Where Did the Mullahs Go? Oral Histories from Rural Uzbekistan

Abstract

Oral histories with elderly collective farmers in Uzbekistan, who recalled the establishment of their collective farms in the 1930s, depict the closing of village mosques and the disappearance of many rural mullahs. Anti-religious policies focused on Islamic institutions and paid functionaries; however, mullahs were left in many villages, and they continued to lead Islamic practices clandestinely. Religious leaders who had never been closely tied to Islamic institutions, such as otins (women religious leaders) were not targeted for arrest and removal. Our respondents remembered times when it was difficult to engage in any practice of Islam publicly, but they emphasized that nonetheless, community members fulfilled the ritual that they deemed most essential: the funeral prayer.

Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road

“…A few years ago, the Silk Road concept was rejuvenated and led to the foundation of the Eurasian Economic Union, and suddenly the concepts of Russian Orientalist scholars, specifically those of ethnographers, were back in focus (Kamp 2010;Stronski 2011;Tolz 2011;Huhn 2016;Sartori 2016). Of particular relevance in this respect is their view that Russia formed a continental bridge between Asia and Europe.…”

“…The plan's directives were chiefly targeted at the female reserve army of labour. Campaigns against religious practice (Kamp 2010), above all against wearing the veil, alternated with the attempted promotion of women into leading positions (Iusupov 1930, 47-49). Literacy campaigns and the provision of medical care were to keep women away from the mullahs.…”

The Missing Turkish Revolution: Comparing Village-Level Change and Continuity in Republican Turkey and Soviet Central Asia, 1920–50

“…94 By 1929, the majority of Islamic scholars had been killed, imprisoned, or exiled, 95 and many had escaped to distant villages where they could still make a living. 96 Furthermore, as a new generation of local Bolsheviks trained in Soviet educational institutions moved into positions of authority, the Communist Party also purged progressive Muslim intellectuals, whose services and mediation it had initially used, thereby ridding itself of all vestiges of the past regime. 97 Whereas many institutions and practices of the old order had an afterlife, such as officially closed mosques that continued to function secretly or women who unveiled at party meetings only to reveil "to walk back home," 98 changes at the turn of the 1930s in the form of the collectivization of land and the expansion of cotton monoculture decisively broke authority structures and communal solidarities in sedentary Central Asia.…”