energetic supervision of the Rus- sian Administration, and all the attempts at betterment and improvement in the correct collection of taxes, the administration of tumans and amlyak- stv [sic], under the old Bukharan system it turned out to be unsustainable. I was forced, having refused to consider it capable of further improvement, to decide on an essential reorganisation, which began to get underway in 1872,—after all attempts at improvement, based on the foundation of unchanged Bukharan conventions, had brought about all the useful results they could, they were unable to overcome the greatest insufficiencies in the system, which lay in its very fundamentals.74 The Bukharan system of taxation was replaced in 1873, when it was simpli- fied to zakāt, ṭanāb and 10% kharāj (reduced from 20%) and some detailed surveys were undertaken by Russian officials seconded from their normal duties. One of these, Ozerov, who had been the president of the Semirech’e oblast’ land commission, remarked in an unsolicited project for the reform of the revenue system in the Zarafshan okrug, that corruption amongst the āqsaqāls had been endemic under the Bukharans and that the Russians still had no means of imposing effective control over them.75 Ultimately these investigations were supposed to have revealed that over the previous three years a total of 165,184 roubles had been withheld from the Russian authorities in the Zarafshan okrug by native revenue officials.76 Writing in

71 A.L. Kun, “Zametka o pozemel’nykh sborakh v Zarafshanskom okruge.” TV 1 (2nd January 1874). 72 Babadzhanov, Kokandskoe khanstvo: 603–12. 73 Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, Otchet po revizii Turkestanskago Kraya, proizvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU poveleniyu. Nalogi i poshliny. Organy finansovogo upravleniya (St. Pb.: Senatskaya Tip., 1910): 50. 74 Von-Kaufman, Proekt vsepoddanneishego otcheta: 69. 75 Ozerov to Abramov, 07.10.1870, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 46, l. 1. 76 Palen, Nalogi i poshliny: 50–1; Ignat’ev, Ob”yasnitel’naya zapiska: 100. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 43 the late 1870s, several years after the abolition of amlākdārī and the dis- mantling of the Bukharan system of revenue collection in the Zarafshan okrug, General von Kaufman later reflected that: The reform began with the abolition of the sarkārs and amlākdārs at that time, when the weaknesses of native economic organisation in the Syr-Darya oblast’ became clear. Deciding against introducing in the [Zarafshan] region the same unfortunate form of revenue establishment, I found it possible to hand over the matter of tax collections and the economic part of the administration to the direct management of volostnye upraviteli [canton administrators] and village headmen.77 He went on to express his satisfaction with this move, pointing to the marked increase in the amount of revenue collected by his chosen intermediaries. This was certainly true (although it did not affect the overall deficit) and was in some ways quite impressive given the concurrent reduction in the rate of kharāj. However whilst overall it seems likely that the tax burden declined in Turkestan as a result of this change, it was no longer as responsive to the vagaries of the harvest as it had been. This led to complaints from some inhabitants. Commenting on a series of petitions from the inhabitants of the large town of Peishambe, Abramov wrote: The substance of most of the petitions of the inhabitants of the tumān of Peishambe who are cultivating amlāk (state) land does not lie in the fact that they have been taxed unjustly with regard to the quantity of land and confirmed prices, but in the fact that, in their view, the kharāj tax should not have been levied in full in some areas of the Peishambe tumān where there was allegedly no harvest in 1871. […] The reason for the petitions of the inhabitants of Katta-Kurgan about the onerousness of the collection of taxes above all lies in the sudden transition from the former amlākdāri system of collection, to the new order, more strict and just. In this respect the amlākdāri system entirely spoiled the people, accustoming them never to pay in full, that which was due from them.78 Amongst the many things Abramov failed to acknowledge here was the fact that under Bukhara the tax burden in each locality had been set annu- ally according to the actual size of the harvest, and determined at least in part by officials appointed by the centre who could monitor the activities of local āqsaqāls. The Russians, because they had neither the manpower nor the expertise to maintain a system of comparable flexibility and supervision, had simply devolved all these functions to the sel’skoe obshchestvo

77 Von-Kaufman, Proekt vsepoddanneishego otcheta: 69–70. 78 Abramov to von Kaufman, 19.11.1872, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 70, ll. 101–101ob, 103. 44 Alexander Morrison or ‘agrarian society’, which in Central Asia was a new, and often rather artificial entity which might comprise one large village or several small ones which had never formed a unit before.79 After 1875, when a rudimentary land survey was completed, each obshchestvo (also known as an aksakalstvo) was assessed for a certain amount of land revenue on the basis of the land, crops and prevailing bazaar prices in that year.80 This amount rapidly become out of date over the succeeding decade, so that in practice far less than 10% was being collected. More importantly, however, under this system the Russians effectively washed their hands of the trickiest element of all—the distribution of tax within villages and aksakalstvos. Instead this would now be determined by the āqsaqāl in collaboration with the illīkbāshīs (electors, chosen from amongst heads of households) who had chosen him, which increased the possibilities of corruption and unfair distribution of the burden.81 In the absence of a detailed cadastral survey of arable land in the Zarafshan Valley, this decision ensured that the colonial regime would remain a shallow one, with only weak extractive capa- bilities.

III. Problems with Mulk

Apart from the basic means of assessing and collecting kharāj and other land taxes, the other major question facing the Russians as they sought to reform the land revenue administration in the aftermath of the conquest was that of pre-existing tax privileges and property rights. The new colonial regime seems to have found the complex patterns of landholding and tax privilege subsumed under the label mulk as inconsistent and confusing as later historians have done. Officials complained that mulk privileges eroded the tax base, and that much of the income thus diverted went to undesir- able religious elites. It thus seems likely that when referring to mulk they were talking mainly about mulk-i ḥurr-i khāliṣ, that exempt from all forms of taxation, and mulk-i ʿushrī, that which (according to Davidovich) paid half the usual rate of kharāj, although it is equally possible that many more

79 See B. Penati, “Swamps, Sorghum and Saxauls: Marginal Lands and the Fate of Rus- sian Turkestan (c. 1880–1915).” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 61–78; Some Russian officials would claim to have identified forms of social organisation similar to the Russian obshchina in the Central Asian countryside, but this proved largely illusory. See S.N. Abashin, “Obshchina v Turkestane v otsenkakh i sporakh russkikh administratorov nachala 80-kh gg. XIX v.” Sbornik Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva 5 (153): 71–88. 80 Ignat’ev, Ob”yasnitel’naya zapiska: 100. 81 On this see, Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand: chapter 5. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 45 types of mulk and justifications for exemption from tax had evolved. Kun’s efforts to study and explain the Bukharan tax system do not appear to have extended to this question, and it was the orientalist M.N. Rostislavov, who had been assigned to the administration of the Zarafshan okrug shortly after Kun, and worked with him for a while both there and in the organisation of the 3rd World Congress of Orientalists in St. Petersburg, who seems to have published the first substantial work on the subject.82 In two articles in Turkestanskie Vedomosti published in 1874, and a later pamphlet in 1879, he put forward a highly idiosyncratic view of property rights in the Zarafshan Valley. Rostislavov claimed that the region had a large number of very substantial landowners, with 300 or 400 tanaps (which he estimated at 100 desyatinas), but also that historically property rights under what he referred to as Islamic ‘despotism’ had been very weak. He added that even mulk was a form of state land, albeit temporarily in private hands (possibly a confused reference to tarkhān status),83 whilst what he called amlyak was state land from which all revenue was meant to go to the central treasury.84 In the version of his text published in 1879, however, he claimed that in Turkestan the term mulk referred only to ʿushrī lands (subject to a 10% tax), whilst kharāji land subject to the usual assessment was known as amlyak. He went on to state, on the basis of nine unspecified Islamic juristic sources, that mulk and amlāk referred respectively to private and state land, and that they were separate legal concepts. However given his apparent reliance on advice from the Samarqand qāżīs (who had probably produced an interpretation that suited their own purposes) it seems unlikely that he had consulted these sources himself.85 The Girs

82 See Istoriografiya obshchestvennykh nauk v Uzbekistane. Bio-bibliograficheskie ocherki, ed. B.V. Lunin (Tashkent: FAN, 1974): 319. 83 Editorial note: A tarkhān grant was a conferral of fiscal privileges. This procedure usually involved descent groups such as sayyids, īshāns, khwājas, and shaykhs, cf. William Wood, A Collection of Tarkhan Yarliqs from the Khanate of Khiva, Papers on Inner Asia no. 38 (Bloomington, IN: RIFIAS, 2005): 30. The tarkhān grantees were exempted from the payment of various taxes, which instead fell on the rest of the population. Wood also suggests (Ibid.: 29) that these grantees were also freed from the obligation to the military service; in addition, it seems that tarkhān also conferred a sort of immunity with regard to a number of infractions. Though many royal warrants for the conferral of tarkhān status have been published, nothing is known of the way in which these grantees made use of fiscal privileges. See also, Paul, Forming a Faction: 535. 84 M. Rostislavov, “Ocherk vidov zemel’noi sobstvennosti v Turkestanskom Krae.” TV 5 (29th January 1874) and 19 (14th May 1874). 85 M.N. Rostislavov, Ocherk vidov zemelnoi sobstvennosti i pozemel’nyi vopros v Turkes- tanskom Krae (St. Pb.: Tip. brat. Panteleevykh, 1879): 5–7. My thanks to Paolo Sartori for this suggestion. 46 Alexander Morrison Commission’s Report was probably following this part of Rostislavov’s interpretation in asserting that amlāk land was subject to the taxes of kharāj and tanap, whilst mulk land was entirely free of them, even if Girs did not agree with his interpretation of these terms as relating to property rights rather than fiscal privilege.86 However, Rostislavov then went on to say that in contemporary Turkestan the difference between amlāk and mulk had been eroded even before the conquest, and that they were now, to all intents and purposes, the same form of tenure, largely thanks to the Russian decision to impose the same fiscal settlement on both: In general the question of amlyak lands must be considered settled, in the sense that all amlyaks have now taken on almost entirely the character of mulk land, especially under our rule, when mulk, with regard to the imposi- tion of taxes, is on an equal footing with amlyak. There can be no other resolution to the question, albeit, from the point of view of fiscal gains and the demands of justice, it ought to have been resolved somewhat differently.87 Rostislavov was writing at the end of a decade in which the question of the legitimacy of mulk tenure and, above all, of the tax privileges it carried, had been a subject of fierce (and often frustrated) debate amongst Russian administrators. As this passage suggests, whatever exemptions from tax the owners of some types of mulk (whom the Russians, at least, generally referred to as mulkdārs)88 might have had before the conquest, the Russians had decided not to recognise them. In the earliest years of Russian rule in Turkestan three commissions were set up by von Kaufman to look into the question of land rights and taxation. The first, under Colonel M.N. Nikolaev, began work in January 1868 and concluded that a clearer definition of land rights was needed, not least in order to facilitate Russian settlement. This was followed by another concentrating on the Syr-Darya oblast’ under Major-General Gomzin, and finally, from 1871–2, a third land commission under the chairmanship of Major-General Abramov which drew its evidence from the Zarafshan okrug.89 Once again, problems over the question of taxation and land tenure were already manifesting themselves in Ura-tepe before the conquest of Samarqand and the Zarafshan Valley. In April 1868 Captain

86 Girs, Otchet: 344–5. 87 Rostislavov, Ocherk vidov zemelnoi sobstvennosti: 7. 88 The term is used in modern Samarqandi Tajik to refer to a property-owner or wealthy person. 89 A.P. Savitskii, Pozemel’nyi vopros v Turkestane: v proektakh i zakone 1867–1886 gg (Tashkent: Izd. SamGU, 1963): 47–59. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 47 Mikhailov, the commandant of the Ura-tepe division, wrote to the head of the Syr-Darya oblast’ administration, asking if a blanket rate of kharāj could be applied to what he referred to simply as mulk land (presumably implying that it was a variety which had previously been exempted from kharāj) and some of the special tax privileges of its owners revoked. He remarked that the list of mulk owners which he had from the old regime included so many mulks that were in his view illegal, as their current owners had bought them rather than inheriting them, that the Russians need have no qualms about abrogating their privileges.90 His subordinate in Ura-tepe, the aforementioned Captain Chaikovskii, disagreed, and argued that the introduction of kharāj on mulk land would mean considerable hardship for a class of tenant labourers: Almost all these mulkdārs give their land in permanent rent, to peasants, muzhiks, who do not have their own land and who settle around their rented land, and give the impression of being serfs. In order to protect landless peasants from exploitation, customs are established and defined by sharīʿa.91 Chaikovskii claimed that as these peasants already gave a proportion of their crop to the mulk owner they were in danger of being taxed twice if kharāj was levied by the state as well. Chaikovskii wrote that some inhabitants of Ura-tepe had told him they would prefer to see the general level of kharāj return to its previous level of 20%, provided it wasn’t levied on tax-exempt mulk land, and he urged the Nikolaev Commission to consider the question very carefully first.92 Chaikovskii’s objections to the levying of tax on mulk were rejected by his superior, Mikhailov, who wrote that it would severely reduce revenue receipts—always a greater priority for the Russians than the maintenance of earlier privileges or rights on the land.93 Slightly later that year the question of mulk land was considered in the newly-created Zarafshan okrug, where it provoked a correspondence with Tashkent that lasted three years. General Abramov estimated that there were 70,000 ṭanābs of mulk land in the Samarqand division,94 plus an unknown quantity in Katta-Kurgan. Almost from the beginning, Abramov linked the question of mulk to the question of how to deal with the khwāja

90 Mikhailov to the President Obl. Prav. Syr-Dar’inskoi Oblasti, 20.04.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, l. 16. 91 Chaikovskii to Abramov, 22.04.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, l. 11ob. 92 Chaikovskii to Abramov, 27.04.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, ll. 12–13. 93 Mikhailov to the Pred. Obl. Prav. Syr-Dar’inskoi Oblasti, 27.04.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 11, l. 15. 94 Abramov to von Kaufman, 22.04.1870, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 28, l. 19ob. 48 Alexander Morrison lineages of Turkestan. He reported to von Kaufman on the existence of a category of land: Otherwise the private property of independent individuals acquired by purchase. One out of four of the owners have documents from the father of the current Amir, others from the previous owners of the property. The income from this land does not go to the treasury, but into the hands of khwājas and other private individuals.95 He estimated that these taxes could potentially be worth 20,000 roubles a year, but that the Russian administration had no idea to whom they were being paid. Abramov added that the class of khwājas who were the main beneficiaries of mulk land were a hostile influence that needed to be contained. these private individuals [who enjoy their land] on unknown grounds, without paying tax, especially khwājas […] are trying to gather and arm the people against the Government, as they did under the Bukharan administration,—when they were the leaders of the popular movements, as for instance Omar-Khwāja of Dahbid, who agitated the town of Samarqand, at the time when we took that town. There is no doubt that others were not far behind, often bearing the title of khwāja illegitimately. There is no way of verifying their antecedents. Because of all this cossack elder Serov96 proposes levying taxes on mulk land on the usual basis.97 The Bukharan historian Sāmī’s account offers independent confirmation of Īshān ʿUmar Khan Makhdūm-i Aʿẓamī’s contribution to the attack on the Russian garrison of the Samarqand citadel in 1868,98 but even without this concrete example of the threat presented by the khwājas and their influence over the people, given the prevailing Russian attitude towards Islamic elites, it is unlikely that they would ever have considered trying to make use of these sacred lineages, as the British did in Sindh.99 Abramov suggested that the revoking of their taxation privileges might just be a temporary measure until their rights were established one way or the other. Von Kaufman was becoming increasingly impatient however, complaining that since Samarqand had been taken in June 1868 too little revenue had

95 Abramov to von Kaufman, 04.08.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15, l. 1. 96 Serov was one of those consulted by the Nikolaev Commission, based in Tashkent; Savitskii, Pozemel’nyi vopros: 22. 97 Abramov to von Kaufman, 04.08.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15, ll. 1ob-2. 98 Sāmī, Tāʾrīkh-i salāṭīn-i manghītiyya: trans., 85 text ff. 84b-85a. 99 See Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand: chapter 2; Sarah Ansari, Sufi Saints and State Power. The Pirs of Sindh (Cambridge: CUP, 1992): 36–56. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 49 been collected in the Zarafshan okrug, totalling just 6,033 roubles to August 1868.100 In August 1868 Abramov wrote indignantly to von Kaufman that ‘Some of the natives, receiving the revenues from mulk, do not even understand the meaning of the term mulk’101 and argued that in the vast majority of cases titles to mulk land were fraudulent. Von Kaufman’s response gives a fascinating insight into the rigid Orientalist interpretation of religious status which informed his thinking on this question. I suggest to Your Excellency that, apart from the documents giving them the right to use mulks, you also demand from those khwājas with pretensions to the income from mulk land their genealogical documents, which will then leave no doubts as to the descent of the khwājas from Hanafie102 and of the Sayyids from Fatima. For the analysis of these documents you should appoint a commission from amongst the ʿulamāʾ of Samarqand, under the chairmanship of an inquiring and able officer or chinovnik. Those who are recognised as being legal sayyids or khwājas, should be placed on a special list, with a description of the size of the mulk ascribed to them and the quantity of money demanded from it. This list Your Excellency should present to me for the authorisation of any disbursement from taxes collected to be returned to sayyids and khwājas.103 It is not wholly clear when and how von Kaufman had discovered the importance of the figure of Muḥammad al-Ḥanafiyya in khwāja genealogies. As early as 1827 the head of the Orenburg Frontier Commission, General Grigorii Fedorovich Gens (1787–1845), in one of his notebooks of researches on the steppe, had taken down an account of the origin of khwājas amongst the Kazakhs from one Yasavul Khwāja Qaragul Babajanov of the inner horde, which described in some detail these two genealogies, one of which he called ‘Sayyid Atai’ descended from ʿAlī and Fāṭima, and one ‘Kuragan’, descended from Muḥammad al-Ḥanafiyya.104 It is not clear however how widely Gens’s writings circulated before the end of the 19th century. The only contemporary Russian reference to khwāja genealogies identified by DeWeese is in a description of the administration of Tashkent under Khoqandi rule by Alexander Geins, the War Minister’s representative on the Steppe Commission, which was originally published in 1867 as an

100 Abramov to von Kaufman, 04.08.1868, von Kaufman to Abramov, 29.11.1868, TsGA- RUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15 ll. 5ob-6. 101 Abramov to von Kaufman, 04.08.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d.15, l. 2ob. 102 i.e. Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya, the son of ʿAlī from whom most khwājas claimed descent. 103 Von Kaufman to Abramov, 29.11.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15, ll. 7–7ob. 104 “O proiskhozhdenie khudzhei khwāja,” GAOO, f. 166, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 166ob-167. 50 Alexander Morrison appendix to the new Turkestan statute which he had helped to draw up. Here Geins refers to precisely this division between a ‘senior’ line of sayyids descended from ʿAlī and Fāṭima, whilst ‘from the other wife of ʿAlī, Hanafie, was born a son, Imam Muhammad-Hanafie, who is held to be the ancestor of the junior line.’105 Geins’s own sources of information are obscure―Gens’s notebooks are a possibility, but Geins had spent most of 1865 and 1866 carrying out investigations in the southern steppe region around Tashkent, Chimkent and Turkestan, and although he does not seem to have spoken any local languages it is possible that he learnt of the importance of al-Ḥanafiyya from one of the khwāja groups of the region. His published and unpublished researches seem to have been extensively relied upon in the earliest years after the conquest, so he is the most likely source of von Kaufman’s sudden and unexpected expertise in Islamic genealogy.106 Von Kaufman was quite well aware that as far as the local population was concerned the definition of a sayyid or khwāja was a good deal less rigid than that which the Russians were now insisting upon, but this was evidently of little concern to him: Individuals―bearing the title sayyid or khwāja because of descent from some holy man or other, or using this form of address because the people gave the title of sayyid or khwāja to a few generations of some family or other―do not, it would seem, need to enjoy freedom from taxation, unlike those who bear the title of sayyid or khwāja in the strict Mussulman sense.107 If Abramov ever did establish the genealogical commission envisaged by von Kaufman, something unclear from this file, then the khwājas of the Zarafshan Valley were either unable or unwilling to provide it with a set of nasab-nāmas that would satisfy the Russian authorities—nor, one suspects, was it ever intended that they should succeed in doing so. Abramov and

105 A.K. Geins, “Upravleniya Tashkenta pri Kokandskom vladychestve.” Sobranie lite raturnykh trudov Aleksandra Konstantinovicha Geinsa, vol. 2 (St. Pb.: Tip. M.M. Stasyulevicha, 1898): 494; DeWeese, “Foreword”: 18. 106 Geins, Sobranie literaturnykh trudov, vol. 1 (St. Pb.: Tip. M.M. Stasyulevicha, 1897): 6–10. 107 Von Kaufman to Abramov, 29.11.1868, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 15, l. 7ob. Von Kaufman here is perhaps referring to the supposed distinction between Khwāja Sayyid-Ata and Khwāja Juybar put forward by Khanikoff (whose Opisanie Bukharskogo khanstva was extensively used by the Nikolaev Commission): the former having ‘documentary evidence of their extraction, whilst the others belong to such families as are known to have been constantly treated as such, though their titles are lost.’ Khanykov Opisanie: 182; Khanikoff Bokhara: 234–5, an assertion repeated by Schefer: Mir Abdoul Kerim Boukhary, Histoire de l’Asie Centrale, trans. & ed. C. Schefer (Paris, 1876): note to 95. This is an incorrect definition (both lineages held positions at the Bukharan court, but the former were Yasavi, the latter Naqsh- bandi) but it might have influenced von Kaufman. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 51 his fellow-officers evidently came to the conclusion that khwāja claims to special status and separate descent did not need to be taken seriously so far as landholding and taxation were concerned. By 1872 Captain Afanasii Grebenkin, the commandant of the Katta-Kurgan otdel and author of a number of ethnographical works on the Zarafshan Valley, could write contemptuously (and inaccurately): Khwājas, as is well known, are descendants of Muḥammad through the female line. All those who consider themselves to be khwājas, are obliged to have a document confirming their descent. In the okrug there are no real khwājas: all those who call themselves khwājas are impostors; nevertheless, once they have been called khwājas, they try, so far as their strength and ability suffices, to confirm their titles. Thus, they give blessings to the people, do not enter into marriage with ordinary mortals, at tamāshās [enter- tainments] strive to occupy the most honoured place, say little; and if they do speak, then try to turn the conversation towards their ancestors. They are all in large part stupid; they conceal their tribal origin, not calling themselves either Uzbek, or Tajik, but simply ‘khwāja’, and assert that khwājas are a separate tribe.108 Even if they had been able to furnish Abramov and von Kaufman with nasab-nāmas of the kind which related Kazakh descent groups were still producing in the 19th and 20th centuries,109 it seems highly unlikely, given Abramov’s hostile remarks about their influence, that this would have been used as a reason for preserving their tax privileges. On the contrary the very real authority which they clearly wielded, whether sanctioned by written genealogies or not, was much more likely to be seen by the Russians as a compelling reason for seeking to reduce their status. Other documents outlining rights to mulk land which might have satisfied the Governor- General also turned out to be few and far between. In August 1869 Colonel Nikolaev’s Commission on the land question had concluded that in cases where there was no documentary proof of mulk status, all tax privileges would be removed and the land would be considered amlāk, ‘state land’; this seems to have been based at least in part on the information with which Abramov supplied them from the Zarafshan Valley.110 The correspondence between Kaufman and Abramov suggests that they were seek-

108 A.D. Grebenkin, “Melkie narodnosti Zarafshanskogo Okruga.” Russkii Turkestan: Sbornik, izdannyi po povodu politekhnicheskoi vystavki, vyp.2 ed. V.N. Trotskii (Moscow: Univ. Tip., 1872): 117–8; I owe this reference to DeWeese, “Foreword”: 23. 109 A group of six of these are described, published and translated in Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia: 51–276. 110 Savitskii, Pozemel’nyi vopros: 23. 52 Alexander Morrison ing reasons for the abolition of the tax privileges attached to mulk land because they thought the income from it helped to sustain dangerous religious elites: a legal justification would not prove hard to find.

IV. A Legal Fig-leaf?

In September 1869 a group of landowners from Samarqand claimed that they were being deprived of their rents from the chairikeri111 who farmed their land, because the state was now levying taxes on it: All of us gave our plots—mulks, bought by us for money, assembled through much sacrifice—in rent to farmers and they carry out work, from the receipts they paid us out of four batmans,112 one batman, and the other three batmans they used themselves. This order (law) has existed since ancient times; none of our rulers have interfered with it, and we cultivated this land ourselves. From last year up until the present time, the sarkārs have been using that, which ought to be used by us, the remainder is used by the farmers themselves, and nothing comes to us. Having lost both land and money, we have become poor. We have turned a few times with petitions to our ḥākims and have received the answer that the Senior Governor is coming who will return your plots, and gladden you. […] Now you have happily come into your domain, and have taken into your own hands all the affairs and hearts of us inhabitants. We turned to you about this matter, but you would not permit us and, leaving, now leave us poor ones with uneasy hearts. We await this from your Excellency: that you, in cherishing us, poor ones, and showing us, the inhabitants, your love—restore to us the ancient law and return us our mulks, so that we may not lose our welfare and property, and we would pray for the White Tsar and the Senior Governor-Lord, and occupy ourselves with our own affairs.113 There are a number of interesting questions which arise from this document. It dates from before any official reform of the fiscal administration had taken place, and interestingly it appears that the Russians were still

111 The Russified term for the Tajik Choryakkor or sharecropper. Although, as the name suggests, conventionally they paid their landlords a quarter share of the crop, in practice it could vary considerably, and sometimes it was more than this. See N.N. Ershov, Sel’skoe khozyaistvo Leninabadskogo raiona Tadzhikskoi SSR pered oktyabr’skoi revolyutsiei (Stali- nabad: Izd. AN TadzhSSR, 1960): 50–1. 112 A measure of weight, which according to Dal’s dictionary was equivalent to 12 poods (432 lbs) in Bukhara. 113 Translation of a petition for the attention of the Starshii Gubernator (presumably von Kaufman) from ‘some poor dwellers of Samarqand’, 18.09.1869, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 28, ll. 13–14. In Russian Rule in Samarkand: 109 I misinterpreted this petition as coming from the sharecroppers themselves. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 53 using officials inherited from the previous regime to collect kharāj. The petitioners refer to the taxes being collected by sarkārs, something which was certainly possible as in 1870 the Russians were still using Bukharan-era revenue officials. This suggests that what was intended to be largely a fiscal measure, namely the removal of tax privileges from mulk land, could, in cases where the land was let out to sharecroppers, lead to the nominal owners losing all effective title over it, as their right to collect a tithe from those who farmed it had now been usurped by the state. It is possible that, as the petition claimed, these mulkdārs paid no taxes before the conquest, but that now Russian-backed sarkārs were collecting the taxes on their plots, and collecting them directly from the sharecroppers. The sharecroppers then refused to give the share due by them to the owner of the mulk because they had already given that as land-tax. This would only be the case, however, if the mulk had been totally exempted from land-tax before the conquest, and it is perfectly possible that this was not so and that mulk owners, knowing that this was what the Russians thought, were trying on a sob-story to be exempted from taxes they had previously been liable to.114 Unfortunately I have no means of knowing how common such cases were, and in any case petitions only ever offer a very one-sided view of any dispute. What is more certain is that this plea provoked Abramov into writing a lengthy disquisition on the origin and legitimacy of mulk land in order to explain to von Kaufman why he did not think the pleas of these mulk owners should be countenanced, in which he offered the following conclusion: The origin of mulks, it seems, was laid down by Amir Tamerlane. Legend has it, that Timur, needing some cash, after advice from his counsellors, sold into private hands a portion of Government land, with the right of hereditary ownership and freedom from taxes in the future.115 Such, he argued, were the purest and most legal type of mulk. However, Abramov claimed that almost none of Samarqand’s mulk owners had the necessary documentation to substantiate their claims. Too many mulks had changed hands by sale too many times, which in his view invalidated them altogether: ‘There are no mulks in first-hand ownership, none even in the hands of direct descendants of the first and therefore legal owner of

114 I am grateful to Beatrice Penati for this suggestion. 115 Abramov to von Kaufman, 22.04.1870, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 28, l. 17ob. 54 Alexander Morrison the mulk. All of them have been re-sold through perhaps hundreds of hands and are being re-sold all the time.’116 A.P. Khoroshkhin, a Ural Cossack officer who served in Samarqand at this time, tells a very similar story of Bukharan amirs ‘sometime in the distant past’ returning from campaign in urgent need of money, and alienating the right to collect taxes on particular plots of land to powerful qāżīs, khwājas and sayyids. These rights were supposed to be supported by documents, and only to pass by descent from father to son. Now, however: All the evidence shows that there are no grounds for considering such lands to be mulk, that is the property of private individuals, still less now because the latest pretenders have nothing in common either by blood or background with those on whom the Amir at some point bestowed the right to collect taxes. At the present time, furthermore, when we demand the original documents from them, it turns out that they struggle to produce them, because it would appear that they do not have them.117 The village of Saidan in the Aforinkent volost’ seems to have acted as a sort of test-case for Russian policy towards mulk privileges. Abramov’s own land commission, which began work in 1871, found that here most mulk owners had lost (or were concealing) their documents and could not prove descent from the original grantees of the mulks they claimed to own.118 Abramov’s commission obtained its information on the existing tax-burden from an amlākdār’s register (daftar or tetrad’), suggesting that these officials were collecting kharāj on all forms of land there.119 This register also shows that by 1871, at least in some places, a uniform level of kharāj was being levied on both amlāk and mulk land, at a rate of 1/5 of the crop.120 In 1872 the question had still not been officially settled, but in practice it seems that kharāj was consistently being levied from mulk land at the same rate as from amlāk, despite the protests of owners that it infringed the privileges they had enjoyed before the conquest. Abramov’s comments to von Kaufman when the mulkdārs in the large town of Peishambe petitioned against being taxed make this clear enough: he stated that these were

116 Abramov to von Kaufman, 22.04.1870, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d.28, l. 18. 117 A. Khoroshkhin, “Dolina Zeravshana.” Sbornik statei kasayushchikhsya do Turkestan- skogo Kraya (S. Pb.: Tip. A. Transhelya, 1876): 167–8. 118 Savitskii, Pozemel’nyi vopros: 49–51. 119 Ibid.: 49–51. 120 I am grateful to Beatrice Penati for showing me her copy of an amlākdār register for Aforinkent, almost certainly the same one referred to by Savitskii, together with a Russian translation of a different register, both of which she found in the Uzbek archives in files relating to Abramov’s land-tax commission. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 55 simply expressions of discontent by the richer classes of society who had previously evaded their fair share of tax, and now did everything they could to encourage and organise petitions against the reform of the taxation system amongst the poorer classes. Whilst suggesting the question was still open, he clearly also had little time for the legal claims that certain types of mulk should be exempt from taxation. The former owners of mulk land, founded on documents some of which are in their hands, and some of which in Bukhara—deem the demanding of taxes from them an unlawful action, and petitioned to be freed entirely from taxes. […] The pretensions of the owners of mulks that tax demands on them are unlawful are widespread. The degree to which such pretensions are justified—is a question which is unresolved for the time being.121 Although in principle the Commission’s draft plan on the land question recognised mulk-i ḥurr-i khāliṣ as private property ‘in cases where it has not been occupied by outsiders and is in the direct use of the owners’, it made no mention of other forms of mulk, or indeed of the continuation of the tax privileges attached to it. Savitskii suggests that the commission’s eventual recommendations set the burden of documentary proof so high as effectively to deprive mulk owners of any possibility of proving either their proprietary rights or exemption from taxation.122 Three years later the explanatory appendix to the temporary Turkestan statute, which was probably summarising the commission’s findings, acknowledged that under Bukharan rule the loss or disappearance of documents had not meant the automatic revocation of tax privileges on mulk land because everyone knew its extent and to whom it belonged. However, it added that now mulk owners would be obliged to pay the full amount to the treasury unless they could produce documents entitling them to exemption or reduction.123

121 Abramov to von Kaufman, 19.11.1872, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 14, d. 70, ll. 101ob-102. 122 Savitskii Pozemel’nyi vopros: 51–6, 157; he does not however give any evidence for this assertion. 123 “O pozemel’nom ustroistve v Turkestanskom Krae.” In Poyasnitel’naya zapiska k proektu polozheniya ob upravlenii v oblastyakh Turkestanskogo General-Gubernatorstva, vol. 1 (St. Pb.: Voennaya Tip., 1874): 61, 69; puzzlingly, this essay also says that the measure is ‘necessary in order to free the population from the dependence which currently exists between them and the owners of mulk and vaqf land.’ Most vaqf continued to remain free of tax notwithstanding, whilst it is not at all clear that the majority of mulk plots were let out to tenants or sharecroppers. Perhaps what is meant here is that ‘mulkdārs’ would give up their right of ownership to those who farmed the land if they found that otherwise they would be liable to pay the tax on it, but this is unclear. 56 Alexander Morrison Whether such demands for documentary proof sprang from a genuine Russian belief that there was a ‘pure’ Islamic judicial notion of rights in mulk which had become corrupted over time, or whether (perhaps more likely) this was simply a cynical excuse for removing awkward tax privileges and undermining a troublesome and untrustworthy group of elite intermediaries whom they no longer wanted and suspected of being religious ‘fanatics’, there seems little doubt that the view of mulk expressed above was far more rigid and legalistic than the reality. It is still unclear to me whence the idea arose that mulks could not be transferred by sale, or why the Russians would not accept more recent documents from Bukharan rulers as proof of the right to exemption from taxes. Possibly they confused mulk with the status of tarkhān, a temporary grant of tax exemption, although there are no references to it in Russian documents. Whatever the precise reason, they quickly decided that the institution of mulk as they encountered it was corrupted and illegal.124 The new tax regime in the Zarafshan Valley would not become fully operational until 1875 after the completion of a rudimentary agricultural survey, and the thorny question of land rights would only be settled under the new Turkestan statute of 1886 (and not fully even then). In practice however, well before this date the Russians had substantially altered the taxation system: they had abolished the office of amlākdār and thus the practice of carrying out fresh annual assessments for kharāj, abolished the tax privileges formerly enjoyed by the owners of mulk land, and, at least in theory, severely weak- ened the property rights of mulk owners. The long-term social and legal consequences of this policy are more difficult to establish.

124 Savitskii suggests that on questions of Islamic law the Russians were relying on the work of the Orientalist Nikolai Egorovich Tornau, Izlozhenie nachal musul’manskogo zakonovedeniya (St. Pb.: Tip. Sobst. E.I.V. Kants., 1850). This may have been true in the case of vaqf, but Tornau only makes very brief reference to mulk, and the context is the ownership of slaves, rather than land. Tornau, Izlozhenie: 352–3; Savitskii, Pozemel’nyi vopros: 22; Ekaterina Pravilova also notes the importance of Tornau’s work (E. Pravilova, “The Property of Empire. Islamic law and Russian Agrarian Policy in Transcaucasia and Turkestan.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12/2 [2011]: 361–6): but goes on to assert that the work of French orientalists and translations of the Ottoman Law Code were the decisive influences on Russian thinking, which was not the case in Turkestan in the 1870s, when the most important debates took place. Instead, as we have seen, it was the work of home-grown orientalists―Khanykov, Geins, Kun and Rostislavov―together with information obtained from local informants and pre-existing prejudices about Muslim ‘fanaticism’, which proved most important. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 57 V. Abandoning the Aristocracy?

Despite the protests of some officials that this represented a gross misread- ing of Islamic law, Russian legislation would formally refuse to recognise that any kind of mulk land in Central Asia constituted absolute private property, and instead asserted that all land in Turkestan other than vaqf belonged to the state. The discontinuities with the situation before the conquest were, however, less severe than this would suggest, largely because there were limits to what state ownership of land actually meant in practical terms.125 Under the 1886 Turkestan statute the Russians chose to recognise, if not full property rights, then at least effective occupation of the land by Turkestani cultivators with full rights of sale and inheritance subject to pre-existing Islamic law and custom.126 Only land which was left idle could be assumed by the state, and in sedentary regions this happened very rarely, if at all: on the contrary, peasants seem to have been able to occupy and cultivate wasteland and acquire effective ownership rights over it more or less at will.127 Ekaterina Pravilova is thus correct in stating that the colonial project to extend the state domain in Central Asia proved to be a ‘bust’: the principle was asserted, but it was impossible to put into practice, not because of opposition from St. Petersburg, but because of local conditions.128 So far as we know, land transactions continued to be regulated by the qāżīs’ courts which the Russians had preserved, although changes in legal practice did start to emerge.129 In nomadic and semi- nomadic regions, the claim to state ownership of land would come to form the legal basis for the expropriation of land for Russian settlement, and was thus of considerable significance, although even this was challenged

125 P. Sartori, “Colonial Legislation Meets Sharī’a: Muslims’ Land Rights in Russian Turkestan.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 43–60. 126 Article 255 of the statute refers to this as zemli amlyakovye. PSZ: sob.3, vol. VI, no. 3814 12th June 1886, 338; Beatrice Penati has argued that it effectively constitutes a formal renvoi to Islamic law on the question of property rights in her “Swamps, Sorghum and Saxauls”: 61. 127 In 1884, for instance the Nachal’nik of the Katta-Kurgan otdel reported to the head of the Zarafshan Okrug that not only did the natives in his district enjoy de-facto ownership of land they already farmed (which they could buy, sell and inherit ‘in accordance with customary rights’, regulated by the qāżīs) but that they seemed automatically to acquire the same rights over any wastelands which they occupied and cultivated, even though these nominally belonged to the government: 23.08.1884, TsGARUz, f. I-5, op. 1, d. 893, ll. 22–24ob. 128 Pravilova, “The Property of Empire”: 376–82. 129 See P. Sartori, “Behind a Petition: Why Muslims’ Appeals Increased in Turkestan under Russian Rule.” Asiatische Studien LXIII/2 (2009): 401–34. 58 Alexander Morrison by some Tsarist officials, most notably Count Pahlen.130 However, it was never used systematically to oust settled cultivators and create large, state- owned tracts of land for colonisation or cotton plantations. In sedentary areas with dense population, at least, the claim to state ownership of land in Turkestan remained largely a dead letter, although this situation was under a concerted challenge from the newly-created Glavnoe Upravlenie Zemleustroistva i Zemledeliya by the early 1900s.131 The abolition of what the Russians referred to generically as mulk was thus primarily a fiscal measure, rather than an abrogation of property rights. Those who had formerly enjoyed the privilege of lighter taxation or none at all, had now lost it. It thus proceeded from the same concerns which caused the Russians to abolish the system of land-tax collection based upon the amlākdār―namely, the desire to simplify revenue collection, and to undermine Bukharan-era elites. The Russians made no attempt to preserve or create a class of Muslim landowners and rentiers in Turkestan who could act as agents of the colonial state. Instead, they often claimed that a landed aristocracy as such did not exist in the Turkestan, at least not as it would be understood in Europe: General Staff Officer L.F. Kostenko confidently asserted, (perhaps following Alexander Burnes), that ‘in Central Asia an aristocracy and in general a privileged class does not exist.’132 V.P. Nalivkin also wrote that there was nothing that could be described as a landed aristocracy in Khoqand;133 but this is open to question. In fact these seem to be ex post facto judgements delivered after the Russians had decided they had no interest in working through landowners, senior Bukharan officials or other ‘aristocratic’ or pseudo-aristocratic intermediaries. Instead they would attempt to create a class of petty officials who owed their influence, such as it was, to their positions within urban and village hierarchies, and increasingly the access they had to the power of the Tsarist state. Why did this happen? The correspondence between von Kaufman and Abramov reveals that they believed that a substantial proportion of those

130 Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, Otchet po revizii Turkestanskago Kraya, proizvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU poveleniyu. Pereselencheskoe delo (St. Pb.: Senatskaya Tip., 1910): 35–43, 51–61, 280; A. Morrison, ““Sowing the Seed of National Strife in This Alien Region”: The Pahlen Report and Pereselenie in Turkestan, 1908–1910.” Acta Slavica Iaponica 31 (2012): 1 -29. 131 See the manifesto set out in A. Krivoshein, Zapiska glavnoupravlyaushago zemleustroistvom i zemledeliem o poezdke v Turkestanskii Krai v 1912 godu (St. Pb.: Gos. Tip., 1912). 132 Kostenko, Srednyaya Aziya: 67; A. Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, vol. II (London: John Murray, 1836): 366. 133 V. Nalivkin, Kratkaya istoriya Kokandskogo khanstva (Kazan’: Tip. Imp. Univ., 1885): 210. Amlākdārs, Khwājas and Mulk Land 59 landowners claiming tax privileges in the Zarafshan Valley were sayyids or khwājas: the idea that lower taxation under the Muslim regimes was closely linked to high religious status was far from wholly erroneous, but what is more important in this context is that the Russians thought this was the case.134 Whilst they were wary of interfering directly with vaqf, they decided that mulk land could and should be tackled more aggressively, not least because the religious lineages which they believed it sustained were more dangerous than the ‘organized’ Islam of the mosque or madrasa. In his posthumously-published draft for a new Turkestan statute von Kaufman recalled that immediately after the conquest the native population had had little confidence in Russian authority or justice, and had looked to traditional leaders in the countryside, particularly the ishāns of the Sufi brotherhoods, who were trying to whip them up for a ghazavāt or holy war.135 Von Kaufman considered the whole population of Turkestan to be fanatical, but its elites, whether political or clerical, particularly so. This helps to explain his refusal to countenance claims to exemption from tax on mulk land, and his use instead of an extremely tendentious reading of Islamic law and custom to dismiss them. Von Kaufman, in common with many other officers in Turkestan, cut his teeth fighting in the Caucasus, a war which in general seems to have deeply coloured Russian attitudes towards Islam, fostered a deep suspicion of all forms of Sufism (or myuridizm, as the Russians called it) and brought about a sea-change in the imperial policy of trying to co-opt local elites.136 Once a key tactic in securing newly-conquered regions for the Empire, by the latter half of the 19th century the incorporation of local aristocracies into the Russian nobility had been decisively abandoned.137 Instead the Russians tried to marginalise pre-existing elites when they created what Ronald Robinson called the ‘Non-European foundations of European Imperialism’ in Turkestan. They attempted to ensure the loyalty of their agents by choosing people who would owe everything to the Russians, and giving them judicial and tax-collecting powers as qāżīs, volostnye upraviteli and āqsaqāls. Whether they succeeded in this or not is another, more complex question. Understanding Russian policies and

134 The idea would be repeated by Pahlen forty years later: Palen, Nalogi i poshliny: 45. 135 Von-Kaufman, Proekt vsepoddanneishego otcheta: 10. 136 A. Knysh, “Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm.” Die Welt des Islams 42/2 (2002): 139–73. 137 D. Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (London: John Murray, 2000): 274–5; A. Morrison, “Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13/2 (2012): 342–6. 60 Alexander Morrison purposes in Turkestan is always a great deal easier than establishing their actual consequences for local society. Certainly as they created their land- revenue system the Russians sought to break the power both of Uzbek tribal elites—represented by the amlākdārs—and of religious elites, namely the sayyids and khwājas who, they believed, were the main beneficiaries of the tax exemptions on mulk land. However, as yet we do not know how far these elites managed to reconstitute themselves within the structures of the fledgling Russian colonial state, and in the offices which it created or adapted. This will require detailed prosopographical study, and may prove difficult even with the extensive use of vernacular sources.

Bibliography

Abbreviations AV: Sankt-Peterburgskii Filial Instituta Vostokovedenii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk: Arkhiv Vostokovedov GAOO: Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Orenburgskoi Oblasti PSZ: Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii RGVIA: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv TS: Turkestanskii Sbornik TsGARUz: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan TV : Turkestanskiya Vedomosti

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Ershov, N.N. 1960. Sel’skoe khozyaistvo Leninabadskogo raiona Tadzhikskoi SSR pered oktyabr’skoi revolyutsiei. Stalinabad: Izd. AN TadzhSSR. Faiziev, A. F. 1992. Istoriya Samarkanda pervoi pol. XIX veka. Samarkand: Izd. SamGU Gross, J.-A. 1982. Khwāja Ahrar: a Study of the Perceptions of Religious Power and Prestige in the late Timurid Period. PhD diss. New York University. Holzwarth, W. 2005. Relations between Uzbek Central Asia, the Great Steppe and Iran, 1700–1750. In Shifts and Drifts in Nomad-Sedentary Relations, ed. S. Leder and B. Streck. Wiesbaden: L. Reichert: 179–216. ____. 2006. The Uzbek State as Reflected in Eighteenth-century Bukharan Sources. Asiatische Studien LX/2: 321–53. Kadirova, M. 2007. Zhitiya Khodzha Akhrara Tashkent: IFEAC. Khismatulin, A.A. 2006. Khvadzhagan. Islam na territorii byvshei Rossiiskoi imperii. Èntsiklopedicheskii Slovar’. Moscow: Vostochnaya Literatura, vol. I: 417–25 Khodorov, I. 1928. K voprosu ob istoricheskoi evolyutsii zemlevladeniya v Turkestane. Istorik-Marksist 10: 121–53. Kimura, S. 2012. Sunni-Shi’i Relations in the Russian Protectorate of Bukhara, as Perceived by the Local ‘Ulama. In Asiatic Russia. Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. T. Uyama. London: Routledge: 189–215. Knysh, A. 2002. Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm. Die Welt des Islams, 42/2: 139–73. Köprülü, M. F. 2006. Early Mystics in Turkish Literature ed & trans. G. Leiser & R. Dankoff. London: Routledge. Kumar, Dh. 1983. The Fiscal System. In The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. II ed. D. Kumar and M. Desai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 905–44. Lambton, A. K. 1953. Landlord and Peasant in Persia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lieven, D. 2000. Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals. London: John Murray. Lunin, B.V, ed. 1974. Istoriografiya obshchestvennykh nauk v Uzbekistane. Bio-Bibliograficheskie ocherki. Tashkent: FAN. Mackenzie, D. 1967. Kaufman of Turkestan: an Assessment of His Administration 1867–1881. Slavic Review 26/2: 265–85. Morrison, A.S. 2008. Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910. A Comparison with British India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ____. 2012a. “Sowing the Seed of National Strife in This Alien Region”: The Pahlen Report and Pereselenie in Turkestan, 1908–1910. Acta Slavica Iaponica 31: 1–29. ____. 2012b. Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13/2: 327–64. Muminov, Ashirbek K., Anke von Kügelgen, Devin DeWeese and Michael Kemper, ed. 2008. Islamization and Sacred Lineages in Central Asia. The Legacy of Ishaq Bab in Narrative and Genealogical Traditions. Vol. 2: Genealogical Charters and Sacred Families: Nasab- namas and Khwāja groups linked to the Ishaq Bab Narrative, 19th-21st centuries. Almaty: Daik Press. Nabiev R. N. 1973. Iz istorii Kokandskogo khanstva. Feodal’noe khozyaistvo Khudoyar Khana. Tashkent: FAN. Nadzhafova, I. A., ed. & trans. 1967. Istoriya Mangitskoi Dinastii. Dushanbe: Donish. Newbury, C. 2003. Patrons, Clients and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paul, J. 1991a. Forming a Faction: The Ḥimayat System of Khwaja Ahrar. International Journal of Middle East Studies 23/4: 533–48. ____. 1991b. Die Politische und Soziale Bedeutung der Naqşbandiyya in Mittelasien im 15. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter. ____. 2010. Review Essay: Recent Monographs on the Social History of Central Asia. Central Asian Survey 29/1: 119–30. 64 Alexander Morrison

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CHAPTER TWO

Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan: A View from the Margins*

Beatrice Penati

Introduction

The history of the rural economy of Russian Turkestan is usually identified with the narrative of the expansion of American cotton crops on an unpre cedented scale. Although the fact that in that period the land surface under cotton increased can hardly be doubted, cotton did not account for the totality of the income of the peasantry—and even less for that of the non- urban population in general. Hence, an exclusive focus on cotton culture risks to jeopardise a more comprehensive understanding of the economy of the region, both in the country and in the cities. In spite of anecdotal evidence of ‘cotton fever’ and the importance of cotton in Russian publications and documents, the hypothesis that the rural economy of Turkestan can be boiled down to cotton expansion and its consequences needs to be tested. This is particularly important in a diachronic perspective: for instance, to what extent can we assume that the standards of life of the peasantry directly reflected trends in the cotton sector? Or again: how did the attitude of imperial authorities towards the ‘cotton boom’ varied between the 1880s and the 1910s? Surprisingly enough, in spite of this focus on cotton, the inner mechanisms of the success of the latter have not been fully explored: little has been written, for instance, on credit for planters, or on price formation at multiple levels. The institutional framework (both governmental and non- governmental) of the cotton boom is similarly unclear: what was the mea- surable effect of specific provisions on railway tariffs? What were the composition and the role of the Khoqand cotton stock exchange? Who owned the cotton cleaning mills that mushroomed in Fergana and else-

* Research towards this article was possible thanks to the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (IFEAC) in Tashkent and a grant-in aid from the Japan Society for the Promo- tion of Science (JSPS). 66 Beatrice Penati where? This goes back to the issue I have just mentioned: it is heuristically more productive to look at cotton expansion in a multi-layered and con- tinually changing context, rather than viewing transformation—in social structures as well as in the landscape—as a mere consequence of the former. Incidentally, switching focus from cotton to its context would allow to reformulate the question of the respective roles of imperial power agencies (‘central’ and Turkestani), Russian industrialists, Turkestani merchants, and peasant households’ sowing decisions in the expansion of this specific crop, instead of considering local agency as a mere response to ‘capitalist’ (or otherwise ‘exploitative’) policies and investments. This chapter argues that the management of the rural landscape of Turkestan constituted an important component of this institutional framework, which deserves to be studied alongside decision-making in St. Petersburg on custom duties1 or new canals.2 Although this management did not concern cotton culture as such, it reflected specific views on state power, relations between different categories of subjects, and above all resource exploitation (land and water in primis). This is not only relevant from the standpoint of cultural history: it is also essential to put into perspective both the cotton boom and the outreach of the Russian colonial administration in rural areas. The interplay between environmental conditions and human activity through the prism of the usage of scarce natural resources constitutes one of the key themes of entire historical disciplines; the approach of environmental history has been successfully applied to the study of regions as diverse as the American West3 or Assam.4 In the case of Central Asia, environmental change absorbs much of the attention of archaeologists, sometimes in a strongly interdisciplinary perspective.5 The relation between men, animals, and resources is equally central to the reconstruc-

1 J. Whitman, “Turkestan Cotton in Imperial Russia.” American Slavic and East European Review 15/1 (1956): 98–9. 2 A good example of this kind of studies is, among others M. Joffe, “Autocracy, Capital- ism, and Empire: the Politics of Irrigation.” Russian Review 54/2 (1995): 365–88. 3 For instance D. Worster, An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American West (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994). 4 Very recently, with a specific focus on colonial forestry policies, see A. Saikia, Forests and Ecological History of Assam (Delhi: OUP, 2011); see also K. Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests. Statemaking and Environmental Change in Eastern Colonial India (Cambridge: CUP, 2000). Works in the environmental history of India, including forests, are very abundant. 5 See for instance S. Riera et al., “1,000-Year Environmental History of Lake Issyk-Kul.” In Dying and Dead Seas: Climatic Versus Anthropic Causes, ed. J.S.J. Nihoul et al. (London: Springer, 2004): 253–83. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 67 tion of the medieval and early modern history of the region.6 At the opposite end of this very cursory overview, we find recent and ongoing studies in the environmental history of the Soviet Period.7 Tsarist Central Asia— and Tsarist Turkestan more than the neighbouring Kazakh Steppe—seems to have attracted comparatively less attention; as for the Soviet period, historians have been working mainly on water and irrigation plans.8 Unlike other studies, this contribution is not going to look at irrigation: instead, it will tackle a few neglected—but on all counts not peripheral—aspects of economic activity. One of these is the issue of state land property (gosudarstvennye imushchestva), and in particular the destiny of the land belonging to a specific juridical category—dikorastushchie lesa, ‘wild woods.’ This chapter will provide evidence to support the argument that, in dealing with the rural landscape, the behaviour of the Russian military-civil administration of Turkestan was moulded by a complex set of goals and motives, which did not necessarily prioritise the development of the cotton sector over other crops, or its expansion at the expense of other kinds of available land. Subordinately, this paper provides additional evidence for the well-known argument that Russian colonial rule in Turkestan was far from monolithic: bureaucratic politics and even personal rivalries shaped decisions and their implementation, affecting the ordinary lives of thousands of rural and

6 To mention only two examples from early modern history, according to Bregel the migration of Turkmen tribes towards the irrigated areas of Khorezm and Khorasan in the 15th c. took place when the Uzboy dried up and underground water levels decreased, trig- gering the salinisation of wells in Qara-Qum and Ust-Yurt (Y. Bregel, “Uzbeks, Qazaqs and Turkmens.” In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia. The Chinggisid Age, ed. N. Di Cosmo, A.J. Frank, and P.B. Golden (Cambridge: CUP, 2009): 233; McChesney discussed in some detail and interpreted the evidence of deurbanisation and deterioration of the irrigation system in Balkh, linking them to the flourishing of horse trade, rather than overall economic decline, R.D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Mus- lim Shrine, 1480–1889 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991): 234. 7 See for instance the ongoing research of Marc Elie on natural catastrophes, as well as C. Teichmann, “Canals, Cotton, and the Limits of De-colonisation in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1924–1941.” Central Asian Survey 26/4 (2007): 499–519―although this article focuses more on Soviet decision-making than on its actual impact on the environment. 8 Some of these works, though, have the distinct advantage of trying to bridge the Tsar- ist and the Soviet period. See for instance M. Peterson, Technologies of Rule: Empire, Water and the Modernization of Central Asia, 1867–1941, unpublished PhD diss. (Harvard, 2011); and J. Obertreis, “Der „Angriff auf die Wüste“ in Zentralasien. Zur Umweltgeschichte der Sow- jetunion.” Osteuropa 58/4–5 (2008): 37–56. The most consistent attempt to study environmental change across time in a specific region so far seems to be the Japanese “Ili Project” (www.ilipro.com). Some results are summarised in Reconceptualizing Cultural and Envi- ronmental Change in Central Asia: An Historical Perspective on the Future, ed. M. Watanabe & J. Kubota (Kyoto: Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, 2010). 68 Beatrice Penati urban dwellers, whether native Muslims or European settlers. More specifically, at the very beginning of the 1910s, when the peripheral agencies of the ministry of agriculture and state properties, which had already been advocating resettlement policies, started relating ‘colonisation’ to the expansion of the surface under cotton and, consequently, ‘new’ artificial irrigation, the clash between these two categories of policy-makers became inevitable. The nexus ‘cotton-resettlement’ and its ideal link to the con stitution of a ‘new Turkestan’―particularly clear in the writings of A.V. Krivoshein―had widespread implications. Besides others, it meant that access to woodland for pasture and charcoal production could not be regulated solely on the basis of conservationist concerns, or regarded primarily as a source of revenues for the treasury, but was supposed to be limited in a way that could ‘open up’ new land for settlers and make resources available for the newcomers. Hence, the paragraphs below are going to show how spontaneous flora and forested land was regarded by different agencies of Russian imperial power in Turkestan, how it contributed to the Turkestani economy and to the budget of the rural population (nomadic and sedentary), and how the varying interests of these two categories of actors combined—and often collided—across time and space. First, we are going to discuss the juridical category of ‘wild wood’ as a specific type of ‘state land property’, by examining how it was defined in regulations and on the spot. Second, the paper explains how the notion of ‘wild wood’, because of its blurred nature, could be used to expand the boundaries of ‘state land’ and, prospectively, of land open to resettlement. This expansion took place at the expense of the natives―how it happened, is made clear in a section consecrated to the economy and usage of forested areas for either timber or pasture. The importance of woodland, both in the income of native Turkestani households and from the viewpoint of the administration, will be discussed separately. The juridical and practical contradictions implicit in the way forested surfaces could be accessed became evident at the occasion of the 1916 revolt:9 the latter can be justly considered as an epilogue to the debates and struggles which had taken place since the issuance of the statute, and will help us to formulate some conclusions in the final part of this paper.

9 The author is grateful to T. Uyama for having brought this aspect to her attention. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 69 I. Defining the Boundaries of State Land Properties

The Turkestan statute of 1887 (Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo kraya) constituted the fundamental legislative text for the administration of the Governor-Generalship. Historians have already dealt with its genesis, and in particular the formulation of the parts concerning land settlement—from art. 255 onwards. This section of the Turkestan statute (especially the instructions at art. 256) triggered a ‘first wave’ of land surveys and land-tax assessment operations, from the late 1880s onwards. Land assessment took place at different moments in different places. For instance, after the initial surveys in the Tashkent uezd, the Samarqand province saw its first ‘land assessment commissions’ only in 1892, and most of Fergana even later. The regulations which underpinned land assessment were not immutable. Some amendments to the original statute were endorsed at the beginning of the 1890s, but the most significant alterations to the section on land settlement and land-tax were introduced only in 1900. The civil-military administration reacted to these new measures in the first decade of the new century. In particular, the ‘second wave’ of land assessment (pozemel’no-podatnye raboty) imposed by the new rules on the registration of non-irrigated and untilled, but productive, land, progressed significantly from 1907 onwards. The most significant novelty introduced by the 1900 version of the statute in the field of land settlement was in fact a mere ‘authentic interpretation’ of the existing legislation: a clarification of the original version of the statute, officially endorsed by the organ which produced the latter. Art. 255 of the statute had already imposed the registration (utverzhdenie) in favour of the local sedentary rural population of the land which was, permanently and hereditarily, in their usage and possession. From the very beginning, there had been controversy over whether this should include land other than irrigated plots.10 This ambiguity derived from the reference to this land in the statute as amlyakovye zemli, because this term had, in the minds of the majority of Russian officials, the meaning of ‘land on which land-tax is paid.’ And land-tax in the proper sense (on the expected harvest of assessed plots) was only paid on irrigated land,

10 I have dealt with this issue more extensively in B. Penati, “Swamps, Sorghum, and Saxauls. Marginal lands and the Fate of Russian Turkestan, ca. 1880–1915.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 61–78. The Russian administration of Turkestan strove to draw a clear distinction between irrigated and rain-fed tilled land. The latter was designated by the noun bogara, or the adjective bogarnaya, allegedly from the local word bahārī. It appears, however, that in vernacular documents rain-fed land was only called lalmī—a word the Russians knew, but used much less often. The author thanks the editor for this precision. 70 Beatrice Penati while until 1900 land-tax on rain-fed (bogarnye) plots was paid as a fixed fraction of the actual harvest. Waste land had not been subject to taxation. Corrections to the assessment methods in use took place in some districts (uezdy) of the Fergana province, where the ‘first wave’ of assessment had not yet been completed. Everywhere else, the new rules implied a thorough revision, at least in principle. The registration of untilled and non-irrigated land, though, was slacking in one of the areas where its necessity was more urgently felt, namely the Syr-Darya oblast’. This meant that in districts where the settlement of European peasants had already taken place, and was likely to expand, the amount of land registered in favour of the Muslim sedentary population was significantly more ill-defined than elsewhere. The situation of the Tashkent uezd was exceptionally complicated: until the beginning of the 1890s, when specific instructions were issued, land-tax commissions operating in the Tashkent uezd registered land to local rural communities quite generously, including rain-fed fields and pastures. Then this practice was discarded, but the 1900 amendments made the inclusion of rain-fed and waste surfaces necessary again, in order to calculate the expected income generated by them. There was some controversy as to whether the new wave of assessment could (or even should) include a revision of the boundaries of untilled land attributed to the Muslim population. Given the increased presence of European settlers, and the growth of a pro-settlement faction within the colonial administration, this second wave of registration could have resulted in the increase of the surface of ‘free lands’, not registered in favour of Muslims. The delimitation of the latter’s rights was a hot issue, as will be clear from the examples reported below. In general, though, the interests of the Turkestan civil-military administration tended to prevail. These officials backed the registration of large amounts of land, both rain-fed and pastures, in favour of local rural communities, for two reasons: first, in order not to enter into collision with Muslim inhabitants over their land rights, fearing their reaction; second, and more importantly, because in doing so they increased land-tax revenues. It is quite obvious that this practice was diametrically opposed to the interests of the Central Administration for Land Organisation and Agriculture (Glavnoe Upravlenie Zemleustroistva i Zemledeliya, or GUZZ) and the Resettlement Administration (Pereselen cheskoe Upravlenie), which was formally one of its departments. GUZZ and resettlement organs in Turkestan depended from the central offices in St. Petersburg, thus similarly fostered the opposite strategy of expanding of state rights in the land. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 71 In the Tashkent uezd conflicts between the population and the colonial authorities, as well as between different colonial agencies of land management, were so harsh and so frequent that it is no wonder that they attracted the attention of the inspection led by Senator Count K.K. Pahlen at the end of the 1900s. Here only three cases will be evoked. First, between 1890 and 1900, trying to gain land plots for colonisation, petty officials of the forestry authority (a department of the administration of state lands, Upravlenie Zemleustroistva i Gosudarstvennykh Imushchestv, itself the local branch of GUZZ) had defined as state-owned rentable plots (kazenno-obrochnye stat’i) many areas that had already been registered in favour of the local Muslim population. In some cases, such as in two localities of the Ablyk canton, they had even attributed irrigated land under rice to the state, so that local peasants not only had to pay the land-tax on these (as their land), but also, unjustly, a rent to the state itself. Elsewhere, for instance in the Zengiata canton, plots of state land had been defined on some of the best cultivated land belonging to the native population, including gardens, fields under clover, flax or wheat. This double registration led in practice to the appropriation, by the state, of plots legitimately owned by the people; more frequently, it concerned marginal lands with an uncertain status.11 These operations were carried out by forestry officials (lesnye ob”ezdchiki): as we will see, the forestry department was the mouthpiece and acted as the operative arm of the Administration for state properties in Turkestan. Again, in the Akdzhar canton, a plot of land, apparently registered in favour of local Kazakhs before 1890, had subsequently been registered as vacant. In 1906, without waiting for the ‘second wave’ of land assessment works, resettlement officials had expropriated it. Then they had realised that it was not really suitable for peasant settlement, but, instead of returning it, had forced the local population (i.e. the official owners, according to the first registration) to pay a rent on it. Land-tax officials asked for advice from the Governor-General’s council in 1908, and received a first, encouraging answer at the end of September: the council condemned the practice of arbitrarily considering plots to be ‘empty’, and stated that, whenever land assessment had not been concluded, the land could only be assigned to settlers on a short-term basis. However, only thirteen days later, the same council added that the situation could not be decided by the land-tax commissions, and that the issue could be handled by the judiciary only. In other

11 General office of the Syr-Darya provincial government, Zhurnal [copy], 21.5.1911, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 4782, ll. 2–9. This episode is also mentioned by Pahlen, Pozemel’no- podatnoe delo (St. Petersburg: Senatskaya Tipografiya, 1910): 131. 72 Beatrice Penati words, the supposed prerogative of the commissions to ascertain rights on the land was rendered a dead letter where the settlers’ (or the state’s) rights were concerned; and no remedy to abuses would have been possible, unless the population had had recourse to the (Russian) judiciary.12 But what were the relations between these various agencies of land management? What central or peripheral organs were they accountable to? It is useful to recall here some aspects of the evolution of the institutional framework of the management of state land properties and forestry in Turkestan. The 1886 Turkestan statute defined state land properties (gosudarstvennye imushchestva) as: water systems, fisheries, wild woods, plots which the state rented out (obrochnye stat’i), and, above all, all the land that was not ascribed in favour of the native rural population according to art. 255. The notion of ‘water systems’ would require specific attention, being related to the thorny issue of the administration of irrigation and of the almost nonexistent grasp of Tsarist power on one of the most essential factors of production in Turkestan, namely water13. Fisheries are not particularly relevant here. This leaves us with three categories: rural land that was not ascribed to the sedentary native population, wild woods, and obrochnye stat’i. All these were ‘state properties’: but, in practice, these were not all the ‘state land properties’ existing in Turkestan. Indeed, the Turkestan statute left the issue of who was the final proprietor of land open. This is particularly evident if we compare the different qualification of land usage by the sedentary and nomadic population respectively: art. 255 imposed the registration in favour of the former of all land on which they enjoyed property rights according to what the Russians called ‘local custom’ (the fact that this was state land was somehow left in the shadow), whilst art. 270 clearly stated that nomads ‘occupied’ state land

12 This episode happened under the Governor-Generalship of P.I. Mishchenko, who is usually labelled as an adversary of the agencies for state land and resettlement. As we will see, this label reflects his policies in Semirech’e more than what Pahlen himself reports about his decision for the Tashkent district. See, General office of the Syr-Darya provincial government, Zhurnal [copy], 21.5.1911, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 4782, ll. 2–9, here ll. 4–5ob. It is unclear whether this 1911 document refers to a similar, but partly different episode mentioned by Pahlen, too; due to practical difficulties in the Aman-Akdzhar canton (Tash- kent district), in 1908 the council of the Governor-General had first stated that the juridical status of the land (state, or belonging to local dwellers) was to be defined by the commissioners only, but shortly after had asserted ‘legitimately constituted’ state land plots ought to be left untouched. See Pahlen, Pozemel’no-podatnoe delo: 132. 13 Compare A.S. Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand, 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford: OUP, 2008): chapter 6; E. Pravilova, “Les res publicae russes. Discours sur la propriété publique à la fin de l’empire.” Annales (Histoire, Sciences Sociales) 3 (2008): 579–609. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 73 (gosudarstvennye zemli), and that the state conceded (predostavlyat’) its communal usage (obshchestvennoe pol’zovanie). No process of registration was mentioned in the following articles, in spite of the fact that ‘communal usage’ was conceded not only on winter quarters and summer pastures, but also on tilled land (art. 271).14 And, unlike land registered to the sedentary population, the state did not need to register nomads’ land usage to collect taxes, because the latter took the form of a capitation, i.e. taxes were paid on a household basis (kibitochnaya podat’). However, what was stated in art. 270 is enough to define, in practice, another category of ‘state land’, which the state itself could not freely dispose of, but which was undoubtedly subject to a stronger grasp than that ascribed to the sedentary population. How, and by whom, these ‘state properties’ had to be managed in the Turkestan krai was not so clear in the immediate aftermath of 1887. Only in 1897 did a new, but provisional, law state that the supreme guidance on state properties in Turkestan was to be given by the Governor-General or, more precisely, by the new Administration for agriculture and state properties (Upravlenie Zemledelya i Gosudarsvennykh Imushchestv) that was established within the framework of the Governor-Generalship. State land administrators at the provincial level were also subordinated to the Governor-General. At the local (uezd) level, nonetheless, the law of 1897 fostered an ambiguous dyarchy: state properties were handled by the local civil-military district commandants (uezdnye nachal’niki) and by the local employees of the Central Administration for Land Organisation and Agriculture (Glavnoe Upravlenie Zemleustroistva i Zemledeliya).15 Already in 1900 the latter had sent a representative, in the person of the head of its Forestry Department, to Turkestan: the coexistence of two different agencies in the ‘chain of command’ of state properties in Turkestan had already led to unpleasant clashes.16 Some attempts to simplify the situation and reduce the sources of controversy to a minimum resulted, in the next few years, in the transfer of the administration of obrochnye stat’i and, to some extent, forestry resources, from the krai to the oblast’ level (1901) and in instructions aimed at defining more clearly the respective responsibilities

14 Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo kraya (1886). In Materialy po istorii politiches kogo stroya Kazakhstana, ed. M.G. Masevich (Alma-Ata: Izdanie AN Kazakhskoi SSR, 1960): 373. 15 Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, Otchet po Revizii Turkestanskago Kraya, proizvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU Poveleniyu. Gosudarstvennye imushchestva (St. Petersburg: Senatskaya Tipografiya, 1910): 5. 16 Ibid.: 9. 74 Beatrice Penati of Tashkent and the provinces.17 In spite of these attempts, voices pointing out the inadequacy of the management system for state properties in Turkestan continued to be heard throughout the first decade of the new century. In 1908 the debate moved to a different and higher level because of the intervention of the head of the Central Administration of Land Organisation and Agriculture, A.V. Krivoshein, who pleaded for the thorough and rapid transformation of the whole system. In particular, he pointed out that, since 1897, Turkestan included Semirech’e and Transcaspia, but state pro perties in these two regions were still under the War Ministry’s control: a circumstance that hindered both harmonisation and the rational management of resettlement.18 When Pahlen visited Turkestan, though, the issue had not yet been settled, and tensions between the two ‘pyramids’ persisted. Pahlen was particularly dissatisfied with the quality of the local employees of the (Turkestan) Administration for agriculture and state properties. With the nomination of the new head of this body, Aleksandr I. Pil’ts, in 1906, and the inspection, a massive turnover had taken place: seven officials out of ten, not counting the executive officer (deloproizvoditel’) of the Direction himself, and several forestry officials were forced to resign, or were submitted to tribunals.19 The inspection marked a striking discontinuity in the management of state land properties in Turkestan, and Pahlen’s initiatives provoked a considerable reaction in Turkestani and imperial public opinion, as reflected in the press. Pil’ts was harshly blamed for having failed to take appropriate initiatives to punish subordinate officers who extorted extra money or pocketed that of the state treasury. Those facts had already been reported, but ostensibly only Pahlen’s team took them seriously.20 One measure in particular provoked a con siderable sensation: the above-mentioned deloproizvoditel’ of the Admin istration for agriculture and state properties, K.A. Timaev, was sent to court.21 Why this was so important will soon be clear.

17 Ibid.: 10–11. 18 “Iz oblasti kazennykh khishchenii.” Birzhevye vedomosti, (1908). In TS 508 (1908): 193. See also Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 15. 19 On illegal and quasi-illegal practices by officials in charge of the management of forest resources, Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 120–2. See also below. 20 Ibid.: 26. 21 T-ov, “Turkestanskaya panama.” Birzhevye vedomosti 10730 (1908). In TS, 494 (1908): 81. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 75 II. Opening up State Land for Resettlement and Concessions

The presence of illegal (samovol’nye) settlers not only in the Steppe and in Semirech’e but also in Syr-Darya, and even in the densely populated Fergana oblast’, created some concerns for the maintenance of public order. First, because settlers were sometimes loitering in big cities without any occupation, waiting for the attribution of land (nadel); second, because many of them had either rented or bought plots of land from the local inhabitants, either Sarts or Kazakhs. ‘Nomadic land’ being state land, after all, nobody was meant to have the right of either alienating or renting out parcels of it. Indeed, settlers had arrived, in particular once famine struck the western part of Russia in 1891, but their de facto seizure of the land contained elements of irregularity, at least from the fiscal point of view. Some of them had acquired plots by buying them from impoverished native dwellers and receiving certificates issued according to Muslim law for this transaction: a situation that was not fully legal, although widely tolerated.22 Others bought only small plots (one to five desyatiny), manifestly insufficient to sustain their households, in order to settle down and be able to exert pressure on the Resettlement authority and obtain additional plots of neighbouring state land, at the expense of the nomads. This trick was considered to be dishonest by some Russian officials serving in Turkestan, and, due to its ‘epidemic’ [sic] propagation, was looked on with some concern, because of the inherent risk of conflict between settlers and nomads.23 The problem of illegal settlers, though, was not the only reason for the growing attention demonstrated by some segments of Russian officialdom—especially in St. Petersburg—to the issue of state land properties. At the beginning of the century, it had become clear that, in Turkestan, the subsoil could contain mineral resources, ranging from oil to coal, but also asbestos, silicates, and minerals. Even though the state was not able to exploit these resources directly, it would have been more lucrative to allow their exploitation on the basis of concessions, distributed to private (mostly Russian) entrepreneurs. Indeed, the Kovalevskii company which set up the first oil plants in Chimion (Margelan district) had been forced to buy the

22 This supposed, of course, that the land had cost more than three hundred roubles; see par. 235 of the Turkestan statute (1900 version); Ministry of finance, Direct taxation department, to Turkestan Governor-General, 9.3.1904, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 462, ll. 15–17, here l. 17. 23 Chimkent land-tax office, Zhurnal, 11.9.1909, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 16533, ll. 39–39ob. 76 Beatrice Penati land from the local rural population.24 We recall here the fact that, if land was not ascribed to the sedentary population, it was considered as ‘state land property’ and could be granted to colonists from the European parts of the empire, rented out (for instance as experimental cotton plantations) to private entrepreneurs, or given to concessionaries in order to dig a quarry, a mine, or an oil well. If that ‘state land’ was located within those parcels of Turkestani territory defined as inhabited by sedentary dwellers, then that land was immediately available for the purposes mentioned above. These regulations only referred to the sedentary areas of Turkestan. On the basis of art. 270 of the statute, we know that the nomadic population of Turkestan had the right to use ‘state land’, therefore excluding, in principle, the presence of settlers and mining endeavours. Hence, in the nomadic parts of the territory of Russian Turkestan, defining the boundaries of state land would have been insufficient to open it up to resettlement or concession: the rights of the nomadic population needed to be taken into account as well. In concise form, one could state that in sedentary areas the definition of state land sufficed to secure land for settlers in Turkestan; in nomadic areas, instead, Russian authorities had first to define the plots concerned as ‘state land property’, then to ascertain (and exclude) the absence of usage rights in favour of nomads. This was easier to say than to do, though, and multiple strategies were put in place in the early 1900s to expand the domain of ‘state land property’ and to limit the rights of the nomadic population of Turkestan. Securing ‘state land property’ was always essential; limiting grazing and transhumance rights concerned nomadic areas only—but given the ‘marginal’ nature of the land concerned, this was not negligible at all. The issue of ‘wild woods’ is relevant for the first aspect, while the notion of ‘excess land’ (izlishki) is crucial for the second, and the two debates were often simultaneously present on the agendas of various commissions, as we will see. ‘Excess land’ means in this context all ‘state land’ exceeding what was supposedly necessary for a nomadic household (norma), at least in the eyes of the Russians, multiplied by the number of households living in a given territorial unit. This mechanism was already in place in the Steppe. Allowing the definition and seizure of izlishki in Turkestan would have allowed an easier allotment of ‘state land’ to settlers

24 V. Dunin-Barkovskii, “Eshche o zakhvate kazennykh zemel’.” Tashkentskii Kur’er 163 (1908). In TS 469 (1908): 113–4. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 77 whenever they were competing with nomads.25 A thorough discussion of the ‘excess land’ in Turkestan as opposed to the Steppe, though, would bring us too far from the focus of this paper. In this section we are going to explain how the local administration for land management and state properties (especially its forestry staff) fought to enlarge the stock of ‘state land’ by stretching the definition of ‘wild wood.’ The increased presence of ‘illegal settlers’ after 1897 and growing interests in mining described above constitute the background to all administrative controversies around ‘state land’ in the early 1900s. Nonetheless, the problem became more acute as a consequence of the above mentioned ‘second wave’ of land assessment that had followed the endorsements of the amendments to art. 255 of the Turkestan statute in 1900. The amendments aroused the hopes of the Resettlement Administration, which wished that the ‘second wave’ would overhaul all previous decisions to register useful but marginal land in favour of the natives. If past errors by the land-tax commissions (pozemel’no-podatnye komissii) could not be amended, at least the new round of assessments, focusing on ‘marginal lands’, were supposed to have acted more rigorously in assessing the formal and substantial foundations of the landed rights of the native rural population. On the contrary, however, the land-tax commissions were now in favour of generous ascriptions because of higher pressure on resources and soaring land prices, in comparison to the ‘first wave’. This approach could not be tolerated by the ‘state land’ clique—a heterogeneous interest group made up of resettlement officers, entrepreneurs, and more or less embed- ded writers and editors. The beginning of what resembles an organised, albeit loose, press campaign can be dated with some assurance to the autumn of 1905, when an editorial article titled ‘Our tasks in Russian Turkestan’ appeared in the influential Torgovo-promyshlennaya gazeta, and was re-printed in the pages of Russkii Turkestan. This article, denouncing the ‘theft’ of state land to the advantage of the Muslim sedentary population, provoked two distinct and somewhat divergent replies by two former land-tax commissars in Fergana,

25 The issue of izlishki has been thoroughly in Soviet and post-Soviet historiography. Here it is useful to mention the passage in V. Martin, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001): 72–3; and Agrarnyi vopros v Kazakhstane i Gosudarstvennaya Duma Rossii (1906–1917 gg.), ed. S.N. Maltusynov (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006): 264–71. See also P. Holquist, “‘In Accord with State Interests and the People’s Wishes’: The Technocratic Ideology of Imperial Russia’s Resettlement Administration.” Slavic Review 69/1 (2010): 151–79. 78 Beatrice Penati Dunin-Barkovskii (himself a Pole) and the Tatar Enikeev. The first essentially dealt with the registration of land to the sedentary rural population, while Enikeev justified the registration of land to Kazakhs and Kirgiz who had embraced sedentary life. Their positions were deeply criticised in the journal Sredne-Aziatskaya zhizn’, which did not hesitate to portray in pathetic terms the gloomy existence of a group of samovol’nye settlers stuck in Andijan.26 The stakes were raised one year later, when those two commissioners were also targeted by the more widely-read Novoe Vremya, which reflected conservative views and was considered the unofficial mouthpiece of segments of the government. It is likely that the kick-off for the 1907 press campaign was given by the announcement, for the second consecutive year, that the chancellery of the Turkestan Governor-General had decided to close the region to incoming pereselentsy. The announcement was complemented, in July 1907, by another declaration of the Turkestan authorities, stating that all illegal seizures of land by the settlers ‘would be prosecuted with the strictest severity.’27 The newspaper’s Tashkent correspondent did not hesitate to describe the registration of additional land in favour of the rural population, as a consequence of the ‘new wave’ of assessment, as nothing less than ‘The expropriation of state lands in Turkestan.’28 In spite of Dunin-Barkovskii’s self defence in the pages of Turkestanskie Vedomosti,29 Novoe Vremya did not loosen its grasp, and shortly after it published a second correspondence from Tashkent.30 Not only did the writer insinuate that Enikeev had favoured Kazakh and Kirghiz demands, being himself a Tatar, it also chauvinistically claimed that, similarly, ‘one should not leave the issue of Russian resettlement in the hands of a Pole.’ Both the first and the second article also attacked much loftier targets: not only the Turkestan Governor-General, but also the State Council (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet) at the ‘centre’ had endorsed these practices. And the fault was to found more in ‘men who look with indif

26 A. Kasatkin, “K zemel’nomu voprosu v Fergane.” Sredne-Aziatskaya zhizn’ 49–50 (1906). In TS 442 (1906): 153–7. 27 “Ob’yavlenie ot kantseliarii Turkestanskogo General-Gubernatora.” Turkestanskie Vedomosti, 2907 (5/18 July 1907): 1. 28 “Ekspropriatsiya gosudarstvennykh zemel’ Turkestana.” Novoe Vremya 11337 (1907). In TS 445 (1907): 174–5. 29 V. Dunin-Barkovskii, “Otvet Novomu Vremeni.” Turkestanskie Vedomosti 178 (1907). In TS 447 (1907): 66–67. 30 “Eshche po povodu ekspropriatsii gosudarstvennykh zemel’ Turkestana.” Novoe Vremia (1907). In TS 449 (1907): 89–90. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 79 ference to the interests of Russia’ than in the ambiguities of legislative texts.31 It was in this explosive climate that, in August 1907, a commission was set up in St. Petersburg on the initiative of the interior minister, together with his war and finance colleagues, and with the equivalent of the minister of agriculture (‘head of land organisation and agriculture’). The commission was led by the acting minister of interior affairs, a close political friend of P.A. Stolypin, senator and statskii sovetnik A.I. Lykoshin.32 The focus of its work was twofold: on one hand, the definition of izlishki in nomadic areas, both in Turkestan and in the Steppe. On the other hand, knowing that no izlishki could be defined without state land, this commission meant to bring some order to the ongoing land assessment operations and, hopefully, to accelerate them. More specifically, it aimed at rectifying supposed errors in the land assessment operations carried out so far: errors that had allegedly brought about ‘the artificial reduction of the capacity of the Turkestan krai to receive colonisers.’33 With a wording surprisingly similar to that of Novoe Vremya, the Administration for agriculture and state land properties claimed that land assessment officials had ascribed too much land to native village communities; it also stated that, due to the officials’ negligence, nomads were abusing their rights on state land.34 By that time, surveys were being carried out in part of the Fergana province; in particular, the presence of nomads in the Namangan district had forced the commissioners and officials of the local administration to realise the presence of ambiguities and unclear points in the regulations concerning their work.35 In sum, the responsibility for the obstacles opposed to colo-

31 “Ekspropriatsiya gosudarstvennykh zemel’ Turkestana.” Here 174b. 32 Aleksandr Ivanovich Lykoshin, among the founders of the reformist Soyuz Russkogo Naroda, and a teacher at the military academy, would be killed by the Cheka in 1918; only tenuous family ties are visible between him and his homonymous Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin, in 1908 commandant of the Khodjent district and later military governor of the Samarqand province. 33 Osobyi zhurnal soveta ministrov [copy], 19.2.1908, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8822, ll. 50–60ob, here l. 50. 34 In particular, the Administration denounced the existence of practices like renting and selling plots formally owned by the state; these episodes had alarmed the ‘centre.’ Glavnoe upravlenie zemleustroistva i zemledeliya to Turkestan Administration for agriculture and state land properties, 3.4.1911, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8822, ll. 14–14ob. 35 Moreover, part of the Syr-Darya province was still excluded from land assessment. To bring the commissioners to the few sedentary cantons of the districts of Chimkent and Aulie-Ata (five and three respectively) would have created the necessary juridical framework for the settlement of European colonisers. See, general office of the Syr-Darya provincial government, Zhurnal, 16.9.1910, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 124–97, here ll. 155–155ob; 80 Beatrice Penati nisation was attributed by the Lykoshin commission to the land-tax commissions, and, more generally, to the attitudes and behaviour of local Russian officials in Turkestan since 1887. The Lykoshin commission tackled these issues in two ways: bureau- cratically and legally. Under the first heading, a proposal expressed by the commission and endorsed by the council of ministers on April 2nd, 1908 consisted of a more significant inclusion of representatives of the Resettlement Administration (pereselencheskoe upravlenie) not only in the land-tax commissions, but also in the land-tax offices (prisutstviya) and in the provincial councils, whenever the latter were called up to decide on issues related to land assessment. More interesting, though, are the legal specifications the commission tried to introduce in the definition of ‘state land’: the category of ‘wild wood’, in particular, proved ambiguous enough to be used as a weapon to expand the surface of ‘state land’ at the expense of the sedentary Muslim population. According to the commission’s proposal, not only the vegetation, but also the earth surface and soil of ‘wild woods’ (dikorastuyushchie lesa) was to be considered as state property, even when it was located within the land registered in favour of the sedentary population, according to art. 257 of the statute.36 In order to understand why this apparently pedantic question could significantly alter land usage in rural Turkestan, though, it is necessary to take a step back and look closely at the economy and at the legal status of Turkestani woods in general.

III. The Forestry Office, the Resettlement Administration, and Colonial Officials

The year 1908, brought about two important novelties: on one hand, the full implementation of the 1900 rules on land-tax on untilled land; second—as we have just seen—the rules approved in April about state property being vested in the soil, and not only the plants that grew on it. Hence, the new rules, by specifying the notion of state-owned ‘wild woods’ to include the soil, opened up new land potentially available to settlers. In practice, the regulation meant the curtailment of the sedentary rural population’s right to use ‘wild woods’ located on the land registered to their compare, Turkestan Governor-General (A.V. Samsonov) to the head of land organisation and agriculture in the Resettlement Administration (A.V. Krivoshein), 23–24.9.1910, TsGA- RUz. F. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 86–89, here l. 86. 36 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 110. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 81 ‘community’. If woods were ‘wild’, in other words, they were ‘state property’, wherever they were located. The regulations endorsed in April 1908 also contained another provision altering the possibility for the native rural population to access ‘wild woods’. This was done indirectly: providing an ‘authentic interpretation’ of art. 255 of the statute, the lands to be registered in favour of the native rural population were more precisely defined as those ‘in permanent hereditary possession, usage and disposition of a given person’.37 If we consider that land used as common pastures (often covered by ‘woods’ or, at least, bushes and tugay) had been registered in favour of the whole ‘rural communities’, it is easy to understand the sense of this provision. In other words, only individually-owned plots were considered to be immune from the state’s pretensions and, potentially, from resettlement or mining concessions. It is true that in the meantime a part of these ‘communal lands’ had been converted into individual plots because of the expansion of tilled land, and that the owners could often show ‘native’ documents as a proof of their individual rights. Nonetheless, the spirit of the 1908 regulations seems to have been precisely the opposite: not the recognition of extended rights for the rural dwellers of Turkestan, but the limitation of their access to marginal lands in favour of state rights on the latter. On both points, the answer of the council of the Turkestan Governor- General, in the form of the proceedings of the meeting held on June 20th,38 could not hide a clear desire to devoid St. Petersburg’s injunctions of much of their practical meaning: the council insisted on the right of the population to oppose any decision that would deprive them of the usage of this land, as well as on the parity between land-tax commissions and representatives of the Administration of state land properties in case of controversies between them; all disputes, moreover, had to be settled taking into account specific local conditions, the final decision being a prerogative of the Governor-General himself.39 The hostility of the council sitting in

37 In Russian: nakhodiashchiyasya v postoyannom potomstvennom vladenii, pol’zovanii i rasporyazhenii dannogo litsa’ [emphasis in the original]; a further annotation made clear that these plots should be tilled (obrabatyvaemye), Osobennyi zhurnal soveta ministrov [copy], 19.2.1908, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8822, ll. 50–60ob, here l. 51. 38 Pahlen claims twice that the ‘reply’ from Turkestan in the form of the meeting of the Governor-General’s council came on June 26th, see, Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, Otchet po Revizii Turkestanskago Kraya, proizvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU Poveleniyu. Pozemel’no-podatnoe delo (St. Pb.: Senatskaya Tipografiya, 1910): 46; compare, Vypiska from the proceedings, 20.6.1908, no. 25, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8822, ll. 58–60ob. 39 Ibid.: ll. 58–58ob. What was unclear, though, was the attitude to be adopted concerning past errors in the attribution of supposed ‘wild woods’ either to the state or to the population, Palen, Pozemel’no-podatnoe delo, 47. 82 Beatrice Penati Tashkent (with the obvious exception of the representative of the Administration of state properties and agriculture) especially targeted the directives formulated at the ‘centre’ about the status of common pastureland mentioned above: the council denied that the latter could bring anything new to the land-assessment procedures that had been in use so far. According to them, the regulations that had been valid until April 1908 did not impose a detailed inquiry about the rights and the de facto situation of each individual household (podvornoe izsledovanie), and neither did the new instructions endorsed by the council of ministers.40 On the other hand, even before April 1908 the land-tax commissioners, and even the Governor- General, ‘had not been exempted from the duty of enquiring about the population’s rights’, according to the ‘markers’ mentioned in par. 255 of the statute41. This explicit reference to the Governor-General’s responsibilities clearly looks like an attempt to raise the stakes in this controversy, a covert reply to the sharp accusations formulated by Novoe Vremya and the like: would the council of ministers really dare to accuse the head of the krai of having misdirected land assessment, in order to put obstacles in the way of colonisation? Indeed, the council in Tashkent was right (as Pahlen noted) in remarking that, even though one had wanted to certify individual rights on the land, this would have been practically impossible: the detailed survey of individual landowners’ estates, proposed by those responsible for state land properties in Turkestan,42 had proved unfeasible; and even in this case, the very text of par. 255, where land rights were attributed to the rural communities, could not be denied. The directives imposed by St. Petersburg were even more problematic as far as marginal lands were concerned, because these lands were used by the whole rural community, and bogara plots could be temporarily created on them. Tracking them year after year was beyond the ability of land-tax authorities; and registering communal plots in favour of individuals would have contradicted the principles that had regulated the enjoyment of land rights so far. Moreover, as the land-tax commission for the Namangan district noted, not only was documentary evidence scarce both for communal and individual rights on untilled (kairachnye) lands, but declarations by local dwellers were also imprecise, and sometimes went against the interests of the population itself. In particular, rural dwellers in the

40 Palen, Pozemel’no-podatnoe delo: 43. 41 Vypiska from the proceedings, 20.6.1908, no. 25, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8822, ll. 58–60ob, here l. 59. 42 Palen, Pozemel’no-podatnoe delo: 43–44. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 83 Namangan district reportedly used to call communal pasture lands padshalik (literally: the king’s domain): whatever the word had meant before the establishment of Russian rule in the province, it was the commissioners’ task, in this case, to enquire about the actual meaning this word had for the interviewees, as it often appeared that ‘this [was] nothing more than a platonic [sic] admission of the existence of state’s rights on all properties’ owned by its subjects. In other words, in this context the commissioners could have used this local notion of padshalik to assign land to the state by subtracting it from that ascribed to the villages. Instead, they chose to overlook formal definitions and only considered the actual way rural dwellers used those communal pastures. On these grounds, they refused to consider them as state land from the viewpoint of the Turkestani administration:43 a choice of which the Administration of state land properties would have undoubtedly disapproved. The vicissitudes illustrated above show how the imperial ‘centre’ tried to re-define the legal status of forested land in order to reduce the land rights of the sedentary population of Turkestan. This also demonstrates the existence of a clear opposition, on the spot, between colonial officials on one hand, and local agents of the ministries of state properties and agriculture and its ‘satellites’ (in particular the Forestry office), on the other. The extent to which the Forestry office was at the forefront of the struggle to expand state land properties could be inferred from what has been said above about the expansion of the notion of ‘wild woods’, but it will be made clearer, from an institutional point of view, in this second part of the section. We saw that, in 1908, Tashkent’s reaction was a covert declaration of unwillingness to comply with the directives issued by the council of ministers. The relations between institutions backing state property rights, and those supporting the claims of the population (and, therefore, the interests of the Turkestan treasury) had already been extremely tense, at all levels. Even where plots had been ascribed to the state, land-tax commissions had often refused to share their expertise on that land with their adversaries, to speed up the drawing of new maps,44 and to ‘lend’ them their human

43 Kollezhskii assessor Leibin, commissioner responsible for the 5th uchastok, land-tax commission for the Namangan district, Doklad [Summer 1908], TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 118–19, here l. 119. 44 Administration of agriculture and state land properties in Turkestan, 12.1.1901, TsGA- RUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 52, l. 119. 84 Beatrice Penati resources: if the Resettlement Administration wanted to use those plots, it had to provide its own land surveyors and officials45. All this happened while Pahlen was carrying out his inspection. As we saw above, Pahlen’s initiatives shook the very foundations of the Turkestan Administration for agriculture and state properties, by fostering a significant turnover of personnel. We mentioned the cases of Pil’ts, and evoked the name of the deloproizvoditel’ Timaev. The latter is best known for having been a very prolific author on the topics of state land properties and related issues: from the future of mining in Turkestan, to the opportunity to engage private capital in the irrigation of new land, and, needless to say, the perspectives for pereselenie in both sedentary and nomadic areas. Timaev did not lose any opportunity to intervene on these topics, and his writings reflect the official views of his agency much more vocally than any of the very few interventions by Pil’ts, who was probably parachuted into a situation he could not fully understand. In 1908, in particular, Timaev had been the initiator of a second press campaign about the supposed ‘expropriation’ of state land in favour of the native population by the pozemel’no- podatnye komissii. Unlike what had happened until then, he personally entered the dispute, in spite (or because of) his official role. This fostered another reply of the former commissioners themselves, namely the above mentioned Dunin-Barkovskii, who had operated in Fergana.46 It is not clear whether Timaev paid for his positions on topics like pereselenie, forestry, etc., where his views diverged from those expressed by Pahlen’s Commission. It is certain, though, that Pahlen’s presence in Turkestan helped to polarise the local bureaucracy into two camps. In particular, a newspaper (Turkestanskaya zhizn’) that had been set up alongside the inspection, to serve as a ‘progressive’ display to denounce abuses, was forced to close at the time of Timaev’s dismissal; at the same time, the tamed Tashkentskii Kur’er, where Timaev used to write, metamorphosed into Turkestanskii Kur’er. The latter was overtly edited by the (then under

45 Spravka on renounced lands, 2.11.1904, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 914, ll. 8–11. 46 K.A. Timaev, “K voprosu o zakhvate kazennykh zemel’.” Tashkentskii kur’er 160, 161, 163, 166 (1908). In TS 469 (1908): 89–100; V. Dunin-Barkovskii, “Eshche o zakhvate kazennykh zemel’.” Tashkentskii kur’er 163 (1908). In TS 469 (1908): 113; again Timaev, “Zakhvat svobodnykh gosudarstvennykh zemel’.” Turkestanskii kur’er 108 (1909). In TS 508 (1909): 86–7. In this article Timaev refers to an article having appeared in Sanktpetersburgskie vedomosti, but I was not able to track it. The indexes to Turkestanskii sbornik consider Dunin- Barkovskii’s article as a reply to this last article by Timaev, but this is manifestly wrong. It is equally impossible to date the third article before Dunin-Barkovskii’s ‘reply’, because, as we will see, Turkestanskii kur’er was the continuation of Tashkentskii kur’er. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 85 arrest) Timaev, and served as a mouthpiece of his self-defence, and as a megaphone of the battle to preserve and enlarge state land properties, in particular through the exclusion of forested surfaces from the usage of the native ‘rural communities’.47 What happened over the following four years deserves attention: documents show the existence of an uninterrupted struggle by the clique interested in the expansion (or, at least, in the preservation) of the stock of state land in Turkestan, in order to make the restrictive interpretation of 1908 fully applicable in the krai. This clique, now headed by the head of the office responsible for woods in the Turkestan Administration for agriculture and state land properties, Mustafin, and manifestly backed by the Resettlement administration and the minister of agriculture (by that time A.V. Krivoshein), was fiercely opposed by provincial military governors. The initial balance seemed to be in favour of Mustafin, who had managed to arrange the constitution of a commission, chaired by himself, on the way the 1908 instructions could be fully enacted in Turkestan. Although it was also supposed to answer to a series of technical doubts raised by the fieldwork of the commissions then operating in Fergana,48 the establishment of the Mustafin commission should be probably seen as a concession to the Administration for agriculture and state properties, and viewed in the context of confrontation between Tashkent and St. Petersburg on the issue of resettlement. No later than June 1908 senator Pahlen received the specific task of enquiring about the situation of pereselentsy, in particular in Semirech’e. Once again, the dispute over the distribution of ‘excess land’ to the settlers and that on the ‘expropriation’ of state land in favour of the native rural population of ‘central’ Turkestan constituted two sides of the same inter-institutional battle. Given this background, it is not surprising that the Mustafin commission started its work, in Spring 1909, in quite a tense atmosphere. It included the director of the Turkestan treasury chamber, Ipatov, together with a representative of the kontrol’naya palata. The head of the Administration for state land properties in Turkestan, the disgraced Pil’ts, was replaced by Mustafin himself. According to Pahlen, Pil’ts had already replaced a much worse predecessor, while Mustafin had just succeeded to the head of the Turkestan Forestry Administration who had been forced to resign at the

47 T-ov, “Turkestanskaya panama.” 48 General office, Fergana provincial government, Zhurnal, no. 27 [copy], 27.8.1908, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 95–100. 86 Beatrice Penati time of Pahlen’s inquiries.49 A colonel V.A. Mustafin had been the head of the chancellery of the Governor-General under Grodekov and Mishchenko.50 Unfortunately, I cannot be totally sure that these two were the same person, but this hypothesis is quite reasonable: the too-powerful head of the chancellery may have been removed by either Pahlen, or the incoming Governor- General, Samsonov, or by both, and put at the head of the forestry authority, decapitated by Pahlen’s revision itself. This was only apparently a secondary agency: Mustafin acted in the place of the disgraced Pil’ts, for instance as the leader of the commission that bore his name. Sure enough, Mustafin turned out to be a bitter adversary of Samsonov, as we will see: to what extent this reflected his personal resentment over his ‘degradation’ between 1908 and 1909, is impossible to say. Timaev had by then apparently been acquitted of the accusations formulated in 1908 and did not lose the opportunity to intervene in the debate with plenty of newspaper articles, as a cursory look at the indices of Turkestanskii sbornik shows. The Mustafin commission was meant to ‘reform’ the rules that regulated the registration of land in favour of the Muslim rural population (and, residually, land belonging to the state), including rules on ‘sedentarised’ nomads—more correctly, on land on which ‘nomads’ carried out agricultural activities. The commission seems to have been able to draft new instructions that integrated the requests formulated, one year before, by the Lykoshin commission:51 for instance, the inclusion of a representative of the Administration for state land properties in the meetings of the general office of each provincial government; a more thorough separation between the assessment of land rights and that of fiscal liability, in order to make the first prevail over the second, not vice versa; the forcible inclusion in the stock of state land properties of all the land shared by more than one rural community (sovmestnoe vladenie) and of unrecognised vaqf, subject to taxation (kara-vakufy). Did this mark the success of the positions backed by the Administration for state land properties? The answer to this question must be negative: first, because some two thirds of the Mustafin commission itself did not share, at least partly, its results;52 second, because of the reaction from most Russian authorities in Turkestan. Not that

49 The commission had been convened by order of the Governor-General, P.I. Mishchenko, in February 1909; in the meantime, he had been replaced by Samsonov; see Zhurnal zasedanii, 18–29.4.1909, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 55–60. 50 “Senatorskaya reviziya Turkestana.” Rech’ 6 (1909). In TS 499 (1909): 186b. 51 Proekt izmenenii k deistvuyushchei Instruktsii pozemel’no-podatnym komissaram, 16–19.3.1909, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 42–46. 52 General office, Fergana provincial administration, Zhurnal, no. 16, 7.4.1910, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, ll. 82–90. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 87 Mustafin’s positions were frontally attacked: they were simply met with stubborn obstructiveness by the provincial authorities. It took one year before the necessary consultative opinions would be formalised by the Fergana provincial authority, and some six months more than this to receive the same answer from Syr-Darya. In both cases, provincial officials expressed their strong criticism, probably resenting the fact that they had been excluded from the elaboration of the amendments themselves in Spring 1909. In particular, provincial officials pointed out that legislation fully admit- ted the existence of land shared by more than one community, and that the same was true for the kara-vakufy: all pious endowments constituted according to par. 267 of the statute were subject to the standard land-tax; moreover, many of them had already been ascribed to the dwellers, so a massive expropriation in favour of the state was absolutely inconceivable.53 The most important point, however, consisted in the fact that, according to the draft new instructions, the land-tax commissars should first define the borders of state lands, including ‘woods’, obrochnye stat’i, etc., and only then register the possession of sedentary local dwellers. This meant, according to critics, a complete overturning of the intrinsic logic of land assessment, as it had been carried out so far. Moreover, they claimed that it would have granted excessive power to forestall inspectors; last but not least, simple ‘instructions’ could not amend what had been stated in the form of a proper law.54 In this way, the debate on the draft went on for more than one year: it took until Autumn 1910 to receive the opinions of all provincial admin istrative organs. As a result, the three draft ‘instructions’ formulated by the Mustafin commission to ‘rectify’ land assessment in ‘central’ Turkestan were already outdated by the time they had gone through the necessary consultative procedure. As the provincial administration of Syr-Darya remarked, even though some points of it had been acceptable, the land assessment was almost completed, and it would have been absurd to alter its procedures at that point, creating differences between results for the very small number of remaining cantons.55

53 Ibid.: here ll. 86ob, 89; General office, Syr-Darya provincial administration, 16.9.1910, TsGARUz, Ibid.: ll. 124–97. 54 General office, Fergana provincial administration, Zhurnal, no. 16, 7.4.1910, here l. 87. 55 General office, Syr-Darya provincial administration, 16.9.1910, TsGARUz, Ibid., ll. 124–97, here, l. 155ob. 88 Beatrice Penati IV. Raising the Stake: The Yany-Kurgan Case in Context

In acting in this way, the provincial administrations were visibly backed by the Turkestan Governor-General. Indeed, in the same period Samsonov was engaged in a parallel dispute, directly with the head of the Administra tion for land organisation and agriculture, A.V. Krivoshein. The casus belli was the frosty response of the Governor-General to the decisions taken by Mustafin and the commissions he presided about some recent developments in land assessment in the Jizzakh district of the Samarqand pro vince.56 On the occasion of the land assessment operations in the Yany-Kurgan canton, a controversy had arisen between the Governor- General and the agency for state land properties; the sudebnaya palata had backed the former, but the question had been submitted to the Mustafin commission, too. Even there, though, Mustafin was left in minority. The controversial point was, as always, the juridical relevance of land assessment operations, thus the degree and modality of the enquiries to be carried out by the commissar; the ultimate implication was the definition of the mutual boundaries between ‘state land’ and land registered to the sedentary population. The Administration for state land properties was of the opinion that the commissars could (and had to) refuse to register a plot to local dwellers even in presence of de facto possession of the land. Moreover, it stated that, until the controversy had been solved by a court, the land concerned should be presumptively registered in favour of the state. Finally, it claimed that, if the land had not been registered, whatever the reason, the owner could not, in the future, establish his rights on it. All these statements had been endorsed by the commission, and then rejected by the council of the Governor-General in its proceedings, with only a small concession to Mustafin as far as the applicability of adverse possession was concerned. Krivoshein’s reaction was prompt:57 the Administration he headed could hardly tolerate this behaviour, by a concurrent agency of state power that was still hindering, as we know, the implementation of the draft instruc-

56 It is unclear whether this commission was a simple continuation of the one created in 1909, or a new one, set up by Samsonov to deal with current issues in land assessment; if the second were true, one could legitimately suppose that this was a gesture by the Turkestan administration towards the requests formulated by hostile state agencies. 57 The archival materials I could consult only include Samsonov’s answer to Krivoshein, Turkestan Governor-General (A.V. Samsonov), to the head of land organisation and agriculture in the Resettlement Administration (A.V. Krivoshein), 23–24.9.1910, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1623, ll. 86–89, here l. 86. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 89 tions voted through in 1909 (and recommended one year before). The Governor-General, in his long reply, tried to contain the dimension of the clash. He opened his letter with a captatio benevolentiae: Krivoshein— wrote Samsonov—could not be unaware of the attention he had paid to the issue of the Russian colonisation of Turkestan. Nonetheless, within Turkestan, the situation in Semirech’e was very different from that in the Syr-Darya and Fergana regions, where the density of the native population was much higher, and where land assessment works had not yet been completed. For this reason, it was inconceivable to ask land-tax commissioners to verify the rights, and not the de facto possession of the land: questioning the rights enjoyed by the population could lead to social turmoil, as had occasionally happened in the 1890s.58 In a brief telegram, though, Krivoshein made clear that his priority was not to discuss the duties of land-tax commissioners in the abstract, but to overrule the confirmation of the decisions illustrated in the proceedings of the Governor-General’s council in August: decisions that denied the positions backed by his agency, in the person of the forestry official Mustafin.59 In a more detailed letter, though, Krivoshein sought to justify his position, by stating that, in his view, the main goal of land assessment in Turkestan should have been to ‘determine for ever (na vsegda) the rights of the population on state land (gosudarstvennye zemli) and separate their possessions from the state’s land properties (kazennye zemli).’60 In this sense, as the Lykoshin commission had stated already in 1908, land assessment could not be a purely fiscal operation, but the rights of the native population should be ascertained, too. The renewal of land assessment works could not constitute an excuse to register additional land to them. All this—Krivoshein claimed—resulted in a diminution of the stock of land open to colonisation and in a waste of high-quality state land properties, where irrigation works could be carried out in order to promote the cultivation of cotton by Russian settlers. No risk of social turmoil, wrote Krivoshein, could serve as an obstacle to these governmental policies.61 Samsonov’s reply contained more than one dem- onstration of goodwill, and in particular the declaration that he had already asked to correct some mistakes made in the Fergana province; nevertheless, he did not shrink from pointing out how, in his view, the interpretation of

58 Ivi. 59 Telegram, A.V. Krivoshein to A.V. Samsonov, 20.10.1910, Ibid.: l. 90. 60 A.V. Krivoshein to A.V. Samsonov, 11.11.1910, Ibid.: ll. 92–97, quot. 94. 61 Ibid.: ll. 94ob-95. 90 Beatrice Penati the tasks of land assessment expressed by the Lykoshin commission contradicted the ‘spirit’ of the 1886 statute on the same point: a ‘spirit’ that was explicit in the statements of the state council that had accompanied its first endorsement.62 The Governor-General’s effort to moderate the tones of his reply is palpable, and it becomes even more evident when the above-mentioned letter, actually sent to Krivoshein, is compared to the two drafts Samsonov wrote before the final version. The very first draft, in particular, reflects quite closely his sincerest views. Land assessment— wrote Samsonov—could make clear the amount of land open to colonisation, but it should also grant an equal treatment of the native population, and especially of nomads: Even now I continue to keep my point of view firm: equity should be preserved, and the dignity of Russian power requires that the rights of the local native population, established by the law, would not be altered, beyond the hazards of politics in the domain of land assessment. I am afraid that absolutely new requests, [formulated] by local organs of the Administration for agriculture and state land properties, [and addressed] to the population, to demonstrate their rights on the land they own, and the introduction of the duty, for land assessment officials, to enquire about those rights […] would bring about too frequently cases of expropriation of the land from those who de facto possess it, in favour of the state (kazna). This would happen because the Administration for state land properties had its representatives in local Russian institutions, whilst the population itself was not represented. Last but not least, Samsonov lamented that to subvert, by a decision taken at the ‘centre’, the rules the population had grown used to for the last fifty years [sic] meant to create troubles which the Turkestan Governor-General would have to face alone.63 None of these statements were included in the final version, though. It is legitimate to ask why land assessment in relatively remote area, such as the Yany-Kurgan canton of the Jizzakh uezd, did spur such a heated debate between nobody less than the Governor-General and the head of GUZZ themselves. After all, the focus of the dispute between Samsonov and Krivoshein between November 1910 and January 1911 was the question of the ascription of ‘marginal’ lands to the native rural population, either sedentary or ‘sedentarised’. The debate, in other words, revolved around the interpretation of art. 255 of the Turkestan statute, some twenty years

62 A.V. Samsonov to A.V. Krivoshein, 7.1.1911, Ibid.: ll. 103–6. 63 Draft letter from A.V. Samsonov to A.V. Krivoshein [second half of November 1910], Ibid.: ll. 98–102, quot. l. 101. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 91 after its approval: which land should not be attributed to the population and could, consequently, be incorporated into ‘state land’? Practically all the debates on ‘marginal land’ were related to this topic: the issue of ‘wild woods’ and their soil itself was a variation on it. The personal involvement of Krivoshein in defence of Mustafin is surely telling of the strong embed- dedness of forestry authorities in the operative chain of command aiming at securing state land for resettlement, as it should be clear by now. But even so, why was the Yany-Kurgan incident so important? To answer this question, it is necessary to put the 1910–1911 debate in context, and show how both the GUZZ and the Governor-General were simultaneously playing on more than one table. As we know, in order to open up parcels of Turkestani territory for resettlement, it was necessary to define those parcels as ‘state land properties’. This was not enough, though, if nomadic dwellers could claim usage rights on it. The standard solution adopted to limit the nomads’ rights was the definition and seizure of ‘excess land’. The introduction of izlishki in the Turkestan statute and the extension of those rules from Semirech’e only to the ‘core provinces’ of Tashkent, Fergana, and Samarqand had been under discussion at multiple levels since 1908 (the Lykoshin commission). Despite Pahlen’s scepti- cism64 and that of the Turkestani civil-military administration,65 the issue had advanced and in 1910 a law ultimately introduced the mechanism of izlishki in the three core oblasti of Turkestan. 66 It is not surprising that, when Krivoshein toured Turkestan again, and reported his impressions in his famous Zapiska, published in 1912, he could not dissimulate his satisfaction.67 But izlishki could only be constituted on ‘state land’: and if ‘state land’ continued to be registered in favour of the native population, as in Yany- Kurgan, the apparent success of the law introducing izlishki in Turkestan would have been nullified. Krivoshein’s frustration, reflected in his harsh correspondence with Samsonov in 1911, could be easily explained: the inter-

64 “Novaya instruktsiya o poryadke opredeleniya gosudarstvennogo zemel’nogo fonda v Stepnykh oblastyakh dlya pereseleniya i drugikh gosudarstvennykh nadobnostei”, Voprosy kolonizatsii 6 (1910): 312–5. 65 D. Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire (London-New York: Rout- ledge, 2003): 144. 66 The law appeared in Sobranie Uzakoneniya 1911g., otd. 1, st. 4; also in Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov, Sobranie tret’e, 30 (1910): no. 34501 (535ss). 67 Krivoshein, Zapiska glavnoupravlyayushchago Zemleustroistvom i Zemledeliem o poezdke v Turkestanskii krai, (Sankt-Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaya Tipografiya, 1912): 50–51; the Zapiska was also published in Voprosy kolonizatsii 12 (1913): 297–369. 92 Beatrice Penati pretation of art. 255 remained a bone of contention, because it was the main significant obstacle in view of the full implementation of the new 1910 law. In May 1911 the council of the Turkestan Governor-General received another project of amendment to the instructions to land settlement officials—an extreme attempt to foster the idea of a more thorough evaluation of native land rights before (or even after) the registration of plots in their favour. The council voted against the amendments with the usual justification, namely, that land assessment had almost been completed, and it would make no sense to adopt new procedures so late. It is interesting to note that even the head of the Turkestani Administration for agriculture and state properties, Uspenskii, pronounced himself against the draft instructions, but for the opposite reason. He claimed that the new instructions were premature, because the impact of the new (December 1910) law on izlishki was still unclear, in particular the way in which the authorities would handle the thorny issue of agricultural land tilled by people classified as ‘nomads’. 68 In spite of all these efforts to regulate the issue of contested pastureland and forested surfaces by means of legislative or administrative texts, the situation remained fluid. Excess land could be used for pereselenie, but land settlement in Turkestan was still carried out according to the same rules that had been used since 1887, and the latter were interpreted more favourably for the rural native population (and for Turkestan land-tax agencies) than for the state administrations for landed properties, forestry, or resettlement.

V. Administrative Classification of Turkestani Forested Areas

A complete assessment of the economic importance of the forested areas of Turkestan falls beyond the scope of this study. Indeed, one would need not only take into account the income obtained by the state and by the population thanks to each of the activities mentioned above (production of charcoal, wood for construction works, pasture), but also the savings derived from the prevention of natural disasters, and even the beneficial effect on the climate of the region. Nonetheless, it is possible to provide

68 Abstract from the Zhurnal, council of the Turkestan Governor-General, no. 15, 17.5.[1911], TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 12, d. 1416, l. 206. The date is unclear: it may be May 17th, 1912. Nevertheless, the discussion refers to a draft submitted on May 3rd, 1911: hence my reasonable guess. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 93 some quantitative pieces of information about the amount of woodland surveyed in Turkestan, whatever its legal status. Pahlen’s report contains an estimate of the surface of woodland in the three ‘core provinces’ of Turkestan, possibly portraying the situation in 1908. These data are aggre- gated either by province or by type of wood (steppe, humid, mountain). Steppe woodland alone took up slightly more than nine tenths of the total and most of it was located in the Syr-Darya oblast’. The oblast’ with the highest percentage of woodland on the total surface was that of Samarqand, quite likely because of the steppe vegetation of the Jizzakh district and, to a much lesser extent, mountain forests.69 On the other hand, 82% of ‘mountain forests’ were obviously to be found in the Fergana province. It is clear, though, that those estimates were quite imprecise, as Pahlen himself acknowledged. Even in the case of steppe woodland, which was easier to assess than that in the mountains, Pahlen’s data seem hardly compatible with documents compiled only a few years later: the senatorial reports talk about almost 17 million desyatiny of ‘steppe woodland’ in the three ‘core provinces’, while in 1912, Krivoshein’s Zapiska states that in Turkestan there were 9 ½ million desyatiny of steppe saksaul vegetation.70 One may imagine that not all steppe woodland was made up of saksauls, but at that point one should also consider that Krivoshein was referring to the whole of Turkestan (including Transcaspia, for instance), while Pahlen’s data only referred to Fergana, Syr-Darya, and Samarqand. If we considered both Krivoshein’s and Pahlen’s estimate to be correct, the surface of saksaul woods would have been halved in the space of three years: a statement that would require additional enquiry before being endorsed. This said, the divergence between these estimates demonstrates the extent to which Russian forestry planning in Turkestan was built on shifting sands, even at the beginning of the 1910s. Until now, we have looked at the natural features of woodland. In order to understand how the imperial state could extract revenues from this land, though, one should also take into account its administrative and fiscal status. A cursory look at the spontaneous flora of southern Central Asia, with the exception of its eastern highlands, is enough to understand that local ‘woods’ are very different from the very idea of ‘woods’ Russian offi-

69 Steppe woodland in the Samarqand oblast’ covered some 3,475 thousand desyatiny, about ten times the surface of its mountain forests (around 386 thousand), Palen, Gosu- darstvennye imushchestva: 113. 70 Krivoshein, Zapiska: 74. 94 Beatrice Penati cials sitting in St. Petersburg were acquainted with. ‘Wild woods’ that had been identified and marked on the maps by land surveyors since 1887 generally consisted of scattered bushes of saksauls. The borders of these ‘woods’ were obviously difficult to define, although at a later stage the fiscal administration was obviously interested in profiting from the 1900 amendments to include as much waste land a possible within the area undergoing taxation. Moreover, the local population used to let their cattle graze in these areas, and often occupied plots located between the trees to sow dry crops. According to par. 257 of the statute, ‘wild woods’ constituted a property of the Russian state. Things, however, were greatly complicated by the existence of ‘wild woods’ with completely different legal statuses. Paradoxically enough, all these types of woods were ‘state land’, but they were ‘state land’ in quite different ways. First, there were woods that were located on state land that had not been attributed to Muslim rural dwellers; this was the most frequent situation in nomadic areas, but was not absent elsewhere. According to the Turkestan statute, the population enjoyed the right to let their livestock graze in these woods. As one may expect, Tsarist authority became less tolerant of this ‘right’ when a higher demand for meat spurred the development of ‘commercial’ cattle-breeding with huge herds. Second, some woods located on manifestly ‘state land’, in particular in mountain areas, could be transformed into a particular category of obrochnye stat’i: state plots that could be rented, in this case not for tilling the land but for making profits from wood.71 Third, the state itself had set up forestry ‘experimental’ enterprises, similar to the ‘stations’ that experimented with ‘dry’ rice culture and selected cotton seeds at the same time. The first, typical plot of this kind was located around the Aman-Kutan pass, in the mountains south of Samarqand.72 Fourth, there was the land under wood collectively used by rural dwellers, and registered in favour of rural communities—sometimes to two or more communities at the same time, as we will see. The second and the third types are quite clear-cut. The first and the fourth, on the other hand, were identical, in practice, so long as rural communities were not asked to pay the land-tax for all land registered in their favour. State land and ‘communal land’ were so interchangeable that, in Syr-Darya in 1904, then in Fergana and Samarqand, rural dwellers were asked to pay for their

71 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 131ss. 72 Ibid.: 106, 123–4. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 95 usage as pastures.73 According to the law, even in the fourth case (woods registered to a rural community ex art. 255), the woods were state property; in practice, until 1908 this definition only applied to the trees, not to the surface. The usage of the latter by local dwellers was tolerated.

VI. Timber, Charcoal, and Livestock: The Economy of Turkestani Forested Areas

By the time Senator Pahlen compiled and published the report resulting from his ‘revision’ of the Turkestan krai, the issue of forestry had become an urgent one. Forested areas, however defined, played a striking economic role from two distinct, and partly competing, points of view: first, livestock could be left to graze in the ‘woods’; second, ‘wild woods’ or dedicated forested areas provided timber, both for construction and as fuel. From a cultural point of view, Russian sensitivity to a well-thought approach to forestry and conservation had significantly increased from the beginning of the colonial period to the eve of World War I. From an economic point of view, it was the transformation of the Turkestani economy that fostered a reconsideration of the way this specific kind of resources was handled by the state. Although a fully fledged quantitative study of land usage in Turkestan would be needed to understand more precisely the change in the usage of forested land, qualitative and anecdotal evidence suffices to depict the latter’s main trends. Demographic expansion alone seems to have increased the demand for combustibles. In 1897, provincial military governors were considering an amendment to art. 258 of the statute, in order to allow the population to collect, besides construction materials, thorny branches (kolyuchka) on state land, which is a sign of the increased pressure on spontaneous vegetation, either for pasture or as combustible.74 Moreover, the increase in the size of the Turkestan population (and, in some areas, the arrival of pereselentsy), improved income for some of its segments, possibly determined a shift from chalma (dung cakes) to wood or charcoal for domestic consumption. The availability of chalma may well have decreased parallel to the intensification of the need to use manure as a fertiliser and, perhaps more significantly, the reduction of available

73 Ibid.: 137–8. 74 Proposal by the military governor of the Samarqand province, 28–29.7.1897, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 15354, l. 2. 96 Beatrice Penati pastureland close to the villages in densely populated areas. In 1895, the Russian officer and orientalist Nil S. Lykoshin reported, in one of his ‘Letters from native Tashkent’, the spread of the habit of using European-style built-in or pig-iron stoves, which Muslim hosts proudly showed to their guests. Lykoshin correctly noted that this change in vernacular architecture and lifestyle boosted the consumption of wood, sometimes in the form of charcoal.75 The demand for charcoal also increased as a consequence of the soaring popularity of samovars in private homes and chaykhanas, where it could not be replaced by wood—and even less by chalma. Coal was also needed for metallurgy, itself stimulated by the combined effect of demographic expansion, agricultural development, and simple industrial technology: if textile plants would have required the import of complex machinery from abroad, at least part of that of cleaning mills, cotton-seed oil plants and soap factories could be set up or, at least, repaired locally. Charcoal from wood (lignite) had to be used instead of (mineral) coal whenever possible, given the slow development of the mining industry. We know that the average output of charcoal per year in Turkestan over the period 1900–1915 was 9.4 million pud: to see the same amount of coal, one needs to wait the year 1914 (9.9 million), while at the beginning of the century the coal mined in Turkestan accounted for only 600,000 pud.76 In the eyes of the colonial administration, thus, the production of charcoal was both a very worrying phenomenon and an opportunity to increase revenues from state properties, waiting for the expansion of the local coal mining industry.77 In spite of the fact that the wood of deciduous trees in mountain areas could have given charcoal of higher quality, it was the saksaul bushes in the arid plains that were particularly targeted. Indeed, charcoal from saksauls was praised, both as a factor of production and for domestic usage. The attitude of the colonial authorities and of the local agencies of central ministries concerning the cutting of saksaul changed considerably over

75 N.[S.] Lykoshin, “Pis’ma iz tuzemnogo Tashkenta.” Turkestanskie Vedomosti 38/1370 (1–13.6.1895): 171–2. 76 The production of lignite was well alive in the years of the revolution and civil war, with a peak of 17,5 million pud in 1919 (opposed to 10,8 million pud of mineral coal in the same year). Data from A. Asatkin (pod red.), Ocherki khoziaistvennoi zhizni Turkrespubliki (Tashkent: TsSNKh Turkestanskoi SSR, 1921): 425. 77 On the coal mining industry, see Senator Gofmeister Graf K.K. Palen, 1910a. Otchët po Revizii Turkestanskogo kraya, proizvedennoi po VYSOCHAISHEMU Poveleniyu. Gornoe delo (SPb: Senatskaya Tipografiya, 1910): 31–61; the potential and difficulties of coal mining are also depicted in N. Davidoff, Le Journal de Nathan Davidoff (Paris: Ginko, 2003): 43–52. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 97 time. If one excludes the very first phase, when little control was exerted on this activity, the period up to the first decade of the 20th c. seems to have been characterised by a prudential approach: the authorities believed that saksauls took many years to grow, so the cutting of living trees was not allowed. Only dry, ‘dead’ saksaul wood could be collected: a choice that limited the revenues of the collectors (in many cases, Kazakh and Kirghiz nomads), but also those of the state, if we assume that the latter could extend its control over a larger extension of ‘waste land’. Around 1910, some officials started advocating a more systematic, ‘rational’ approach to saksaul cutting, claiming that it took less time for them to re-grow than had been initially thought. This opinion was functional to a more direct involvement of the state (and notably of the Ministry of agriculture and state properties) in this profitable activity. Hence, it is not by chance that Krivoshein expressed those views in the Zapiska on his trip to Turkestan in 1912.78 Wood was also used for construction work—both public infrastructure (railways in particular) and private housing. The resettlement of European peasants, in particular, increased the demand for wooden poles and beams. Incidentally, the construction of settlers’ villages also boosted the consumption of stone and bricks: hence the interest of pro-resettlement imperial agencies in securing access to clay and stone deposits and quarries by defining the areas where those were located as ‘state land’. According to art. 258 of the Turkestan statute, the population had the right to collect sand, stones, and clay on state land, but industrial exploitation of those deposits required a proper concession. At any rate, these regulations implied that the deposits did not fall within the boundaries of the land registered in favour of any ‘rural community’, although by the 1910s some voices within the Administration of state properties and agriculture in Turkestan claimed that, according to the sharīʿa, the final proprietor of the subsoil and its resources remained the state, whatever the juridical situation of the surface of the land concerned.79 Even without mentioning the subsoil, though, demographic expansion alone increased the pressure on mountain forested land. The vegetation of some areas, for instance the slopes of the basin of the Kara-Tyube river, became heavily eroded in the vicinity of major urban settlements—in the case of the latter, Samarqand.

78 Krivoshein, Zapiska: 74. 79 Draft document [1911–1914] of the Turkestan Administration for agriculture and state properties, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 8802, ll. 123–24, here l. 123. The ‘sources’ this opinion was based upon were Grodekov’s translation of the Hidāya and Nafalen’s and Van der Berg’s manuals. 98 Beatrice Penati The increased exploitation of forests seems to have unbalanced the local ecosystem, leading in particular to a lower availability of water for irrigation in the lowlands of the basin and a consequent reconversion of the local economy to bahari crops. Given the increase in prices of products derived from wood, though, it is also clear that those to whom woodland had been registered in various ways had the opportunity to improve their income, in Kara-Tyube as well as elsewhere.80 The main function of woods, though, was that of pasture: and fuel- gathering was in competition with Kazakh and Kirghiz livestock breeders. Beside the cattle of the nomadic population, the animals of the settled inhabitants of Turkestan also grazed in areas classified as ‘wild-growing woods’. Because of the increased pressure on the land in the plains and because of the labour-intensive nature of cotton culture, it seems that during the summer at least some sedentary owners left their livestock in the custody (popechenie) of the nomads, who looked after them and then returned them in winter. According to the military governor of Fergana, A.P. Chaikovskii, who gave a vivid account of the situation of agriculture and stockbreeding in his report for the year 1900, this mechanism had existed for quite a long time, but the rural population of Fergana had been resorting to it more and more often since the beginning of the cotton boom and the reduction of fallow in or around the sedentary ‘rural communities’.81 This circumstance aggravated the pressures of grazing on mountain woodland, which already had to support animals for a longer period than the winter steppe pastures in the plains. Woodland, being included in state property, was freely accessible for pasture, but the presence of livestock was often regarded with some hostility, as a structural obstacle to a ‘rational’ and prudent approach to forest resources. With the development of ‘industrial’ (better, specialised) livestock breeding, how could a forest renovate itself? What would happen to the younger saplings? Indeed, limitations to pastures in mountain woodland were introduced at the turn of the century in the Samarqand province, while in Fergana and Syr-Daria the provincial administration refused to take measures of that kind, partly because it saw in charcoal production a more serious threat.82 Chaikovskii, in the 1900 report mentioned above, explicitly took position against the forestry administration, which was pressuring Tashkent to introduce lim-

80 On Kara-Tyube, see Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 106–7. 81 Vsepoddanneishii otchet o sostoyanii Ferganskoi oblasti za 1900 g., RGIA, f. 1282, op. 3, d. 524, ll. 16–19, here l. 18–18ob. 82 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 105, 134–5. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 99 itations on grazing in Fergana mountain forests. The situation changed at the beginning of the 20th c., though, when, especially in the Syr-Darya province, the colonial administration realised that an increased demand for meat was stimulating the rearing and trading in cattle on an unprecedented scale by Kazakh breeders and merchants. In a couple of localities (Bishtan and Talas, Aulie-Ata district) the vegetation had been over- exploited. Consequently, in the early 1900s, new regulations on ‘industrial’ livestock breeding were endorsed, leading to the adoption of a sort of tax per head.83

VII. Turkestani Forested Land and the ‘Costs of Empire’

Given this high demand for timber, charcoal, and animal food, how much could the state gain from forested land? State officials of the ‘forestry inspection’ acted as both technicians and tax-collectors, by checking that the population paid all they owed for cutting wood, producing charcoal, or for occasional exploitation (pobochnoe pol’zovanie). As explained above, in 1903–1904 Russian authorities introduced the payment of 2 and 10 kopeks for each head of sheep or goat, and ‘large’ livestock, respectively, in a few areas of the Aulie-Ata district (Syr-Darya province). These rules were extended to the other ‘core provinces’ in 1907. This discipline, though, presented two problems: first, it targeted nomads and sedentary peasants in the same way, in spite of their generally different fiscal treatment and of the fact that rural communities were also being asked to pay the land-tax on ‘marginal’ lands, as explained above; second, it was difficult to distinguish between ‘industrial’ and ‘non-industrial’ breeders.84 Indeed, we know that in 1916 one of the main grievances of Kirghiz and Kazakh small—and often impoverished—livestock breeders was that the new system resulted in privileges for their ‘industrial’ competitors (among them, the head of the police of Vernyi),85 probably because of their stronger position—or more abundant means of corruption—in negotiating access to grazing areas controlled by the forestry inspection. Payment for wood was done by buying ‘tickets’ (bilety); in principle, the latter were meant to be acquired in advance, but in practice they were paid for when the charcoal, or the branches, were transported to be sold on the

83 Ibid.: 138. 84 Ibid.: 138. 85 Kuropatkin, diary entry, 10.11.1916, reproduced in P.G. Galuzo (ed.), “Vosstanie 1916 goda v Srednei Azii,” Krasnyi Arkhiv 3/34 (1929): 65. 100 Beatrice Penati nearest market. Embezzlement, corruption, but also circumvention of the forestry officials were not uncommon.86 Woods located on state land and destined, at least theoretically, for ‘rational exploitation’ were divided into lesnichestva and lesnye dachi. Out of the woodland owned by the state in the three ‘core provinces’ of Turkestan, more than one half were located in the Samarqand oblast’, one third in Syr-Darya, and the rest in Fergana. Nonetheless, in Syr-Darya the extension of each single dacha must have been considerably smaller, if we consider that two thirds of the total number of exploitation units were located in this specific province: 154 dachi, almost five times more than in Fergana or Samarqand. These dachi were labelled as characterised by either kul’turnoe or nekul’turnoe lesokhoziaistvo: a distinction referring to the type of exploitation, either ‘modern’, ideally aiming at the conservation and renewal of the resources, or ‘self-organised’ and supposedly ‘irrational’, hence potentially obnoxious to the stock of trees available in the krai.87 According to Krivoshein, between 1907 and 1912 the revenues obtained by the state (lesnoi dokhod) more than tripled (from 285 to 938 thousand roubles).88 We know from Pahlen’s report that the value of the production of wood (either ‘green’ or ‘dead’) in the three core oblasti was 164,890 roubles, while the gross income (revenues) from state woodland in 1907 was 216,979 roubles; if we include with the latter the gross income for the same year from Semirech’e (54,314 roubles) and some 32,000 roubles from Transcaspia,89 we obtain 303,293 roubles, which is compatible with Krivoshein’s value for the same year.90 It is difficult to estimate how much of this gross income for the state came from the ticketing system for timber and wood, and how much from the per head payments for grazing, but we can attempt a rough estimate. Where the per head payments were first introduced (Syr-Darya oblast’), between 1903 and 1907, the Treasury registered a cumulative inflow of 99,393 roubles, which could be rounded at 10,000 roubles per year. In 1908, the gross income from grazing rights in the Fergana province was 8,631 roubles, and 12,040 roubles in Samarqand. Hence we can estimate that, out of the gross income for the three ‘core’

86 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: esp. 125–6. 87 Ibid.: 115. 88 Krivoshein, Zapiska: 74; Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 113–5. 89 31.721 roubles was the gross income for the year 1906. 90 Palen, Gosudartvennye imushchestva: 126, 184, 161, and 178 respectively; values for Syr-Daria only from 1900 to 1906 are also published in “Lesnye dokhody,” Turkestanskoe sel’skoe khoziaistvo 7 (1906): 47. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 101 provinces in 1908 (414,161 roubles), some 30,700 came from grazing rights and the large majority (92.6%) from wood-cutting tickets. What Krivoshein failed to mention, and was on the contrary clear in Pahlen’s report, is that in 1907, the net income for the state in the three ‘core provinces’ was 94,777 roubles (43.7% only of the gross revenue), and that expenditures similarly reduced gains for the state elsewhere. The costs for the state had even exceeded revenues until as late as 1903.91 In other words, forestry had long being a burden, at least from the budgetary point of view, before a significant leap forward in gains in the late 1900s. In particular, a sharp increase in gross revenues can be observed between 1907 and 1908 in Fergana and Samarqand: a clear sign that the introduction of payments on grazing helped to redress the balance in those two provinces.92 Hence, in 1907, the net income for the imperial state from the administration of state woodland in the ‘core provinces’ was around one half of the value of the production, but its gross revenues from the tickets (that is: the amount paid to the state for the usage of woods) totalled a fabulous 233% of the value of wood cut, or gathered. Supposing that the production is correctly estimated—for instance, we exclude the possibility that artifi- cially low prices were used in the calculation—this means that the usage of state woodland with the system of tickets explained above was exceed- ingly expensive. Even assuming that wood and charcoal could be re-sold at very advantageous prices on markets ‘downstream’, allowing much more than the coverage of transportation etc., one can easily understand why Turkestani subjects were tempted by illegality in their usage of state-owned woodland.93 Although it would be exaggerated to talk about a ‘conservationist approach’ to woodland in colonial Turkestan, it is nevertheless true that

91 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva, 184. 92 Given the limited weight of per head payments on the total gross income from forested areas, though, the new taxation alone could not have been decisive. This is particularly true in Fergana, where the additional revenues between 1907 and 1908 amount to more than 50,000 roubles, when grazing rights only amounted to 8,631 roubles. The difference was probably made up of rents or concessions. In Samarqand, on the contrary, additional revenues can be fully explained by the new grazing tax. Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 184. 93 One may object that not all the exploitation of state-owned woodland was actually paid for. This is correct, but one should not forget that, in such a case, the production of wood carried out in that illegal way would also go unregistered. If we consider that payments for grazing rights were much lower that the wood-cutting tickets, it is legitimate to formulate the hypothesis that the Russian forestry policy in Turkestan, after all, favoured livestock breeders at the expenses of the producers of timber and charcoal, but that both categories paid significantly more after 1908. 102 Beatrice Penati some observers insisted on the importance, for the local economy, of the maintenance and expansion of forested lands. Count Senator Pahlen, for instance, insisted in his report on the fact that in the plains even saksaul bushes protected agriculture by preventing sand storms and, consequently, the clogging of irrigation networks. Closer to the mountains and where artificial irrigation was present, trees prevented landslides and flooding during thaw.94 Indeed, this sensibility pre-dates Pahlen’s visit to Central Asia: in 1878 a major flood had occurred in Namangan and one year afterwards the Turkestan Governor-General had ordered the planting of trees along major water streams and canals. On that occasion, the colonial administration had even specified what type of plants should be planted where: from perennial native species along permanent streams, to fruit trees (including mulberries) along rarely-flooded aryks (interestingly enough, willows were prohibited along major streams). Before quitting his post as Governor-General, K.P. von Kaufman also tried to implement measures fostering the conservation of steppe vegetation in the central parts of Fergana, in an attempt to reduce the frequency of sand storms.95 Saksaul bushes were also deliberately planted along the Transcaspian railway line, so that sands would not cover the rails: hence the words of warm praise Krivoshein addressed in 1912 to the forest inspector Paletskii, of the Ministry of Communications.96

VIII. Epilogue

In the paragraphs above I have tried to discuss the issue of ‘wild woods’ both from the juridical point of view (woodland as an ‘extensible’ sub- species of ‘state land properties’) and from the viewpoint of their economic importance. Ultimately, the establishment of well-defined, state-managed lesnichestva, not to mention the ‘tickets’ on wood-cutting and the payments per head of livestock, were widely shared goals among those officers and bureaucrats who saw a ‘rational’ exploitation of woodland as one of the hallmarks of the modernising task of Russian power in Central Asia. Although differently formulated, such a goal was shared both by supporters and adversaries of the aggressive resettlement policies backed by GUZZ, as we have discussed above. Besides this point, however, those two fields

94 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 103. 95 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 104–5, quoting: Turkestan Governor-General, circular no. 3113, 19.4.1879. 96 Krivoshein, Zapiska: 75. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 103 had little in common: even when they were confronted with the same set of events, the interpretations they provided for the latter could be diametrically opposed. As an example—and as an epilogue to this discussion—we can briefly refer to a series of opinions expressed by Turkestani officers in the immediate aftermath of the 1916 revolt. We will refer here only to the ‘core provinces’ of Turkestan, although similar circumstances are reported for Semirech’e, too. Although this topic has not been dealt with in sufficient detail, there is some documentary evidence of the fact that, together with the ‘native administration’, Russian forestry inspectors (lesoob’ezdchiki) were among the first targets of the outburst of violence that took place in the summer of 1916, after the issuing of the conscription decree for the native population of Turkestan. In Zaamin (Jizzakh uezd), a group of statisticians of the ministry of Agriculture and the officers (chiny) of the forestry inspection were killed by the insurgents.97 Similarly, the very first episode of the revolt in the uezd of Aulie-Ata (Syr-Darya province) was an attack on the residence of a local forestry inspector: the latter was absent, but the property was devastated.98 It may be true that the forestry inspectors were simply at the forefront of Russian administrative presence in remote areas, where power was otherwise handled by the ‘native administration:’ but some observers pointed at specific reasons for hatred towards them. In the words of a knowledgeable Turkestani officer, N.S. Lykoshin (then military governor of the Samarqand province), one of the most important reasons for the failure of the Russian colonial endeavour, visible in 1916, was ‘the presence among the natives, in the role of various kinds of inspectors and guards (ob’ezdchiki i storozhi), who collect[ed] from the natives different taxes and, in the majority of cases, allowed the most outrageous abuses, to the point that the people’s animosity against such kind (rod) of persons manifested itself during the revolt in Jizzakh in the form of savage torture and the killing of forestry inspectors and their families, including small children.’99 Taxes, irregular procedures, and possibly undue payments, though, were not the only reason for this hostility towards forestry inspectors: in his

97 Turkestan Governor-General Kuropatkin to the tsar Nikolai Romanov, February 1917, reproduced in P.G. Galuzo (ed.), “Vosstanie 1916 goda”: 67. 98 Aulie-Ata district commandant Kostal’skii, report, 29.11.1916, reproduced in P.G. Galuzo (ed.), Vosstanie 1916 goda v Srednei Azii. Sbornik dokumentov (Tashkent: Gosiz- dat UzSSR, 1932): 46. 99 Samarqand military governor N.S. Lykoshin, report, December 1916, reproduced Ibid.: 27. 104 Beatrice Penati diary, Kuropatkin bitterly condemned the ‘forestry bacchanalia’ which had taken place throughout all Turkestan in the years immediately before the war, in the form of the arbitrary rule of the inspectors. In Kuropatkin’s words, the latter ‘started squeezing (tesnit’) the Kirghiz, Turkmen, and Sarts, with all their forces. Not only did they crowd them […] on the plots seized by the Treasury, but also on the plots left in the usage of the population, either nomadic or sedentary.’ Here Kuropatkin is describing the same process we have discussed above, namely the use of the definition of ‘wild woods’ to re-classify plots as ‘state land property’, in spite of the fact that they were located within the boundaries of sedentary rural communities (the ‘Sarts’ of the quotation). But he is also mentioning a more worrying phenomenon, visible in nomadic areas. In his words, not only had the extension to Turkestan of the mechanism to seize ‘excess land’ in 1910 reduced the rights of the nomadic population of the ‘core provinces’, but state rights (or pretentions) on woodland served to limit the nomads’ rights even within the norma they were entitled to. In other words, the system of payments for grazing and wood-cutting, and the power over woodland which it implied, although perfectly legal, clashed with the legal rights of the Kazakh, Kirghiz, and Turkmen dwellers of the krai.100 In some localities, thus, regulations and day-by-day practices concerning forestry and ‘state land property’ could be interpreted as one of the factors from which the 1916 revolt originated. This seems true in particular in the Jizzakh district. Kuropatkin saw the origin of the abuses and corruption of the forestry inspection in its insufficient funding and human resources, but also in the unclear definition of the boundaries of ‘state land properties’ in Turkestan.101 But even among members of the Turkestani civil-military administration this diagnosis was not universally shared. Ivanov, military governor of Fergana in 1916, submitted a report that clearly diverged from those of his fellow officers. Echoing the thesis of those who, since 1905, had lamented the ‘theft of state land’ in favour of the Muslim population in the press, he praised the ‘long-standing concerns about the land organisation (zemleustroistvo) of the natives, when the state’s assets, in the form of free land, had been absolutely disregarded’, while ‘the na- wtives [had] started plundering (raskhishchat’sya) it, going absolutely

100 Kuropatkin, diary entry, 10.11.1916, P.G. Galuzo (ed.), “Vosstanie 1916 goda”: 65. 101 Turkestan Governor-General Kuropatkin to the tsar Nikolai Romanov, February 1917, here 78. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 105 unpunished.’102 Ivanov’s views clearly reflected his experience in Fergana, where the expansion of tilled land meant that fallow land (or what the inspector would have classified as ‘wild wood’) was made productive and, consequently, considered as legitimately appropriated, in spite of the fact that it exceeded the boundaries of a ‘rural community’. It was also symp- tomatic of the unresolved contradiction between the priorities of agricultural development (and taxation) and of a greater state land stock (and resettlement).

Conclusion

Possibly prefiguring what would happen later, in the years around 1910 many top Turkestani civil-military officials were refusing their endorsement to measures that would have expanded the stock of state property in land for three reasons: first, a sincere belief in the land rights enjoyed by Turkestan native subjects living in rural areas; second, the fear of social turmoil, alimented by economic and social reasons but sometimes articulated in religious terms; third, some twenty-five years after they had begun, the wish to bring to a close the land assessment works, that had occupied an immense amount of administrative time and effort and had surely cost much more than had been expected at the beginning. Turkestan Governor- Generals usually backed the land-tax authorities, although some inconsistencies are visible. In particular, Samsonov proved himself inflexible as far as Muslims’ land rights were concerned in the Syr-Darya province. In 1910– 1911 and again in 1914, he positively backed the land assessment authorities against the Administration of state land properties.103 Nevertheless, the fact that the issue of state land properties was inextri- cably interwoven with the destinies of resettlement does not mean that the two things were synonymous. As I stated at the beginning of this paper, the category of ‘state properties’ did include other objects, beside ‘empty’ land suitable for colonists. We have looked in particular at the category of ‘wild wood’ (dikorastushchii les). It is true, as we have seen, that the definition of what a ‘wild wood’ was in Central Asia could be extended and manipulated to the point of including most untilled, half-desert, land, if

102 Fergana military governor Ivanov, report, December 1916, reproduced in P.G. Galuzo (ed.), Vosstanie 1916 goda v Srednei Azii. Sbornik dokumentov: 64. 103 Abstracts from the proceedings of the council of the Turkestan Governor-General, no. 7, 1.5.1914, TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 4782, l. 18; and no. 10, 5.6.1914, Ibid.: l. 21; these examples refer to the cantons of Telyauz and Osman-Ata respectively. 106 Beatrice Penati only it had a few saksauls scattered around.104 The provisions that stated that, in those cases, the soil was state property did the rest. Under this regard, in the case of ‘wild woods’ the interests of the advocates of state land properties coincided with those supporting resettlement. But ‘wood’ (both in the sense of forestry, and combustibles) was an urgent economic problem, and Pahlen himself acknowledged that extensively in his report. In spite of some hostility towards the technocratic (and even ‘socialist’) utopia expressed in the Resettlement Administration’s and the Central Administration for Land Organisation and Agriculture’s mechanism of abstractly defined normy and ‘excess land’,105 this did not exclude a widespread confidence in a similarly ‘scientific’ exploitation of land resources, for instance in the case of forestry and mining. In this, Pahlen’s report reflected views generally shared by members of the Turkestan civil-military administration: it not only contains harsh criticisms of the widespread corruption of the personnel involved in the management of forestry in ‘central’ Turkestan and Semirech’e (as one might easily expect), but also many bitter comments about the unreasonable exploitation of forest resources made by the tuzemtsy. Pahlen, in other words, was an adversary of what, in his opinion, ‘slow[ed] down the cause of a rational organisation of forestry (kul’turnoe lesoustroistvo)’: a goal shared by many Governor- Generals, land assessment officers, and district commandants.106 If nothing else, all these actors were keen on increasing revenues collected through the ‘ticketing’ mechanism. It would be wrong, though, to look at bureaucratic politics (and subsequent decision-making) as the only factor of change in the rural landscape of colonial Turkestan. Administrative and legislative decisions, taken in Tashkent or St. Petersburg, were at least as much a response to autonomous transformations taking place in Turkestan as they were an attempt to pilot them in a specific direction; this is visible in looking at the renunciation of fallow land in favour of alternative grazing practices and more intensive agriculture, and the expansion or recovery of ‘marginal land’, either dry or humid. Processes of change depended on the behaviour of Turkestani dwellers (or even on the initiative of European samovol’nye settlers) and could not be explained only in terms of specific colonial policies. Even urban dwellers and newcomers participated in this process,

104 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 111–2. 105 See again Holquist, “‘In Accord with State Interests and the People’s Wishes’”; compare with Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan (London: Oxford UP, 1964): 141. 106 Palen, Gosudarstvennye imushchestva: 126–7, 129, 133–5; quotation from 133. Managing Rural Landscapes in Colonial Turkestan 107 increasing the demand for specific commodities (charcoal, construction wood) and causing shifts and imbalances in the local markets. Natural phenomena, demographic trends, and changing food habits (i.e. higher demand of meat) moulded the relationship with local resources, such as forested areas, while Tashkent and St. Petersburg had to face these shifts in production and consumption patterns, limiting their impact on the environment. This paper has merely scratched the surface of all the factors men tioned above. It has shown the inconsistencies and zigzags of ‘colonial policies’ which were applied in Russian Turkestan—but voiced, endors ed, and implemented (or boycotted) at different levels. Moreover, it may have succeeded in disentangling the nexus between often col liding fiscal and resettlement policies in the day-by-day practice of bureaucratic and technocratic local agencies. Finally, it has shifted focus from cotton expansion to otherwise neglected components of the economy of Turkestan, whether from the viewpoint of the income of its Muslim dwellers, or that of the budget of the krai. As anticipated in the introduction, the adoption of a ‘peripheral’ perspective, such as that of apparently ‘empty’ land—and in particular, of woodland—helps to relativise the grand narrative of the cotton boom by showing how policies reflecting the nexus between this crop and resettlement had a relatively marginal and late impact on the approach adopted in practice by the local civil-military authorities in dealing with basic economic resources, such as land and vegetation. A strong, consistent, and centrally-driven initiative to expand the land surface under cotton by installing colonists on Turkestani territory had some visible impact on the way the land stock of the krai is dealt with, but only after 1905. Roughly speaking, before Krivoshein the imperial administration, however defined, had not tried to organise the management of land resources in order to foster cotton expansion; still less had it tried to trigger the latter by opening up new land for colonisation. Until then, fiscal concerns and a diametrically opposed approach to the definition of the rights of the native population had prevailed. 108 Beatrice Penati Bibliography

Abbreviations RGIA: Rossiiskii gosudarsvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv TS: Turkestanskii sbornik TsGARUz: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan

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CHAPTER THREE

Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? Controversy over Irrigation Concessions between Russia and Khiva, 1913–1914*

Akifumi Shioya

Introduction

The Amu-Darya is one of the largest rivers in Central Asia, extending about 2,500 km through the region. At present, it is an international river, originating in the territories of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, running through Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and, today, disappearing in the desert area in the north of the Khorezm oasis (short of its historic terminus at the Aral Sea). The Khorezm oasis is situated in the lower basin of the Amu and is surrounded by two deserts—the Qara-Qum and the Qizil-Qum. For many generations, the inhabitants of the region, who depend on the water of the Amu-Darya for their livelihoods, have developed and maintained its artificial irrigation networks, sometimes under the direction of independent political powers. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a group of nomadic Uzbeks from the Qïpchaq steppe, independent of the groups who conquered Mawarannahr and Fergana, held dominion over Khorezm and established the Khanate of Khiva around 1511. Although the title of monarch—Khan— was monopolized by the members of Chinggisid origin, it was the Uzbek tribal leaders who held the real power in the Khanate. This intensified as internal conflict increased during the eighteenth century. Against these political upheavals and the subsequent decline in commercial activities, ‘the ancient agricultural tradition in Khorezm was not lost during the

* Research for this study was made possible by a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) KAKENHI (22720263), the Comprehensive Studies on Slavic Eurasian Regions (Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University), and the Central Asian Archival Research Project (Kyoto University of Foreign Studies). 112 Akifumi Shioya period of Uzbek dominance.’1 Finally, from 1770, the Khorezm oasis gradually gained political stability after a tribal leader of Uzbek-Qongrat origin grasped real control. In 1804, his grandson Eltuzer (r. 1804–06) ascended to the throne of the Khan, and his dynasty—the Qongrat dynasty—was established in the Khanate.2 In the context of this new political stability, the Khivan (Qongrat) khans in the first half of the nineteenth century made great efforts to develop the irrigation systems in the central area as well as in the western fringe of the Khorezm oasis. One notes, for example, the extensions of the Shahabad and Ghaziabad canals (in the 1800s and the 1810s), the construction of the Qilich Niyaz Bay (in 1815), and various large irrigation projects that were developed through the Lavzan canal to the Daryaliq (or Kuhna Daryā—the old river bed of the Amu) (in the 1830s and the 1840s). As a result of their military expeditions in the surrounding areas of Khorezm, the khans initiated waves of forced migration to the newly irrigated lands; some groups migrated to the area voluntarily.3 The migrations involved various ethnic groups including those from inside Khorezm (Qaraqalpaqs and Turkmens) and those from outside the region (Turkmens of Khorasan and Gorgan, Jamshidis from the upper Murghab, and the inhabitants of Bukhara and Iran). The process of migrations to the newly irrigated lands was promoted by two mobilizing projects, irrigation projects and military expeditions, each reinforcing the other. The combination worked until 1850, when an uprising among the Turkmen Yomuts caused great disturbance. This uprising appears to be related to Muḥammad Amīn Khan’s (r. 1846–55) policy of favouring the Jamshidis over the Yomuts in his military expeditions to the Merv oasis. Rebellions of the Turkmens increased in the period of intra-Qongrat succession struggles which followed the sudden death of Muḥammad Amīn Khan in battle in 1855. As a

1 V.V. Bartol’d, Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni Turkestana (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1927): 101. 2 The most valuable description on the history of the Khanate of Khiva from the 16th to the 19th centuries can be found in chapter five (Uzbek Khanates) of Bartol’d’s Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni Turkestana. Recently, Yuri Bregel published an outline of the history of Khiva, focusing on the Turkmen migrations from the seventeenth century, see his “The New Uzbek States: Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand: c. 1750–1886.” In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. N. di Cosmo, A.J. Frank and P.B. Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 392–411. 3 Ibid.: 400. For a detailed analysis of the military expeditions of Muḥammad Raḥīm Khan (r. 1806–25), see, R. Komae, “The Reign of Muḥammad Rahim Khan in the Qongrat Dynasty.” The Nairiku Ajiashi Kenkyu (Inner Asian Studies) 16 (2001): 39–59. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 113 result, all irrigational development ceased until at least the end of the 1860s.4 From the early eighteenth century, the Russians made a number of attempts to conquer the Khanate of Khiva. On 29 May 1873, they succeeded, and the Khanate of Khiva became a protectorate of the Russian Empire under the peace treaty that was signed a few months later at Gandumjan, near Khiva, between the commander of the Russian armies—K.P. von Kaufman—and the Khan of Khiva—Sayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm—on 12 August 1873. This peace treaty, outlined the following changes in the political situation: the Khan of Khiva became an ‘obedient servant (pokornyi slug)’ of the Emperor of Russia (article 1); the border between Russia and Khiva was defined (with the exception of the western and south-western boundaries of the Khanate) (article 2)—all the territory on the right bank of the Amu was ceded to Russia and some was ceded to Bukhara (articles 3–4); Russian ships were permitted free navigation on the Amu (article 5); Russian subjects were guaranteed free trading and allowed to acquire estate in the Khanate (articles 6–12); Russian subjects were given judicial prerogatives in the Khanate (articles 13–15); slavery and the slave trade (rabstvo i torg lyud’mi) were abolished (article 17); and the Russian government received indemnity payments from the Khanate (article 18).5 Regarding the concerns of this article, no provisions for the water rights of the Amu were outlined in the treaty. In 1874, the Amu-Darya Department (Amudar’inskii otdel) was formed in the former territory of the Khanate, on the right bank of the Amu-Darya. The Commandant (nachal’nik) of the Department governed the inhabitants of the Department, settled issues among Russian and Khivan subjects, and closely regulated the relationship between the government of Russia and the Khanate of Khiva, in accordance with the peace treaty of 1873.6

4 A. Shioya, “Irrigation Policy of the Khanate of Khiva regarding the Lawzan Canal (1), 1830–1873.” Area Studies Tsukuba 32 (2011): 115–36. 5 S.V. Zhukovskii, Snosheniya Rossii s Bukharoi i Khivoi za poslednee trekhsotletie (Petro- grad, 1915): 179–83; S. Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1968): 75–6, 316–8. For the process of Russian military advance to Khiva, see, Ibid.: 65–74. For a brief survey of the peace treaty concluded between Russia and Bukhara in 1873 and its comparison with the one between Russia and Khiva, see, Ibid.: 77–8. 6 The provisional statute for rule over the Amu-Darya Department (vremennoe polozhenie o upravlenii Amudar’inskim okrugom) was approved by Kaufman on 26 August 1873 and obtained imperial sanction on 9 March 1874. N.A. Ivanov was appointed as first Commandant. The Amudar’inskii Okrug was renamed as Amudar’inskii Otdel, see T.G. Tukhtametov, Amudar’inskii otdel: sotsial’no-èkonomicheskoe i politicheskoe znachenie dlya 114 Akifumi Shioya This regime was maintained until the collapse of imperial Russia in 1917.7 After the successful suppression of the Yomut Turkmen’s resistance in the Khanate by the Russian army from 1873 to 1877, the Russian government (under the Governorship-General of Turkestan) pursued a policy of non- intervention toward the Khanate. This lasted until the beginning of the 1910s, when again Turkmens became a source of local instability.8 The period of the Russian protectorate is commonly equated to an era marked by political, socio-economic backwardness. Needless to say, this interpretation—largely based on Soviet historiography—calls for a systematic assessment on the back drop of the documentary evidences produced in vernacular languages by Khivan institutions and now housed in the post- Soviet archives.9 The aim of this chapter is firstly to introduce readers to the outline of the project, which concerns a large irrigation enterprise in Lavzan in 1913, then to identify the main factors that undermined the enterprise. This irrigation plan was supported by a massive injection of financial capital, and would introduce modern technologies of irrigation to the Khanate. In particular, this study assesses the motives lying behind the 1913 controversy over the water rights of the Amu-Darya, between the Khan of Khiva, Isfandiyār, and the Commandant of Amu-Darya Department, Lykoshin. It was this dispute that deprived the Khan of his water rights on the Amu- Darya, a change that became another cause for the failure of the large irrigation enterprise in the pre-revolutionary Khorezm.

I. Dacha Lavzan

Bayānī, a Khivan court historian who was active at the beginning of the 20th century, attributed the construction of the Lavzan canal to a certain Lavzān Bāy of Qaraqalpaq origin before the beginning of the nineteenth

Khorezmskogo oazisa (Nukus: Karakalpakstan, 1977): 53–4. For the purposes of this article, we ignore this bureaucratic distinction. 7 Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: 74–8. 8 Ibid.: 227–36; G.E. Markov, Ocherk istorii formirovaniya severnykh turkmen (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo universiteta, 1961): 137–8. 9 A.S. Sadykov, Èkonomicheskie svyazi Khivy s Rossiei vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX vv. (Tashkent: Nauka, 1965); Id., Rossiya i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX vv. (Tashkent: Fan, 1972); T.G. Tukhtametov, Rossiya i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka: pobeda Khorezmskoi narodnoi revolyutsii (Moscow: Nauka, 1969); Y. Bregel, “Central Asia: 12th–13th/18th–19th Centuries.” Encyclopaedia Iranica V (1992): 193–205. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 115 century. The inundation of the Lavzan by the waters of the Amu, in around 1830, enabled the Qongrat khans to launch their irrigation enterprises on the western fringe of the Khanate. The expansion of irrigated lands, and the sedentarization of the Turkmens in the western parts of the Khanate, continued until around 1850, when the khans began to pursue a policy of regulating the water supply to the Turkmens. It was not until the end of the 1860s that a limited expansion of the irrigated lands there recom- menced.10 The vicinity of the blockaded main stream of the Lavzan gathered attention from the Russians after the Khivan expedition in 1873, because the Lavzan was considered to be one of the potential starting points of a proposed project for diverting the water of the Amu to the Caspian Sea.11 As far as the history of irrigation is concerned, scholars seem either to undermine the importance of the protectorate period altogether,12 or to focus almost exclusively on the imperialist (read utopian) character of the ambitious irrigation projects designed by the Russians in earlier periods.13 This

10 Shioya, “Irrigation Policy of the Khanate of Khiva regarding the Lawzan Canal (1).” 11 For example, Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich Romanov, who visited Lavzan, and planned to fulfil this project in 1879 and 1890, asserted that ‘the diversion of the Amu Darya to Uzboi must be certainly done through Lavzan’, and asked Sayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm Khan to destroy the dams on the Lavzan, see RNB, f. IV, d. 839, l. 43. 12 Except for A. Koshchanov, “K istorii irrigatsii v Khivinskom khanstve kontsa XIX– nachale XX veka.” Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane 1 (1964): 57–60, very little research has been conducted on the irrigation history of Khorazm during the period while it was under the protection of Russian Empire. Even Gulyamov’s most voluminous work on this theme gives only a brief description of that period, see Ya. Gulyamov, Istoriya orosheniya Khorezma s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei (Tashkent: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, 1957): 236. Yuri Bregel has stated that the local population was left to its own devices in building and maintaining the irrigation system, and that no innovations were introduced by the Russians (“Central Asia: 12th–13th/18th–19th Centuries”: 203). If so, we must find the reasons for this ‘stagnation’ in irrigation. 13 Recently, Ekaterina Pravilova investigated two irrigation projects aiming to divert the water of the Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea, which were planned in the territories of the Khanate by Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich and Glukhovskoi in the 1870s to the 1890s. Pravilova regards these attempts as imperial projects aiming at the conquest of nature. Despite their utopian nature, these projects came back to life again in the minds of Soviet engineers in the 1920s, see her “River of Empire: Geopolitics, Irrigation, and the Amu-Darya in the Late XIXth Century.” In Une colonie comme les autres? (Cahiers d’Asie centrale 17-18), ed. S. Gorshenina and S. Abashin (Paris-Tashkent: Éditions Complexe, 2009), 254–87. How- ever, Pravilova did not examine the attitudes nor did she address the responses of the Khivan khans towards these irrigation works, or the international relations between Russia and Khiva as outlined in the 1873 peace treaty. Besides that, some irrigation investigation did take place in the lower basin of the Amu-Darya from the 1870s; however, these investigations were not launched for the whole of the Amu Darya basin until the 1910s, cf. RNB, f. 196, op. 1, d. 250, ll. 4–5; Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: 92. 116 Akifumi Shioya state of affairs downplays the impact which the Qongrats’ irrigation policy had in the longer term, and neglects the fact that certain large irrigation projects did come close to materialization at the beginning of the 20th century. The latter were initiated by Russian entrepreneurs, in order to establish farms for commercial plants, backed by financial capital, introducing modern irrigation facilities (e.g., motor pumps powered by fossil fuels). These projects were concentrated in the areas surrounding the Lavzan and the Daryaliq from 1913 onwards.14 Of these projects, the farm initiated by Duke M.M. Andronikov, a court nobleman in St. Petersburg, and A.I. Putilov, the head of the Russo-Asiatic Bank, was the most feasible. Some Soviet scholars of Russo-Khivan relations have emphasized the speculative nature of Andronikov’s land acquisition in the Khanate in 1913. However, none of these scholars have produced an accurate description of this project.15 In the summer of 2006, the author found, in the Ichan Qalʿa Museum of Khiva, a copy of the decree issued by Isfandiyār Khan (r. 1910–1918) on 30–31 December 1913. The document tells us that, on 17 June 1913, Andronikov petitioned Isfandiyār Khan, requesting land in the Khanate.16 At the end of December 1913, the Khan issued a decree converting about 20,000 desyatina scale of state land (mamlaka-yi pādshāhī, kazënnaya zemlya) on the Lavzan canal into the private property (milk) of Andronikov and his co- purchaser A.I. Putilov, or recognizing their ownership (sobstvennost’) over that land. On 27 January 1914, the Commandant of Amu-Darya Department,

14 As of June 1913, three irrigation projects, including that of Andronikov, were proposed to the government of Khiva, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 23–24. At the same time, one should take stock of a rapid increase of commercial plant cultivation at the hands of natives in the Khanate at the beginning of the 20th century. For more detail on this topic, see Sadykov, Èkonomicheskie svyazi Khivy s Rossiei and Id., Rossiya i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX vv. 15 I.V. Pogorel’skii, Ocherki èkonomicheskoi i politicheskoi istorii Khivinskogo khanstva kontsa XIX i nachala XX vv. (1873–1917 gg.) (Leningrad: Leningradskii universitet 1968): 12; M.I. Veksel’man, Rossiiskii monopolisticheskii i inostrannyi kapital v Srednei Azii (konets XIX–nachala XX v.) (Tashkent: Fan, 1987): 78, 82–83; O. Qoʻshjonov and N. Polvonov, Xora- zmdagi ijtimoiy-siyosiy jarayonlar va harakatlar (XIX asr ikkinchi yarmi–XX asr birinchi choragi) (Toshkent: ABU Matbuot-Konsalt MChJ, 2007): 116–18. 16 On Andronikov’s relationship with the War Minister Sukhomlinov and its collapse, as well as the former’s plots to implement the latter’s downfall, see W.C.Jr. Fuller, The Foe Within: Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006): 66–72, 106–11. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 117 Lykoshin,17 solemnized the contract for land acquisition that had been outlined in the decree.18 Based on the sources of the Russo-Asiatic Bank, this land acquisition was not a mere speculative activity, but rather an initial phase of the irrigation project on the Lavzan, which was to become the dacha Lavzan. The purpose of the dacha was to produce and export commercial plants, such as cotton and alfalfa, which were expected to be cultivated on the land on the Lavzan canal by the newly introduced motor pumps. The export of the plants to Central Russia was to be undertaken using the planned railway from Aleksandrov-Gai to Charjuy.19 The plan for the enterprise was prepared by the engineer M.N. Ermolaev, who had, since 1909, planned several large irrigation schemes in Turkestan.20 The Russo-Asiatic Bank, which

17 Lykoshin, who was appointed to the Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department on 3 March 1912, arrived at Petroaleksandrovsk on 13 April 1912, TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, l. 12. Lykoshin held important posts in the Turkestan administration (including Governor of Khujand district (uezd), Commandant of Amu-Darya Department, Military governor of Samarqand province, and others). Moreover, he was also undoubtedly an individual who believed in the dominance of Russian civilization and the legitimacy of Russian rule over Turkestan. He was well acquainted with Turkestan, had a good knowledge of the native languages, and produced numerous works on the native administration, everyday life and customs, jurisdiction, and the lifestyle of nomads, see B.V. Lunin, Srednyaya Aziya v dore volyutsionnom i sovetskom vostokovedenii (Tashkent: Nauka, 1965): 206–16; M.K. Baskhanov, Russkie voennye vostokovedy do 1917 goda: biobibliograficheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Vostochnaya literatura, 2005): 145–7; A.S. Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand 1868–1910: A Comparison with British India (Oxford: OUP, 2008): 131. However, although Lykoshin wrote an abundance of reports, memorandums, letters, and other official documents concerning the political and socio-economic conditions of the Khanate of Khiva during his tenure as a Commandant of Amu-Darya Department (1912–1914), almost no research has been conducted on his activities during that period. In some ways, Lykoshin’s activities were similar to those of other contemporary ‘Russian specialists’ in Turkestan, such as Ostroumov and Nalivkin. For an outline and exploration of the controversies surrounding the ‘orientalist’ characters that were common in these Russian administrators and specialists, see B.M. Babadzhanov, “Andizhanskoe vosstanie 1898 goda i «musul’manskii vopros» v Turkestane (vzglyady «kolonizatorov» i «kolonizirovannykh»).” Ab Imperio 2 (2009): 156–7. 18 The decree, which was written in both Russian and Turkic and comprised 12 folios, consisted of three parts: the transfer of 19,400 desyatina of state land (mamlaka-yi pādshāhī) to the private possession of Andronikov and Putilov, the deed for a sale of 1,500 ṭanāb of land, and the contract, (‘ahd-nāma) with 20 articles. The copy of the original decree is preserved as document KP 3894 at the Ichan qal’a Museum of Khiva (GMI), and access to it was courtesy of Komiljon Xudoyberganov. 19 Andronikov petitioned to join a group of entrepreneurs for railroad construction (Aleksandrov-Gai–Charjuy) headed by K.V. Nikolaevskii in April 1916, RGIA, f. 1617, op. 1, d. 774, ll. 1–2. 20 For Ermolaev’s plan for the dacha Lawzan, see RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, l. 10–10ob. Ermolaev planned to introduce motor pumps to the dacha. Electricity would be provided from the central electric station of a 1000 hp motor with four diesel engines, see RGIA, 118 Akifumi Shioya opened its branch in Novo-Urgench, the Khanate’s largest commercial centre, in 1909, gave financial support to this enterprise.21 In short, the project of dacha Lavzan was initiated by a troika in St. Petersburg: a court noble, an irrigational technician, and a banker. The project, when complete, would introduce the modern technique of machine irrigation and plantation management to the Khanate for the first time in its history. What kind of benefits would be brought to the Khivan government for promoting this sort of large irrigation enterprise in the Lavzan? At that precise moment, Isfandiyār Khan and his government were hoping to find a way out of the political deadlock by initiating and implementing reforms. On 22 January 1910, Isfandiyār publicly proclaimed a broad range of reforms, including the establishment of a state budget, placing all government servants on a salary, tax reforms, improvement and extension of the irrigation network, and the establishment of hospitals, dispensaries, and new-style elementary schools.22 Isfandiyār Khan entrusted Sayyid Islām Khwāja to carry out reform projects, including the construction of various modern facilities, such as a new north city gate to Khiva, a hospital (dār al-shifā), a jail (zindān khāna), and a telegraph office (tīlgrām khāna).23 The tax reforms were expected to increase government revenue by about two million rubles a year, of which one million was to be spent on projects such as schools and hospitals—this would mean, approximately, a fivefold increase in funding in these areas. However, the attempt to change the tax f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, ll. 11ob.–13ob. In the end, this plan did not materialize. For a description of several irrigation projects drawn up by Ermolaev in Fergana and the territories of Bukhara, see R.A. Pierce, Russian Central Asia, 1867–1917: A Study in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960): 180–1; Veksel’man, Rossiiskii monopolisticheskii i inostrannyi kapital: 79–85; M. Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation.” Rus- sian Review, 54/3 (1995): 372. Ermolaev’s Bukharan project in Qarshi was a result of collaboration between himself and Andronikov; it was financed by 22 investors, including the Russo-Asiatic Bank, see RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 852, ll. 23–24. 21 Andronikov dispatched Ermolaev to Khiva in order to survey the purchase-estimated land in August–September 1913. Ermolaev received the necessary amount of money for this survey from the Novo-Urgench branch, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, ll. 111–15. Andronikov and Putilov were to pay 650,000 rubles for the land, on a five-year instalment plan, GMI, KP 3894, ll. 5–5ob. By November 1916, the Novo-Urgench branch continued to pay 430,000 rubles to the government of Khiva, instead of Andronikov and Putilov, RGIA, f. 630, op. 1, d. 478, ll. 105–6. For a description of the activities of the bank in the Khanate of Khiva, including some bias, see Sadykov, Èkonomicheskie svyazi Khivy s Rossiei vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX vv.: 149–60. 22 Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: 229. 23 Muḥammad Yūsuf Bayānī, Shajara-yi Khwārazmshāhī, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 9596, 503b–508a; Mullā Ḥasan Murād Qārī Kāmkār, Gulshan-i Saʿādat, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 7771, 7b–9a; TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, l. 57. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 119 structure, including the introduction of a proportional land tax, prompted opposition from the Yomut Turkmens.24 Isfandiyār Khān planned to allocate large amounts of state land to Russians (including Andronikov and Putilov), in return for the latter’s payment of land tax (sālghūt) to the government of Khiva. However, Maḥmūd Khan Ātālkhānūf, a leader of the Turkmen Kūllī Yomuts near Old Urgench, opposed the plan for the dacha Lavzan, and its proposed use of the water of the Lavzan canal. Ivan Ivanovich Friuling, head of the Novo-Urgench branch of the Russo-Asiatic Bank, petitioned for the protection of Andronikov and Putilov’s land ownership in Lavzan against the native inhabitants’ ‘violations’ in March 1915, but the Commandant of Amu-Darya Department and Lykoshin’s successor, Kolosovskii, rejected this petition.25 However, the irrigation enterprise in Lavzan had hardly begun when, as late as the summer of 1915, Atalkhanov took-over the Lavzan, and the dacha virtually disappeared.26 However, was the Turkmens’ occupation on the dach Lavzan the only factor that undermined the enterprise? To answer this question, let us now begin to look a little closer at the matter of Russo-Khivan relations.

II. The Khan, the Duke and the Commandant

On 17 June 1913, Duke Andronikov left Khiva after a two-day stay, during which he had an audience with Isfandiyār, the ruler of Khiva. During his visit, Andronikov pleaded the Khan for the acquisition of state land in Lavzan to be irrigated with the water of the Amu-Darya.27 In the same period Andronikov concluded also a provisional contract for acquisition of ‘private land ownership (myul’kovoe vladenie)’ on 10,000 desyatina of state land along the coast of the Amu-Darya with Sayyid Islām Khwāja, the grand vizier of the Khanate of Khiva.28 On 1 July 1913, after Andronikov had

24 Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: 229. 25 RGIA, f. 630, op. 1, d. 478, ll. 56–65ob. 26 RGIA, f. 630, op. 1, d. 478, ll. 91–95. 27 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 7, 13ob. 28 The head of the Asiatic department of the General Staff, Major General S.V. Tseil’, certified this contract on 18 July 1913, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, l. 2. Tseil’ was considered the real governor of Turkestan during his tenure, A. Rediger, Istoriya moei zhizn’: Vospomi- naniya voennogo ministra (Moscow: Kanon-press, 1999): 219. In addition to this, another contract involving the acquisition of 300,000 ṭanāb of state land in the vicinity of the above- mentioned allotment was in preparation, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, ll. 2–4. As mentioned below, the former contract was changed to permit the acquisition of private ownership of about 20,000 desyatina of land in Lawzan as a result of Ermolaev’s negotiations with the Khan. The latter contract was not concluded. 120 Akifumi Shioya left Khiva, Isfandiyār Khan sent Lykoshin a draft of ‘the land allocation regulations’. This was a draft of contract to secure transactions of land with the Khan, which envisaged either rental agreements or transfer of ownership rights.29 It comprised 20 paragraphs, which regulated the following stipulations: the price of land (depending on location); the period of rent; taxation on land; the preliminary obligations of the estimated landholders to measure land, prepare a map, and submit it to the Khan; the rules for construction, maintenance and utilization of canals; the conditions of transferring the ownership to a third party; the rights exercised by the Khan in the allocated land (the right to construct towns, mosques, bazaars, and canals; the title of underground resources; and the jurisdiction over the subjects of Khiva); and the obligation to cede land required for construction of railway. Lykoshin was critical of this draft contract and reacted accordingly by communicating to Khiva that ‘the land allocation regulations drafted by His Highness should be subjected to serious criticism before allowing their issuance.’30 Lykoshin’s criticism was mainly focused on his interpretation of the articles of the peace treaty of 1873 between Russia and Khiva, especially article 5.31 As Lykoshin stated in his report to the Governor-General of Turkestan, A.V. Samsonov, ‘the cardinal question is whether or not the Khan of Khiva dispose of rights on the water of the Amu-Darya for irrigation and expand the cultivated land on the left bank of the river without violating the peace treaty in 1873; it seems to me that Article 5 of the Treaty excludes such a right of the Khan of Khiva’.32 Furthermore, in 1873, he wrote the following to the Khan: When His Highness intends to allocate lands which currently are not irrigated and cultivated already, your intention must be consistent with article 5 of the peace treaty [signed] at Gandemiyan (i.e., Gandumjan). This precise reading of this article meant that the waters of the Amu-Darya were the

29 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 17–20. The official name of the regulations was as follows: Khīva yurtīdāghī adrā yirlārnī harkīmgha ijāragha va milk ītīb pādshāhlīgh maʿūnatī bīla bīrīlmākīnī tartīblārī / Usloviya razdachi raznym litsam v arendnoe pol’zovanie i potomst vennoe vladenie svobodnykh zemel’ Khivinskogo khanstva za ustanovlennye podati, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, l. 4. 30 See Lykoshin’s report no. 54 to the Governor-General of Turkestan (Samsonov), 08.07. 1913, attached with a copy of the land allocation regulations, TsGARUz: f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 15. 31 Lykoshin also argued that paragraph 14 of the regulations for allocation was in viola- tion of a law proclaimed on 28 June 1912, which prescribed the legal position of the Russian subjects in the Khanate of Khiva, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 16. 32 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 15–15ob. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 121

inseparable property of Russia. This then meant that expansion of the irrigated land on the left bank of the Amu-Darya was only feasible with the agreement of the Russian Government.33 In his assertion, Lykoshin interpreted article 5 of the peace treaty of 1873 far more broadly than it had been before.34 However, this interpretation was not supported by the text of the actual treaty, which only stipulated the right of free and exclusive navigation (svobodnoe i isklyuchitel’noe pla- vanie) for Russian ships and the right of navigation for Bukharan and Khivan ships on the Amu-Darya under special permission from the supreme Russian authority (vysshaya russkaya vlast’) in Central Asia.35 The treaty did not contain any statements with regard to the irrigation rights of the Amu-Darya basin. What was behind Lykoshin’s denial of the Khan’s irrigation rights on the left bank of the Amu-Darya? Lykoshin was assertively opposing any new large irrigation projects within the Khanate of Khiva without permission from the Russian government. The Khan had asserted in his conversation with Lykoshin on 19 May 1913 that he would not permit any irrigation concessions (orositel’naya kontsessiya) until the prospective land allocation regulations were deliberated and approved by the Governor-General of Turkestan.36 Despite this, Isfandiyār Khan allocated land in the Khanate to Andronikov before receiving the Governor-General’s approval. Lykoshin regarded this as a deception and blamed a certain Maqṣūdov, a Tatar interpreter at the Khivan Court, as being one of the instigators of the draft contract.37 Apparently, Lykoshin feared that unlimited irrigation on the left bank of the Amu-Darya, caused by the issuance of the land allocation regulations,

33 Isfandiyār Khan’s letter no. 825 to Lykoshin, 19.07. 1913, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 23–4. 34 The Russian foreign minister Sergei Sazonov criticized Lykoshin’s broader interpretation on this matter, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 156ob. 35 Zhukovskii, Snosheniya Rossii s Bukharoi i Khivoi: 180; Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: 316. In this context, the ‘supreme Russian authority in Central Asia’ means the Governorship-General of Turkestan. 36 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 37ob. 37 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 38ob. The Russian authorities in Turkestan were already cautious about the activities of the Tatar interpreters at the court of Khiva. The then Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department, Galkin, banished a Tatar interpreter, a certain Aghaev (Ageev, Akhmadzhan khodzha Fatukhullin), from the Court of Khiva in 1900 on the pretext that he had a ‘Pan-Turkist attitude’ and was planning hostile acts toward the Russian government, see Sadykov, Rossiya i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX vv.: 126–7. Sadykov misleadingly identifies this Aghaev with a famous Turkish nationalist of Azerbai- jani origin Ahmed Ağaoğul (1869–1939). 122 Akifumi Shioya would diminish the possibility of the expansion of cultivated land on the right (Russian) bank of the Amu-Darya.38 He insisted that the Khan post- pone the irrigation works for expansions of cultivated lands until the needs of water of the inhabitants on the right bank of the Amu-Darya, that is, in the Amu-Darya Department, were satisfied. Moreover, he suggested that total water consumption in the Amu-Darya basin should first be estimated by conducting a water resources assessment.39 In a draft memorandum addressed to the Governor-General, Lykoshin also proposed that, after the end of the water assessment, the water of the Amu-Darya be blocked at a certain point and two main canals be dug in two directions—to the left and the right banks; this required modern European techniques and a large amount of capital. This revision would allow all the small canals to branch off from these main canals.40 Lykoshin’s political attitude to the Khanate is fully revealed in his draft memorandum to the Governor-General of Turkestan in July 1912, about the gradual annexation of the Khanate to Russia: ‘All the defects of the contemporary rule in Khiva under the current regime will be removed only by the creative projects initiated at a slow speed by the friendly Russian government and the gradual awakening of the consciousness of the law and legitimacy (pravo i zakonnost’) by the people of Khiva through the observation of the lives of their fellow countrymen (edinoplemenniki) on the right bank of the Amu-Darya. The construction of a railway to Khiva and the development of traffic infrastructure in the Khanate will undoubtedly give a powerful effect in this respect. Another efficient means of a strategic character is turning the Khanate of Khiva into a Russian province (guber- niya), [but only] when the time will become favorable and [the actions]

38 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 15ob. 39 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 15–16ob. The water resources assessment of the Amu-Darya basin initiated by the Department of Land Improvement (Otdel zemel’nykh uluchshenii) began in 1910. Engineer Grzhegorzhevskii (Boris Leonidovich Grzhegorzhevskii, 1878–1941?) estimated the total water in the Amu-Darya basin (including the territory of the Emirate of Bukhara, with financial support from Amīr ʿAlīm (r. 1910–1920), TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 13–14ob., 15–16ob. The comprehensive investigation on the Amu-Darya basin continued until 1917, V.V. Tsinzerling, Oroshenie na Amu-Dar’e (Moscow: Izdanie Upravleniya vodnogo khozyaistva Srednei Azii, 1927): 24. An expedition led by N.V. Mas- titskii began on the left bank of the Amu-Darya in the period 1913–1915; V.V. Tsinzerling led another expedition on the right bank of the Amu-Darya in the period 1913–1917, see Tsinzer- ling, Oroshenie na Amu-Dar’e: 23. 40 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 75–76ob. Lykoshin had doubts about the benefits of introducing motor irrigation in place of local water pumps, see TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 13ob, 76–77. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 123 effective’.41 He expressed, in a manuscript that, under the supervision of the Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department, the policies of Khiva should encourage the introduction of modern facilities to the Khanate (such as railways, post and telegram offices, regular waterborne transportation on the Amu-Darya, a proper system of irrigation, medical facilities, and elementary schools). Only once these facilities had been put in place did he believe that the Khanate be able to merge successfully to Russia.42 In all probability, Lykoshin hoped that the gradual process of ‘enlightment’ of the inhabitants of Khiva and the introduction of modern facilities to the Khanate under the supervision of the Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department would ultimately result in the incorporation of the Khanate into Russia. He expressed the same opinion against an article,43 which appeared in Utro Rossii, a newspaper founded by a prominent Moscow entrepreneur and a famous cotton industrialist Pavel Riabushinskii, who championed the cause of the merchants and sough to stir their collective consciousness.44 The article reflects the vigorous calls for immediate annexation of Bukhara and Khiva to Russia among the entrepreneurs at that time. In contrast, Lykoshin was critical of the immediate annexation of Khiva to Russia from beginning to end.45 Most probably, Lykoshin shared the common fear of unrestrained private enterprise held by most government officials, especially in Turkestan.46 Lykoshin hoped that the large irrigation projects on the Amu-Darya basin would be conducted under the initiative of the Russian government in harmony with the results of the water resources assessment, not by the initiative of the Khivan government and the Russian entrepreneurs. One of the reasons for Lykoshin’s broader interpretation of the treaty might well have resulted from this position.

41 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, l. 47. For the details of a project to construct a railway through the Khanate of Khiva in the same period, see, Tukhtametov, Rossiya i Khiva v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka: 110–2. 42 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 78–79ob. 43 Utro Rossii 137 (1912). 44 A.J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982): 296. 45 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 72–79ob. 46 Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 386–7. Similar to the contemporary colleagues of the Turkestan administration, Lykoshin was cautious about the commercial activities and land holdings of the Jews, see TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 33ob.–34. 124 Akifumi Shioya III. Isfandiyār Khan’s Refutation of Lykoshin’s Claims

In a letter to Lykoshin dated 19 July 1913, Isfandiyār Khan outlined his opposition to the opinion that the water of the Amu-Darya was property of Russia and expansion of the irrigated area on the left bank of the Amu- Darya could only be realized with the consent of the government of Russia. The objection was reasoned according to the following three points: 1) Article 5 of the peace treaty of 1873 only contained provisions about navigation on the Amu-Darya, whereas article 2 sanctioned that the Amu-Darya itself marked the boundary between Russia and Khiva; therefore, both sides were permitted to utilize its waters equally. 2) The amount of water necessary for irrigation of the territories of Khiva had, for many years, been decided by the Khan. Indeed, the Russian government had not intervened in water management in the territory of Khiva until that date. 3) The uninhabited lands in the lower basin of the Khanate had been irrigated and cultivated for the past 20 years, and the Khan was entitled to continue to develop irrigation works on these lands without any intervention of the Russian government.47 It seems that in opposing Lykoshin’s views, Isfandiyār Khan was speaking the language of the Russian statutory laws and the treaty which regulated Russo-Khivan relations. However, the last point shows that, in fact, he was exercising leverage on the rhetorical force of established agricultural practices and the customs of irrigation which had long existed before the Russian take-over48. Indeed, prior to the Russian conquest, the rulers of Khorezm had maintained a strong agricultural tradition in the oasis, which depended on the artificial irrigation networks of the Amu.49 Either the khans themselves or dignitaries in their court supervised the dredging (qāzū), the opening of the main canals in Khorezm in March, and the closing of them in November.50 The labor force was made up of sedentary elements from within the Khanate (Uzbeks and Qaraqalpaqs, mainly) who worked for 12 days a year due to a levy enforced by the khan (bīgār).51 Often,

47 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 23–24ob. 48 Zhukovskii, Snosheniya Rossii s Bukharoi i Khivoi: 180. 49 Bartol’d, Istoriya kul’turnoi zhizni Turkestana: 101. 50 Ismāʿīl Khan Mīr-panja, Khāṭirāt-i asārat: rūznāma-yi safar-i Khwārazm va Khīva, ed. Ṣafā’ al-Dīn Tabrākiyān (Tehran: Mu’assasa-yi Pazhūhish va Muṭālaʿāt-i Farhangī, 1991): 120; [G.I. Danilevskii], “Opisanie Khivinskogo khanstva.” Zapiski Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva V (1851): 86. 51 Y. Bregel, “Bīgār, bīgārī.” Encyclopaedia Iranica IV (1989): 249–51. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 125 when the Amu flooded, the khans commanded labourers for the construction of dams and the repair of burst embankments.52 After the Russian military expedition in 1873, Khiva became a protectorate of the Russian Empire and lost its right to conduct external affairs, while some sort of internal autonomy was preserved. The irrigation remained predominantly the responsibility of the khans, although some irrigation projects were proposed to the Khan by the Russian authority in Turkestan.53 In 1893, about 20 years before Lykoshin leveled his criticism, a canal construction plan in Lavzan had been drafted by the Russian engineer Kh. V. Gel’man. This was then presented to Sayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm Khan by the Governor-General of Turkestan, A.B. Vrevskii.54 The Governor- General presented the proposal to the Khan under the following conditions: If the Khan completed the construction, the newly irrigated lands would be under the Khan’s discretion. If the Russian government undertook the construction, the newly irrigated lands would be transferred to the Russian government. The Khan accepted this proposal, and, having made some changes to ensure that indigenous conditions (mestnye usloviya) were taken into consideration, a new canal was constructed (Novyi Lauzan) in 1894.55 These changes protected the Khan from transferring a part of his territories to the Russian government while also avoiding the potential high expenditure caused by the canal construction.56 In this way, the Khivan Khan accommodated the interference of the Russian government in irrigation while maintaining a level of autonomy.

52 Shīr Muḥammad Mīrāb Mūnis and Muḥammad Riżā Mīrāb Āgahī, Firdaws al-iqbāl: History of Khorezm. ed. Y. Bregel (Leiden: Brill, 1988): 1048; [Danilevskii], “Opisanie Khivin- skogo khanstva”: 74. The rulers’ direct involvement in patronizing extensive irrigation plans is reflected by Khivan court chronicles. Firdaws al-iqbāl: 694–5, 886; Muḥammad Riżā Mīrāb Āgahī, Riyāż al-dawla, MS Istanbul, İstanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi, Türkçe Yazmalar, inv. no. 82, ff. 524b–758a. 667b–668a; Muḥammad Riżā Mīrāb Āgahī, Jāmiʿ al-vāqiʿāt-i sulṭānī, MS St. Petersburg, IVRRAN, Tyurkskie rukopisi, inv. no. E-6, 462a–464a. 53 These proposals came from Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovich in 1879 and 1890, Swiss traveler Henry Moser in 1889, and Gel’man in 1893. 54 TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 33a, ll. 6–12. 55 V.Kh. Gel’man criticized this change and regarded it as a ‘deviation’ (otstuplenie) of this plan in his “Obvodnenie starogo rusla Amu-Dar’i.” Izvestiya Turkestanskogo Otdela Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva II–I (1900): 131–6. 56 The cost of the canal construction was estimated at 950,000 rubles, Ibid.: 125–30. 126 Akifumi Shioya IV. Irrigation Concessions: Controversy

In contrast to Isfandiyār Khan’s claim to water right over the Amu-Darya in the territories of the Khanate, which was strongly supported by the historical evidence, Lykoshin’s discussion was based on a broader interpretation of the 1873 peace treaty. What reasoning and evidence lay behind his broader interpretation? I will now discuss this in the context of the irrigation policy of the Russian Empire in Turkestan of that time. Following the Russian conquest over Turkestan, various unsuccessful irrigation projects were initiated by the state. These failures were mainly a result of a lack of knowledge, technology, and experience in irrigation and the absence of preliminary investigation to the projects; insufficient budget allocation from the state; and dependency on local technology and labour force.57 As noted by Muriel Joffe, A.V. Krivoshein, a promoter of the Stolypin’s agricultural reforms and the head of the Central Administration for Land Organisation and Agriculture (Glavnoe upravlenie zemleustroistva i zemledeliya) from 1908,58 hoped to attract private capital to irrigation projects while, at the same time, pursuing state objectives such as economic development in Turkestan and the integration of Turkestan into the Empire and self-sufficiency in terms of cotton and the expected Russian peasant settlement from European Russia. That is, he intended to expand the newly irrigated land by both state and private-initiative irrigation enterprises in Turkestan. Russian peasant colonization in these areas was to be encouraged, in the expectation that the newcomers would become cotton farmers on those lands.59

57 Veksel’man, Rossiiskii monopolisticheskii i inostrannyi kapital v Srednei Azii: 90; Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 371–2; Morrison, Russian Rule in Samarkand: 232–7. 58 The Main Administration of Land Management and Agriculture was created in 1905. The holder assumed responsibility for agriculture, colonization, and all matters related to land tenure and use, Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 369–70. 59 Ibid.: 382–3. On the other hand, the Russian cotton industrialists increased their interest in investing in irrigation projects of Turkestan at the beginning of the twentieth century, Veksel’man Rossiiskii monopolisticheskii i inostrannyi kapital v Srednei Azii: 75–90; E.A. Pravilova, Finansy imperii: den’gi i vlast’ v politike Rossii na natsional’nykh okrainakh (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2006): 294. The Ministry of Agriculture dispatched Duke Masal’skii, an expert in irrigation, to Moscow and Lodge to negotiate with the representatives of cotton industrialists regarding the investment of irrigation enterprises in Turkestan. This negotiation might be responsible for the establishment of the Moscow Irrigation Company by the Moscow cotton industrialists in 1909, which planned an irrigation project Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 127 Krivoshein planned to draft two fundamental legislations—a law to authorize private entrepreneurial activities and a new water law in Turkestan. Both were aimed at securing the interests of entrepreneurs and ensuring that governmental interests were given priority. The former legislation ran contrary to the entrepreneurs’ request to own land as property, denying as it did any corporation whose membership included foreign citizens from acquiring land as property. The legislation even gave authorities the right to supervise and confiscate any enterprise in its entirety that breached this contract. The government obligated entrepreneurs to promote Russian settlement on some part of the newly irrigated lands, while the remaining part was to be given to the entrepreneurs.60 The latter piece of legislation was intended to grant a ‘supreme disposal’ (verkhovnoe rasporyazhenie) of water anywhere in Turkestan to the Russian government and protect native inhabitants from the exploitation of the entrepreneurs.61 A standard contract was proposed between the entrepreneurs and the Russian government.62 These initiatives repelled many entrepreneurs. As a result, a bill for the first piece of legislation that was referred to the Duma in May 1913 was rejected and the second piece of legislation, which was put forth in January 1913, was approved only in August 1916.63 These legislations (or legislation processes) became serious obstacles to private irrigation enterprises in Turkestan.64 These regulations for private-initiative irrigation enterprises in Tur kestan, as well as the implementation of the ‘supreme disposal’ of the Russian government to water resources in Turkestan, may well have extended as far as the territories of the two protectorates—Bukhara and Khiva—and on the water resource of the Amu-Darya, which flows through or along the two countries. The regulations were delivered as part of an issue of ‘irrigation concession (orositel’naya kontsessiya)’ within the Russian government. in Fergana province, Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 372–5. 60 K.A. Krivoshein, Aleksandr Vasil’evich Krivoshein: Sud’ba rossiiskogo reformatora (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1993), 133; Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 375–8. 61 Ibid.: 381–2. It was estimated that the right for entrepreneurs to use water resources would be preceded by the Russian government first and the native inhabitants second. 62 This contract would ultimately define the economic relations between the state, the entrepreneurs, the colonists, and the native populations with respect to land use, rental obligations, taxes, and government supervision, Ibid.: 378. 63 Ibid.: 386. 64 Ibid.: 375–86. 128 Akifumi Shioya A general investigation that focused on the entire Amu-Darya basin in terms of fixing the amount of ‘free water’ (svobodnaya voda) was launched by the Russian government around 1909.65 Together with the commencement of the investigation, some private- initiative irrigational enterprises were planned in the Emirate of Bukhara. Already in May 1911, Krivoshein had asked the Governor-General of Turkestan to request the Main Administration to permit private irrigation enterprises in Bukhara and Khiva.66 In July 1913, a private meeting held at the Department of Land Improvement delivered a draft of the principal rules (glavnye osnovaniya) for the water management of the Amu-Darya, which outlined various private irrigation concessions that were to be permitted in Bukhara and Khiva, for deliberation in both St. Petersburg and Tashkent.67 However, by the beginning of January 1914, the Russian Government had still failed to reach a definitive conclusion: ‘Unfortunately, we cannot but acknowledge that some differences in opinion exist among the chiefs of the related agencies with regard to this issue’.68 The War Ministry (voennoe ministerstvo) and the General Staff (glavnyi shtab) were keen to approve these concessions. War Minister V.A. Sukho mulinov agreed that the Amir and the Khan could freely give concessions, except in certain cases when the concession would affect common use of the water from the Amu-Darya. The Chief of the General Staff also requested that the Governor-General of Turkestan explain to the Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department (Lykoshin) that any doubts regarding the concession that had been concluded between Andronikov and the Khan were unfounded.69 What then was the attitude of the Governorship-General of Turkestan toward the issuance of land allocation regulations and the issues over

65 RNB, f. 196, op. 1, d. 250, ll. 2, 5; Tsinzerling, Oroshenie na Amu-Dar’e: 24–7. 66 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 352, ll. 3–6ob. This Krivoshein’s request was transmitted to Glushanovskii, the then Commandant of Amu-Darya Department and Lykoshin’s predecessor. 67 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 112–13, 131–131ob. The draft of these rules consisted of 11 provisions that would be submitted to the Council of Ministers. This draft spelled out the following: 1) The water management of the Amu-Darya basin is to be implemented by the government of Russia represented by the Administration of Land Settlement and Agriculture, 2) the special contract (osovyi dogovor) between government and entrepreneurs, 3) surveillance of the government over the irrigation projects, and 4) half of the newly irrigated lands should be allocated to Russian settlement, TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 352, ll. 3–6ob. 68 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 111–18. 69 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 113ob. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 129 irrigation concessions? In the Governorship-General of Turkestan, an independent deliberation of those issues was conducted. In response to criticism leveled by Lykoshin,70 there were plans to hold a conference to debate the issue of irrigation concessions. Finally, on 3 January 1914, this conference was held in Tashkent under the initiative of the Administration of Agriculture and State Properties in Turkestan (Upravlenie zemledeliya i gosudarstvennykh imushchestv v Turkestanskom krae). This conference deliberated a draft of a contract on irrigation concessions between the governments of Bukhara and Khiva on one hand, and entrepreneurs on the other. The draft was based on the land allocation regulations prepared by Isfandiyār Khan and the Anan’ev’s agreement on obligations (tekst obyazatel’stva) and the draft contract on irrigation concessions that was agreed between the government of Russia and entrepreneurs.71 At the end of December 1913, during these deliberations, Isfandiyār Khan issued the decree I mentioned earlier, regarding the transfer of about 20,000 desyatina of state land in Lavzan to Andronikov and Putilov. Before the issuance, the Governor-General Samsonov instructed Lykoshin to solemnize this contract on the condition that the entrepreneurs should petition the water right on the land concerned to the Russian government. Therefore, on 27 January 1914, Lykoshin signed the contract.72 As a result, on 13 March 1914, the Council of Ministers (sovet ministrov) held a meeting in St. Petersburg to establish the ‘principal rules for water usage in the Amu-Darya basin for the irrigation of new lands’ (glavnye osnovaniya ispol’zovaniya vod Amu-Dar’inskogo basseina v tselyakh orosheniya novykh zemel’)’ based on the draft drawn up by Krivoshein’s department, while incorporating opinions from the Governorship-General of

70 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, l. 15. 71 TsGARUz: f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 103–18. The Administration of Agriculture and State Properties in Turkestan was established on 20 November 1897. It controlled matters of agriculture and government properties in Turkestan, through the activities of rural administrations and staff members from the Main Administration of Land Management and Agriculture. It was abolished on 23 November 1917. For Anan’ev’s agreement, see, Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva: 187. We can find an interesting description of the attitude of a local ruler toward the ‘concessionaires’ in Mīrzā Salīm Bīk’s Tārīkh-i Salīmī; he describes engineer Anan’ev’s efforts to acquire land for irrigation purposes, as well as the author’s response to Anan’ev’s activities. See Mirza Salimbek, Tarikh-i Salimi (istochnik po istorii Bukharskogo èmirata) (Tashkent: Akademiya, 2009): 117–23. 72 GMI, KP 3894. 130 Akifumi Shioya Turkestan, as the Russian government’s official position. This consisted of 10 provisions that can be summarized in the following four points:73 1) The disposal (rasporyazhenie) of the water of the Amu-Darya belongs to the imperial government of Russia (provision 1). 2) The promotion of irrigation projects in the Amu-Darya basin, as initiated by the Russian government, would be conducted through the cooperation of the governments of Bukhara and Khiva, and half of the newly irrigated land would be transferred under the control of the Russian government (provisions 2–4). 3) Acquisition of irrigation concessions required prior approval from the related offices of the Russian government, and it is obligatory for them to conclude a special contract (osobyi dogovor)74 with the Russian government, represented by the Main Administration of Land Manage- ment and Agriculture; accept supervision from the Russian government; and submit a concession deposit (zalog) to the Russian government (provisions 5–8). 4) Half of the land irrigated by entrepreneurs should be allocated for Russian settlements, in accordance with direct instructions from the Governor-General of Turkestan (provisions 9–10). Thus, the ‘principal rules’—approved by the Council of Ministers on 13 March 1914—entrusted the disposal of the water of the Amu-Darya to the Russian government. This decision resulted in the Russian government attempting to enlarge its irrigation policy in Turkestan regarding the water resources of the Amu-Darya and the territories of Khiva and Bukhara; all claims of Isfandiyār Khan were thus denied. The deliberative process that resulted in the establishment of the principal rules may well tell us about the motivation behind Lykoshin’s broader interpretation of the 1873 peace treaty. As a ‘faithful follower of the policy of the central government’,75 Lykoshin recognized that there were no provisions in the treaty concerning the water rights of the Amu-Darya. This allowed or forced him then to refute Isfandiyār Khan’s claim for land allocation for irrigation by adopting a broader interpretation of the treaty. This decision might result in the failure of the dacha Lavzan. In May

73 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 3–7. For more on the role of the Council of Ministers in the Russian government, see, N.P. Eroshkin, Istoriya gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevolyutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2008): 531–63. 74 It is equivalent to the standard contract to which Joffe referred. 75 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 2, d. 475, l. 5. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 131 1914, Andronikov petitioned the Russian government to grant permission to use the water resources of the Amu-Darya for his land.76 The Russian government debated a draft for a special contract between the government and the entrepreneurs, as mentioned in the provision 6 of the principal rules. The deliberation process continued well into July 1916.77 Despite the refusal of the Governorship-General of Turkestan to trans- mit the principal rules to Bukhara and Khiva immediately, for fear of the Amir’s or Khan’s anticipated opposition,78 the temporary Governor-General of Turkestan, F.V. Martson, who was appointed in place of Samsonov, transmitted the ‘principal rules’ to Isfandiyār Khan at the end of November 1914. The Khivan government accepted. As a result, the government probably became cautious about the promotion of the private-initiative irrigation project in the Khanate, as provisions 9–10 of the principal rules stipulated the allocation of newly irrigated land to Russian settlement under direct control of the Governor-General of Turkestan. On 12 Decem- ber 1914 Kolosovskii reported that Isfandiyār Khan might have declared for the Khivan subjects on the prohibition of the land sale to the Russians.79 Besides, in March-April 1915, the Khivan government refused to accept a series of petitions from the side of dacha Lavzan for protecting the land of Lavzan from the arbitrary use of the native inhabitants.80

76 TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 5007, ll. 5–6. 77 TsGARUz, f. I-7, op. 1, d. 5007, ll. 51–55ob. The evidence is not clear about the result of further deliberation. 78 TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 156–157ob., 174–174ob., 176–77. The favorable attitudes toward the contract concluded by Andronikov were still strong within the Governorship- General. General Galkin, the Commandant of the Syr-Darya oblast’, insisted that interference with the contract was likely to result in a decline in prestige of Russian entrepreneurs in the Khanate, TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 324, ll. 42–43. It is clear that the favorable attitude was influenced by the Khan’s bribery to such dignitaries of the Russian government as Galkin, the Commandant of the Amu-Darya Department Kolosovskii, War Minister Sukhomlinov, and the head of the Asiatic department of the General Staff Tseil’, see Pogorel’skii, Ocherki èkonomicheskoi i politicheskoi istorii Khivinskogo khanstva: 89. In May 1914, Isfandiyār Khan in his conversation with Friuling, a head of the Novo-Urgench branch of the Russo-Asiatic Bank, asserted that there would be no obstacles to the free access to water in the Khanate, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, l. 124–125ob. In July 1914, the Khan dispatched one of his dignitaries, Muḥammad Vafā Baqqālūf, to St. Petersburg to request confirmation on the right of water use in the Khanate, at the Khan’s discretion, TsGARUz, f. I-1, op. 17, d. 957, ll. 156–157ob, 176–77. It is supposed that the Khan intended to negotiate on this issue with the War Minister Sukhomlinov, because Baqqalov visited Sukhomlinov during his stay in St. Petersburg, according to the memoirs of Pahlavan Niyaz Yusupov, a prominent figure of the Muslim reformists group in Khiva―Young Khivans. See Polvonniyoz Hoji Yusupov, Yosh Xivaliklar Tarixi: Xotiralar, ed. M. Matniyozov (Urgench: Xorazm, 1999): 66–7. 79 TsGARUz, f. I-2, op. 1, d. 352, ff. 45–46ob. 80 RGIA, f. 630, op. 1, d. 478, ll. 52–64. 132 Akifumi Shioya Conclusion

In the wake of the Russian conquest of Turkestan in the 1860s and 1870s, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva became Russian protectorates, and a part of the Amu-Darya basin came under direct Russian rule. However, the peace treaties with Bukhara and Khiva, which regulated relations between Russia, Bukhara and Khiva, did not include any provisions regarding the water rights of the Amu-Darya. At the beginning of the 20th century, Central Asia witnessed a rapid increase in the number of new private-initiative irrigation plans. These plans covered such areas as Fergana, the Hungry Steppe, the basins of the Murghab and Tezhen, as well as the territories of Bukhara and Khiva.81 One of these projects, the dacha Lavzan—launched by Duke M.M. Andronikov, A.I. Putilov, and M.N. Ermolaev—was a daring attempt against the land policy of the Russian government in Turkestan: Andronikov and Putilov acquired private landownership (sobstvennost’) from the Khan and then endeavored to gain Russian government’s (or, more precisely, colonial authority’s) approval82. They partially succeeded in this attempt on 27 January 1914 when Lykoshin authorized the contract, despite having initially criticised Isfandiyār Khan’s policy of land allocation. This criticism seems to have been based on a broader interpretation of the provisions outlined in the peace treaty of 1873, which Isfandiyār Khan refuted by making reference to the force of customs and established agricultural practices. Clearly, it was the colonial policy, which lay behind Lykoshin’s specific interpretation. At the same time, while promoting private irrigation projects in Turkestan, the Russian government was also imposing various stipulations on these projects (including the standard contract) and applying the principle of ‘supreme disposal’ of the water resources of Turkestan,

81 Veksel’man, Rossiiskii monopolisticheskii i inostrannyi kapital v Srednei Azii: 75–90; Pravilova, Finansy imperii: den’gi i vlast’ v politike Rossii: 294. 82 On Russian norms regulating enterpreneurs’ acquisition of private landownership in Turkestan see, Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 376–8. According to the amendment 3 to the provision 262 of the statute of Turkestan of 1886, joint-stock companies (aktsionernoe obshchestvo) were virtually required to gain approval from the Tsar after the deliberation of Council of Ministers, see Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo kraya s ismeneniyami i dopolneniyami po 1-e yanvarya 1901 goda (Tashkent: Tipo-litografiya br. Portsevykh, 1901): 73. Andronikov and Putilov were actually planning to establish a joint-stock company for managing the dacha Lavzan, RGIA, f. 630, op. 2, d. 853, l. 136–38. For a general discussion on the issue of landownership in Turkestan in the colonial period, see, P. Sartori, “Introduction: Dealing with States of Property in Modern and Colonial Central Asia.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 1–8. Who Should Manage the Water of the Amu-Darya? 133 which were deemed essential to the irrigation enterprises. This ensured that the government monopolized access to the water. These measures guaranteed that the native inhabitants would be protected from entrepreneurs’ exploitation as well as ensured that the government’s interests were paramount: Turkestan’s irrigational and economic development and its integration into the Empire, the Russians’ settlement in Turkestan, and the achievement of cotton self-sufficiency.83 The policy of the Russian government in regard to the water resources and the activities of the entrepreneurs probably extended as far as the water of the Amu-Darya and activities in the two protectorates, Bukhara and Khiva. The application must have been based on a preliminary arrangement wherein the Russian government deprived the amir of Bukhara and the Khan of Khiva of their individual water rights to the Amu-Darya. Lykoshin, understanding this state policy and recognizing that there were no provisions of the treaty concerning the water rights of the Amu-Darya, interpreted the treaty much more broadly and, by so doing, deprived the Khan of his rights on Amu- Darya. For Lykoshin, this denial was consistent with the idea of gradual annexation of the Khanate to Russia: he was backing the imperial initiative of irrigation development on both sides of the Amu-Darya and attempt to enforce the consciousness of the law and legitimacy (pravo i zakonnost’)— that is, to accept imperial Russian citizenships.84 The principal rules imposed various conditions on the entrepreneurs who were involved in various irrigation projects in Khiva while also depri ving the Khan of the opportunity to engage in irrigation at his own discretion. The denial of the Khan’s independent rights on the water of the Amu-Darya and the possible loss of control over a part of his territory must have made the local ruler reluctant toward the irrigation development in the Khanate. This meant that the first large-scale irrigation enterprise, which was backed by the financial capital and aimed at introducing modern irrigation facilities to the Khanate, was doomed to fail. Thus, the modernization of irrigation (the introduction of motor pumps and other means), and its accompanying social upheaval, did not occur before the Russian Revolution. The bulwarks to these changes rested, on the one hand, with the failure of the Khanate to subsume the Turkmens and, on the other,

83 Joffe, “Autocracy, Capitalism and Empire: The Politics of Irrigation”: 381–3. 84 For the discussion on Russian government’s efforts to implant the concept of citizenship in the imperial eastern borderlands, see, D. Yaroshevski, “Empire and Citizenship.” In Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917, ed. D.R. Brower and E.J. Lazzerini (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997): 58–79. 134 Akifumi Shioya even more significantly, with the limitations in the development policy of the Russian government in Turkestan, as well as its failure to attract entrepreneurs to the proposed area of irrigation.

Bibliography

Abbreviations GMI: Gosudarstvennyi muzei zapavednik Ichan Kal‘a. IVRRAN: Institut vostochnykh rukopisei Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk (Sankt-Peterburg). IVANRUz: Institut vostokovedeniya im. Abu Raikhana Biruni Akademii nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan. RNB: Rossiiskaya natsional’naya biblioteka (Sankt-Peterburg), otdel rukopisei. RGIA: Russkii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv. TsGARUz: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan.

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CHAPTER FOUR

High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz: Terms and Their Problems, 1845–1864*

Daniel G. Prior

Introduction

Scholars have long noted the variable terminology of high rank among the Kirghiz (Kyrgyz, Qırghız) of the Tian Shan. Of particular interest to historians of the nineteenth century is the appearance of the term manap to denote a leader of extraordinary power and influence at the top level of the northern Kirghiz elite. Contemporary observers saw the manaps as members of an incipient tribal nobility, which appropriated the label manap in differentiation from an existing stratum of leaders with the title biy. This interpretation was taken up more or less entirely by Soviet scholars, who added the qualification that the Biys’ and Manaps’ power base had become ‘feudal’ as well as clannic-tribal (feodal’no-rodovoi, not just rodo-plemennoi); this distinction recognized dialectical tensions that, according to Marxist-Leninist thought, were massing in Kirghiz society in the late medieval period. The term manap has been seen as denoting a rank and status not essentially different from those of the older title biy, and the biys out of whose number the manaps were said to have emerged continued to hold some authority. In my view, the historiography and

* Major support for the research presented in this paper was provided by an IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities grant (2008) and by an ACLS/SSRC/NEH International and Area Studies Fellowship supplemented by the College of Arts and Science, Miami University (2009–2010). For fruitful discussions and for sharing their suggestions and special knowledge in the development of this paper I am grateful to Virginia Martin, Tetsu Akiyama, and fellow participants in the workshops “Early Modern and Colonial Central Asia in Arabic-Script Documents (17th–Early 20th Centuries)” (December 2009, Martin Luther University, Halle), and “Family and State in Chinggisid and Post-Chinggisid Central Eurasia” (September 2008, Indiana University, Bloomington), to graduate students in the Miami University History Department colloquium “Tribes, States, and Empires”, and to this volume’s editor and an anonymous reviewer. These interlocutors’ good sense and erudition has, I fear, not always been a match for my stubborn errors, for which I take full responsibility in what follows. Figure 4.1 is from a photograph by Tetsu Akiyama; all the other photographs are by me. 138 Daniel G. Prior historical ethnography of the Manap phenomenon, whatever it was, has developed from these observations in such a way that the edifice of knowledge displays pronounced overhang in relation to the available source base. In other words, most accounts of the early manaps overlie gaps in the primary layers of evidence; in other respects the evidence seems to support different conclusions, which involve agents and forces outside Kirghiz society. I noticed these variances when researching early, datable examples of discourse that mentions manaps. The documents and other sources I found suggest that there was something like an ‘observer effect’ or colonial feedback in the decades of political negotiation and accommodation between 1845 and 1864—a span of years during the first half of which the first representatives of the northern Kirghiz were approaching Russian officials with expressions of willingness to submit to the Tsar, and during the second half of which the Russian government accepted oaths of submission from leaders of nearly all of the camps of the northern Kirghiz. It was amid these events, the sources show us, that the term manap was selected, defined, and instrumentalized in a manner recognized in later historiography and historical ethnography as originally and properly Kirghiz. But since there were Kirghiz, Russian, and even Kazakh actors involved in these processes (and, just as tellingly, since the concept of manaps had no currency what- soever in the governments of the Khanate of Khoqand or Ch’ing China), it is no surprise that, during the very years that the manaps emerged as a social and political category so labeled, there were divergent and at times quite contingent ideas of what a manap was. The problems I will examine in this paper surround the early elaboration of the term manap and the status it signified in the beginning stages of the formal political integration of the northern Kirghiz with the Russian Empire. The structure and dynamics of northern Kirghiz society in the nineteenth century cannot be appreciated without understanding what the manaps were, and were not. My materials are mostly documents, including previously unpublished letters with Kirghiz senders or recipients, and published letters and diplomatic documents, as well as published reports by Russian observers, mostly created between 1845 and 1864. In some cases information for this study was obtainable only from the original Turki (Chaghatay) versions of documents and their seals; in other cases, slight disagreements in wording between the Russian and Turki versions become their own sites for historical analysis. Such documents have previously been used only through their Russian translations, with no consideration of the seals. Auxiliary High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 139 sources such as works of Russian and Soviet ethnography and history, in the earliest instances representing the field notices of military officers, and later the work of academics, as well as works of Kirghiz ethno-history, provide contextual insights. By ‘ethno-history’ I mean both oral-derived native genres of reporting the past, such as sanjıra or genealogical chronicles, and works of history in Kirghiz—and based in large part on oral- derived genres—written down mostly before the elaboration of Soviet nationality policy in the 1940s. The ‘traditional’ character of ethno-historical sources presents special problems of interpretation that are seldom recognized and little discussed. Historians working with conceptions of oral traditions as reservoirs of national memory (a notion characteristic of, but not limited to, Soviet scholarship) have tended to apply straightfor- ward methods to the interpretation of ethno-historical materials and to avoid placing questions of these sources’ authorship, patronage, and textual factors in the forefront of their analyses.1 An exploration of the history of high rank and power among the northern Kirghiz will necessarily cross some contested theoretical territory. In current debates on the historical connections between kinship and the sociopolitical structures of Inner Asian pastoral peoples, the main unsettled problems basically concern the extent to which social and political structures may be distinguished or related. Of particular interest for this study is the question of whether it is appropriate to apply social-anthropological concepts of kinship to formations commonly called tribes, and how such formations should be defined. The manaps emerged at the head of the northern Kirghiz tribes such as the Sarıbaghısh, Bughu, Solto, and Sayaq. These are described by Kirghiz sanjıra and modern ethnography as large kin groups descended patrilineally from various distant ancestors.2 To the extent that the genealogies of the leading northern Kirghiz families, includ-

1 E.g., E. Bekmakhanov, Kazakhstan v 20–40 gody XIX veka (Alma-Ata: Kazak universiteti, 1992); B. Dzhamgerchinov, “Kirgizy v èpokhu Ormon-Khana.” Trudy Instituta yazyka, litera tury i istorii, Kirgizskii filial AN SSSR 1 (1944): 111–30; Id., Prisoedinenie Kirgizii k Rossii (Mos- cow: Izd-vo sotsio-èkonomicheskoi literatury, 1959). Questions of authorship, patronage, and textual factors of ethno-historical sources on the northern Kirghiz are addressed in such works as Jacquesson’s contribution to this volume; D. Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: Epic and the writing of Northern Kirghiz history (Leiden: Brill, 2013); and G. Salk, Die Sanjïra des Togolok Moldo (1860–1942) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009). 2 S. Abramzon, “Ètnicheskii sostav kirgizskogo naseleniya Severnoi Kirgizii.” Trudy Kirgizskoi arkheologo-ètnograficheskoi èkspeditsii, 4 (1960): 3–137; ʿU. Ṣidikof, Tārīx-i qırghız-i Shādmāniya (Ufa: Vostochnaya pechat’, 1914); B. Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı (Bishkek: Arkhi, 2003); Salk, Die Sanjïra des Togolok Moldo; E. Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası (Bishkek: Uchqun, 1995). 140 Daniel G. Prior ing the manaps, can be traced in these sources—and many of them can— patrilineal descent is a useful, graphically accessible, and fairly straight- forward analytical framework for studying northern Kirghiz society. But this framework has limited reach when questions arise about the varieties of social relations comprehended under the specific form and content of such patrilineal descent groups. Early on, the idiom of descent was recognized as a convenience that masked various forms of relationships including patronage and adoption.3 The picture becomes even more complicated when non-Kirghiz, especially colonial, actors are found to have had a part in defining the vocabulary of those social relations. In demographic terms, the few thousands of names recorded in Kirghiz genealogies have not yet been subjected to prosopographical analysis, but it is obvious that they comprised only a part of the Kirghiz population, the sort who ‘mattered’, however that may have been determined by different genealogists at different points in time. It is not simply a truism to state that the chief concerns of the ancestral figures deemed worth remembering were those that shaped society: wars near and far, wealth won and lost, sets of spouses and children of notable men; the passing on of wealth, status, and power mainly (but not always) through patrilineal descent; and even the act of shaping the past through narrative.4 Debates about political formation in ‘kinship societies’ in Inner Asia have received new definition and impulse from the revisionist views of the social anthropologist David Sneath (who argues it is inappropriate to use the concept of kinship to explain steppe political formation), and in equal measure from the reactions Sneath’s ideas have engendered.5 Sneath’s bold thesis that ‘aristocratic orders’ comprising

3 ‘The membership of a Kirghiz to one tribe or another is not permanent and unchanged. One of them has merely to move from the Sarıbaghısh lands to the Solto, and he will not be called a Sarıbaghısh, he becomes a Solto. Moving to the Sayaqs, he becomes a Sayaq [...], but this may only be said of the common people, the buqara [...] manaps preserve the division into tribes, and strictly maintain them. […] The emergence of many tribes has been very recent—one or two generations. Even today new tribes are forming.’ (G. Zagryazhskii [“Ocherki Tokmakskago uezda.” Turkestanskiya vedomosti 1873, no. 10], quoted in V.F. Shakhmatov, Kazakhskaya pastbishchno-kochevaya obshchina (Alma-Ata: Izd-vo Aka- demii nauk Kazakhskoi SSR, 1964): 48–9). 4 Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex; Id., The Twilight Age of the Kirghiz Epic Tradition, unpublished Ph.D. diss. (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2002). 5 D. Sneath, The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresenta- tions of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). For mixed reactions to Sneath’s thesis see his summary article and colloquy with the reviewers Sergei Abashin, Tatyana Skrynnikova, Nikolay Kradin, Munkh-Erdene Lkhamsuren, Adrienne Edgar, and others in a special section of Ab Imperio 4 (2009); also the review of The Headless State by Peter Golden and the exchange of rejoinders by Sneath and Golden in the Journal High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 141 ‘houses’ rather than tribes were the true basis of pre-colonial Steppe political formations6 still lacks broad substantiation, but it can usefully focus researchers’ attention upon finer-grained study of historical processes made up of contingent, individual rather than patterned, corporate agency and action—as if ‘aristocratic’ rather than ‘tribal.’7 Where that bald dichot- omy has little explanatory purchase on the extremely fluid, multipolar political situation I will examine below, it is not because the Kirghiz (as is well known) lacked the töre, the so-called ‘white bone’ or Chinggisid aristocratic lineage with exclusive claim to the right of sovereign rule as khans over the plebeian biys and tribes, as the Kazakhs had; it is instead because historians have not come to a clear understanding of the nature of high rank in Kirghiz society within the broader Central Asian context. My sources suggest to me (but I cannot fully argue within the confines of this exercise) that a clearer historical picture of Kirghiz society will reveal descent groups of patrilineally related kin as the effects of a range of creative political impulses in the actions of high-ranking leaders and their supporters. One such type of creative impulse, the practice of producing and reproducing historical and genealogical narratives, is the subject of a different study of mine;8 another impulse, what might be called opportu- nistic label-mongering, is the subject of this paper. The usual name for an elite social class that is at once insistent upon validation through a tradition of exclusivity (often at variance with its actual permeability), prone to confusing its interests with those of everybody else, and inclined to reinvent and reassert itself in politics as a leading class sine qua non, is an aristocracy.

of Asian Studies 68/1 (2009) and 69/2 (2010); and the reviews of The Headless State by Devin DeWeese in the International Journal of Turkish Studies 16/1–2 (2010), and by the present writer in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (n.s.) 16 (2010). For historical analyses of Mongol social structure that find alternative principles to that of kinship, see C.P. Atwood, “Mongol Society’s Basic Unit: What it Was and Wasn’t”, lecture delivered at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York, 15 February 2007; Id., The Tribal Mirage: Khans, Pastures, and Families on China’s Inner Asian Frontiers: forthcoming. 6 Sneath, The headless state: 197. On the Kirghiz manaps, cf. Ibid.: 84–87. 7 The better to control aprioristic conceptual seepage from the boggy ground of kinship theory, this work jettisons the term clan in analysis and instead refers to groups comprehended by tribes simply as ‘divisions’ or ‘subdivisions.’ In Russian colonial accounts cited below, the term clan translates Russian rod, except as noted. 8 Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex; cf. R.P. Lindner, Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 1983): 1–38. 142 Daniel G. Prior I. History and Historical Ethnography of the Manap Phenomenon

Excluded (or aloof) from the Chinggisid dispensation of töre or khans and sultans that had been inherited from the Jochid and Chagadaid branches of the Mongol royal family by such Central Asian peoples as the Moghuls, Uzbeks, and Kazakhs, the Kirghiz in normal times had no political authority higher than the level normally referred to as tribal. Consequently we get occasional indications that their power structures and nomenclature of high rank varied over time and according to the situation. The Russian historian V.V. Barthold noted in the Ottoman Turkish author Sayfi’s account of 1582: ‘The Qirghiz, he [Sayfi] writes, [...] have no king, but only begs whom they call qashqa.’9 Maurice Courant relates on the basis of Chinese sources that the eastern Kirghiz, faced with the campaigning Ch’ing army in the 1750s, ‘n’avaient pas de khan; les cinq tribus indépendantes élisaient, à temps, un chef commun.’ 10 The Kirghiz term biy (identical with Kazakh biy and cognate with Turkic bek, beg, all in the same sense of a lord or a chief of a tribe) is introduced in Chinese accounts of the Kirghiz in the eighteenth century. One source from 1777 asserts that the Kirghiz biys held their dependents as ‘slaves’, and that succession among biys was only by heredity, the successor being a son or brother of the deceased.11 An early nineteenth-century Chinese account of the Ili region relates, ‘The Buruts [Kirghiz] call their leaders biy. There is no permanently fixed number of leaders in each Burut tribe. The men who become leaders are those who have advanced to the forefront sometime earlier thanks to their power, and also by right of heredity.’12 These rights of heredity had an imperial dimension. As Nicola Di Cosmo notes in regard to Ch’ing appointments to high ranks and titles in the eighteenth century, ‘Although the native titles

9 V.V. Barthold, “II. History of the Semirechyé.” In Four studies on the history of Central Asia, 1 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962): 159. 10 M. Courant, L’Asie centrale aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Empire Kalmouk ou Empire Mantchou? (Paris: A. Picard & Fils, 1912): 127. But cf. the Hsi yü t’u chi (1782), quoted by A. Bernshtam, “Istochniki po istorii kirgizov XVIII v.” Voprosy istorii 11–12 (1946): 128: ‘all the chiefs [of the main tribes] are independent of one another. Every year they elect a leader (chang), who has the task of general governance and to whom all are subordinate. The chief (t’ou) who has become the chang is named Mamıq Quli (Ma-mu-t’u-khu-li). (He) is only temporarily the head of the tribes (pu).’ (Does this mean that this Chinese report was made when the Kirghiz were at war?) 11 Hsi-yü Wen-tsien Lu, quoted in Bernshtam, “Istochniki”: 128, and in K.I. Petrov, Ocherki feodal’nykh otnoshenii u kirgizov v XV–XVIII vv. (Frunze: Izd-vo AN Kirgizskoi SSR, 1961): 126. 12 Ch’in-ting Hsin-chiang Shih-lüeh (1821), quoted in Petrov, Ocherki: 127; cf. Bernshtam, “Istochniki”: 126. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 143 of bī and akhalakci13 were preserved, the appointments were routinely confirmed through edicts issued by the emperor upon requests submitted in memorials by the Qing agents. As pro forma as this procedure might have been, it introduced an element of external control in the political process of selection and appointment of the Kirghiz leaders.’14 Neither the sources produced in Ch’ing China nor those of the Khoqand Khanate provide any insight into the origin of the Kirghiz manap phenomenon, since the term is not found in sources produced in either country;15 for that we must search instead in the northern part of Kirghiz territory, and from a vantage point oriented toward Russia. In the late eighteenth century the officer and scholar Ivan Andreev found among the Kirghiz a certain concentration of power, which was in part a consequence of conflict with Ablay Khan of the Kazakh Middle Horde: ‘The [Kirghiz] do not have any khan or sultan, but they have one prince or biy, Atake.16 [...] This Atake is the chief of their entire Horde; he has his nomadizing grounds in the center of this people, [...] and they all are divided into ten volosts, in which

13 Di Cosmo etymologizes this term from Mongolian aqalakci ‘senior’, ‘elder’, ‘chieftain’. It is not known outside of Ch’ing usage in reference to the Kirghiz. 14 N. Di Cosmo, “Kirghiz nomads on the Qing frontier: Tribute, trade, or gift exchange?” In Political frontiers, ethnic boundaries, and human geographies in Chinese history, ed. N. Di Cosmo and D.J. Wyatt (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003): 358. Cf. V.S. Kuznetsov, Tsinskaya imperiya na rubezhakh Tsentral’noi Azii (Vtoraya polovina XVIII–pervaya polovina XIX v.) (Novosibirsk: Nauka, Sibirskoye otdelenie, 1983): 46. 15 This observation rests on the reports of summative works by specialists. A. Bernshtam wrote: ‘The absence of the title manap from the Chinese information is surprising’ (Bern- shtam, “Istochniki”: 129). Mid-twentieth century ethnographic field work among the Kirghiz of Sinkiang by S.M. Abramzon (“Kirgizskoe naselenie Sin’tsyan-uigurskoi avtonomnoi oblasti Kitaiskoi narodnoi respubliki.” In Trudy Kirgizskoi arkheologo-ètnograficheskoi èkspeditsii 2 [1959]: 332–69) produced no mention of manaps. Timur K. Beisembiev’s surveys confirm that the term manap is not found in surviving sources from Khoqand (Beisembiev, Annotated indices of the Kokand chronicles [(Tokyo): Research Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 2008]); Id., Kokandskaya istoriografiya: Issledovanie po istochnikovedeniyu Srednei Azii, XVIII–XIX vekov [Almaty: Print-S, 2009]). For additional historical information on the Kirghiz in the context of Khoqandian and Ch’ing politics, see V.A. Romodin (ed.), Materialy po istorii kirgizov i Kirgizii 1 (Moscow: Nauka, 1973) and K. Dzhusaev (ed.), Mate- rialy po istorii kyrgyzov i Kyrgyzstana 2 (Bishkek: Kyrgyzsko–turetskii universitet Manas, 2003); V.M. Ploskikh, Kirgizy i Kokandskoe khanstvo (Frunze: Ilim, 1977); T. Saguchi, “The eastern trade of the Khoqand Khanate.” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 26 (1965): 47–114; L.J. Newby, The Empire and the Khanate: A Political History of Qing Relations with Khoqand c. 1760–1860 (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 16 On the Sarıbaghısh leader named Atake, the grandfather of Jantay discussed below, see V.M. Ploskikh et al. (ed.), Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya: Istoriya vzaimootnoshenii (XVIII–XIX vv.). Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Bishkek: Ilim, 1998), passim; V.M. Ploskikh, Pervye kirgizsko–russkie posol’skie svyazi (1784–1827 gg.) (Frunze: Ilim, 1970): 32–41; D.B. Saparaliev, Vzaimootnosheniya kyrgyzskogo naroda s russkimi i sosednimi narodami v XVIII v. (Bishkek: Ilim, 1995): 120–30. 144 Daniel G. Prior they have their own leaders.’17 Atake was nowhere referred to as a manap, but his assumption of (or election to) paramount rule over at least those Kirghiz of whom Andreev had knowledge shows the ability of some biys to adjust their power and authority on a scale to suit the political situation. This is analogous to the case of the single, temporary wartime chief noted in the above passage by Courant. In 1851, when the Russian army had extended its nominal control southward through the territory of the Kazakh Senior Horde to the right bank of the Ili river,18 the office of the governor general of Western Siberia informed the Imperial Russian Geographical Society of yet another political permutation, the Kirghiz manap: The whole Black Horde (Chërnaya Orda)19 is divided into many tribes (rody) and divisions (otdeleniya), the most important of which are the Bughu, Sarıbaghısh, Solto, etc. Each tribe and division is governed by manaps who are elected by a majority of the people; although this status is not hereditary, it passes predominantly to the sons and other relatives of a deceased Manap, if their wealth and personal qualities command respect.20 Historians have reasoned that this use of the term manap as a label for some sort of high status or governing function must have become widespread only after the first substantial Russian report of the Kirghiz in the 1820s by Dr. Zibbershtein, for we would expect to find the term in that

17 I.G. Andreev, Opisanie srednei ordy kirgiz-kaisakov (Almaty: Gylym, 1998): 51–2. 18 P.P. Rumyantsev, Uezdy Zhetysu (Almaty: Zhalyn, 2000): 169. 19 The term Chërnaya Orda ‘Black Horde’ used in this report was a Russian invention to denote the Kirghiz in contradistinction to the Kazakhs, whose ruling töre or notional descendants of Chinggis Khan were known as the aq süyek ‘white bone’; the Kirghiz had no white-bone aristocracy, and so were termed karakirgizy ‘Black Kirgiz’ by the Russians. The extra distinction was necessary because in the Russian language the term Kirgiz had already been applied to the Kazakhs. 20 Anon., “Svedeniya o dikokamennykh kirgizakh, dostavlennye ot General-Gubernatora Zapadnoi Sibiri.” Zapiski IRGO 5 (1851): 141. In the limited space of this article it is not possible to list and discuss every important published early Russian source on the manaps; the following are some of the most important summations by Soviet-era and later scholars on the origin of the term manap and the institution of ‘manapstvo’ (a term of not only Marxist-Leninist but also Tsarist-era liberal opprobrium): Abramzon, “Ètnicheskii sostav”: 32; Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie Kirgizii k Rossii: 51–7; A. Karypkulov et al. (ed.), Istoriya Kirgizskoi SSR 1 (Frunze: Kyrgyzstan, 1984): 511–12; A. Dzhumagulov, “O termine ‘manap’.” Izvestiya Akademii nauk Respubliki Kyrgyzstan, ser. Obshchestvennye nauki, 4 (1991): 61–8.” These works contain references to the key Tsarist-era accounts. In English, see D. Gullette, The Genealogical Construction of the Kyrgyz Republic: Kinship, State and “Tribalism.” (Fol- kestone, Kent: Global Oriental, 2010): 54–8, 64–72. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 145 source if it had been current in Kirghiz usage then.21 In any event, the term manap is not known in the languages of Central Asia, either Turkic or Persian, so its explanation must be sought among the Kirghiz people.22 The origin of the term manap is explained in Kirghiz tradition unam- biguously. It has been remembered since the nineteenth century as the personal name of an ancestor on one of the genealogical branches of the Sarıbaghısh tribe, a name that was later abstracted to become the common noun. The figure named Manap, one of the sons of Döölös, is well-known in Sarıbaghısh Kirghiz genealogies,23 but like virtually all Kirghiz sources of ethno-history, beyond supposition none of that information can be traced back further in time than the Tsarist era. According to the Turcologist Wilhelm Radloff, who visited the Kirghiz in 1862 and 1869, the Kirghiz maintained that the manap phenomenon formed when leaders outside the Sarıbaghısh began appropriating, or aspiring to, attributes for which the remembered individual named Manap was known.24 These attributes are witnessed in the ethno-historical accounts written down by Belek Soltonoev (1878–1938), the author of the first work of modern scholarship in Kirghiz, Qızıl Qırghız tarıkhı ‘The History of the Red [i.e., Bolshevist] Kirghiz’. Sometime between 1895 and 193425 Soltonoev wrote down an account of the birth, pedigree, naming, and career of Manap, the ancestor who had been identified by Radloff some decades before. Soltonoev’s report leaves no doubt that the individual so named had a reputation for rapacity, greed, and oppressive despotism. The story of his birth and naming (rem-

21 M.P. Vyatkin, “Putevye zapiski lekarya Zibbershteina.” Istoricheskii arkhiv 1 (1936): 223–25. Abramzon (“Ètnicheskii sostav”: 32) opines that the term could have been current when Zibbershtein was there, only not among the Bughu tribe that he visited. 22 The term manap entered Turkic lexicographical works in the West in the 1860s (H. Vámbéry, Ćagataische Sprachstudien (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1867): 337; cf. V.V. Radlov, Opyt slovarya tyurkskikh narechii/W. Radloff, Versuch eines Wörterbuches der Türk-Dialecte (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaya Akademiya nauk, 1893–1911), vol. 4.2, col. 2017; it was not cited in Muḥammad Mahdī Xān’s dictionary of Eastern Turkish, Sanglax (ca. 1759; see Muḥammad Mahdī Xān, Sanglax: A Persian guide to the Turkish language [London: Luzac, 1960]). The personal name Manap is well-attested in Inner Asia (cf. L. Rásonyi and I. Baski, Onomasticon Turcicum: Turkic personal names [Bloomington: Indiana University, Denis Sinor Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2007], 2: 529) though of uncertain origin as well (cf. the Arabic personal name ʿAbd Manāf, borne by an ancestor of the Prophet). Arabic manāb ‘deputy; vicar’ was not current in Persian or Chaghatay titulature in Central Asia. 23 Abramzon, “Ètnicheskii sostav”: 32 and figure 5; Ṣidikof, Tārīkh: 36–7 (cf. Sıdıqov, Tarikh: 30–1); Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı: 113; Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası 1: 46–7, 83. 24 V.V. Radlov, Iz Sibiri: Stranitsy dnevnika (Moscow: Nauka, 1989): 353. 25 On the dating of Soltonoev’s work see Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı: 6 (facsimile of the ms. title page), 19. 146 Daniel G. Prior iniscent, incidentally, of Rachel and Leah and their handmaids in Genesis) asserts a relation through Manap’s mother with a line of khojas or descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad, and through him with the name ʿAbd Manāf, the great-great-grandfather of the Prophet.26 This exclusive charter of social rank assures us that the figure of Manap made a deep impression among purveyors of Sarıbaghısh genealogy; at the same time, the etymological neatness of the connection to a hallowed figure reminds us to be wary on principle of the claim that the term manap arose from the name of a man with legendary attributes who was otherwise unknown. Nevertheless, where caution is required most is in trying to fix in time the spread of this term among northern Kirghiz chiefs inclined to ‘Manap- esque’ (whatever that referred to) despotism. Soltonoev’s brief discussion of the extension of the name as a label for leaders of the Sarıbaghısh and eventually other tribes (uruu) agrees basically with the version recorded by Radloff, while stressing that it was the leaders themselves who promoted their association with manap’s cruel reputation; Soltonoev is silent, however, about when this extension of meaning occurred. There is, in fact, no concrete evidence in Soltonoev’s account that would favor an earlier rather than a later use of the term in any other sense than the name of the individual member of a Sarıbaghısh lineage.27 Assessing ethno-historical claims of anteriority beyond the horizon of the mid-nineteenth century is one of the most difficult and sensitive issues in Kirghiz historiography, as cases examined in this study show.28 Given the tendency of traditions to adapt their contents to changing political and cultural circumstances,29 valid questions often arise about the real age of supposedly old traditional knowledge and concepts. One such concept was a quasi-hierarchical taxonomy of various types of manaps. These are summarized in Konstantin K. Yudakhin’s Kirghiz dictionary: agha manap (also called chong manap)

26 Erroneously Abdulmanak in the Cyrillic edition of Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı: 113. 27 Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı: 111–15. Soltonoev dates Manap’s birth circa 1595–1600 and his death circa 1635–1638. Soltonoev’s account is not the first dated mention of manaps in a Kirghiz narrative source; that distinction goes to an epic-like poem written down in 1909 or 1910 (see Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 106–7, line I.79). Cf. the two similar accounts of the origin of the manaps collected by P. Kushner (Knyshev) in the late 1920s and published in his Gornaya Kirgiziya (Sotsiologicheskaya razvedka) (Moscow: Kommunisticheskii universitet trudyashchikhsya Vostoka, 1929): 84–5. 28 Cf. Israilova–Khar’ekhuzen’s incorrect claim (Ch.R. Israilova–Khar’ekhuzen, Tra ditsionnoe obshchestvo kyrgyzov v period russkoi kolonizatsii vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX v. i sistema ikh rodstva [Bishkek: Ilim, 1999]: 92): ‘The manap institution arose in the Middle Ages.’ 29 Cf. D. Prior, Twilight Age. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 147 ‘Senior Manap’, a title that was employed for a time by the Russian colonial government (Russian starshii manap); jınjırluu/chınjırluu manap ‘hereditary manap’; chala manap ‘minor manap’, one dependent on a Senior Manap; choloq manap ‘manap of lowest rank’; buqara manap ‘relative of a manap’, who still ranked higher than the common people. There is no evidence of these terms, or of the social taxonomy they encode, before the Tsarist era.30 As for the term manap itself, Barthold could not find it attested earlier than a reference in a narrative of the death of the Kazakh Sultan Kenesarı Qasımov at the hands of Kirghiz defenders in 1847.31 The Soviet Kirghiz historian Begamaaly Dzhamgerchinov dated the earliest known use of the term to 1844 (in a Kirghiz letter to be discussed below);32 no subsequent researcher has been able to push back any further the date of the earliest instance of the term manap in the sources. Dzhamgerchinov was one of the Soviet-era historians who most candidly addressed the lack of source material on the manaps prior to the 1840s;33 nevertheless, the account of the manaps that he erects shares with all other versions a marked reticence with regard to the implications of the temporal coincidence of Russia’s approach and the appearance of the term in the sources.34 The ethnographer Saul M. Abramzon, perhaps drawing conclusions from his ethnographic interviews, was of the opinion that the term manap spread among

30 K.K. Yudakhin, Kirgizsko–russkii slovar’ (Moscow: Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1965): 515. Radloff recorded the term agha manap in 1863, after the Kirghiz in question had submitted to Russia (Radlov, “Observations sur les Kirghis.” Journal asiatique 6e série/2 [1863]: 322). Cf. Soltonoev, [Qızıl] qırghız tarıkhı: 291–97, 305 (chong, chala, and buqara manap); Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie: 55; K.U. Usenbaev, Obshchestvenno-èkonomicheskie otno sheniya kirgizov. Vtoraya polovina XIX–nachalo XX vv. (Frunze: Ilim, 1980): 145. Curiously, Israilova–Khar’ekhuzen’s (Traditsionnoe obshchestvo: 92–3) taxonomy elicited from a field informant in the late twentieth century exactly matches Yudakhin’s. 31 V.V. Bartol’d, “Kirgizy. Istoricheskii ocherk.” In Sochineniya 2.1 (Moscow: Izd-vo vostochnoi literatury, 1963): 530–32. Barthold did not remark on the date, language, title, or content of the narrative he referred to. It apparently was unpublished, since the only text of an oral narrative of the Kirghiz-Kazakh hostilities to be published before Barthold wrote Kirgizy ([N. Zhamanqŭlŭlı], “VII. Pesnya o Kenesarye,” in “Obraztsy kirgizskoi poèzii,” ed. T.A. Seidalin and S.A. Dzhantyurin, Zapiski Orenburgskago otdela IRGO 3 [1875]: 312–419) does not contain the term manap. Cf. V.V. Bartol’d, “Istoriya turetsko-mongol’skikh narodov.” In V.V. Bartol’d, Sochineniya 5 (Moscow: Izd-vo vostochnoi literatury, 1968): 225–6. 32 Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie: 53. 33 Ibid. Cf. Also V.M. Ploskikh and S.K. Khudaibergenov, “Rannie kirgizskie pis’mennye dokumenty.” Izvestiya Akademii nauk Kirgizskoi SSR 4 (1968): 79: ‘From the [early] letters we may conclude that […] the Biys were the ruling elite (the term manap does not occur […]).’ 34 Cf., e.g., V.V. Bartol’d, “Kirgizy. Istoricheskii ocherk”; Usenbaev, Obshchestvenno- èkonomicheskie otnosheniya. 148 Daniel G. Prior the northern Kirghiz ‘in the first half of the nineteenth century’—a seem- ing hedge around the hard anterior limit of the available written source material.35 What little Western scholarship that has been produced on the manaps has derived its assumptions from this thinking.36 Svetlana Jacquesson, in her monograph on processes of social integration among the Tian Shan Kirghiz, moves the question a step ahead, noting that ‘the fact that the recognized chiefs were no longer referred to as biys but as manaps may signify a change in the way power was exercised or in the political system, but at the present state of knowledge this must remain a hypothesis.’37 This paper prepares the way for testing that hypothesis.

II. Finding a Common Language

As mentioned above, the Ch’ing government had ‘introduced an element of external control in the political process of selection and appointment of the Kirghiz leaders.’38 It is just this sort of ‘external control’, but by Russia not China, with which we observe Kirghiz biys engaging when we look at the earliest dated sources on the manaps. The biys alternately wooed, cajoled, and resisted the Russian agents of this control, all the while representing themselves as manaps. The Chinese situation is especially per- tinent to our understanding of the context of events on the Russian–Kirghiz frontier, because the Kirghiz chief who made the earliest known use of the term manap was Borombay Bekmurat uulu (d. 1857 or 185839), a powerful Biy of the Bughu tribe, who was well-known as a subject of the Ch’ing before he submitted to the Tsar.40 Not only the Bughu, whose territory faced the Ch’ing border, but probably more westerly tribes such as the Sarıbaghısh as well, took to the stage in the nineteenth-century Tsarist records not as

35 S.M. Abramzon, Kirgizy i ikh ètnogeneticheskie i istoriko-kul’turnye svyazi (Leningrad: Nauka, 1971): 158. 36 E.g., A. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, 2nd edn (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994): 175–6; P.G. Geiss, Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia: Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003): 109–10. 37 S. Jacquesson, Pastoréalismes: Anthropologie historique des processus d’intégration chez les Kirghiz du Tian Shan intérieur (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010): 33. 38 Di Cosmo, “Kirghiz Nomads”: 358. 39 Ch.Ch. Valikhanov, “Opisanie puti v Kashgar i obratno v Alatavskii okrug.” In Sobra- nie sochinenii v pyati tomakh 3, ed. A. Margulan et al. (Alma-Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1985): 54; Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya: 444. 40 Borombay and other Bughu leaders were observed wearing the colored buttons of the Ch’ing system of military ranks in the 1850s (Ch.Ch. Valikhanov, “Zapiski o kirgizakh.” In Sobranie sochinenii v pyati tomakh 2, ed. A. Margulan et al. (Alma-Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1985): 79, 85). High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 149 colonial novices but as knowledgeable and in some cases practiced actors in the give-and-take of imperial titles and ranks.41 Where the traditional account of the origin of the label manap emphasizes the spread of the term from its beginnings among the Sarıbaghısh to those outside the tribe, it is indeed a non-Sarıbaghısh leader who uses the term as a self-designation in the earliest surviving source. In June of 1845, Borombay sent a letter in Turki (Chaghatay) to the Russian assessor (zase- datel’) of the Ayaguz military district (okrug) requesting permission to submit to Russia, in which in closing he referred to himself as manāb Būrāngbāy Bīkmurāṭ ūghlī. The seal on this letter uses his title biy, in the normal position of Central Asian titles after the name (see Figure 4.1).42 The placement of the term manap before Borombay’s name signals something specific in Central Asian usage: it was not a title, such as bī, khān, bātır (hero), or dādkhwāh (a mid-level Khoqandian title), which usually appear after the individual’s name. For an analogous placement we must look to an honorific term such as er ‘(brave) man, hero’, or ḥājjī; sulṭān was the only title commonly placed before a name. (The analogy between manap and sultan is rather particular, and will be explored in detail below.) Borombay was still referred to simply as a biy in Russian official papers of the 1840s.43

Figure 4.1. Signature and seal of ‘Manap Borombay Bekmurat uulu’, 1845. TsGARK, f. 374, op. 1, d. 1574, l. 15ob. The seal reads Būrānbāy Bī ibn Bīkmurād.

41 The earliest Kirghiz diplomatic contact with Russia was an embassy sent by the Sarıbaghısh Biy Atake, who has been mentioned above (Ploskikh, Pervye kirgizsko–russkie posol’skie svyazi: 32–41). 42 TsGARK, f. 374, op. 1, d. 1574, ll. 15–15ob. The letter is dated June 1845, apparently 3 June, but the Turki scribe’s handling of the Russian date (there is no Hijri date) is not entirely clear. Dzhamgerchinov (Prisoedinenie: 53) wrote, ‘In the sources known to us, the term ‘manap’ first appears in a letter of 30 June 1844 from the Bughu Biy Borombay to the Ayaguz okrug office.’ Dzhamgerchinov gives no archival address, quotation, or facsimile of this letter, and it has apparently not been seen since. Irrespective of whether these two letters may or may not be one and the same, we are assured that the first known use of the term manap was by Borombay in the mid-1840s. 43 Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie: 136 (quoting a document from November 1844); Zh. Kasymbaev, Poslednii pokhod khana Kenesary i ego gibel’ (dekabr’ 1846–aprel’ 1847 gg.) (Almaty: Ana tili, 2003): 130 (quoting a document from February 1847). 150 Daniel G. Prior Borombay Biy’s letter shows how an early user of the term manap nego tiated among different options in his terminology based on the political context of the occasion. These options are clearly apparent in a pair of mutual nonaggression oaths enacted by Kazakh and Kirghiz leaders under Russian auspices in August 1847. This was about four months after the military defeat and execution of Sultan Kenesarı Qasımov of the Kazakh Middle Horde.44 The Kirghiz, after repelling the Kazakh invasion from their territory in the Chu Valley, had continued to exchange raids with the Kazakhs. The oaths, overseen by the Russian officer in charge of the Middle Horde Kazakhs, were an attempt at calming both sides. The most important Kirghiz parties to the agreement45 were two chiefs of the Sarıbaghısh tribe, Jantay Qarabek uulu of the Tınay branch and Ümötalı Ormon uulu of the Esenghul. Jantay (d. 1867) was the elder of the two, who according to Kirghiz oral tradition had been elevated by his people as Khan (probably by the Tınay with some allied groups, including some non-Sarıbaghısh).46 He was a rival and sometime advisor of Ümötalı’s father, the formidable Ormon (d. ca. 1854), who tradition holds was elevated as Khan not long before the final conflict with Kenesarı in 1847.47 Jantay and Ormon had played leading roles in the Kirghiz defense against Kenesarı’s final incursion. The oaths are in two copies signed (or rather sealed) by the Kazakh and Kirghiz representatives respectively.48 Each copy in turn exists in a Turki

44 M. Kozybaev et al. (ed.), Natsional’no-osvoboditel’naya bor’ba kazakhskogo naroda pod predvoditel’stvom Kenesary Kasymova (Sbornik dokumentov) (Almaty: Gylym, 1996): 472–8. 45 The names of the four Kirghiz who affixed seals or tamgi to the agreement were as follows (in the Cyrillic transliteration of the published document): Umetaly Urmanov, Dzhantai Atekin, Dzhalantush Iskhodzhin (tamga), and Toktor Karavchinurov (tamga). 46 The date of Jantay’s elevation is unrecorded, but was probably before 1847. See Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası 1: 170–71; Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 39–43, 297–99. The meaning of the term khan among the mid-nineteenth century Kirghiz, who notably lacked any ruling ‘white bone’ lineage of descendants of Chinggis Khan, clearly differed from that among e.g. the Kazakhs, who raised their Khans from Chinggisid families. The two instances of Kirghiz Khan-elevations best attested by oral tradition, those of Jantay and Ormon (the father of Ümötalı), seem to have been conditioned in part by the political and military threat of Sultan Kenesarı’s expanding enterprise (although Khans among the Tınay went back at least one generation before Jantay; see Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası 1: 165, 170; Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 298). Hence the rank and title assumed by these two men have more akin with the concept of the war-Khan, a temporary post at the head of an army (see Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 172), than with the Chinggisid political dispensation. 47 Ṣidikof, Tārīx: 40 (cf. Sıdıqov, Tarikh: 34); Soltonoev, [Qızıl] Qırghız tarıkhı: 285; Dzhamgerchinov, “Kirgizy”: 121. See also Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 219–20. 48 TsGARK, f. 374, op. 1, d. 1669, ll. 118–19 (cited as published; see below). High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 151 version and a concurrent Russian version; it is not possible to tell from the available evidence whether the Turki or the Russian versions are the originals.49 I have not examined the Kirghiz copy. The Kazakh copy begins with these words:50 1847-nchi yılı va awgust aynıng [space for 1 or 2 characters—date numerals missing] -nchi küninde bizge töbönde möhörlerimizni va tamghalarımıznı salghan sultanlar häm biyler Ulugh Yüzning, Sibir Qazaqlarınıng Poghranish- nay Särdarı Yanaral-Mayor Wishnawaskiy häzrätläri aldında Qaraqırghız näslli yurtnıng manapları häm qädirlu adämläri bilän öz aramızda fätva aytıp däyın qılıp qoyduq bulaycha [...] On [22] August 1847 we, the Sultans and Biys who have affixed our seals and marks below, in the presence of Frontier Superintendent of the Senior Horde and the Siberian Kazakhs [= Middle Horde Kazakhs] Major General Vishnevskii, with the manaps and esteemed men of the lands of those of Karakirgiz descent,51 have sworn and affirmed among ourselves the following [...]52

49 Though it is an easy guess that Russian interests were in the forefront of the agreement and probably guided the documents’ drafting, it would be wrong to discount the possibility of initiative on the part of powerful Kazakh or Kirghiz parties in the region, who may have viewed the Russian approach in the aftermath of the Kenesarı conflict as a chance to curry favor and protection. 50 The transliteration system used for this document is intended to make up for the lack of total clarity of the facsimiles available to me, and thus aims not for graphemic exactitude but for recognition of Turki word forms with a coloration of Qıpchaq/Kazakh or Kirghiz features where these can be inferred. This means, for example, that suffixal skeletons have been left as in their implied Turki (Chaghatay) forms, but Arabo-Persian spellings have been normalized to a spoken Qıpchaq/Kazakh or Kirghiz convention; unwrit- ten vowels have been supplied, and basic vowel harmony has been suggested where appropriate. The letter ä signifies the mid back unrounded vowel, which is usually unwrit- ten; written alif is transliterated as a. 51 All three words in the phrase Qaraqırghız näslli yurt are interesting from a historical perspective. Karakirgiz was the Russian term for the Kirghiz and had no currency in native Central Asian discourse. The Arabo-Persian Turki word näslli ‘consisting of a tribe/race’ in collocation with yurt ‘possession, country, homeland, state’ is unusual in reference to the Kirghiz and could be an attempt on the part of the drafters to clothe imperial Russian concepts of ethnicity and political development in Turki garb, although the parallel Russian version is less ambitious, merely referring to the Kirgizovskii Rod ‘Kirghiz clan/tribe’. 52 This Kazakh copy only, in its two languages, is edited and published in F.N. Kireev et al., Kazakhsko–russkie otnosheniya v XVIII–XIX vekakh (1771–1867 gody). Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1964): 340–43, with a facsimile of the Kazakh document, from which the present excerpt is transliterated and translated; the facsimile is also reproduced on the fourth and fifth unnumbered pages of plates between pp. 244 and 245, in Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya. The ten Kazakhs who affixed their seals or tamgi (marks) to the agreement were as follows (in the Cyrillic transliteration of the published document): Ali Adilov, Akish Ablaev, Rustem Asfandiyarov, Syuk Ablaev, Bulen’ Shankhaev, Tuvganbai Kongel’din (tamga), Acheke Dairbekov (tamga), Supatai Alibekov (tamga), Diikanbai Kobsalov, and Sary Altaev. 152 Daniel G. Prior The parallel Russian version of this copy, which occupies the same page as the Kazakh version in the original, begins: 1847go Goda Avgusta 22 dnya my nizhe sego prilozhivshie pechati i tamgi Sultany i Bii Bol’shoi Ordy v Prisutstvii Gospodina Nachal’nika Sibirskikh Kir- gizov General Maiora Vishnevskago s manapami i pochetnymi lyud’mi Kir- gizovskago Roda zaklyuchili mezhdu soboyu sleduyushchee uslovie... On August 22, 1847 we, the Sultans and Biys of the Great Horde who have affixed seals and marks below, in the Presence of Frontier Superintendent of the Siberian Kirgiz [= Middle Horde Kazakhs] Major General Vishnevskii, with the manaps and esteemed men of the Kirgiz Tribe, have concluded among ourselves53 the following term[s]... The two provisions listed after this preamble are (1) that the Kazakhs undertake to live in peace and friendship with the Kirghiz (Turki: Qaraqırghız [kh]älayıqı bilän; Russian: s Kirgizovskim narodom), and to refrain from raiding (Turki: barımta; Russian: baranta54), theft, and murder, and to adhere to local steppe laws (stepnye zakony) in solving disputes; and (2) in the event of a breach of the first provision, that the undersigned shall incur God’s wrath and prosecution under Russian law. The accompanying copy enacted by Kirghiz representatives is different from the Kazakh copy in several crucial respects. It is known to me only in a recent publication of its Russian-language version,55 which begins as follows:

53 The interpretation of who is implied in the Russian phrase mezhdu soboyu ‘among ourselves’ is debatable, and much hinges on it. (Compare the Kirghiz copy, immediately below.) Since the phrase appears only in the Kazakh copy of this apparently minutely- coordinated pair of oaths, there is justification in proposing a nuance of meaning that distinguishes the Kazakhs and Kirghiz. Such a nuance would be ‘among ourselves, the three named parties—Kazakhs, Russians and Kirghiz’. The explanation of why the Kazakhs would be agreeing on terms to or before other parties while the Kirghiz simply ‘give terms’ is not clear, but as with the ‘or else’ clause (see below), it may be connected to the presumed subject status of the Kazakhs: since they were juridical persons inside Russian legal space, it was possible for them to swear a binding oath before a Russian official witness, whereas the non-subject Kirghiz simply gave the Russians an ‘affidavit’, as it were, of their intentions vis-à-vis the Kazakhs. 54 By 1847 in Russian imperial discourse, the legal nuances that the Kazakhs and Kirghiz understood in their custom of barımta were overwhelmed by the Russian effort to outlaw the practice, to the point that this document turns the term back on its original users and makes them complicit in the Russian misperception; cf. V. Martin, Law and custom in the steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 2001): 140–55. 55 Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya: 125–6. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 153

1847 goda avgusta 22 dnya. My, nizhe sego prilozhivshie sobstvennye tamgi kyrgyzovskogo naroda bii, prislannye po doverennosti naroda nashego k pogranichnomu nachal’niku sibirskikh kirgizov general-maior Vishnevskomu, dali sie uslovie v tom: [...] August 22, 1847. We, the Biys of the Kirghiz people who have affixed our marks below, and who have been dispatched as proxies of the people to the Frontier Superintendent of the Siberian Kirgiz [= Middle Horde Kazakhs] Major General Vishnevskii, have given these following terms: [...] The provisions listed in this copy are (1) that the Kirghiz undertake to live in peace and friendship with the Kazakhs of the Middle and Senior Hordes, who are subjects (poddannye) of the Russian Tsar, and to obey the same provisions as in item one of the Kazakh version; (2) that they will refrain from attacking and rather aid trading caravans entering their lands; and as a final, unnumbered provision, that they will obey and hold these promises as sacred, and in the event of even the slightest transgression they shall incur responsibility before the wrath of God. Even these brief excerpts of the paired documents display a number of interesting variations, on the one hand in terminology between the Turki- and Russian-language versions, and on the other hand in basic content between the Kazakh- and Kirghiz-sealed copies. These differences illumi- nate the political context of the reception of the term manap by all three represented groups. The underlying difference between the two groups of signatories is clearly shown in the ‘or else’ clauses of the two copies. In the event of any transgression the Kazakhs are bound and responsible before Russian law and God, suggesting that they were Russian subjects.56 The Kirghiz, on the other hand, are bound and responsible before God only—because they had not submitted to the Tsar (yet, in 1847). The difference in political status between the two groups that is thus plainly discernible at the ends of the two documents is also the key to understanding their opening statements. The Kazakh representatives were ‘sultans and biys’ enacting an agreement ‘in the presence of Frontier Superintendent of the Senior Horde and the Siberian Kazakhs Major General Vishnevskii, with the manaps and esteemed men of the lands of those of Karakirgiz descent [also present]’ (Qaraqırghız näslli yurtnıng manapları häm qädirlu adämläri). For their

56 Any named individuals to be identified as members of the Senior Horde (who incidentally had not submitted to Russia at that time) would have been the cause for Vishnevskii’s official title having been expanded in the Kazakh copy from ‘Frontier Superintendent of the Siberian Kirgiz [= Middle Horde Kazakhs]’ to include the Senior Horde as well. 154 Daniel G. Prior part, the Kirghiz were ‘Biys of the Kirghiz people [...] dispatched as proxies of the people to the Frontier Superintendent of the Siberian Kirgiz [= Middle Horde Kazakhs] Major General Vishnevskii.’ The Kazakhs were swearing before Vishnevskii and the Kirghiz present, some of whom they called manaps; the Kirghiz did not refer to anyone as manaps, only biys; and their oath was only to Vishnevskii, not in the presence of’ the Kazakhs. The matter of why the Kirghiz should utter their promise to leave the Kazakhs in peace only to Vishnevskii, and not mention the presence of the very same Kazakhs as well, is unclear but may be related to Russia’s differing administrative-rhetorical needs with respect to the subject and non- subject parties to the agreement.57 The asymmetrical deployment of the term manap has a similar trian- gular basis, one that is clearly in counterpoise to the Kazakh sultans. The Kirghiz, in uttering their promises to Vishnevskii only, identified themselves in the simplest manner, which was also the most accurate: they were biys, all the same status. The Kazakhs, however, came to the table in two different status groups—sultans and biys, and the promises they enacted ‘in the presence of’ the Kirghiz had to express parity with their counter- parts. This was not a matter of inflating the Kirghiz’ status for the sake of the Kirghiz themselves; on the contrary, the Kirghiz biys were free of pos- turing. Their representation as manapları häm qädirlu adämläri ‘manaps and esteemed men’ in the Kazakh copy was an expedient circumlocution to suit the Kazakh context of the situation: the Kazakh sultans looked across to the Kirghiz ‘manaps’, and the Kazakh biys faced the ‘esteemed men’ of the Kirghiz.58 Whether the pairing of sultan–manap and biy– qädirlu adämläri/pochetnye lyudi served mainly Vishnevkii’s notion of fair dealing or that of the Kazakh representatives is unknowable from the documents; it is possible that both the Russians and the Kazakhs had an interest in making sure that the promises exchanged on paper were those of peers, but it was Russian officials who preserved the surviving copies of these documents.59 Soon, however, Jantay, Ormon, and other high-level

57 On Russian imperial interventions in Kazakh oath-taking practices, cf. V. Martin, “Kazakh Oath-taking in Colonial Courtrooms: Legal Culture and Russian Empire-Building.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5/3 (2004): 483–514. 58 The reason for the effacement of the status of the Kirghiz Biys, as they are explicitly called only in the Kirghiz copy, is not clear, but like so much else in this set of documents, it is likely related to the fact that the Russian legal status of the Kazakhs put special restric- tions of meaning on their titles and status terms. 59 It is indicative of the anachronistic misinterpretations to which such sources are prone that the two Russian document collections in which these oaths are edited and High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 155 Kirghiz chiefs joined Russian officials in employing the term at a frequency not seen before.60

III. Mixed Messages

On 17 January 1855, a deputation of the Bughu sent by Borombay to Omsk affixed their seals and marks to the first Kirghiz oath of submission to the Russian throne. The chief signatory, Qachıbek Sheralı uulu,61 is referred to as a Manap in both the Turki version (Qirghiz khalāyīqīnīng manāb Qāchī Bīk Shīrālī ūghlī) and the parallel Russian version.62 A related document recognized Borombay, who did not make the journey to Omsk, as the head Manap (Russian glavnyi manap) of the Bughu and conferred upon him the military rank of lieutenant colonel.63 Thus from the first moments in the formal political integration of the northern Kirghiz with Russia, the term manap had a prominent place, and its formation into a title within the Russian colonial administrative system was begun. But other sources show that even among the Bughu at that time the term harbored useful ambiguities. The Russianized Kazakh officer Chokan Valikhanov (1835–1865), him self a Chinggisid, was the first outsider to observe the northern Kirghiz Manap phenomenon up close. Valikhanov had been sent with a Russian military reconnaissance expedition in the spring of 1856 to assess the security of the encampments of Russia’s new nomadic subjects the Bughu; these lay to the east of lake Issyk Kul near some of the Sarıbaghısh Kirghiz (with whom the Bughu had been at war since 1854), sometimes hostile Senior Horde Kazakhs, and the Chinese border. The information Valikhanov obtained from Borombay and others produced the first published refer to the Kirghiz signatories, in the conventional titles of the documents, as ‘manaps’ (see Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya: 125; Kireev, Kazakhsko–russkie otnosheniya: 340). 60 A number of documents attesting usage of the term manap between 1847 and 1853 have been published in Russian: see Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya; N.E. Bekmakhanova, Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana i Srednei Azii k Rossii (XVIII–XIX veka). Dokumenty (Moscow: Insitut Rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2008). 61 See Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası 2: 14. 62 A facsimile of the document in both languages is published in Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie: 145–7, and in Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya, on the sixth through eighth unnumbered pages of plates between pages 244 and 245; the Russian copy of the oath is edited and published in Ibid.: 177–78. 63 Dzhamgerchinov, Prisoedinenie: 144. Podpolkovnik is the Russian rank term in the document. 156 Daniel G. Prior detailed picture of northern Kirghiz society and of the special role played by the biys whose power and prominence had attracted to them the label manap. While still in the field in 1856, Valikhanov began writing a monograph, presumably intended for scholarly and broader Russian audiences, to present the information he had collected. This work lay unfinished and unpublished at his death and for many years after, until it and his diary were published in full in 1961.64 Below is an excerpt from Valikhanov’s account of the manap institution, which he already characterized as an ‘estate’ (soslovie): We have already said that the unlimited, almost despotic power of the manaps was introduced quite recently, and in a certain sense was an abuse of the power of the head of the family (otets semeistva), the biy, as the manaps were formerly called. The first manaps (a powerful, remote despot, as the natives explained [the term]) appeared a short time ago, at first among the Sarıbaghısh. A biy of the Sarıbaghısh by the name of Manap was the first tyrant. Biys of other tribes (rody) took a liking to the status of the manap (manapstvo), and now manap is the common noun for the clan leader (rodonachal’nik) of every sublineage (pokolenie) of the horde. Be that as it may, in the Bughu tribe the [common] people have greater importance, and Borombay himself said to me that they did not have manaps in the strict sense.65 Valikhanov’s explanation shows that the term manap was not without negative connotations within Kirghiz society—and even in Borombay’s mind, for the Russian-confirmed head Manap of the Bughu chose to claim misleadingly (and, it can be inferred, self-servingly) that there were no manaps among the Bughu. The phrase ‘in the strict sense’ is very important here, since it implies that Borombay already recognized that the term had two separate lives, one in Russian official and the other in Kirghiz colloquial discourse. It is not clear how well Valikhanov understood Borombay’s dis- simulation, but it was probably not well at all. Although he referred to

64 Valikhanov, “Zapiski”; Id., “Dnevnik poezdki na Issyk-kul’, 1856 g.” In Ch.Ch.Valikha- nov, Sobranie sochinenii v pyati tomakh 1, ed. A. Margulan et al. (Alma-Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1984): 306–57. On the history of the creation and publication of “Zapiski o kirgizakh” (the conventional title of this monograph applied by Soviet-era editors), see Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii 2, ed. A. Margulan et al. (Alma-Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1985): 356. In his work Valikhanov followed normal Russian usage by calling the Kirghiz by the usual misnomer karakirgizy or dikokamennye kirgizy, which had been necessitated in the Russian language by the widespread habit of calling the Kazakhs Kirgiz. 65 Valikhanov, “Zapiski”: 38. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 157 Borombay and others as manaps starting in 1856,66 he had been personally charmed by Borombay during their short acquaintance, and he wrote in his diary, ‘Borombay was especially courteous as I was departing. I had been inquiring about the clans and about the manaps, and he concluded by saying that all of this was being done at the command of the White Tsar, to confer decorations on them (dlya dachi nagrad).’67 Since Valikhanov’s diary only records one instance of a one-on-one discussion between himself and Borombay, we can be certain that the key to understanding this rather elliptical expression is to be found in the above passage from ‘Notes on the Kirgiz’ in which he cited Borombay’s statement to him: ‘Borombay himself said to me that [the Bughu] did not have manaps in the strict sense.’ For Borombay, manaps ‘in the strict sense’ were the despots he described to Valikhanov, from whose number he excluded himself.68 The Russians, he implied in his parting comment, had taken hold of the term for their own purposes, as a hook on which to hang the medals and awards that came with submission to the Tsar. In this meaning of manap Borombay was pleased to participate; he was less eager to be seen as an abuser of power within his tribe. Valikhanov clearly did not know that Borombay himself had been instrumental, through his correspondence with the Ayaguz okrug office, in satisfying Russian officials’ administrative need for an elite stratum of Kirghiz society, an aristocracy, with whom to deal effectively in the political expansion of the Empire’s borders. There were other northern Kirghiz actors who tried to use the label manap to position themselves with respect to the Russians. One such individual was Qalıghul Alıbek uulu (d. 1899), who is remembered in Kirghiz tradition for two things: as a chechen or master orator, and as the messenger who carried the head of the vanquished Kenesarı Qasımov to the Russian authorities in Omsk.69 A member of the Satıbaldı subdivision of the Sarıbaghısh, in 1861 he was one of a group of Sarıbaghısh leaders

66 Valikhanov, “Dnevnik”: 323–24; Id., “Zapiski”: 82–9 (genealogical tables of the Kirghiz). A year later, the Russian scientist Pëtr P. Semënov (Tyan-Shanskii) traveled through the lake Issyk Kul region, and the posthumously published account of his journey likewise refers to several Bughu and Sarıbaghısh leaders as manaps (see P. Semënov, Travels in the Tian’- Shan’ 1856–1857, trans. L. Gilmour et al. [London: Hakluyt Society, 1998]: 96–97, 143, 145, 154, 173, 195, 198). 67 Valikhanov, “Dnevnik”: 337 68 We may be certain that the phrase ‘in the strict sense’ was Borombay’s idea and not Valikhanov’s insertion, for the simple reason that if Borombay had asserted that the Bughu had no manaps (period), the statement would have been nonsensical and obviously false; Borombay was the sitting, Russian-approved head Manap of the Bughu. 69 On Qalıghul Alıbek uulu (not to be confused with the even more famous orator, sage, and wit, Oluya [‘Saint’] Qalıghul Bay uulu [1785–1855]), see Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın 158 Daniel G. Prior (none of whom had officially submitted to Russia yet) carrying on regular correspondence with the head of the Alatau okrug and district superintendent for the Senior Horde Kazakhs, colonel Gerasim A. Kolpakovskii, in Vernoe.70 Kolpakovskii indiscriminately referred to these correspondents as manaps in at least one letter.71 Having earlier been a signatory to joint letters, about December of that year Qalıghul attempted to send Kolpakovskii a letter of his own, to express his friendship with the Tsar’s Kazakh subjects, his anxiety over being hemmed in by Khoqandian forti- fications, and his allegiance to Russia (in part by repeatedly referring to his past service with Kenesarı’s head).72 A further source of uneasiness for Qalıghul was how the Russian administration would receive this communication, since it did not bear his own seal. In closing he wrote: Bizning könglimiz sizda, bizning ʿärżdadımıznı Aq Padıshahgha häm bilgüzsün khäṭ ibarıp, bizning Aq Padıshahda khäṭimiz bar. Bu khäṭqä negä muhr basmädi demäsün: Sart bizgä ishanıp muhur bergän yoq, sizdin bizgä muhr tikkän yoq, ḥażır qolumızda muhrumız yoq. Ikhlaṣımız ilän yazıp ibargan khäṭimiz muhur. Frisṭab baynıng aman-esenlikni khäṭ yazghuchı Mänaf Khaliqul ʿAli Bek ughlıdın, emdi Ïrısqul Bek ne kap73 qoshluq. We have your wishes at heart, and we have also sent a letter to make our entreaty known to the White Padishah [Tsar], and our White Padishsah has our letter. So let no one say, Why has a seal not been affixed [to this letter]? The Sarts [Khoqandian government] have not entrusted us with a seal, and no seal from you has reached us; so now we have no seal at hand. Our let- qısqacha sanjırası 1: 106–15; Soltonoev, [Qızıl] Qırghız tarıkhı: 318–20; and the annotated translation of the latter passage in Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 332–43. 70 The correspondence, which is dated 4 September–29 December 1861 and involves such individuals as Rısqulbek, Ajı, Adil, and Qalıghul, is collected in TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484: ‘On expression of devotion to the Russian Government by Senior Horde Kazakhs and Kirghiz situated on the far side of the Chu and on the intention of some of them to accept Russian protection.’ At least one letter from the exchange predates this delo: see TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 402, including a letter from Kolpakovskii dated 30 December 1860, which is edited and published in Ploskikh, Kyrgyzstan–Rossiya: 251–2. 71 TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, ll. 14–14ob. 72 TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, l. 31. The letter can be dated approximately by association with the Russian reply of 29 December 1861. The letter has been published in facsimile in Ploskikh, Kirgizy, on the 13th page of unnumbered plates between pp. 160 and 161 (for my study I used a photograph of the original document I made myself in July 2008). Extracts of the document have also been presented and interpreted (with mistakes of attribution and dating) in V.M. Ploskikh and T. Nazaraliev, “Original’nye istochniki po istorii Kirgiz- stana.” In Stranitsy istorii i material’noi kul’tury Kirgizstana (Dosovetskii period), ed. B.D. Dzhamgerchinov et al. (Frunze: Ilim, 1975): 66. The Russian official translation of the letter is found on the next leaf in the TsGARK file; even for such a short, simple letter, the translation is far from exact. ن -ne gäp[?] and the translation ‘as it were’ are doubt ��ک�ا ب� The reading of the ms., as if 73 ful. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 159

ter written and sent with devotion [should be considered as if it bears] a seal. From the writer of the letter [wishing] health to the rich district superintendent—the Manap Qalıghul Alıbek uulu, but [from] Ïrısqul Bek equally, as it were.74 At this point the seal of Ïrısqulbek, a distant relative of Qalıghul’s, is affixed to the letter (see Figure 4.2).74 The title on Ïrısqulbek’s seal is one that was frequently bestowed by the Khoqandian government on its Kirghiz subjects and vassals: dādkhwāh (> Kirghiz datqa).75

Figure 4.2. Partial signature of ‘Manap Qalıghul Alıbek uulu’ and seal of Ïrısqulbek, on a letter dated inductively to 1861. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, l. 31. The seal reads Irīs Qul Bek Dādkhwāh ibn ʿAlī Bek Bī.

It is not clear whether Qalıghul had had the title of manap conferred upon him by the Russian administration, or whether he was using it in the manner in which Borombay had done before his submission, as an honorific that the Russians would have limited ability to verify on their own. He implied that he was justified in expecting to receive a seal from the Russians, which would have borne an authorized title. His statement, ‘no seal from you has reached us’, may have been naïve or simply rhetorical, for the variety of shapes, sizes, designs, and dates of the seals possessed by other Kirghiz men of high rank at the time suggests that they were not an item of standard issue from the Russians. Because the label manap was not a Kirghiz internal title, the term’s placement before the name differs from the normal usage with Central Asian titles, which appear after the name; thus if Qalıghul had held any Kirghiz title such as biy, there was room for

74 Ïrısqulbek was a half-brother of Ormon Khan (Töröqan uulu, Qırghızdın qısqacha sanjırası 1: 206). 75 T. Beisembiev characterizes the title as follows: ‘Demanding justice, honorary title of middle rank with tax immunity; in Kazakhstan was regarded to be higher than title of biy’ (Beisembiev, Annotated Indices: 769). K.K. Yudakhin defined the Kirghiz term datqa as ‘one of the high titles given in the Khoqand and Bukhara Khanates; was equated by several pre-revolutionary scholars with the rank of colonel; one of the duties of a datqa was to report complaints by subjects in a given region to the Khan [...]’ (Yudakhin, Kirgizsko–russkii slovar’: 187). 160 Daniel G. Prior him to record it in his signature, but he did not. In any event it is quite certain that the term manap would have made no difference to the Khoqandian authorities about whom Qalıghul complained in the letter, who were the usual dispensers of the title dādkhwāh (and, as Qalıghul implies, of the seals themselves); the Khoqandians seem never to have used the term manap at all. Faced with the perennial dilemma of someone cor- responding with Russian bureaucrats—‘Dare I send this letter without a seal?’—Qalıghul carefully explained the choice he made to affix the seal of a close associate, Ïrısqulbek Datqa, who clearly was of higher rank than Qalıghul with respect to Khoqand, and who had been Kolpakovskii’s chief correspondent in the joint letters that passed back and forth in 1861. Qalıghul’s letter illustrates the fluid, urgent political situation facing the Sarıbaghısh in the years preceding their biys’ acceptance of Russian suzerainty. Squeezed between two Khoqandian forts (probably Pishpek and Toqmaq, original locations of the cities Bishkek and Tokmok), Qalıghul summed up his prospects in the shadow of Khoqand with a Kirghiz proverb: Ikki qorghan ortasında yatırmız, ʿilajımız yoq. Baqäning özi chöldä bolsa da, közi köldä ‘We are between two forts; we have no recourse [but to you]: though the frog may be on the steppe, his eyes are [always] on the lake’.76 With the slipperiness of a small, darting frog, a person like Qalıghul with no title or seal could represent himself as a Manap in a direct appeal for help from the top Russian military officer in the region.77 In 1861, at the same time that Qalıghul, who had still not submitted to the Tsar, was busy making himself out to be a Manap (against the evidence of his insignificance that is plain from his lack of a seal), the Kirghiz tribe with the most experience as Russian subjects, the Bughu, were negotiating a succession question caused by the death of their agha manap. This post (Russian starshii ‘senior’ manap) had been set up by the Russian administration in emulation of the post of starshii sultan, which had first been created for the Kazakhs of the Middle Horde in the ‘Regulations on the Siberian Kirgiz’ of 1822.78 Necessary archival research on the nature of the

76 TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, l. 31. This proverb is cited in Yudakhin, Kirgizsko–russkii slovar’: 99 in identical wording. 77 In what seems to be his reply to this letter (TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 484, ll. 33–33ob), Kolpakovskii tersely thanked Qalıghul and Ïrısqulbek for their expressions of devotion, and emphasized the desirability of peace between the Kirghiz and those Kazakhs who had submitted to Russia. 78 See V. Martin, “Kazakh Chinggisids, Land and Political Power in the Nineteenth Century: A Case Study of Syrymbet.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 84 and 97 (n. 24); on the 1822 Regulations and subsequent revisions see Martin, Law and Custom: 34–59. The High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 161 post of agha/starshii manap has yet to be done, but by analogy with the Kazakh starshii sultan it may be inferred that this figure held administrative and some judicial responsibilities over a population larger than the volost’ level where the units of the main tribes of the Kirghiz that are commonly called ‘clans’ (such as Tınay and Esenghul under the Sarıbaghısh, or Belek and Qıdıq among the Bughu) were grouped. Once already the superintendent of the Senior Horde Kazakhs, Lieutenant Colonel M.D. Peremyshl’skii, had made a trip to the Bughu territory east of lake Issyk Kul in the late spring of 1858 to mediate a factional dispute over the selection of the successor of the recently deceased Borombay in the post of starshii manap. The Kirghiz had decided this dispute, the first ever of its kind, in favor of Borombay’s son, a youth of about 20.79 Peremyshl’skii appears to have avoided suggesting his own preference, but after the Kirghiz agreed on Borombay’s son, he found it prudent to back the decision: Seeing as how this choice had been made by each faction in the hope of exerting influence on this young man, and not wanting to contradict their decision too soon, I agreed to this choice, but let it be known to all the Manaps that, due to the young age of the one they had selected, I agreed to permit him to take the post only temporarily, with the understanding that if after a year he has justified their trust by the judicious preservation of peace and order in the Bughu tribe (rod) and been elected a second time by the Manaps, only then will he be confirmed in the post.80 Evidently Borombay’s son did not pass the test in his probationary period, because there was another incumbent whose death in 1861 touched off the next problem over succession. The key role Peremyshl’skii played in per- suading the Bughu factions to come to an agreement in 1858 had made an impression on at least some of the Bughu chiefs; in an attempt to circum- origin of the status of starshii sultan among Senior Horde Kazakh tribes neighboring Kirghiz territory evidently preceded the establishment of the Alatau okrug, which occurred in 1856 with the consolidation of submitted Senior Horde tribes and the transfer of the Zailiiskii district center from Kopal to Vernoe (M. Kozybaev et al., Alma-Ata. Èntsiklopediya [Alma- Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya, 1983]: 26): in letters written as early as 1851, Kazakh Sultans of the Senior Horde from the regions of Ayaguz and east of Vernoe were referring to themselves as Starshii sultan (Bekmakhanova, Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana: 190–1). The term agha manap is glossed by the editors of the 1984–1985 edition of Valikha- nov’s collected works as ‘Senior Manap, by analogy with the agha sultan of the Kazakhs’ (Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii 5: 476 n. 6). 79 Bekmakhanova, Prisoedinenie Kazakhstana: 222–4. (report of 26 June 1858 from the governor general of Western Siberia, G.Kh. Gasford, to Foreign Minister A.M. Gorchakov). It will be recalled that Borombay had obtained the rank and title of glavnyi manap ‘Head Manap’ by decree at the time the oath of submission was enacted in 1855. 80 Ibid.: 223. 162 Daniel G. Prior vent the internal Kirghiz deliberations, they appealed directly to the Russian authorities to confirm their candidate. The senior Bughu Manap who died in 1861 was Qachıbek Sheralı uulu, who had been Borombay’s chief proxy in the Bughu oath of submission in 1855. The Kirghiz who corresponded about the succession question with the Russian military governor of Semirech’e oblast’, Colonel G.A. Kolpa kovskii, were Qachıbek’s brothers—all kinsmen of the late Borombay as well. Having apparently noted that neither Borombay nor Qachıbek had survived longer than three years as Senior Manap, and that the previous Russian official had approved of Borombay’s young son in the post, the brothers sent a letter that forwarded as their candidate their own youngest brother Altıbasar, who comes off in the letter as very young indeed. But personal qualities of leadership and judgment concerned the writers less than the continuance of their family’s hold on power. Six years after their submission to the Tsar, the Bughu elders realized that no matter how much they may have wished to decide matters in the old way, their decision would have to be approved by Colonel Kolpakovskii in the district head- quarters at Vernoe. The result was an appeal that clearly draws on two motivating codes, that of the old chiefs confident of their preeminent place in society and that of the new vassals eager to display their loyalty and ease in an unfamiliar status. Beyond that, the supplicants show very little concrete understanding of the new imperial structure they inhabited; and, in the end, related papers stored in the same archival file tell us that the honor of being named Senior Manap went not to Altıbasar and the Sheralin brothers, but to another Bughu named Sarpek Saskin, whose character quickly came to offend both Kirghiz and Russian alike.81 The letter is presented in the Appendix below in its entirety as an example of one kind of text emanating from the northern Kirghiz around the time of their submission to Russia. Among many interesting aspects of this letter, it may be noted that only one of the senders is referred to as a Manap: this is Nıysha Sheralı uulu, the eldest member of the group, either ‘great Manap’ or ,ا �ل � نم��ا who in the closing identified himself as وع ب� ‘elder Manap’, and who validated the document not with a seal, but with

81 According to the editors of the 1984–1985 edition of Valikhanov’s collected works, Sarpek was a cousin of Borombay (Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii 5: 476 n. 6). Cf. Radloff, “Observations”: 322: ‘À la mort de l’Aga-manap Katchibai, le gouvernement refusa de don- ner cette charge à son fils, sans doute parce que il le trouvait trop jeune, et il en investit Savi-Bek [sic], homme d’un character dur et violent […].’ High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 163 a finger-blot (see Figure 4.3).82 Thus, even while the letter’s senders were acting in a manner that showed their resignation to and even positive appropriation of the imperial political process,83 one of their number, like Qalıghul without his seal, hung on to the view that being a Manap meant simply saying one was a Manap. The status of manap was not something the Russians could completely control.

Figure 4.3. Seals of Alghazı Sheralı uulu (top) and Baybughra Ajıbay uulu, and finger-blots of Nıysha Sheralı uulu and Yunus Sheralı uulu, on a letter dated inductively to 1861. The top seal reads (in Russian) Pechat’ Algazy Shiralina and (in pseudo-Persifying Chaghatay, and in reverse order from the Central Asian norm) muhr-i bī Alghāzī bin Shīr Alī; the bottom seal reads (in reverse order from the Central Asian norm) Bāy Būghrā bātūr ibn Ḥajjī Bāy Bī, and bears a Hijri date of 1267, or ad 1850/51. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 516, ll. 1–1ob.

Another letter from around the same time shows early examples of the term manap used on seals themselves. The letter, sent to Colonel Kolpa kovskii by a group of Bughu Manaps (who now unequivocally refer to themselves as such in their opening salutation in the Turki original text) was in response to complaints about Bughu raiding lodged with Kolpakovskii by members of the Kazakh Senior Horde. The senders identify themselves as Bughu tayfasining manapları ‘Manaps of the Bughu tribe/people/com munity’,84 under which collective label the following names are listed: Biy Nıysha Sheralı uulu (see above), Biy Muratalı Pirnazar uulu, Balbay Ishkhoja

82 In his lifetime, Qachıbek had made a similar choice to do without a seal and affix others’ seals instead, while calling himself a manap (in a request of ca. September 1850 to the superintendent of the Senior Horde Kazakhs, published in Russian in Ploskikh, Kyrgyz- stan–Rossiya: 141) 83 Alghazı Sheralı uulu had been sent to Omsk on a diplomatic mission in 1824, but the envoys’ request to be allowed to accept Russian suzerainty was met only with promises of protection (Karypkulov, Istoriya: 496). 84 The phrase Bughu tayfasi, with the Arabo-Persian loanword ṭā’ifa, has a peculiarly bookish ring, and may already reflect the influence of Russian imperial concerns for ethnographic description and hierarchical cataloging of subject peoples. 164 Daniel G. Prior uulu, Tilekmat Pirnazar uulu, Sultanqul Albay uulu, ‘and the rest of the Belek Manaps.’85 The seals of Balbay and Muratalı attract the most interest (see Figure 4.4). Balbay’s seal takes the teardrop shape traditionally reserved in Central Asia as a prerogative of persons at the rank of khan or sultan.86 This seal also continues the break with Central Asian carving tradition noticed above in the seals of Alghazı Sheralı uulu and Baybughra Ajıbay uulu, which were inscribed beginning at the top and with continuing lines progressing downward; the normal order of the lines is from bottom to top. Also noteworthy is the fact that Balbay’s seal contains the word manap in Turki: as usual, since it is not a true title, the label precedes Balbay’s name. Muratalı, with frank efficiency, had the word manap carved in Russian on his seal. Thus in correspondence addressed by Kirghiz writers to Russian recipients, men with seals and without them called themselves ‘manaps’, and if they employed the term manap in their seals, these were made in ways that broke with Central Asian seal-carving traditions. In both cases we can see that, while Russian rule over the northern Kirghiz was solidifying, the Russian concept of the meaning of the term manap gained increasing importance for the Kirghiz themselves.

Figure 4.4. Seals of Balbay Ishkhoja uulu (top left: Manāb Bālbāy bin Ishkhūjah), Muratalı Pirnazar uulu (right: Turki not completely legible; Russian Manapa Murataliya) and Tilekmat Pirnazar uulu (bottom: Tīl Aḥmad ibn Bīr Naẓar Bī), on a letter datable by induction to around 1861. TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 498, l. 8.

85 The letter is in TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 498, ll. 8–8ob (reversed). 86 Another example of a teardrop-shaped seal belonging to a Kirghiz of non-Chinggisid status is that of Atake, grandfather of Jantay, found on a letter from 1785: see Shabdan Baatyr: Epokha i lichnost’. Dokumenty i materialy, ed. Zh. Abdyldabek kyzy (Bishkek: Sham, 1999), the second unnumbered facsimile plate after page 256. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 165 IV. Intercepted Letters: Kirghiz and Khoqandians Discuss High Ranks

We have seen examples of discourse created by northern Kirghiz and intended for Russian readers (and Russianized listeners, in the case of Borombay with Valikhanov) from the 1840s to the early 1860s.87 In none of the documents from the period just examined was it possible to find the word manap in a totally native setting, in the words of Central Asians addressing other Central Asians. It becomes possible to pin down the native context starting around 1859, when for the first time datable written evidence shows us purely Central Asian discourses on the Kirghiz, as distinct from the ways in which Central Asians represented themselves to Russian interlocutors. In these documents, the word manap is not found. Rare as they are, it is possible to find examples of exclusively Central Asian discourse in archives established by and for the Russian authorities. In the Central State Historical Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan in Almaty, amid files filled with normal paperwork passed between Russian hands or between Russians and Central Asians, I found (in a sampling that was not exhaustive) about a dozen pieces of correspondence that had been addressed by Central Asians to Central Asians yet had found their way into the Russian bureaucracy. For convenience I call these ‘intercepted letters’, though the exact details of their acquisition are not known. In many cases this probably involved the willing offices of Central Asians themselves in the ‘interception’, as when a Kirghiz candidate for the oath of submission would turn over to the Russians any letters he received from the Khoqandians as a sign of his loyalty and good intentions toward the White Padishah. In short, the few intercepted letters I have so far identified provide not a single instance of the term manap circulating between Central Asians when no Russian reader was anticipated. Most of the intercepted letters were written by Khoqandian officials, some of them quite high-ranking, to their northern Kirghiz subjects demanding support and loyalty in the face of the Russian advance.88 One

87 There are also some instances, as expected, of Kazakhs referring to Kirghiz manaps in correspondence with Russians, such as a letter of February 1862 from Sultan Tezek to Kolpakovskii dealing with the same incident of raiding (TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 498, ll. 15–15ob): Būghīning manāblārīnah khaṭ yāzib yubārdūk ‘we wrote a letter to the Bughu manaps’, which is faithfully translated in the Russian version (l. 16ob). But such instances of Kazakh usage are harder to find. 88 Most of the letters examined for this survey were found in TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 167, such as ll. 107–107ob, 110 (letters from Turdiquli Bek Agha Biy to Jantay Batır, Khudayar Biy, and Baytik Batır); ll. 127–127ob (letter from Mulla Turdiquli Bek Agha Biy to Jantay Batır and Khudayar Biy); ll. 128–128ob (letter from [seal obscure] to Jantay Batır); ll. 134–134ob 166 Daniel G. Prior letter in particular, however, has a Kirghiz author and Kirghiz addressees: this is a letter that Ümötalı, the son of the famous Sarıbaghısh Khan and manap Ormon, wrote before his submission, sometime between 1859 and 1861, to a list of Bughu biys and batırs, calling for ghazāt or holy war against the infidel Russians on behalf of the Khoqandian Khan.89 Ümötalı’s letter begins:

ت خ ز ت �خ ش � ت نن To our well-wishers, the yurt د و�ل��وا ه ی��م� �یور� ی��ی �سی و ای��لا � �م��ک�ا yäkhshisi as well as the people: [polite salutations...] [polite salutations...] Muratalı ن �ق ت ا ک� ت �مرا د ع��لی ب�ی و ��س��ل��ط�ا � �ل ب��ا �ی و ��ی�ل �م�� ب�ی Biy, Sultanqul Bay, Tilekmat ق ن ض ��ا � ��ک � � �� ا �� ک � ,Biy, Qachıbek Biy, Yunus Biy و جی بی بی و یو س بی و ری ب بی بی و Zarıpbek [Sarpek] Biy, Qılıch �ق ف� ق �ق ن غ �ی��ل��ج ب�ی و ��ا ��لب��ا �ی ب��ه�ا د ر ب��ا ��لٮ�ا � ب�ی �را ج ب�ی و �و �ا �ی ,Biy, Balbay Batır, Balbaq Biy � ق ت ق � ��ه�ا د د � ن � ا � � ��س�ه ��ه � ��س�ا ��س�ا ل � Qarach Biy, Qarach Biy son of ب� ر ی� ر ج� بی و و ب بی و م ی بی و ,Noghay Batır, Toqsaba Biy ن ن ت ی��ا لم��ح��م�د ب�ی و ای�م�ا � ب�ی و ب�رک ب��ا �ی ب�ی و �ور د و�ل�� ب�ی ,Samsalı Biy, Jalmamat[?] Biy Ïyman Biy, Berkbay[?] Biy, and ]... [ Nurdöölöt Biy [...]

Although all of the individuals named here bear the titles of either biy or batır, the address in the opening salutation, yurt yäkhshisi va ilat, signifies a different social distinction, between the upper class (yurt yäkhshisi) and the common people (ilat). As it happens, seven of the seventeen men addressed in this letter (Muratalı, Sultanqul, Tilekmat, Qachıbek, Yunus, Sarpek, and Balbay) were named in documents examined above. It is not clear, however, which of these men Ümötalı intended to address as the elite yurt yäkhshisi and which as common ilat; the distinction between the titles biy and batır found in the list does not seem to correspond. It is simplest to conclude that to Ümötalı, all of the named individuals were yurt yäkhshisi, and that the ilat or their representatives were too numerous or insignificant to mention by name. This is important, because we find in this list three names that bore the label manap in letters and seals of about the same time, which were discussed above: Muratalı, Qachıbek, and Balbay. Quite apart from the fact that Ümötalı never refers to anyone as a manap, his grouping together of biys and batırs under the label yurt yäkh-

(letter from Narmuḥammad Parvanachi to Jantay Batır); ll. 135–135ob (letter from Tashmuḥammad Dadkhwah and Mulla Turdiquli Bek to Jantay Dadkhwah); ll. 140–140ob (letter dated ah 1280/1863–1864 from Mulla ʿAlimqul [regent of Khoqand] and Ming Bay Parvanachi to Jantay Batır). 89 TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 365, ll. 12–12ob. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 167 shisi shows that to the Kirghiz elite themselves the status of manap did not have the same dialectical import that it had in, for example, the Russian- backed Kazakh oath of 1847, where Kirghiz ‘manaps and esteemed men’ had been lined up across from Kazakh ‘Sultans and Biys.’ Ümötalı’s seal (see Figure 4.5) is telling as well: in it he is simply Ümötalı Biy; the famous Ormon named in his patronymic is not styled Ormon Khan or Manap Ormon, but Ormon Datqa, with the Khoqandian title. The Hijri date carved on the seal is not clear, but it may be 1275/1858–1859, a few years after Ormon died and thus well after a spate of correspondence in which Ormon and Ümötalı had self-identified as manaps to, and been referred to as manaps by, various Russian officials from okrug level up to the Foreign Ministry.90 Even by the time he placed his seal on this letter ca. 1860, Ümötalı, who was known by then to close observers such as Valikhanov and Semënov–Tyan-Shanskii as a quintessential manap,91 had no use for the title or status of manap in reaching out to the grandees of the rival Bughu. These very same Bughu had Russian-confirmed Manaps of their own at the time, a fact which certainly did nothing to promote Ümötalı’s use of the term in the context of his call for holy war against the Russians.

Figure 4.5. Seal of Ümötalı Biy (Ummet ʿAlī Bī ibn Ūrmān Dādkhwāh) on a letter dated inductively to 1859–1861, the date range of the file (TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d.365); the seal is on l. 12ob.

Conclusion

Features of Ümötalı’s letter of 1861 provide an appropriate summary of the state of the title and status of manap in northern Kirghiz society at the beginning of the 1860s, a time when submission to Russia was proceeding at a quickening pace with the initiative—and resigned acceptance—of their leading men. Ümötalı called these men Biys and Batırs in the confi-

90 See above, note 60. 91 Valikhanov, “Zapiski”; Id., “Dnevnik”; Semenov, Travels. 168 Daniel G. Prior dence that his words would be read by Kirghiz alone, yet the Bughu leaders he addressed in this fashion were already highly experienced in the new system that Russian rule had imposed over them, in which the term manap was attached to an at least theoretically powerful office that attracted contending factions. In the 1840s–1860s the term manap had different meanings for different people in different situations. Most ambivalent is its significance to the very people whom history has associated with it, the northern Kirghiz elite. The manap estate92 had arisen out of the stratum of biys under the influence of the Russian Empire, if not to answer to specific organizational requirements, then in any case to fulfill certain presumptions held by the Russians, while the presence of Khoqandian, Kazakh, and Ch’ing political patterns acted as catalysts. One presumption was that a status and later a position comparable to that of the Kazakh Sultans was necessary, first in cases such as the 1847 oaths of friendship that required an approximation of parity between representatives of the two ethnic groups. Apparently the elaboration of the manap estate was in part an inadvertent result of an attempt to overcome the simple lexical dissonance between the Kazakh term biy and its Kirghiz twin. Biys had been supreme among the Kirghiz, not subordinate to Chinggisid sultans and khans; the documents analyzed here suggest that it was only when the Kirghiz and their neighbors were inscribed on the ethnic grid of the empire that the bad ‘fit’ between the Kazakh term biy and the Kirghiz term biy resulted in the invention of a slot above the Kirghiz biys. The label that was ready at hand happened to have some notoriety; the personal testimony of an early aspirant to the Russian dispensation, Borombay, shows that by the time the Russians arrived, at least one Biy of the northern Kirghiz had become uncomfortable with the

92 I apply the term ‘estate’ to the manap phenomenon advisedly. This is not to equate it with the concept of the social estate (soslovie) that was a mainstay of Russian social history since the nineteenth century, as in Valikhanov’s usage, quoted above. In my rough- and-ready view of sociological terminology, estates differ from classes, which are analyzed according to their similar features across diverse societies, which are of a markedly economic character, and whose members may even undertake common actions across ethnic and political boundaries in the name of their class; and from castes, which are strongly hereditary; and from institutions, which do not necessarily involve family relations in any way. To reemphasize: I do not mean to imply that the manap estate was, like Russian sosloviya, ‘consciously established by the all-powerful state’ or even theoretically ‘capable of restrain- ing autocracy’ (G.L. Freeze, The soslovie [estate] paradigm in Russian social history, Amer- ican Historical Review 91/1 [1986]: 12); rather, with the phrase ‘the manap estate’ I simply recognize that the manap families played a constitutive but not easily characterized role in society. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 169 way the label manap was being applied to them by their commoners. It was not a title; it was more like a weapon of the weak, and the meager textual remains of discourse carried on with no expectation of a Russian hearing suggest that the strong had no use for the term except when dealing with the Russians. The seals of Borombay, Jantay, Ümötalı, and others in power in northern Kirghiz society during the 1840s to the 1860s continued to rely on the institutions of biy, batır, and (from the Khoqandian side) datqa—in short, the old yurt yäkhshisi or upper class—for validation, even as their protestations of loyalty to Russia required them to adopt manap alongside the old terms. It is indicative of the equivocal character of the label manap in native Kirghiz parlance that none of these leaders ever abided it in the dignified titular position after his personal name. In the future lay the submission of the last independent Kirghiz in the north,93 and a nearly half-century-long process of accommodation, collaboration, and mutual suspicion accompanied the development of the manap estate into a social appendage that was widely deplored by Tsarist- era Russians and Kirghiz alike. This future was foreshadowed by none other than Chokan Valikhanov, whose groping toward a conceptualization of the manaps in 1856 had left him prone to the artful doubletalk of Borombay, the first Russian-confirmed Manap. Subsequently Valikhanov’s intimate involvement in native affairs in Semirech’e soured his thinking. In a letter to G.A. Kolpakovskii, the superintendent of Alatau okrug, in December 1864, he wrote a blistering indictment of Russia’s role in northern Kirghiz affairs, specifically among the Bughu: Among the Kirghiz the aristocratic element did not exist historically, just as there was no centralized tribal (rodovoi) government. There, every tribe was governed by its own Biy.94 It turned out, of course, that some manaps, who were powerful as patriarchs (rodovichi), succeeded in gaining suprem- acy, such as Ormon and Borombay, though this was coercion. Nevertheless, these men had unquestionable merits: the one [Ormon] bravery, the other an excellent mind. We, however, having bestowed the title of agha manap on Sarpek, who is of no consequence and notorious for his deceitfulness,

93 As it happens, the last manap to submit appears to have been Ümötalı, who took the oath for the final time in 1867 (N. Severtsov, Puteshestviya po Turkestanskomu krayu i izsledovanie gornoi strany Tyan’-Shanya 1 [Obshchie otchety o puteshestviyakh 1857–1858 godov] [St. Petersburg: K.B. Trubnikov, 1873]: 342–44; later A. Khasanov [Vzaimootnosheniya kirgizov s Kokandskim khanstvom i Rossiei v 50–70 godakh XIX veka (Frunze: Kirgizskoe gos. uchebno- pedagogicheskoe izd-vo, 1961): 45] noted a relevant archival document [not seen by me]: TsGIA Kaz. SSR [= TSGARK], f. 44, op. 1, sv. 267, d. 5269, l. 12 [1867–1868 gg]). 94 Valikhanov’s assured statement that the biys did not constitute an aristocracy remains open to question. 170 Daniel G. Prior

have elevated a chance phenomenon into a permanent dignity. This was a mistake in and of itself. We get positively no benefit from the agha manap, and while propping up his importance we do harm to ourselves, alienate the people, and strengthen other manaps against us [...]. I believe we must support the old governing order among the Kirghiz, so that each tribe is governed by its own Biy. Then there will be competition between them, for one to excel over the others.95 Close to the end of the Tsarist era, liberal Russian administrators held that the Kirghiz manaps had overtaken the Kazakh Sultans in forming an exploi- tive ruling class: [N]owhere among the Kazakhs is there such a sharp distinction and antagonism between the ‘white’ and ‘black’ bones as there is between the Kirghiz ‘manaps’ and ‘bukhara’. A ‘manap’ is a nobleman (dvoryanin); ‘bukhara’96 are the common people. [...] Several tribes (rody), as e.g. the Sayaq, are considered to be exclusively manap in composition, and owing to their numbers play a leading role vis-à-vis the ‘black’ tribes, and in every aspect of local life they field their own candidates for elected positions—heads of volosts (volostnye upraviteli), Biys, heads of auls97 (aul’nye starshiny), etc.98 In this Tsarist publication the manaps are considered to have been a hereditary nobility; the Kirghiz manaps were now conceived as rulers by blood analogous to the Kazakh töre or white bone. The antagonism between manaps and commoners that had clearly been growing since at least Valikhanov’s time became a commonplace of the manap estate. The epic-like poem mentioned above that contains the earliest mention of manaps in a Kirghiz narrative source, written under the patronage of the leading Manap of the era, Shabdan Baatır, the son of Jantay, expresses defiant, almost crude admiration for the collusions of a mullah and manaps:

95 Valikhanov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 5: 169–70. 96 From Arabo-Persian fuqarā’ ‘the poor, the common people’. 97 The aul (from Kazakh: ‘encampment’) was the smallest unit of local administration among the Central Asian nomads in the Russian system. 98 Pereselencheskoe upravlenie, Materialy po kirgizskomu zemlepol’zovaniyu. Fergans- kaya oblast’. Namanganskii uezd (Tashkent: Pereselencheskoe upravlenie, 1913): 24–5. This report from Namangan district shows that by the time it was published (1913) the manap category had spread southward to the territory of the former Khoqand Khanate, where it had not occurred before the Russian takeover. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 171

Their mullah, Qudayqul—himself an ambler in Qudayqulu Moldosu— [the herd of] men, the heroes’ comrade, who özü adamdın jorġosu, often gouged the poor—he sends no one to hell. bečaranı köp jegen He was the mullah of all the Kirghiz, and their baatırlardın joldošu— khoja, on account of his being a mullah, for he tozoq jaqqa jiberbeyt; delivered judgments to the people—their tiger, bütkül Qırghız moldosu— who pounced upon the common people. Turning šarat aytsa elderge up his nose at the poor, he supported the moldo turmaq qojosu— manaps.99 buqaranın üstünö čamınıp čıqqan jolborsu— kembaġaldı sasıq dep manaptardı qoldoču. 99 The copyist of this manuscript, Belek Soltonoev, by origin a lower-class Sarıbaghısh who sympathized with the Bolshevik cause, left little doubt in his own historical work (written down between 1895 and 1934) that he was a champion of the poor and a staunch opponent of the Kirghiz manaps.100 Strong disapproval of the manaps’ grip on the Kirghiz masses was not limited to the victims; Russian scholars and journalists in colonial Turkestan published frank exposés of the manaps’ excesses.101 In 1905 the agronomist O.A. Shkapskii maintained, ‘The manap class has persisted not as a relic in society, but as a powerful social phenomenon that has not simply adapted to the new conditions of life; rather, it has adapted these new conditions to itself.’ 102 Saul M. Abramzon was among the cohort of intellectuals that the early Soviet state tasked with weakening the ‘feudal-clannic’ manaps through socio-cultural research;103 by the time he had the chance to publish

99 Prior, The Šabdan Baatır Codex: 105–7. (lines I. 68–79). 100 See, for example, his references to manaps as qan icher ‘bloodsucker’: Soltonoev, Qızıl qırghız tarıkhı: 111–15, 161, 333, 350, 358, 378, 380–1. Soviet concepts of ethno-national identity and history are apparent in the various textual layers of the surviving copy of Soltonoev’s work, as is language that seems to be borrowed from catch-phrases of Bolshe- vik class struggle, though these elements have not been carefully analyzed to distinguish them from pre-Soviet era portions of the text. 101 E.g., Anon. “Manap i bukara.” Turkestanskiya vedomosti (22 February 1903); O.A. Shkapskii, “Kirgizy–krest’yane.” Izvestiya IRGO 41/4 (1905): 770–6. The Tsarist era is examined in Tetsu Akiyama, “On the authority of a Kyrgyz tribal chieftain: The funeral ceremonies of Shabdan Jantai”, paper delivered at the workshop ‘Social History of Modern Central Asia: A Focus on Arabic-script Documents (18th–20th centuries)’, at the Oriental Institute, Martin Luther University Halle–Wittenberg, 11–12 December 2009 (http://www. orientphil.uni-halle.de/sais/veranstaltungen-2009–12–11.php, retrieved 18 December 2012). 102 Shkapskii, “Kirgizy–krest’yane”: 772. 103 S. Abramzon, “Sovremennoe manapstvo v Kirgizii.” Sovetskaya ètnografiya 3–4 (1931): 43–59; Id., “U istokov manapstva.” Sovetskaya Kirgiziya 256, 262 (Nov. 1930) (quoted in Abdyldabek kyzy, Shabdan Baatyr: 237–43). Cf. Kushner, Gornaya Kirgiziya; P. Pogorel’skii and V. Batrakov, Èkonomika kochevogo aula Kirgizstana: Po materialam èkspeditsionnogo 172 Daniel G. Prior his voluminous field research and formulate northern Kirghiz ethnology in a more objective manner,104 Manap families had long since vanished in the whirlwind of Stalinism.105 In a sense, this study has removed a ‘layer of dust’ that has sat on the question of the northern Kirghiz manaps since the Soviet era. Political considerations may have been to blame originally for discouraging recognition of the fact that the development of the manap estate was inextrica- bly linked with Russian colonialism; over time, cultural norms in Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship set in and the dust settled. What we find under- neath is summarized succinctly by Abramzon: ‘It is wrong to connect the origin of the whole social institution [of the manaps] with the emergence of the term. No fundamental difference between the manaps and biys can be found, nor indeed was there any, evidently.’106 It is certainly true that the problem of the manaps in Kirghiz social history is essentially a sub- question of the nature of the biys. However, two conclusions established in the analyses above must not be ignored. First, Kirghiz biys had no use for a title called manap before the time that the Russian Empire began to expand into their homeland. Second, the title came to be used specifically to address certain circumstances in which the biys found themselves in the new colonial space. All that we know about the manap estate comes from the colonial context; the evidence that backs up my conclusions is indirect and lodged in disparate sources—some of the most important of which are not even straightforwardly Kirghiz, or Russian, or Kazakh— sources that defy systematic methods familiar in social history, and require instead some of the ‘hand-made tools’ characteristic of philology. I have not shown that no Kirghiz person bore the title manap before the Russians arrived, only that the best evidence upon which the existence of such figures could be argued is ethno-historical in nature and chronologically unreliable, and more compellingly, that the documentary evidence clearly points to the close approach of Russian power as the conditioning factor

obsledovaniya Sredne-aziatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta (Moscow: Sovnarkom K.A.S.S.R., 1930); M.G. Sakharov, Osedanie kochevykh i polukochevykh khozyaistv Kirgizii (Moscow: Tsentral’noe byuro kraevedeniya, 1934). 104 Abramzon, “Ètnicheskii sostav”: 11–13. 105 On the political campaign to eliminate the manaps in the 1920s and 1930s see Burov–Petrov, Na bor’bu s baistvom i manapstvom (Frunze: Kirgizskoe Gos. izdatel’stvo, 1927). 106 Abramzon, “Ètnicheskii sostav”: 32; repeated almost verbatim in his 1971 monograph, Kirgizy: 158. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 173 that led to the emergence, instrumentalization, and wide spread of the use of the term manap as a title. The efforts of some biys, which led to their emergence as a recognized social stratum—as manaps—were enabled by the experiences of the northern Kirghiz under Tsarism. In a sense, this case is an example of the well- known processes of invention and rearrangement of political and social categories that occur worldwide under conditions of colonialism.107 I believe that, given the kinds and amount of source material we possess, the nineteenth-century social history of the northern Kirghiz will not fall into order easily at the mere evocation of colonialism, no matter where we see the power emanating—from Russia, or Khoqand, or China. The realiza- tion that the manaps were in part a product of Russian–Kirghiz colonial agendas merely sharpens the sense of what we do not yet understand about the older estate of the biys, and about earlier institutions of high rank and power among the Kirghiz, such as qashqa in the sixteenth century. With these categories we must carefully compare those with more markedly external form or content, such as the Khoqandian title dādkhwāh (Kirghiz datqa), the Ch’ing-conferred akhalakci, and what by now can be considered the classic case, the title and status of Manap. It is entirely possible that a thorough examination of the Biy estate among the Kirghiz would reveal analogous hegemonic underpinnings, as perhaps from China or even the Qazaqs. In any case, my sense is that social historians of Central Asian pastoral peoples of the pre-Tsarist era should accustom themselves to thinking of their pursuits as a search for the edges of aristocracy.

Appendix

This letter (TsGARK, f. 3, op. 1, d. 516, ll. 1–1ob.) is written in a fairly neat nasta’liq hand in black ink with a qalam on both sides of a single sheet of common Central Asian paper approximately 23 cm wide by 19.5 cm high, which was folded in half on its long dimension to produce a four-page card or booklet. No cover, date, or external seals exist; the letter is dated inductively to 1861 (see p. pp. 162–3 and Figure 4.3 above). The complete transcription has been kept as faithful as possible to the original and is not normalized to any presupposed spoken convention of the author. Thus the language of the letter appears as mostly common Central Asian Turki with a few scattered features that mark it as coming from the pen of a Kirghiz speaker. The line divisions in the text are as in the original; numerals in square brackets in the translation refer to approximate line numbers in the text.

107 Cf. Martin, Law and Custom; Ead., “Kazakh Oath-taking”; Ead., “Kazakh Chinggisids”. 174 Daniel G. Prior َّ ق غ غ ق �عز ت�ل ا �ل � ز �ز ا ��ن �ه � �� عز �ن ��و و وع یو� � �ی و م بو ی ر �ی�ی ا� � ت �ف ق ن � �ق ف� خ� ض ت ن ب��ی�ل کوچ�ی پ�ر�ی��س��ا � پ��ا �ل��و��ی� کک�ا �لپ��ا �و�� کس�ی ��ر� لاری��ه ق ت آ غ ت �م�ا � ��ا � ��ک ��ا � ن��ن�ک � �ه ��س ن��ش��ا ��ا � د � ن یور چی بی ب ور ی یآ ب ور ی� ن � ن ن ن ن � غ ذ و ای��ی �سی �یو��ی��س ب��ای��دی� � �ک�ی��ج��ه ای��ی �سی � �ل��ا � �ی ت 5 ��ا � د � ن ک� � ک� � ��س� ا ��ع�د ن��د ه ب ور ی� و ب و ب ل م ب خ نن ن ق ض � ت �ق � ��د ا �ی ��ک ا�مر�ی ب�ر�ل�� ا �سی ی��ٮ�� ب� ��ا چ�ی ب��ی�ک ت ز ت ت ز خ ت غ ب��ا �ور�م� او�و ب � �ک�ی��د �ی ای�م�د �ی ��س� �ر�م��لو ق ت � ن اع� ا ا��د � ا ت��ن��ه �مز ک ��ا � �� ا � ا ت��ک�ا ل م ی و ب و � ی چی بیک ب ور و � ن ن ن ک� ن ز خ غ ش �ق دی� ��ک�ی�� ای��د � ی ی�م��سی ب��ا ر دی�م�ا� ک�� د ا �ه �� ک�ر �یو��اری��د ه ذ ن ز نن � ش نن 10 �م�� ک�ور ای��د و� �ل�ک�ا� لار�م��ک ه�م�ه ��سی ب�ر ��ی��را لی ��ک غ� ز غ ز �ق � ت ۥ او�ول لار �ی �م� اۥ ول ی��ا �ل��و� ��ا چ�ی ب��ی�ک ب��ا �ور ا و �ل�د �ی ز ن ذ ا ک�الا �مز �ه � خ�� م� ت� لا ��ن� ک�ز � �ل��س�ه د ه و� ر � ر ی َ ری � بو نش أ َّ ز ن نّت ز ز ا �� ا �ل��ل�ه ط�ی�ر�م� د ی��ک�ا� ��ی��م� ب��ا ر �ی�ره ت ق ز آ ز ن ش �و�و� � ط�ا ب��اب��ا �م�دی�� ب��ی�ر �ی او��ب��و ا �لو ذ نع 15 ل ن��ن� خ�� م�ت�ن��د ه ا ت�� ن ا ا � �ز ل �ه ار ک و ک�ا��ل ر یرک�ا� ب� ار م ش نَّ ت نن ت ن ن ز ن ز ��ول ��ی�� ک او��س��و�� م� ی��ه او�یم��دک�ار�م� ز آ غ ��س ��لن��د �م ت��ه �ل د � ن ا�ن� �مز � ��لت� ��ا �ص�ا �ه آ � ب ر ب و ی� یی � ی ب ر غ ن ق خ ذ تن خ� ت � �ه �م��ا ب� ��لی�� م��ی �مر �م�� ای��د و ب� ب��ی�ر��س�ه ز ق ۥ غ لا د�� ه ��الا�مز ��ا �ش��لق ��ل��س�ه د ه ا �ل��ا ر آی ب �یر ب � ی � ی غ ن غ ز خ ذ تن � �ق 20 �ی��ا � � �ه لار �ی ب��ی��لار �� م��ی ب ج��ا �ی��لو ب� ت ز ن ز آنن ن � ا �م د ��ک�ا� ا �م��د �م ��ا � ��ک ا � � وآر ر � ی و ی و � ب ر و چو غ ن ق ز ن ن ق غ ن� ز ب�و � �ه �م��ا ب� ��لی�� لوا�ی�م��دی�� ا �ل��ا ی��م� چ��ه ف ُ ن �ز لا ن��ن�ک ج�مغ�� مز ن��ن�ک ��ا ت� � �ل�� ا � �ل�ک�ا ��مز ب� ر ی � آ و بو ب و � �خ ش ن غ ن ق خ ذ تن ت ی��ی �هر �ی ب�و�ل��س�ه د ه � �ه �م��ا ب� ��لی�� م��د ه �ور و ب� ق غ ق آن ن ن ز 25 ب ج��ا ��ل ر �ه ��ا ر ا�م�ا �ص�ا � ��دی�� ص �ک ��لارک�ا ی و ی َ و ب �ق ن ز خ تّ ن �خ ش اوب��ک�ه �ی��ل��س�� ک�� ب�ولا د ور ��ی ب�ور ا ��ب��ا �ی ی��ی ق غ ق ن � لم�ا ��ه ��س�� ز � �ش��ا ﭘﺎ د ��ک�ا ا�� مز ن��ن�ک بو ی ب ب بی�یم � ی � لیی � آ ق ز ز ق ن غ ن ز �ر��ه ��سی ا��د �ی ب� �ل��س ��م �م�ا ��ط�ا ��ا ��م ای�م�� ی و و ُ � � س �ق � ت نن � �ش ق ن ن �ق غ� ��ا چ�ی ب��ی�ک ب��ا �ور��ک ج�وا �� ل��دی�� هر ��ا �ی��سی ب�و�ی ز ن ز ز ن خ 30 ب�ر ��سو� �ی ��سو�لاو ج�ی ای��د �ی ��س�لاردی�� ب�ر م� ک� ]؟[ ت ش ن ُ ق م ا �ل � �� ت��ق� � نا ع� ا � ا �ش��لق ��ل � و وع و م ک�ا� ر��بلی �� ل ج� ج و � ی وچی High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 175 ن خ ض ت ز ن ت ن ای��د �ی �هر �ی ب�و�ل��س�ه د ه ��ر��ی� ک��دی�� او�� ب� �صوار �ی ز آ غ ن ق ز ن آ ت غ ز �م �کی � �ه �م��ا ب� �ل� �لو� ا �م�ی � ��ل�ی ب��ا �ص�ار �ه ب��ی�ر و ب� ب��لار �ش ت خ ذ ت �ق ق ن ب��ا �� او��س�ی ید�� ب� �� م�� ی��ل��ص�ا � د ی��ک�ا� او�یم��د د ه �ق ق َّ خ غ ن خ ت غ 35 ب�و�ل� ب� ��ا �ل�د و � اول ��د ا �ه ای��ک��چ�ی �ر�م��لو �ه ن ت ق ق غ ن ز ق ا�� با�� ای��د و ب� ��ا �ل�د و � �ی�ر �ی ��ه ی��ا � ا ��لی�� ن ز ت ن غ خ ت ن ن آ غ ای��ی �م� ا ��ل�ی ب��ا �ص�ار ج��ا ��ط�ا �ی��ه ��ا �و�و �ی � �ل��ا لی ت غ ن ن ی�� ب� ای��د �ی ای�م�د �ی چ��اب��ا �ا � ی��ب��ارد وک ی�ک ��ل�ک�ا� ن خ ض ش ف ن غ تٔ خ �صو�ک ��ور �ی ��ر�ی�� لاری��ک �ه ب��لا ��ا �ی��ر ی��ب��ار و ز ۋ تن ز غ آ غ ز 40 ر�م� د �ی� او��و ب� ی��ا ��وچ�ی � �ل��ا� �ی ش ن ت � ��ی��را لی اوع��لی ا��اب��ٮ��لی ��م�هری ب��ا �ص�د و غ آ م م ��ا � � �� ا � ��ا � ا ع�� مه � ��ا ص�د و ب ی بو ر ج ب ی و لی �ریم ب � وم ا �ل � نم��ا ن��ش��ا �ش�� ا ل ا ع�� و وع ب� ��ی� یر ی و لی ن ش �ق ا و �یو��ی��س ��ی��را لی اوع��لی �و �ل�ل ر ن ق 45 �مز � � ��د � ی وی وم

To the esteemed superintendent in charge of the Senior Horde Kazakhs and the Bughu Kirghiz, Colonel Kolpakovskii: many, many greetings from Major Qachıbek Batır’s elder brother Nıysha Batır and from his younger brother Yunusbay and from his youngest brother Alghazı Batır. [5] By God’s command, our Qachıbek Batır’s appointed time has come and he has passed away. Now, as you [prepare to] make your respected announcement, we beg you not to question who there is [to fill the post] now that Qachıbek has passed on. Thanks be to God, all of us [10] named above are sons of one [father,] Sheralı. In the first place Qachıbek Batır’s sons proper, and [then] the rest of us, aspire to be ready to serve you in any way at all, because as it happens the last nine generations of our ancestors have passed in the service of just such [15] great men. In addition to this aspiration of ours, we also hope that you, from the loftiness of your position, will bestow the office of Senior Manap upon our younger brother Altıbasar; for even if our boy should act with [the inexperience of] youth, we his elder brothers, [20] who are advanced in years, will always set matters aright—this is our hope. For this reason it would be better if the lot of us died than for us to be deprived of this post of Senior Manap. If we did not approve of the [25] installation of anybody at all in the post of Senior Manap, then you could take offense at us. Indeed, the reason why Borombay was [a] good [manap] was that he was located to the rear of our people called Shapaq. We are not saying this to boast; every Bughu spoke with one voice of Qachıbek Batır’s gentleness. A great man whose strength does not exceed yours [30] would behave in a gentle manner virtually out of necessity. In any case, the question with 176 Daniel G. Prior

which we entreat you is whether the post of Senior Manap shall be given to Altıbasar, and whether every one of us shall pledge our service; [35] that is the hope in which we remain. We have put our trust first in God, and second in [your] respected [eminence]. Anything else is worthy of punishment. Our younger brother Altıbasar has arrived at Jantay[’s camp] to take his bride; we have now sent a messenger [after him]. After he comes [40] we will send the loitering boy to your noble presence.—Saying which, I, the writer of this entreaty, Alghazı Sheralı uulu, have placed my seal of devotion; and I, Baybughra Ajıbay uulu, have placed my seal; and we, the elder Manap108 Nıysha Sheralı uulu and Yunus Sheralı uulu, have [45] placed our hands.109

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Abbreviations IRGO: Imperatorskoe Russkoe geograficheskoe obshchestvo TsGARK: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstan

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Secondary Literature Atwood, C.P. 2007. Mongol Society’s Basic Unit: What It Was and Wasn’t. Lecture delivered at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York, 15 February. ____. Forthcoming. The Tribal Mirage: Khans, Pastures, and Families on China’s Inner Asian Frontiers. Beisembiev, T.K. 2008. Annotated Indices of the Kokand Chronicles. [Tokyo]: Research Institute for the Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. ____. 2009. Kokandskaya istoriografiya: issledovanie po istochnikovedeniyu Srednei Azii, XVIII –XIX vekov. Almaty: Print-S. Bekmakhanov, E. 1992. Kazakhstan v 20–40 gody XIX veka. Alma-Ata: Kazak universiteti [1st edn 1947]. Di Cosmo, N. 2003. Kirghiz Nomads on the Qing Frontier: Tribute, Trade, or Gift Exchange? In Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. N. Di Cosmo and D.J. Wyatt. London: RoutledgeCurzon: 351–72. Dzhamgerchinov, B. 1944. Kirgizy v èpokhu Ormon-Khana. Trudy Instituta yazyka, literatury i istorii, Kirgizskii filial AN SSSR 1: 111–30. ____. 1959. Prisoedinenie Kirgizii k Rossii. Moscow: Izd-vo sotsio-èkonomicheskoi literatury. Dzhumagulov, A. 1991. O termine ‘manap’. Izvestiya Akademii nauk Respubliki Kyrgyzstan, ser. Obshchestvennye nauki 4: 61–8. Freeze, G.L. 1986. The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm in Russian Social History. American Historical Review 91/1: 11–36. Geiss, P.G. 2003. Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia: Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Gullette, D. 2010. The Genealogical Construction of the Kyrgyz Republic: Kinship, State and “Tribalism.” Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Israilova–Khar’ekhuzen, Ch.R. 1999. Traditsionnoe obshchestvo kyrgyzov v period russkoi kolonizatsii vo vtoroi polovine XIX–nachale XX v. i sistema ikh rodstva. Bishkek: Ilim. Jacquesson, S. 2010. Pastoréalismes: Anthropologie historique des processus d’intégration chez les Kirghiz du Tian Shan intérieur. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Karypkulov, A. et al., ed. 1984. Istoriya Kirgizskoi SSR 1. Frunze: Kyrgyzstan. High Rank and Power among the Northern Kirghiz 179

Kasymbaev, Zh. 2003. Poslednii pokhod khana Kenesary i ego gibel’ (dekabr’ 1846–aprel’ 1847 gg.). Almaty: Ana tili. Khasanov, A. 1961. Vzaimootnosheniya kirgizov s Kokandskim khanstvom i Rossiei v 50–70 godakh XIX veka. Frunze: Kirgizskoe gos. uchebno-pedagogicheskoe izd-vo. Khazanov, A. 1994. Nomads and the Outside World, 2nd edn. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Kozybaev, M. et al., ed. 1983. Alma-Ata. Èntsiklopediya. Alma-Ata: Kazakhskaya Sovetskaya èntsiklopediya. Kuznetsov, V.S. 1983. Tsinskaya imperiya na rubezhakh Tsentral’noi Azii (Vtoraya polovina XVIII–pervaya polovina XIX v.). Novosibirsk: Nauka, Sibirskoe otdelenie. Lindner, R.P. 1983. Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia. Bloomington: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Martin, V. 2001. Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ____. 2004. Kazakh Oath-Taking in Colonial Courtrooms: Legal Culture and Russian Empire- Building. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 5/3: 483–514. ____. 2010. Kazakh Chinggisids, Land and Political Power in the Nineteenth Century: A Case Study of Syrymbet. Central Asian Survey 29/1: 79–102. Newby, L.J. 2005. The Empire and the Khanate: A Political History of Qing Relations with Khoqand c. 1760–1860. Leiden: Brill. Petrov, K.I. 1961. Ocherki feodal’nykh otnoshenii u kirgizov v XV–XVIII vv. Frunze: Izd-vo AN Kirgizskoi SSR. Ploskikh, V.M. 1970. Pervye kirgizsko–russkie posol’skie svyazi (1784–1827 gg.). Frunze: Ilim. ____. 1977. Kirgizy i Kokandskoe khanstvo. Frunze: Ilim. Prior, D. 2002. The Twilight Age of the Kirghiz Epic Tradition. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Bloomington: Indiana University. Rásonyi, L. and I. Baski. 2007. Onomasticon Turcicum: Turkic personal names (2 vols.). Bloomington: Indiana University, Denis Sinor Institute for Inner Asian Studies. Saguchi, T. 1965. The Eastern Trade of the Khoqand Khanate. Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 26: 47–114. Saparaliev, D.B. 1995. Vzaimootnosheniya kyrgyzskogo naroda s russkimi i sosednimi narodami v XVIII v. Bishkek: Bilim. Shakhmatov, V.F. 1964. Kazakhskaya pastbishchno-kochevaya obshchina. Alma-Ata: Izd-vo Akademii nauk Kazakhskoi SSR. Sneath, D. 2007. The Headless State: Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society and the Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Usenbaev, K.U. 1980. Obshchestvenno-èkonomicheskie otnosheniya kirgizov. Vtoraya polovina XIX–nachalo XX vv. Frunze: Ilim. 180 Daniel G. Prior Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 181

CHAPTER FIVE

Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts: The Discursive Construction of Identity Categories*

Svetlana Jacquesson

Introduction

Ash, ‘the memorial feast’, is a major ritual event that stands out as the Central Asian parallel to the potlatch of the Northwest Coast Indians.1 In both cases, the assemblies were held in order to commemorate a deceased. In both cases, reputation and honour were displayed and disputed in games and contests, through the attribution of prizes and the exchange of gifts. In both cases, either formalized or spontaneous verbal performances played a central role in the interactions between hosts and guests. Finally, both the potlatch and the ash drew the ire of colonial authorities and were eventually outlawed.2 Compared to the scope of research produced on potlatch, ash remains largely overlooked in the social science analyses of Central Asia.3 Such

* I would like to thank Daniel Prior and Paolo Sartori for their valuable comments and critiques on earlier drafts and Dan, especially, for his help in translating the Kyrgyz verses. I am also grateful to an anonymous peer reviewer who, at an early stage in the development of this essay, encouraged me to explore performance and poetics as possible analytical frameworks for the indigenous data on memorial feasts. Research for this essay was spon- sored by a VolkswagenStiftung grant. None of the persons or institutions mentioned here would necessarily support my views, and I alone am responsible for any errors found in the text. 1 See for instance H.G. Barnett, “The Nature of the Potlatch.” American Anthropologist 40/3 (1938): 349–58; G. Ringel, “The Kawkiutl Potlatch: History, Economics, and Symbols.” Ethnohistory 26/4 (1979): 347–62; S. Kan, “The 19th-Century Tlingit potlatch: a New Perspec- tive.” American Ethnologist 13/2 (1986): 191–212. 2 The ash were banned in the late 1920s as soon as Soviet rule over the country was secured, see P. Pogorel’skij and V. Batrakov, Èkonomika kochevogo aula Kirgizstana (Moskva: Sovnarkom KirASSR, 1930): 162. 3 From a historical perspective the memorial feast has been analysed by H. Perrin- Wagner, L’idéologie du töre et l’espace communautaire turcique (S.l.: Atelier national de reproduction de thèses, 2002) and S. Jacquesson, “Le cheval dans le rituel funéraire kırgız: variations sur le thème du sacrifice.” Journal asiatique 295/2 (2007): 383–414. Contemporary funerary rituals, including memorial feasts, have been studied by E. Kuchumkulova, Kyrgyz Nomadic Customs and the Impact of Re-Islamization after Independence (Unpublished Ph. 182 Svetlana Jacquesson neglect is surprising, for besides being amply recorded in colonial ethnog- raphy4, memorial feasts have also engendered abundant indigenous data in the form of oral poetry, epics (ır/dastan)5 and ethno-historical narratives (bayan). In this essay I adopt what we might term ‘social poetics’ as an analytic approach in order to explore how collective identities were displayed and debated at oral performances during the ash and the role of the performers in the discursive construction of these identities. As developed and introduced by the anthropologist Michael Herzfeld in the late 1980s6, the practice of social poetics seeks to disengage the concept of ‘poetics’ from its purely romantic and verbal aspects, and to understand it more simply as a domain of action, such as we find conveyed by the original Greek term poiesis. As practitioners of social poetics, we seek also to distinguish the concept of ‘rhetoric’ from mere eloquence, and to understand it rather as the more or less successful intentions of all social actors to keep control over the outcome of their interactions. Such redefinitions of poetics and rhetoric allow us, first, to approach all social interactions as rhetorical and, second, to unite in a single analytical framework their performative or ritual and their quotidian or mundane manifestations. Moreover, as Michael Herzfeld emphasises7, by restoring the etymological relation of poetics to action it becomes possible to overcome the separation between language and agency and to study more effectively the role of verbal rhetoric in the social construction of relations and identities.8

D. dissertation, University of Washington, 2007), S. Jacquesson, “The Sore Zones of Identity: Past and Present Debates on Funerals in Kyrgyzstan.” Inner Asia 10 (2008): 281–303 and R. Hardenberg, “How to Overcome Death? The Efficacy of Funeral Rituals in Kyrgyzstan.” Journal of Ritual Studies, 24/1 (2010): 29–43. 4 See for instance G. Zagryazhskii, “Kirgizskie ocherki: ash ili trizna po umershem.” Turkestanskie vedomosti 1 (1873); E. Kovalev, “Ocherki byta karakirgizov: iz putevogo dnevnika. Pominki po Boku Chalkadykovu” Turkestanskie vedomosti 20/21 (1895); Alibii, “Kara-kirgizskie s”ezdy: pominki manapa Kenesary Boshkoeva.” Turkestanskie vedomosti 167 (1905); S. Dmitriev, “Baiga u karakirgizov po sluchayu smerti manapa Shabdana Dzhan- taeva v Pishpekskom uezde.” Otdel’nyi ottisk iz Izvestiya Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geogra- ficheskogo Obshchestva 68/6–10 (1912). 5 One of the most sizeable sections of the Manas epic is about a memorial feast, that of Kökötöy-khan, see A. Hatto, The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy-khan: a Kirghiz Epic Poem (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). 6 M. Herzfeld, The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) and Id., Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York, London: Routledge, 1997). 7 Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: 187–89. 8 For further elaborations on social poetics and the use of rhetoric in the conceptualization of culture see Culture and Rhetoric, ed. I. Strecker and S. Tyler (New York, Oxford: Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 183 The oral performances I explore in this essay fall into the category of performative social interactions. However, I rely only on their subsequently textualized versions. Therefore, I focus on the ways collective identities as a subfield of social relations are shaped and created through categorization and stereotyping. Both categorization and stereotyping have been abun- dantly studied in anthropology even if, to my understanding at least, they have remained largely under-conceptualized.9 Instead, most of the analytical and methodological work has been carried out in neighbour disciplines, most notably in social psychology. Social psychological approaches to categorization and stereotypes have moved from an emphasis upon structure to one upon agency, an analytical shift common to all social science in the late 20th century. Thus the pre- dominating cognitive approach in the study of categories and stereotypes has been challenged, from the beginning of the 1990s, by a newly developed discursive approach.10 The proponents of the latter argue that the analysis of speech acts should focus not on ‘what are categories’ but on ‘what is being done with categories’.11 Verbal performances are situated and rhe- torically organized.12 Categorization becomes thus more empirically and analytically tractable because its study is emancipated from the use of tests, questionnaires and interviews and focuses instead on creatively deployed social agency in the course of real interactions.13 This social agency is made possible by reconceptualizing some of the basic semantic features of categories such as prototype structures, fuzzy

Berghahn, 2009) and The Rhetorical Emergence of Culture, ed. F. Girke and Ch. Meyer (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2011). 9 Herzfeld states that social stereotypes are the basic concern of social poetics but he does not really address the relationships between their formation, use and spread, see Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: 26. Roger Brubaker also underlines the reluctance of social sciences to discuss the psychological or cognitive mechanisms of categorization, see R. Brubaker, M. Loveman, P. Stamatov, “Ethnicity as Cognition.” Theory and Society 33/1 (2004): 36. 10 On the cognitive approach and its relevance for social science analyses see Brubaker et al., “Ethnicity as Cognition”. The discursive approach has been developed in the works of Jonathan Potter and Derek Edwards, see D. Edwards, “Categories arе for Talking: on the Cognitive and Discursive Bases of Categorization.” Theory and Psychology 1/4 (1991): 515–42; J. Potter and D. Edwards, “Social Representations and Discursive Psychology: from Cognition to Action.” Culture and Psychology 5/4 (1999): 447–58. On the reception of the discursive approach within the broader field of social psychology, see C. Voelklein and C. Howarth, “A Review of Controversies about Social Representations Theory: a British Debate.” Culture and Psychology 11/4 (2005): 431–54. 11 Edwards, “Categories are for Talking”: 517. 12 Ibid.: 525–9. 13 Potter and Edwards, “Social Representations”: 449. 184 Svetlana Jacquesson boundaries, and contrastive organization. Rather than being designed for realistic representation, these features in fact can as well serve the rhetoric of social interactions. With regard to stereotypes, discursive psychology goes against the wide-spread understanding that stereotypes help social actors cope with the diversity and complexity of the world and that they are the outcome of prototypical thinking. They argue instead that if we accept that prototypes are the best examples of a category then we should also acknowledge, first, the freedom of social actors to either centralize or marginalize what is being described and, second, the possibilities of dis- agreement, of competing descriptions, of controversial statements of typicality.14 What counts as a simple description or as a stereotype is therefore decided in the course of interactions, in the rhetoric of situated talks and texts. Therefore, categories and stereotypes inform us as much on shared cognitive mechanisms as on various speakers’ knowledge and interests and on the particular social actions they are aiming to accomplish. In this essay I largely support the analytical insights of social poetics and discursive psychology. Yet, I also suggest a way to reconcile the rhetoricity and situatedness of categories’ or stereotypes’ production with widely shared stereotypical representations by drawing attention to the subsequent social management of bards’ performances. I start with two short introductory sections on the indigenous sources that I use and on the main dimensions of collective identities evoked during the ash. In the third and fourth sections I explore the use of identity categories respectively in ethno- historical narratives and in oral performances. I show how in ethno-historical narratives the ash is discussed in two different but complementary ways: through the rhetoric of its significance in the relations between genealogical lines and through the pragmatics of its organization in which the genealogical belongings of hosts and guests are only secondary to their territorial belongings. I use the oral performances during the ash in order first to investigate how these two dimensions of identification were sepa- rated, related or fused by the performers, and secondly to highlight their crucial role in connecting genealogical lines, ancestral lands and prominent people, in coining group stereotypes and in shaping the relations between various identity groups. In the conclusion I elaborate on the role of bards in coining group stereotypes and on the relationship between context- sensitive rhetoric and wide-spread social stereotypes.

14 Edwards, “Categories Are for Talking”: 522–23. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 185 I. Local Sources

This essay is based on the analysis of ethno-historical narratives and oral poetry. By ethno-historical narratives I refer to a genre of local history writing which I divide into three chronological categories. The first one includes local literatis’ accounts of Kyrgyz history, genealogy and customs collected at the time of the Kyrgyz republic’s inception in the late 1920s.15 The works of local scholars and intellectuals who have pursued informally the collection of oral traditions and oral testimonies during the Soviet period fall into the second category.16 Local history production undertaken by various amateur historians after independence in order to satisfy the increasing demand for such narratives constitutes the third one.17 All three categories of ethno-historical narratives share some common features: their authors are natives of the region and often genealogically related to the people they write about; Kyrgyz is the only language used; various oral and written sources such as epics, folklore, individually collected interviews and published or unpublished archival documents are freely used and merged in order to create stories that no official history tells. As sources on the past, ethno-historical accounts are neither first-person testimonies nor can they answer the demand for accurate historical information; instead they provide access to the cultural forms and processes by which individuals and groups express their sense of themselves in history.18 Oral poetry was collected all throughout the Soviet period, either by local research institutions, such as the Institute of Language and Literature

15 B. Soltonoev, Kızıl kırgız tarıhı, ed. J. Japiev, 2 vols. (Bishkek: Uchkun, 1993, edn of ms. written 1895–1934); A. Tınıbek uulu, Angeme-eskerme, ed. O. Sooronov (Bishkek: Adabi- yat, 1991, edn of ms. written 1940–1947). 16 A. Moldalı uulu, “Bayzak baatır bayanı.” Ala-too 1 (1994): 92–130; Ey, bu Kuyruchuk: angeme, bayandar, ed. E. Öskönalı uulu (Bishkek: Sham, 1997); S. Rıskulov, Shamen (Bishkek: Turar, 1998). 17 J. Jılkıbaeva, Kıdır ake (Bishkek: Adabiyat, 1993); A. Karıbay uulu, Sadır ake (Bishkek: Uchkun, 2002); B. Alagushov and S. Sher-Niyazov, Aktangdaylar (Bishkek: Aytısh koomduk fondu, 2003). On local, non-academic production of history in Central Asia and Xinjiang see S. Jacquesson and I. Beller-Hann, “Introduction.” Central Asian Survey 31/3 (2012): 239–49 (Special issue on “Local History as an Identity Discipline”). 18 A. Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991): IX. See also A. Portelli, The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997): 86–87. As in the case of potlatch, memorial feasts seem to matter as much for how they actually happened as for the ways they were recounted later, see D. Newell and D. Schreiber, “Collaborations on the Periphery: the Walcott-Sewid Potlatch Controversy.” BC Studies 152 (2006/07): 33. 186 Svetlana Jacquesson of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences, or by local amateurs on their own initiative. Most of the collected data, however, was stored in the archives, not the least because the Kyrgyz performers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were patronized and maintained by local big men and could be easily turned into ‘class enemies’. Few pieces of oral poetry were ever published in Soviet times, and when this did happen they were removed from their social and political contexts as well as from the particular occasions on which they were performed.19 The collections of oral poetry published after independence differ favourably from their Soviet prototypes.20 Whenever possible, the new editions provide biographical data on the performers and a short history of the transmission of their oeuvres (when they were collected, from whom and by whom as well the existence of variants and their relation to one another). They describe the context of the performance (making known the type of event—memorial feast, marriage or other celebrations), its time and its place and they give indications on the constitution of the audiences. The oral poetry related to the ash consists of testaments (kereez), laments (koshok), welcome addresses (uchrashuu), proclamations (jar chakıruu), praises (maktoo), mockeries (kordoo) and verbal contests (aytısh). All of these genres can be identified as repertoires of ‘expressive folklore’ which, in the wording of Roger D. Abrahams, ‘comes to life in performance’.21 Textualized performances, or performances that have been transferred from oral recitation to print, may be considered as ‘second- hand’ sources. Yet, especially when the editing is not too ‘heavy-handed’, they highlight the interactions between the performer and his audience.22 A performer may perform wonderfully but caught in the act of performance he himself cannot really evaluate the effectiveness of his accomplishment.

19 For instance Toktogul: chıgarmalarının eki tomduk jıynagı, ed. J. Tashtemirov, 2 vols. (Frunze: Kırgızstan, 1968); Togolok Moldo: chıgarmalar, ed. J. Tashtemirov, 2 vols. (Frunze: Kırgızstan, 1970). 20 See B. Kebekova, Arstanbek (Bishkek: Ilim, 1994); Zalkar akındar, ed. A. Akmataliev (Bishkek: Sham, 1998). 21 R. Abrahams, “Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore.” The Journal of American Folklore 81/320 (1968): 145. My personal opinion is that they remain lively and expressive even when they are printed. In preparing this essay I spent quite a few evenings enjoying the reading of bards’ performances at the ash. For some time I was even accused by my family and my friends of spending all my time with these ‘weird’ men. 22 On verbal art forms as self-contained and bounded objects easily separable from their social and cultural contexts of production and reception and on the related processes of entextualization, decontextualization and recontextualization see R. Bauman and Ch. L. Briggs, “Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life.” Annual Review of Anthropology 19 (1990): 59–88. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 187 It is the audience who does it in a variety of ways: by liking and disliking, by approving or disapproving, by confirming what has just been uttered or by questioning it. And, most significantly, these are members of the audience who serve as ‘performers’ on their turn, by repeating, reporting or interpreting what they have heard. The data I use then is as much the outcome of single acts of performance as of the subsequent transmissions and interpretations of such acts up to the point when the texts were published. From the standpoint of a purely formalist approach this may be considered a serious shortcoming. Instead, I build upon the specificity of my data in order to relate the rhetoricity or situatedness of identity discourses to the persistence and popularity of group stereotypes.

II. Identity Categories

The indigenous sources related to ash elaborate on two dimensions of identification: genealogical and territorial. Genealogical identification may take two different shapes. During fieldwork one can establish the patrilineal lines of persons and some of the relations between these patrilineal lines. These relations are often partial since oral knowledge of genealogies is also partial. I refer to such patrilineal lines that trace individual ancestries as ‘descent lines’. Descent lines offer one way of discussing genealogy. It is also possible to focus on the putative common ancestor of all the Kyrgyz and on the relations among his descendants. This is the field of genealogy experts known as sanjırachı.23 I refer to the categories produced in this process as ‘genealogical lines.’

23 Soviet ethnography conceptualized genealogies as the orally transmitted history of the Kyrgyz, and thus as a genre of ‘popular’ or ‘people’s history’. Recently discovered written genealogies challenge the still prevailing concept of genealogies as popular oral lore. Instead, they highlight the minute work of local literati attempting to merge an age-long Islamic tradition of genealogical writing and local oral history, see for instance Nasab-naama, ed. O. Sooronov (Bishkek: Mamlekettik til fondu, 2003) and Alymbektin sanjırası, ed. T. Asanov (Bishkek: n.p., 2007). Far from being ‘people’s histories’ genealogies focus instead on heroes and prominent people. On the post-independence boom in genealogy publishing and genealogy production and on the current debates on genealogy as a genre, see R. Harden- berg, “Collective, Communicative and Cultural Memories: Examples of Local Historiography from Northern Kyrgyzstan.” Central Asian Survey 31/3 (2012): 265–76 and S. Jacquesson, “From Clan Narrative to Clan Politics.” Central Asian Survey 31/3 (2012): 277–92. 188 Svetlana Jacquesson Genealogical lines come closest to the sociological concepts of clans or tribes.24 Still I keep using genealogical lines because they allow me to discuss genealogy without any assumptions on the categories or groups based on this dimension of identification. The data discussed below comes from the regions of Issyk Kul and Narın. Within the colonial administrative system these regions corresponded to two districts (uezd): Pishpek and Przhevalsk. The districts were divided into counties (volost’) and the colonial government used the names of genealogical lines - such as Sarıbagısh, Sayak, etc.—to name these counties, according to the genealogical belongings of their residents.25 Because of this naming policy and because most of the documented memorial feasts took place during the colonial period, it is often impossible to distinguish between colonial administrative categories and genealogical ones. Additionally, such a blending of administrative and genealogical categories may well have affected the local practices of identification as well as the ways they were merged and interrelated both in ethno-historical accounts and in the performances during the memorial feast.

III. The Memorial Feast in Ethno-history

The bulk of available narratives on ash refer to the late 19th and early 20th centuries and thus coincide roughly with the period of Russian colonial rule. These narratives centre on a sundry category of prominent people most often referred to as manaps or chong kishi ‘big men’. The Kyrgyz ‘big men’ at that time were straddling the boundary between the colonial government and the local administration which was comprised of elected functionaries from among the Kyrgyz. The memorial feasts as analysed below are then singularized by the fact that they commemorate the deaths of prominent people and involve among their honorary guests other prom-

24 On the ‘clan debate’ in Central Asia, see D. Gullette, “Theories on Central Asian factionalism: the Debate in Political Science and its Wider Applications.” Central Asian Survey 26/3 (2007): 373–87; Id., “The Problems of the “Clan” Politics Model of Central Asian Statehood: a Call for Alternative Pathways for Research.” In Stable Outside, Fragile Inside? Post-soviet statehood in Central Asia, ed. E. Kavalski (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010): 53–69; R. Hardenberg, “Reconsidering Tribe, Clan and Relatedness: a Comparison of Social Categori- sation in Central and South Asia.” Scrutiny: Annual Journal of International and Pakistan Studies 1 (2007): 37–62. 25 See S. Jacquesson, “Reforming Pastoral Land Use in Kyrgyzstan: from Clan and Cus- tom to Self-Government and Tradition.” Central Asian Survey 29/1 (2010): 103 – 118; Ead., Pastoréalismes: anthropologie historique des processus d’intégration chez les Kirghiz du Tian Shan (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2010): 81–92. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 189 inent people. Such memorial feasts are known in Kyrgyz as chong ash ‘chiefly memorial feasts’.

III.1. The Rhetoric of Genealogy, Reputation and Honour The memorial feast closes the period of mourning. It is the most important funerary rite and it may take place any time after the commemoration of the fortieth day of the death. Each deceased person had to be commemo- rated, and ethno-historical accounts interpret the respect or disrespect of this obligation in terms of reputation, honour and shame especially when the deceased was a manap. Thus Boronbay, a manap belonging to the Bugu genealogical line (died 1858), seems to have opposed the lavishness of memorial feasts, as is attested by the following lines in his testament (kereez): Do not let them race horses at my memorial feast, At chaptırba ashıma do not raise a tomb over my head, korgon kurba bashıma, do not let my wives put on widows’ weeds and katınım kara kiyip betine belgi scar their faces. salbasın Such a wish however was met with incomprehension and disapproval by his favourite bard, Arstanbek26:

O Boronbay, Father! O Boronbay abake, You are the chief of the people … jurt bashchısı sen eleng,…, Unless they race horses at your memorial feast, at chaptırbas ashıngga, unless they plant a tomb over your head, korgon kurbas bashıngga, unless they take their fingernails to their faces, betine tırmak salbastan, and strike their bodies with cords, beline arkan chalbastan, your wives shall not have made their lamentations, katını aza kütpögön, your sons shall not have had their grief! khanzaadaga küybögön ! Than whom among the Sarıbagısh, Solto, and Sayak, Sarıbagısh, Solto, Sayaktın are you less? kimisinen kem eleng

Arstan underlines the need of mourning for the close relatives of Boronbay but also refers to reputation and honour, that of Boronbay but also that of the people of whom he is chief. The way in which reputation and honour are evoked is also worth noting: ‘Than whom among the Sarıbagısh, Solto, and Sayak, are you less?’ It is no exaggeration to state that reputation and honour, disgrace and shame in the relations between genealogical lines

26 Kebekova, Arstanbek: 9–10. Biographical data on the bards cited in the text is provided in Appendix 2. 190 Svetlana Jacquesson are the master themes in ethno-historical accounts of memorial feasts. Let me offer one more example to illustrate how these themes recur in different guises. Tilekmat uulu Chınıbay passed away two months before Soltonkul (died 1888). Soltonkul was just a wealthy person while Chınıbay was one of the spokesmen of the Russian colonial administration in the newly created Przhevalsk district and thus a ‘big man’. He was, however, extremely unpop- ular among some of the local Kyrgyz because of his habit of meddling with the creation of colonial counties and because of his tyrannical outbursts. Both Soltonkul and Chınıbay belonged to the Bugu genealogical line. The following year Baltabay, their most influential relative, organized the ash of Soltonkul but did not allow the ash of Chınıbay to be held. Such a decision enraged Chınıbay’s supporters. They looked for the mediation of an outsider, Sadır ake, from the Sayak genealogical line. During the negotiations, as reported in ethno-historical narratives, Sadır ake threatened to shame the Bugu by having the ash of Chınıbay organized by the Sayak, i.e., by people belonging to a different identity category.27 In order to save the reputation and the honour of the Bugu, and to prevent their being shamed by the Sayak, Baltabay eventually permitted the memorial feast of Chınıbay to be held. In ethno-historical accounts then the memorial feast takes all its significance only when it is held by the genealogical line of the deceased; a memorial feast for a big man from the Bugu organized by the Sayak appears as aberrant and, in a way, meaningless. Reputation and honour were also measured in lavishness. In his history of the Kyrgyz written in the early 20th century Belek Soltonoev, for instance, systematically states first the genealogical belonging of the deceased and then the size and the duration of his memorial feast. Thus, according to Soltonoev, in 1886, the memorial feast of Baytik, a Solto, took place in the valley of Chüy where 40,000 persons were received in 5000 yurts. In 1889, 5000 yurts were set up in Tüp region for the five days’ long memorial feast of Soltonkul, mentioned above. In 1900, 35,000 persons gathered in the valley of Chüy to commemorate Sooronbay Kudayar uulu, a Solto. One of the last memorial feasts held under colonial rule took place in 1912, cele- brating the memory of Shabdan, a Sarıbagısh. Some 50,000 persons visited the native place of the deceased, the valley of Kichi Kemin.28 Belek Soltonoev is not the only one to report memorial feasts in such a way. In

27 Jılkıbaeva, Kıdır ake: 60–1; Karıbay uulu, Sadır ake: 161–9. 28 Soltonoev, Kızıl kırgız tarıhı: II, 203, 206–10. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 191 all the ethno-historical narratives the genealogical line of the deceased is a key identity category. By extolling the size and duration of various memorial feasts, these narratives closely intertwine reputation, honour and genealogical belongings.

III.2. The Rationality of Organization The holding of an ash had to be approved by the colonial authorities at the district level. They were wary of huge assemblies rife with conflicts and were thus eager to keep an eye on them. Colonial representatives joined the event both as honourable guests and as commanders of small military detachments charged to maintain order and to protect the domestic animals intended as prizes.29 A special council (kengesh) was appointed for each ash. The council’s members had both honorary and coercive functions: honorary since they were asked to give their opinion on the choice of guests, on the games to be held and on the prizes to be given; coercive because they were also responsible for splitting up the expenses of the feast among the hosts and for securing their compliance.30 The constitution of the council was variable but most often it comprised the canton administrators (bolush), the customary adjudicators (biy) and the elders of the camps (aksakal), i.e., all the representatives of the local administration.31 The latter elected a president (bashkarma, biy) who became the ultimate authority during the event: he was responsible for its orderly deployment, he acted as a referee during the competitions and he adjudicated the conflicts.32 The hosts had to accommodate, feed and entertain yurts full of guests for the duration of the feast. Ethno-historical accounts define the hosts by colonial counties: for the ash of Soltonkul (1889), all of the 16 counties of Przhevalsk district were considered as hosts; the ash of Bayzak (1914) was prepared by the counties considered Sayak, i.e., in which the majority of the residents belonged to the same genealogical line as the deceased. Such a way of defining the hosts departs from the rhetoric of genealogical repu-

29 Ash of Soltonkul, 1889. Instead of referring to the sources, in this and in the following sections I refer to the ash, followed by the year when it took place. Appendix 1 provides a list of the ash cited in the essay and the sources from which the ethnographic data is taken. 30 Occasionally these councils were also asked by the district authorities to establish written by-laws or make clear the rules presiding over the organization of the event, see ash of Soltonkul, 1889. 31 Ash of Soltonkul, 1889; ash of Bayzak, 1914. 32 Ibid. 192 Svetlana Jacquesson tation and honour discussed in the previous section. It highlights instead the canton administrators as the only persons who were in a position to easily secure public participation. The genealogical dimension is still present since the counties either bore the names of genealogical lines or were identified with them, yet the available evidence indicates that chiefly memorial feasts were neither the outcome of spontaneous participation nor the responsibility of genealogical lines alone. The council decided on the games to be organized and the prizes to be offered. The big horse race (chong at chabısh) which closed the ash was the most important game and its prizes (bayge) constituted the highest cost.33 According to ethno-historical accounts, these prizes had to be entirely reimbursed by those belonging directly to the descent line of the deceased: while all the counties of the district were involved in the organization of the ash of Soltonkul, the 25 prizes for the big horse race, amounting altogether to 4000 horses, were provided by the Alıbay alone, i.e., by those who belonged to the same descent line as the deceased.34 The ability to afford these prizes was a sine qua non for the holding of an ash as is proved by the cases of ‘rotating prizes’, i.e., of prizes won at an ash which were used to organize another ash. Thus sometime around 1905, in Semizbel, at the ash of Kenenbay, a Bugu, the big horse race was won by Shaten uulu Kasımaalı, a Sarıbagısh, who used the prize to push forward the organization of the ash of Bekchoro, one of his genealogical relatives.35 For a chiefly ash the ambition was to invite ‘all the Kyrgyz’ (büt Kırgız). Ethno-historical accounts conceptualize the latter as northern Kyrgyz (Arka), southern Kyrgyz (Anjiyan) and Xinjiang Kyrgyz (Kashgar)36; occasionally, however, büt Kırgız refers to all the colonial districts recognized as Kyrgyz under Russian rule.37 The invitations were sent by messengers to jurt jakshıları ‘the prominent people of the country’. By accepting the invitation the prominent people recognized the hosts’ claims to be able to

33 On horse races, see my article “Le cheval dans le rituel funéraire kırgız”; C. Ferret, “Course à la mort ou quête de respectabilité: le bäjge en Asie central.” Ethnozootechnie 82 (2008): 129–48. 34 A. Tınıbek uulu, “Kökötöy Chechen.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 63; Karıbay uulu, Sadır ake: 149. 35 Rıskulov, Shamen: 75–6. 36 A. Tınıbek uulu, “Alıkenin ashı.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 256–7. 37 A. Tınıbek uulu, “Soltonkuldun ashı.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 276; E. Öskönalı uulu, “Rayımbektin ashı.” In Id., Ey, bu Kuyruchuk: 64; Anonymous, “Osmon baatır.” In Joloy, Taylak, Balbay, Osmon, ed. A. Akmataliev (Bishkek: Sham, 2002): 392; Anonymous, “Baytik.” In Tarıhıy ırlar, koshoktor jana okuyalar, ed. A. Akmataliev (Bishkek: Sham, 2002): 226. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 193 provide for a chiefly ash; when these claims were not backed by an appropriate reception, it was possible to sabotage the feast and to humiliate both its organizers and the deceased. This is one of the main reasons for the havoc so closely associated with memorial feasts. At the ash of Soltonkul (1889), for example, the fact that the big horse race was postponed for a day led to the decision by Shabdan, the representative of the Sarıbagısh, to abandon the event, and to a near renewal of hostilities between Sarıbagısh and Bugu. During the ash of Sooronbay Kudayar uulu, the guests were so disappointed by the meals on offer that they raided the herds of their hosts.38 Far from being friendly or compassionate, the relations between the hosts and the guests were extremely formalised and could easily turn into outright conflict. To recapitulate, in ethno-historical accounts, the relations between the deceased, the hosts and the guests are equivocal: they are neither purely genealogical nor purely administrative. But the overall rhetoric of the ash is the rhetoric of reputation and honour couched in identity categories that either coincide with genealogical lines or can be easily equated with them. In a way what mattered was not so much the organization itself, whether carried out by genealogical groups or by colonial territorial units, but the way in which the memorial feast was used to enhance or undermine prestige and honour with reference to genealogical belonging.

IV. Oral Performances, Verbal Contests and Competitions

The big men who attended a memorial feast were extremely sensitive about their reputation and honour: they paid attention to the choice of their followers, to the size and quality of the gifts they were going to offer, to the persons who were going to take part in the competitions on their behalf. What escaped their control, however, was the way in which their reputation and honour were going to be engaged by the bards. And all the more so since oral performances allowed for quite a substantial amount of out- spokenness, critique, sarcasm and parody. It was therefore important for the big men to be accompanied and represented by skilful bards. For the sake of loyalty and trustfulness, bards were not only rewarded lavishly, they were also protected and maintained

38 Soltonoev, Kızıl kırgız tarıhı: II, 207. 194 Svetlana Jacquesson by big men.39 The bards then could rarely show themselves impartial or neutral, they had to take sides and act as the spokesmen of their patrons. In order to imagine the atmosphere of a chiefly memorial feast one has to think of hundreds of people assembled to be entertained, to feast, but also to compete. They were noisy, eager and fervent, and the usual way to catch their attention was by having wind instruments blown. All of these people joined the feast in certain roles: hosts, and thus defenders of the reputation and honour of the deceased; guests, and thus followers of a big man and involved in his quest for respect and prestige. These were the bards who through their oral performances made these roles and relations meaningful. The samples of bards’ performances are numerous and lengthy; those discussed below have been selected in order to exemplify some of the devices used in such meaning-creation.

IV.1. Welcome Address: Connecting Prominent Persons, Ancestral Lands and Peoples In the welcome address (uchrashuu), performed by a specially appointed ırchı at the opening of the event, the prominent people were introduced, their social identities were outlined and the framework for all the subsequent interactions was set. The two samples of welcome address that follow illustrate how this introduction was carried out. The first one comes from an ash held in the beginning of the 19th century at Janbulak (Narın region) in honour of Alıke, of the Tınımseyit genealogical line. The guests are said to have been received in one thousand yurts and three hundred tents. The welcome address, performed by Arstanbek, starts with recalling the oral traditions on the origin of the Kyrgyz and of their different genealogical lines and then focuses on the prominent people present from where the following extract is taken:40

39 On the relations between big men and bards, see Appendix 2. For an extended study of the triangle bard-patron-audience, see D. Prior, Patron, Party, Patrimony: Notes on the Cultural History of the Kyrgyz Epic Tradition (Bloomington: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2000). 40 A. Tınıbek uulu, “Alıkenin ashı.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 264. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 195

… From his ancestral homeland … Keng Chüy ata jerinen, in the wide valley of the Chüy river, his horses raging at their tethers, kermede atı elirgen, having as ancestor Bogorston, arkı atası Bogorston, the best among his peers, artık bolgon tenginen, sharing the same roots Tülöberdi baatırdın, as Tülöberdi the hero, tübün ichken semirgen, Jangarach the Khan, Chıngısh the brave, kan Jangarach, er Chınggısh, their virtues plain in their words, kasiyet tapkan kebinen, have joined this feast kelgen tura bul ashka, on behalf of the people of Solto with the moon- ay tamga Solto elinen… shaped brand… A great many high-born men, Alda kancha asıl jan, Zarpek, Janak, Boronbay, Zarpek, Janak, Boronbay, Balbay the brave son of Eshkojo, Eshkojonun er Balbay, their far reaches on the Tekes steppes, nar jagı Tekes chölünön, their near reaches on lake Issyk Kul, ber jagı Issıkkölünön, Murataalı, Toksobay, Murataalı, Toksobay, haven’t they crossed in order to come ashıp kelgen turbaybı the mountain pass of Chalık uuru, Chalık uurunun belinen, haven’t they also arrived bular de kelip turbaybı, on behalf of our kin Bugu people… Bugu tuugan elinen…

The prominent people are named and their personal qualities are emphasized by epithets such as ‘khan’ (kan) or ‘brave’ (er), the first evoking skills in government, the second bravery in warfare. They are related both to their illustrious predecessors and to the eponymous ancestors of their genealogical lines. The introduction is completed by relating the prominent people to an ‘ancestral land’ (ata jeri) the inhabitants of which are conceived of as ‘people’ (el) and subsumed under a single genealogical category, Solto or Bugu in this case. While the prominent people and their epithets change from one welcome address to another, they are always treated as representatives of ‘ancestral lands’ and ‘peoples’. The second welcome address provides more data on how the ‘peoples’ are conceptualized. It comes from the ash of Baybek, belonging to the Bugu genealogical line, held in the beginning of the 20th century on the southern shore of lake Issyk Kul:41

41 Kalmırza, “Kalmırzanın köl manaptarın maktagan ırı.” In Zalkar akındar, ed. A. Akmataliev, (Bishkek: Sham, 1998): 83. 196 Svetlana Jacquesson

Mambetaalı and Bayake, Mambetaalı, Bayake, Shabdan the hero and Dür, baatır Shabdan, Dür eköö, to the ash of Baybek Baybektin ashına, all four urged me to come... bargın dedi bul törtöö… The thick-buttocked Kenenbay, Köchüktögü Kenenbay, the broad-breasted Aalıbay, köküröktö Aalıbay, all the Lake Bugu are rich, köl Bugusu baarı bay, Batırkan and Baltabay, Batırkan menen Baltabay, one as strong as the other –ah! eki birdey lögüm ay, Isagaalı and Sagın- ah! Isagaalı Sagın ay, all you Bugu, you are fortunate –ah! ırıstuu Bugu baarıng ay. Kongurölöng and Alabash, Kongurölöng, Alabash, your vast summer pastures covered with thick grass, jayloong artık baarı saz, their users are wealthy in animals. bukarası malga mas. Their wives are dressed Zayıptarı kiygeni, in glossy red cloth, jarkıragan kızıl shay, the drink of the Lake Bugu köl Bugusu ichkeni, is black tea from Yarkand, Jargentten kelgen kızıl chay, their food in summer jayınkısın jegeni, is milk-bred fat foals… kızır emdi jalduu tay…

The welcome address is overtly praising because of a series of flattering images of the land to which the prominent people belong and of the people who inhabit it: the land is depicted as vast pastures covered with thick grass, the men who inhabit it are all wealthy and lucky, all their women are dressed beautifully, they all drink imported black tea from Yarkand and eat milk-bred fat foals in summer. These ‘people’ are once again subsumed within a single identity category—the Bugu genealogical line. Ultimately, in the welcome addresses the prominent persons and the people they represented were shaped as bearers of the same genealogical identity for the rest of the event.

IV.2. Verbal Contests: Stereotypes and the Coining of Group Identities The bards attending a memorial feast entertained the guests in the evening by reciting genealogies, epics or poetry and, most importantly, they were ready to take part in aytısh ‘verbal contests’ either on their own initiative or on the initiative of the prominent people present. A true memorial feast could not take place without such contests, as the following lines attest:42

42 Kalmırza, “Kalmırza menen Barpının betteshüüsü.” In Zalkar akındar: 43–56. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 197

When Arka and Anjiyan get together, Arka Anjiyan chogulsa, at the memorial feast of a famous rich man, aytıluu baydın ashında, presided over by prominent people, jakshıları bashında, it is a simple matter to keep us from reciting, ırdabay koyso jön bolot, but there’s little celebration in that. anın saltanatı kem bolot.

In verbal contest the ırchıs questioned their former performances and their reputations but as often as not they targeted also their ancestries, genealogical belongings and native regions. The contests lasted as long as the participants could find witty provocations and replies but occasionally, if the exchange took a really abusive turn, they could be stopped by one of the prominent people. The samples discussed below exemplify how native regions were debated in such contests. In 1900, at the ash of Ötömbay at Ketmentöbö, Kalmırza, an aged and renowned ırchı performing in the Chüy Valley is irritated by the presence of Barpı, a young and not so well-known one coming from the South, or Anjiyan. After teasing him on his age and on his ancestry, Kalmırza attacks him on his native region:43 I have been to Anjiyan, Anjiyandı körgömün, I laughed a lot while there, külö jürüp ölgömün, The Anjiyan guys, Anjiyandık amaki, they stink of tobacco, artıngganıng tamaki, when there is a market, they are at their best, bazar dese shaylanat, they hold their baskets, may kabagın baylanat, they buy an ounce of meat, arım kadak et alat, they buy an ounce of fat, jarım kadak may alat, when a guest comes to their homes, üyünö meyman kelgende, they ask their wives to cook a soup. katın shoola kılgın dep koyot. As if they have been pulling two carts, Eki araba tartkansıp, they speak nonsense, esi oogancha söz bolot, you eat two mouthfuls eki alımın sen jeysing and when one mouthful remains, bir alımı kalganda, they call it a dish, kachina tabak dep koyot, the women from Anjiyan, Anjiyandın katını, they lick the dish clean. jalap-juktap jep koyot.

Barpı, the spokesman of the ‘the place called Anjiyan’ endorses the description of Kalmırza in a move of ‘rueful self-recognition’44 but he also pushes him and the people he represents into an introspection on their own turn:45

43 Ibid.: 52. 44 Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: 3. 45 Kalmırza, “Kalmırza menen Barpının betteshüüsü.” In Zalkar akındar: 52–3. 198 Svetlana Jacquesson

What you say is right, Kalmırza. Aytkanıng ıras Kalmırza, I am a guy from Anjiyan, Anjiyandık amaki, I stink of tobacco, artıngganım tamaki, when there is a market, I am at my best, bazar dese shaylanam, I hold my basket, maykabagım baylanam, I buy an ounce of meat, jarım kadak et alam, I buy an ounce of fat, arım kadak may alam, an avid person from Arka jadısı sorgok Arkalık, will burst out from eating, they say, jarılıp ketet eken dep, but I eat and I relax. jata kalıp jep alam. In my land called Anjiyan, Anjiyan degen jerimde, we sow white wheat and we eat white bread, ak buuday tartıp nanın jeyt, we care of the hereafter. akırettin kamın jeyt. In your land called Arka, Arka degen jeringde, they eat the illicit meat of dead animals, aram ölgön malın jeyt, your women and children, katın menen baldarıng, they eat lungs and bowels. öpkö menen karın jeyt. When they are in Anjiyan, Anjiyanga barganda, they taste bread and think it butter, sarı may dep samın jeyt, they taste dough and think it dumplings. chüchbara dep kamır jeyt, If you tell them that something is illicit, aram öldü dep koysong they answer ‘it used to be licit’, adal ele bolchu dep, they tell a lie and eat it up. jalgan aytıp janın jeyt.

The description of the lifestyle and customs of ‘the place called Anjiyan’ made by Kalmırza is not false yet it is extremely selective. The bard in fact picks up only features that can be contrasted with the manners of ‘the place called Arka’, or of the side he represents in the contest: the practice of agriculture, tobacco growing and so tobacco smoking as opposed to herd breeding and chewing tobacco imported from China; busy markets and a taste for trading as opposed to scarcity of markets and distrust for traders; guests treated to a soup, or a liquid dish, as opposed to guests being offered meat pieces; finally, women left to lick up the dishes as opposed to women allowed to eat lungs and bowels. In turn, Barpı charges the Arkalık ‘Northerners’ with gluttony or fondness for meat and meat dishes and, more importantly, with lack of religious rigour manifested in the consumption of dead animals or in the unwillingness to dwell on licitness or illicitness as soon as it is a question of meat. Again, Barpı’s description of the Northerners is neither entirely wrong nor entirely right; it is largely triggered by the claims of his rival and is a riposte to them. The outcome, however, are two stereotypical representations of regional cultural differences. These representations are made meaningful, but also memorable, because of their dialogic production and because of Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 199 the ways in which the selected cultural differences are locked up in expressive oppositions.

IV.3. Games: Enacting Reputation and Honour If welcome addresses, oral performances and even verbal contests were not guaranteed to attract the attention of the public, praises and mockeries during the games46 seldom failed to do so. The vocabulary of the games is built around the concept of ‘honour’ (namıs). Thus one took part in a game namıs üchün ‘for the honour’,47 the act of competing was conceived of as namıstashuu ‘disputing the honour’,48 the outcome of a game was referred to as namıs büttü ‘[disputing for] honour is over’,49 and victory was signalled by the formulation namıs kettirgen jok ‘the honour was not lost’.50 It is no surprise, then, that the games represented moments of exceptional collective solidarity when every move, every gesture and every word mattered. The following example provides some evidence on how the ırchıs seized these occasions in order to pursue their mission. At the ash of Keldibek, the president of the event suggests that the combatants in the jousting should represent Anjiyan and Arka. Anjiyan and Arka, as mentioned above, were contemporary terms for southern Kyrgyzstan and northern Kyrgyzstan. Karıbek, the prominent person representing Anjiyan, decides that a certain Ürpökbash will enter the tournament. Baysal, a big man from the North, chooses Ashırbay. When he wins, Naymanbay, the ırchı who accompanies Baysal, celebrates the victory as follows:51

46 On the games and contests at memorial feasts see Tınıbek uulu, “Kırgız uluttuk oyundarı.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 189–242. Detailed descriptions of the games and contests to be held as well as of the prizes to be offered are contained in the jar chakıruu ‘proclamations’ of bards, see Tınıbek uulu, “Alıkenin ashı.” In Id., Angeme-eskirme: 269–70, “Kalmırzanın jar chakıruu ırdagan.” In Zalkar akındar: 79–82; Ümötaalı Esenaman uulu, “Jar chakıruu.” In Zalkar akındar: 186–90. 47 Moldalı uulu, “Bayzak baatır bayanı”: 122. 48 Ibid. 49 Anonymous, “Osmon baatır”: 394. 50 Moldalı uulu, “Bayzak baatır bayanı”: 129. 51 Anonymous, “Osmon baatır”: 394. 200 Svetlana Jacquesson

For Arka and for Anjiyan, Arka menen Anjiyan two men entered the tournament, eki mırza betteship. Ürpökbash and Ashırbay, Ürpökbash menen Ashırbay, showed their skills in front of the people, önörün elden jashırbay, two giants entered the tournament, eki döö sayıshtı, many lances got smashed. dalay nayza mayıshtı, Ashırbay escaped the blow, Ashırbay kıyın kachırdı, Ürpökbash tumbled down, talpaktay uchup Ürpökbash, utterly shamed. abiyiri jaman achıldı. Karıbek from Anjiyan, Anjiyandın Karıbek the greatest of all the Ichkilik, Ichkiliktin baarı bek, here’s what I have to say to you, men aytamın mınday dep, Baysal the brave, son of Baytik, Baytiktin uulu er Baysal, had his combatant win and take the prize, baatırga chaap bayge algan, didn’t he enter a real combatant in the baatırdı salgan turbaybı, contest? Anjiyandan Karıbek Didn’t Karıbek from Anjiyan saman köchük, chöp kursak katındı make a weak-seated, spineless woman salgan turbaybı. enter the tournament?

After introducing the sides in the competition, the ırchı acknowledges the skills of the combatants and the seriousness of the tournament. He then announces the result with regard to the combatants themselves: the loser, Ürpökbash, is ‘utterly shamed’. In the next move however the ırchı shifts attention from the combatants to their patrons and pokes fun not so much at Ürpökbash as at his patron Karıbay. Similarly, his praise is as much for Ashırbay, the winner of the tournament, as for his patron Baysal. The outcome is a fusion between the combatants and their respective patrons. The territorial and genealogical belongings of the protagonists are present all along: from the opening in which the ırchı reminds which combatant stands for which region, through his address to Karıbek, whom he treats as the ‘greatest of all the Ichkilik’,52 until the closure where Karıbek is somehow jokingly referred to as ‘Karıbek from Anjiyan’. The ırchıs’ performances on such occasions were taken very seriously by the prominent people: in the case of the jousting tournament, Karıbek, wary of the way he was ridiculed in public, is reported to have ordered his guards to shoot the ırchı who was eventually defended and spared by Baysal.53 These performances took place in front of large audiences deeply involved in the making and unmaking of reputations. The memory of a victory in a tournament went hand in hand with the remembrance

52 Ichkilik is a collective name for the genealogical lines of southern Kyrgyzstan. 53 Anonymous, “Osmon baatır”: 394. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 201 of the ırchı’s performance. The most artful among them became widely popular and thus played a crucial role in upholding territorial and genea logical belonging as meaningful identity categories. This leads me to the conclusion in which I relate the social poetics of identity construction to the role of bards in coining group identities and group stereotypes and in their propagation.

Conclusion

The significance of the memorial feast derived from the ways it intertwined the genealogical belongings of the deceased, the hosts and the guests, from the size and lavishness of the event and from the collective effervescence marking the assembly. The oral performances and verbal contests on such occasions were among the most authoritative sites for making and unmaking individual reputations, honour and prestige and for relating them to collective identities. As the foregoing analysis demonstrates identity categories were created in bards’ performances by means of various rhetorical devices that made genealogical or territorial belonging culturally meaningful. Bards liked to underscore the relationship between prominent people and their genealogical lines through the prominent people’ famous ancestors; they fused genealogical categories and territorial ones; they contrasted and even essentialised cultural differences for the sake of buttressing collective identities; they transferred the rivalry from the contestants to their patrons and to the patrons’ regions and genealogical lines; they were constantly stereotyping when debating about lands and people. The effectiveness of these devices is proved by the fact that a century later genealogical and territorial belongings are still meaningful and the relations between prominent people, ancestral lands and the genealogical line of their inhabitants are still largely established in the same ways. There is a temptation here to explain the pervasiveness and persistence of some of these representations by culturally shared cognitive mechanisms. I suggest instead that categorization and stereotyping in relation to genealogical and territorial belongings depended on individual expertise and skilfulness. Bards were not the only persons to engage in the rhetoric of identities and belongings. It is safe to suggest that identities were displayed and debated in a multitude of other social interactions which however are less documented and which were, in a way, more ephemeral. The ırchıs’ performances instead were highly appreciated by the public. They were remembered, repeated, spread, stored and recalled. This is the way in which they have been preserved up to the present. 202 Svetlana Jacquesson This observation adds an important aspect to the social poetics of collective identities: because of its artful effects, skilfully deployed rhetoric is susceptible of being repeated, reported, modified or transferred from oral narration to print independently of the situation in which it was initially produced. It can thus become independent of its concrete triggers and can provide instead the content of relatively wide-shared stereotypical representations. In spite of its situatedness and context-sensitivity, social poetics can eventually account for the stability of some of these representations and, in the case studied here, for the pervasiveness of the genealogical discourse in the past and in the present. Elsewhere I have argued that the salience of genealogical belongings depends not on their transmission from one generation to another, or their being culturally shared, but on cultural tools which are historically contingent.54 If nowadays genealogical belongings are rendered meaningful by the production of genealogical and clan narratives simultaneously on the internet, on the pages of the local news media and in books, I consider the ırchıs’ performances of the past equally efficient and powerful cultural tools in the shaping and dissemination of these identities. Neither genealogy- not locality-based identity categories can be fixed, described and analysed once and forever. Instead, as much as the available sources and data allow it, the investigation has to take into account both their rhetorical deployment in situated interactions and the possibilities for their perpetuation, or even reification, through the subsequent processes of repetition, transmission and publication.

Appendix 1

Ash of Keldibek, c. 1878: Anon. 2002. Osmon baatır. In Joloy, Taylak, Balbay, Osmon, ed. A. Akmataliev. Bishkek: Sham: 365–99.

Ash of Soltonkul, 1889: Tınıbek uulu, A. 1991 Alıkenin ashı. In Id., Anggeme-eskirme. Bishkek: Adabiyat: 251–74. ____. Soltonkuldun ashı. In Id., Anggeme-eskirme. Bishkek: Adabiyat: 275–88. Karıbay uulu, A. 2002. Sadır ake. Bishkek: Uchkun: 145–60.

Ash of Bayzak, 1914: Moldalı uulu, A. 1994. Bayzak baatır bayanı. Ala-too 1: 92–130.

54 Jacquesson, “From Clan Narratives to Clan Politics”: 289–90. Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 203 Appendix 2

Arstanbek (1824?-1878?) was born in a rich household from the Tınımseyit genea logical line. As a son of a second wife (tokol), he was less privileged than the other children. Therefore, he spent most of his life among his in-laws, on the southern shore of the Issyk Kul where he became highly admired and maintained by the Bugu manaps of that time, Boronbay and Chınıbay. In most of his public improvisations Arstanbek acted as their spokesman.55 Kalmırza Sarpek uulu (1866–1910), a Sarıbagısh from the Chüy Valley, had to leave his native land, most probably because of a rival ırchı, Naymanbay (see below). Kalmırza joined his in-laws in the valley of Talas and spent his youth in service of the Talas manaps. Thanks to the support of Shabdan, one of the most influential Sarıbagısh at that time, he could eventually move back to the Chüy Valley. Kalmırza is said to have been excessively flattering to the Sarıbagısh and more than acceptably insulting towards the other genealogical lines. Even Shabdan, as the key figure of the Sarıbagısh, and as the person most often praised, was occasionally annoyed with Kalmırza. According to some sources, it is because of his improvisations as an ırchı that he was murdered in 1910.56 Naymanbay Balık uulu (1853–1911) was from the Sarıbagısh genealogical line. He was born in the Talas Valley where his father Balık made a living by performing the Manas epic. In 1856 Baytik, one of the Solto manaps at that time, brought all the family to the Chüy Valley. Naymanbay inherited not only the eloquence of his father but he also remained linked to the Solto manaps, performing notably for the son of Baytik, Baysal.57 Naymanbay and Kalmırza seemed to have been engaged in a dire rivalry as evidenced by their confrontation at the ash of Japarkul in the early 1900s. As the story goes, Naymanbay, who was expected to perform the welcome address, was late for the event. Kalmırza seized the opportunity: his performance was well appreciated and he was lavishly rewarded. Upon his arrival, Naymanbay got furious. In some sources, the two bards come to blows and then are invited to solve their conflict in a verbal contest; in others, they only engage in a verbal contest which, if we judge by the fragments that have been preserved, stands out as particularly violent.58 Barpı Alıkulov (1884–1949) was born in Achı, in the south of Kyrgyzstan. His father made his living by selling his working force to the wealthy and, according to the existing biographies, so did Barpı until the age of 30 or rather until the establishment of Soviet rule in the 1920s. If we judge however by the number and volume of his performances, he was not entirely enslaved and could spare time in order to join various events and act as ırchı. As different from the other bards mentioned in this essay, Barpı is not explicitly related to a patron or a protec tor and is described instead as being overtly critical to manaps and big men.

55 Kebekova, Arstanbek: 3–8. 56 B. Kebekova, “Kalmırza Sarpek uulu.” In Zalkar akındar: 242–65. 57 Alagushov and Sher-Niyazov, Aktaŋdaylar: 115–18. 58 See “Kalmırza menen Naymanbaydın aytıshkanı.” In Zalkar akındar: 30–35; Alagushov and Sher-Niyazov, Aktaŋdaylar: 118–21. 204 Svetlana Jacquesson

A significant number of his late works is dedicated to the praise of Soviet rule. He is one of the bards who has been repeatedly published in Soviet times and even translated in Russian.59

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59 See for instance Taŋdalmaluu ırlar (Frunze: Kırgızmambas, 1949), Chıgarmalar: bir tomduk (Frunze: Kırgızmambas, 1960) and Taŋdalmalar (Frunze: Kırgızstan, 1984). Performance and Poetics in Kyrgyz Memorial Feasts 205

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CHAPTER SIX

Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters to Reconstruct Local Political History of the 1820s-30s

Virginia Martin

Introduction

This chapter centers on an analysis of three brief letters written in the Turki language by elite Qazaq Chinggisids to Russian officials within the first decade of Russian administrative rule over the Middle Horde Qazaq steppe.1 The first document was written in 1828 by Ayghanïm, widow of the late Middle Horde Khan Wali; she makes specific demands of administrators in Omsk for construction work, travel privileges, and recognition of her authority. The second is from Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi-oghlï, whose prominence as a Chinggisid grew out of his father’s successful control of trade routes through the region, and who wrote in June 1830 to inform Russian officials of his efforts to make a certain number of Qazaqs into new subjects. The third letter, dated June 1832, is from Sultan Chinggis, son of Ayghanïm and Wali, who requested permission to travel to see the Qazaq nomads under his authority, even though Russian officials had expected him to return to Omsk, where he was enrolled in the Omsk Asiatic School to train as a translator. There is little of historical consequence in these communications. Their authors came from families who enjoyed political prominence within the nomadic community and in Russian eyes, but they did not hold official posts in the imperial administrative apparatus at the time the letters were written. The content of the letters is informational about current political conditions or personal situations of importance to the authors and often includes demands for attention to specific concerns. Each document

1 Turki is used here to refer to a variety of Chaghatay with typical Qipchaq features and reflecting the spoken varieties of the steppe region. I would like to acknowledge the transcription and translation work that Dr. Talant Mawkanuli did on these documents: without his linguistic expertise, I would not have been able to undertake such a careful analysis of these historical sources. 208 Virginia Martin reveals something different about Qazaq political behavior, and the subject matter is completely local. This is a source for reconstructing microhistories of Qazaq steppe inhabitants, especially its elite political actors and how they viewed and managed the local political and social challenges in front of them. But at a more macro level, the documents also represent a type of evidence that offers the researcher a way to move beyond much of the current historiography on 19th century Qazaq history, which tends strongly towards viewing Qazaq nomads as objects to be analyzed against a backdrop of developments in Russian imperial history. That is, immersed in analysis of state and empire, historians critique Qazaq nomads’ actions and words in relation to the centralized state and its policies, using the terminology of that state. The resulting explanations invariably and inevitably denigrate the nomads and offer negative assessments of their political culture.2 My premise is that rather than beginning with the central state and asking why Qazaqs did not measure up to it—why they opposed it, why they accommodated it, why they remained so corrupt or uncivilized or traditional, etc.—we should strive to adopt an ‘emic’ view and ask, for instance, how these Qazaq nomads defined themselves as political actors and as leaders of their communities, what societal issues occupied them, what tools and models they may have employed to gain position and advantage during their encounters with each other and with neighboring states. In posing and answering such questions, we should look back to the longue durée of Inner Asian nomadic history, political culture and economies, and we should be fully conscious of the terminology of description and analysis used to depict this nomadic world, taken from the broadest possible selection of documentary records, which might give us clues for explaining Qazaq actions in a more authentic light. My goal in this research is to follow the Qazaqs’ own voices and ultimately build from them a collective image

2 Examples of recent scholarship of this type would include: E.V. Bezvikonnaya, Admin- istrativno-pravovaya politika Rossiiskoi Imperii v stepnykh oblastyakh Zapadnoi Sibiri v 20–60-kh gg. XIX v. (Omsk, 2005); A.Yu. Bykov, “Rossiya i Kazakhstan (XVII-XIX vv.).” In Tyurkologicheskii sbornik 2002. Rossiya i tyurkskii mir, ed. D.D. Vasikl’ev, S.G. Klyashtornyi i V.V. Trepavlov (Moscow: “Vostochnaya literatura RAN, 2003): 51–117; Michael Khodark- ovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). Another historiographical trend treats the Qazaq nomads as warriors in a battle against the Russian state, and results in the virtual mythologization of Qazaq history. Mostly, this trend pertains to the writing on historical eras prior to the 1820s, and it characterizes a large percentage of the Russian and Qazaq language historical scholarship published within Kazakhstan. See N.E. Masanov, Zh.B. Abylkhozhin, and I.V. Erofeeva, Nauchnoe znanie i mifotvorchestvo v sovremennoi istoriografii Kazakhstana (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2007). Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 209 of their political lives in a particular time and place. The temporal and geographical context of the research behind this paper is the Middle Horde steppe in the 1820s-30s, but eventually, by increasing the scope of this historical lens, we may move closer to comprehending the processes of adaptation and change, as well as the phenomena of cultural resilience and resistance, as whole nomadic communities confronted the increasingly restrictive rules and regulations of the Russian imperial state over the course of the 19th century. The purpose of this paper, then, is to interpret three archival documents in Turki language, which serve as samples from a corpus of similar documents that guide my conceptual and methodological reassessment of local Qazaq political and social history in this era.3 While the goals of this research are ambitious―considering that its foundational sources are brief communications of seemingly questionable historical consequence―the methodology for travelling the path towards incorporating Turki-language letters as key historical sources has been carefully contemplated. There are two different contexts within which I view and analyze the documents: 1) Inner Asian nomadic political-cultural traditions and 2) Russian imperial politics and practices in the Qazaq steppe.

I. Inner Asian and Qazaq Models

In much of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, the political landscape of the Middle Horde Qazaq steppe changed dramatically, with the expanding presence of the Russian and Qing empires, as well as that of various Central Asian Khanates, the defeat of the Jungars by the Qing (which Peter Perdue has called ‘the end of the steppe in world history’4) and changes to patterns of trade.5 At this time, there was no centralized

3 See below in section “Using Turki Sources from Russian Imperial Archives” for a description of this collection of documents. 4 P.C. Perdue, China Marches West. The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). 5 I’d like to make the point that the picture that I draw of a pre-19th century political landscape of the Qazaq steppe should not be considered as a set of fixed norms or ‘traditions’ that would undergo change only at a particular moment in time. In fact, already by the end of the 17th century and certainly through the 18th, steppe politics clearly underwent major changes as regional conditions changed: the Jungars (Oirats) invaded from the east in the 1720s causing massive population shifts and loss of Qazaq control of the Syr-Darya riverine cities, political and trade relations of Qazaq and Bukharan rulers were disrupted, and then the Jungars themselves were permanently defeated by the Qing in 1757. Thereaf- ter, any unity to a Qazaq polity was destroyed. The Qing never attempted to conquer Qazaq 210 Virginia Martin Qazaq state, no functional tribal confederacy, no nomadic empire. Yet, I argue, there was a clear political culture—that is, a set of guidelines, norms and modes of operating, which political actors observed on behalf of themselves and their groups as they sought advantage and played out rivalries over power and position, and which distinguished Qazaqs as part of an Inner Asian nomadic world of Chinggisid heritage.6 In developing an understanding of this nomadic political culture, I draw on a wide range of scholarship on Inner Asian or Central Eurasian history, such as the recent theoretical work on nomadic social and political structure by David Sneath and Christopher Atwood7; scholars of nomadic or Chinggisid polities of earlier eras of Inner Asian history, such as Isenbike Togan, Thomas Allsen, David Morgan and Robert McChesney8; specialists in Chinese history and that empire’s long relationship with nomads, such as Peter Perdue, Nicola di Cosmo, Thomas Barfield, and James Millward9; and then a handful of lands, but Russia increased its presence, first with Cossack forts and then with various administrative bodies, and finally in 1822, the Middle Horde lands were subject to administrative control with the promulgation of the Ustav o sibirskikh kirgizakh and state expansion directly onto their territory. Specifically on 18th c. political history of the Qazaq steppe region, see I. Erofeeva, Khan Abulkhair: polkovodets, pravitel’ i politik (Almaty: Sanat, 1999); V.A. Moiseev, Dzhungarskoe khanstvo i kazakhi. XVII-XVIII vv. (Alma-Ata, 1991); Perdue, China Marches West. 6 For conceptualizations and discussions of what might be understood under the term ‘Chinggisid’, see Stephen Kotkin, “Mongol Commonwealth? Exchange and Governance across the Post-Mongol Space.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 8/3 (Summer 2007): 487–532; and Virginia Martin, “Family and State in Chinggisid and Post- Chinggisid Central Eurasia.” Central Eurasian Studies Review 7/2 (Fall 2008): 33–6. 7 D. Sneath, The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresenta- tions of Nomadic Inner Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries, ed. D. Sneath (Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, Center for East Asian Studies, 2006), especially his own introduction, “Imperial Statecraft: Arts of Power on the Steppe” (1–22); Christopher Atwood, “Mongols and Qazaqs: Two Alternative Types of Inner Asian Nomadic Social Structure,” unpublished conference paper presented at Seoul National University, October 30, 2008 (under revision). 8 I. Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations. The Kerait Khanate and Chinggis Khan (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Ead., “Patterns of Legitimization of Rule in the History of the Turks.” In Rethinking Central Asia, ed. K.A. Ertürk (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999): 39–53; T.T. Allsen, “Sharing out the Empire: Apportioned Lands Under the Mongols.” In Nomads in the Sedentary World, ed. A.M. Khazanov and A. Wink (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2001): 172–90; D. Morgan, The Mongols (Cambridge, MA & Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1986). R.D. McChesney, “The Amirs of Muslim Central Asia in the 17th Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 26/1 (1983): 33–70. 9 N. di Cosmo, “State Formation and Periodization in Inner Asian History.” Journal of World History 10/1 (1999): 1–40; P.B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992); P.C. Perdue, China Marches West. The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 211 Kazakhstani scholars who have been critical of Soviet and post-Soviet paradigms, most especially Irina Erofeeva and the late Vladimir Moiseev and Nurbolat Masanov.10 With the obvious exception of the Kazakhstani publications, very little of this scholarship directly addresses the Qazaq setting, but as a body of work examining Inner Asian nomads, Qazaqs among them in the post-Chinggisid historical era, it provides concepts and tools for interpreting the primary evidence outside the confines of the long, russocentric historiographical tradition.11 Based on these models from the historiography of nomadic Inner Asia, we can describe features of the political culture in the Qazaq steppe for a period from roughly the mid-18th century through the early 1820s. It was a highly decentralized political world, with no one superior ruler and no one town or territory functioning as its focus (as Turkestan had served until it was taken by the Jungars in the 1720s). Power and wealth derived from multiple sources, including land rights and claims to subservient nomads and their herds, as well as from ancestry and/or membership in respected descent groups. For most of this period, power bases mapped locally and regionally onto diffuse territories and their inhabitants. Qazaq nomads were not organized in an egalitarian social structure; they were stratified in a sort of caste system, and within each caste, into elites and non-elites.12 The political elites of the White Bone caste were töre, who claimed descent

University Press, 2005); J.A. Millward, “The Qing Formation, the Mongol Legacy, and the ‘End of History’ in Early Modern Central Eurasia.” In The Qing Formation in World-Histori- cal Time, ed. L.A. Struve (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 2004); T. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Basil Blackwell, 1989); A. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World (Cambridge, 1984). 10 N.E. Masanov, Problemy sotsyal’no-èkonomicheskoi istorii Kazakhstana na rubezhe XVIII-XIX vekov (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1984); V.A. Moiseev, Rossiya-Kazakhstan: sovremennye mify i istoricheskaya real’nost’. Sbornik nauchnykh i publitsisticheskikh statei (Barnaul, 2001); I.V. Erofeeva, “Sobytiya i lyudi Kazakhskoi stepi (epokha pozdnego srednevekov’ya i novogo vremeni) kak ob’ekt istoricheskoi remistifikatsii.” In Nauchnoe znanie i mifotvorchestvo v sovremennoi istoriografii Kazakhstana, ed. N.E. Masanov et al. (Almaty: Daik Press, 2007): 132–224. 11 Christopher Atwood has written insightfully on nomadic social structure and cautions against generalizing the experiences of Inner Asian nomads. This is an excellent point that demands significant research, which he is undertaking. See, e.g., his attempt to differentiate between Mongol and Qazaq nomads: “Mongols and Kazakhs: Two Alternative Types of Inner Asian Nomadic Social Structure,” presented at Seoul National University, October 30, 2008 (under revision). 12 Note that this was not a closed caste society, as seen from the fact that in time of war, any Qazaq nomad could grow into a military leadership position, regardless of birth or socioeconomic status, and attain the title ‘batyr.’ For a discussion of this aspect of Qazaq sociopolitical structure, see I.V. Erofeeva et al., Anryakaiskii treugol’nik: istoriko-geograficheskii areal i khonika velikogo srazheniya (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2008): 81–3. The age of the 212 Virginia Martin from Chinggis Khan and who used the title sultan to denote their privileged status.13 Elites of the non-Chinggisid Black Bone caste, who demonstrated their leadership within tribal groupings, were biys/beys (In times of war, elites with military prowess, called batyrs, emerged.).14 Rivalries and power struggles among and between Black and White Bone were commonplace. Although only Chinggisids of the White Bone could aspire to be khan, multiple khans existed at any one time within each of the three historical military-administrative divisions of the population (Ulï, Orta, Kishi jüz).15 Each extant khan claimed certain lands and their inhabitants under his authority, which were his yurt, but none held those claims permanently. Further, certain töre families held power and amassed wealth, while others from different lineages had little or none. Thus, even though culturally (using the idioms of kinship and caste) all Qazaqs deferred to those of Chinggisid descent, in social and political practice, sultans vied with biys― Chinggisids vied with non-Chinggisids―for power and authority over other nomads, especially as pertained to issues of pasture use and migration. In the historiography of the Qazaq steppe of the 18th-20th centuries, any number of outside observers of this political culture dismissed its decentralized nature and propensity for rivalry among elites as ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’; the oft-cited Russian imperial official Alexei Levshin is prime among them.16 But such dismissiveness is unproductive; social science creation of Qazaq ‘batyrs’ was over before the end of the 18th century, but myth-making surrounding them has continued down to the present day. 13 Religious elites of the White Bone caste were qojas and sayyids. See I. Erofeeva, Rodoslovnye kazakhskikh khanov i kozha XVIII-XIX vv. (Almaty: TOO “Print-S”, 2003): 18–37. 14 In addition, prominent local figures were recognized by the Russian Empire with the title starshina, and by the Qing Empire with the title aqalaqchi. Note that these were titles granted by outside governments. See Noda Jin, “Qazaq Nomadism Reflected in Imperial Documents: Between the Qing and Russian Empires (19th c.),” paper presented at the CESS Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, October 19–21, 2007. 15 See I. Erofeeva, “Kazakhskie khany XVIII-serediny XIX v.” Vostok 3 (1997): 10–30, for lists of khans in this period. The tables show that one khan was often recognized as the elder khan; he had residence in the city of Turkestan, but his claim to power was far from absolute, as other men claimed the title khan simultaneously. This was true even under the powerful Abulkhair Khan (d. 1748), who was the first, in 1730, to seek Russian protection, a decision made in the context of destructive conflicts with the Junghars, and during the era of Ablai Khan (d. 1781). 16 See his Opisanie kirgiz-kazats’ikh, ili kirgiz-kaisatskikh, ord i stepei, SPb, 1832. This is not to say that all historians or observers saw anarchy. However, those that see structure have a distinct tendency to be ahistoricist in applying it. Thus, Tursun Sultanov’s research on pre-18th century Qazaq social and political organization is quoted in numerous studies of 19th century history (see, e.g., T.I. Sultanov, Kochevye plemena Priaral’ya v XV-XVII vv.: voprosy etnicheskoi i sotsyal’noi istorii [Moscow, 1982], and T.I. Sultanov and S. Klyashtornyi, Kazakhstan. Letopis’ trekh tysyacheletii [Alma-Ata, 1992]). The latter thus fail to take into Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 213 scholarship provides tools to help us analyze more rigorously. Toward this end, I have found it particularly useful to engage David Sneath’s recent book, The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepresentations of Nomadic Inner Asia. In this book, Sneath argues that historically, nomadic Inner Asian polities should be seen as aristocratic and hierarchical in structure, with multiple ‘houses’ of elites that maintained and/or aspired to hold power locally or regionally, rather than aspiring to assume control of a centralized state mechanism. He calls this a ‘headless state’ and sees it as ‘a form of social relation rather than a central structure’17 that had features common to the centralized, bureaucratized state, i.e., political authorities, systems of rules, and distinctions between rulers and ruled. By viewing the nomadic state through the prism of such relationships and practices, we can interpret sources of elite decision- making that might otherwise appear ‘anarchic’ and/or contradict the time- less ‘system’ of ‘pre-state’ genealogically-based, ‘egalitarian’ kinship groups and tribal structures traditionally presumed to define nomadism.18 Also, we are better positioned to account for long-acknowledged patterns of account any possible changes over time, beginning in the early 18th c., that may have occurred in socio-political relations and cultural norms after the dissolution of the centralized Khanate, the end of Jungar rule, the virtual end of the era of new warrior-heroes (batyrs) as warfare sharply decreased, and the search for protection from outside powers. 17 Sneath, The Headless State: 1f. We might also see here a parallel to the ‘repertories of imperial power’ that Burbank and Cooper use to analyze empires as states, or to Michael W. Doyle’s definition of empires as ‘relationships of political control’, in his Empires, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986): 19. 18 Sneath does not dismiss kinship as a political organizing principle entirely, but rather asserts that genealogy was the key to the formation of polities only among the aristocratic elite families. One troubling aspect of Sneath’s theory is his reluctance to identify how kinship may have worked among non-elite groups. In considering kinship as an organizing principle, I find two scholars particularly useful: 1) Rudi Paul Lindner (“What was a Nomadic Tribe.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24/4 [1982]: 696–7) explains that kinship is important as the idiom of tribal ideology, but not the reality of practice in the formation of and relations among nomadic groups, which were based on the shared practical concerns of sustaining the animal husbandry economy. 2) Atwood (“Mongols and Qazaqs”) also makes this distinction by analyzing nomadic ‘cultural categories’ (e.g., the idiom of kinship) versus ‘social groups’ (e.g., the communities that come together for political and economic reasons, regardless of geneaological ties). Examples from among the many sources that presume egalitarian kinship structures as the foundation for Qazaq political formations into the 20th c. include Zhanar Dzhampeisova, Kazakhskoe obshchestvo i pravo v poreformennoi stepi (Astana: ENU im. L.N. Gumileva 2006) and Paul Geiss, Pre-Tsarist and Tsarist Central Asia. Communal Commitment and Political Order in Change (London-New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). Much more (and more critical) research needs to be conducted on these issues, keeping in mind Atwood’s insightful warning not to generalize too broadly the experiences and structures of all Inner Asian nomads across time (see note 11 above). 214 Virginia Martin nomadic life such as the historic tendency, asserted by Morgan, of nomadic political leaders to exercise pragmatism, flexibility and adaptation to local situations regardless of or often in direct contradiction to the interest of genealogical kinship.19 However, for my purposes here, such theorizing does not go far enough to explain how this multicentered order functioned locally, how power was built and maintained, how elites legitimized their own authority in the eyes of fellow nomads, etc., nor does Sneath convincingly apply it to the Qazaq case.20 So, in the case of the Qazaq nomads of the period roughly from the mid-18th to mid-19th centuries, we might ask: how did political elites, Chinggisid or non-Chinggisid, gain and lose power and authority amongst themselves, over land and livestock, and in relation to non-aristocratic clans? What were the sources of their legitimacy as powerholders? My research uncovers ample evidence to suggest that Qazaq political elites of both White and Black bone castes claimed and sustained privilege, status and power most importantly from the successful assertion of patronage, that is, the mutual and dependent relationships formed of nomadic patrons meeting the needs of subservient client groups.21 Successful patrons ensured such groups access to good pastureland and water; they offered protection from harm or loss due to external threats, internal disputes or natural disasters; they shared the fruits of engagement in the trade economy; and, through redistribution mechanisms, they provided resources for religious devotion, education, and ritual observations, among other

19 Morgan, The Mongols: 87. 20 What Sneath does do convincingly is demonstrate the constructedness of kinship terminology within the context of European enlightenment thinking of the 18th-19th centuries, which scholars continue to use uncritically in analyses of Inner Asian nomadism down to the present day. See esp. Sneath, The Headless State: chap. 2. 21 My focus on patronage as a mechanism of nomadic politics is nothing new, even among scholars of Qazaq history, but it has long been buried under other models, most prominently those that feature ‘nomadic feudalism’ and other ‘system[s] of vertical dependence’ among rulers and subjects. See I. Erofeeva, “Titul i vlast’: k probleme tipologii instituta khanskoi vlasti v Kazakhstane v XVIII-nachale XIX vv.” Kazakhstan i mirovoe soobshchestvo 4 (1996): 37–46. Such scholars as Thomas Barfield (The Perilous Frontier]) and Elizabeth Bacon (Obok. A Study of Social Structure in Eurasia [New York, 1968]) also refer to patronage as basic to tribal-political organization among nomads. For a fascinating analysis of the many types of patron-client relationships that could drive power politics among nomadic groups, see Emrys L. Peters’ study of the Bedouins in Libya in The Bedouin of Cyrenaica. Studies in personal and corporate power, ed. J. Goody and E. Marx (Cambridge: CUP, 1990): 40–58; 112–37. Although he does not use the term patronage, M. Nazif Shahrani discussed many of the same features of ‘traditional local leadership’ among Kirghiz of Afghanistan. See his “The Kirghiz Khans: Styles and Substance of Traditional Local Leader- ship in Central Asia.” Central Asian Survey 5/3–4 (1986): 255–71. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 215 popular concerns. Patronage has been a standard feature of aristocratic politics historically, but among nomads it was a trickier feature and arguably a less reliable tool for the patron: by virtue of their mobility, client groups of nomads posed the persistent threat of eroding and/or destroying a patron’s power base by at any time simply moving away with their herds and seeking pasturage and protection from another patron who could better guarantee their livelihood. A khan’s power (or that of a lower-level patron) could dissipate in this way, new patrons could emerge from among client groups, and those possibilities could act as a check on abuses and/ or an incentive to rule in the interests of the community’s wellbeing.22 In considering the idea of patronage within the decentralized, hierarchical Qazaq political culture of the 18th to early 19th centuries, it is important to reiterate that Qazaq nomads did not function in isolation from the sedentary world. The proximity of centralized states with economic and geostrategic interest in the region offered local claimants to power numerous opportunities to maximize the benefits of interaction with those states, thereby allowing the patron to enhance his status and reinforce his legitimacy as authority figure within his community. For example, led by their elites, Qazaq nomads regularly sought opportunities to trade their animals and animal-based products in order to relieve surplus, by participating in the regional caravan trade, which grew in importance, or bringing their herds to local or regional trading towns as they emerged.23 Historically, nomads in all layers of the social structure could benefit from this trade, given the redistributive mechanisms that anchored many community interactions. As Isenbike Togan has argued, redistribution was essential to the nomadic economy as a whole, with trade of surplus products benefitting elite herd leaders and ‘redistribution of the exchanged goods’ benefitting

22 As Togan asserts in her discussion of forms of legitimacy among Turkic nomads, tribes could ‘vote with their feet’, and relations between them were ‘based on persuasion rather than force’ (Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations: 41; see also Golden, An Introduction: 4; and J. Janabel, “Qazaq Khanate: From a United to a Divided Polity.” Études mongoles et sibériennes 27 (1996): 97–128). 23 See Noda Jin, “Russo-Chinese Trade through Central Asia: Regulations and Reality,” forthcoming in volume of papers from 2007 Slavic Research Center Winter Symposium: “Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts,” December 5–7, 2007, Sapporo, Japan. Noda concludes that Qazaq caravans were prominent in trade in Central Asia (bridging China and Russia) from 1760s to 1830s. For evidence from an earlier era, see Wolfgang Holzwarth, “Relations between Uzbek Central Asia, the Great Steppe and Iran, 1700–1750.” In Shifts and Drifts in Nomad-Sedentary Relations, ed. S. Leder and B. Streck [Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 2005]: 185), regarding Qazaq khans of the 17th and early 18th centuries organizing ‘joint commercial and diplomatic ventures’ with non-Qazaq sedentary merchants of Central Asia. 216 Virginia Martin non-elites.24 Interaction with the sedentary world involved also using a neighboring state in contestations for power among political rivals, by, for example, gaining dual subjecthood by vowing loyalty to two states simultaneously (as Ablai Khan did in the 1770s, and as Sultan Gabaidulla attempted to do in 1825)25; acquiring outside recognition of an individual Sultan’s proclaimed status as ‘khan’ of his people,26 or demonstrating benevolent concern for one’s clients by seeking state recognition (with perks and rewards) for their services. By taking these features of a Qazaq political culture as a backdrop—a decentralized, multicentered polity; a hierarchical sociopolitical structure based on patronage; and interaction with neighboring states for economic and political gain—I think we can fairly and properly reconstruct a more Qazaq-centered picture of the early 19th c. steppe than oft-cited historiography tends to do. Still, we must consider the fact that the introduction in 1822 of a new set of rules and regulations to organize nomadic structures within those of the empire created the potential for dramatic changes to the Qazaq community. It is important, therefore, to elucidate the features of Russian administrative rule within the region.

II. The Russian Imperial Context, 1820–1830s

On paper, and eventually in practice, a new era in the Russian Empire’s relations with Qazaq nomads began in 1824, when the 1822 Regulations on Middle Horde Qazaqs (Ustav o sibirskikh kirgizakh) was officially implemented. In that year, two regional administrative offices were opened in the steppe and Qazaq elites were invited to participate in their operations. The 319 articles of the Regulations defined the administrative, economic, legal and cultural features of imperial rule and the obligations and expectations of Qazaqs who became subjects of the Russian tsar. With the prom-

24 Togan, Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations. 25 See, e.g., J. Noda, “Kazakhskaya step’ mezhdu Kitaem i Rossiei (XIX vek).” In Mirovye tsivilizatsii i Kazakhstan, K.Sh.Khafizova, chast’ 2. ed. (Almaty: Qainar universiteti, 2007): 22–31. 26 For example, see the requests of Sultans Tursun Chingisov and Ablai Gabbasov at their audience with Tsar Nicholas I in 1830 in TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 410, ll. 232 & 233ob-234 [Also published in B.T. Zhanaev, compiler and commentator, O pochetneishikh i vliyatel’neishikh ordyntsakh. Istoriya Kazakhstana v russkikh istochnikakh XVI-XX vekov, Tom VIII, ch. 1 (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006): 31–3]. For a historical survey of the meaning of such deputations to Russian-Qazaq relations, see A. Remnev and O. Sukhikh, “Kazakhskie deputatsii v tsenariyakh vlasti: ot diplomaticheskikh missii k imperskim presentatsiyam.” Ab Imperio 1 (2006): 119–53. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 217 ulgation of this statute, Russia ceased to recognize the authority of Middle Horde khans; instead, through either election by their peers or appointment by Russian officials, a select few Qazaq elites could lay claim to the titles ‘senior sultan’ (starshii sultan, agha sultan) of the new outer regional offices (vneshnyi okruzhnyi prikaz) or ‘volost’ sultan’ of the sub-regional administrative unit, called a volost’, through which the empire endeavored to organize the population of each okrug. The first two outer regions were created in 1824, with the opening of offices in Karkaralinsk and Kokchetav.27 It would not be until summer 1831 that a third region and office were opened, followed by four more by 1834. The locations of these units coincided with territories claimed by Qazaq elites (mostly Chinggisids) deemed loyal to the empire, and they were usually situated in areas deemed stra- tegically advantageous to the Russian state.28 Over the course of ten years, 1824–34, gradually and incompletely new groups of nomads requested that they become Russian subjects; these groupings chose a leader whom they recognized as the official ‘volost’ Sultan.’ But within the territory of each outer region, there remained large numbers of nomads who did not profess any allegiance to the state, who did not take loyalty oaths, for various reasons.29 Some simply opted to migrate and otherwise operate as long as they could outside of the emerging administrative structure.30 During the first decade of establishing legal-administrative rule in the Middle Horde Qazaq steppe, the Russian presence was still thin, and while these regions were opened and administrators within them named, I argue that radical changes to Qazaq political culture did not occur. Evidence is overwhelming that Qazaq political actors continued to operate within their own orbit of expectations for leadership, organization, legitimacy, and

27 Tsarist officials recognized these two regions as coinciding with the territories claimed by the last two Middle Horde khans, Khan Bukei and Khan Wali. See RGIA, f. 1264, op. 1, d. 341, ll. 3–5. “Svedeniya o novom ustroistve Kirgiz-kaisatskoi stepi sobrannye senatorami kn. Kurakinym i Bezrodnym pri revizii Zapadnoi Sibiri v 1827–28 gg.” Outer regions were defined in part by the absence of borders with foreign states to the east and south; ‘inner’ or ‘near-line’ (bliz-lineinyi) regions were those touching or including the Siberian Line and included the towns of Omsk and Petropavlovsk, among others. 28 Bezvikonnaya, Administrativno-pravovaya politika Rossiiskoi Imperii: 91. 29 Some were denied their requests to form new units, because the Russians saw behind these requests political machinations by untrustworthy individuals, in some cases motivated by suspicion of Chinese influence. RGIA, f. 1264, op. 1, d. 341, ll. 7ob-8. 30 As one sultan argued in 1825, the Qazaqs ‘wished to lead life as had Ablai Khan’, who ruled the Middle Horde until 1781 with great political acumen and power to balance Russian and Chinese interests without allowing dominance of either over the Middle Horde nomadic territory. IAOO, f. 3, op. 1, d. 755, l. 2ob. Quoted text is Russian translation of words of Sultan Kasym, son of Ablai and father of Kenesary. 218 Virginia Martin tactics, at least through 1834 or 1835; Russia’s presence served in this period as an added source of power or conflict, or as a new model of authority that could be tested. As much as Russia sought to bring ‘order’ and ‘civility’ to sociopolitical life in the Qazaq steppe, Qazaq political elites themselves viewed Russian structures only as one more tool with which they might craft their own power bases. The Qazaqs were supplementing decades-old practices for engaging with neighboring powers (e.g., Russia, the Qing, Khoqand, Bukhara), at the same time that Russia was developing new strategies in its long-term project of accommodating difference as it expanded the empire.31 Opportunities for pushing their advantages could be perceived from both sides, at least for a time. Clearly, though, the challenge that the nomads faced―of retaining and practicing politics as before―was immense, and growing, because representatives from the ‘neighboring state’ of Russia were now situated squarely in their midst.

III. Using Turki Sources from Russian Imperial Archives

Methodologically, we can study the contents of individual documents penned by Qazaq elites (or their scribes) in the traditional written language of the region and find within them a powerful affirmation of or a counter- source to the categories, signifiers and cultural understandings formed by the recipients of the communications, who were representatives of the state. We must acknowledge that much of what we know specifically about the Qazaqs of the early 19th century comes from the centralized states with which the nomads corresponded. State structures were erected to facilitate communication, create ‘order’, make sense (in imperial eyes) of the nomadic economy and polity and to help Russia meet its goals in the region. It is no revelation then to declare that the vast majority of the archival documentary record is organized around the policies and politics of the state and its offices. The limitation of the state-centric, etic perspective of the archival record is one element behind the comments of the prominent Soviet-era historian Zimanov, who bemoaned in his 1960 collection of documents that ‘[o]ne of the most poorly studied and in many ways least clear questions of the political history of Kazakhstan is the question of the structure and function of local power and administration before the imple-

31 On incorporating and accommodating diversity as one strategy of rule (among others in the ‘imperial repertoire’) of Russia and other empires, see J. Burbank and F. Cooper, Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton Univer- sity Press, 2010). Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 219 mentation of the decrees and statutes of the 1820s.’ 32 This issue still characterizes the historiography today.33 And yet the fact remains that Qazaqs engaged with Russian administrators at their own initiative, for their own purposes, and the written record of those interactions―most particularly the correspondences of the local authority figures who served in (or wished to serve in) steppe administrative positions―have much to tell the historian about power politics and everyday life among Qazaq elites, as we will see below. Evidence abounds of personal relationships (ranging from genuinely friendly to stiffly official) forged through regular visits of Qazaqs to Omsk or Tobol’sk and through periodic expeditions into the steppe by all levels of Russian officialdom stationed in those administrative centers. Written correspondence supplemented these opportunities for face-to-face interaction, and the Turki- language letters of Qazaq elites provide a supplement to the otherwise overwhelmingly etic nature of the archival record. Furthermore, to my knowledge there are few documents or writings preserved from this era that Qazaqs wrote independently, such as exist for later eras, like the works of Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpey-ulï , which date from the 1860s and later, or of Shokan Walikhanov, which date from the 1850s-60s.34 Surely, then, any

32 Zimanov wrote: “Odnim iz samykh slaboizuchennykh i vo mnogom neyasnykh voprosov politicheskoi istorii Kazakhstana yavlyaetsya vopros o structure i funktsiyakh mestnoi vlasti i upravleniya do prinyatiya ustavov i polizhenii 20-kh godov XIX v.” S.Z. Zimanov, Politicheskii stroi Kazakhstana kontsa XVIII i pervoi poloviny XIX vekov (Alma- Ata, 1960): 131. 33 We still know so little about local politics in part because the source base remains the same (still woefully small), but also because of a profound dearth among historians worldwide of interest in and serious scholarship on the period of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Even such rich ‘new’ primary sources as those documents culled from Qing era archives by Bakhyt Ezhenkhanulï and others are quite state-centric in their contents, focusing on relations between the Qing government and high level Qazaq leaders such as Abylai Khan. Few of the published documents are accompanied by a Turki version (of the 104 documents contained in the two collections cited below, only two are in Turki). While they reveal extremely important information about high politics, diplomacy and trade policies of the Qing toward the Qazaq nomads, they do no enlighten enormously on local issues, such as I am concerned with here, and they do not extend chronologically past the third quarter of the 18th century. See, e.g., Qazaqstan tarikhy turaly qytai derektemeleri. III. Tom. Tsin patshalyq deuirining muraghat quzhattary (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2006); Qazaq xandyghy men tsin patshalyghynyng saiasi-diplomatialyq qatynastary turaly qytai muraghat quzhattary. I. Tom. Qurastyrghan, Qytai derektemelerin audarghan, kirispesin, eskertuleri men tusindirmelerin zhazghan B. Ezhenxanulï (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2009). 34 Both of these 19th century local observers of the Qazaq steppe have had published multiple editions of their ‘collected works;’ these are valuable resources and do contain some information about the early 19th century. One could also mention the very occasional find within archival files of written communications from nomad to nomad (not meant for 220 Virginia Martin documents generated by Qazaqs themselves in this era are valuable resources, and if we want to attempt to find an emic view of this time and place, we cannot do without them. The state-centric nature of the available primary source base is not the only methodological concern in writing local histories of this era. We must also acknowledge that we cannot always know with certainty the identity of the scribe employed to write out a Qazaq nomad’s communication in Turki, the written language of the educated Muslim Qazaq elite. Very little has been written about scribes who worked under the patronage of Qazaq elites in the early 19th century. We do know that beginning in the 18th century, Russia began appointing pristavy―servitors (mostly Tatars)―to Kishi jüz Qazaq khans, who used them as translators, diplomats, and informants, and these figures continued to facilitate communications between the highest elite Qazaqs and Russians in the 19th century, although mostly in the Kishi Jüz.35 Various Chinggisids, particularly those within the immediate family of a Russian-legitimated khan, requested and had appointed to them mullahs who served not only as religious leaders locally but as scribes and educators.36 It seems to have been mostly Tatars from Russian provinces who worked for Middle Horde Qazaq elites in the 19th century, particularly in the Russian-appointed position of scribe (pis’movoditel’; khaṭchï) to the district administrator (volost’ sultan) from 1824 to the 1870s, when the government stopped furnishing these state-salaried assistants. Such scribes would have been experienced at preparing a document in Turki for Russian eyes in a certain format and style and perhaps also with state consumption), such as the intercepted note of Bulat Gabaidullin to a set of allied biys and a qoja that Russian administrators translated and kept. See TsGARK f. 338, op. 1, d. 693, ll. 177–78. 35 Kazakhstani scholar Gul’mira Sultangalieva has written extensively about Tatars among the Kishi (and Bukei) jüz Qazaqs, but imperial administration from Orenburg or Ufa differed from that in Omsk (which administered the Middle Horde Qazaqs) in significant ways in the 18th and 19th centuries (through 1868), and the Tatars who found positions within Kishi and Orta jüz regional structures may not have been from the same ‘families’ or ‘dynasties’ of servitors. See her Zapadnyi Kazakhstan v sisteme etnokul’turnykh kontaktov (XVIII–nachalo XX vv.) (Ufa: RIO RUNMTs Goskomnauki RB, 2002): 50–69; and “Karatol- mach, stabs-kapitan Mukhammed-Sharif Aitov v kazakhskoi stepi (pervaya polovina XIX v.).” Panorama Evrazii [Ufa] 2 (2008): 13–22. See also I.V. Erofeeva, “Epistoiarnoe nasledie kazakhskikh khanov i sultanov kontsa XVII-serediny XIX v.: proiskhozhdenie, struktura i vidovye osobennosti.” In Rol’ nomadov v formirovanii kul’turnogo naslediya Kazakhstana. Nauchnye chteniya pamiati N.E. Masanova. Sbornik materialov mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, ed. I.V. Erofeeva, B.T.Zhanaev, and L.E. Masanova (Almaty: Print-S, 2010): 71–5. 36 Ayghanïm referred to the fact that her children benefitted from the services of the mullah appointed to them by the Siberian Governor General (date of appointment not known). TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 690, l. 16. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 221 a specified vocabulary.37 A different person, usually someone trained in Omsk, would have translated it into Russian language after the document had arrived at the administrative office of its addressee. 38 We cannot know how closely the texts that the scribes wrote in Turki followed the nuances of the presumably Qazaq (vernacular) words used to clarify the mostly local political concerns, dictated orally to them by the Qazaq elites.39 Still, these Turki-language documents are the closest we can probably come to capturing the voices of Qazaq elites in this time period. The corpus of documents that I have collected consists of approximately 60 letters written in the period 1824–1834 by various Middle Horde Qazaq elites (who used titles sultan or biy). Each letter appears within a larger archival file in its Turki-language original and in a translation into Russian language. Because my research is still at a very preliminary stage, I have not yet had the opportunity to do a systematic search and analysis of a broader source base of Turki language documents written by Qazaqs. For example, I have not done research in archives relevant to early 19th century Qazaq steppe history in Orenburg, Moscow, Tashkent or Beijing (i.e., locations of archives of other contemporaneous states that had relations with Qazaqs or of the Russian empire’s other administrative centers besides Omsk), and my overall historical focus has been on the territory identified under Russian rule as that of the Middle Horde40. Therefore it is difficult to comment with any certainty on the representativeness or uniqueness

37 However, the standards and rules of written communication between Muscovy/ Russia and Central Eurasian khans in earlier eras do not seem to have been applied in this context. For discussion of such forms, see F.M. Khisamova, Tatarskii yazyk v vostochnoi diplomatii Rossii (Kazan: Izd. Master Lain, 1999). 38 In the Qazaq lands under Russian rule in the first half of the century, scribes were Tatars or other Turkic peoples, including some Qazaqs. Translators into Russian of the Turki-language documents submitted to officials in Omsk and in the regional offices were more often Russians or other non-Turkic peoples who had received their linguistic training in the Omsk Asiatic School (founded in 1789 and merged in 1836 with Omsk’s Cossack school). By the 1870s, it was Russians/Cossacks who predominated in all scribal roles: in 1877 in all of Akmolinsk oblast’, only one Qazaq and one Tatar were employed as scribes among the Qazaqs (TsGARK, f. 369, op. 1, d. 2040a). 39 For an example of the complexities of doing a lingustic analysis of these documents, see Talant Mawkanuli and Virginia Martin, “Nineteenth Century Kazak Letters to the Rus- sian Authorities: Morphemic Analysis and Historical Contextualization.” Central Eurasian Studies Review 8/1 (Spring 2009): 21–8. 40 My decisions on how to utilize my limited opportunities for archival research have been guided by the logistical and practical strategy of requesting and searching through files for the regions administered from Omsk, not from other provincial administrative centers of the Russian Empire 222 Virginia Martin of these letters across space, time, cultural context or political context. Clearly, more research and analysis needs to be done. However, a distinctiveness to my corpus is evident by comparing it with published collections of documents from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Compilations by Vyatkin (1940), Masevich (1960), and Kireev (1964) contain surprisingly few Turki originals and as a whole they are mostly high diplomatic communications from Qazaq khans, mostly from Kishi jüz elites (rather than from the Orta, Ulï or Bukei jüz), and mostly from the 18th century, rather than the 1820s or after.41 The more recent collections compiled by Ezhenkhanuli (2006) and Noda & Onuma (2010) contain fascinating samples of correspondence between Qazaq elites and Qing officials, but the vast majority were either written in the second half of the 18th c. or in a language other than Turki (e.g., Mongolian/Tod or Manchu). Other document collections exist, but they contain versions of or excerpts from reproductions of the Russian-language versions of Qazaq letters only, not the Turki originals.42 Those published document collections that do contain samples of Turki language letters from Orta jüz regions tend to be of limited use for various reasons, including the absence of facsimiles (only transcriptions are provided) and the poor quality of the reproduction. While all of these are often extremely useful in reconstructing the larger historical context of events, personalities and trends, they are of secondary value to the goals of my current project. In the end, only a small handful of individual documents from published collections are both usable and relevant to my focus on local political-cultural concerns of the Orta jüz nomads after the commencement in the 1820s of Russian administrative rule over them.43

41 Vyatkin’s collection contains only 15 documents in the Turki and the rest, totalling 151, are in Russian only. 42 Examples include: Istoriya Bukeevskogo khanstva. 1801–1852 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, ed. B.T. Zhanaev et al. (Almaty: Daik-Press, 2002); Zh. Kasymbaev, N. Agubaev, Istoriya Akmoly (XIX-nachalo XX veka): issledovaniya, istochniki, kommentarii (Almaty: Zheti Zharghy, 1998); A. Bukeikhanov, “Iz perepiski khana Srednei kirgizskoi ordy Bukeya i ego potomkov.” In Pamyatnaya knizhka Semipalatinskoi oblasti na 1901 god, vyp. V (Semipala- tinsk, 1901): 1–17; N. Konshin, “Materialy dlya istorii stepnogo kraya. I: Otkrytie Ayaguzskago okruga.” In Pamyatnaya knizhka Semipalatinskoi oblasti na 1900 g., vyp. IV (Semipalatinsk, 1900): 1–68. 43 A multivolume collection of letters of Qazaq khans and sultans is currently in press; its compiler (Irina Erofeeva) has described to me the character of the collection—hundreds of letters in Turki and Russian gathered from archives worldwide dating from periods including the early 19th century—and it promises to be very valuable, judging from the team of scholars who have participated in its production, but I have not seen it and therefore cannot comment on its relevance to my project. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 223 Methodologically, then, I use these documents as a vital primary source, and analyze their contents with one eye to past nomadic political models, another to present opportunities, and with acknowledgement of the dangers of reading too much between the lines. Rather than tell a linear narrative story of events, these documents in and of themselves serve as individual pieces of a puzzle of how actors within the Qazaq nomadic political culture used familiar practices to meet the challenges of a new era of imperial impositions.

III.1. Document #1: A Khan’s Widow Asserts Authority Ayghanïm was a wife of Wali Khan, and after his death in 1821 she asserted claims to status and privilege as a member of a töre family, to the advantage of herself and her sons. She wrote this letter44 in May 1828 to two officials from St. Petersburg, Senators Kurakin and Bezrodnyi, who had just completed an inspection of Karkaralinsk and Kokchetav outer regions as part of an imperial effort to assess the effectiveness of Russian rule there and the feasibility of opening more outer regions at that time.45 While her decision to write directly to these Senators is unclear, she was very practiced at communicating with Russian officials at the highest levels.46 She introduced herself as khanïm of the late Wali Khan of the orta yuznüŋ

44 IAOO, f. 3, op. 1, d. 422, ll. 30–30ob (Turki original). 45 See RGIA, f. 1264, op. 1, d. 341. The two Senators were tasked with investigating such topics as: whether the regional offices (okrug prikazy) and a legal system had been established according to rules in the 1822 Ustav; whether Kazakhs had expressed any desire to engage in agricultural production and if so, what size land plots were given to them; and the condition of Cossacks who had been brought to this part of the steppe. Rather than providing dry responses to the list of questions, the report’s ca. 200-pages includes a wealth of information (from the point of view of high officials from St. Petersburg) about the lives of the Kazakhs whom the Senators encountered. They reported valuable details on the relationships among Qazaqs, including those who were hostile to the Russian presence since the opening of the administrative offices in 1824. Clearly they took their time in trying to learn details of life in this new territory of the empire, which helps explain Ayghanïm’s decision to address her requests to them. 46 After Wali Khan died, she forged a respectful and enduring connection between Russian officialdom and her family, for the benefit of her sons, whom she envisioned as servants of the empire. The archival record is rich with records of her interactions with Governor General Kaptsevich, Omsk oblast’ Commander Bronevski (he appears to have had a very positive and cordial relationship with her), and others, both from her visits to Omsk and Tobol’sk and their visits to her pasturelands at Syrymbet. For a sense of the high level of contact that she maintained, with Russian officials, as she lobbied for her own interests in competition with other Qazaq elites, from 1821 almost through to the end of her life in 1853, see my article, V. Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids, Land, and Political Power in the 19th Century: A Case Study of Syrymbet.” Central Asian Survey 10/1 (2010): 79–102. 224 Virginia Martin qïrghïz-qazaq yurtu and defined her yurt as the lands on which the Ataghai, Khudaiberdi, Uwaq and Kerei people (el) had their summer and winter pastures. The letter articulated a series of specific demands and concerns. Her first concern was for the construction of a mosque on her lands, a project that the government had promised to undertake and finance in 1824 but had not completed to her satisfaction.47 Second, Ayghanïm requested permission to go to St. Petersburg with one of her sons and ‘ten good biys’ to have audience with the Tsar, so that she personally could tell him of the ‘the needs of our yurt’ (yurtumuznïŋ akhtiyarun). She had two major complaints that she presumably intended to bring up with the Tsar. The first was that ‘within our yurt it is not Sultans who are ruling the people but commoner Qazaqs who rule’ (yurtumïznïŋ ichindä el ustab turghan sultanlardan el biyletmäy küchlük qïlub qara qazaqgha biletub turlar). This situation was disturbing the people, and neither she nor ‘the good biys of our yurt’ (yurtumïznïŋ barcha yaxshi bälarumiz) wanted commoners to be official Sultans. Her second complaint was that ‘Russian fishermen from the Russia yurt’ (russiyä yurtundan chïghub balïqchï oruslar) were fishing and this disturbed her peace and that of the entire yurt.48 She therefore asked that this fishing be stopped. An analysis of the terminology used in this letter reveals that Ayghanïm clearly wrote from the point of view of the töre caste of Qazaq Chinggisids, who claimed a privileged status over non-Chinggisid Qazaqs, most specifically in the rights to hold the position of khan and to possess a yurt—a territory and its nomadic inhabitants, according to Chinggisid tradition.49 Here, we see Ayghanïm identifying the yurt of the late Wali Khan as containing four named groupings, who were collectively the ‘el of the Khan’s yurt.’ Note that she did not refer to these groupings with words such as ru, otok, aimaq or other terms for nomadic social units that were prominently used within the social-evolutionist discourse of Eurasian empire-builders of the age and that helped states organize their new subjects;50 they were

47 For specifics on this construction project, see IAOO, f. 3, op.1, d. 422, ll. 2–5, and also Martin, “Qazaq Chinggisids, Land, and Political Power in the 19th Century”: 83–6. 48 See TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 744, ll. 1–3 for another Qazaq allegation of Russian over- fishing in the same region. 49 Ayghanïm herself was born into a qoja lineage. See A.K. Muminov, Rodoslovnoe drevo Mukhtara Auezova (Almaty: Zhibek zholy, 2011): 31, fn 1. 50 On the argument that the theory of social evolutionism in modern European (and Russian) intellectual thought of the 18th-20th centuries underlay imperial analysis of and policy on the nomads, see Sneath, The Headless State. Note that the Russian text does not refer these groupings as rod or plemya, which are terms for ‘clan’ or ‘tribe’ of later 19th c. and 20th c. vintage. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 225 simply her ‘people’ (el) which is a much more amorphous term referring simply to those under her authority, without discernment of ethnic division/identity or place in a sociopolitical structure.51 Ayghanïm voiced her concerns in the name of these people, or more specifically, the elites who represented them, i.e., the ‘good biys of our yurt.’ In her so doing we can see the Chinggisid need to display a certain level of benevolence and power- sharing―to be good patrons―and thereby maintain support from non- Chinggisid leaders, even while distinguishing the inherent political-cultural differences between elites and non-elites. In this new era after 1822 when Russia refused to confirm new Chinggisid claims to khanship, it was still important for those aspiring to positions of power and authority to be inclusive of the needs of non-Chinggisids, and especially the stratum of elites among them. Ayghanïm’s goals on display in this letter—benevo- lently ruling over the former Khan’s yurt, including biys in a delegation to St. Petersburg, building a mosque, ensuring that Chinggisid privilege be upheld—all demonstrate a Qazaq political culture that was steeped in Inner Asian nomadic traditions. Another interesting element of this letter, alongside the clear statement of hierarchies of position within Qazaq society, is Ayghanïm’s use of the term yurt to refer both to Russia and to her own claimed lands. As Ayghanïm presented it in this petition, Russia was not an expanding empire seeking territory to conquer and control; it was an entity called the russiya yurt whose peoples were abusing the land and water rights of the people in Wali Khan’s yurt. While a new administrative structure had clearly been imposed within Qazaq lands, here we see that it did not replace or alter her conceptualization of territorial rights, given that she used the same term to iden-

51 B. Äbilqasïmov (XVIII-XIX ghasyrlardaghï qazaq ädebi tilining zhazba nuskalarï [Almaty: Ghylym, 1988]: 18) indicates that el has the meaning of aul (awïl), i.e., nomadic encampment, but I see no reason to translate the term (used mostly in the singular in my collection of Turki documents) to mean this smallest organizational unit of the nomadic economy/society. It is worth noting here that McChesney (“The Amirs of Muslim Central Asia in the 17th Century”: 34) found no evidence in 17th century sources to justify attempting (as Bartol’d and Radlov did in their times) to create hierarchies of size or status for terms of socioeconomic-political units: the terms qawm, ṭā’ifa, buluk, ulus, il, aul, etc. were used interchangeably in his sources. I follow McChesney’s lead in thus refraining from labelling el with too much precision, and opt instead for a generalized translation appropriate to the context here, i.e., ‘people.’ Tursun I. Sultanov (Kochevye plemena Priaral’ya v XV-XVII vv.: voprosy etnicheskoi i sotsyal’noi istorii [Moscow, 1982]: 78) translates el as the ‘people of the ulus’, with yurt translated as the ‘territory of the ulus.’ Since the word ulus does not appear in my 19th c. Turki sources, I do not adopt it in this discussion, and also use yurt without translation, understood as the people and territory claimed to be under the authority of a particular individual/family (most often, a Chinggisid). 226 Virginia Martin tify both polities.52 It should be noted, however, that she names her yurt ‘qïrghïz qazaq’, an appellation that does not appear often in other letters by Qazaq elites of this era. More common in my corpus of letters is ‘qazaq’, and most common is the absence of an ethnonym and instead some other identifier, such as tribal affiliation. One possible explanation for Ayghanïm’s usage is that she wrote her letter with an understanding of the formal conventions in use for naming the subject peoples of the Russian Empire. An appreciation for these elements of Ayghanïm’s letter is reinforced by comparing it to the Russian translation. In the archival record, the Russian version is the one that is referenced in subsequent official correspondence and thus its content is important as the text that entered the imperial discourse on political policies and empire-building in the Qazaq steppe. What is striking about the Russian translation of Ayghanïm’s letter is the type of information that is added, both for purposes of providing more cultural context for the official audience and in order to present contents in a proper way. For example, the language of the Russian version indicates that there were conflicts (razdory) among the people about who should have the right to rule, i.e., either ‘Kirgiz who descend from simple tribes’ or ‘sultans who descend from the khan’s blood’, whereas in the Turki version Ayghanïm presents a common front of elites in agreement that ‘commoner Qazaqs’ should not be in positions as rulers. The Russian version refers to ‘administration’ of volosts, using the language of the empire and its territorial units, whereas the Turki version uses the verb biylet-, which does not in itself imply administrative organization. And at the end of the Russian translation, an entire paragraph is added that expresses Ayghanïm’s intention to honor the will of the emperor, whatever he should decide in regards to her requests. Ayghanïm’s original letter contains no such expression of submissiveness, which may serve as an indication that at least this Qazaq töre did not conceive of Russian rule as displacing her own authority.

52 It is clear from this and other examples that the term yurt has a flexible definition. Thus, it is used by Qazaq elites to refer to Russia (russiyä yurtu), all Qazaq people (qyrghyz- qazaq yurtu), one horde (ulug yurt; Russian translation = bol’shaya orda) (TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 350, ll. 22ob & 23), and one tribe/clan (Naymādegän yurtumnï), see J. Noda and T. Onuma, A Collection of Documents from the Kazakh Sultans to the Qing Dynasty (Tokyo: Department of Islamic Area Studies, 2010) : 69. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 227 III.2. Document #2: A Sultan as Patron In another letter, we see, in fact, how a Chinggisid nomadic leader could conceive of the Russian administrative structure as a supplement to his authority—not as a reason for its displacement or as a problematic presence to be overcome, but as a tool for enhancing his status in a very competitive nomadic political arena. The author of this letter was Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi-oghlï (b. 1796), who would become the first Senior Sultan in the newly opened Akmolinsk outer region in 1832, but who, at the time of this letter (June of 1830), had no official position in the steppe administration. The letter was addressed to the Governor General of Western Siberia in Tobol’sk, I.A. Velyaminov, whom the Sultan had just visited in the spring. The contact between the Sultan and the Governor General was typical of regional elites on both sides: representatives of certain töre families had long curried relationships with the highest possible local Russian officials. Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha was the son of Sultan Khudaymendi Ishim Khan oghlï, whose lands along caravan routes to Central Asia had positioned him to control and guarantee safe passage of merchants, including Russians attempting to traverse the region, since at least the late 18th century.53 When his father died in October 1825, Qoŋïr Qulzha expressed his wish to be a Russian subject, something his father had never done.54 In 1830, when this letter was written, Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha was in the midst of the process of coordinating under his own presumed authority the formation of the new outer region, which entailed working with the Cossack regiment commander sent into the steppe, Lieutenant Shubin, to ensure that Qazaq clans would agree to the ‘new order’ and take allegiance oaths. The letter also contains three separate requests that appropriate recognition be given to, in turn, a Tatar merchant, Qoŋïr Qulzha’s personal scribe, and two biys who had accompanied him to Tobol’sk. The two hand- written pages of this letter, when analyzed alongside other documentation of the historical and cultural context, reveal a tremendous amount about

53 In 1797 Sultan Khudaymendi demanded ‘gifts’ from a Russian caravan procession on its way to Tashkent. See “Zhurnal pokhoda podporuchiki i atamana Telyatnikova v Tash- keniyu s opisaniem puti, mestopolozheniya i prochego opisannogo Serzhantom Beznosi kovym.” In Ch. Ch. Valikhanov. Sobranie sochinenii v pyati tomakh. Tom III., ed. A.Kh. Margulan (Alma-Ata, 1964): 292. 54 TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 335, ll. 1b-ob: this document accompanying a correspondence from Sultan Khudaymendi to a Bukharan merchant in July of 1824 indicated that neither the Sultan nor his son were subjects of the Tsar, and it identified the Sultan’s summer and winter pastures to be within the lands under Khoqand’s rule. 228 Virginia Martin the sources and limitations of power and authority in this community, which derive from the complex connections of patronage. Here, my analysis will focus mainly on the issue of the types of services that a patron provided for his clients, and then briefly on two issues that demand further research, the caravan trade in the region and the presence of scribes in the lives of the Qazaq elite. As in the other two letters analyzed in this paper, so too here the author’s style indicates his role as a patron: we see the importance he places on community well-being at the same time that he proves his authority over that community. In the opening of the letter, he informed the Governor General that upon his return from Tobol’sk in May, ‘we received news from our yurt and all were safe and sound’ (yurtumuzdan khabar alduk külläsi esanlar ekan). In describing the arrival of Lieutenant Shubin ‘to our people’ (bizniŋ elimiz) in mid-June, he noted the warm welcome that they ‘together with the nearby biys’ (yanïmïzdagï bylerimiz bilän qarshï chïghup alduk) extended to this representative of Russia. As indicated above, the purpose of Shubin’s presence was to help Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha confirm the new subjects of the state who would make up the population of Akmolinsk outer region. To demonstrate his success in this project, the Sultan informed Velyaminov in the letter that over 5000 households comprising almost 1000 auls came under the new order (yaŋgi niżam) after three days during which ‘the töres and biys in the nearby auls took oaths’ (yakïn awïllardagï törelär häm biylar elan üch kün kasam ichip bolduk). While Qoŋïr Qulzha clearly meant for the numbers to seem impressive, he alluded to the problems he had in reaching out to the many more Qazaq clans who migrated in distant regions of the realm that he recognized as his yurt: ‘For some reason, now our messengers, whom we sent to our distant people and to those people on the periphery, have not yet returned’ (qaysudur yïraq ellarïmïzga häm chet ellarga yibargan chabqunchïlarïmïz khazir kelgen yoq), but he noted that he was expecting them soon. There is a large and complex story to tell about the information contained in these few lines of Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha’s Turki-language letter to Velyaminov. The story unfolds within the pages of Russian archival documents pertaining to the opening of the Akmolinsk regional office, which Qoŋïr Qulzha would eventually lead as Senior Sultan. I place the events against the backdrop of a patronage system whose adherents were forced to weigh the risks and rewards of cooperation with Russia, a foreign state that touched their lives more closely now than any other in recent memory. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 229 To summarize55, while Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha appears in this letter and elsewhere in the documents to be in control, and while he would succeed in the short term to dominate local politics, his ability to protect his own was regularly questioned by other Middle Horde elites in the region. This questioning had to do primarily with land disputes: representatives of the ‘994 auls and 5046 households’, which he claimed to have brought under the new order by June of 1830, told Russian officials in November of that year that they had trusted the Sultan to protect their land from claims made by Qazaqs who had become Russian subjects within Karkaralinsk outer region a few years before and who had the support of the Senior Sultan from that region, but Qoŋïr Qulzha had not delivered on that promise of protection. It would take him another year to argue their case successfully before Russian administrators and return their lands, but still then the dispute was not permanently resolved, and in any case by then many Qazaqs had already begun to perceive Qoŋïr Qulzha in a not altogether positive light, weighing the evidence of his leadership against the promises made by other local elites.56 If we examine the second half of this letter, in which the Sultan makes three separate requests on behalf of named individuals for imperial recognition of their services, we have evidence of his ability to work and think like a patron. One request pertains to two biys from the two clans over which he as Sultan already exercised authority. They accompanied him on his visit to Omsk and Tobol’sk in the spring of 1830, where they as a group engaged in lobbying for the new office to be situated in their territory. ‘Do not neglect two biys who were with me in Omsk and Tobol’sk’ (özümüz birlän birgä omskigä tobolsghä barghan iki biyni yardamïŋïzdan ṭashlamiŋiz erkan), Qoŋïr Qulzha urged. In the end, they were not neglected: the first,

55 I have written a full analysis of this story in an unpublished paper: “Patronage as a Tool of Governance in the Middle Horde Qazaq Steppe,” Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, October 28–31, 2010. 56 See TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 693, ll. 151–54. This document presents the results of a survey that Lt. Shubin conducted in November 1830 of the groups who had taken loyalty oaths since he first arrived in June. He asked them to name individuals who had the most respect among the people (kto predpochital’no uvazhaetsya ot naroda), and in addition to Qoŋïr Qulzha, they named twelve different people, ten other Sultans and two highly regarded biys. While most of Shubin’s respondents had approved of the choice of Qoŋïr Qulzha, they also believed that he only wanted the position of Senior Sultan for his own personal gain, and they now had other preferences above him. Their reasoning was that winter was fast approaching, and Qoŋïr Qulzha had failed to resolve who had rightful claims to disputed winter pastures, even though he had promised them that becoming subjects of Russia would result in the resolution of those disputes 230 Virginia Martin a biy of the Qarpyq people, became volost’ sultan at the opening of the Akmolinsk office in 1832, and the second, an untitled man of the Altai people, was recognized for his services finally in 1833.57 Thus, the political power that Qoŋïr Qulzha displayed to Russia was translated into political positions for his own loyal men, who happened to have been significant figures among the Qazaq Altai and Qarpyq, who had long been loyal to Qoŋïr Qulzha and his father. The other two requests in the letter indicate a broader range and impact of the Sultan’s community stature. One of the requests was to have royal recognition and reward bestowed upon a particular merchant, Abdulghazï Omar oghlï from the Volga town of Arsk, for two services he rendered to the empire: his work alongside Qoŋïr Qulzha in ‘convincing those who have not been convinced’ (könmaganlarni köndürüp) of the need to become subjects, and his trade business (padshah khażratïne ezhtïmala etup yürgan zhan tïnlarï elän öziniŋ sawda ishlarun qoyup; trans.: ‘having sacrificed his [soul and body] and his commercial business in service to the tsar’). Unfortunately, we know nothing specifically about this man, but the figure of Tatar trader was a familiar one within the nomadic community. And control of regional trade had long been a source of the wealth and political power for Qoŋïr Qulzha and his father, Khudaymendi. Until his death in 1825, Khudaymendi guided the family’s regular trade relations with Khoqand and Tashkent; their work involved protecting caravans that went on a route through their lands in the Aqtau mountains, leading south into Khoqand. This region, south of what would become Akmolinsk, had been far outside the orbit of Russian advances, and Russia relied on these Sultans to ensure safe passage for ‘their’ merchants. For the Sultans, reward or advantage from Russia was not the ultimate (or the only) goal, as we can deduce from the fact that in 1824 Khudaymendi and Qoŋïr Qulzha offered their protective services to merchants from Bukhara moving caravans south through their lands to Tashkent.58 Thus, the inclusion in this letter of a request to acknowledge a particular merchant can be seen as part of the larger profile of Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha as politician and patron in the context of a steppe economy invested in regional trade networks. Qoŋïr Qulzha’s final request in this letter was for royal recognition of another Tatar of Russia, a man from Ufa province named Idris Islam oghlï, who had worked for ten years as the Sultan’s scribe (özimizdä khaṭchï). The

57 IAOO, f. 3, op. 12, d. 17673, l. 182. It does not indicate in this document, which lists the Qazaqs recommended for ranks and rewards, what in fact he was awarded. 58 TsGA RK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 335. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 231 people who served as scribes in the service of Qazaq elites were generally ‘mullahs’, typically Tatars or Bukharans, commonly educated in Bukhara, Tashkent, Semipalatinsk, and other regional cities. Qoŋïr Qulzha would not have sought reward for this man only to retain his loyalty. Rather, the presence of Idris Islam oghlï is one piece of evidence among several of this Sultan’s desire to patronize religious figures and retain them within the community. For example, during his tenure as Senior Sultan of Akmolinsk region, he patronized one Qamaraddin-hazrat, a Qazaq trained in Bukhara who served as educator to Qazaqs subordinate to the Sultan.59 Retention of the services of scribes and mullahs became extremely competitive by the mid-1830s: Russian administrators noted a serious dearth in numbers of available and adequately trained men. They even denied requests of volost’ sultans for their own scribe, a post that was mandated in the 1822 Ustav, because there just were not enough of them to go around.60 The fact that Qoŋïr Qulzha sought rewards for this particular scribe for his long personal service is an indication not only of his desire to recognize this individual’s value in the community, but simultaneously of the value polit- ically of having a trained ‘mullah’ at his side. From the reward requests in this letter, we also know that Russia as a state recognized the importance of rewarding service. Aside from the fact that state service was concretely rewarded to Russian servitors in the form of the granting of rank in the Table of Ranks, along with other privileges and rewards such as gifts and pensions, Russian administrators in the steppe seemed to understand that Qazaqs, too, benefitted from and appreciated state recognition of their services (and the gifts, ranks, salaries and pensions that usually accompanied that recognition). In this case, Lt. Shubin wrote a special plea at the end of 1830 to his superiors urging them not to ignore the reward requests that Qoŋïr Qulzha had submitted in this June letter.61 The urgency of Shubin’s plea should be understood within the context of the region within which he had worked for six months, where many nomads had not yet become imperial subjects because they had not been ‘convinced’ of Russia’s trustworthiness.62 Clearly, Shubin interpreted

59 Allen Frank, “Sufis, Scholars, and Diwanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the Works of Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpey-ulï,” paper presented in Venice, Italy, November 2009, 5 (cited with permission). More research into Qoŋïr Qulzha’s life is needed to build a clearer picture of his patronage of religious figures. 60 TsGA RK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 765, l. 2 (1832). See also TsGARK, f. 345, op. 1, d. 1869 (1834). 61 TsGA RK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 693, l.416-ob. 62 It is worth noting that in the Russian-language version of Qoŋïr Qulzha’s 1830 letter, the phrase könmaganlarni köndürüp is translated as skloneniem nepredannykh narod v 232 Virginia Martin state recognition of service as having symbolic value within the steppe community, and just as clearly, Qoŋïr Qulzha as patron embraced the same belief that rewarding loyalty could have positive consequences for all parties concerned.

III.3. Document #3: A Chinggisid’s Local Concern The final letter that I would like to discuss here is a curious little note that, in spite of its thoroughly mundane contents, gives us a good sense of how open to a variety of models of political behavior the Qazaq elite could be (or had to be) in this early period of imperial rule. This letter is from Sultan Chinggis Wali Khan oghlï, son of Ayghanïm. At the time of its writing, in June 1832, Chinggis was 21 years old and enrolled as one of the first Qazaq students in the Omsk Asiatic School, where he was officially studying to be a translator. Ayghanïm had personally requested his enrollment there in 1831. The letter was written at his mother’s summer pasture in the territory of Kokchetav outer region. Chinggis had gone there in May, having received permission from the director of the school and from De Sant Loran, the addressee in this letter, to be absent for one month in order to attend his brother’s wedding.63 Its brief contents are easiest to analyze by reading the letter in full: In those May days, having departed from Omsk, shortly on our way our horse became exhausted [wasn’t able to walk] and we endured much distress. Although we reached the place called Babuk on the Burluk waters (river), a distance of 200 shaqïrïm from our own winter pasture called Sïrïmbet, in the summer pasture I also endured many hardships and walked on foot. Afterwards I met with our mother Ayghanïm and other older brothers. After we found our yurt to be safe and sound, I got very ill. Now only today I am feeling better. However, I had promised your eminent Highness that I would go for one month. However, Allah did not permit us to fulfill that promise. And I feel very embarrassed in front of your Highness. Now humbly and hopefully, we request and wish that you will not blame us. And after this, our Qazaq Uwaq people that are subject to us are now asking us to be with them. I was wondering if it would be possible that you could give me a travel permit to go to the Uwaq people, then come back. I request from your merciful Eminence that if it is also possible after that, I will go straight to the city of Omsk after hewing the hay.64 poddanstvo (convincing those not devoted to become subjects), which imbues onto those Qazaqs reluctant to take loyalty oaths a hostile character, rather than simply a sceptical demeanor. 63 TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 690, l. 139. 64 TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 690, l. 148ob. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 233 In its appropriately respectful but still rather chatty style, this letter allows us to imagine how this son of a Middle Horde khan spent his ‘summer vacation’ from school in Omsk. On the one hand, we see him trying, as a student in a Russian school, to meet high officials’ expectations for communicating and behaving in appropriate ways. On the other hand, his patronage obligations towards the nomads subject to him motivated him to act in their interests. Thus, although he explained his delay and expressed embarassment at having broken his promise to return to Omsk after just one month, he still requested permission to prolong that absence even further in order to attend to the Qazaqs who wished his presence (and then also to attend to the hay gathering, presumably at his mother’s pasture). It is difficult to measure Chinggis’ ability to navigate this complex ter- rain, where imperial and nomadic models of political behavior coexisted within this elite family. We know that in his early adult years, school was secondary to other concerns: in 1832, he did not in fact return to Omsk until November (extending his absence, which began in May, to six months), and by the following spring he requested permission to leave his schooling entirely and get married. Finally, in November 1833, he was formally released from the Omsk Asiatic School without having graduated.65 We also know that the Uwaq people (qazaq uwaq elimiz) referred to in the letter were important to Chinggis’ social and political position within his community during this period. The Uwaq were his tölenguts—servitors to former kans and their families, who could be claimed as dependents only by Chinggisids. It is not clear where exactly this group of Uwaq pastured their herds, but a large group of them would be with Chinggis in the new Aman-Karagai outer region when he became its first Senior Sultan in 1834. Elsewhere, I have written about the dwindling status of Chinggisids in this Middle Horde region during this period, and one indication of the decrease in privileges long claimed as Chinggisid was the loss of possession of tölen-

65 Ibid.: ll. 159ob-160, 180–180ob, 186–187ob, 220. The training for Chinggis included ‘Russian, Tatar and Mongolian’ languages (l. 62). Before Chinggis was enrolled in the Omsk Asiatic School, his mother informed the Commander of Omsk oblast’ (in a letter available only in Russian) that Chinggis (and his siblings) had already received training (obucheny) in ‘Tatar letters’ (tatarskaya gramota) from the mullah that a former governor general had provided to her (op. cit., l. 16). Although Chinggis hand-signed the letter analyzed here in Cyrillic letters, it is not at all clear that he had gained much proficiency in the Russian language before he left school. In Karavannye tropy (Almaty: Atamura): 46, Galiev restates a Soviet-era fiction of the ‘friendship of the peoples’ ideology that Chinggis emerged in 1834 [sic] after seven [sic] years of schooling with a ‘deep knowledge’ of Russian science, literature, etc. I have seen no evidence of his training in Mongolian language. 234 Virginia Martin guts, who over time opted instead to form their own administrative units and choose their own leaders, thus distancing themselves from their former Chinggisid protectors and patrons.66 But in this still early period of changes under Russian rule, the Uwaq people were loyal to and/or dependent on Chinggis to help them address their concerns: in correspondence directly from the Uwaq to Omsk, we learn that, without his help, they had trouble resolving disputes with other local nomads over land claims, and wished to have him returned to them.67 Chinggis would have served as their advocate, if not for his extended absences from them for schooling. Although it is beyond the scope of this letter’s specific contents, it is important to note that Chinggis would continue his service to the Russian state for over three decades, beginning in 1834 in the post of Senior Sultan in Aman-Karagai, and extending in two additional posts until his retire- ment in 1868. One might suspect that in those 34 years he learned to be a ‘loyal’ imperial servitor, but what that might mean in practice is open to discussion. And just as importantly is the question of the extent that he retained political authority within his own nomadic community. Further research must be conducted on this question (about Chinggis and many other elites who occupied administrative posts), but early letters such as this one point us to a possible pattern to follow: Chinggis seemed to absent himself frequently from official oversight. My research into Chinggis’ tenure as Senior Sultan of Aman-Karagai outer region reveals that he was rarely present in the regional office; he rarely (compared to Senior Sultans of other regions) signed his name to official correspondence. In that post, as well as in his youth as a student, it appears that he acted in the name of his nomadic community first, even when aware of Russian norms and expectations that would dictate he act otherwise. If this is true, his was a risky strategy, because once he became on official servitor of the empire, he was obligated to demonstrate loyalty, lest he arouse suspicions. Demonstrating loyalty was particularly important in Aman-Karagai, where nomads frequently made ‘illegal’ movements across the administrative division between Orta and Kishi jüz lands (between those administered from Omsk and Orenburg, respectively), allegedly to escape taxation, and where suspicions would be acute of opposition to Russian rule under the influence of local elites such as Gabaidulla, Sarzhan, Kasym, and Kenesary Sultans throughout the 1830s and 1840s.68 We can only speculate that Chinggis

66 Martin, “Kazakh Chinggisids, Land, and Political Power in the 19th Century.” 67 TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 751, ll. 43ob-44 (1833). 68 We can only guess that Chinggis was out in the steppe attempting to play a construc- tive role in defeating Kenesary (who had a year before done considerable damage to his Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 235 learned to demonstrate loyalty adequately, even through times of suspicion, or he would not have served so long in the region’s high-level administrative posts reserved for Middle Horde Qazaqs. With these issues in mind, the value to historians of the brief 1832 note from Sultan Chinggis lies in what it can tell us about Qazaq political figures’ priorities and actions before the need to demonstrate loyalty to the Tsar became paramount to their careers.

Conclusion

I have attempted in this analysis to present a method for conducting research toward a non-russocentric, non-state-centered view of the local, political and social history of the Middle Horde Qazaq steppe in the 1820– 30s, using samples of a source base that uncover at least echoes of Qazaq elites’ own voices and interpreting them within a nomadic political-cultural context. This research method rests on a series of presumptions. First, it presumes that we can fairly draw from Inner Asian nomadic models of political culture from earlier eras to inform our understanding of Qazaq elite behavior in the early 19th century. From these models we can identify certain features of the Qazaq political context: a multicentered realm populated by multiple ‘houses’ of elites, hierarchical relationships among political actors who assume roles in patron-client relations, and a historical inclination to seek and find sources of economic and political power through interaction with neighboring polities. Second, it presumes that the Russian imperial presence could not be ignored after 1822, but neither did it radically and immediately reshape local nomadic political practices. In the first decade or so after 1822, Qazaq elites continued to act using long-established models, which they supplemented (experimentally, hes- itantly, sometimes greedily) with the offices, perks and privileges that the empire now offered. Third, this research method presumes that the letters from local political elites, who communicated local political, economic and social concerns of their communities to the new imperial officials, can be relied upon to be a valuable, indeed foundational, primary source of local history. I make this presumption based on the use of the original let- mother’s winter home) when in 1839, at a high point of the revolt, Chinggis was ‘on vacation’ from his post as Senior Sultan, not having informed any Russian authority of the reasons for his absence. This absence, not untypical for Chinggis in his career as Senior Sultan up to that time, brought him officially under suspicion and observation by local Russian administrators. See TsGARK, f. 374, op. 1, d. 162, ll. 340–341. 236 Virginia Martin ters penned by scribes in the Turki language, analyzed alongside the Russian translations (and supporting documentation), an exercise which reveals sometimes significant differences between the two versions and thus yields surprising insights into both the intellectual backdrop and the everyday political practices of empire-building in the Qazaq steppe. While both the Turki and Russian versions of these documents were written for the political consumption of representatives of the state, they are among our only sources of a more authentic Qazaq representation of local history and therefore must be used. What, then, do we learn about the local history of the Middle Horde steppe from the correspondences of individuals like Ayghanïm, Qoŋïr Qulzha, and Chinggis? As I hope my analysis of three documents made clear, there is a significant amount that we can glean about the everyday life of political elites. The 1820s-30s were a fascinating era when the empire was literally being built among the Qazaq nomads. It is because Russia tried hard to erect sustainable imperial structures, soliciting at virtually every turn the participation and views of its new nomadic subjects (or at least its elite patrons among them), that we have the source base to explore local political and social history in this region, a source base that did not exist in the 1800s-1810s or before. And so we discover (to reiterate a few examples) the expectations of local elites who agreed to take oaths of allegiance to the Tsar and the extent to which the state met those expectations; the sources of local authority for the patron and the options he had (or was now deprived of) to harness them to his advantage; the difficulties that political actors experienced when they attempted to reconcile socio- cultural and economic needs of their communities with imperial demands to fulfill state needs. In these letters, we hear expressions of anger, desperation, pride and other responses to specific situations, and when we analyze the contents alongside other documentation in archival files, we create at least the outlines of political activity that no other sources can give us. Alas, we are left to speculate about many questions; arguably more questions are raised than can possibly be answered by the glimpses of everyday life offered here. Rigorous archival research can undoubtedly solve some riddles, but certainly not all.69 I am the first to admit that the conclusions we can draw are very limited.

69 The simple nature of these letters―communications to Russian officials―precludes the possibility of learning about any number of important issues, even if we restrict our view (as I have) to local elite political culture. Examples of elusive information include: religious identity and practices; political power bases among non-elites, within their micro- Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 237 How far into the 19th century can we count on these types of documents to help us reconstruct local political and social history, and where, truly, do they bring us in reassessing the history of the Qazaq steppe in the 19th century? First, as I alluded earlier in this paper, the types and quantity of Turki documents available to researchers in Russian archives definitely diminish after about 1835. In the second half of the 1830s, various policies that had been created in the 1820s were finally implemented after a decade’s delay, new personnel took positions in Omsk, administrative units and borders were rigorously created, and taxes were being collected. This new atmosphere of empire-building set clear limits on the political actions of Middle Horde Qazaqs, and the nature of correspondence with officialdom changed. My research thus far has determined that, at least in the Middle Horde steppe, we can rely on Turki documents to help us reconstruct a local view of nomadic political culture really only before the mid-1830s, because it was in those 10–14 years (ca. 1822/24–1835/36) that their correspondence shows Qazaqs engaging with the new imperial structures on familiar nomadic cultural terms. But even though this is such a short period of time, what we learn from studying the documentary evidence of local political concerns can provide us with tools for more accurately assessing subsequent events and trends, such as the protest movement of Kenesary Kasimov, the decline of relative Chinggisid authority and reshaping of political relations and structures among and within nomadic groups, the increase in numbers of land disputes, the impact on politics of the decrease in regional caravan trade, decisions made by local communities to supplement animal husbandry with agriculture, etc. The questions that we ask when we approach these topics deserve to be based on a Qazaq-centered political and social history, and only then may we understand the changes that occurred as the empire asserted more and more of its political power into nomadic society.

communities that existed for the purposes of organizing and carrying out migrations and local-level redistributions of resources, etc.; or gender relations. While some of this information can be gleaned from Russian observers, we are hard-pressed to find data attributable to Qazaqs themselves, produced outside of the world of imperial intermediaries and constructed ‘others’ of the empire, i.e., produced within and for Qazaq community consumption. 238 Virginia Martin Document #1: English Translation of Turki Text (IAOO, f. 3, op. 1, d. 422, ll. 30–30ob)

By the decree of the Great Imperial Majesty Emperor To His High Eminence Vasilii Yatilustov and Boris Alekseevich and to High Eminence Yaveriy Vaskodtilichtov From the wife of the late Khan Wali of the Middle Horde Qïrghïz Qazaq yurt My request [I request] in the year 1828

In other words, the Ataghay, Khudaiberdi and Uwaq and Kerei people of our own yurt, and with the lands of our summer and winter pastures, the ruling official, benevolent, powerful, dutiful Great Emperor of All Russia, [confirmed the decree of] the Ruling Senate and [sent it] to Mr. Peter Mikhailovich [Kap- chevich], Tobol’sk and Tomsk General of Infanty and Cavalry, [with the help of Ilich Vilich]. And even though a copy of the decree regarding the order of the Ruling Senate and Ministry of Finance was delivered, we are not satisfied with the above described situation. And I think that what His Majesty the Emperor’s decree allotted to construct for us home and mosque is not entirely used up. A copy of this decree did not satisfy us and I have to request from benevolent, great ruling compassion that I go to His Majesty the Emperor along with one of my great sons and ten good people, where I could testify in person about the needs of our great yurt ruled by the late Khan Wali. And all the good biys of our yurt are complaining to us, crying and saying that no matter what, you should deliver [the petition] to His Majesty the Emperor in person. And within our yurt, the people are not allowing the ruling Sultans to rule but are forcing and letting the nomadic commoner Qazaq to rule. And all of the good biys of our yurt say they do not want the commoner Qazaqs to rule us so the people of our yurt are very disturbed. I respectfully request in advance that you turn your attention to us and not let the commoner Qazaq rule the people as Sultans. And about the order of His Majesty the Emperor and the official decree, I make a request to speak myself. And Russian fishermen coming out of the Russia yurt disturb my calm and the whole yurt’s calm and made us very angry. I ask that you prevent Russian fishermen anyhow. On the 21st day of May, the year 1828 I placed my stamp as a convenience Number 31 in Fort Petropavl [stamped with Khan Wali’s Russian-Turki stamp] Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 239 Figure 6.1. 240 Virginia Martin Document #2: English Translation of Turki Text (IAOO, f. 3, op. 12, d. 17673, ll. 12–12ob)

To Mr. Governor General Ivan Aleksandrovich

With humbleness and regards From Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi-oghlï

If you ask about us, at my departure from Tobol’sk, I was sick and stayed for two months at the line. We arrived back at our home at the first day of May, and so for that reason we were not able to write you a letter. We received news from our yurt and all were safe and sound. When I was about to write you a letter, Lieutenant Colonel Shubin came to our people. On the 13th of June we went out to welcome him together with our biys among us [our neighboring biys]. In accordance with the new orders of His Most Gracious Ruler Emperor, we along with the töres and biys in nearby auls took oaths over the course of three days. The number of people under the new order is now 994 auls and 5046 households. For some reason, now our messengers that we sent to our far-flung people and those people at the edges/periphery have not yet returned. We are expecting them to return speedily soon. And I request and ask His Highness that Arsk merchant Abdulghazï Omar oghlï, having sacrificed his (soul and body), and his commercial business, who together with ourselves has expended great effort for the benefit of his Ruling Emperor in convincing those who haven’t been convinced. And so the way to show well the respect of his Excellency the Emperor is, for this request, to give your attention. Second, regarding Idris Islam oghlï of Ufa province, Bugulmas okrug, Bawli awïl, having worked very hard as our scribe for ten years in the service of the emperor, I request that you confirm this scribe with your gracious communication, // and we hope that you will not neglect to turn your royal attention to him. Third, do not neglect two biys who were with me in Omsk and Tobol’sk, the first one being Qulubet Ishkini oghlï, biy of Qarpïq people, and the other being Qoqan Muŋlubay oghlï of Altay people. I would like for you to keep me informed about this request. I, Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi- oghlï placed the stamp of Baygozï Yangeldi oghlï for the reason that I lost my own stamp. 24th day of June Year 1830 Qarautkul [?] Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 241 Figure 6.2. 242 Virginia Martin Document #3: Letter from Sultan Chinggis Wali Khan oghlï to General Lieutenant de Sent Loran, June 1832. TsGARK, f. 338, op. 1, d. 690, l. 148. Using Turki-Language Qazaq Letters 243 Bibliography

Abbreviations IAOO: Istoricheskii arkhiv orenburgskoi oblasti. RGIA: Russkii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv. TsGARK: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Kazakhstan.

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Masanov, N.E. 1984. Problemy sotsial’no-èkonomicheskoi istorii Kazakhstana na rubezhe XVIII-XIX vekov. Alma-Ata: Nauka. Masanov, N.E., Zh.B. Abylkhozhin and I.V. Erofeeva. 2007. Nauchnoe znanie i mifotvorchestvo v sovremennoi istoriografii Kazakhstana. Almaty: Daik-Press. Mawkanuli, T., and V. Martin. 2009. Nineteenth Century Kazak Letters to the Russian Authorities: Morphemic Analysis and Historical Contextualization. Central Eurasian Studies Review 8/1: 21–8. McChesney, R.D. 1983. The Amirs of Muslim Central Asia in the 17th Century. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 26/1: 33–70. Millward, J.A. 2004. The Qing Formation, the Mongol Legacy, and the ‘End of History’ in Early Modern Central Eurasia. In The Qing Formation in World-Historical Time, ed. L.A. Struve. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press: 92–120. Moiseev, V.A. 1991. Dzhungarskoe khanstvo i kazakhi. XVII-XVIII vv. Alma-Ata: Ghylym. ____. 2001. Rossia-Kazakhstan: sovremennye mify i istoricheskaya real’nost’. Sbornik nauchnykh i publitsisticheskikh statei. Barnaul: Altaiskii gosudarstvennyi universitet. Morgan, D. 1986. The Mongols. Cambridge, MA & Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Muminov, A.K. 2011. Rodoslovnoe drevo Mukhtara Auezova. Almaty: Zhibek zholy. Noda, J. 2007. Qazaq Nomadism Reflected in Imperial Documents: Between the Qing and Russian Empires (19th c.). Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, Seattle, WA, October 19–21. ____. 2007. Kazakhskaya step’ mezhdu Kitaem i Rossiei (XIX vek). In Mirovye tsivilizatsii i Kazakhstan, ed. K.Sh.Khafizova, chast’ 2. Almaty: Qainar universiteti, 22–31. ____. 2012. Russo-Chinese Trade through Central Asia: Regulations and Reality. In Asiatic Russia: Imperial Power in Regional and International Contexts, ed. T. Uyama. London & New York: Routledge: 153–73. Perdue, P.C. 2005. China Marches West. The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Peters, E.L. 1990. The Tied and the Free & The Power of Shaikhs. In The Bedouin of Cyrenaica. Studies in Personal and Corporate Power, ed. J. Goody and E. Marx. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press: 40–58 & 112–137. Remnev, A.V. and O. Sukhikh. 2006. Kazakhskie deputatsii v stsenariyakh vlasti: ot diplomaticheskikh missii k imperskim presentatsiyam. Ab Imperio 1: 119–53. Shahrani, M.N. 1986. The Kirghiz Khans: Styles and Substance of Traditional Local Leader ship in Central Asia. Central Asian Survey 5/ 3–4: 255–71. Sneath, D. 2007. The Headless State. Aristocratic Orders, Kinship Society, and Misrepre sentations of Nomadic Inner Asia. New York: Columbia University Press. Sneath, D., ed. 2006. Imperial Statecraft: Political Forms and Techniques of Governance in Inner Asia, Sixth-Twentieth Centuries. Bellingham, WA: Western Washington University, Center for East Asian Studies. Sultangalieva, G. 2002. Zapadnyi Kazakhstan v sisteme etnokul’turnykh kontaktov (XVIII– nachalo XX vv.). Ufa: RIO RUNMTs Goskomnauki RB. ____. 2008. Karatolmach, stabs-kapitan Mukhammed-Sharif Aitov v kazakhskoi stepi (pervaya polovina XIX v.). Panorama Evrazii [Ufa] 2: 13–22. Sultanov, T.I. 1982. Kochevye plemena Priaral’ya v XV-XVII vv.: voprosy etnicheskoi i sotsyal’noi istorii. Moscow. Sultanov, T. and S. Klyashtornyi. 1992. Kazakhstan. Letopis’ trekh tysyacheletii. Alma-Ata: Tsentr ‘Kazakhstan-Peterburg’. Togan, I. 1998. Flexibility and Limitation in Steppe Formations. The Kerait Khanate and Chinggis Khan. Leiden: Brill. ____. 1999. Patterns of Legitimization of Rule in the History of the Turks. In Rethinking Central Asia, ed. K.A. Ertürk. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press: 39–53. Zimanov, S.Z. 1960. Politicheskii stroi Kazakhstana kontsa XVIII i pervoi poloviny XIX vekov Alma-Ata. 246 Virginia Martin A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 247

CHAPTER SEVEN

A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara: Observations on Islamic Knowledge in a Nomadic Environment

Allen J. Frank*

Introduction

If the persistent stereotype of the ‘un-Islamic’ nature of Muslim nomads in Central Asia is hopefully waning, at least in scholarly literature, publications containing more detailed information on the specifics of education among within these groups are still difficult to come by. The aim of this article is to aid in correcting this deficiency through the examination of an early 20th century Tatar manuscript history in which the author provides some detailed information on Islamic education among Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara during the last half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. This manuscript is titled Tārīkh-i Barāngavī. Its author, Aḥmad b. Ḥafīẓ ad-Dīn al-Barāngavī (1877–1930), was a student in Bukhara from 1901 to 1905, and has left us a detailed account of a month he spent among Qazaq nomads in the Emirate of Bukhara in the summer of 1905. He also includes in the history extensive biographical documentation on his father, who studied in Bukhara from 1849 until 1863, and who was also active as a teacher in Bukhara’s Turkmen population. A generalized approach, reflecting outsiders’ cultural assumptions about nomads strongly characterize our sources for Islamic education among the Qazaqs in the 18th through the early 20th century. This characterization applies equally to Russian and Tatar sources. Russian observers, for example, often considered nomadism to be incompatible with Muslim culture, and many Russian officials considered it their duty to insulate nomads from the cultural interactions with their sedentary neighbors, Tatars and ‘Sarts.’ The assumption that nomadism was incompatible the Islamic reli-

* The author wishes to thank Paolo Sartori for his interest and helpful comments in the preparation of this paper. 248 Allen J. Frank gion is still widespread today, including among many Qazaqs, but certainly fails to take into account the presence of nomads at the center of political and religious life throughout virtually the entire course of Islamic history. Tatar authors, often seeking to advance a reformist religious ideology, sometimes carried their own prejudices about Qazaq religious life. Unlike most Russian observers, Muslim Tatars could have a much more sympa- thetic understanding of the role of religious institutions and education among Qazaqs. At the same time, many Tatars also understood Qazaqs (and other nomads) as ‘uncivilized’, and often viewed the Tatars’ interaction with the Qazaqs to be a sort of ‘civilizing mission.’ Among Islamic reformists, like Shihāb ad-Dīn Marjānī, ‘civilizing’ the nomads involved introducing them to a capitalist economic system through the establishment of currency and commerce, but also reforming their religious practices, and integrating Qazaq Islamic institutions into Tatar Islamic administrative bodies.1 In the Soviet period erstwhile religious reformers easily secularized this approach by changing the term ‘civilization’ to ‘modernity.’ The depiction of Tatar reformers and intellectuals as the van- guard of modernity among nomadic and sedentary Muslims in Central Asia had become part of the Tatars self-definition, and remains so today.2 The fixation on ‘modernity’ is still evident in much of the current research in the West focused on Tatar jadidism. If the Tatar modernist depiction of Qazaq religious life represents a type of rhetorical straw-man, it is also based on a similar straw-man that depicts Tatar Islamic practice in an equally idealized fashion, specifically as ‘ortho- dox’ in comparison with the Qazaqs supposed ‘heterodoxy.’ In fact if Tatars and Qazaqs diverged in terms of economic lifestyle, their religious practices were actually in large measure similar. Among both Qazaqs and Tatars we see the same emphasis on Sufism, shrine pilgrimage, patron saints, the use of Sufi litanies in rituals, funerary repasts, the elevation of khwāja descent

1 Shihāb ad-Dīn Marjānī, Mustafād al-akhbār fī aḥwāli Qazān wa Bulghār, vol. I (Kazan, 1900): 154–7; for a Russian translation cf. Shigabutdin Mardzhani, Izvlechenie vestei o sostoyanii Kazani i Bulgara (Kazan, 2005): 172–6; Ūshbū qiṣṣa qazāqning aḥvāllarūn bayānī, (Kazan, 1879). For examples of analogous Tatar stereotypes about Bashkirs and Noghays cf. A. Ibragimov, “Bashkiry v proshlom.” Inorodcheskoe obozrenie 8 (1915): 538–41, Jahān-Shāh an-Nīzhghārūṭī, Tārīkh-i Astārkhān (Astrakhan, 1907): 13–14. 2 Sherali Turdyev, “Sredneaziatskie tatary: rol’ i znachenie v kul’turnoi i politecheskoi zhizni Turkestana pervoi chertverti XX v.” Islam v tatarskom mire (Kazan, 1997): 169–90, Malik Chanishif, Jonggu tatar ma’arip tarikhi, (Urumchi, 2001); for popular manifestations of the idea of a Tatar civilizing mission cf. Allen J. Frank, “Varieties of Islamization in Inner Asia: the Case of the Baraba Tatars, 1740–1917.” Cahiers du monde russe XLI/2–3 (2000): 29–46. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 249 groups, and so forth. In other words, much of the actual religious practice in the Volga-Ural region or Siberia, and on the Qazaq steppe, originated in Central Asian Sufi tradition. Similarly, the legal traditions were rooted above all on the common Ḥanafite jurisprudence, also bearing a very strong Central Asian imprint. As a result, many Tatar observers who were less invested in reformist and modernist agendas, but who were more familiar with Qazaq society may have remarked on the differences between the nomadic and sedentary economies of the two groups, but in fact often described the Qazaqs commitment to Islamic practices and institutions as superior to that of the Tatars.3 More significantly for our purposes, they did not describe Qazaqs as passive recipients of ‘civilization’ or ‘culture’, but depicted them as Islamic actors in their own right. Such a view is evident in Aḥmad al-Barāngavī’s account, but is also present in the works of other historians, such as Muḥammad-Fātiḥ al-Īlmīnī’s Tavārīkh-i Alṭī Atā, devoted to the Inner Horde, and above all in Qurbān-‘Alī Khālidī’s published and manuscript works.4 Not surprisingly, Qazaq sources provide our best evidence that Qazaq scholars themselves played an important role in the Islamic revival that took place among them from the mid-19th century, down to first decade of Soviet rule, and while Qazaq biographical sources for this period are only slowly coming to light, these sources are showing that Islamic institutions staffed by Qazaq scholars and Sufis were operational and expanding in nomadic communities. Furthermore, if Tatar dominated cities like Troitsk, Petropavlovsk, and Semipalatinsk attracted many of these scholars, as many, if not more, were attracted to Central Asian cities, mainly Bukhara.5 The insights that Aḥmad al-Barāngavī provides about religious insti tutions among the Qazaqs may encourage us to question many still-current assumptions that undervalue the presence and significance of Islamic institutions among Inner Asian nomads in general. Devin DeWeese, in particular, has explained the significance that the memory of conversion

3 Cf. Allen J. Frank, “Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Toward an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule.” In The Construction and Deconstruc- tion of National Identities in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki (Sapporo, 2003): 261–89. 4 For example, in his biographical dictionary Qurbān-ʿAlī includes several Qazaq scholars; cf. Qurbān-ʿAlī Khālidī, An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe (1770–1912), ed. A.J. Frank and M.A. Usmanov (Boston-Leiden: Brill, 2005): ff. 26a, 96b- 97b. 5 Cf. Allen Frank, Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpey-ulï as a Source on Sufis and Scholars in the Qazaq Middle Horde, presented at the conference “Religion and Society in Central Eurasia: New Sources for the Religious History of Kazakhstan,” Venice, Italy, October 29–30th 2009. 250 Allen J. Frank had among the steppe nomads.6 But we also know, for example, that Islamic legal institutions were strongly developed among Noghays in the North Caucasus and Black Sea Steppe in the 18th and early 19th century.7 Similarly, a substantial body of more or less recent scholarship devoted to the Qazaq sayyids in particular has demonstrated the political, religious, and social significance of these descent groups among nomads.8

I. The Tārīkh-i Barāngavī

The source for this study is a manuscript work title Tārīkh-i Barāngavī. It was compiled in 1914 by Aḥmad b. Ḥāfiz ad-Dīn al-Barāngavī (1877–1930), an imam in the village of Baranga (Paran’ga in Russian sources). Baranga was formerly located in Viatka province’s Urzhum district, and is today a district center in the Republic of Mari El, in the Russian Federation. The village was closely connected historically and economically to the Tatar villages of the Qazan Artï (or Zakazan’e in Russian sources) and to the city of Kazan. The Tārīkh-i Barāngavī has come down to us in one complete and two defective copies housed in the Manuscript Institute of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences in Kazan.9 The work is unpublished, uncatalogued and remains virtually unstudied.10 The complete copy is relatively volumi-

6 Devin DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1994). 7 I. Bentkovskii, Nogaitsy, vol. I (Stavropol’, 1888): 80–1; Barbara Keller-Heinkele, “Crimean Tatar and Nogay Scholars in the 18th Century.” In Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries [vol. 1], ed. M. Kemper, A. von Kuegel- gen, D. Yermakov (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag 1996): 279–96. 8 For an discussion and bibliography of the sayyid phenomenon in Central Asia, see the “Foreword” by Devin DeWeese in Islamizatsiya i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii, ed. A. Muminov (Almaty: Daik Press, 2009): 6–33; cf. also Damir Iskhakov, Seidy v pozdnezolotoordynskikh tatarskikh gosudarstvakh (Kazan, 1997): 71–4. 9 Inventory numbers 39/34, 39/567, 39/581. The first of these constitutes the fullest version. 10 Manuscripts of the Tārīkh-i Barāngavī were evidently in circulation soon after its completion. Rizā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn used the works as a source for several biographies of scholars from the Viatka region in his until-recently unpublished third and fourth volumes of Āsār; cf. Rizaeddin Fäkhreddin, Asar: öchenche häm dürtenche tomnar, ed. M.A. Usmanov (Kazan, 2010); a pencil notation on the obverse of the front cover of MS 39/34 indicates the work had been used by Shähär Shäräf in preparing his biography of Marjani, which was published in Kazan 1915, although in the published work Shäräf does not cite the work. More recently, Yuri Bregel mentioned the work in his survey of Islamic manuscripts in Kazan; cf. Yu. E. Bregel’, “Vostochnye rukopisi Kazani.” Pis’mennye pamyatniki Vostoka A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 251 nous, containing 220 folios, making it one of the largest known Tatar manuscript histories. The author clearly conceived of his work, at least structurally, as a ‘village history’, since it follows the same structural format that we see in other regional histories. This genre’s characteristic features include a nominally restricted geographical scope, listing in numerical order a specific area’s mosques, maḥallas, madrasas, and above all its ʿulamāʾ, along with general information about the area’s geography, economy, and ethnography. However, the genre also allowed considerable flexibility and could include extensive biographical and documentary material. Structurally the Tārīkh-i Barāngavī falls squarely within this genre, covering the four mosques and maḥallas of the village of Baranga, and the imams assigned to them. However, beyond its seemingly limited geo- graphic scope as a village history, the author includes extensive biographical and documentary material on figures who studied in Bukhara, including relatives who lived outside of Baranga. Aḥmad himself studied in Bukhara from 1901 to 1905, and provides extensive autobiographical information on his experiences there. Aḥmad incorporates a large amount of documentary material in his history, including dozens of letters sent to and from Bukhara, as well as various licenses (ijāzatnāma and khaṭṭ-i irshād), Central Asian pilgrimage narratives, a biographical dictionary of Central Asian scholars, and other materials excerpted and copied from manuscripts produced in the village. In this regard the village is as much a family chronicle as it is a village history, and contains considerable information on Islamic education in Bukhara under the Manghït Dynasty. In any case, Aḥmad’s own family dominated Baranga’s Islamic institutions for most of the 19th century, and for the first several decades of 20th. The Bukharan experience was clearly a critical element in the family’s religious authority, and for this reason the author focuses considerable space and attention to it.

(1969): 365; Marsel’ Akhmetzianov briefly described the manuscript is in 1995, in a study of Tatar genealogies; cf. M. Äkhmätjanov, Tatar shäjäräläre (Kazan, 1995): 118. it is also mentioned in a survey discussion of the Tatar village history genre, cf. Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: the Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2001): 29, as well as in a Russian documentary history of Paran’ga district, Paran’ginskii raion: sbornik dokumental’nykh ocherkov, ed. N.S. Popov (Ioshkar-Ola, 2004): 194–5. 252 Allen J. Frank II. The Work’s Author

The work’s author is Aḥmad b. Ḥāfiẓ ad-Dīn b. Naṣr ad-Dīn al-Barāngavī, who served as imam of Baranga’s Fourth Mosque from 1907 presumably until his death in 1930. He came from a long line of scholars in the region active already at the beginning of the 18th century. His ancestor Rafīq b. Makāy b. Mamatāy was a student of Murtażā b. Qūtlighïsh as-Simatī (d. 1722), and according to Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn, Rafīq11 was the author of an early treatise on the necessity of the Night (yastū) Prayer, a topic of both ritual and political significance in the Volga-Ural region.12 Aḥmad identifies his ancestor as having served as imam and mudarris in the village of Qursa Pochmaghï. His great-grandfather ʿAbd al-Salām (d. 1821) was from Qursa Pochmaghï, and became imam in Tashkichü in 1780. One of his teachers was Bīkchantāy b. Ibrāhīm al-Baraskavī (d. 1800), who served as imam in the village of Bäräskä, and was also one of the three qāżīs in Orenburg appointed by the first mufti Muḥammad-Jān b. al-Ḥusayn.13 His grandfather, Naṣr al-Dīn (1796–1868) became imam of Baranga’s First Mosque in 1824,14 and earned meshchanin status15, which freed his descendants from the poll tax. He served as muḥtaṣib for Urzhum district, which signifies that he was responsible for collecting cadasters (metricheskie knigi) for the district.16 He studied in Qarghalï (Seitovskii Posad) with the renowned scholars Walīullāh al-Baghdādī and Muḥammad-Sharīf al-Kirmānī, but also studied by correspondence with the Bukhara-based

11 Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn, Āsār, vol. I/2: 38; Riżā ad-Dīn identified him as Rafīq b. Tayyib al-Qūrsavī. 12 The issue of the whether it was required to perform the obligatory Night Prayer in far northern latitudes during midsummer, when the sun’s light did not disappear from the horizon, took on political dimensions in the debates of Islamic scholars at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, in the debates between ‘official’ and ‘opposition- ist’ scholars that the time of the establishment of the Orenburg Muftiate; cf. Michael Kemper, Sufis und Gelherte in Tatarien und Baschkirien, 1789–1889: Der islamische Diskurs unter russischer Herrschaft (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlga, 1998): 278–86. 13 TB fol. 14b; Marjānī, Mustafād, vol. II: 128–9; Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn, Āsār, vol. I/3: 154. 14 In literary and scholarly documents his named appears as Naṣr ad-Dīn al-Bulghārī. 15 A meshchanin was a member of urban estate in imperial Russia that largely consisting of craftsmen and petty merchants. Acquisition of this status freed Naṣr ad-Dīn and his descendants from the Poll Tax and corporal punishment. 16 In imperial Russia and the early Soviet era the term muḥtaṣib was used in a restricted sense in the context of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, and its Soviet successor. Before 1917 a muḥtaṣib was responsible for collecting demographic information in cadasters (metricheskie knigi) for a specific district. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 253 Mujaddidiyya Sufi Shaykh Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Khiyābānī (b. 1785/86 ce, 1200 ah).17 Two of Naṣr al-Dīn’s sons, both of whom studied in Bukhara and became renowned scholars in their own right, figure prominently in Aḥmad’s history. These are Aḥmad’s father, Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn (1827–1917) and his uncle Burhān al-Dīn (1829–1901). 18 Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn studied with his father, and then from the age of 12 in the nearby village of Mazarbashi with Aḥmadī b. Iḥsān al-Mamsavī (d. 1871).19 He then studied briefly in Machkara at the madrasa of ʿAbdullāh al-Chirtūshī, and at age 18 he travelled to Bukhara, arriving there in December 1846.20 In addition to studying with Marjānī, Ḥāfiẓ ad-Dīn’s masters in that city included ʿAbd al-Mūʾmīn Khwāja b. Ūzbek Khwāja al-Afshanjī, Shaykh Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Khiyābānī, and the Sufi Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ash-Shahrisabzī, also known as Īshān-i Pīr.21 In Central Asia Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn traveled to Khotan and Kashghar, in Eastern Turkestan, and in Khotan studied under Mufti Ḥabībullāh al-Khotanī.22 From there he returned to Bukhara, and with his brother travelled to Samarqand, where Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn studied under the Tatar Sufi Tāj ad-Dīn b. Aḥmar al-Bulghārī as-Samarqandī.23 He returned to Russia in 1865, marrying in Petropavlovsk and residing there for several years, before returning to Baranga, where he assumed the duties of imam of the First Mosque.24 Aḥmad was born in Baranga in 1877, and studied with his father, and later studied in one of Kazan’s madrasas. He travelled to Bukhara in 1901,

17 TB ff. 18ab, 21a; a copy of Jalāl ad-Dīn’s Persian ijāzat-nāma appears on ff. 21a-22a. Aḥmad believes the document dates to 1273 ah. Jalāl ad-Dīn’s silsila, linking him to the important 18th century Central Asian Mujaddidiya figure Khwāja Mūsā-Khan ad-Dahbīdī, appears on fol. 141a; on Mūsā-Khan ad-Dahbīdī cf. Baxtiyor Babadžanov, “The Naqšbandi- Muǧaddidīya in Central Māwarāʾannahr in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries.” In Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia in the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries [vol. 1], ed. M. Kemper et al. (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996): 391–3. 18 Shähär Shäräf provides some biographical information on Hafiz ad-Din when he lists Marjānī’s students in Bukhara, however it appears his source of this information is the Tarikh-i Barangawi; cf. Shihabetdin Märjani, ed. R. Märdanov (Kazan, 1998): 105. Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn includes both Ḥāfīẓ ad-Dīn and Burhān ad-Dīn in the recently third volume of Āsār; cf. Rizaeddin Fäkhreddin, Asar: öchenche häm dürtenche tomnar: 261–5, 341–8. 19 Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn identifies him as Aḥmad b. Iḥsān al-Mamsavī; cf. Āsār, vol. II/15: 509. 20 TB: ff. 97b-98a. 21 TB: ff. 99ab, 101a; on this figure cf. also Babažadanov, “The Naqšbandi-Muǧaddidīya in Central Māwarāʾannahr”: 403–4. 22 TB: ff. 144b-145b. 23 TB: fol. 138ab; on this figure cf. Riżā ad-Dīn b. Fakhr ad-Dīn, Āsār, vol. II/15: 538–9. 24 TB: ff. 104b-105a. 254 Allen J. Frank and remained there until 1905. In Bukhara he studied chiefly under a Tatar scholar, Mir-Ṣiddīq al-Qazānī. He also studied Sufism under Maḥmūd Khalīfa, the grandson of his father’s master Īshān-i Pīr.25 He returned to Baranga in 1905, and two years later obtained the position of imam of the Fourth Mosque. In addition to the Tārīkh-i Barāngavī, Aḥmad is known to have written one other work, a treatise on Turkic spelling conventions titled Adab-i kātib, compiled in 1909.26 The account of the Qazaqs is included in a section describing Aḥmad’s pilgrimages to shrines in the Emirate, and is located in the rather extensive autobiographical section, covering Baranga’s Fourth Mosque, on folios 209a-215b. It is one of two sayāḥat-nāmas in the work, the other being an account written in Persian by his father of the shrines he visited in Mawarannahr, the Fergana Valley, and Eastern Turkestan in the 1850’s, which is not translated here. Regrettably, Aḥmad informs us that an original version of the work was burned in a fire in Baranga in 1906, and the version he compiled in 1914 was from memory.27 Generally, the later version is quite detailed, but Aḥmad admits he forgot the name and biographical information of at least one Qazaq Sufi.

III. Translation of al-Barāngavī’s Account of the Qazaqs

[209b] On a hot day in summer we went among the Qazaqs to Zindānī district (tūmān)28 with a Qazaq student at the madrasa who had come from the Ural River (Jāyïq). We traveled for a month and then returned. The Qazaq student talked with some Qazaqs who were transporting dried dung to Bukhara. The Qazaqs had come to Bukhara to sell the dung and had settled in a square near Khiyaban for a few days.29 The Qazaq people are very enamored of students, and took us with them, and we were there guests for several weeks. Our madrasa was next to the road they would leave by. We exited the Imam Gate30 and waited for the Qazaqs. The Qazaqs came with a dozen or so camels. They gave us each a camel and we mounted it.

25 TB: fol. 204ab. 26 The manuscript is housed in the Manuscript Division of Kazan University Library, inventory number 2203T; for a catalog description cf. A.S. Fätkhiev, Tatar ädipläre häm ghalimnäreneng qulyazmalarï (Kazan, 1986): 54–7. 27 TB: fol. 214a. 28 Aḥmad is referring to a nearby rural district north of the city of Bukhara; the Qazaq communities he visited probably resided in the steppe further to the north. 29 Khiyaban is the name of a major street in the western part of the city. The Khiyabani Madrasa is located in this street. 30 This was one of the city’s northern gates, nearest the Ark, or Citadel, so named because it leads to the mausoleum of Imam Abu Hafs-i Kabir. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 255

We headed to the southeast, and from morning until night we rode on the camels. We passed Khayrabad, and we entered a desert. We went over the sand on a camel path. When it was time for the afternoon prayer we dismounted at a place full of camel thorn [210a] took water from the baggage; someone filled a kettle, and began cooking, another began boiling tea. They gave us some water for ablutions and we performed our daily prayers. They hobbled some of the camels, and let others loose. The Qazaqs piled up the things they had brought from Bukhara, like flour and salt, and they built a tent and put down rugs, and we took a rest. At first riding by camel was comfortable, but the came’s walking and running made me uncomfortable. There was an old man named Nārāṭ Bāy who liked to talk about historical events, about the heroism of his ancestors. He talked about the wars of the heroes from the time of Chinggis Khan to those who had recently fought the Russians.31 He also talked about customs (ʿādatlar) that were being practiced and the [Qazaqs’] divisions into various tribes (tūrlī qabīlalara āyrïlïqlar). He talked and talked that we couldn’t remember half of what he said, and we were very sleepy. At dawn they started calling the camels. They had scattered across the steppe and the desert, and not one was to be seen. After a half an hour they were all found and brought together. They loaded the camels and we mounted them. On his camel Nārāṭ Bāy [210b] addressed me, ‘Hey Mullah, do you read the book on top of the camel?’ I said, ‘What book is that?’ He interrupted and said, ‘You don’t know it?’ When I asked my companion he said that it is the Hidāya.32 He said, ‘There was a student like us who when he traveled with the Qazaqs read the Hidāya on top of a camel. When a Qazaq asked what book that was, he answered, ‘The book you read on a camel!’ On that day we traveled until the afternoon prayer. It was so hot that you couldn’t walk on the sand with bare feet, and if you cracked an egg it would cook in a quarter of an hour. There were many white and green snakes in the sand. In the distance something that looked like a chardughan was visible.33 Nārāṭ Bāy said what we were seeing was the tomb of Chūpān Ātā, and related its story.34 After that a stone pillar was seen in some mountains. The Qazaqs said, ‘We’re getting there’, and began shouting ‘Way-khay!’ And among the camel-thorn a grass that was yellowed

31 Accounts of Qazaq resistance to the Russian conquest were also recorded among Qazaqs in Turkestan; cf. Kirgizskii rasskaz o russkikh zavoevaniyakh v Turkestanskom krae: tekst, perevod i prilozheniya, ed. N. Veselovskii (St. Petersburg, 1894); Veselovskii’s text reveals a strong Islamic political orientation. 32 The Hidāya is one of the standard Hanafi texts on fiqh. 33 In Tatar a chardughan is a log or rail frame placed around a grave. 34 The mausoleum of Chūpān Ātā is a well-known pilgrimage site located near Samar- qand; cf. Joseph Castagné, “Le culte de lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan.” L’Etnographie n.s. 46 (1951): 88; however, Aḥmad may be referring to another site in the steppe linked to this saint. Chūpān Ātā is known among Qazaqs (as well as among Tatars and Bashkirs) as the patron saint of sheep, and in narrative tradition is linked to the Yasavi tradition; for Qazaq legends regarding Chūpān Ātā cf. G.N. Potanin, Ocherki severo-zapadnoi Mongolii, vol. I (St. Petersburg, 1881): 152–3. 256 Allen J. Frank

a bit like straw became visible. We didn’t go far, and six or seven felt yurts became visible. [211a] The Qazaqs said, ‘Now we’ve arrived.’ We dismounted from the camels, dusted ourselves off, and put on slippers. We went to a spot behind the camels, at the edge of the yurts, and we said they would come out and receive us because were guests. The Qazaqs went into the yurts, and the women and girls unloaded the camels and brought the things in. We were still waiting under the sun for a quarter of an hour, and we started getting thirsty. My companion said, ‘They aren’t inviting us; do they not have such customs? (ʿādatlar).’ We went to the yurt of the owner who had made us the promise [of hospitality] and greeted him. He said, ‘Wait here.’ He washed a cup, and then gave us a basin of water, and began boiling water. There was no samovar and he gave us some cups of tea. The owner had his wife, his mother, and some children. They were sitting eating what their father had brought (bread and some fruit) and were sitting opposite us. There were also some neighbor women and girls. [211b] We drank our fill of tea. Our host was a poor man. He didn’t bring much back from Bukhara. A dog stole the meat and ran off. His son saw this, went and took it from the dog’s mouth. His wife washed the meat, and cooked it. All of us sat together and ate. The next day his neighbor, a big fat woman, invited us to a feast. We accepted and went there. They invited one or two other people, as well as Nārāṭ-Bāy and had the Qur’an recited, and for a small price we performed the taṣadduq prayer,35 and they made us guests. Everyone here was poor, and was a dung-seller and had one or two camels. These unfortunate people said that they suffered oppression from the Bukharan bīks and if they had a camel, they would take it, saying it was zakāt.36 We stayed there as guests four or five days. After that our host said, ‘Moldakas,37 in a rocky place there’s a camp. Unlike us they have good food. They are preparing food now because tomorrow it will have been forty days since so-and-so’s death. I can take you there, if you want to go.’38 We agreed. The next day there were two people and we went there with five or six horses and camels. So that sand would not enter their mouths, the Qazaqs wrapped French kerchiefs over their mouths, [212a] and after an hour we reached that place. Those who were in fact rich had felt yurts and had good and large herds of sheep and camels. The community was blessed, that is, a lot of people could be seen. We entered the yurt our host indicated. How- ever, the owner of the yard we entered was also involved in the fuel business

35 Among Qazaqs in particular the taṣadduq prayer (in Qazaq, tasattïq) was often performed as a rain prayer 36 Although zakāt is in fact an incumbent charitable tax for Muslims, in the Central Asian Khanates at that time it was in effect a tax that the Khanates obtained from nomadic communities, among others. 37 Qazaq for ‘mullahs’. 38 Memorial ceremonies held on the fortieth day after someone’s death are known among the Qazaqs as qïrqï. A similar ceremony is observed among the Tatars. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 257

and went to Bukhara. He had a young wife there and a beautiful daughter. We rested and drank tea. It was time for the afternoon prayer. The Qazaqs spread one or two canvas cloths and stood up to pray. We performed the ablutions and joined them. The imam came out of a felt yurt that was the school (maktab) and met with us. This person was from among the Qazaqs’ authoritative men (agha) and had studied in Bukhara, and was good with the Mukhtaṣār.39 Being a friend of the Persian language, he knew the meaning of [authors] like Bīdil and he studied and taught. Of his physique he had a round handsome face and a blond beard. It was a patient, humble and decent assembly. We performed the namāz, and the khatm litany was begun. It finished after an hour or so, and in the Bukharan fashion there was bread and raisins, and then the pilaf came. After that we came to the assembly. As for that, it was a Qazaq-style feast. Before the food [came] the owner of the house began to speak. ‘Moldaka, I convened this assembly to perform the marriage ceremony [to marry] my daughter so-and so, to so- and-so, the son of so-and-so. [212b] However, my daughter is pregnant. Her groom has declared he will accept responsibility, and wanted to accept it. Here is his father.’ And he added this after the imam’s khutbā. After a pause, the mullah said, ‘I cannot perform the marriage ritual for a pregnant woman.’ The host and other people all said, ‘Moldaka, of course you will perform it. Otherwise will we deprive the child of his ancestry? (ōl bālānī nasibsizmi būrāqamiz?) The sin of this person will not be in doubt to you (būning gunāhī sheksiz sangā ōlachaq).’ (Amazingly, this was aimed not at the young man who had committed the fornication, but at the mullah!), and numerous voices were raised [saying this]. However, some of the Qazaqs were saying, ‘Wait, brother, let’s ask for a legal opinion (istiftā) on this matter from these students.’ When we had said we agreed, they asked us, ‘Is it incorrect to perform the marriage ritual for a pregnant woman?’ My companion, a student of Arabic morphology (kāfiyakhwān),40 had recently learned to write [Arabic], was unable to speak up. They said, ‘It’s not in the Kāfiya. Let him be.’41 Imam Afandi looked at me. I said, ‘Although the marriage ceremony is permitted as long as the birth has not taken place, the consummation is not permitted.’ The imam said, ‘The marriage ceremony is all right, they won’t wait until the [wedding] night for its consummation.’ After that the ceremony was performed, and they paid a few Bukharan tanggas. After the fātiḥa sheep heads, intestines, and lungs were set out in large bowls, and they brought soup, and one knife. Each person took one slice, and slicing with the knife in their belts, began to eat. I started to eat

39 Mukhtaṣar al-Wiqāya, otherwise known as the Nuqāya, is a work by ʿUbaydullāh b. Masʿūd al-Maḥbūbī al-Bukhārī (d. 747ah/1347ce). The work is composed on the basis of the al-Wiqāya, an abridged version by the author’s grandfather Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad al-Maḥbūbī (d. 630ah/1232ce) of the al-Hidāya by Marghīnānī; cf. Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, vol. I (Weimar, 1898): 377. 40 The Kāfiya is a text on Arabic morphology that was part of the standard curriculum in Bukhara. 41 In Qazaq in the text: Kāfiyada zhōq, bōghāy ōl. 258 Allen J. Frank

too. My companion took a slice of meat, and he put it in my mouth. [213a] When I looked, everyone was doing it in the same way, putting it in that way as it had been initially done. If you looked, it seemed clownish. My companion said, ‘Your grace, sitting and being hosted by the Qazaqs is very much like this.’ We left the assembly and Imam Afandi brought us into the school [yurt]. The Imam Afandi had his own felt yurt that was also called the mosque. After that his 15-year-old daughter brought tea, and we sat down and started to drink it. The imam said, ‘Stay with us as guests for a week. I will accompany you myself.’ There was no concealment among Qazaq women and girls. They spoke openly and laughed. However the imam’s wife, while she did not conceal herself, did not speak after having greeted us. That night two young Qazaq fellows came. They went from camp to camp performing songs. They strummed played dombras in their hands and began singing songs. They were also preaching (waʿẓ sōyliyōr) and everyone, young and old, men and women, assembled to observe and hear the sermon. We also went to listen. It was a moonlit night. However, it was understood as if among the young men and the girls in the isolated empty places there were various secrets. The next day there were horse races, like sābāntūy42 in our parts. [213b] First of all they assembled and bought a ram. They cut its head off and without gutting it, all of the young men mounted their horses and, and they were tearing this ram from each other’s hands. A snow-white lather fell from the horses. They did this for five or six hours. The ram was torn into two pieces. The remains were left on the sand, and the young men went off. The next day a woman came and received permission from the mullah to cook the remains, and she cooked it. We sat down and ate it, however soon there was a smell and the sand was swimming in the meat and in the soup. Our time there was very pleasant. Every day we drank kumiss and we gained weight, however we also became quite afflicted with lice. They even gathered in the folds of [our] pants. Every day during afternoon prayers there would be a fierce sandstorm. At that time everyone would disappear and no one would go out. At that time Mullah Afandi would give lessons twice a day every day to 20 or 30 children. Since the yurt where we stayed was the school 15 or 16 year-old girls would assemble there. The lessons would start after eight o’clock in the morning until the advent of the sandstorm. The later lesson would be given from when people woke up until the afternoon prayer. Imam Afandi gave lessons very diligently. Although he did not teach syllables, morphology [214a] was according to the jadid method. However, the mullah sat in one place cross-legged, holding a whip in his hand. Putting the children in a circle, they were arranged as if all of them were together with their partners, and they recited with the books and Qur’ans in their hands. They would read the Haft-i Yak in Persian, and later

42 A reference to an agricultural festival common among the Tatars, typically held in mid-June. A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 259

recite the Qur’an. After the practical exercises [they read] the Chahār kitāb,43 and the Thubāt al-ʿājizīn;44 after the Qur’an recitation, [they read] Bīdil and Murād al-ʿārifīn. As with us [in Russia], invalids and the lame would give lessons and would be junior instructors. In this way a forty-year old man would give lessons in Bīdil and the Qur’an. Because Imam Afandi liked us a great deal, we also loved him. However, even though I did know and record his name, during the Baranga Fire it was destroyed together with my sayāḥatnāma. I had time here to devote attention to my Farāʾīż45 that I had copied myself, and I was studying. The mullah made an invitation to learn the rules of arithmetic and calendars. After that a Qazaq placed the two of us on a camel, paid the price of a taṣadduq prayer, and sent us toward a second Qazaq encampment (ūtrāw). We went across the desert for about an hour, and we reached some Qazaqs who had a few felt yurts. There we entered [the yurt] of a Qazaq whom Imam Afandi had taught. However, when we went in he was lying in the place of the owner. His old mother, and his wife and children were there. [214b] They brewed tea and my companion started talking about his own Qazaq ancestry. He said he had [come] from a group of the Petropavlovsk Qazaqs. The old woman had gathered camel-thorn for the purpose of making medicine for her son. She put in a large wooden mortar for pounding seeds, and crushed it, and they boiled it in water and made him drink it, and they did the major ablution. At that time the owner said, ‘I’m dying’, and started dictating his will to my companion. After everyone started crying he couldn’t write and put down the pen. They gave both of us a tanga as an offering, and they sent us by camel to another distant encampment. Although there were five or six Qazaq yurts there, since it was close to Khayrabad, its lands were grassy. We ended up staying with a Qazaq imam named Jumʿa-Bāy. He was a humble person and a great shaykh. He had two felt yurts. One of them he inherited from his deceased younger brother. He became the heir of all of his relatives’ goods and homes. Even if they had wives, he became the heir of what was left. ([This is] the law that Chinggis Khan issued).46 His old mother and the wife of his late brother live in the second yurt. He also had an eight or nine year old child. We stayed here five or six days. [215a] I saw that the two wives went around together like friends. His Holiness Jumʿa-Bāy took training for a few years from Sultan

43 The Chahār kitāb is originally a Persian maktab primer widely translated into Cha- ghatay and modern Turkic languages; it was also widely used among Qazaq nomads in the 19th century; cf. Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpeyulï, Shïgharmalarï, vol. IX (Pavlodar, 2006): 277, Allen Frank, Popular Islamic Literature in Kazakhstan: and Annotated Bibliography (Spring- field, Virginia, 2007): 47. 44 On this influential Sufi work and madrasa text cf. H.F. Hofman, Turkish Literature: a Bio-Bibliographical Survey, part III vol. 1–3 (Utrecht, 1969): 75–80; Frank, Popular Islamic Literature in Kazakhstan: 79. 45 A standard text on inheritance law. 46 Here Aḥmad is referring to Qazaq customary law, or ʿādat. 260 Allen J. Frank

Khan47 in Bukhara, and obtained a license. He also taught the Rashahāt48 for a while. After that we set off to return to Bukhara.

IV. Some Notes on the Text

It was very common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries for Tatar madrasa students to spend summers among nomads as instructors. However because living among nomads was often compelled by difficult economic circumstances, among Tatars it was widely held to be a low- status pursuit. Elsewhere in the manuscript Aḥmad points out that when he was a student in Kazan, fellow students who returned from spending the summer among Qazaqs were often ridiculed by other students. 49 However he expressed surprise that the opposite appears to have been the case in Bukhara, where students returning in autumn held those who had lived with nomads in particular honor.50 Aḥmad does reflect on the reasons for the difference in their attitudes, but they could be based on differing perceptions of the political status of nomads, or tribal communities, in Russia and Bukhara respectively. With respect to the Qazaqs with whom Aḥmad was travelling, we know that there were communities of Qazaq nomads subject to the emirs of Bukhara, although they were neither numerous, powerful, nor well documented. The Polish diplomat Jan Witkiewicz, who visited Bukhara in the 1840’s, has left us with a description of these Qazaqs: The only Qazaqs subordinate to Bukhara are those known as Ilibai [Ilibay]. It is not a clan, but a collection, an accidental rabble of various tribes and clans, around 1,500 tents wandering between the Yaman-Qïzïl and the borders of Bukhara in the Buqan Mountains. They are not rich, despite their name, which means ‘the wealthy auls.’ Two hundred tents of Shömekey Qazaqs wander between Bukhara and Qarshi. The Ilibais are engaged in the shipping of charcoal and wood to Bukhara. There are no other Qazaqs subordinate to Bukhara.51

47 This was one of the sons of and successors of Jalāl ad-Dīn Khiyābānī; TB: ff. 141b-142a. 48 This is presumably a reference to the Sufi work Rashahāt al-ʿayn al-hayāt of Fakhr ad-Dīn ʿAlī b. Ḥusayn Ṣafī. 49 Typically, difficult economic conditions were the main factor in making scholars or students in Russia seek their living among nomads; cf. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia, 233. 50 TB: fol. 201a. 51 P.I. Demezon and I.V. Vitkevich, Zapiski o Bukharskom khanstve, ed. N.A. Khalfin (Moscow, 1983): 89. The Shömekeys form part the Junior Horde’s Älimulï division, but were A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 261 Aḥmad does not further identify the Qazaqs he traveled with. He points out that the Qazaqs with whom he first travelled were dung-sellers, which was used as fuel. Perhaps these were the Ilibays whom Witkiewicz identifies as fuel sellers. At the same time, the route Aḥmad took appears to have been to the north of Bukhara, which was the direction of the territory inhabited by the Shömekey Qazaqs. Conversely, Aḥmad may have even travelled with both groups.

V. Curricula and Education

In his description of Islamic education and of the teachers, and of the texts they made use of, Aḥmad reveals a Muslim community with a strong educational foundation, at many levels similar to that of rural Muslim communities in Russia. He records a broad range of Persian and Turki literature that appears to have been widely read among these Qazaq nomads, and which reveal a substantial level of literary sophistication and Islamic knowledge among these nomads, including a high degree of familiarity with the Persian language. We find references to a broad selection of works typical of the Ḥanafite curriculum of that era, beginning with madrasa primers and including more advanced works on jurisprudence and Sufism. Aḥmad’s account demonstrates quite clearly that the Qazaq nomads studied and displayed familiarity with many of the standard texts of the Ḥanafite curriculum that were in use in Bukhara and Russia. These include the Chahār kitāb, which was widely used as a maktab primer in Central Asia. Although it was less commonly encountered in the Volga-Ural region, it was nevertheless used throughout much of the Qazaq steppe. Mäshhür- Zhüsip Köpeyulï reports having used it as a primer in the Pavlodar region in the 1860’s, 52 and the work continues to circulate in Kazakhstan in a modern Qazaq translation.53

primarily located in the Aktyubinsk region of western Kazakhstan. The Ilibay Qazaqs in Bukhara should not be confused with another group of Qazaqs by the same name belonging to the Senior Horde. 52 Mäshhür Zhüsip mentions a Qazaq proverb that relates, ‘If you can read the chahār kitāb, you can read any book;’ Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï, Shïgharmalar, vol. IX (Pavlodar, 2006): 277–8. 53 In modern Qazaq the work is known as shar kitap; cf. Frank, Popular Islamic Litera- ture in Kazakhstan: 47. 262 Allen J. Frank The mukhtaṣār in all likelihood refers to the Arabic fiqh text Mukhtaṣār al-wiqāya.54 This work formed part of the core of fiqh studies in both Russia and Central Asia. Aḥmad makes frequent mention of the work in his account of his and his father’s studies in Bukhara. It was a common text in the Russia madrasa curriculum, and it also appears to have been widely used as a fiqh text among other Qazaq nomads, since Mäshhür Zhüsip also mentions it as one of the works he studied.55 Aḥmad also mentions several works devoted to Sufism. Clearly at the beginning of the 20th century Naqshbandi ṭarīqats maintained a strong presence in Qazaq nomadic communities, and Qazaq murīds were studying Sufism both in major centers in both Russia and Central Asia, such as Troitsk, Petropavlovsk, Semipalatinsk, Khiva, Bukhara, and Tashkent.56 Sufi shaykhs and their murīds were also widespread among nomadic communities. Aḥmad mentions the ishān Jumʿa-Bāy, linked to the Bukharan Ṣāḥibzāde lineage. Mäshhür Zhüsip mentions numerous Sufi shaykhs among nomads in the Pavlodar region, and Qurbān-ʿAlī Khālidī mentions the same phenomenon among Qazaq nomads in the Chinese Altai.57 However, as Aḥmad makes clear, Sufi knowledge was not limited to the ṭarīqat, but was also more broadly assimilated through the study of Sufi texts. In the case of the Qazaqs with whom Aḥmad traveled, they were conversant in a number of doctrinal works, such as the Persian work Murād al-ʿārifīn, written by Ṣūfī Allāhyār b. Allāhqulī al-Bukhārī (d. 1722), and the Thubāt al-ʿājizīn, by the same author, an influential Turki work that was widely used in the madrasas in Russia and the Qazaq steppe as a doctrinal work.58 Clearly, Sufi conceptions were disseminated textually, as well as orally, among these nomads.

54 This is a fiqh text attributed to ʿUbaydullāh Ṣadrī-Sharīʿa (d. 1349 ce); on its place within the Ḥanafite curriculum in Bukhara cf. N. Khanykov, Opisanie Bukharskago khanstva, (St. Petersburg, 1843): 216. The work is also known as Niqāya, and is an abridgement of his Sharḥ Wiqāya. 55 Köpeyulï, Shïgharmalar IX: 277; Mäshhür-Zhüsip claims to have studied this text in Bayanaul at age eight, while he was a maktab student. 56 Thierry Zarcone, “Les confréries soufies en Sibérie (XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle).” Cahiers du monde russe XLI/2–3 (2000): 279–96. 57 Köpeyulï, Shïgharmalar, vol. I: 229–36; vol. IX: 265–7; Khālidī, An Islamic Biographi- cal Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe: fol. 87ab. 58 For detailed references on these works cf. Hofman, Turkish Literature: a Bio-Biblio- graphical Survey III/1 vol. 1–3: 74–9. These works circulated widely in both manuscript and printed form. For example, a Persian edition with a Turkic translation/commentary was printed in Kazan in 1860. There also existed Turki commentaries on both by the Bashkir Sufi and historian Tāj ad-Dīn b. Yālchīghul al-Bāshqōrdī (1768–1837). His commentary on the Thubāt al-ʿājizīn, titled Risāla-yi ʿAzīza, was particularly popular and influential. Arabic- A Month among the Qazaqs in the Emirate of Bukhara 263 In his account it is evident that Aḥmad is impressed with his hosts’ knowledge of the Persian language. In all likelihood, certain texts, such as the Murād al-ʿārifīn, were read in Persian. However, Aḥmad mentions on two occasions how these Qazaq nomads read works by the Indian poet ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil (1644–1720), who is renowned in India, Afghanistan and Central Asia, and has been described as ‘the foremost representative of the later phase of the ‘Indian style’ (sabk-i hindī) of Persian poetry, and the most difficult and challenging poet of that school.’59 Aḥmad indicates the imam in the settlement was particularly devoted to Bīdil’s poetry, and reveals that his poetry was even taught in the school. As we have indicated above, in pre-Soviet Tatar texts the ignorance of Qazaq nomads is a commonly-encountered stereotype, and at one level several of Aḥmad’s comments could be interpreted in that framework. For example, one of the Qazaqs identifies the Hidāya as ‘the book one reads on top of a camel.’ Similarly, the episode where the Qazaqs seek a legal opinion from Aḥmad regarding the legality of a marriage between a young man and the girl he impregnated. However, the reader is left wondering whether the Qazaqs are note perhaps slyly poking fun at their Tatar guests. As we have seen, the level of Islamic education among these nomads is clearly elevated. When they are discussing the fatvā regarding the marriage for the pregnant girl, the Qazaqs know to dismiss the authority of the Tatar student who had only so far studied Arabic grammar.

VI. Ethnography

The account also stands out for Aḥmad’s attention to ethnographic detail. Clearly he was quite fascinated by his experience with real nomads, something that was quite new and exciting to him. Aḥmad was struck particularly by the Qazaqs’ poverty, and in fact during their month-long stay they stayed in three separate encampments because of their hosts’ limited resources. He also remarked on how the Qazaqs complained of their oppression by the Bukharans, who exacted zakāt from them. He comments on how Qazaq women went about uncovered, unlike in Bukhara, and also mentions that Qazaq girls, even those as old as 15-years old, attended les-

script Turki editions Thubāt al-ʿājizīn were still printed and available in bazaars in Kazakh- stan in 2005; cf. Frank, Popular Islamic Literature: 79. 59 http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bidel-bedil-mirza-abd-al-qader-b. 264 Allen J. Frank sons. Similarly, be observed the Qazaqs’ parallel application of customary law and Islamic law in their rites and customs.

Conclusion

The Qazaq communities that Aḥmad describes bring into question a number of commonly encountered clichés that describe nomads, and Qazaqs in particular, as either un-Islamic, or fundamentally lacking in Islamic knowledge. Aḥmad’s account in fact reveals the exact opposite: a community that maintains its own Islamic educational institutions, and what is more, a community that is sufficiently secure and confident in its Islamic knowledge as to even sometimes make fun of the Tatar students who traveled among them. Aḥmad describes a fairly effective educational structure among these nomads, which he describes as essentially similar to what he experienced in his home village in Russia. This includes education for girls as old as 15, demonstrating that girls’ education was not restricted to Tatars. With respect to Islamic institutions among the Qazaqs he describes encampments with schools for children, staffed not only by the local imam, but also by handicapped members of the community, which he notes was an arrangement also in place in Russia. The texts used in the classes were by and large those typical of the Ḥanafite curriculum. It is also worth pointing out that whereas both Russian officials and Tatar observers credited (or blamed) the growth in Islamic institutions among Qazaqs to Tatar influence, we see in this case that Qazaqs subjects of the Emirate of Bukhara, who were under greater Bukharan political and cultural influence than Russian or Tatar, nevertheless maintained educational and religious practices that Aḥmad described as differing substantially from what he had observed in Bukhara. These observations suggest that perhaps Qazaq nomadic religious institutions were less influenced by outside cultural and political forces than has previously been thought, and at the same time, they did not depart significantly from the broader Ḥanafite current in which they were firmly located.

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Secondary Literature Äkhmätjanov, M. 1995. Tatar shäjäräläre. Kazan: Tatar kitap näshriyäte. Babadžanov, B. 1996. The Naqšbandīya-Muǧaddidīya in Central Māwarāʾannahr in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries. In Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 1 ed. M. Kemper, A. von Kügelgen, D. Yermakov. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz. Bentkovskii, I. 1888. Nogaitsy I. Stavropol’: Tipografiya guvernskago pravleniya. Bregel’, Yu. È. 1974. Vostochnye rukopisi Kazani. Pis‘mennye pamyatniki Vostoka. Ezhegodnik 1969. Moscow: Nauka. Brockelmann, C. Geschichte der arabischen Literatur I (Weimar: Emil Felber, 1898). Castagné, J. 1951. Le culte de lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan. L’Etnographie n.s. 46: 46–124. Chanishif, M. 2001. Jonggu tatar ma’arip tarikhi. Urumchi: Shinjang khälq näshriyati Demezon, P. I. and I.V. Vitkevich. 1983. Zapiski o Bukharskom khanstve, ed. N.A. Khalfin. Moscow: Glavnaya Redaktsiya Vostochnoi Literatury. DeWeese, D. 1994. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and the Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition. University Park, Pennsylvania: Penn State Press. ____. 2009. Foreword. In Islamizatsiya i sakral’nye rodoslovnye v Tsentral’noi Azii, ed. A. Muminov. Almaty: Daik Press, 6–33. Fätkhiev, A.S. 1986. Tatar ädipläre häm ghalimnäreneng qulyazmalarï. Kazan: Qazan Universitetï Näshriyäte. Frank, A.J. 2000. Varieties of Islamization in Inner Asia: the Case of the Baraba Tatars, 1740–1917. Cahiers du monde russe XLI/2–3: 29–46. ____. 2001. Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia: the Islamic World of Novouzensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780–1910. Leiden-Boston: Brill. ____. 2003. Islamic Transformation on the Kazakh Steppe, 1742–1917: Toward an Islamic History of Kazakhstan under Russian Rule. In The Construction and Deconstruction of National Identities in Slavic Eurasia, ed. Hayashi Tadayuki. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University: 261–89. ____. 2007. Popular Islamic Literature in Kazakhstan: and Annotated Bibliography. Springfield, Virginia: Dunwoody Press. Ibragimov, A. 1915. Bashkiry v proshlom. Inorodcheskoe obozrenie 8: 538–41. Iskhakov, D. 1997. Seidy v pozdnezolotoordynskikh tatarskikh gosudarstvakh. Kazan: Iman. 266 Allen J. Frank

Hofman, H.F. 1969. Turkish Literature: a Bio-Bibliographical Survey, part III vol. 1–3. Utrecht: Library of Utrecht University. Keller-Heinkele, B. 1996. Crimean Tatar and Nogay Scholars in the 18th Century. In Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 1 ed. M. Kemper, A. von Kügelgen, D. Yermakov. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz: 279–96. Kemper, M. 1998. Sufis und Gelehrte in Tatarien und Baschkirien, 1789–1889: Der islamische Diskurs unter russischer Herrschaft. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz. Khanykov, N. 1843. Opisanie Bukharskago khanstva. St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaya Akademiya Nauk. Popov, N.S., ed. 2004. Paran’ginskii raion: sbornik dokumental’nykh ocherkov. Ioshkar-Ola. Potanin, G.N. 1881. Ocherki severo-zapadnoi Mongolii I. St. Petersburg. Märdanov, R., ed. 1998. Shihabetdin Märjani. Kazan: Tatar kitap näshriyäte. Turdyev, S. 1997. Sredneaziatskie tatary: rol’ i znachenie v kul’turnoi i politecheskoi zhizni Turkestana pervoi chertverti XX v. In Islam v tatarskom mire, ed. S.A. Dudoignon. Kazan: Institut Istorii, Akademii Nauk Tatarstana, 169–90. Veselovskii, N., ed. 1894. Kirgizskii rasskaz o russkikh zavoevaniyakh v Turkestanskom krae: tekst, perevod i prilozheniya. St. Petersburg: P. O Yablonskii. Zarcone, T. 2000. Les confréries soufies en Sibérie (XIXe siècle et début du XXe siècle). Cahiers du monde russe XLI/2–3: 279–96. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 267

CHAPTER EIGHT

Creating the Façade of a Despotic State: On Āqsaqāls in Late 19th-Century Bukhara

Andreas Wilde

To the possessor of honor and manifestation of amīrhood, the trustworthy agent of the government Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy Dīvānbīgī exalted by royal favors, be aware that the localities of ʿAjaz [?], Khānābād, Qūrghāshīm and Yanghikent have always belonged to Qarshi. Appoint and install a governor from Qarshi! You have done well in reconstructing the citadel of Panjāb. Since the populace of Panjāb is well acquainted with you, be kind to their arbābs and āqsaqāls (ba arbāb wa āqsaqālash mihrabānī kunīd)! Deliver robes of honor and address them with good parlance.1 With this passage commences an official letter encompassing numerous orders and instructions issued by the Bukharan ruler Amīr Ḥaydar (r. 1801– 1826) to the dīvānbīgī Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy, the governor of the province of Qarshi. Apart from mentioning a number of settlements, the ruler gives some other instructions, e.g. the appointment of a dārūgha, a military governor in charge of small local fortresses. Subsequently he commends the recent reconstruction of Panjāb accomplished by the addressee of the letter. Before passing to other issues, Amīr Ḥaydar places emphasis on his official’s personal acquaintance with local representatives, the elders (arbāb wa āqsaqāl) of Panjāb. On this occasion he advises Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy to treat them with kindness and leniency and to talk in a gentle manner to them (sukhan-i khūb-i tānrā gū’īd). By furnishing a small piece of information on the relationship between a government official—in this case a governor—and community representatives, the letter helps to fill in a void of data with regard to local elders usually left by Bukharan court chronicles. Taking very much the ruler’s perspective, most chronicles only infrequently furnish data on elders

1 Amīr Ḥaydar, Maktūbāt-i Amīr Ḥaydar, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 5412: fol. 2b-3a (maktūb 2). 268 Andreas Wilde (āqsaqāl, rīsh-safīds) or village headmen (kadkhudā).2 The letter further indicates that at local level good relationships with a number of representatives were important for the administrators. Obviously, neither the governor nor the amīr could afford to ignore notables and village chiefs. The document also mirrors the political conditions in the Emirate of Bukhara and the indirect nature of late Manghit rule. According to this brief text, the complex relationship between the center and more remote rural areas was mediated by government agents and local middlemen. The following chapter represents a preliminary attempt at an investigation of socio-political structures in the Emirate of Bukhara in the second half of the nineteenth century. Drawing almost exclusively upon documents from that period, the chapter constitutes a first preliminary step of archival research and should be regarded as part of a work in progress. It argues that the Bukharan āqsaqāls and their colleagues responsible for affairs connected with irrigation, the amīns, played not only an important role for the self-administration of rural communities; they formed an inseparable part of exchange-based social networks composed of a multitude of power relations. Moreover, the relationships they were part of were probably not unique to the Bukharan context but in this or other forms can be encountered in other settings and regions. The chapter is divided into six parts. Section I will give a short overview of the political history of Bukhara between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries with a view to pinpointing the establishment of the Manghits’ power. Part II will consist of a cursory presentation of the archival source materials that form the basis of this study. Part III reviews the arrays of administrative and social duties performed by ‘the elders’ (āqsaqāls) at the level of local administrations in the periphery of the Bukharan Emirate. Sections IV and V concern the actual pattern of appointment to the office of āqsaqāl as it can be discerned in the documents. The paper ends with a final discussion on local power and representation. Unfortunately, many sources such as court chronicles restrict the historian to an investigation from a mere bird’s-eye view on social history. Especially the chronicles leave the reader with many questions since most of the accounts neither come up with names of āqsaqāls nor do they furnish

2 The term āqsaqāl literally means ‘whitebeard’ derived from āq (white) and saqāl (beard). In the local setting this term was generally applied to old people but also to village and clan elders as well as to city notables and gild leaders. Similar to the Turkish word āqsaqāl is the Persian loan word rīsh-safīd, see G. Doerfer, Türkische und Mongolische Ele- mente im Neupersischen, 4 vols./II (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1965): 89. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 269 detailed information about rural life. Placing the main emphasis on the designation of village elders, I will endeavor to highlight the procedure of selection of āqsaqāls rather than addressing the question of which particular tasks and duties were attached to the position. The main question I try to answer is thus concerned with the actual nomination of candidates at the local level. How were elders selected? What particular reasons led to an appointment and what qualities were needed for a candidacy, and which role did the central government play in the selection process?

I. Historical Background

In contrast to the commonly known term Emirate or Khanate of Bukhara, a designation which originally harks back to the Russian Bukharskoe khanstvo, until the middle of the nineteenth century native sources describe the area as Mawarannahr (Arab. ‘what is beyond the river’). Sometimes we also come across Turan as opposed to Iran, or Turkestan.3 In Western literature we often find the toponym Transoxania instead. From the beginning of the sixteenth century onward, Transoxania was ruled by two dynasties of Chinggisid origin, the Shibanids (1501–1599/1600),4 and the Ashtarkhanids (ca. 1600–1747/1785), sometimes also called Tuqay-Timurids. These dynasties, or rather dynastic clans, ruled over an ensemble of principalities organized around the major urban centers such as Samarqand, Bukhara, Balkh and Tashkent. Within this highly decentralized system of government, the titles of khān and sulṭān were the prerogatives of members of the ruling Chinggisid houses.5 This meant that these titles could not be assumed by non-Chinggisid actors, e.g. the Uzbek leaders. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the scope of Ashtarkhanid power gradually diminished. The political landscape was characterized by constant segmentation and conflict between the dynasty and the Uzbek chieftains, the amīrs. During this period of less than thirty years, prominent tribal leaders of the Manghit, Ming, Yūz, Kīnakas, and Qataghān moved to

3 Y. Bregel, “The New Uzbek States: Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand: c. 1750–1886.” In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chinggisid Age, ed. N. di Cosmo, A.J. Frank and P.B. Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009): 396–7. 4 For the political development under the Shibanids see P.P. Ivanov, Ocherki po istorii Srednej Azii (XVI-seredina XIX v.) (Moscow: Izdatetl’stvo Vostochnoi Litaratury, 1958): 46–57. 5 M. Dickson, “Uzbek Dynastic Theory in the Sixteenth Century.” Trudy dvadtsat’ pyatogo Mezhdunarodnogo kongressa vostokovedov 3 (1963): 208–16; R. D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia. Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990): 52–66. 270 Andreas Wilde the forefront.6 By 1730, the sphere of Ashtarkhanid power was more or less confined to Bukhara and the districts (tūmānāt) in its immediate vicinity.7 In 1740 Transoxania was formally occupied by the Iranian ruler Nādir Shāh who relied on the Manghit leader Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy Atālīq and his son Muḥammad Raḥīm as vassals and intermediaries.8 Nādirid patronage gave a considerable boost to the Manghits. In 1745–46 the pres- tigious post of atālīq was transferred to Muḥammad Raḥīm Biy who is commonly regarded as the founder of the non-Chinggisid Manghit dynasty.9 With the sudden death of Nādir Shāh in 1747, the Manghit amīr was able to ward off his Iranian allies and, after having put the last active Ashtarkhanid ruler Abū’l-Fayż Khan to death, strengthened his position as commander-in-chief (amīr al-umarā). Muḥammad Raḥīm Biy ruled first in the name of Chinggisid puppet khāns and was officially crowned in late 1756.10 At that time, the Fergana Valley had already gained independence under the Ming Uzbeks, whereas Balkh had become part of the Afghan Durrani Empire.11 Whilst Muḥammad Raḥīm Khan’s successor Dānyāl Biy (r. 1759–85) only governed as atālīq, Shāh Murād (r. 1785–1800) abandoned the custom of governing in the name of shadow khāns and only retained the title of amīr.12 In the nineteenth century, the Emirate of Bukhara was by far the most important and powerful of the three Central Asian Khanates north of the

6 For this period see O.D. Chekhovich, “K istorii Uzbekistana v XVIII veke.” Trudy Instituta Vostokovedeniya 3 (1954): 43–82. 7 O.D. Chekhovich, “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii Srednei Azii XVIII-XIX v.” Voprosy istorii 2 (1956): 86. 8 Perhaps the best account of this time is given by the chronicler Qāżī Vafā Karmīnagī; see Qāżī Vafā, Tuḥfat al-khānī, MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 16: fols. 33a-125b. 9 The position of atālīq was usually held by an Uzbek amīr who acted first as tutor and adviser of the Chinggisid princes and appanage holders. The atālīq was often in charge of administrative and military affairs. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, an intense rivalry among the Uzbek leadership revolved around this position. Later the atālīqate was monopolized by the Manghit amīrs. In the course of the nineteenth century, the office gradually lost its significance and became transferred into a more or less honorary title, see Y. Bregel, “Atālīḳ.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 2004), supplement to vol. XII: 96–8. 10 In the time before, the Manghit amīr had established control over the core areas of Transoxania. It was the first time after more than two and a half centuries that a non- Chinggisid actor adopted the khān title, see Bregel, “The Three Uzbek States”: 395; Ivanov, Ocherki: 102. 11 Ivanov, Ocherki: 90; Chekhovich, “K istorii”: 43; Checkhovich, “O nekotorykh”: 86. 12 G. Hambly, “Der Verfall der usbekischen Khanate.” In Fischer Weltgeschichte vol. 16: Zentralasien, ed. G. Hambly (Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer Verlag, 1966): 192. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 271 Oxus.13 With the territorial consolidation of Manghit rule, the Emirate not only came into conflict with its eastern neighbor Khoqand but several times experienced Khivan forays and invasions. In addition, Amīr Ḥaydar (r. 1800–26) also had to deal with rebellions on the fringes of his realm, especially in Miyānkāl where he was challenged by the Khiṭā᾿ī-Qipchāq.14 According to Bregel, one of the characteristic features of late Manghit rule was a consolidation of the central government at the expense of the Uzbek tribal chiefs. The members of the hereditary Uzbek leadership were sub- jugated and suppressed by Naṣrullāh Khan (r. 1826–60). ‘As a result, the Khanate of Bukhara became a despotic monarchy, where the amīr, enjoying unlimited power, ruled through a huge bureaucratic apparatus.’15 Under Naṣrullāh and his successors, Bukhara reached an unprecedented degree of internal centralization. This development went on at the expense of smaller provinces and principalities like Shahrisabz, Hissar or Kulab which had always formed ‘a rather doubtful “outer fringe”.’16 In the middle of the nineteenth century, Russian influence made itself increasingly felt in Central Asia. In 1868 Bukhara was defeated by Russian forces and lost its eastern part including the city of Samarqand, which was absorbed into the Russian Governor-Generalship of Turkestan. Afterwards, the Emirate was transformed into a Russian protectorate with limited sovereignty.17 During this time, the administration was largely run by persons of non-Uzbek origin who were bound to the rulers by personal loyalty.18 The second person in command after the amīr was the qūshbīgī or first minister who was in charge of the civil administration.19 After the dissolution of the Emirate and the flight of the last amīr ʿĀlim Khan in 1920, Bukhara became a People’s Republic and in 1924 was incorporated into the Soviet Union. In Soviet times, all the documents (official letters, correspondence, petitions etc.) produced under the Manghits and during the short-

13 M. Holdsworth, Turkestan in the Nineteenth Century. A Brief History of the Khanates of Bukhara, Kokand and Khiva (Oxford: Central Asian Research Centre, 1959): 1. 14 See P.P. Ivanov, Vosstanie Kitai-Kipchakov v Bukharskom khanstve (1821–1825 gg.). Istochniki i opyt ikh issledovaniya (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Nauk SSSR, 1937). 15 Y. Bregel, “Mangits.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn (Leiden: Brill, 1991), vol. VI: 419. 16 Holdsworth, Turkestan: 4. 17 For the developments under Russian rule see S. Becker, Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968). 18 Bregel, “Mangits”: 419. 19 N. Khanikoff, Bokhara its Amir and its People (London: James Madden): 243. For a thorough discussion of the title of qūshbīgī, or better said qoshbēgī, see Y. Bregel, The Administration of Bukhara under the Manghïts and Some Tashkent Manuscripts (Blooming- ton: Indiana University–Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, 2000): 7–12. 272 Andreas Wilde lived Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic were carted off to Tashkent and became part of the Central State Archive.20

II. The Archival Material

This chapter opened with a quotation from an inshā collection which, together with the material from the Bukharan chancellery, bears witness to the increasing administrative centralization in the Emirate. For the investigation of the designation of village headmen and elders, I rely exclusively on the rich material of the Qūshbīgī archive.21 A glance at the catalogue reveals that the nominations of elders are―in contrast to the chronicles―well recorded. The documents I am going to explore are designated petitions (ʿarīżā) requesting the verification of āqsaqāl and amīn appointments. But in fact, the documents I shall analyze are rescripts whose reproduction was instigated by the chancellery or the ruler himself. Most of the documents were authored by the qāżī on the instructions given in royal mubārak-nāmas. The latter obviously referred to requests of village communities regarding the appointment of āqsaqāls and amīns. The overwhelming amount of more than one thousand petitions sent to the ruler by villagers and government agents suggests that the issue of eldership or local representation (āqsaqālī) played an important role in the daily life of Transoxanian villages.22 The petitions sent to the Bukharan government emanated from the immediate environs of Bukhara but also from the countryside and remote rural areas like Yekke Bāgh, Kulab, or Żiya al-Dīn.23 Although the folder descriptions refer to the nomination of āqsaqāls and amīns, most of the records point to the confirmation of ordinary village

20 A. Khalid, “The Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic in the Light of Muslim Sources.” Die Welt des Islams, 50/3–4 (2010): 335–61. 21 The Qūshbīgī archive contains the bulk of documents from the chancellery of the former Bukharan prime ministers and perhaps also other offices that kept letters and documents from the time of the late Manghits. The documents from the Bukharan administration were transferred to Tashkent after the revolution and the final integration of Bukhara into the Soviet Union in 1925. There, they were organized in a special fond simply known as the ‘Qūshbīgī Fond’ or ‘Qūshbīgī archive.’ At present the records of the chancellery are housed in the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan in Tashkent and are registered as ‘collection’ (fond) I-126 (Koshbegi Èmira Bukharskogo). The material is divided into two main inventories (opisi 1 and 2), see Koshbegi Èmira Bukharskogo. Opis’ no. 1 (Tashkent 1969). 22 There are 1045 petitions on the nomination of candidates for eldership in twelve different files: TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 12, 13, 16–22, 24, 26–29. 23 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 19. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 273 chiefs and elders (āqsaqāls). Apart from a few exceptions, all petitions addressed to the amīr are undated.24 Considering the majority of the few dated documents in the Qūshbīgī chancellery,25 it seems reasonable to locate them in the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is worth noting that I did not find any royal diploma (manshūr) amongst the material, though most of the petitions request an official confirmation of the elders. It is worthwhile to explore the petitions as they provide a substantial grid of data giving insight into social conditions and administrative minu- tiae in villages and hamlets. Thus, they help to highlight important aspects of the social history of this part of Central Asia from the perspective of the rural context that is little known and often neglected by other sources. Especially the court chronicles leave the reader with many questions since most of the accounts neither come up with names of āqsaqāls nor do they furnish detailed information about rural life in a political system resting very much on localism.26 The information furnished by the petitions is, however, fragmentary and they do not reveal every detail to the reader that might be of interest. Particularly questions with respect to the negotiations about the choice of suitable candidates for eldership or the campaigning of different factions are left open. Many details about the procedure are still veiled in darkness. As will be discussed, the social historian will not gain any deeper insight into the local decision-making process because the material does not inform about all the actors involved. Thus the historian is likely to adopt a more inductive approach to the petitions, which implies a large range of possibilities for interpretation. This means that the conclusions to be drawn from the material are by no means conclusive but should be seen as mosaic pieces within a more comprehensive investigation of Bukhara’s social history. In the following, I will explore the issue of local representation by means of the example of the district (tūmān) of Kharqān Rūd located north of the Bukharan capital.27 I therefore selected eleven petitions, or more correctly

24 Only one file (TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 24) contains petitions, which, dating back to the years 1310–1333/1892–1914, were sent directly to the chancellery of the prime minister. 25 Especially the documents on taxation and irrigation bear dates from the late eighteenth and early twentieth century. 26 McChesney, Waqf: 59. 27 The tūmān Kharqān Rūd was one of eleven districts making up the Bukharan-Qarākūl Oasis. In former times, Kharqān Rūd was officially called Ghijduvān after its administrative center. Its designation had probably changed in the course of the nineteenth century. Marking the northernmost edge of the oasis, the tūmān was administratively organized 274 Andreas Wilde their rescripts, sent by district officials to the ruler. I have chosen the documents from this district for several reasons. First, the geographical coverage of records in the archive is very uneven. The inventory contains more than one thousand petitions requesting the official recognition of newly appointed village heads. This exceptionally large number of documents bolsters my argument regarding the importance of āqsaqāls. During the archival research, I randomly selected approximately two hundred of them according to readability and the state of the paper. The investigation yielded the result that most of them were sent from the immediate vicinity of Bukhara, the tūmānāt, whilst there are only a few records from the provinces. Second, even within the double oasis of Bukhara and Qarākūl, the number of documents I was able to obtain varies considerably, with a greater share from Shomālī-yi Rūd (forty-seven petitions) and the city of Bukhara (forty-six petitions). In contrast, only two petitions originated from Qarākūl. The petitions on amīn appointments show a similar gap between the administrative center of the Emirate and the hinterland. Thus the documents from Kharqān Rūd provide a fairly limited sample for the analysis, but one that is nevertheless big enough to allow for more general conclusions. Eight of the documents explicitly refer to the appointments of āqsaqāls, two ʿarīżas furnish information on the nomination of amīns in the same district. I will translate five of the petitions. The rest will be given in summarized form in the text and in footnotes.28 To answer the question regarding the social status of local elders, I underpin the data gleaned from the documents with the results of some oral history interviews conducted during a field stay in southern Uzbekistan in summer 2007.

around the town of Ghijduvān and the Kharqān Rūd irrigation canal branching off from the Zarafshan River, see A.R. Muhammadzhanov, Naselenniye punkty Bukharskogo èmirata (kon. XIX–nach. XX vv.). Materiyaly k istoricheskoi geografii Srednei Azii (Tashkent: Natsional’nyi Universitet Uzbekistana/Tsentral’nyi Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv 2001): 10; see also F. Schwarz, “Bukhara and its Hinterland: The Oasis of Bukhara in the Sixteenth Century in the Light of the Juybari Codex.” In Bukhara. The Myth and the Architecture, ed. A. Petruccioli (Cambridge: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996): 80–1. 28 I will briefly summarize additional petitions from other districts to highlight exceptional cases or to provide further information on the appointment procedure. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 275 III. Review of the Literature: Function and Role of Elders

The lack of information on elders may be interpreted as a sign of the autonomy rural areas enjoyed during this and the previous periods of the Shibanids and Ashtarkhanids. Since the Uzbeks adhered from the very beginning to localism, many responsibilities like the recruitment of warriors and taxation were delegated to local actors. This state of affairs continued well into the eighteenth century. In the secondary literature we find different and partly contradictory statements on the role and functions of local elders. Seymour Becker describes the āqsaqāl as an elder endowed with minor duties acting at the lowest level of the governmental hierarchy, the village.29 Subsuming the positions of āqsaqāl and mīrāb under one administrative category,30 Mary Holdsworth defines both as executive functionaries but also as the most important local actors who were in close contact with the people and in control of the administration of irrigation channels.31 ʿAynī only describes them as intermediaries who had been selected by local functionaries amongst the rich landowners,32 whilst Hélène Carrère d’Encausse identifies the āqsaqāls as elders in charge of villages and hamlets. According to her, they were chosen for life by the people they represented vis-à-vis the administration. Eldership expired only in cases of serious misdemeanor. Forming an ‘element of permanent contact between the central power and its subjects’, elders represented a point of reference and joint link to the government. But as their role was purely representative they remained without real effectiveness.33 Semënov, who worked on the administration and the system of ranks and offices in Bukhara, does not make any mention of the āqsaqāl title. He only refers to the title of amīn, defined as a fiduciary or authorized trustee

29 Becker, Russia’s Protectorates: 9. 30 The mīrāb is generally defined as ‘waterlord’ in charge of the irrigation at local level. However, the documents suggest that in late nineteenth-century Bukhara the mīrāb was appointed by the central government for the supervision of the irrigation at district level. It is worth mentioning that most of the office holders bore the title of tūqsāba or mīrākhwur in addition to the title of mīrāb (for instance TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 16, ll. 12, 13, 18; TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 17, l. 79 etc. 31 Holdsworth, Turkestan in the Nineteenth Century: 9. 32 arbāb va āqsaqāl barīn, maʿmūrīn-i maḥallī az sīr-zamīntarīn-i ānhā [tājīkān] intikhāb (taʿyīn) namūdand … arbāb shudand, āqsaqāl shudand, kalān va khwurd ba miyāna dar āmadand, see Ṣ. ʿAynī, Yāddāshthā, ed. ʿA.A. Saʿīdī Shīrjānī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i āgāh, 1362 h.s./1983): 6, 442. 33 H. Carrère d’Encausse, Islam and the Russian Empire. Reform and Revolution in Cen- tral Asia, 2nd edn (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009): 26. 276 Andreas Wilde responsible for the wealth of his ward.34 This contrasts with the information given by the documents from the Bukharan chancellery, according to which the amīn was an arīgh-āqsaqāl responsible for irrigation issues (see below). The Russian secondary literature is dominated by the view that the āqsaqāls made up the lowest level of the Bukharan administration. According to Enpe, the amīns were the chiefs of the ordinary elders and assisted the amlākdārs in the collection of revenues, while Magidovich is much more explicit in saying that the revenue districts (amlāks) were composed of several ‘āqsaqālships’ and ‘amīnships’ (aksakalstva i aminstva). These territorial units consisted of settlements headed by mingbāshīs as representatives of the Uzbeks and arbābs as Tajik headmen.35 According to the findings of Kislyakov, the āqsaqāls staffed the lowest administrative level. In the Bukharan amlāks, every settlement had its own representative. Big villages divided into different mosque communities had several whitebeards; one was selected for every mosque. Another administrative office was that of amīn. The latter was responsible for a cluster of villages and acted as middleman between the government and the population.36 The Russian scholar Radloff, who visited the Zarafshan Valley in the aftermath of the Russian conquest, follows many of his compatriots by terming Bukharan provinces ‘beg-ships’ (Russian begstva), which were further divided into districts. The latter were headed by āqsaqāls. The most influential of them was the āqsaqāl in charge of the bīk’s residence, who bore the title of amīn. However, the accuracy of this information should be questioned, especially since native documents define the amīn as responsible for irrigation issues and tax collection (see below). Each village was represented by its own whitebeard, and even local bazaars were represented and supervised by āqsaqāls who also acted as tax collectors.37

34 Semënov draws here upon one Bukharan document which names a certain Mūsā Khwāja as amīn of his small sister, see A.A. Semënov, Materialy po istorii Tadzhikov i Uzbekov Srednei Azii, vypusk II: Ocherk ustroistva tsentralnogo administrativnogo upravleniya Bukhar- skogo khanstva pozdneishego vremeni. (Stalinabad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk Tadzhikskoi SSR, 1954): 36–7, 38 footnote 1. 35 For a detailed overview of the Russian literature on āqsaqāls see N.A. Kislyakov, Patriarkhal’no-feodal’nye otnosheniya. Sredi osedlogo sel’skogo naseleniya Bukharskogo khanstva v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka (Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1962): 57. 36 Kislyakov, Patriarkhal’no-feodal’noe otnosheniya: 58. 37 Radloff also mentions that the āqsaqāls had a staff of lower ranking tax collectors, see W. Radloff, “Das mittlere Serafschanthal.” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 6/6 (1871): 523. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 277 While the secondary literature often only alludes to the term āqsaqāl (Turkic ‘whitebeard’), the native sources come up with a more complex terminology such as rīsh-safīd (Persian ‘whitebeard’), kalānān (literally ‘the great or big people’ in the sense of local leaders or notables), akābir wa aʿyān or ashrāf wa aʿyān (the nobility). In the petitions we also read about the kalān-shavandagān (literally ‘those becoming great’ meaning local big men), a designation that underlines the social status and reputation of local elites whose members belonged to a stratum of intermediaries composed of urban notables, religious dignitaries, wealthy landowners and even caravan traders. Traces of urban notables and their activities can be already found in sources dating back to the pre-Mongol period. At that time we observe a large spectrum of actors of the most diverse origin and background.38 The fact that elders and notables, functioning as intermediaries between certain segments of the population and the government, can be traced to the pre-Mongol period opens up the perspective of a longue durée. This suggests a longevity and resilience of local socio-political structures in Central Asia. The institution of āqsaqāl mentioned in the petitions was by no means unique to late nineteenth-century Bukhara, but should be seen as a historically evolved element of local representation in the wider region. Although minor changes in the position, the administrative duties and the amount of authority attached to it may have occurred in the course of the centuries, the pattern of representation based on notions of nobility did not fundamentally change until the end of the nineteenth century. Yet although they provided a crucial link between the different groups and echelons of society throughout history, in many sources village representatives and urban notables do not appear as individuals.39 The question

38 J. Paul, “Herrschaft und Gesellschaft. Einige Bemerkungen.” In Der Islamische Orient. Grundzüge seiner Geschichte, ed. A. Noth & J. Paul (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 1998): 174–5. 39 In some of the eighteenth century Bukharan and Iranian chronicles, local elders played an important role as interlocutors of foreign domestic rulers and the commanders of the royal troops, especially in the aftermath of sieges or military campaigns. For instance, Muḥammad Kāẓim reports how in 1737 the whitebeards and village headmen (rīsh-safīd va kadkhudā) in the vicinity of Termez voluntarily submitted to the Iranian troops led by the son of Nādir Shāh. Offering a number of gifts to the Iranian commanders, they requested the leader of the Qungrāt Uzbeks to surrender (M. Kāẓim, ʿĀlamārā-yi nādirī, ed. M.A. Riyāḥī, 3 vols./II (Tehran: Zavvar, 1985): 584–5). This motif of voluntary submission also forms a recurrent theme in some Bukharan sources. For example, after the conquest of Ūrgūt by Bukharan troops on 20 Jumāda I 1166/March 25, 1753, and the subsequent resettlement of a part of the local population, the āqsaqāls of Shing and Māghiyān submitted voluntarily, cf. Qāżī Vafā, Tuḥfat al-khānī: fols. 213a-b. 278 Andreas Wilde is, why do the āqsaqāls always appear as a uniform group of people in most of the Bukharan and even Iranian court chronicles as well as in documents on the levy of taxes and irrigation issues? In all likelihood, the chroniclers may have perceived the village elders as rather insignificant figures compared to tribal chieftains or higher ranking officials. Whatever the reason for this neglect, it makes the whitebeards extremely difficult to grasp as active agents. The position of whitebeard can also be found in many settings beyond the Bukharan boundaries. A case in point is Ḥājjī Biy, the governor of Maimana, who in 1750 joined the Afghan court at Herat together with a group of representatives (āqsaqālān wa aʿyān) from Lesser Turkestan, the region between the Amu-Darya and the Hindu Kush. On this occasion they sought protection against Muḥammad Raḥīm Biy Manghit and his oppres- siveness.40 Beisembiev identifies the āqsaqāl and amīn offices as the lowest positions in the Khanate of Khoqand. According to him, an āqsaqāl was an administrator in rural areas, e.g. amongst the Kurama and in the district of Tashkent, the whitebeard appears as a village chief or as an urban notable. The same apparently held true for the Fergana Valley. In the urban context, the headmen and elders of town and neighborhood quarters also bore this title.41 For example, in 1842 during their campaign to Khoqand, the Bukharans sent messengers to Tashkent in order to gain information about the position of the urban notables, amongst whom we also find a certain Bīk Muḥammad Āqsaqāl.42 Paying attention to this office in Kashghar and Xinjang, Chen points to the āqsaqāls (Chinese ‘Hudai-da’) as ‘commercial agents’ and representatives from Khoqand in Kashghar. In the Syr-Darya region, however, the term was applied to the representatives of rural communities and town quarters whose income usually came from the tax paid by the population. Chen thus identifies a clear difference between whitebeards in western Turkestan, where they had been selected by the people, and in Kashghar. Here they were appointed by the Ḥākim Bīgī.43 From both, Chen’s and Beisembiev’s works, it becomes apparent

40 M. al-Ḥuseinī, Tārīkh-i Aḥmadshāhī, ed. Sarvar Humāyūn (Peshawar: Dānish khaparandūya ṫolana, 2001): 108–9. 41 T. Beisembiev, Ta’rikh-i Shahrukhi. Kak istoricheskii istochnik (Alma Ata: Izdatel’stvo Nauka Kazakhskoi SSR, 1987): 68, 71. 42 Ibid.: 113. 43 Ch.-L. Chen, “Aksakals in the Moslem Region of Eastern Turkistan.” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 47 (1975): 41–3. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 279 that the Khoqandian āqsaqāls and amīns later dispatched to Kashghar acted as tax collectors.44 It emerges ultimately from the secondary literature and the primary sources that the whitebeards were actors fulfilling several duties at the same time. Very often their tasks were not really defined in the sources. Above all, they acted as intermediaries or power brokers linking the population in the countryside to the central administration. Many of them exercised patronage over a range of local clients and supporters whom they represented vis-à-vis the amīr and his bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the view of many historians of the āqsaqāls and amīns is obstructed by the attempts to identify clear-cut tasks and duties of Bukharan offices. These attempts probably hark back to the perception the Russian colonial administrators had with regard to the political circumstances in southern Central Asia. Their view was very much dominated by the model of the European nation- state. As a consequence, most outside observers were unable to recognize the specific local color of governance mechanisms and political dynamics that were characterized by fluidity and fuzziness. The tendency to view the Central Asian Khanates through the lens of the nation-state coincided with the introduction of a terminology for territorially defined administrative units such as begstva (‘begship’), amlakdarstva (‘amlakdarship’), aksakalstva or aminstva (‘aksakalship’, ‘aminship’). These terms were later re-translated into the regional languages, i.e. the Turkic bīglik, amlākdārlik, and the Persian bīgīgarī, amlākdārīgarī.45 In fact, no such terminology can be deduced from indigenous sources of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.46 In that period as in the time before, political authority was

44 Chen, “Aksakals”: 45–6; Beisembiev, Ta’rikh-i Shahrukhi: 19. 45 Similarly, the native terms for Emirate and Khanate (amīrligī/amīrīgarī/emārat or khānligī/khānīgarī) are re-translations from the Russian words that became common usage in later periods. In other cases, indigenous terms such as amīnī or āqsaqālī were misleadingly translated as territorial entities (Russ. aminstva, aksakalstva) and thus corrupted the fluid connotations originally attached to these positions. 46 The most frequent common denominator for spatial entities to be found in native sources is vilāyat, meaning province, principality or domain. Depending on the context, this term can also be translated as region or area in a wider sense. Another administrative term is tūmān, a Turkic word originally meaning a contingent of 10,000 soldiers in the decimal system constituting Turko-Mongol battle formations (Doerfer, Türkische und Mongolische Elemente, II: 632–42). In eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Bukharan sources the tūmāns appear to have designated dependencies that were administratively organized around the major irrigation canals and larger fortified settlements (qalāʿ). Very often the term describes an area under intensive agricultural cultivation. Other terms such as tavābiʿ va lavāḥiq or navāḥī also describe dependencies or regions. Rural settlements were mostly called maużiʿa. 280 Andreas Wilde wholly personal and rested less on notions of territory than on an entourage tied to the monarch by personal allegiance and the exchange of favors, loyalty and material resources. The population was not bound to territorial entities but to extended networks, groups and factions led by influential local representatives. I therefore argue that the institutions of āqsaqāl and amīn were a remnant of a political order where power was not concentrated in the hands of an anonymous state or the ruler but fundamentally decentralized, distributed over and constantly negotiated through network ties. The fluidity of this setting is reflected by the term āqsaqālī that covered a broad spectrum of meanings ranging from representation, taking care of local affairs (irrigation, tax collection, hosting visitors etc.) up to mediation and protection. Accordingly, it is possible to translate the term āqsaqāl in various ways as local representative, spokesman, elder, whitebeard, village chief and even as intermediary or power broker.

IV. Patterns of āqsaqāl Appointment and Verification Procedure

In this section particular attention will be paid to the selection of āqsaqāls as can be gleaned by exploring the rescripts from the Bukharan bureaucratic apparatus. The investigation pursues three major questions. First, what were the reasons for the nomination? How was the verification procedure structured? Which qualities were needed to present a candidate to the government? Addressed to the amīr, the first rescript (ʿarīża) was authored by Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Baqā Khwāja, a government official in the district of Kharqān Rūd located north of the capital, and gives the following account: To his exalted Majesty, the compassionate Kalif, my Lord—may God the Sublime save him. A petition from the lowest ranking and loyal servant striving to please and ready to sacrifice his life, the faithful and mercy dependent Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Baqā Khwāja with immense humbleness and politeness to his excellent Majesty, the pillar of the sultans and model of the khans, the first Khan, the head of the believers, and Imam of the Muslims, my Sayyid and Master, my Qibla and my Lord—it may reach the degree of acceptance that I confirm to his exalted and blessed Highness: Mullā Naṣrullāh, ʿAvaż Murād, Sharāf Bāy, Hātam Bāy, ʿAbd al-Sattār Bāy, Nūrullāh Bāy and other subjects of the village Gadāy Tāpmas in the district of Kharqān Rūd have reported to his luminous Majesty that: We had an elder by the name of Mullā Nār Bāy in the aforementioned settlement. He passed away (fautīd) and we are suffering from a delay of our affairs (ba umūrāt-i khwudhā muʿṭallī mīkashīm). Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 281

His son—Mullā ʿAbd al-Muʼmin—is a man of integrity, we want him as our āqsaqāl and hope for an auspicious diploma. Therefore, his exalted Majesty addressed a tabarruk-nāma to me with the order to find out about their wish and to report. I took the excellent and appreciated tabarruk-nāma with the hands of respect, kissed it, rubbed it on my eyes, and prayed for my Lord. According to the royal order, I have made inquiries and asked: Indeed, the āqsaqāl by the name of Mullā Nār Bāy has passed away, their affairs are postponed; Mullā ʿAbd al-Muʼmin, the son of the deceased Mullā Nār Bāy, is skillful (ba-ṣalāḥ būda ast); they want him to be their āqsaqāl [instead of the deceased Mullā Nār Bāy] and hope for a royal warrant. This loyal servant has drawn the holy and noble attention of his exalted Majesty, my Lord, to the content of that matter. Demonstrating fidelity, I have expressed obedience out of servility. Please God that his exalted Majesty, my Master, be eternally and forever on the throne of the government and the monarchy. May the shadow of mercy and high favor be on the heads of the people of the world, in particular on the head of this loyal slave like the shining sun āmīn …47 This case makes it obvious that the central government played an important role in the selection of new village heads. Moreover, the appointment is depicted as a sequence of different steps, rather than as a single act. The reason is obvious: the position is vacant because the old āqsaqāl has passed away. As a result, the applicant community is suffering from a suspension of their affairs. Yet their matters (umūrāt) are not explicitly mentioned or defined, perhaps because the Bukharan administrators and the ruler were well informed about the duties and performance of elders. What also becomes clear is that the whole verification procedure was structured by a more complex communication between the applicants and the administration. The whole process consisted of three or four separate steps involving more than one document. At the beginning of this petition, the sender informs the ruler that the people had first reported their problem to the amīr (ba ʿarż-i anvār-i ʿālī-maulāyam rasānīda-and), most likely also in the form of a petition. However, we only learn about a bargaining and decision-making process revolving around the question of (a) suitable candidate(s) in the village. But we are neither informed about what really happened after the death of Mullā Nār Bāy, nor do we learn anything about the players involved in the negotiations. Although the petition sender frequently mentions the people of Gadāy Tāpmas, on behalf of whom the petition is written, they rather appear as an anonymous and silent mass. We are only informed about a group of actors who probably acted as peti-

47 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 29. 282 Andreas Wilde tioners and spokesmen representing their community. All of them are designated bāy, well-to-do inhabitants, but we do not learn about their position in the community—except that one of them was a mullā—let alone their role during the selection process. Second, the amīr sent a tabarruk-nāma to the qāżī with the order to gain information on the state of local affairs, and to find out the wish of the people concerning the candidate. Although we lack the royal letter to the official, it had probably consisted of two parts: first, an explanation of the matter to the judge; and second, the order to make inquiries and to report. In a third step, the qāżī went there after having received the tabarruk-nāma. He then questioned the people about the problem and the candidate, including what personal qualities made him an ideal candidate for eldership. Subsequently, the judge sent the above-cited document confirming the issue of the vacant function, the nominee—in this case a son of the last elder—and the request for a royal manshūr, the final certificate of appointment. In spite of lacking the diploma, which was in all likelihood kept in the house of the new village chief, we can be certain about the existence of such a certificate. Taking all the single steps into consideration, the following sequence of documents, performances and paperwork emerges: 1. Reporting their problem of the vacant function of an elder, the applicant community sent a first petition (ʿarīża) to the king. At the same time the people introduced their candidate. 2. The amīr ordered his chancellery to issue a tabarruk-nāma addressed to the district official whom he ordered to find out more about the issue and to report. 3. The official went to the village, made inquiries and reported in the form of a second petition or rescript of the matter, including the request for a royal warrant (manshūr). 4. The ruler issued a manshūr to make the appointment complete. According to this sequence, it is reasonable to conclude that three parties had been involved in the entire procedure. First the applicant villagers, or rather their spokesmen, second the district judge, and third the ruler and the civil administration. At least four different documents were exchanged between the parties and people involved. Two documents were ʿarīżas sent by the qāżī to the amīr. In addition, we have the tabarruk-nāma issued by the ruler to the qāżī, and finally the certificate that was needed to legitimize the new headman in his position. During this lengthy selection process, Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 283 the ruler did not communicate directly with his subjects but addressed his letter to the judge who acted as an intermediary between the applicants and the amīr. These results and the ambivalence between the information given in the document and what really happened on the ground leave a number of open questions. The most important concerns the decision-making as a whole. Can the procedure be applied to other settlements in Kharqān Rūd? Was there a general uniform process or are we dealing with less clearly defined and different appointment mechanisms? Do other petitions give more information about the details of the negotiations in the villages? Two other petitions from the same district may help to answer these questions.

Document #1 (f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 18)

To his exalted Majesty, my Master—may God the Sublime save him. A petition presented with immense humbleness and infirmity by the lowest ranking loyal servant and faithful devotee striving to please, Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Hādī Khwāja Ṣudūr to his excellent Majesty of exalted grandeur, the triumph acquiring and grace related King, his Majesty the honor of the sulṭāns, the model of the khāns, the compassionate Kalīf of the two worlds, with deep respect to my Master who is kind to his servants: Ṭāhir Bāy, Jumʿa Bāy, Ḥājī Murād and other subjects of the village of Khaṭcha in the district of Kharqān Rūd have petitioned his enlightened Majesty: That we had an āqsaqāl by the name of Asadullāh who is a deceiver and betrayer (ghadr wa khiyānat-kunanda). We have come near to desperation because of him. ʿAvaż Badal is the name of a destitute man of integrity (ādam-i bīchāra-yi ba ṣalāḥ). We want him to be the āqsaqāl, and, hoping that he will be distinguished by a royal manshūr, perform the prayer. I confirm to his Majesty being kind to the smallest particle that for this reason a royal tabarruk-nāma was sent to this loyal servant who strives to please with the order to see if this is the case, to find out their wish and to report. Striving to please this loyal servant confirms that I respectfully took the kind marḥamat-nāma, kissed it and rubbed it on my eyes. I summoned the inhabitants of the aforementioned village. I made inquiries in accordance with the obedience demanding order and asked. Praying for his Majesty, my exalted Lord, all of them want the aforementioned ʿAvaż Badal to become their āqsaqāl and hope for a blessed manshūr. I reported out of servility and loyalty. His Majesty my Master is excellent and illustrious. Oh God, may the sun of my sublime Majesty’s eternal government shine on the heads of the people of the inhabited part [of the world] (rubʿ-i maskūn). Āmīn, āmīn, āmīn.48

48 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 18. 284 Andreas Wilde Document #2 (f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 25)

To his Majesty, my Master and my Lord, may God the sublime save him. Presented by this loyal servant belonging to the lowest and sincere preachers striving to please, Qāżī Mullā Mīr Sirāj al-Dīn Ṣudūr hoping for acceptance and benevolence … to his exalted Majesty, my Lord and my Maulā, the ‘Asylum of the World’. I confirm to my sublime Lord: That Niyāz Murād Bāy, Hamrāh Bāy, Mardān Bāy, Quldāsh Bāy, Yuldāsh Bāy, Īkim Bīrdī, ʿAvaż Bāy and other subjects of the village of Bīsh Duʿā located in the district of Kharqān Rūd petitioned his elevated Majesty that we have an elder with the name of Khwāja Bāy who is thoughtless and careless, a deceiver and betrayer. Having betrayed the subjects, he caused harm (ba fuqarāyān jirr karda żarar mīrasānd). Hoping that at the request of the community a man of integrity shall be exalted as āqsaqāl, they have said they will perform the prayer. Therefore a revered tabarruk-nāma has been addressed to this loyal servant with the order to see if this is the case, to make inquiries, to find out and to report the wish (khwāhish) of the community. This praying slave has kissed the mubārak-nāma of the sublime King, rubbed it on my eyes and made it the crown of my head. I have summoned the small and big people of the aforementioned village in accordance with the obedience demanding order of my Lord and asked their will. They prayed for his exalted Majesty and said that Bāzār Bāy is a man of integrity, he is destitute and able to perform. We want him to be our āqsaqāl, and, hoping he will become distinguished by the high favor of a sublime manshūr, perform the prayer. Making immense efforts to please, this servant has taken the prayer for his exalted Majesty from all [of them]. They performed the prayer and their wish became clear to my Lord. I have reported out of servility and invoca- tion of a blessing. May the shadow of his grace shine on the heads of the hopeful.49 Apart from the different names and reasons for the nominations, the two petitions largely follow the first document in style and content. Both were sent by Bukharan government agents to the ruler. The petition senders also mention a royal tabarruk-nāma/mubārak-nāma and a first ʿarīża of the applicant communities Khaṭcha and Bīsh Duʿā sent to the ruler.50 This implies that the process followed the same pattern as has been identified in the first document, just the protagonists and the places involved differ.

49 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 25. 50 There are some petitions giving an alternative reason for the dismissal of elders. For example, inhabitants of the village Charmgarān-i ghadanī (?) near Ghijduvān petitioned the amīr about the problems with their āqsaqāl because of his age. They state: ‘Our elder Arbāb Jān has become old (pīr shuda), he is not able anymore to take care of the matters of eldership (az ʿuhda-yi sar-rishta-yi āqsaqālī bar āmada na-mītavānad).’ After placing emphasis on the suspension of their affairs, the petitioners give the name of their candidate and express their hope concerning an appointment, see TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 20, l. 43. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 285 Thus it seems reasonable to assume a uniform bureaucratic practice consisting of three or four phases including the usual exchange of petitions, royal letters, and eventually the diploma as the last step and confirmation of the elder. What renders both cases interesting is the fact that the old āqsaqāls are accused of bad performance and mismanagement. Unfortunately, the petitioners do not elaborate on their misdeeds. The Bukharan ruler is simply informed about the inattentiveness and carelessness (bīparvāʼī; musāhila- kārī) committed by them. At the same time, both are described as betray- ers acting perfidiously (ghadr wa khiyānat-kunanda) against the interest of the people. In the case of Khwāja Bāy, the village chief of Bīsh Duʿā, the petitioners complain that he has betrayed the inhabitants and therefore caused constant harm. Unfortunately, we neither learn much about the actual misdeeds of the elders nor about the exact qualities needed for eldership. Here, the social historian is again confronted with the ambivalent relation between the sparse explanation given by the documents on the one hand and the actual events in the village on the other. We are faced with the same void of information regarding the bargaining and selection process, which leaves a large variety of options for interpretation. Nonetheless, something important is communicated through the text. In these cases, either the entire community or a part of it, or key players have withdrawn their support from the āqsaqāls. Containing a small number of antonyms—carelessness (bīparvāʼī, musāhila-kārī) as a common indicator of inability versus ability, and integrity (ʿuhda-barāʼī, ba ṣalāḥ būdan)—both appeals remain vague in terms of the reasons for an āqsaqāl’s removal from office.51 Since the documents do not provide more information regarding the performance of or the betrayals committed by elders, they were seemingly not designed to put forward official claims against āqsaqāls. However, it remains open to question whether the applicants and the petition senders wanted to prevent delicate information from leaving the local sphere or whether the Bukharan amīrs consciously left disputes and cases of bad performance to local middlemen and mediators. Most noteworthy, we do not find any mention of punishment or orders given to the government agents calling the elders to account for their inattentiveness. It is likely that conflicts arising from such behavior were solved internally by elders or religious dignitaries, or that administrators like the qāżī brought their influence to

51 Only in the first petition explaining the death of the elder does the reason for the new appointment not need further specification! 286 Andreas Wilde bear on behalf of the parties involved. But nevertheless, the records do not make any mention of such cases. The dearth of information about the personal qualities of elders leads us directly to the question of local self-governance. At first glance, the letters from Kharqān Rūd suggest that in Bukhara the central power had the ultimate say in installing āqsaqāls. Yet although the existence of a large number of documents suggests strict administrative control, we observe that the villages and hamlets enjoyed considerable autonomy. A first indication has already been described. Apparently the central government did not endeavor to call the ‘black sheep’ among the elders to account. Moreover, the local decision-making process taking place without the involvement of the central power is evident beneath the façade of control created by the petitions and the lengthy verification procedure. All petitions described so far place great emphasis on the will and wish of the people. At least they pretend to argue in their name, but the role of the populace is unclear. The negotiation process is veiled in darkness and we will perhaps never learn more about the details and the players. Notwithstanding the fact that a government agent (in all three cases qāżīs) reported to the king, a group of local actors appears as the actual applicant or petitioner. In all cases we read almost exclusively about the bāys,52 wealthy people who informed the king about the problem and the choice of this or that candidate. The additional mention of other subjects (sāyir-i fuqarāyān) pales into insignificance besides the personal names of the bāys.53 This and the fact that in the ʿarīżas I quoted particular persons appear as applicants, suggests that the political process in the countryside started without the interference of the government agents in the run-up to the first petition-writing. There must have been negotiations amongst

52 The term bāy or bai is of Turkic origin and it is said to mean ‘wealthy’. In Central Asia wealthy individuals often attached this term to their personal names, see W.W. Barthold, “Bai.” Enzyklopaedie des Islam, Ger. ed. (Leiden/Leipzig: Brill & Otto Harrsowitz, 1913), I: 610. 53 A large number of petitions do not mention particular applicants but only name the subjects (fuqarāyān). For example, the subjects of Diha-yi Baland in Kharqān Rūd had petitioned the amīr that their elder Ustā Mīrzā had acted carelessly and that he was not able to fulfill the tasks of an āqsaqāl. Another man of integrity should be appointed as village head. When the government official arrived at the village to make inquiries in accordance with the royal orders, they confirmed to have been suffering from a delay in their affairs. At the same time, the subjects name a certain ʿAbd al-Jalīl, a destitute man of integrity as candidate for eldership, see TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 68. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 287 the people in the villages before the administration was informed about the problem and the candidate. Looking at the three letters, a diverse picture emerges. In the first document, a local well-to- do man, a bāy, by the name Mullā Nār Bāy has died. In the second petition, neither the old office holder nor his successor appear with this title, whilst in the third both, the old and the new āqsaqāl bear this title as an indicator of wealth and social status. The fact that many letters do not name wealthy persons as elders, whereas others indicate the old as well as the new āqsaqāls as bāy (rich, wealthy), somewhat corrects ʿAinī’s statement on the choice of elders made exclusively amongst rich landowners.54 As many of the records mention the name of persons who are styled as wealthy, it seems likely that the elite initiated the first letter that set up the communication between the inhabitants and the administration. The persons named in the documents obviously spoke on behalf of the entire village. In the cases of the three petitions from Kharqān Rūd, the applicants probably played a decisive role in influencing the outcome of the negotiations in their villages. But we are still lacking the details. The void of data can be filled with the results from oral history interviews that I conducted in summer 2007 in southern Uzbekistan. According to one informant, the rich landowners decided whom to nominate before presenting the new āqsaqāl to the local government authorities, but the elders themselves were not necessarily rich.55 Another interviewee stated that in his native region Dehnau, the village heads were exclusively furnished by rich landowning families able to organize festivities (tūys), on the occasion of which they provided landless peasants with food provisions. Many rural settlements were not geographically delineated units but consisted of several clusters of houses and alleys grouped around the major mosques. Most of the villages and mosques were just known under the personal name of their āqsaqāl.56 In some cases the name of the village changed after the death of its namesake. Another interlocutor placed much more emphasis on particular qualities of nominees and stated:

54 See ʿAynī, Yāddāshthā: 6. 55 Interview 03.08.2007 in Sina/Dehnau (Surkhandarya–Uzbekistan). 56 Interview 01.08.2007 in Obodon Mahalla/Dehnau (Surkhandarya). See also K. Mielke and C. Schetter, “Where is the Village? Local Perceptions and Development Approaches in Kunduz Province.” Asien 104 (2007): 71–87. 288 Andreas Wilde

An āqsaqāl had to possess manifold characteristics. He needed to be diplomatic and willing to compromise in order to reach a consensus [in cases of conflict]. An elder needed rhetorical skills, he had to talk well.57 The same interviewee said that prior to the revolution, only the āqsaqāls were entitled to enter the residence of the provincial governor in Shīrābād. While the last statement to a certain extent fills the void of information concerning the qualities of elders, the informants did not remember the decision-making in the villages. As the petitions from the district of Kharqān Rūd show, the government did not intervene in the negotiations. Moreover, in cases of betrayal and general bad behavior, it was not the government or the amīr who moved to dismiss the elders, but the people decided on their removal from office. It was likewise not the central power who dictated the choice but the populace, or probably influential individuals from the village. Therefore we can assume that the whole consulta- tions in the villages took a longish time, probably several days or a couple of weeks.58 The other records from the district reveal that in the majority of the cases the choice of a candidate was made locally. For example, Ḥasan Pahlavān, Mullā ʿAbd al-Salām, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd, ʿĀlim and other inhabitants of Jaʿfarī petitioned the king because their elder had died. Like in the first letter, the applicants wanted the son of the former āqsaqāl as new village head.59 Another document issued in Ghijduvān informs us that the community of the confectioners (jamāʿa-yi ḥalwāgarān) instigated a letter because their āqsaqāl ʿAbd al-Vāḥid had died in the year of the plague.60 Therefore they were suffering from an immense suspension of their affairs and name

57 Interview in Beshkutan/Termez, 22.08. 2007 (Surkhandarya–Uzbekistan). 58 A petition from the village of Nūmītan in the Shomālī-yi Rūd district informs us that the local community is suffering from a delay in their matters because the function of an āqsaqāl has been vacant for five or six months since the death of their former elder, TsGA- RUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 20, l. 31. Another document that originated from the province of Khuzār describes how the community of the alācha (a kind of cotton fabric) sellers in the local bazaar had lost their elder nine months before and were suffering from a suspension of their affairs. For this reason the ruler issued a mubārak-nāma to the raʾīs of the province to make inquiries. According to the document, the guild had already confirmed the loss of their representative to the central government nine months ago: Nār Qul Āqsaqāl muddat- i nuh māh shuda ast ki taṣadduqāt shuda ast, TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 19, l. 29. It is possible that the first petition either got lost on its way to Bukhara, or the administration simply did not react to the request of the guild leaders. The appointment of elders in the districts close to the capital may have been a matter of weeks. 59 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 20, l. 47. 60 According to ʿAinī’s memoirs, Bukhara was struck by a plague in 1306/1889 and 1310/1893. The petition was perhaps issued in one of those years, see ʿAynī, Yāddāshthā: 132. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 289 Ustā Naẕrullāh Bāy, a confectioner from Ghijduvān, as candidate because he is a man with the integrity of an elder (ādam-i ba ṣalāḥ-i mūysafīd). The sender—a certain Mullā Muḥammad Yaʿqūb, the raʼīs of Ghijduvān— reports that he had gone to the bazaar where he asked the big and the small people of the confectioners’ guild. After verifying the choice of the guild members once again, he officially expressed the hope of the community for a royal diploma.61 Amongst the records from Kharqān Rūd and Ghijduvān we find a few petitions that do not mention the name of candidates for the position of āqsaqāl. For instance, Turdī Bāy, Maḥmūd Bāy and other inhabitants of Ankār Ghanchī petitioned the ruler without presenting a candidate. They just expressed the wish of the subjects that the amīr should install another person instead of the deceased āqsaqāl.62 This may be seen as a sign of an ongoing negotiation process within the village at the time the petition was written and sent to the capital. The applicants had perhaps not yet reached a decision for a particular person at that point. Yet when the Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Hādī Khwāja Ṣudūr arrived at the village, the people had obviously agreed on a certain Mīrzā Bāy.63 A similar petition from Kharqān Rūd records the case of the cooks’ guild (jamāʿa-yi āshpazān). The guild appealed to the government because ʿAbd al-Raʼūf, one of their senior guild leaders (bābā), had passed away.64 At the same time, they report to the king that their āqsaqāl Ustā Nāfir has become old and is therefore not able to see to the regulation of the guild affairs.65 The applicants however do not mention the names of candidates. Instead, they want other persons with the integrity of a senior leader and an elder.66 Upon the arrival of Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Baqā Khwāja, the guild mem-

61 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 7. Most of the other petitions issued in this district record the same procedure and mention the name of a candidate for eldership. 62 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 12. 63 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 12. Here the quality of ‘destitution’ (bīchāragī) should not be taken too literally. The term served as an instrument to present a suitable candidate to the government rather than as a description regarding the economic status of a person. 64 Senior leaders of urban bazaar guilds are presented as bābā in some of the documents; most of them have died in office. For example, see the petition involving the case of the Yūsif Khwāja, the head of the shoemakers in Ghijduvān, TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 22. 65 ʿAbd al-Raʼūf nām bābā dāshtīm fautīd. Ustā Nāfir nām āqsaqāl dāshtīm, pīr shuda az ʿuhda-yi durustī-yi muhimmāt-i jamāʿa-yi māyān nabarāmad, TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 15. 66 ūmīd mīkunīm ki yak ādam-i ba ṣalāḥ ba bābāgī-yi jamāʿa-yi māyān va yak ādam-i ba ṣalāḥ-i dīgar ba āqsaqālī-yi jamāʿa ba manshūr-i mubārak-i ʿālī sar afrāz yāfta, TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 15. 290 Andreas Wilde bers presented Tūqna Murād, the brother of the deceased guild leader, and Abū’l-Faiż as new elder. As the last two cases show, there were exceptions deviating from the norm according to which the applicants presented a candidate. This may be interpreted either as a sign of ongoing negotiations or as an indicator that the people, taken by surprise by the sudden death of their representatives, appealed first to the administration and started bargaining over the candidacy later on.

V. The Appointment of Amīns in Kharqān Rūd

In the following I will explore the cases of amīn nominations in Kharqān Rūd by shedding light on two petitions sent to the amīr of Bukhara. In contrast to common statements in the secondary literature, the irrigation work at village level, at least in the oasis of Bukhara, Qarākūl and Ghijduvān, was not managed by mīrābs, but by amīns.67 The amīn was an elder who was installed for the regulation of water in the smaller side canals branching off from the major irrigation channels.68 Petitions on irrigation issues and taxation from the environs of Bukhara show that the office holders were responsible for the regulation of water and the supervision of the cleaning and repairing of canals, water basins and bridges. Besides, they assisted the local amlākdārs in the collection of the tax on harvests and land.69

Document #1 (f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 45)

To his Majesty of the moon-like procession, the Divine Shadow, our Lord and our Maulā. May God the Sublime save him! The preachers and lowest servants of the supplicants and the most humble of the devotees striving to

67 For the position of amīn and its functions see Kislyakov, Patriarkhal’no-feodal’noe otnosheniya, 58–59. 68 Most of the documents on amīn appointments give the name of the irrigation canal (jū/nahr) and mention the regulation of the irrigation work (tasviya-yi āb) and the conduct of ḥashars, shared labor on public projects, see for example TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 17, ll. 66, 73, 86). This matches ʿAinī’s descriptions concerning the management of ḥashars for the excavation of irrigation canals in the rural districts of Bukhara, see ʿAynī, Yāddāshthā: 61–62, 67–68). 69 Since many amīns were also in charge of revenue collection, the documents sometimes give the name of villages or entire tax districts (amlāk), see TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 19, l. 20; f. I-126, op. 1, d. 20, l. 10. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 291

please, Qāżī Mullā Mīr Sirāj al-Dīn Ṣudūr and ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīk Tūqsāba present this petition [bearing witness] of servility to his exalted Majesty, our Highness, our Lord, with the hope of acceptance and benevolence. We confirm one thousand times to his Highness, our Master, the refuge of the world being kind to his servants, that ʿAbd al-Qahār Bīk, Qazāq Āqsaqāl, ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Āqsaqāl, Rajab Bāy, Bālta, Niyāz Bāy and other water using subjects of the Bālā-yi Nahr canal in the district of Kharqān Rūd have petitioned his exalted Majesty, that Raḥmān Qul Bīk the amīn of the Bālā-yi Nahr canal in Kharqān Rūd has given up his office (amīnī-yi khwud rā par- tāfta rafta). Therefore, we are suffering from a suspension of our affairs. They say we hope that another person of integrity will become elevated to the aforementioned position of amīn by a royal manshūr. They express their loyalty and hope! For this reason, a royal tabarruk-nāma was sent to these supplicants and servants with the order to see if this is the case, to find out the wish of the subjects and to report (ʿarż kunīd). Therefore, we kissed the sublime tabarruk-nāma, rubbed it on our eyes and made it the crown of our heads. We prayed, and gathered the small and the big people (khwurd wa kalān) of the subjects in accordance with the royal order. We asked [and found out that] indeed the aforementioned Raḥmān Qul Bīk has given up his amīn position. Therefore, the elders (āqsaqālān wa kalān-shavandagān) and other water using subjects of the Bālā-yi Nahr branching off from the Kharqān Rūd want Ṣafar Bāy instead of Raḥmān Qul Bīk, who has given up his position. They pray for his Highness and say, if, due to the favor and kindness of his Majesty, the aforementioned Ṣafar Bāy becomes exalted with the amīn office (instead of Raḥmān Qul Bīk) for the Bālā-yi Nahr in Kharqān Rūd by a royal diploma, this will be appropriate. We found out the will of the subjects, and petitioned out of servility and simplicity. Oh God, may the sun of fortune be shining. Āmīn, āmīn, āmīn …70

Document #2 (f. I-126, op. 1, d. 16, l. 18)

[To his Majesty] who is kind to his servants. I confirm to my Lord that Qāżī Mullā Mīr Sirāj al-Dīn Ṣudūr and Mīrzā Muḥammad Tūqsāba your servants have made inquiries in accordance with the sublime order. Mīrzā Umīd has been the amīn for the villages Chughdarī, Shūr Rabāṭ, Til-i Ghandak, Qūshqamak and Bābā Ghāzī in Ghijduvān. He acted carelessly in handling the affairs of the subjects (ba umūr- fuqarāyān bīparvāʼī va musāhila karda). The local subjects want instead of him Zākir Bāy who is honest and able. They want him as amīn and hope for a sublime manshūr … They say that they pray for his Majesty and have reported to his Highness. My Lord knows it better. …71

70 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 26, l. 45. 71 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 16, l. 18. 292 Andreas Wilde The different length of the petition texts notwithstanding, both documents reflect roughly the same verification procedure as I identified in the case of the āqsaqāl petitions. After receiving tabarruk-nāmas larded with royal orders, government agents and administrators went to villages or small irrigation canals to verify the issues of concern. In both cases the function of an amīn was vacant and the populace was obviously suffering from a serious delay in their daily affairs, here the handling of irrigation and the collection of taxes. In the first case, the petitioners did not mention any candidate, perhaps because they had not found or agreed upon a person at the time the first request was issued. Thus, the negotiations and considerations among the water users went on in the time between the first petition and the reception of the tabarruk-nāma at the hands of Qāżī Mullā Mīr Sirāj al-Dīn Ṣudūr and ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīk Tūqsāba. When the two officials arrived at the Bālā-yi Nahr, the decision-making on the ground was already finished and a candidate (in this case Ṣafar Bāy who was not named in the first petition) was presented. As in the cases of the āqsaqāl appointments, the choice was made locally. It seems worth mentioning that the former office holder had given up his position voluntarily for unknown reasons. We do not learn whether he did not want the office any longer, or whether he had committed betrayal and resigned under the pressure of his former clients. However, the petitioners did not pass the information as to what exactly had happened with the former amīn to the administration. Similar to the āqsaqāl petitions, the government officials, who must have found out the reason for this step, were not obliged to furnish detailed information to the king. The second case follows very much the usual pattern of appointment, though the text of the document is much shorter. Here, the applicants had just informed the amīr about the bad performance of the former amīn and presented his successor to the district officials. This leads me to conclude that in the second half of the nineteenth century the central government granted the Bukharan hinterland a considerable degree of autonomy regarding the selection of local representatives. These results are confirmed by an exceptional letter issued in the district of Khayrabad. According to this document, the district official Mullā ʿInāyatullāh Khwāja Raʼīs reports that a certain Jāndar, the Mīrzā of the Qāżī Kalān, visited the catchment area of the Rūd-i Khayrabad in order to make inquiries regarding the amīn position of a certain Arbāb Jūra. According to the text of the document, Jāndar Mīrzā asked questions among the people. Fearing the removal of their amīn, five hundred people Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 293 gathered and went to the qāżī kalān. When they arrived at the office of the qāżī, they announced that they had never experienced any betrayal or treachery (hīch jināyatī nadīda-īm) by him! In the same breath they asked him why he wanted to install another amīn for the Panj Jū canal area. They had always chosen their amīn and if another person should be named instead, this would cause harm! There are twenty-five villages and hamlets the surroundings of which had fallen dry (in former times). Arbāb Jūra had initiated the digging and construction of the five side canals and if he should be replaced by somebody else, the water would not be distributed in the right way. In this case, they would go and petition the king directly. After listening to the outraged crowd of villagers, the qāżī kalān even apol- ogized to them for his overhasty attempt to install a new elder. Asking for pardon, he said that he did not know their arrangements.72

Conclusion

In this chapter I investigated the appointment of local representatives in the Emirate of Bukhara by means of the example of one particular district. The letters I explored are part of a large body of records which had been kept and stored in the chancellery of the former Bukharan prime ministers. The analysis of the documents shows that the foreign perceptions concerning the whitebeards and other local representatives do not describe the āqsaqāls in an adequate way. Most of the Russian colonial administrators as well as following generations of historians, who heavily relied on the first-hand information given by the Russians, looked upon local society from a state-centric vantage point. This resulted in the failure to view the Central Asian Khanates as wholly institutionalized nation-states in the classic sense. This is not to say that Bukhara and its neighbors lacked all the qualities that are commonly ascribed to states. There were certain elements of statehood, e.g. an administrative machinery, and, by the end of the 19th century, clearly delineated borders. But as a concept that is insep- arably associated with modern statehood, political boundaries were introduced to the region by foreign colonial powers, Russia and Great Britain. Nonetheless, the political entities in question still exhibited the age-long

72 TsGARUz, I-126, op. 1, d. 18, l. 80. Unfortunately, the document does not tell us why the qāżī kalān sent his assistant to make inquiries. This step may have been instigated as the result of wrong information given by a local adversary of the amīn or some other incident. It is also possible that the people first complained of some misdemeanor and then regretted having sent a petition. 294 Andreas Wilde features of the area. Thus we are dealing with a complex setting characterized by a diverse population composed of different kinship groups that were not wholly bound to the territory or a common citizenship. Nomads and semi-nomads played a crucial role, but seldom recognized the authority of the central government. In spite of obvious centralization tendencies, the ruling dynasties often faced strong centrifugal forces, internal rivalries and shifting alignments of local players.73 Certainly, the documents indicate a transition from political conditions characterized by localism and segmentation towards a more settled framework of authority. But many of the patterns of social and political life outlined above still predominated in the second half of the nineteenth century. Records show that the government took measures to register rural settlements in 1914–1916.74 But this does not imply any concept of modern citizenship such as had developed in Europe by that time. Against this backdrop, the āqsaqāls should not just be described in purely administrative terms. It would be more appropriate to depict the whitebeards as members of the local elite, as local notables and strongmen, who acted as spokesmen of their communities and as mediators between higher echelons of the society, the central government and their own clientele. The position of the āqsaqāls and amīns was not static or stable like in a system of clearly defined offices, but flexible and at times even shifting. The results yielded by the analysis of the documents do not fit the understanding of Central Asia’s social history such as it has been strongly shaped by the information of Russian administrators and historians. This does not mean that the information given by them was completely wrong; it was just misinterpreted through a state-centric lens. Giving an insight into local political circumstances from an internal perspective, the records from the Qūshbīgī office help to overcome the usual bird’s-eye view of social history taken by other sources. With this, the petitions provide a useful corrective contrasting to the static notions of modes of administration and political representation conveyed by the ‘mainstream’ picture of history. At this point I argue that the documents, and the fact that a huge amount of them was kept in the office of the prime minister, created only the façade of a central state in full charge and control

73 Holdsworth, Turkestan: 2–3. 74 TsGARUz, f. I-126, op. 1, d. 70. The material collected by Muhammadzhanov suggests that the administration took the initiative to register at least the settlements either during the last decade of the nineteenth century, or more probably in the first decades of the twentieth century. However, the registration does not appear to have followed a properly designed plan; for the registers see Muhammadzhanov, Naselennye Punkty. Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 295 of appointments. The terminology of submission and humbleness employed by the petitioners adds to the image of ‘despotic authority’. A deeper investigation of the rescripts of the petitions shows that the central government exercised a certain degree of control over key political positions in the provinces but was not able to signal its authority by imposing āqsaqāls who were not the choice of the population, or more appropriately local elites. Although the petitions reflect some administrative routines and procedures from the viewpoint of the central power, they do not inform about all details of the appointment procedure. But even this dearth of information is telling as it indicates how limited the power of the amīr in fact was. His government obviously did not interfere much in local affairs. Even in Kharqān Rūd, a region located just north of the capital and hence within the immediate reach of the administration, the selection and choices of a candidate should be seen as an outcome of local negotiation processes. Whether the ordinary peasantry, usually described as ‘small people’ (khwurd) as opposed to the ‘big people’ (kalān; kalān-shavandagān), played any role in this cannot be said on the basis of the material. The documents further mirror the communication and negotiation process between the Bukharan government and the village communities in question. Besides the typical chancellery style, the text was shaped by clearly defined patterns and elements. The terminology followed firm guidelines and rules. The petitions reflect a gap between demand (aiming at full adminis- trated control) and the political realities in Bukhara, which has too often been simply identified as a despotic monarchy. Placing emphasis on the political circumstances in the pre-Mongol period, Jürgen Paul argues that besides actors who derived their authority from personal proximity to the ruler and his inner circle, there were persons who were influential in other segments of society over which the ruler had almost no control.75 The results of my analysis make it evident that this state of affairs continued well into the 19th century. Irrespective of the various shifts of power, the rise and fall of dynasties, minor changes in administrative tasks and the amount of authority attached to the position of āqsaqāl, we see a striking durability and resilience of social practices and patterns of representation throughout history. The phenomenon of institutional longevity certainly deserves further elaboration and constant reflection in future studies.

75 Paul, “Herrschaft und Gesellschaft”: 174. 296 Andreas Wilde Finally, the notion of despotism probably harks back to the tendency to view power as a locatable phenomenon that can be acquired, or ‘a myste- rious property or agency resident in the person or group to whom it is attributed.’76 The material discussed in this chapter indicates that instead of viewing power as an object of substance, we need fresh concepts and ideas of social power from alternative vantage points. Power should be conceptualized as a phenomenon that manifests in human relationships and extended networks rather than in material wealth or objects that can be used to forcefully impose one’s will upon others.77 Depending on the subject of scrutiny, power may also take a variety of other forms like patterns of perception ingrained in local worldviews or mental-cognitive schemes. Thus the petitions I investigated appear as historical echoes and remnants of power processes. Although they reflect only a few dimensions of these processes, the results yielded from their exploration could initiate new studies of a number of other sources to reconsider Central Asia’s social history in a new light.

Bibliography

Abbreviations IVANRUz: Institut vostokovedeniya im. Abu Raikhana Biruni Akademii nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan. TsGARUz: Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respubliki Uzbekistan.

Primary Sources ʿAynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. 1362 h.s./1983. Yāddāshthā, ed. ʿAlī Akbar Saʿīdī Shīrjānī. Tehran: Intishārāt-i āgāh. Amīr Ḥaydar. Maktūbāt-i Amīr Ḥaydar. MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 5412. Kāẓim, Muḥammad. 1985. ʿĀlamārā-yi Nādirī, ed. M.A. Riyāḥī (3 vols.). Tehran: Zawwar. Wafā, Qāżī Muḥammad. Tuḥfat al-khānī. MS Tashkent, IVANRUz, inv. no. 16.

Interviews Sina/Dehnau (Surkhandarya), 03.08.2007. Obodon Mahalla/Dehnau (Surkhandarya), 01.08.2007. Beshkutan/Termez (Surkhandarya), 22.08.2007.

76 D.H. Wrong, Power. Its Forms, Bases and Uses (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1979): 3. 77 See here M., Mann, Geschichte der Macht, vol. I: Von den Anfängen bis zur Griechischen Antike (Frankfurt a. Main/New York: Campus Verlag, 1990). Creating the Façade of a Despotic State 297 Secondary Literature Barthold, W.W. 1913. Bai. In Enzyklopaedie des Islam, Ger. edn. Leiden/Leipzig: Brill & Otto Harrassowitz, vol. I: 610. Becker, S. 1968. Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Beisembiev, T.K. 1987. Taʾrikh-i Shahrukhi. Kak istoricheskii istochnik. Alma Ata: Izdatel’stvo Nauka Kazakhskoj SSR. Bregel, Y. 2004. Atālīḳ. In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill, supplement to vol. XII: 96–8. ____. 1991. Mangits. In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill, vol. VI: 418–19. ____. 2000. The Administration of Bukhara under the Manghïts and Some Tashkent Man uscripts. Bloomington: Indiana University—Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies. ____. 2009. The New Uzbek States: Bukhara, Khiva and Khoqand: c. 1750–1886. In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The Chingissid Age, ed. N. Di Cosmo, A.J. Frank, and P.B. Golden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 392–411. Carrère d’Encausse, H. 2009. Islam and the Russian Empire. Reform and Revolution in Central Asia, 2nd edn. London/New York: I.B. Tauris. Chekhovich, O.D. 1954. K istorii Uzbekistana v XVIII veke. Trudy Instituta Vostokovedeniya 3: 43–82. ____. 1956. O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii Sredney Azii XVIII-XIX v. Voprosy istorii 2: 84–94. Chen, Chiung-Lung. 1975. Aksakals in the Moslem Region of Eastern Turkistan. Ural- Altaische Jahrbücher 47: 41–47. Dickson, M. 1963. Uzbek Dynastic Theory in the Sixteenth Century. Trudy dvadzat’ pyatogo Mezhdunarodnogo kongressa vostokovedov 3: 208–16. Doerfer, G. 1963–1975. Türkische und Mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen (4 vols.). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Hambly, G. 1966. Der Verfall der usbekischen Khanate. In Fischer Weltgeschichte vol. 16: Zentralasien, ed. G. Hambly. Frankfurt a. Main: Fischer Verlag: 186–96. Holdsworth, M. 1959. Turkestan in the Nineteenth Century. A Brief History of the Khanates of Bukhara, Kokand and Khiva. Oxford: Central Asian Research Centre. Ivanov, P.P. 1937. Vosstanie Kitai-Kipchakov v Bukharskom khanstve (1821–1825 gg.). Istochniki i opyt ikh issledovaniya. Moscow: Izdat. Nauk SSSR. ____. 1958. Ocherki po istorii Srednei Azii (XVI-seredina XIX v.). Moscow: Izdatel‘stvo Vostochnoi Literatury. Khalid, A. 2010. The Bukharan People’s Soviet Republic in the Light of Muslim Sources. Die Welt des Islams 50/3–4: 335–61. Khanikoff, N. 1845. Bokhara its Amir and its People. London: James Madden. Kislyakov, N.A. 1962. Patriarkhal’no-feodal’nye otnosheniya sredi osedlogo sel’skogo naseleniya Bukharskogo khanstva v kontse XIX–nachale XX veka. Moscow/Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. Mann, M. 1990. Geschichte der Macht, vol. I: Von den Anfängen bis zur Griechischen Antike. Frankfurt a. Main/New York: Campus Verlag. McChesney, R.D. 1991. Waqf in Central Asia. Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 1480–1889. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mielke, K. and C. Schetter. 2007. Where is the Village? Local Perceptions and Development Approaches in Kunduz Province. Asien 104: 71–87. Muhammadzhanov, A.R. 2001. Naselenniye punkty Bukharskogo èmirata (kontze XIX–nachale XX vv.). Materiyaly k istoricheskoi geografii Srednei Azii. Tashkent: Natsionalnyi Universitet Uzbekistana/Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv. Olufsen, O. 1911. The Emir of Bokhara and his Country. London: William Heinemann. 298 Andreas Wilde

Paul, J. 1998. Herrschaft und Gesellschaft. Einige Bemerkungen. In Der islamische Orient. Grundzüge seiner Geschichte, ed. A. Noth and J. Paul. Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag: 173–84. Radloff, W. 1871: Das mittlere Serafschanthal. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 6/6: 497–526. Schwarz, F. 1996. Bukhara and Its Hinterland: The Oasis of Bukhara in the Sixteenth Century in the Light of the Juybari Codex. In Bukhara. The Myth and the Architecture, ed. A. Petruccioli. Cambridge: Aga Khan Programm for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 79–92. Semënov, A.A. 1954. Materialy po istorii tadzhikov i uzbekov Sredney Azii, vypusk II: Ocherk ustroistva tsentral’nogo administrativnogo upravleniya Bukharskogo khanstva pozdneishego vremeni. Stalinabad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk Tadzhikskoi SSR. Wrong, D.H. 1979. Power. Its Forms, Bases and Uses. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fathers and Sons 299

CHAPTER NINE

Fathers and Sons: Re-Readings in a Samarqandi Private Archive*

Thomas Welsford

Introduction

In late March 1880,1 a young man called Jūra Bāy presented before the Samarqand vilāyat courthouse a claim for restitution. His claim was directed against his elder brother, who was called Tilav Bāy. In his deposition, Jūra Bāy submitted that his brother owed him 10800 tanga in cash, a horse, various quantities of foodstuffs, and proceeds from the sale of 8 ṭanābs of land. These, he claimed, were the share owed to him from the estate of his late father Ṣābir Bāy: a share which had been calculated following the division of the ancestral property between himself, his brothers Tilav Bāy and Muḥammad Yūnus, his two sisters Tursūn Bībī and Ūghul Āy, and his father’s widow Māh Bībī. But, said Jūra Bāy, his elder brother had kept the entire estate for himself, and was refusing to pass on to his kinsmen the properties to which they were entitled.2 Jūra Bāy’s claim for restitution was notarised in a document which is today held at the Samarqand Museum of the History of the Culture and Art of the Peoples of Uzbekistan. On the reverse side of the document is a notarised report of what happened next. The report states that, subsequent to having issued his claim for restitution, Jūra Bāy made a second statement before the Samarqand vilāyat courthouse. He had decided, he said, to drop

* The research for this essay was undertaken in Uzbekistan between May 2009 and April 2010, with funding from the VolkswagenStiftung and UNESCO. I am grateful to Paolo Sartori, Florian Schwarz and Jürgen Paul for comments and suggestions. 1 Dates are given in the documents according to the hijrī and/or the Julian calendar. For the purpose of this essay, dates are rendered according to the Gregorian calendar. 2 916: KP 1237 (449a). All references are to documents presently held in the Samarqand Museum. The format of references is as follows: a: b (c), where a is the museum sequence number, b is the KP number and c is the entry number in Catalogue of Arabic-Script Docu- ments from the Samarqand Museum, edited by myself and Nouryaghdi Tashev, with the assistance of Masudxon Ismoilov and Hamidulla Aminov, and published by UNESCO. 300 Thomas Welsford his claim, in return for a one-off payment by Tilav Bāy of 400 tanga. Tilav Bāy was to keep the contested horse, foodstuffs and cash.3 37 years passed. Then, in early 1917, Tilav Bāy died. Following his death, Tilav Bāy’s property in turn was divided up between his heirs. This time round, the division appears to have proceeded smoothly. On March 28 of that year, Tilav Bāy’s heirs issued a joint statement, a notarised copy of which is similarly held in the Samarqand Museum. In this statement, they declared that the division of Tilav Bāy’s property had been conducted in accordance with stated procedure, and that they had each received the portion which was due to them. Consequently, they said, they had no right or claim against their fellow heir Birdī Murād, who was Tilav Bāy’s eldest son.4 Composed several decades apart, these texts are two of approximately 60 Persian- and Turki-language legal documents held at the Samarqand Museum which relate the activities of Tilav Bāy, Birdī Murād and their various kinsmen. As we shall see, the descriptive content of these approximately 60 items offers a rich panoramic view over the activities of several generations in a prominent Samarqandi family during the years of Tsarist rule. But this descriptive content is not the only aspect of our documents to demand, and reward, the historian’s attention. Equally important are two other interrelated domains of significance. The first of these is what we might term our materials’ instrumental force. As will become clear, the documents are instructive in terms not just of how they reflect socio-economic patterns in late 19th- and early 20th-century Samarqand, but also of how they served to determine the very dynamics which they relate. This determinative function is something which the documents all have in common. While constituting a wide variety of documentary types―including amongst them declarations of sale, acknowledgements of receipt, cessations of claim and declarations of appointment―they uniformly serve the purpose of authorising the behaviour of certain actors even as they constrain the behaviour of others. Put most crudely, the documents can thus be conceptualised as what we might term instruments of utility: a utility perhaps best evoked in contemporary English usage by conceiving of them not as ‘documents’ at all, but instead as items of ‘documentation’― the driving licence in the glove compartment, the propiska in readiness for the knock at the door. By attending to our documents’ instrumental force,

3 916: KP 1237 (449b). 4 915: KP 1237 (509). Fathers and Sons 301 we begin to uncover how individuals might deploy their resources to negotiate the world around them: and how they thus made the world their own. An awareness of our documents’ instrumental force may prove useful also as we turn to our final domain of enquiry. This relates to what we might term the integrity of our materials.5 By ‘integrity’, I refer to the fact that the documents are not merely a bricolage of disparate items, but instead constitute a collection whose acquisition and preservation evidently served some coherent purpose. By attending to what we might call the architecture of this or any other documentary collection―which is to say, the dimensions of both what it contains and, by implication, what it does not―we begin to uncover what may have been the logic of its assembly. As we shall see, the architecture of the present collection is somewhat complicated: it is what might be termed a tiered collection, containing items sequentially acquired by more than one person, and attesting to multiple acquisitive logics. But by attributing an ‘integrity’―a common instrumental coherence―to the entire assemblage of items, we start to discern who must have midwifed the collection into its present form: and whose projects and purposes can thus be gleaned running right the way through every item. We thus encounter a story very different from that offered by a simple reading of the collection’s constituent items. Taken in mutual isolation, our documents attest to the activities of a family. Taken together as a coherent collection, however, they attest to the activities of one man, and to that single relationship which did so much to determine the course of his life. By reframing what is ostensibly the monument to a family instead more properly as the monument to a person, we may begin to rethink our conceptions about the dynamics of the family, and of solidarity groups more generally, in pre-modern Central Asia.

I. The Family

Of Ṣābir Bāy’s five children, the documents tell us little about the activities of Muḥammad Yūnus, Tursūn Bībī and Ūghul Āy. Of Jūra Bāy, we learn just a few details. He was born, we read, in ca. 1861.6 Subsequent to waiving his

5 I derive the vocabulary of ‘integrity’ from the work of Ronald Dworkin, who proposes that the understanding of a transhistorical ‘integrity of law’ should serve as a determining principle in legal―and particularly constitutional―reasoning. R. Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing, 1998), passim [stated most clearly p. 225]. 6 He was aged 22 (in hijrī years) in January 1883 (973: KP 5991/601 (450)), and was 31 (in hijrī years) in March 1892 (987: KP 5991/615 (455)). 302 Thomas Welsford right to a share of his father’s estate, he acquired or retained a mixed portfolio of property and business interests. He owned a ¾-ṭanāb plot of garden land located in the rural settlement of Dih-i Nav, in Shāvdār tūmān, which he then sold to his brother Tilav Bāy in January 1883;7 he owned a number of courtyard properties located in Samarqand’s Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter;8 and he speculated in grain production.9 He died young some time in 1894, aged about 34, leaving a widow called Chīnnī Āy bint-i ʿĀbid Bāy, a son called Tāsh Muḥammad and two daughters called Ikrāma Āy and Dādra Āy.10 Because the three orphans were all evidently under 15 years old, their legal interests were now entrusted to a guardian. This guardian was their uncle Tilav Bāy. The activities of Tilav Bāy are attested in a large number of the approximately 60 items together comprising the collection, and a survey of our materials allows us to say quite a lot about him. When appointed as guardian to his nephews, Tilav Bāy was about 42 years old. He had been born in ca. 185211, and was Ṣābir Bāy’s eldest son.12 He married the first of his several wives while still a teenager, and when aged approximately 20 he fathered his first son, to whom he gave the name Birdī Murād.13 The identity of Birdī Murād’s mother is not absolutely clear, though she may well have been a woman called Sara Āy bint-i Īgam Birdī Bāy. About Sara Āy we know little, other than that she was, at the time of Tilav Bāy’s death at the age of about 65 in 1917, the eldest of his current wives, at 67 a year or two older than her husband;14 she may also have been the mother of Tilav Bāy’s daughter Mukarrama Āy, who was about nine years younger than Birdī Murād.15 In addition to Sara Āy, Tilav Bāy at one time or another had at least five other wives. Three of these were still married to him at the time of his death: these were Muḥarrama Āy bint-i ‘Ādil Bāy, who in 1917 was aged 41, Iqlīma Āy bint-i ‘Umūr Bāy, who was aged 39, and Rāḥat Āy bint-i Jūra Bāy, who

7 973: KP 5991/601 (450). 8 917: KP 1237 (454); 987: KP 5991/615 (455). 9 819: KP 115/5 (453). 10 976: KP 5991/604 (459a+b). 11 He was 43 (in hijrī years) in May 1895. See 976: KP 5991/604 (459b). 12 He was almost certainly older than Muḥammad Yūnus, since he is mentioned before this last in the list of Ṣābir Bāy’s male heirs in 916: KP 1237 (449a); it was highly conventional in such documents for heirs to be listed in decreasing order of age. 13 Birdī Murād was aged 42 (in hijrī years) in June 1913), so was presumably born in ca. 1871. See 904: KP 1237 (504). 14 915: KP 1237 (509). 15 Ibid. Fathers and Sons 303 was aged 25.16 Two others were divorced from him during his lifetime. The first of these was Marḥamat Āy bint-i Qārī Muḥammad Ṣādiq, whom he probably divorced in early 1903.17 The second was the daughter of a certain Ustā Qulī Bāy, from whom Tilav Bāy was evidently estranged by late summer 1910: in August or early September of that year he appointed a certain Mullā Āchildī b. Fayżī Bāy as his attorney, instructing him to go to Khoqand vilāyat and secure the return of his 12-year-old daughter Sulṭāna Āy from her mother, who was presently resident in that vicinity.18 Chronology suggests that Tilav Bāy may have married Iqlīma Āy after divorcing Marḥamat Āy, and that he may then have married his youngest wife Rāḥat Āy after divorcing Ustā Qulī Bāy’s daughter some seven years later. In addition to the afore-mentioned Birdī Murād, Mukarrama Āy and Sulṭāna Āy, Tilav Bāy is known to have had four other daughters and two other sons. The daughters were all younger than their sister Mukarrama Āy, who at the time of Tilav Bāy’s death was aged 37: Rustām Āy was then aged 32, Ḥaqīqat Āy 28, Anwara Āy 18 and Āftāb Āy 15. Our documents do not identify their respective mothers, though chronology allows us at least to whittle down the possibilities. Rustām Āy could have been born to Sara Āy, Marḥamat Āy or just feasibly the daughter of Ustā Qulī Bāy; at Sara Āy’s junior by almost 40 years, Ḥaqīqat Āy is perhaps more likely to have been born to Marḥamat Āy, though again she could feasibly have been born to Ustā Qulī Bāy’s daughter; and Anwara Āy and Āftāb Āy were most probably born to either Muḥarrama Āy or Iqlīma Āy, though chronology would not preclude them from having been born to either of Tilav Bāy’s divorced wives.19 Of Tilav Bāy’s remaining sons, one was called Ḥājjī Qurbān and the other was called Tūkhta Murād. Ḥājjī Qurbān appears narrowly to have prede- ceased his father, dying probably during the winter of 1916–17.20 Regarding his background, we have just the merest circumstantial evidence as to when and to whom he was born. He died leaving what appears to have been a single wife, ‘Anbar Āy bint-i Manṣūr Bāy, who at the time of his death was aged 25. With the example of Tilav Bāy illustrating how the age gap between a husband and his first wife might be minimal, Ḥājjī Qurbān may very well have died somewhere in his twenties: if so, he like Ḥaqīqat Āy is perhaps

16 Ibid. 17 993: KP 5991/621 (477); also 971: KP 5991/599 (478a+b). 18 910: KP 1237 (500). 19 915: KP 1237 (509). 20 992: KP 5991/620 (508). 304 Thomas Welsford most likely to have been born to Marḥamat Āy. Regarding Tūkhta Murād’s age, meanwhile, there is some confusion. A document produced in the immediate wake of Tilav Bāy’s death in 1917 suggests that he was at the time aged just 17.21 This is perhaps placed in question, however, by a document dating from 1905, in which Tūkhta Murād is identified as the purchaser of a plot of land.22 If we accept that at the time of Tilav Bāy’s death Tūkhta Murād was aged 17, it would follow that at the time of this transaction he was a 5-year-old child. While, as we shall see, it was hardly unusual for children to own property, acquisitions were generally made on their behalf by adults acting in their capacity as parent or guardian: in this document, however, Tūkhta Murād is presented qua purchaser as an autonomous agent. It may well be, therefore, that his ascription of age in the 1917 document is erroneous, and that he was at least ten years older than suggested.23 With his age so uncertain, the identity of his mother is necessarily unclear. The fact that Tilav Bāy was able to maintain this sprawling domestic ménage gives an impression of the extensive economic resources at his disposal. His access to such resources is suggested also by the fact that he was apparently able to perform the ḥajj. Tilav Bāy’s pilgrimage receives explicit attention in no single document, but from March 1903 onwards he is conventionally accorded the honorific title of ḥājjī.24 Up until March 1901, he is identified in documents without adornment as Tilav Bāy or (more rarely) Tilav Birdī Bāy. Between March 1901 and March 1903 there is a two- year lacuna in which his activities are unrecorded; it was presumably at some point over these two years, therefore, that he traveled to the Ḥijāz. A heavy concentration of documents dating from March 1903 further suggests that the recent ḥājjī was confronted upon his return with an accumu- lated backlog of paperwork. Among the documents dating from this month was a claim made against him by Sayyid Aḥmad Bāy b. Mīr Afżal Bāy, acting as attorney to Marḥamat Āy: following his divorce, the attorney said, Tilav Bāy should return to Marḥamat Āy’s father her dowry, which amounted to 700 ṣūm. Interestingly, in this claim for restitution Marḥamat Āy herself was identified as a ḥājjī: one wonders, therefore, whether mari-

21 915: KP 1237 (509). 22 918: KP 1237 (481). 23 15 was conventionally regarded as the age of majority: thus (in a different context) e.g. 312: KP 5991/64 (367), and 388: KP 5991/135 (368). 24 989: KP 5991/617 (476b), and documents dated thereafter. Fathers and Sons 305 tal relations between the couple had declined during the rigors of a shared journey.25 Money might not buy marital concord: but it might buy a lot else. Between 1880 and 1917, Tilav Bāy was able to pursue what looks like a sustained policy of expanding his portfolio of investments. Like his brother Jūra Bāy, he maintained stakes in a variety of enterprises. Having bought from Jūra Bāy in 1883 the afore-mentioned ¾-ṭanāb plot of garden land in the village of Dih-i Nav, he bought a further ½ ṭanāb of land there in August 1904;26 in January 1898 he additionally bought a share in the jointly-owned sukniyāt―which is to say, the resources and provisions, whether buildings, trees or crops―on a ½-ṭanāb plot of mamlaka land located in the village of Dashtak-i Bālā, close to Dih-i Nav in Shāvdār tūmān.27 The garden land would probably have been given over to the cultivation of fruit and vegeta- bles, and the property in Dashtak-i Bālā was a poplar plantation, presumably furnishing craftsmen with building materials. It is unclear whether Tilav Bāy’s portfolio extended to cereal production, though it appears that he, like Jūra Bāy, had some stake in the wholesaling of grains: he is identified in one document as a dukānchī,28 and a series of documents dating from 1899 to 1901 attest that for three consecutive years Tilav Bāy rented the exclusive right to use the measuring scales in Samarqand’s rice bazaar.29 Like Jūra Bāy, Tilav Bāy also acquired stakes in the sukniyāt on a number of courtyard properties located in Samarqand’s Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter:30 such outgoings were doubtless intended to recoup themselves as rental investments. If the contours of Tilav Bāy’s holdings thus resembled those of his brother’s, however, our documents suggest that the dimensions of their respective holdings rather differed. In his 65 years, Tilav Bāy appears to have expanded his holdings considerably beyond what Jūra Bāy was able to achieve in his own shorter lifetime. Whereas Jūra Bāy’s attested holdings were confined to Samarqand and the tūmān districts radiating out from the city, Tilav Bāy’s economic interests encompassed a much larger radius. Unlike what we know of Jūra Bāy, for instance, Tilav Bāy had substantial interests in the region of Khoqand, far away from Samarqand in the

25 971: KP 5991/599 (478a+b). 26 986: KP 5991/614 (480). 27 901: KP 1237 (468). 28 990: KP 5991/618 (462). 29 975: KP 5991/603 (469a); 920: KP 1237 (471); 994: KP 5991/622 (472). 30 984: KP 5991/612 (451b); 997: KP 5991/625 (483); 972: KP 5991/600 (484); 977: KP 5991/605 (485); 982: KP 5991/610 (486); 980: KP 5991/608 (489). 306 Thomas Welsford Fergana Valley. In July 1910, Tilav Bāy bought from a certain Maḥmūd Āqsaqāl b. Qūzī Bāy, a resident of Khūqand’s Sar-i Mazār village, a ⅓ share in a plot of property located in the nearby Dakat-lik neighbourhood.31 His motive for investing in the area is unclear, though one suspects that it relates in some fashion to the afore-mentioned episode later that same summer when Tilav Bāy dispatched his attorney to Khoqand with instructions to secure the return of his young daughter Sulṭāna Āy.32 The fact that Sulṭāna Āy’s mother had taken her thither suggests that she was a native of the Khoqand region, returning to her ancestral home upon the termina- tion of marriage; whether Tilav Bāy’s interest in the region was informed by the fact of his wife’s origin, or whether his marriage to a Khūqandi native was itself motivated by his economic interests, must for the moment remain a matter of speculation. Beyond Samarqand and Khoqand, Tilav Bāy had interests also in Bukhara. In May 1897, he conferred a power of attorney upon his son Birdī Murād, with instructions to secure the restitution of property owed to him by a certain Qurbān Bāy and his son Mīrzā Bāy, who lived in the territory of the Bukharan emirate:33 his interests were evidently not confined to territory under Russian administration. Notable also is a letter to Tilav Bāy dating from late 1914 or 1915. In this letter, an anonymous Bukharan correspondent requests Tilav Bāy’s assistance. The bearers of the letter, he tells Tilav Bāy, have been dispatched to Samarqand with instructions to buy rice and take it back to the amīr’s court at Bukhara: if Tilav Bāy were able to assist them, he would be assured of the speaker’s gratitude.34 The document suggests that Tilav Bāy continued to operate in his afore-mentioned capacity of cereal merchant or broker until the final years of his life; the implication that he exercised in this capacity some influence in provi- sioning the Bukharan Emirate gives an impression, furthermore, of the scale of the operations which he ran. With his business interests traversing as they did the line of Tsarist demarcation, Tilav Bāy reveals for us the porous nature of this political frontier. Even after the death of his brother Jūra Bāy in 1895, Tilav Bāy was not the only member of his family whom we know to have been economically active. Our documents relate that his sons also pursued interests of their own. As mentioned above, Tūkhta Murād is known to have acquired prop-

31 955: KP 1237 (499a). 32 910: KP 1237 (500). 33 990: KP 5991/618 (462). 34 995: KP 5991/613 (507). Fathers and Sons 307 erty in 1905: in a statement of sale notarised that year, a certain Ḥājjī Bāy b. Bābā Jān Bāy declares that he has sold to Tūkhta Murād for 1600 tanga a ¾-ṭanāb plot of garden land located in the village of Dih-i Nav, in the Maḥalla volost’.35 In this same document it is noted that the property under transaction abuts onto a plot of garden land in the possession of Tūkhta Murād’s brother Ḥājjī Qurbān: the circumstances in which Ḥājjī Qurbān acquired said land are unknown, but the property presumably constituted at least part of the estate which was later divided up between his heirs upon his death in early 1917.36 Of Tilav Bāy’s sons, however, it is Birdī Murād whose activities are best attested in our documents. In June 1893, aged about 22, he bought for 100 tanga the sukniyāt on a shop located by Samarqand’s Khānim madrasa,37 and in May 1895 he bought from his paternal cousins Tāsh Muḥammad, Ikrāma Āy and Dādra Āy for 7000 tanga part of the estate of his late uncle Jūra Bāy, comprising the sukniyāt on a courtyard property located in Samarqand’s Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter.38 In the years following he was active as a moneylender―on three distinct occasions we encounter reference to mortgage transactions, whereby property owners ‘sold’ their holdings to Birdī Murād, undertaking thereafter to redeem their property by repaying the loaned ‘sale’ cost as a monthly rental fee39―and he continued to expand the scale of his holdings. In March 1903 he acquired for 2000 tanga a 10/24 share in a jointly-owned commercial property located in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter,40 and in September of that year he purchased for 2000 tanga the sukniyāt on a further courtyard property which was also located in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter.41 By August 1906 he is known to have owned a sarāy property located in Samarqand’s Masjid-i Sharbat quarter,42 and in November 1907 he acquired a 1/3 share in a courtyard property located in the same vicinity;43 in December 1912, meanwhile, he bought from the heirs of the late Ḥājjī ‘Ārif Jān for 1000 tanga the sukniyāt on 4 ṭanābs of garden land located in the village of Bāgh-i Maydān, in Samarqand’s Siyāh Āb tūmān.44

35 918: KP 1237 (481). 36 992: KP 5991/620 (508). 37 906: KP 1237 (458). 38 976: KP 5991/604 (459b). 39 998: KP 5991/626 (473a+b); 912: KP 1237 (498). 40 989: KP 5991/617 (476b). 41 827: KP 5991/521 (479). 42 999: KP 5991/627 (482a). 43 999: KP 5991/627 (482b). 44 909: KP 1237 (501). 308 Thomas Welsford In early 1917, Tilav Bāy died. Part of the estate was evidently divided up immediately between his heirs.45 Another part of the estate was bequeathed to all of Tilav Bāy’s heirs together, and was placed under the administration of a certain ‘Umar Bāy b. Manṣūr Bāy. This part of the estate included the plot of property located in Khūqand’s Sar-i Mazār village which Tilav Bāy had acquired in 1910. In December 1917, ‘Umar Bāy issued a statement declaring that, acting on behalf of all Tilav Bāy’s heirs, he had sold the property in question to a single purchaser.46 The sale was for 300 tanga, and the purchaser was Birdī Murād. And with this declaration of sale, the contents of the collection draw very nearly to a close.

II. The Collection

From a synoptic reading of these approximately 60 documents, the historian learns something about the activities of a family in Tsarist-era Samarqand: contained within these items appear to be the makings of a skeletal dynastic saga. But it is not only in their mutually distinct contents that our documents reveal information. It is also in the way that these documents are arranged within a single collection. Indeed, the taxonomi- cal logic behind the documents’ acquisition and preservation may be as instructive for the historian as are the terms of their composition. Although the approximately 60 items contained in the collection presently belong to the Samarqand Museum, it was not this museum which first assembled them; the museum evidently acquired the collection intact. The person who first assembled all the documents was Birdī Murād. This is nowhere explicitly stated, of course, but can be inferred from the fact that he alone of his kinsmen had an instrumental purpose in preserving each of the collection’s constitutive items. 24 of the documents serve explicitly to sanction Birdī Murād’s activities and to constrain the behaviour of others: we find among these 24 documents (i) declarations by vendors of his acquisition of property,47 (ii) acknowledgments by borrowers of his advancing money on mortgage,48 (iii) judicial rulings in favour of his claims

45 915: KP 1237 (509); also 828: KP 5991/522 (510). 46 955: KP 1237 (499b.i). 47 906: KP 1237 (458); 976: KP 5991/604 (459b); 989: KP 5991/617 (476b); 827: KP 5991/521 (479); 999: KP 5991/627 (482b); 981: KP 5991/609 (487); 969: KP 5991/597 (488); 955: KP 1237 (499b.i); 909: KP 1237 (501). 48 912: KP 1237 (498). Fathers and Sons 309 for restitution,49 (iv) judicial rulings against claims for restitution towards him by hostile parties,50 (v) cessations of, or abstentions from claim against him,51 (vi) solicited jurisprudential opinions sanctioning his behaviour52 and (vii) notarised attorney instructions.53 The content of the remaining items in the collection, meanwhile, relates to the interests of other family members. But although these remaining documents were evidently first acquired by other parties, we can trace how they subsequently devolved by tiers into Birdī Murād’s possession through a series of transfers and transactions. As we shall see, one need not be a named party in a document in order to derive utility from the document’s existence. Prime among the stipulated beneficiaries of the remaining items in the collection is of course Tilav Bāy, whose activities receive sanction in 27 documents; amongst these we encounter (i) declarations by vendors of his acquisition of property,54 (ii) cessations of claim against him by hostile parties,55 (iii) acknowledgments of receipt,56 (iv) notarised attorney instructions,57 and (v) an acknowledgement by a third party of a debt towards one of his wives.58 Given that Tilav Bāy was evidently responsible for first acquiring these 27 documents, it might seem reasonable to attribute the genesis of the present collection to him as much as to Birdī Murād. As we reconstruct the architecture of the collection, however, we see that its present integrity owes little to Tilav Bāy’s activities. Although the 27 documents pertaining immediately to Tilav Bāy offer a panoramic view over his life and activities, they do so only partially. That is to say, these items are only a very incomplete selection of the documents which would once have attested to the scope of Tilav Bāy’s interests. In an early declaration of sale dating from January 1883, for instance, we find mention of a property

49 998: KP 5991/626 (473b). 50 919: KP 1237 (492b.ii); 965: KP 5991/593 (495.i). 51 905: KP 1237 (497); 902: KP 1237 (506b); 992: KP 5991/620 (508); 915: KP 1237 (509); 828: KP 5991/522 (510). 52 958: KP 1237 (493); 830: KP 5991/524 (503). 53 914: KP 1237 (502); 904: KP 1237 (504). 54 973: KP 5991/601 (450); 984: KP 5991/612 (451b); 970: KP 5991/598 (456b); 829: KP 5991/523 (457.i); 963: KP 5991/591 (461b); 913: KP 1237 (463); 979: KP 5991/607 (467); 901: KP 1237 (468); 996: KP 5991/624 (470); 986: KP 5991/614 (480); 997: KP 5991/625 (483); 972: KP 5991/600 (484); 977: KP 5991/605 (485); 982: KP 5991/610 (486); 980: KP 5991/608 (489); 955: KP 1237 (499a). 55 916: KP 1237 (449b); 975: KP 5991/603 (469b.ii); 971: KP 5991/599 (478b). 56 920: KP 1237 (471); 994: KP 5991/622 (472). 57 990: KP 5991/618 (462); 910: KP 1237 (500). 58 957: KP 1237 (505). 310 Thomas Welsford belonging to Tilav Bāy and abutting onto the property under transaction:59 but no item within the collection relates the circumstances of this earlier property’s acquisition. The evident absence here of certain documents pertaining to Tilav Bāy’s interests and holdings suggests that amongst such documents there existed some criterion as to whether or not they devolved into the present collection. What the present 27 items have in common is that they relate to those properties and resources which upon Tilav Bāy’s death devolved into the possession of Birdī Murād, rather than any of his fellow heirs. The exact terms and circumstances of the inheritance are unclear. A document issued on March 28 1917 indicates that Birdī Murād, like his brother Tūkhta Murād, received a 28/160-share of Tilav Bāy’s estate,60 but there is no specific mention of what this share comprised. It is a strong possibility, however, that according to the division of estate Birdī Murād simply took receipt of those properties indemnified against claim in the 27 documents, which thereby devolved to him also. It is an equal possibility that Birdī Murād took receipt of some of these documents as the deeds to properties which he did not inherit, but which he instead purchased from his fellow heirs at the time of his father’s death. There is some evidence that by the terms of the document dating from March 28 1917 Birdī Murād acquired more than just the stipulated 28/160 of Tilav Bāy’s total estate: unusually for a document nota- rising the division of property, the text contains also a disavowal of any claim against Birdī Murād on the part of his fellow heirs, suggesting that in the absence of said disavowal Birdī Murād might have been liable to accusations that he had taken a larger share than that to which he was entitled. One possible inference here is that Birdī Murād purchased a portion―though not all61―of other people’s shares in the estate, and that the vendors notarised his acquisition with this corporate disavowal of claim in lieu of multiple declarations of sale. Whatever the circumstances of their acquisition, however, the more accurate impression conveyed by these 27 items is not of Tilav Bāy’s life and activities tout court, but of his life and activities as framed through the interests of Birdī Murād. It may reasonably be objected, of course, that my argument here is purely conjectural, and that there is no direct evidence that any of Tilav Bāy’s 27 documents devolved into Birdī Murād’s possession. The argument

59 973: KP 5991/601 (450). 60 915: KP 1237 (509). 61 We know that some of Tilaw Bāy’s estate remained in the joint possession of his heirs until December 1917: see 955: KP 1237 (499b.i), as above. Fathers and Sons 311 receives strong circumstantial support, however, when we turn now to a further group of items in the collection which clearly devolved to him from the possession of one of his kinsmen. The kinsman in question was Birdī Murād’s short-lived uncle Jūra Bāy, whose holdings are confirmed in three documents.62 Although Birdī Murād was not one of Jūra Bāy’s heirs,63 we know that he acquired the properties outlined therein: as is related in a declaration of sale from May 1895, soon after his uncle’s death Birdī Murād purchased from his cousins Tāsh Muḥammad, Ikrāma Āy and Dādra Āy a part of the late man’s estate.64 The three items from Jūra Bāy’s collection evidently provide documentation detailing the particulars of Birdī Murād’s acquisition. In this last instance, Birdī Murād’s accumulation of documentation might appear somewhat supererogatory. The 1895 declaration of sale both details the property under purchase and confirms the terms of acquisition: consequently, the earlier three documents assembled by Jūra Bāy himself ostensibly serve within the collection just to corroborate that description of the property offered in the later text. There is a contrast here with the seemingly more direct utility which Birdī Murād derived from Tilav Bāy’s collection of documents: in the apparent absence of any notarised statement explicitly identifying Birdī Murād’s share of his father’s estate, the 27 documentary items which devolved to him seem to have carried the primary burden of confirming the terms of his inheritance. The fact that Birdī Murād also preserved ‘surplus’ documents such as those first assembled by Jūra Bāy attests to his curatorial concern to preserve for each of his properties as complete as possible a justificatory paper trail with which to bulwark his holdings against claim. His concern was well founded.

III. The Paper Trail

In early January 1908, an attorney acting on behalf of Akābir Khwāja b. Sayyid Khwāja presented before the courthouse of Samarqand vilāyat’s district no. 1 a claim for restitution against Birdī Murād.65 The claim related to a courtyard house located in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter, abutting in the west partly onto a blocked thoroughfare and partly onto a house belonging

62 819: KP 115/5 (453); 917: KP 1237 (454); 987: KP 5991/615 (455). 63 976: KP 5991/604 (459a+b). 64 976: KP 5991/604 (459b). 65 919: KP 1237 (492a). 312 Thomas Welsford to Zumurrud Āy, in the north onto a house belonging to Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad ‘Āqil b. Bābā Jān, in the east onto a house belonging to the respondent Birdī Murād and in the south onto a public thoroughfare. Akābir Khwāja’s attorney claimed that the property had belonged to the late Sayyid Khwāja until his death, whereupon it had devolved to his heirs, these being two wives, two daughters and four sons, namely the plaintiff Akābir Khwāja and his brothers Rustām Khwāja, Muḥammadī Khwāja and Aṣal al-Dīn Khwāja. But, the attorney claimed, Birdī Murād and his father had seized possession of the entire estate for themselves, and refused to yield it over. In response to this complaint, Birdī Murād presented himself before the courthouse to answer the accusation. He proposed to contest Akābir Khwāja’s claim, and to this end he brought with him by way of evidence three documents, all of which are now contained within the collection. The first of these was the text of a report of sale, dated 3 May 1889 and recorded as entry no. 347 in the official ledger of transactions undertaken during the year 1889 in Samarqand’s district no. 1. The report details the sale by the afore-mentioned plaintiff Akābir Khwāja to his brother Rustām Khwāja for 80 ṣūm of a 14/64 share in a property located in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter and abutting in the west onto a courtyard house belonging to Qārī ʿAzīz b. Qārī Żiyā, in the north onto a blocked thoroughfare, in the east onto a house belonging to Mullā Jan b. Mullā Bābā Jān and in the south onto a major thoroughfare.66 The second document which Birdī Murād presented was one of the three documents in his possession which had first been acquired by his uncle Jūra Bāy. It was a declaration of sale, dated 5 March 1892 and registered as entry no. 288 in that year’s ledger of transactions. In this declaration, the afore-mentioned Rustām Khwāja states that together with his brother Muḥammad Khwāja he has sold to Jūra Bāy for 8000 tanga the sukniyāt on a courtyard property comprising multiple houses located in Qara Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter, and abutting in the west partly onto a property belonging to the purchaser Jūra Bāy and partly onto a property belonging to Ustā Ḥakīm Zargar b. Ustā Qāsim, in the north onto a property belonging to Mullā ‘Āqil Muftī b. Mullā Bābā Jān, in the east partly onto a property belonging to the heirs of Ẕākir Khwāja and partly onto a property belonging to ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Bāy b. ʿAbd al-Qādir Bāy, and in the south onto a public thoroughfare.67

66 919: KP 1237 (492b.i); the text is given also in 908: KP 1237 (494). 67 917: KP 1237 (454). Fathers and Sons 313 The third document which Birdī Murād presented was the May 1895 declaration of sale issued by his father Tilav Bāy in his capacity as attorney to the offspring of the late Jūra Bāy. In his declaration of sale, registered as entry no. 871 in that year’s ledger of transactions, Tilav Bāy states that he has sold to his son Birdī Murād for 7000 tanga the sukniyāt on a courtyard property, located in Samarqand’s Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter and abutting in the west partly onto a house belonging to Ustā Qanbar Bāy and partly onto a house belonging to Rustām Khwāja b. Sayyid Khwāja, in the north partly onto a blocked thoroughfare and partly onto a house belonging to Mullā Muḥammad ‘Āqil Muftī b. Mullā Bābā Jān, in the east partly onto a house belonging to Ḥākim Pahlawān b. Bāy Malik and partly onto a house belonging to Mullā ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. Mullā ʿAbd al-Qādir, and in the south onto a public thoroughfare.68 In presenting these three documents before the courthouse, Birdī Murād thus presented records of those successive transactions whereby the property under contention had legally―if circuitously―devolved to him from the plaintiff Akābir Khwāja. Presented with this documentation, Qāżī Mullā Mīrzā Niyāz Muḥammad b. Mīr Ḥusayn Bāy Ṣūfī duly ruled that the plaintiff’s claim was inadmissible, and Birdī Murād was confirmed in his holdings.69 The episode offers a cogent rationale for the scope and dimensions of Birdī Murād’s documentary collection. In rebutting Akābir Khwāja’s claim for restitution, Birdī Murād presented not just a single document vouching for the legality of his own acquisition, but also two prima facie ‘surplus’ documents. In fact, these latter two documents were in no way surplus to Birdī Murād’s argument: they vouched that the property which he had acquired was property which successive vendors had been entitled to sell. Documentation drawn from Jūra Bāy’s archive was as instrumental in establishing the legal devolution of property from plaintiff to respondent as was the May 1895 declaration of sale which had been composed on Birdī Murād’s own behalf. Of course, it would be wrong to exaggerate the utility to Birdī Murād of his amassed documentary archive. Of the three documents which he submitted for inspection in early 1908, Birdī Murād had acquired the record of the 1889 transaction expressly for the occasion, receiving from the qāżī in return for a 15-tīyin fee a notarised copy of the original summary text as

68 976: KP 5991/604 (459b). 69 919: KP 1237 (492b.ii); also 965: KP 5991/593 (495.i). 314 Thomas Welsford preserved in the qāżī’s ledger of transactions.70 The fact that Birdī Murād was able in 1908 to purchase a copy of the record of sale from 1889 suggests that he could similarly if necessary have purchased copies of records from the 1892 and the 1895 sales. From at least 1883 it was the qāżī’s practice in Samarqand to keep records of all transactions conducted over the course of the year:71 the resultant novelty of access to an institutional documentary archive evidently reduced the burden on private parties to preserve documents attesting to their holdings. By maintaining his own collection, however, Birdī Murād was able to avoid the expense in 1908 of having to purchase copies of the 1892 and the 1895 declarations of sale: the collection provided him with materials which he would otherwise have had to pay for. By maintaining the collection, therefore, Birdī Murād was able to min- imise the cost of accessing the legal resources which were available to him. He was able to offset the expenses of engaging the law. The documents which Birdī Murād presented before the qāżī in March 1908 comprise just one example of the documentary paper trails which he assembled and preserved in his archive. Another such instance is the documentation attesting to his ownership of a 1/3-share of a courtyard property located in Samarqand’s Masjid-i Sharbat quarter. In a declaration of sale before the courthouse of Samarqand’s district no. 3 dated 15 November 1907, a certain Mullā Mu’min Jān Bāy b. Mullā Muslim Jān states that he has sold said share of the property to Birdī Murād for 300 ṣūm.72 This declaration of sale was not written on a blank piece of paper. Instead, it was written on the reverse side of a previous declaration of sale dating from August 1906. In this earlier declaration of sale, Mullā Muḥammad Rāfiʿ Bāy b. ‘Umūr Bāy states that, acting as attorney to his brother Muḥammad Shākir Bāy, he has sold the share of property to Mullā Mu’min Jān Bāy.73 This is very similar to the documentation which Birdī Murād acquired with the acquisition from his kinsmen in December 1917 of the property in Khūqand’s Sar-i Mazār village, where the declaration of sale by the vendors’ joint attorney ‘Umar Bāy b. Manṣūr Bāy sits on the reverse of a declaration of sale dating from July 1910, in which Maḥmūd Āqsaqāl b. Qūzī Bāy confirms Tilav Bāy’s legal acquisition of the property.74 In both instances, Birdī Murād received attestation on a single piece of paper both that he had

70 908: KP 1237 (494). 71 The earliest document to display this practice is 973: KP 5991/601 (450). 72 999: KP 5991/627 (482b). 73 999: KP 5991/627 (482a). 74 955: KP 1237 (499a+b.i). Fathers and Sons 315 legally acquired the share of property and that the property had been the vendor’s (or vendors’) to sell. Nor was Birdī Murād alone among his kinsmen to take receipt of such back-to-back declarations of sale. Amongst the 27 documents first accu- mulated by his father Tilav Bāy are several items of a very similar nature. In May 1905, for instance, Tilav Bāy acquired from ʿAbd al-Jabbār b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm half the sukniyāt on a courtyard property and house located in Qara Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter. Together with the property, he acquired ʿAbd al-Jabbār’s declaration of sale, on the obverse side of which is an earlier declaration dating from August 1887, in which it is confirmed that ʿAbd al-Jabbār legally acquired the property from Qāsim Bāy b. Muḥammad Yūnus Bāy.75 In April 1893, Tilav Bāy acquired a property located in Samarqand’s Khwāṣī quarter, taking with it receipt of back-to-back declarations of sale first by ʿAbd al-Ẓuhūr b. Ibrāhīm Bāy and then by Raḥmān Birdī and Ḥasan Bāy b. Muḥammad Sharīf Bāy, who had jointly sold the property to ʿAbd al-Ẓuhūr in December 1892.76 And when in March 1897 Tilav Bāy acquired from Ḥājjī Qurbān Bāy b. Mīr Fāżil Bāy the sukniyāt on 3 ṭanābs of mamlaka land located in Siyāh Āb, he acquired back-to-back declarations of sale both by Ḥājjī Qurbān Bāy and by Ṣādiq Bāy b. Ustā Muḥammad Ẓarīf, who as attorney to Khūj Muḥammad b. Nūr Muḥammad had sold the property to Ḥājjī Qurbān Bāy five years earlier.77 Such back-to-back declarations of sale are extremely rare amongst the larger collection of Arabic-script documents presently held in the Samar qand Museum. Indeed, the only five instances of such documents are contained within Birdī Murād’s private archive: other purchasers evidently satisfied themselves with receipt of a declaration of sale confirming acquisition, without receiving confirmation of the vendor’s entitlement to sell. From this statistical anomaly we may draw two inferences. The first is a general point. It is that purchasers might, if so inclined, exercise some agency in the composition of a declaration of sale: even if Birdī Murād and his father lacked scope to determine the heavily conventionalised wording of the document, they were able to exercise a preference that it be produced, palimpsest-like, on the reverse of an existing declaration. The second inference is somewhat more case-specific. It is that Birdī Murād and his father displayed an unusual degree of prudential concern to defend their holdings against the claims of outside parties. This is understandable:

75 984: KP 5991/612 (451a+b). 76 970: KP 5991/598 (456a+b). 77 963: KP 5991/591 (461a+b). 316 Thomas Welsford the presence amongst our documents of numerous claims for restitution against Birdī Murād and his father indicates that both men were regularly assailed with legal challenges. If the presence of similarly numerous cessations of claim is anything to go by, both men were also adept at rebutting them. Our documents attest to how Birdī Murād and his father proved able to negotiate the fraught waters of legal contestation. They also constitute the very resources with which the two men did so.

IV. Fathers and Sons

The approximately 60 documents in Birdī Murād’s collection very largely tell a single story. This is the story of Birdī Murād’s relationship with his father Tilav Bāy. If there is a particular pattern which commonly emerges from our documents, it is the way in which the activities of the one man were orchestrated to complement the activities of the other. The two men evidently pursued a very similar set of interests: like Tilav Bāy before him, for instance, Birdī Murād rented rights to the Samarqand flour market.78 This in itself tells us little, of course: the two men might very well have occupied a similar economic domain as rivals rather than as colleagues. But two afore-mentioned instances of legal contestation indicate that the interests of father and son were in fact strongly mutually constitutive. The first such instance relates to Tilav Bāy’s claim for restitution against the Bukharans Qurbān Bāy and Mīrzā Bāy. Birdī Murād’s afore-mentioned attempt qua attorney to pursue the claim in early summer 1897 evidently came to little, and in early summer 1913―after an unexplained 16-year hiatus―two further attorneys were dispatched to Bukhara in quick succession to resolve the case. On each occasion, the attorney was appointed and dispatched not by the 61 year-old Tilav Bāy but by Birdī Murād himself:79 his father’s claim for restitution had effectively become his own. The second instance relates to Akābir Khwāja b. Sayyid Khwāja’s claim for restitution in early January 1908: in the deposition of claim, we see that Tilav Bāy is named alongside Birdī Murād as a co-respondent,80 despite the fact that the property under contention was ostensibly in the possession of Birdī Murād alone. The absorption in both instances of father and son into a

78 902: KP 1237 (506). 79 914: KP 1237 (502); 830: KP 5991/524 (503); 904: KP 1237 (504). 80 919: KP 1237 (492a). Fathers and Sons 317 single legal party indicates how strongly they each identified―and were in turn identified by third parties―with the interests of the other. This evident commonality of interest between Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād appears to have been considerably stronger than that between Tilav Bāy and any of Birdī Murād’s siblings. This may appear rather a rash assertion, given the manifest selectivity of the range of documents available to us: the fact that the collection contains no items directly attesting to Tilav Bāy’s close relations with his younger son Tūkhta Murād, for instance, scarcely precludes the possible existence of such items elsewhere. While acknowledging the partiality of our documentation, however, there remain strong grounds for concluding that, of all his offspring, Tilav Bāy maintained closest relations with Birdī Murād, and that he specifically groomed his eldest son to accede to his own elevated wealth and status. He groomed Birdī Murād as his favoured heir: and like many fathers, he did so in despite of Islamic principles of partitive inheritance. Indeed, he did so specifically to counteract the force of such principles. The reader will remember that in May 1895 Tilav Bāy, acting as attorney for the children of his late brother Jūra Bāy, oversaw the sale for 7000 tanga of a plot of property to his son Birdī Murād.81 The declaration of sale is situated on the reverse side of a solicited legal opinion, in which Tilav Bāy seeks jurisprudential ratification for the proposed sale of the property to his son.82 The fact that he went to the lengths of seeking jurisprudential ratification suggests that Tilav Bāy was keen for this transaction to take place: in securing ratification, Tilav Bāy was deploying resources in order to ensure that Jūra Bāy’s property might devolve into his own son’s possession. One wonders, of course, with what funds the 23-year-old Birdī Murād was able in May 1895 to afford the property’s 7000-tanga sale price. In the absence amongst our approximately 60 documents of any attestation to Birdī Murād’s prior-standing investments at this time, it is likely that Tilav Bāy assisted his son with the purchase. If so, Tilav Bāy was only doing what Birdī Murād himself probably did some 22 years later, as we see from two declarations of sale dating from November 1907. In each of these two declarations, Muḥammad Rāfi‘ Bāy b. ‘Umūr Bāy states that, acting as attorney to his kinsman Muḥammad Shākir b. Maḥmūd Bāy, he has sold to a purchaser a 2/9 share in the sukniyāt on a jointly-owned courtyard property located in Samarqand’s Masjid-i Sharbat-dār quarter. The purchaser in one

81 975: KP 5991/604 (459b). 82 975: KP 5991/604 (459a). 318 Thomas Welsford of the transactions was an individual called ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, who is identified as the son of Birdī Murād;83 in the other, the purchaser was another son of Birdī Murād called Sulṭān Murād. Because at the time of the transaction Sulṭān Murād was a minor, we read, Birdī Murād himself conducted the purchase on his son’s behalf.84 A generation apart, Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād each bought property for his offspring, or at least assisted his offspring in the acquisition of property. The likelihood that Birdī Murād assisted both ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and Sulṭān Murād in their respective purchases suggests, of course, that a father might not confine his assistance to one son alone. And it is likely that Tilav Bāy similarly offered assistance to members of his offspring other than Birdī Murād. When in July 1905 Tilav Bāy’s son Tūkhta Murād bought a ¾-ṭanāb plot of garden land located in Dih-i Nav, for instance, the purchaser is unlikely to have been out of his teens,85 and like Birdī Murād very probably relied on paternal assistance when making the acquisition. Mention of this plot’s abutting onto a property belonging to Tilav Bāy’s other son Ḥājjī Qurbān Bāy suggests that this latter, too, may have been the beneficiary of paternal largesse. Like Birdī Murād after him, Tilav Bāy appears to have taken steps to ensure that each of his sons had the resources with which to conduct an independent existence. As we saw above, however, Tilav Bāy’s relationship with Birdī Murād comprised more than just a paternal duty of care. The relationship between father and eldest son was both collegial and mutually reinforcing: in Birdī Murād, Tilav Bāy had a son with whom to share the purposes of a lifetime, and upon whom to place his hopes for posterity. This emerges most clearly when we examine patterns in the two men’s acquisition of property. While there are admittedly some disparities in the their attested patterns of acquisition―unlike in the case of his son, for instance, there is no evidence that Tilav Bāy acquired any property in Bāgh-i Maydān―their respective port- folios are strikingly complementary, and suggest a strong degree of mutual co-ordination. This emerges perhaps most obviously when we examine a series of sale declarations dating from early 1907. In these declarations, Qābil Jān b. Mīrzā Bāy states that he has sold to both Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād a number of shares in a property located in Samarqand’s Qarā Bāy

83 974: KP 5991/602 (491). 84 997: KP 5991/625 (483). 85 918: KP 1237 (481). Fathers and Sons 319 Āqsaqāl quarter.86 By these transactions, Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād each thus acquired a stake in a property partly belonging to the other. Such mutual adjacency of acquisition was not new: in early September 1903, for instance, Birdī Murād had acquired the sukniyāt on a courtyard property located in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter, abutting in both the east and the south onto another courtyard property belonging to his father.87 Of course, given both men’s attested appetite for acquiring property in Qarā Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter, such interweaving of acquisitions could just have been the accidental outcome of mutually uncoordinated investment programmes. But it is striking that there is not a single declaration of sale in the collection which indicates that either Tilav Bāy or Birdī Murād acquired property which abutted, for instance, onto property belonging to either of Tilav Bāy’s either sons Tūkhta Murād or Ḥājjī Qurbān Bāy. And we can point to one instance, at least, where the acquisition by Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād of mutually adjacent properties must manifestly have been a coordinated action. In the declaration of sale from July 1910 whereby Tilav Bāy acquired a plot of land in Khūqand’s Sar-i Mazār village, we read that among the properties abutting onto this territory was a plot of land belonging to Birdī Murād.88 From what we can make out, the investments by father and son in the Khoqand region were extremely limited: it is scarcely likely, therefore, that this adjacency of acquisitions could have been co-incidental. The two men’s evident penchant for acquiring mutually adjoining properties is indicative of how closely they, in contradistinction to even their closest other kinsmen, aligned their mutual interests. Purchasers often acquired mutually adjoining properties: declarations of sale dating from February-March 189989 and August 190490 indicate that in both transactions, for instance, Tilav Bāy thereby acquired plots of agricultural land adjacent to others already belonging to him. One reason why purchasers went to the lengths of acquiring mutually adjoining properties was to reap the benefits of territorial aggregation. These benefits were real: whatever risk accrued from concentrating holdings in a particular place―rather than spreading them widely apart as insurance against localised meteoro- logical setback and the like―might evidently be more than offset by the

86 997: KP 5991/625 (483); 972: KP 5991/600 (484); 977: KP 5991/605 (485); 982: KP 5991/610 (486); 981: KP 5991/609 (487); 969: KP 5991/597 (488); 980: KP 5991/608 (489). 87 827: KP 5991/521 (479). 88 955: KP 1237 (499a). 89 996: KP 5991/624 (470). 90 986: KP 5991/614 (480). 320 Thomas Welsford agricultural efficiency savings or real estate development options accruing from the aggregation of two plots into a single one. The utility of aggregation is clearly illustrated in two of those documents in the collection which were first assembled by Jūra Bāy. Each of the two documents is a declaration of sale dating from March 1892. The first document, already encountered in our discussion, details Jūra Bāy’s acquisition from the brothers Rustām Khwāja and Muḥammad Khwāja of the sukniyāt on a courtyard property located in Qara Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter and partially abutting onto an item already in his possession;91 it was this property which in 1895 Birdī Murād would purchase from Jūra Bāy’s offspring. In the second declaration of sale, meanwhile, Jūra Bāy states that he has sold to Rustām Khwāja and Muḥammad Khwāja the sukniyāt on another courtyard property, similarly located in Qara Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter and partially abutting onto an item belonging to the two brothers.92 What we witness in these two documents, therefore, is an exchange of properties, apparently motivated by the fact that by the terms of the two sales each party acquired a property abutting onto an item already in his or their possession. The frictional costs of transaction were evidently justified by the advantage of being able to aggregate one’s holdings into a larger territorial unit. By their repertoire of acquisitions, Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād displayed their mutual sympathies: the utility accruing from their purchase of mutually adjoining properties reflected on both their parts an understanding of their respective holdings not as demarcated possessions but as a mutually shared resource. The mutual adjacency of properties of course might also have the function, after Tilav Bāy’s death, of easing the absorption of his properties into his son’s estate. This indeed proved to be the case: in early 1917 Birdī Murād evidently inherited from his father or purchased from his siblings the various properties which Tilav Bāy had formerly owned in Qara Bāy Āqsaqāl quarter, and in December of that year he acquired from his siblings that plot of land in Khoqand which had formerly belonged to Tilav Bāy, and which adjoined a plot of his own.93 In buying his fellow heirs out of their own respective shares, Birdī Murād was also of course doing something very similar to what his father had done 37 years earlier. As we saw at the very outset of this essay, in 1880 Tilav Bāy had acquired for himself the rump of his late father Ṣābir Bāy’s estate, by first denying to his younger siblings access to their own designated shares,

91 917: KP 1237 (454). 92 987: KP 5991/615 (455). 93 955: KP 1237 (499b.i). Fathers and Sons 321 and then securing their complaisance by paying them to desist from objection.94 Birdī Murād’s acquisition of the Khoqand property may not have provoked his siblings into legal contestation as Tilav Bāy’s course of action had done, but both men finessed their steps towards the monopolization of hereditary landed estate with the judicious distribution of cash. By ensuring that paternal properties were not sold outside the family, and by min- imising the extent to which they were divided up between their fellow heirs, Tilav Bāy and Birdī Murād were each sequentially acting to maintain the territorial integrity of their late father’s holdings. The two men were each also preserving a monument to the achievements of their father’s lifetime.

V. Rethinking the Family?

The impression which thus accrues from our collection of documents is of a family dynamic somewhat more atomised and individualistic than that which a social historian of pre-modern Central Asia might have expected to encounter. Conspicuously lacking is any impression of a corporate family economic interest: instead, our documents suggest that members of successive generations in a wealthy Samarqandi family generally cultivated their own projects, acting in their capacity as what we might regard as independent rational actors, and that, ceteris paribus, siblings in particular pursued a zero sum approach in their economic dealings with one another. The exception to this pattern, of course, was the relationship between father and son, and most significantly the relationship between father and eldest son, where we witness between the two parties a degree of collaboration which elsewhere within the family seems to have been conspicuous by its absence. Of course, some caution is in order here. It is possible, for instance, that the generic conventions of our materials offer a misleadingly confrontational picture of sibling relations. Reading the protocol of claim with which Jūra Bāy sought the restitution from Tilav Bāy of his due share of the ancestral estate, one might reasonably conclude that March 1880 saw an legal confrontation between the two brothers, resolved only by Jūra Bāy’s subsequent cessation of claim. One wonders, however, whether there was really any substance to the protocol’s agonistic tone: the sequential issue and cessation of claim is a model of practice widely attested amongst

94 916: KP 1237 (449a+b). 322 Thomas Welsford Tsarist-era inheritance cases, and the frequency of its appearance suggests that it may actually have been a legal fiction, presenting a façade of breach and reconciliation with which to conceal an individual’s primogenitural acquisition of ancestral property in a legal environment where such practices were formally proscribed. If we are indeed looking here at a legal fiction, we are necessarily looking an instance of cooperation between the soi-disant plaintiff and respondent: even as one brother set about monop- olising possession of his late father’s landed estate, the other would have been complicit in the acquisition. It appears, therefore, that competitive self-interest in the economic sphere might co-exist alongside a more coop- erative commitment to the maintenance of family order: to the natural entitlement of the first-born, that is, and to the integrity of the family name. In the story of Birdī Murād and his kinsmen, we see how the dynamics of a family in Tsarist-era Samarqand might contain a wide range of both atomised and pro-social forms of behaviour. We begin also to wonder whether other, non-familial categories of ‘solidarity group’ might usefully too be regarded not, à la Olivier Roy and other social scientists,95 as mag- netised alignments of interest so much as engrained theatres of interaction, this being confrontational or collaborative according to context.

VI. The End of the Story

At some point in either 1919 or 1920, some two or three years after he had acquired from his siblings the plot of land in Khoqand, Birdī Murād yielded possession of the property. He issued a statement declaring that he had made it over to his wife Muqaddas Ātin bint-i Qārī Mullā Mīr ʿĀbid, as the equivalent of her dowry to the sum of 1000 ṭilā.96 This is the last which we hear of Birdī Murād. Soon after the composition of this last text, the approximately 60 items comprising Birdī Murād’s documentary collection entered the possession of the Samarqand Museum. The circumstances of this acquisition are unclear: so too is the subsequent fate of Birdī Murād and the rest of his family. But times were changing: and the documents, the resources and the relationships which Birdī Murād spent so much of a lifetime acquiring and husbanding may have availed him little in a Samarqand under Soviet rule.

95 O. Roy, The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 85–100. For criticism, see e.g. T. Trevisani, Land and Power in Khorezm: Farm- ers, Communities in Uzbekistan’s Decollectivisation (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011), 190. 96 955: KP 1237 (499b.ii). Fathers and Sons 323 Bibliography

Primary Sources Welsford, T., and Tashev, N., 2012. A Catalogue of Arabic-Script Documents from the Samarqand Museum Samarqand: IICAS.

Secondary Literature

Dworkin, R. 1998. Law’s Empire. Oxford and Portland, OR: Hart Publishing. Roy, O. 2000. The New Central Asia: The Creation of Nations. New York: New York University Press. Trevisani, T. 2011. Land and Power in Khorezm: Farmers, Communities in Uzbe kistan’s Decollectivisation. Münster: Lit Verlag. 324 Thomas Welsford index of persons and social groupings 325

index of Islamicate Terminologies

ʿādat 8 fn. 22, 255-256, 259 fn 46 milk (also mulk) 12, 24, 28-32, 36, 44-49, amīn 7 fn. 18, 19, 41, 272, 274-276, 278, 280, 51-57, 59-60, 116, 120 fn. 29, 290-293 mīrāb 275, 290 amlāk 28-30, 32, 37 fn. 59, 40 fn. 67, 43, mubārak-nāma 272, 284, 288 fn. 58 45-46, 51, 54, 290 fn. 69 muḥtaṣib 252 amlākdār 24, 26-28, 33, 36-38, 41-43, 54, 56, namıs 199 58, 60, 276, 290 nikāh 7 fn 17 āqsaqāl 26, 35-37, 42-44, 59, 267-269, 272- qāżī 7-8, 35, 45, 54, 57, 59, 252, 272, 282, 285- 281, 283-289, 291-295 286, 289, 293, 313-314 arbāb 267, 275 fn. 32, 276 qūshbīgī 271, 273 arīża (also ʿarż) 272, 274, 280-282, 284, 286, sanjira 139 291 sanjırachı 187 atālīq 270 sarkār 27-28, 33, 41-43, 52-53 bāy 282, 286 fn. 52, 287 sayyid 31, 45 fn. 83, 49-50, 54, 59-60, 212 fn. dādkhwāh 149, 159-160, 173 13, 250 dārūgha 36-37, 41, 267 sharīʿa 7-8, 42, 47, 97 el 195, 224-225 sukniyāt 305, 307, 312-313, 315, 317, 319-320 fatvā 151, 263 tabarruk-nāma 281-284, 291-292 fiqh 262 ṭāʿifa (also tayfa) 163, 225 fn. 51 fuqarāʾ (also bukara, bukhara) 140 fn. 3, tamga 150 fn. 45, 151 fn. 52, 195 147, 170, 196, 284, 286, 291 taṣadduq 256, 259 ilat 166 töre 141-142, 144, 170, 211-212, 223-224, 226- istiftāʾ 257 227 jamāʿa 288-289 tūmān 26, 36, 43, 254, 273, 279 fn. 46. 302, kadkhudā 268, 277 fn. 39 305 kharāj 26-28, 30-31, 37-47, 53-54, 56 ʿulamāʾ 42, 49, 251 khutba 257 ʿushr (also ʿushrī) 30-31, 44, 45 khwāja (also qoja) 13, 31-32, 45 fn. 83, 47-51, vaqf 7, 26, 28-29, 55 fn. 123, 56 fn. 124, 57, 59, 54, 59-60, 212 fn. 13, 220 fn. 34. 224 fn. 49, 86 248 yurt (also jurt) 151, 153, 166, 169, 190-191, 194, madrasa 29, 59, 251, 253-254, 260-262, 307 212, 224-226, 228, 232, 238, 240, 256-259 maktab 257, 261 zakāt 39, 42, 256, 263 mamlaka 28, 30, 116, 305, 315 zakātchī 33, 42 manshūr 273, 282-284, 289 fn. 66, 291 326 index of persons and social groupings index of persons and social groupings 327

index of Persons and Social Groupings

Aalıbay 196 Ataghay, Qazaq tribe 238 ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ash- Atake 143-144 Shahrisabzī 253 Ātalkhānūf, M.K. 119 ʿAbd al-Mūʾmīn Khwāja b. Ūzbek Khwāja Atwood, C. 210, 213 fn. 18 al-Afshanjī 253 Ayghanïm 17, 207, 223-226, 232, 236 ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīk Tūqsāba 291-292 ʿAbd al-Qādir Bīdil 263 Babajanov, B.K. 42 ʿAbd al-Salām 252 Babajanov, Yasavul Khwāja Qaragul 49 Abduraimov, M.A. 26, 29 Balbaq Biy 166 Ablai Khan (also Ablay Khan) 143, 212 fn. Balbay Ishkhoja uulu 163-164, 166, 195 15, 216, 217 fn 30 Baltabay 190, 196 Abdulghazï Omar oghlï 230, 240 Barfield, T. 210 Abrahams, R.D. 186 Barthold, V.V. 29-31, 142, 147 Abramov, A.K. 33-34, 36, 39, 43, 46-51, Baqqālūf, M.V. 131 fn. 78 53-55, 58 Batırkan 196 Abramzon, S.M. 147, 171-172 Bayake 196 Abū’l-Fayż Khan 270 Baybek 195-196 Abū Ḥanīfa 9 Baybughra Ajıbay uulu 164, 176 Abū Ṭahir Khwāja 31 Baygozï Yangeldi 240 Aghaev (Ageev), A.F. 121 fn. 37 Baysal 199-200, 203 Aḥmad b. Ḥafīẓ ad-Dīn al-Barāngavī 18, 19, Baytik 190, 200, 203 247, 249-250, 252, 260, 262-264 Bayzak 191 Aḥmad Kāsānī Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam 32 Becker, S. 275 Aḥmadī b. Iḥsān al-Mamsavī 253 Beisembiev, T.K. 27-28, 278 ʿAynī, Ṣ. 287 Belek 161, 164 Alabash 196 Benjamin, W. 10 Alghazı Sheralı uulu (also Alghazı Batır) Berkbay [?] Biy 166 164, 175-176 Bezrodnyi, Senator 223 ʿAlī 31, 49-50 Bīkchantāy b. Ibrāhīm al-Baraskavī 252 Alıbay 192 Bīk Muḥammad Āqsaqāl 278 Alıke 194 Birdī Murād, eldest son of Tilav Bāy Alıkulov, Barpı 197-198, 203 (q.v.) 300, 302-303, 306-322 ʿĀlim Khan 271 Bogorston 195 Allsen, T. 210 Borombay Bekmurat uulu (also Boron- Altay, Qazaq tribe 240 bay) 148-150, 155-157, 159, 161-162, 165, Altıbasar 162, 175-176 168-169, 175 Amīr Ḥaydar 267, 271 Bregel, Y. 26 fn. 12, 67 fn. 6, 115 fn. 12, 271 Amir Naṣrullāh 25 Bughu (also Bugu) 139, 144, 148, 155-157, Anan’ev 129 160-163, 165-169, 175, 189-190, 192-193, 195- Andreev, I. 143-144 196, 203 Andronikov, A. A. 116, 117 fn. 18, 19; 118 fn. Bulat Gabaidullin 220 fn. 34 20, 21; 119, 121, 128-129, 131-132 Burnes, A. 58 Arbāb Jūra 292-293 Arstanbek 189, 194, 203 Carrère d’Encausse, M. 275 Ashırbay 199-200 Chaikovskii, A.P. 39-40, 47, 98 328 index of persons and social groupings

Chalık uuru 195 Ïyman Biy 166 Chekhovich, O.D. 28, 30-31, 37 fn. 59 Ïrısqulbek Datqa 159-160 Chen, Ch.-L. 278 Chernyaev 38, 39 fn. 64 Janak 195 Chinggis Khan 212, 255, 259 Jangarach 195 Chıngısh 195 Jantay, Qarabek uulu 150, 154, 169-170, 176 Chınıbay Tilekmat uulu 190, 203 Jacquesson, S. 148 Courant, M. 142, 144 Joffe, M. 126 Jūra Bāy, younger brother of Tilav Bāy Dānyāl Biy 270 (q.v.) 299, 301, 305-307, 311-313, 317, 320- Davidovich, E.A. 30-31, 44 321 De Sant Loran 17, 232 DeWeese, D. 49, 249 Kalmırza 197-198, 203 Di Cosmo, N. 142, 210 Karıbek 199-200 Döölös 145 Kasımaalı Shaten uulu 192 Dunin-Barkovskii 78, 84 von Kaufman, K.P. 33-36, 38, 42-43, 46, Dzhamgerchinov, B. 147 48-51, 53-54, 58-59, 102, 113 Dür 196 Keldibek 199 Kenenbay 192, 196 Eltuzer 112 Kerei, Qazaq tribe 224, 238 Enikeev 78 Khiṭā᾿ī-Qipchāq, tribe 271 Ermolaev, M.N. 117, 118 fn. 21, 132 Khoroshkhin, A.P. 54 Eshkojo 195 Khudaiberdi, Qazaq tribe 224, 238 Ezhenkhanuli, B. 222 Khwāja Bāy 284-285 Kireev, F.N. 222 Friuling, I.I. 119 Kislyakov, N.A. 276 Kolpakovskii, G.A. 158, 160, 162-163, 169, 175 Geins, A. 49-50, 56 fn. 124 Kongurölöng 196 Gel’man, V. 125 Kostenko, L.F. 58 Gens, G.F. 49-50 Krivoshein, A.V. 68, 74, 85, 88-91, 93, 97, Ginzburg, Carlo 10 100-102, 107, 126-129 Girs 46 Kun, A.L. 36-38, 40-41, 45, 56 fn. 124 Gomzin 46 Kurakin, Senator 223 Grebenkin, A. 51 Kuropatkin 104 Grodekov, N.I. 86 Lavzan Bāy 114 Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn, father of Aḥmad Lenin, V.I. 7 al-Barangavī 253 Levshin, A. 212 Ḥājjī Biy 278 Lykoshin, A.I. 79-80, 86, 89-91 Ḥākim Bīgī 278 Lykoshin, N.S. 96, 103, 114, 117, 120-124, 126, Herzfeld, M. 182 128-130, 132-133 Holdsworth, M. 275 Maḥmūd Khalīfa 254 ʿIbadullāh b. Khwāja ʿĀrifī Bukhārī 26 Mambetaali 196 Ichkilik 200 Manap Ormon 166-167 Idris Islam oghlï 230-231, 240 Maqṣūdov 121 Ilibay 260-261 al-Marghīnānī, B. 9 Imam Afandi 257-259 Martson, F.V. 131 Isagaalı 196 Masanov, N. 211 Isfandiyār Khan 15, 116, 118-121, 124, 126, 129- Masevich 222 132 Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpey-ulï 219, 261-262 index of persons and social groupings 329

McChesney, R. 210, 225 fn. 51 Qamaraddin-hazrat 231 Mikhailov 47 Qarach Biy 166 Millward, J. 210 Qarpyq, Qazaq tribe 230 Mir-Ṣiddīq al-Qazānī 254 Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Baqā Khwāja 280, Mishchenko, P.I. 72, 86 289 Moiseev, V. 211 Qāżī Mullā Muḥammad Hādī Khwāja Morgan, D. 210, 214 Ṣudūr 283, 289 Muḥammad Amīn Khan 112 Qāżī Mullā Mīr Sirāj al-Dīn Ṣudūr 284, 291- Muḥammad b. al-Ḥanafiyya 31, 49 292 Muḥammad-Fātiḥ al-Īlmīnī 249 Qilich Niyaz Bay 112 Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy Atālīq 270 Qılıch Biy 166 Muḥammad Ḥakīm Biy Dīvānbīgī 267 Qoqan Muŋlubay oghlï 240 Muḥammad Raḥīm Biy 270, 278 Qudayqul 171 Muḥammad-Sharīf al-Kirmānī 252 Qulubet Ishkini oghlï 240 Muḥammad Yūsuf Bayānī 114 Qurbān-‘Alī Khālidī 249, 262 Mullā ʿInāyatullāh Khwāja Raʼīs 292 Qurbān Āy 7 Mullā Muḥammad Yaʿqūb 289 Mullā Nār Bāy 280-281, 287 Radloff, W. 145-146, 276 Muratalı Pirnazar uulu 163-166 Rafīq b. Makāy b. Mamatāy 252 Murtażā b. Qūtlighïsh as-Simatī 252 Raziqulov, M.R. 41 Mustafin, V.A. 85-89, 91 Riabushinskii, P. 123 Rostislavov, M.N. 45-46, 56 fn. 124 Nabiev, R.N. 27, 31 Robinson, R. 59 Nādir Shāh 270, 277 fn. 39 Sadır ake 190 Nārāṭ Bāy 255-256 Sagin 196 Naṣrullāh Khan 271 Sāmī 48 Naymanbay Balık uulu 199, 203 Samsalı Biy 166 Nalivkin, V.P. 58, 117 fn. 17 Samsonov, A.V. 86, 89-91, 120 Nikolai Konstantinovich, Grand Duke 115 Sarıbaghısh 139, 144-146, 148-150, 155-157, fn. 11, 13; 125 fn. 53 160-161, 171, 188-190, 192-193, 203 Nikolaev, M.N. 46-47 Sarpek Saskin 162, 166, 169 Nikolaevskii, K.V. 117 fn. 19 Satıbaldı 157 Nıysha Sheralı uulu 162-163, 175-176 Savitskii, A.P. 55 Noda, J. and Onuma, T. 222 Sayaq (also Sayak) 139, 170, 188-191 Nurdöölöt Biy 166 Sayfī 142 Sayyid Islām Khwāja 118-119 Ormon Khan 150, 154, 159 fn 74, 166 Sayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm Khan 113-114, 115 Ostroumov, N.P. 117 fn. 17 fn. 11, 125 Ozerov 42 Schwarz, F. 24, 30-31 Ötömbay 197 Semënov, A.A. 26, 40 fn. 67 Semënov-Tyan-Shanskii, P.P. 157 fn. 66, 167 Pahlen, K.K. 33, 58, 71, 74, 82, 84-86, 91, 93, Shabdan Baatır 170, 190, 193, 196, 203 95, 100-102, 106 Shaniyazov, K. 30 Perdue, P. 209-210 Shaykh Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Khiyābānī 253 Pil’ts, A.I. 74, 84-86 Shapaq 175 Pravilova, E. 56 fn. 124, 57, 115 fn. 13 Shihāb ad-Dīn Marjānī 248, 253 Putilov, A.I 116, 117 fn. 18, 118 fn. 21, 119, 129, Shkapskii, O.A. 171 132 Shömekey, Qazaq tribe 260-261 Shubin, Lieutenant Colonel 227-228, 229 fn Qachıbek Sherali uulu 155, 162, 166, 175 56, 231, 240 Qalıghul Alıbek uulu 157-160, 163 Sneath, David 18, 140, 210, 213-214 330 index of persons and social groupings

Solto, Kyrgyz tribe 139, 144, 189-190, 195, 203 Toksobay 195 Soltonkul 190-193 Tülöberdi 195 Soltonoev, B. 145-146, 171, 190 Sooronbay Kudayar uulu 190, 193 ʿUbaydullāh b. Maḥmūd Khwāja Aḥrār 29 Stolypin, P.A. 79, 126 Uspenskii, G.I. 92 Ṣūfī Allāhyār b. Allāhqulī al-Bukhārī 262 Uwaq, Qazaq tribe 224, 232-234, 238 Sukhomlinov, V.A. 116 fn 16, 131 fn. 78 Ümötalı Ormon uulu 150, 166-167, 169 Sultan Chinggis, son of Wali Khan (q.v.) Ürpökbash 199-200 207, 232-236 Sultan Gabaidulla 216, 234 Valikhanov, Ch. (also Walikhanov) 155-157, Sultangalieva, G. 220 fn. 35 165, 167, 168 fn 92, 169-170, 219 Sultan Kenesarı Qasımov (also Kenesary Velyaminov, I.A. 227-228 Kasimov) 147, 150, 157, 234, 237 Vishnevskii, Major General 151-154 Sultan Khudaymendi Ishim Khan oghlï 227 Vrevskii, A.B. 125 Sultan Qoŋïr Qulzha Khudaymendi-oghlï Vyatkin, V.L. 222 207, 227-232, 236, 240 Sultanqul Albay uulu 164, 166 Wali Khan 223-225, 232 Sultan Sarzhan 234 Walīullāh al-Baghdādī 252 Witkiewicz, J. 260-261 Tamerlane (also Timur) 7, 53 Tilav Bāy 299-300, 302-311, 313, 313-321 Yudakhin, K.K. 146 Tilekmat Pirnazar uulu 164, 166 Yunus Biy (also Yunus Sheralı uulu) 166, Timaev, K.A. 74, 84-85 176 Tınay 150, 161 Yusupov, P.N. 131 fn. 78 Tınımseyit 194, 203 Togan, I. 210, 215 Zarpek 195 Tol’stoi, L. 10 Zeldin, T. 10 Toqsaba Biy 166 Zimanov, S.Z. 218 index of places 331

index of Places

Ablyk canton (volost’) 71 Chimbay 8 fn 21 Achi 203 Chimkent 50 Afghanistan 111, 214, fn. 21, 263 China 138, 143, 148, 173, 198 Aforinkent 41, 54 fn. 120 Chūpān Ātā tomb (Bukharan Emirate) 255 Akdzhar canton (volost’) 71 Chüy river (also Chu) 158 fn 70, 195 Akmolinsk province (oblast’) 221 fn. 38, Chüy valley (also Chu) 150, 190, 197, 203 227-228, 230 Chupan-Ata, mausoleum 31 Alatau military district (okrug) 158, 169 Aleksandrov-Gai 117 Dahbid 32, 48 Almaty 165 Dehnau 287 Aman-Karagai 233-234 Dih-i Nav, rural settlement (Samarqand dis- Aman-Kutan pass 94 trict) 302, 305, 307, 318 Amu-Darya river 111, 115 fn. 13, 119-124, 126- 133, 278 Eastern Turkestan 254 Andijan 78 Europe 58, 294 Anjiyan 197-200 Ankār Ghanchī (Bukharan Emirate) 289 Fergana 32, 40, 65, 69, 111 Aral Sea 111 Fergana province (oblast’) 69-70, 75, 79, Arka 197-200 84-85, 89, 91, 93-94, 98-102, 105, 118 fn. 20, Arsk 230, 240 132 Aulie-Ata district (uezd) 99, 103 Fergana Valley 254, 270, 278, 306 Ayaguz military district (okrug) 149, 157 Fort Petropavl 238 Babuk 232 Gadāy Tāpmas 280-281 Baghdad 8 Ghaziabad canal 112 Bālā-yi Nahr 291-292 Ghijduvān 273 fn 27, 284 fn. 50, 288-291 Balkh 269-270 Baranga (also Paran’ga), village in Urzhum district (q.v.) 250-251, 253-254, 259 Herat 278 Bengal 35 Hindu Kush 278 Beijing 221 Bīsh Duʿā, rural settlement (Bukharan India 263 Emirate) 284-285 Iran 112, 269 Black Sea Steppe 250 Issyk Kul lake 161, 188, 195, 203 British India 23 Hissar 25, 271 Bukhara 18-20, 27-29, 32-34, 38-40, 43, 55, Hungry Steppe 132 112-113, 118 fn. 20, 127-133, 218, 230-231, 247, 249, 251, 253-257, 260-264, 268-272, Janbulak (Narın region) 194 274-275, 277, 286, 290, 293, 295, 306, 316 Jaʿfarī, rural settlement (Bukharan Emir- Bukhara, People’s Republic 271-272 ate) 288 Buqan Mountains 260 Jizzakh 88, 90, 93, 103-104

Caspian Sea 115 fn. 13 Kara-Tyube canton (volost’) 98 Caucasus 59 Kara-Tyube river 97 Charjuy 117 Karkaralinsk 217, 223, 229 332 index of places

Kashghar 253, 278-279 Qarākūl 274, 290 Katta-Kurgan 43, 47, 51 Qara-Qum desert 67 fn 6, 111 Kazan 250, 253, 260 Qarghalï (Seitovskii Posad) 252 Ketmentöbö 197 Qarshi 260, 267 Khānābād, rural settlement (Bukharan Qazaq steppe 207-212, 217-218, 219 fn 34, Emirate) 267 221, 226, 235-237, 249, 261-262 Kharqān Rūd 273, 274, 280, 283-284, 286- Qizil-Qum desert 111 291, 295 Qūrghāshīm, rural settlement (Bukharan Khaṭcha, rural settlement (Bukharan Emir- Emirate) ate) 283-284 Qursa Pochmaghï village 252 Khayrabad rural settlement (Bukharan Emirate) 255, 259, 292 Russia (also Russian Empire) 35, 75, 79, 113- Khiva 8 fn 22, 111, 113, 118-125, 127-133, 262 114, 117, 120-124, 132, 133, 138, 143, 147-148, Khiyaban rural settlement (Bukharan Emir- 155, 158, 168-169, 173, 221 fn. 37, 224, 226, ate) 254 228, 230-231, 253, 260-262, 264 Khoqand 27-28, 34, 39, 42, 58, 138, 143, 160, 173, 230, 271, 278, 303, 305-306, 319-322 Saidan 54 Khorezm 111-112, 124 Samarqand 29, 31-32, 34-35, 41-42, 46-49, Khujand 39, 117 fn. 17 52-54, 94, 97, 253, 269, 271, 299-300, 305- Kichi Kemin 190 306, 311, 314, 316, 322 Kokchetav 217, 223, 232 Samarqand province (oblast’) 69, 88, 91, 93, Kulab 271-272 98, 100, 103 Kunia-Urgench 8 fn 22 Semipalatinsk 231, 249, 262 Semirech’e province (oblast’) 42, 74-75, 85, Lavzan canal 112, 114-117, 119 89, 91, 100, 103, 106, 162, 169 Lavzan dacha 117-119, 129-132 Shahabad canal 112 Shahrisabz 25, 34, 36, 271 Mawarannahr 254, 269 Shāvdār (also Shavdor) district (tūmān) 26, Mazarbashi village 253 302, 305 Miyānkāl 271 Shomālī-yi Rūd 274, 288 fn. 58 Moscow 38, 126 fn. 59, 221 Siberia 41, 144, 227 249 Murghab river 132 Sindh 48 St. Petersburg 36, 38, 45, 57, 66, 70, 75, 79, Namangan 79, 82-83, 102 81-82, 85, 94, 106-107, 116, 118, 128-129, 131 Narın 188, 194 fn. 78, 223-225 Novo-Urgench 118-119 Syr-Darya province (oblast’) 43, 46-47, 70, 75, 87, 89, 93-94, 99-100, 103, 105 Old Urgench 119 Syrymbet 17, 223 fn. 46 Omsk 155, 157, 207, 219, 220 fn. 35, 221, 229, 232-234, 237, 240 Tajikistan 111 Omsk province (oblast’) 223 fn. 46 Talas 99, 203 Orenburg 220 fn. 35, 221, 234, 252 Tashkent 29, 47, 49-50, 78, 82, 85, 96, 98, 106-107, 128-129, 221, 230-231, 262, 269, Panjāb 267 272, 278 Panj Jū canal area 293 Tashkent district (uezd) 69-71, 89, 91 Pavlodar 261-262 Tashkichü 252 Petroaleksandrovsk 8 fn 22, 117 fn. 17 Tezhen river 132 Petropavlovsk 249, 253, 259, 262 Tobol’sk 219, 227-229, 238, 240 Peishambe 43, 54 Toqmaq 160 Penjikent 35 Tian Shan 137 Pishpek 160, 188 Transcaspia, region 74, 93, 100 Przhevalsk 188, 190-191 Troitsk 249, 262 index of places 333

Turkestan, city of 50 Yanghikent, rural settlement (Bukharan Turtkul (also Petroaleksandrovsk) 8 fn 22 Emirate) 267 Yany-Kurgan canton (volost’) 88, 90-91 Ufa 220 fn. 35, 230, 240 Yarkand 196 Ura-tepe 3 fn 5, 28, 39, 46-47 Yekke Bāgh rural settlement (Bukharan Urzhum district 250, 252 Emirate) 272 Ust-Yurt 67 fn 6 Uzbekistan 13, 111, 274, 287, 299 Zaamin canton (volost’) 103 Uzboy 67 fn 6 Zarafshan military district (okrug) 33-35, 42-43, 47, 49 Vernoe 158, 162 Zarafshan river 274 fn 27. Viatka province 250 Zarafshan valley 18, 24, 25, 33, 39-40, 44-46, Volga-Ural region 249, 252, 261 50-51, 59, 276 Zengiata canton (volost’) 71 Xinjang 278 Zindānī district (tūmān) 254 334 index of places