HAOL, Núm. 4 (Primavera, 2004), 43-57 ISSN 1696-2060 NATIONALITY OR RELIGION? VIEWS OF CENTRAL ASIAN ISLAM (1901-1991) H. B. Paksoy Texas Tech University, USA. E-mail: [email protected] Recibido: 15 Marzo 2004/ Revisado: 17 Abril 2004/ Aceptado: 11 Mayo 2004/ Publicación Online: 15 Junio 2004 Resumen: As the historical vista has already Central Asia despite their fascination with the indicated, nationality does not necessarily equal area. What they did not know, the authors religion, or vice-versa. Both attributes form created3. Only later would the Westerners begin parts of an identity defining function, as seen fit to learn the Central Asian languages and by the polity or the individual concerned. This is dialects, in order to read what the Central Asians naturally true for Central Asians as well, as they had written about themselves. have been buffeted by numerous waves of assaults, political or religious, on their identities The designation Altai, as Ozbek and Kazakh, are over time stretching across millenia. Added to primarily geographical, tribal or confederation that mix are other elements, such as names, not ethnonyms. Those appellations were consciousness of origins as defined by leavening mistakenly or deliberately turned into 'ethnic' or documents and linguistic affinity. This paper 'political' classifications by early explorers or explores the basics of the mix that forms the intelligence agents arriving in those lands ahead underlying factors. Nationality, religion, Central of the Russian armies and bureaucrats. Early in Asia, literature, politics, anthropology, Soviet the 8th century, the Turks themselves provided Union, ethnography, orientalism, democracy, an account of their identity, political order and nation-building, military, fundamentalism, history. These were recorded on the scores of history. stelea, written in their unique alphabet and Palabras Clave: anthropology, Central Asia, language, and erected in the region of Orkhon- democracy, ethnography, fundamentalism, Yenisey4. This information is corroborated in history, literature, military, Nationality, nation- earlier written sources, in the Byzantine and building, orientalism, politics, religion, Soviet Chinese chronicles, the Turks' Western and Union. Eastern neighbors, respectively. Most ______________________ mountains, cities, lakes, deserts, rivers in this region, from early historical times until the 1. INTRODUCTION Soviet period, carried names of Turkish origin5. oday, many authors use the designation Thus language alone was no sure indicator of "Muslim" in their analyses when ethnicity, for the educated came to be versed in T referring to the territories or people of the major languages of the Islamic world at Central Asia. This is a relatively new Arabic, Persian and later, Turkish. Yet, the phenomenon among a long string of differences among them remained. Many pre- classifications. Central Asia was was labelled Islamic values of each culture survived the "Tartary", or "Independent Tartary" by romantic transition to Islam and was preserved in the European cartographers and travellers in the native language of each people. Islamic period 15th-17th centuries, and the inhabitants were works of various courts reflected the retention of called 'Tartar'1. Perhaps Christopher Marlowe traditional values. Among the "mirror for (1564-1593), by writing fiction about Timur (d. princes" works6 the earliest is the Turkish- 1405), with a stretch of imagination calling him Islamic work of statecraft, the 11th c. Kutadgu Tamburlane2, is one popular source of this Bilig. It calls upon the king to be a just ruler, peccadillo. But Marlowe's and like-minded mindful of the needs of the people, and thereby authors' writings also betray the inadequate echoes older traditions7. information the Western world possessed on © Historia Actual Online 2004 43 Nationality or Religion? H. B. Paksoy Those Central Asians farthest from the border of (Afghanistan), a possible stepping-stone to an Islamic lands were the last to adopt Islam and invasion of India, or so the British feared. retained their traditional beliefs to the greatest England thereafter strove to gain a foothold in degree. The Kazakh and Kirghiz of the steppe Iran as both she and Russia competed for legal were converted to Islam only in the late 18th- and economic concessions there as a means to early 19th centuries by Volga Tatars thanks to exert political influence11. The Great Game also policies of Catherine II, of Russia (r. 1762-96), had a Far Eastern component manifested in its who apparently hoped that Islam would soften advances against China and a series of unequal those populations and make them more treaties signed with Chinese rulers after 185812. receptive to the tsarist empire. She allowed the Later in the 19th century, competition for Tatars to represent her court in Transoxania colonies and for influence in Central Asia grew trade. On the way, the merchants were sharper. Political deadlocks in Europe often led encouraged to form settlements and convert the Powers to carry their rivalry to Asia or nomads8. The Kazakh and Kirghiz, even today, Africa. Russian gains in the Russo-Turkish war retain much of their pre-Islamic way of life of 1875-1877 alarmed Europe which feared a including mastery of the horse, drinking kumiss9 Power imbalance, but especially Britain, always and extensive personal independence of women concerned over lines of communication with so characteristic of steppe societies10. India. The resulting Congress of Berlin (1878), hosted by German Chan fruits of her victories Thus Arabs remained Arabs; Persians, Persians; and also awarded the island of Cyprus to the and Turks remained Turks. In the 19th and 20th British, assuring British dominance in the centuries, the non-Arabs would debate the real eastern Mediterranean. Though this arrangement meaning of Islam for them and its role in their by Bismarck and British Prime Minister identities. The tension, even hostility, among Benjamin Disraeli soothed British nerves, it them remained as well, and is documented by angered the Russians, seriously damaging the slurs and stereotypes, and by frequent German-Russian relations. To the Russians, warfare (up to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s) expansion in Central Asia promised more despite the ideal and rhetoric and dreams of certain returns on Russian 'investments'. Islamic brotherhood and the indivisibility of the umma. During the 1890s, the British and Russians negotiated the Russian-Afghan border, The 'Great Game', the Anglo-Russian established Afghanistan as an official 'buffer' competition for land and influence across Asia, under English influence in 1907-1909 and was played in two adjacent arenas. The main thereby called a halt to the Great Game, at least arena was Turkistan-Afghanistan, where tsarist for the time being13. Perhaps Britain had been armies moved south to annex the former as the pushed to the limit of tolerance and Russia knew British tried to keep them north of the latter, in that in a direct military conflict, victory could defense of British India. Second, but in some not be assured. Certainly both Powers feared the respects more complex, was the Caucasus-Iran rise of Germany, mainly in Europe and on the threater. Caucasia was the place where the Great seas, but also in the scramble for African Game met the Eastern Question, the multipower colonies and because Germany was entering the struggle over the eastern Mediterranean and the Great Game. German interests envisioned a fate of the Ottoman Empire. The Russian railroad from Berlin to Beijing, through the conquest of the Caucasus entailed two Russo- length of the Ottoman Empire and Central Asia. Iranian wars (1806-1813 and 1826-1828) and Due to the political and military conditions on one Russo-Ottoman war (1828-1829). Russian the ground, the project was scaled down, and the power was now closer to the Mediterranean (and railroad turned south towards Baghdad remained therefore Suez, a gateway to India) and to entirely within the Ottoman Empire. India's neighbor Iran. Perhaps more worrying for the British, the Russo-Iranian Treaty of The Great Game was not limited even to these Turkmanchai (1828) granted Russia concessions political, diplomatic and economic moves. in Iran: Russian goods imported into Iran would European states systematically acquired, stored be exempt from internal tariffs; Russian subjects and studied knowledge of the "Orient" in the would not be subject to Iranian law; only Russia proliferating state-sponsored Oriental could maintain a fleet on the Caspian. The latter Institutes14. European Orientalists, in service of potentially enabled Russian forces to land on the their governments, laid the foundation for southeast Caspian shore, closer to Herat policies like Christian proselytization in 44 © Historia Actual Online 2004 H. B. Paksoy Nationality or Religion? education and publishing, but also elaborated 2. THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY justifications for Europeans' 'civilizing' the peoples of Central Asia. Among these was the In 1905-1906 the defeat of the tsarist Russians notion of "Pan-Turkism"15. by the Japanese began a new chapter against the Russian colonial rule in Central Asia. Since the "Pan-Turkism" or "Pan-Turanism" was tsarist military occupation of Central Asia, one ostensibly a movement by Turks to establish of the inflexible Russian policies was the hegemony over the world, or at least Eurasia. In imposition of limits on printed material in fact, this "Pan" movement has no historical