Chapter 3
The Origins of Jadidism

In 1899, a young man of twenty-five boarded the Transcaspian Railway in Samarqand and headed off to Transcaucasia on his way to Istanbul, Cairo, and Mecca. The journey was to be a turning point in the life of Mahmud Khoja ibn Behbud Khoja, who later took the surname, in the Tatar fashion then becoming popular, of Behbudi. In his travels Behbudi saw current developments in public education in the Ottoman empire and Egypt and met leading figures concerned with cultural reform. Upon his return to Samarqand eight months later, he took out a subscription to the newspaper Terjüman , published by the Crimean Tatar reformer Is-mail Bey Gasprinskii (1851-1914) in Bahchesaray. Behbudi's public career began with the appearance of his first essays in the official Turkistan wilayatining gazeti (TWG) in 1902 and proved to be the most illustrious of his generation. He also supported a school that taught literacy according to the new method championed by Gasprinskii. Over the years, he wrote a number of general information books as well as primers for new-method schools; he edited and published a newspaper and then a magazine of his own. His publishing activities expanded considerably and in 1913 he opened a bookstore that stocked books from all over the Muslim world. That same year he became Central Asia's first playwright when his Padarkush (The Parricide) opened in Samarqand. Down to the premature end of his life in 1919 he continued to exhort his compatriots to "awake from their sleep of ignorance" and acquire the knowledge that the new age demanded.

Yet for all his enthusiasm for reform, Behbudi (1874-1919) came from the old cultural elite of Turkestan. His father was qazi in the village of Bakhshi Tepe on the outskirts of Samarqand, and Behbudi was taught the standard madrasa texts of the time at home by his father and uncles. But his father died when Behbudi was twenty, and he was forced to find work. He worked as mirza (scribe) to an uncle who served as qazi, before becoming a qazi himself.^[1] The family was prosperous enough for Behbudi to travel abroad, and he was astute enough not to squander his wealth. In 1913, he owned houses in both the Russian and native parts of Samarqand (he himself lived in the Russian part) as well as ten desiatinas of agricultural land. He also traded in grain in addition to keeping his position as a mufti in Samarqand.^[2]

Behbudi's experience was exceptional only in that he was the most prominent figure in the Jadid movement that arose in Central Asia around the turn of the twentieth century. He was very much a figure of his time, experiencing the world in a manner that would have been impossible for his compatriots a generation earlier and making use of forms of communication and organization that had not existed before. Behbudi's career embodied all the seeming paradoxes of Muslim cultural reform in Central Asia: Its most vocal proponent was rooted in the tradition of Muslim learning, yet advocated the adoption of new cultural forms; although Jadidism generally raised the hackles of Russian officialdom, its earliest expressions emerged in the organ of officialdom; and although it was a response to Russian rule, its most constant feature was a ruthless critique of Muslim society. These are paradoxes, however, only if we insist on seeing Jadidism merely as a "response" to colonization or "the challenge of the West," an expression of nationalism, directed solely at the colonizer. The "challenge" was not inherently obvious to all. Rather, Jadidism is to be located at the intersection of Russian cultural policies and processes of social and economic change set in motion by the Russian conquest which put older patterns of cultural production under

[1] Typically also for the Jadids, details of Behbudi's biography are not well known. Apart from Behbudi's own copious writings, our best source for biographical information is an article by his disciple, Haji Muin [Shukrullah], "Mahmud Khoja Behbudi (1874-1919),"Zarafshan (Samarqand), 25 March 1923; see also Sherali Turdiev, "Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy,"Muloqot , 1994, no. 3-4, 44-48; and Ahmad Aliev, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy (Tashkent, 1994).

[2] TsGARUz, f. 461, op. 1, d. 1312, l. 665; see also the reminiscences of Behbudi's daughter in Solih Qosimov, "Behbudiy wa jadidchilik," Ozbekiston adabiyoti wa san"ati , 19 January 1990.

strain and allowed new voices to emerge. Jadidism was both a social and a cultural phenomenon.

The First Generation

The advocacy of comprehensive modernizing cultural reform was not the "natural" outcome of Russian conquest. Indeed, the dichotomy of Russian and native served to reinforce existing cultural practices as essential markers of difference. The authority of the decorated notables rested on their status as intermediaries between Russians and natives; the clear demarcation of boundaries between the two as separate entities came to be of crucial importance to them. Cultural practices—texts, dress, food, posture, gesture—and the manner of their reproduction became the bedrock of a traditional way of life that differentiated natives from Russians, Muslims from Christians. The ultimate authority for this newly objectified tradition rested in "Islam," which was inextricable, as I have argued, from the practices surrounding its transmission. The Russians had seen in Islam the essence of Central Asia's otherness. For rather different reasons, an appeal to Islam became the source of the new elites' authority.

The notables, as intermediaries between society and the colonial regime, kept a foot in both worlds. Wealthy merchants such as Said Azimbay built houses in the new Russian cities; many ulama accepted decorations from the state, learned Russian and sometimes sent their sons to Russian educational institutions. Sattar Khan Abdulghaffar oghli (1843-1901), a qazi in Chimkent at the time of the Russian conquest of the city, exemplifies the trajectory of many such individuals. In the dislocation following the Russian conquest of the town, Sattar Khan lost his position. He made the acquaintance, however, of a Muslim officer in the Russian army, a certain Yenikeev, from whom he learned Russian. Sattar Khan became convinced of the need for Central Asians to learn Russian; for three years, between 1871 and 1874, he taught Russian in a school that he established in Chimkent. Later, in 1881, he moved to Tashkent, where he worked as a translator for various government departments, including the offices of the TWG . In Tashkent, he lived in the Russian part of town in a house furnished in the European manner and sent his sons to the gimnaziia .^[3] Muhiddin Khoja, son of the last qazi kalan of Tashkent, was decorated with the orders of St. Stanislav and St. Anna. He

[3] N. P. Ostroumov, Sarty: etnograficheskie materialy (obshchu ocherk ), 3rd ed. (Tashkent, 1908), 190-215.

remained a qazi all his life, but he learned Russian and consorted with Russian officials. Although initially opposed to it, he taught Russian to his sons, one of whom attended the gimnaziia . But Muhiddin also taught that son the usual madrasa texts at home and married him off at the age of sixteen.^[4]

The colonial regime had left the practice of Muslim law intact; it also allowed for the survival of the maktab and the madrasa. Kaufman's cultural policies stemmed from his general outlook on Islam. Properly ignored and deprived of state support, maktabs and madrasas would automatically lose their attraction for the population. The state was to be concerned with attracting the local population to Russian schools, where they would study together with Russian students. Kaufman saw as the aim of the educational system the creation of "useful citizens of Russia" regardless of religion.^[5] Since the basic aim of public education in the region "must be its development in the direction of Russian interests ... the religious convictions of the natives must remain without any encroachment and schools for natives must not have a confessional character."^[6] The state was to support only Russian schools, where Russians and natives would study together, for only such education could produce the useful citizens Kaufman foresaw. Kaufman concentrated his efforts on the Qazaqs, where education would allow "[us] to fulfill the humanitarian responsibility of drawing them into the family of civilized peoples ... [as well as] to distance them from Muslim influence that have already begun to appear among the nomads."^[7]

The local population in its turn steadfastly ignored the new institutions (see Table 4). The numbers of Muslims in Russian institutions remained minuscule, and most of this small number belonged to Tatar or Qazaq families, or were sons of the decorated notables. On the other hand, the maktab and the practices associated with it continued. Traditional Muslim education retained its prestige and its value after the conquest. To be sure, the period of conquest did prove disastrous for many madrasas, as in the confusion many waqfs were embezzled and turned into private property.^[8] Upon the conquest of Samarqand, waqfs benefit-

[4] Ibid., 121-131.

[5] Ostroumov, Konstantin Petrovich fon-Kaufman, ustroitel' Turkestanskogo krata (Tashkent, 1899), 49.

[6] S. M. Gramenitskii, Ocherk razvitiia narodnogo obrazovamia v Turkestanskom krae (Tashkent, 1896), 4-5.

[7] Quoted by K. E. Bendrikov, Ocherki po tstorn narodnogo obrazovaniia v Turkestane (1865-1925 gody ) (Moscow, 1960), 64.

[8] N. S. Lykoshin, Pol zhizni v Turkestane (Petrograd, 1916), 68.

ing properties located in Bukhara were confiscated while the amir of Bukhara refused to allow muitawallis ("trustees") from madrasas in the conquered territories to collect revenues in his domains.^[9] According to the 1886 legislation, endowed populated lands passed into the possession of those who worked them, while the status of other kinds of waqf property had to be verified and confirmed by the local uezd administration.^[10] New waqfs could be established only with the permission of the governor-general himself, and waqf property was subject to local taxes.^[11] This process proceeded with the usual glacial speed, and many claims were rejected on technicalities.^[12] Despite such difficulties, though, the cultural authority of madrasas and the knowledge to be acquired in them remained intact and young men continued to consider spending several years in residence a worthwhile experience. According to some reports, the numbers of madrasas actually increased after the conquest, especially when the introduction of cotton through the 1890s increased the income of their waqfs manifold.^[13] During this period, the madrasas of

[9] N.A. Maev, "Dzhizak i Samarkand," Materialy dlia statistiki Turkestanskogo krata , 2 (1874): 271; Beliavskii, Matertaly po Turkestanu (n.p., n.d. [St. Petersburg, 1884]), 60.

[10] Polozhenie obupravlenii Turkestanskogo krata (St. Petersburg, 1886), §§ 265, 267.

[11] Ibid., § 266.

[12] V.P. Nalivkin, "Polozhenie vakufnogo dela v Turkestanskom krae do, posle ego zavoevaniia," Ezhegoduik Ferganskoi oblasti , 3 (1904): 1-56.

[13] This prosperity was, however, relative. According to Ostroumov, the combined waqf income of the thirty-seven madrasas in the city of Kokand was "not more than 50,000 rubles" on the eve of the First World War (N. P. Ostroumov, Vvedenie v kur's is-lamovedeniia [Tashkent, 1914], 183). Similarly, the waqf income of madrasas in Andijan city totaled 34,955 rubles in 1908 (A. Sharafiddinov, "XIX asr okhiri-XX asr boshlarida Farghona oblastida madaniy hayot tarikhidan," Obshchestvennye nauki v Uzbekistane , 1978, no. 2, 27). In contrast, in 1908, the Tashkent men's gimnazna alone had an annual budget of 73,913 rubles (although tuition fees accounted for 21,512 rubles): K.K. Palen, Otchet po revizii Turkestanskogo krata, proizvedennot po Vysochaishemu poveleniiu Senatorom Gofmeistorom grafom K. K. Palenom , 19 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1910), VI: 153.

Kokand were especially densely populated and attracted students even from Bukhara. New madrasas were founded after the conquest: Of the fifty-eight madrasas in existence in Samarqand oblast in the years 1892-1893, no fewer than ten had been founded since the conquest, and thirty-six in the nineteenth century.^[14]

The earliest commentaries on the changed fortunes of Central Asia came in traditional genres. The feeling of a world turned upside down expressed in these lines by Zakirjan Furqat 1858-1909), the popular Kokand poet, was widely shared in the literary milieu of the first generation after the conquest:

Ah! The commonfolk are honored, the learned wretched
The unwise hold their heads high, and the wise are trampled underfoot And the exalted have become lowly, and the lowly exalted.^[15]

Chronicles by disaffected court officials such as Ahmad Makhdum Danish and Abdulaziz Sami in Bukhara continued to cast the narrative of the decline of Muslim fortunes in Central Asia in the same framework well after the turn of the century.^[16] Many poets, however, went beyond such laments and used verse to describe, with praise or satire, many of the new phenomena they witnessed. Much of this poetry appeared in the TWG , which, along with its longtime editor N. P. Ostroumov, played a central (if seemingly paradoxical) role in the articulation of new voices.

Historians have tended to dismiss the TWG all too hastily. In the influential opinion of Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, "Despite the considerably important role of Muslims in its publication, it [TWG ] was conservative, [and] very hostile to all manifestations of Jadidism.... Edited by Russians, [it] cannot be considered a true 'Muslim' newspaper."^[17] A closer look shows that the newspaper's

[14] V.P. Nalivkin, "Svedeniia o sostoianii medrese Samarkandskoi oblasti v 1892/93 uchebnom godu" (ms., ca. 1894), TsGARUz, f. 455, d. 1, l. 20b.

[15] Quoted in A. Abdughafurov, Zokirjon Furqat: hayoti wa ijodi (Tashkent, 1977), 20.

[16] Ahmad Makhdum Danish, Traktat Akhmada Donisha "Istoriia Mangytskoi dinastii ," ed. and trans. I.A. Nadzhafova (Dushanbe, 1967 [ms. ca. 1890]); Sami, Tarikh-t salatm-i manghitiyya (1906), discussed m Jo-Ann Gross, "Historical Imagination, Cultural Identity and Change: 'Abd al-'Aziz Sami's Representation of Nineteenth-Century Bukhara," m Darnel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzerini, eds., The Russian Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples , 1700-1917 (Bloomington, 1997), 203-226.

[17] Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris, 1964), 25-27. Similarly, writers such as Baymirza Hayit (Turkistan Rusya ile Çin Arasinda , trans. Abdulkadir Sadak [Ankara, 1975], 168-170) and H. B. Paksoy (Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity under Russian Rule [Hartford, 1989], 19) see the newspaper only in the context of Ostrou-moves efforts to create a Sart language, and hence dismiss it as pernicious. For a recent defense of its place in Central Asian cultural history, see A. Jalolov and H. Ozganboev, Ozbek ma "rifatparwarlik adabiyotining taraqqiyotida waqth matbuotining orni (Tashkent, 1993), 17-59.

role was far more ambivalent. It began life in 1870 as a weekly supplement (with "Sart" and Qazaq editions alternating every week) to the Turkestanskie vedomosti printed at the newly established printing press at the military headquarters in Tashkent. In 1883, the Qazaq edition was abandoned altogether and the Sart version turned into a weekly newspaper in its own right; it became biweekly in 1908. The TWG was one of the first Turkic-language periodicals in the Russian empire, and except for two brief periods in 1906-1908 and 1913-1915, when a vernacular commercial press existed in Turkestan, it remained the only local newspaper in Central Asia in the tsarist period.

The newspaper was established by Kaufman's decree in order to "inform the populace of all manner of decrees issued by the governor-general." The first issue of the newspaper promised that "it will also include all kinds of news about trade and happenings in Tashkent and other cities."^[18] Its first editor was Shahimardan Ibrahimov, a Tatar from Oren-burg who worked as translator in the governor-general's chancellery. In its first years, the newspaper was aimed at native functionaries, whom it sought to keep abreast of the latest regulations and decrees; it also served to provide a record of Kaufman's comings and goings, and his conquests. The effect of these dreary reports (often written in convoluted prose that gave every indication of its origins in Russian bureaucratese) was lightened by the publication of tales from the Thousand and One Nights and random news bits from the Russian press. By the mid-1870s, however, the newspaper began publishing pieces by its readers, as well as "useful information" about the modern world. Useful information ranged from an account of the world's geography and the names of important states, through descriptions of hot-air balloons, railways, and telephones (as early as 1881), to instructions about the cultivation of cotton and silkworms. In 1879, when Ibrahimov went to Europe on vacation, he sent back descriptions of his travels for readers of the newspaper, thus providing the first description of Berlin in Central Asian Turkic. Readers' contributions usually recounted local affairs and scandals, but they also began to air opinions about the shortcomings of Central Asian society.

[18] TWG , 28 April 1870.

The arrival at its helm of Nikolai Petrovich Ostroumov in 1883 changed the newspaper. A student of Nikolai Il'minskii at the Kazan Spiritual Seminary, where he specialized in Arabic, Turkic languages, and Islam, Ostroumov (1846-1930) arrived in Tashkent in 1877 in the capacity of inspector of schools for Turkestan.^[19] Over time, he was to serve as director of the newly founded Turkestan Teachers' College, and then the director of the Tashkent men's gimnaziia . His education was solidly missionary, but in Turkestan, where Kaufman had prohibited proselytization by the Church, Ostroumov saw himself as an upholder of "Orthodox monarchism," using his orientalist learning to ensure the state's best interests in the region. His orientalist credentials attracted the attention of the authorities, and he soon had easy access to Kaufman and Cherniaev, who, during his brief tenure as governor-general between 1882 and 1884, appointed him editor of TWG , in which position he served until 1917. Over the years, Ostroumov became the resident expert on everything connected with local life, and the authorities routinely solicited his opinions on subjects ranging from Islamic dogma to policy concerning new-method schools; he also served as censor for books published locally. In addition, he maintained a copious correspondence with missionaries and orientalists, in Russia as well as abroad, and produced an astonishing amount of writing in a number of registers. His missionary interests are reflected in his translation of the Bible into "Chaghatay," as well as in the publication of a series of textbooks of Islamic studies. But such work was pushed to the background by his copious output on the archeology, ethnography, and history of Central Asia, which appeared in a steady succession of articles and monographs. As the epigraph to one of his books asserted, "It is necessary to study the moral constitution, the beliefs and the way of life of the Sarts in order to beneficially influence their lives."^[20]

Once understood, however, Sarts had to be enlightened, and that task Ostroumov made his own. Ostroumov's appointment as editor was part of a broader shift away from Kaufman's policies, as his successors became concerned with the local population's continued disinclination to learn Russian. The TWG was to be an instrument of the new policy of cautious enlightenment, and it was to be used much more effectively than

[19] Ostroumov's life and work have largely escaped scholarly notice; the most detailed treatment is m B.V. Lunin, Istoriografiia obshchestvennykh nauk v Uzbekistane: biobibliograficheskie ocherki (Tashkent, 1974), 259-271.

[20] Ostroumov, Sarty , epigraph.

had been the case in Ibrahimov's tenure as editor. Orientalism could enlighten orientals and do so in such a way that their interests coincided with those of autocracy. The TWG published useful information, enlightening but politically harmless, in its columns with redoubled effort. In 1891, Ostroumov made the acquaintance of the poet Furqat. At Ostroumov's invitation, Furqat visited the gimnaziia and the theater in the Russian part of Tashkent and wrote poems describing them that Ostroumov published in TWG . Ostroumov ensured that Furqat received a modest honor for his efforts.^[21] In 1891, when Furqat left Tashkent to travel through Istanbul, Greece, Bulgaria, Egypt, Arabia, and India (he eventually settled in Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan), he maintained his correspondence with Ostroumov, who continued to publish his poetry and correspondence in TWG .^[22] At the same time, Ostroumov encouraged contributions from the local population, and the TWG often hosted lively debate among its contributors. For Ostroumov, it was much better to have the natives debate matters under his watchful eye than on their own. Hence his suspicion of those—Tatars, Jadids, even other Russian officials—who encroached on his turf. Many poets and writers developed lasting personal friendships with Ostroumov, for apart from any personal charms, Ostroumov offered patronage and protection from the caprices of the bureaucracy. Others, such as the numerous Jadid writers who wrote for the TWG , although not personally beholden to him, maintained proper relations with him, for the paper he edited offered them a unique forum. The bitterest criticism of Ostroumov invariably came from Tatar writers, who were more likely to focus on his missionary background and his official position. When TWG ran a polemic against an article in the very first issue of Taraqqi in 1906, Ismail Abidi (Gabitov), its Tatar editor, bitterly denounced "this newspaper whose publisher and editor is the famous missionary Nikolai Ostroumov, while Mulla Alim [its "native" subeditor and contributor] is a writer who for several years has been selling his honor for thirty or thirty-five rubles a month."^[23] For Ostroumov, the reason for this attitude was simple: "Not having great success among the natives, progressive Tatars do not hide their dislike of the Editor of the native newspaper [TWG ], calling him a missionary in the civil sense, i.e., a Russifier, since he defended and de-

[21] A. Abdughafurov, "Zokirjon Furqat haqida yangi ma"lumotlar," in Furqat ijodiyoti (Tashkent, 1990), 34-40.

[22] Abdughafurov. Zokirjon Furqat , 44-101.

[23] Taraqqi , 5 July 1906.

fends the autonomy of the nationality and language of the natives of Turkestan from Tatar attempts to involve the Sarts in the progressive Tatar movement. The native newspaper more than once expressed distrust of such attempts and printed direct indications that the constitutions of Turkey and especially Iran will bring no good. Recent events justify this conviction of the Editor."^[24] Yet, for all this, Ostroumov maintained a long, if sporadic correspondence with Gasprinskii, who started publishing his Terjüman in the same year that Ostroumov became editor of TWG . The two editors exchanged subscriptions and invariably maintained a high level of civility both in print and in correspondence.^[25]

Jadidisms

Although it is impossible to date the beginning of Jadidism in Central Asia with any precision, by the end of the century poetry in praise of the theater and gimnaziia gave way to expressions of profound dissatisfaction with the current state of Central Asian society and passionate appeals for change. In its broad outline and its emphasis on elementary education, this new critique was inspired by similar currents of opinion among emergent cultural elites in other Muslim regions of the Russian empire. The term "Jadidism" came from the new (i.e., phonetic) method (usul-i jadid ) of teaching the Arabic alphabet pioneered by Gasprinskii in the Crimea in the 1880s. Gasprinskii traveled widely among the Muslim communities of European Russia (he visited Central Asia twice) spreading his message. In addition to the reform of the maktab, he advocated the acquisition of modern knowledge, the creation of new civic institutions, and the improvement in the position of women in Muslim society.^[26] From 1883 on, he single-handedly published the newspaper Terjü-

[24] "Raport Redaktora Turkestanskoi tuzemnoi gazety N. Ostroumova," 12 March 1910, TsGARUz, f. 1009, d. 150, l. 63.

[25] A small portion of this correspondence IS conserved m Ostroumov's personal archive (TsGARUz, f. 1009). When Gasprinskii died in 1914, TWG joined the Muslim press in mourning him; the obituary (TWG , 25 September 1914) was written by Mir Muhsin Shermuhammadov, and Ostroumov added an appreciation of his own.

[26] With work m the relevant archives not possible until very recently, the basic source on Gasprinskii's life remains the biography written by a disciple: Cafer Seydahmet, Gaspi-rail Ismail Bey (Istanbul, 1934); for a study of Gasprinskii's reform program, see Edward J. Lazzerini, "Ismail Bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1878-1914" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1973); and Lazzerini, "Ismail Bey Gasprinskii. (Gaspirali): The Discourse of Modernism and the Russians," in Edward Allworth, ed., Tatars of the Crimea: Their Struggle for Survival (Durham, N.C., 1988).

man to propagate his ideas.^[27] After an indifferent beginning, the new method became widespread among the Tatar populations of the Crimea and the Volga-Urals region. This success was linked to the emergence, after the middle of the nineteenth century, of an urban mercantile middle class among the Volga Tatars, who, living in the heartland of the empire, were directly affected by the escalating economic change in European Russia. The last half-century of the old regime saw an explosion of publishing activity among the Volga Tatars; modern schooling also become widespread and new genres of literary production emerged. Similar phenomena also developed in Muslim Transcaucasia.^[28]

The Russian conquest put Central Asia at the margins of the debates that accompanied the rise of Jadidism among those groups. As early as 1885, Terjüman had zoo readers in Turkestan,^[29] and it figures prominently in the intellectual biographies of every prominent Central Asian Jadid. Gasprinskii himself was held in the highest esteem by Central Asian Jadids, many of whom were acquainted with him personally. Similarly, Jadid schools used Tatar textbooks until (and sometimes even after) local editions became available, and after 1905, the Tatar press served as the model for its Central Asian counterpart. In addition, some Muslims from other parts of the Russian empire came to Central Asia to teach in new-method schools. However, to assert that Jadidism in Central Asia arose simply as a result of Tatar influence or that it remained a pale reflection of a better organized movement in European Russia is inaccurate.

The view of Tatars as the prime movers of Jadid reform in Central Asia comes from two mutually antagonistic sources. On the one hand, it is rooted in the fears and suspicions of Russian officialdom of the period. Russian officials in Turkestan were always suspicious of Tatar influence,

[27] On Terjüman , see Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay, La presse , 37-42; Edward J. Lazzerini, "Ismail Bey Gasprinskii's Perevodchik/Terciiman : A Clarion of Modernism," in H. B. Paksoy, ed., Central Astan Monuments (Istanbul, 1992).

[28] Dzh. Validov, Ocherk istorii obrazovannosti i literatury tatar (Moscow, 1923; reprint ed., Oxford, 1986); Abdullah Battal Taymas, Kazan Turkleri , 3rd ed. (Ankara, 1988), chs. 11-14; Azade-Ayse Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience (Stanford, 1986), chs. 6-9; S. Hakan Kirimli, National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars (1905-1916 ) (Leiden, 1996); Alan W. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, 1978), ch. 10; Huseyin Baykara, Azerbaycanda Yenilesme Hareketi: XIX. Yuzyil (Ankara, 1966); Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of National ldentity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge, 1985); Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijam Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule (Stanford, 1992), esp. ch. 4.

[29] Z. Radzhabov, Iz istorii obshchestvenno-politicheskoi mysli tadzhikskogo naroda vo vtoroi polovine XIX i v nachale XX vv . (Stalinabad, 1957), 387.

pernicious by definition, over their new wards. Kaufman had early attempted to minimize such influence by attempting to ban Tatar printed books from his domain; lack of success in such attempts only strengthened the suspicions. Ostroumov complained to Gasprinskii in 1900: "I cannot, of course, determine the course of history, but I always regret that in three and a half centuries Tatars have remained aloof from the Russians and ... pass along their aloofness to other inorodtsy of the Muslim faith."^[30] Similar sentiments are legion in official correspondence from the period. Scholars, both Soviet and Western, have tended to accept this official view as an accurate reflection of a reality that was far more complex.^[31] This picture of Tatar influence also fit well with the self-image of many Tatars, who saw themselves as the natural leaders of the Muslim community in the Russian empire. It was their mission to awaken Central Asia to the cause of reform, and many took for granted that they would be able to dictate the terms of this awakening. Ultimately, however, Tatars wrote for a Tatar audience, in which Central Asians occupied a marginal place, and as their responses indicate, Central Asian Jadids were fully aware of this fact.^[32]

Professions by later émigré historians of a common bond against the Russians need not hide from view the ambivalence of Tatar opinion about Central Asia. On the one hand, the region exercised a fascination for many Tatar intellectuals, who saw it as the cradle of Turkic civilization, and in the years before the revolution, Nurshirvan Yavushev and Zeki Velidi (Togan) traveled to Central Asia for scholarly purposes.^[33]

[30] Ostroumov to Gasprinskii, n.d. [1900], TsGARUz, f. 1009, d. 90, l. 540b.

[31] Hélène Carrère d'Encausse ("The Stirring of National Feeling," m Edward All-worth, ed., Central Asia: A Century of Russian Rule [New York, 1967], 178), for example, in speaking of the leading role of the Tatars m Turkestan, cites A.V. Piaskovskii (Revoliutsua 1905-1907 godov, v Turkestane [Moscow, 1958], 102), who in turn cites a memorandum from the military governor of Syr Darya oblast to the Department of Police expressing disapproval of the spread of pan-Turkic ideas m Turkestan through Terjüman .

[32] Perhaps the most striking evidence of this is the long essay, "Turkistands bugunke hayat" (Contemporary Life in Turkestan), serialized in the Orenburg magazine Shura in 1916 and 1917. It yeas written by Abdurrauf Muzaffer, a Tatar functionary who served for many years m Turkestan. During his stay in Tashkent, he was involved m local cultural life, primarily as a regular contributor to ST (1914-1915). The tone of the essay is purely ethnographic, explaining an exotic land and its people to a home audience; the concern with the Turkestan, lack of progress is firmly pushed to the background.

[33] Yavushev, who spent several years m Turkestan and Chinese Turkestan, wrote copiously m both the Tatar and the Central Asian Jadid press about his travels as well as the history of the areas he visited. He died in 1917; his obituary is in Hurriyat , 17 November 1917. Ahmed Zeki Velidi (1890-1970) went on to become the leader of the Bash-kit national movement during the revolution and civil war, and later, in emigration, under the surname Togan, found renown as one of the foremost Turkologists of the century.

Containing half the empire's Muslim population, Central Asia also became important to Tatar politicians who founded the All-Russian Muslim movement in 1904. For others, the desire to spread the message neatly coincided with the necessity of getting a job. Tatars (and Transcaucasian Muslims) held a competitive advantage in the field of new-method education in Central Asia. Nevertheless, Tatars formed distinct communities in Central Asia cities, with their own schools and organizations, and those visiting from European Russia found Central Asia quite alien. Traveling in 1893, Mehmed Zahir Bigiev found himself surrounded by backwardness. The students in the famed madrasas of Bukhara and Samarqand surprised him by "their complete ignorance of the world"; his guides could not answer his questions; numerous customary practices, "holdovers from paganism," contravened explicit commands of the shariat; and the position of women was "extremely pitiable." All of this Bigiev contrasted to the situation in "our Russia [bizim Rusya ]."^[34] According to a Tatar employee of the police department who traveled incognito in Ferghana in 1909 to gauge the "mood of the population" (a common exercise), Tatars had stopped interacting with the local population, which they referred to as iilek khalïq (dead people) for reasons of their political inertia.^[35] This impatience with Central Asia also led to constant criticism in the Tatar press. The Muslim press in Transcaucasia was no kinder to Central Asia. The illustrated satirical magazine Mulla Nasreddin of course spared nobody, but the Baku newspaper Iqbal also ran numerous articles harshly critical of Central Asia. A certain Muhammad Said from Transcaucasia visited new-method schools in Turkestan in 1913 and 1914 and was not impressed by what he saw. First he lectured the schoolteachers of Turkestan in the local press on the shortcomings of their schools and their methods of teaching, and then he went home and declared in Iqbal that "there is not a single genuine and selfless teacher in Turkestan."^[36] All through 1914 and 1915, Iqbal kept up a barrage of criticism of Central Asia that was harsh even by prevailing standards. If the Jadids could come in for such treatment, the rest of society could expect little mercy.

In the end, different elite strategies defined the various styles of Jadidism in the Russian empire. These various Jadidisms shared several fea-

[34] Muhammed Zahir Bigiev, Maveraiinnabrda styahat (Kazan, 1908).

[35] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 540, l. 1780b.

[36] Muhammad Said, "Adab wa tarbiya,"Ayina , 10 May 1914, 557-559; 17 May 1914, 567-568; "Imtihan masalasi," ST , 11 May 1914. The article in Iqbal prompted a response from Abdulhakim Sarimsaqov, "Izhar-i haqiqat ya bayan-i hal,"ST , 8 July 1914.

tures (the new-method school, an emphasis on education, readership of common newspapers), but their proponents faced markedly different struggles in society. Volga Tatar Jadidism was defined by the concerns of a nascent mercantile middle class facing the consequences of economic change in the center of the empire along with intense pressure from the Church, which threatened to obliterate the very existence of the Tatar community, which had already been turned into a demographic minority. Among the Crimean Tatars and the Qazaqs, reform was first championed by aristocratic elites who had been coopted into the Russian social hierarchy, many of whom had Russian educations. In Transcaucasia, Jadidism arose in a situation of conflict with neighboring non-Muslim communities that threatened to marginalize the Muslim population in an oil-based industrial economy. In Central Asia, in the new social terrain that emerged in the first generation of Russian rule, reform was articulated by a group occupying a different position in society. Although Central Asian reformers appropriated the rhetoric and methods of the Jadids of European Russia, their use of them was defined by imperatives, constraints, and possibilities peculiar to Central Asia.

Once it is located in society, Jadidism does not appear as an undifferentiated intellectual movement emanating from a well-defined center to the periphery. Instead, there were many Jadidisms in the Russian empire, each with its own concerns rooted in local social struggles. This accounts for the fruitlessness of repeated attempts at cooperation at the all-Russian level, as illustrated by the lack of success of attempts to create a common Turkic literary language (a favorite project of Gasprinskii's) or to create a fully representative political movement.

The Jadids of Central Asia

In calling for society to reform itself, the Jadids of Turkestan set themselves up against the social order that had emerged in the generation after the Russian conquest. The Jadids most commonly called themselves ziyalilar (intellectuals) or taraqqiparwarlar (progressives). The term most often used by others in society was yashlar (the youth). The label usul-i jadidchilar or jadidchilar (proponents of the new method) was actually less frequently used, although it has acquired standard usage in scholarship. The emergence of the Jadids also created, largely as a residual category, their opponents, who came to be called usul-i qadimchilar , or qadimchilar (the proponents of the old method). The debate over reform had turned quotidian cultural practices into objectified traditions. But

the emphasis on the conflict of ideas implicit in these labels does not help us in locating the Jadids on the new social map, even though their place in society was to be of fundamental importance to their project.

The task of locating the Jadids in their society is not easy. Although the lives of the Jadids are chronologically not very distant, they can be extremely difficult to reconstruct. They were born in a society in which written documents did not mark a person's progress through life (although some of them developed a mania for documenting their lives), and few accumulated private papers. Even the concrete remains of their lives perished against the twin assaults of Stalinist repression and urban development. No plaques mark places where the Jadids lived and worked, for most have not survived; the few "house-museums" that exist have undergone so many changes that they fail to evoke the lives of their former occupants. Often the most basic details of their biographies are difficult to establish with any certainty. Nevertheless, as the following survey shows, it is possible to trace the basic outlines of a collective biography.

Behbudi remained the most respected Jadid in Central Asia down to the revolution. In Samarqand he found support from a number of active colleagues and disciples. His circles included Abdulqadir Shakuri, Ajzi, and Haji Muin. Shakuri's (1875-1943) father was an imam, and his mother ran a maktab for girls.^[37] He studied at the Arifjan-bay madrasa in Samarqand and taught children according to the old method in his village of Rajabamin on the outskirts of the city. Then he came in contact with Gasprinskii's Terjüman at a Tatar friend's shop and became a devotee of the new method.^[38] He opened one of the first new-method schools in his village and in time published three textbooks for use in such schools. He traveled to Kazan in 1909 and to Istanbul in 1912 to observe at first hand the workings of modern Muslim educational institutions.^[39] Sayyid Ahmad Siddiqi (1864-1927), who wrote under the pen name "Ajzi," was born in a family of modest means. Orphaned early, he was apprenticed to a watchmaker and worked for several years in this craft before going to Bukhara to attend a madrasa.^[40] He dropped out after two or three years and worked at various jobs, including a stint as a

[37] Wadud Mahmudî, "Muallim Abduqodir Shakurî," Sadoi Sharq , 1990, no. 8, 5.

[38] M. Fattaev, Vidnye pedagogi Samarkanda (Samarqand, 1961), 5-6; Mahmudî, "Muallim Abduqodir Shakurî," 7.

[39] Mahmudî, "Muallim Abduqodir Shakuriî," 22.

[40] Muhammadjon Shukurov, "Zindaginomai Ajzî," Sadoi Sharq , 1992, no. 2, 123-124.

scribe for the qazi of Khatirchi.^[41] Like all Jadids from Samarqand, Ajzi was perfectly bilingual in Persian and Turkic, and at about this time, he learned Russian from personal friends (two Russians and a Qazaq). Ajzi had inherited a parcel of land from his father, which he sold in 1901 to go on the hajj. He traveled in Turkey, Egypt, and Arabia (where he worked as a translator at the Russian consulate in Jeddah) for two years. On the way back, he visited Moscow and St. Petersburg before returning to Turkestan through the Caucasus. In Baku, he made the personal acquaintance of leading Transcaucasian Jadids. As for Behbudi, this trip acquainted Ajzi with contemporary intellectual life in other Muslim countries, and upon his return he opened a new-method school in his village.^[42] Ajzi was also active in publishing and started the Zarafshan Bookstore in Samarqand in 1914. He was an accomplished poet who contributed frequently to TWG as well as Behbudi's Ayina , but his biggest contribution to Jadid reform was two long poems in Persian (both later translated into Turkic), Anjuman-i arwah (The Gathering of Souls) and Mir'at-i ibrat (The Mirror of Admonition), which came to be the standard Jadid indictment of Turkestani society. Haji Muin ibn Shukrullah (1883-1942) was born in the family of a shopkeeper but orphaned at the age of twelve and brought up by his grandfather, whom he accompanied on hajj in. his youth. He established a maktab in Samarqand, which he switched to the new method in 1903. Over the next decade, he published a primer and poetry, in addition to being a regular contributor to both the Central Asian and Tatar press and translating between Turkic and Persian. After the success of Behbudi's first play in 1914, Haji Muin diverted his energies to writing plays for the stage and produced several pieces, of which three were published.^[43]

Tashkent was the largest center of Jadid activities. Its publishing trade was the largest, and its new-method schools most numerous in Turkestan. Munawwar Qari Abdurrashid Khan oghli (1878-1931) was in many ways Behbudi's counterpart there. Also born in a family of cultural accomplishment (his father and two elder brothers were mudarrises), Munawwar Qari attended the Yunus Khan madrasa in Tashkent before spending some time at a madrasa in Bukhara. He returned to

[41] Ibid., 124.

[42] Ibid., 125-126; Fattaev, Vidnye pedagogi , 20-21; see also Begali Qosimov, "Shoir khotirasini izlab," Sharq yulduzi , 1989, no. 10, 178-184; Shuhrat Rizaev, "Khalqdin yorliq istarman ...," Guliston , 1990, no. 8, 9-10.

[43] R. Muqimov, "Hoji Mum kim edi?" Muloqot , 1994, no. 5-6, 27.

Tashkent in 1901 and opened a new-method school. We know little about his personal motivation, although one author has recently hinted at the significance of his friendship with a Crimean Tatar.^[44] This school eventually became the largest and the most organized new-method school in all of Turkestan. Munawwar Qari also wrote numerous textbooks, ran a bookselling and publishing business, was instrumental in publishing at least two newspapers, and also became involved with theater after 1914. He was at the center of a gap , or a discussion circle, in Tashkent that provided the focus for Jadid activity in the city.^[45] Munawwar Qari's friends, disciples, and acquaintances included practically everybody involved in reform in Central Asia.

One of his closest comrades was Abdullah Awlani (1878-1934), whose father was allegedly a weaver^[46] but whose family was prosperous enough for Awlani to own a house in Tashkent, which he converted into a new-method school. In his youth, Awlani had attended both the maktab and madrasa. In his own words, around the age of fourteen, "I began reading Terjüman and became aware of the world."^[47] In 1908, he published the short-lived newspapers Shuhrat and Azya , subsequently authored several textbooks and collections of poetry (often for classroom use), and organized a reading room in Tashkent. He, too, was involved in publishing and was partner, along with ten other Tashkent Jadids, in the Maktab publishing company floated in 1914. After 1914, Awlani also wrote a number of plays for the theater, with which he was involved also as actor, director, and manager, founding Turkestan's first regular theater troupe in 1916.^[48]

In Ferghana, with its cotton-boom economy and many small towns, Jadid circles were more numerous and dispersed. One of the first advo-

[44] Sirojiddin Ahmad, "Munawwar qori," Sharq yulduzi , 1992, no. 5, 107.

[45] GARF, f. 102, op. 244 (1914), d. 74, ch. 84B, l. 71.

[46] This information comes from Awlani's own account of his life, written in 1933, when the need to find such proletarian origins was quite pressing; see Abdulla Awloniy, "Tarjimai holim," in Toshkent tongs, ed. B. Qosimov (Tashkent, 1979), 373-374. Despite Awlani's prominent position in the official pantheon, details of his life are sketchy, as existing biographies tend to focus on the period after 1917. See A. Bobokhonov and M. Mahsumov, Abdulla Awloniyning pedagogik faoliyati wa ta" lim-tarbiya toghrisidagi fikrlari (Tashkent, 1966); Abdulla Abdurazzakov, "Pedagogicheskoe nasledie uzbekskogo prosvetitelia Abdully Avloni" (Candidate's diss., Tashkent, 1979); U. Dolimov, "Abdulla Awloniy—atoqli metodist olim," in Milliy uyghonish wa ozbek filologiyasi masalalari (Tashkent, 1993), 40-50; and OSE , I, 14-15, s.v. "Abdulla Awloniy."

[47] Quoted by Bobokhonov and Mahsumov, Abdulla Awloniyning pedagogik faoliyati , 32-33.

[48] T.T. Tursunov, Oktiabr'skaia revoliutsiia i uzbekskii teatr (Tashkent, 1983),10-12.

cates of reform in the region was Ishaq Khan Tora Junaydullah oghli (1862-1937), who began writing in TWG in the 1890s. Like Behbudi, he came from a well-to-do family and likewise possessed madrasa knowledge (he had attended madrasa in Kokand and was qazi in his native village of Tora Qurghan). He had traveled in Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Chinese Turkestan for five years between 1887 and 1892. Upon his return home, he went into the publishing trade, which he used to publish his own work, including such useful books as a six-language lexicon and a compendium of scripts used all over the world. In 1908, he purchased a printing press, which he devoted largely to propagating the message of reform.^[49] By that time, new-method schools were widespread in Ferghana, and their teachers provided a substantial core for Jadidism. Again, many came from the older cultural elite. Ashurali Zahiri (1885-1942?), a prominent contributor to the press and author of the first guide to the orthography of Central Asian Turkic, had attended madrasas in Kokand and Bukhara.^[50] But perhaps the most active proponent of reform in Ferghana was Hamza Hakimzada Niyazi (1889-1929), whose background and activities encapsulated many characteristics of Central Asian Jadidism.

Hamza's father had studied in Bukhara and was one of the most renowned apothecaries of Kokand. He also wrote poetry and mingled with the literary elite of Kokand. He had traveled extensively in Chinese Turkestan and India, which is evidence of a certain prosperity.^[51] Hamza's education was traditional: After the maktab, he spent seven years in a madrasa in Kokand. Hamza wrote poetry in Persian and corresponded with his father only in Arabic. But by 1907, he began reading Vaqït and Terjüman , and, as he later recalled, "I began to think about old superstitions, about [reform] of the madrasas, changes in the people's life, civilization, and society."^[52] He had started working as a scribe in the office of Abidjan Mahmudov,^[53] but in 1910 he went to Bukhara to perfect his Arabic. He arrived, however, just as riots broke out in the city, and in-

[49] O. Usmon, Ozbekistonda rus tilining ilk targhibotchilari (Tashkent, 1962), 40; Aziz Bobokhonov, Ozbek matbaasi tarikhidan (Tashkent, 1979), 112-113; Ulughbek Dolimov, Ishoqkhon Ibrat (Tashkent, 1994).

[50] Iuldash Abdullaev, Ocherki po metodike obucheniia gramore v uzbekskoi shkole (Tashkent, 1966), 147.

[51] Siddiq Rajabov, "Ozbek pedagoik fikrining asoschisi," Ozbek tili wa adabryoti , 1989, no. 5, 15.

[52] Hamza, "Tarjimai hol," in Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy, Tola asarlar toplami , ed. N. Karimov et al., 5 vols. (Tashkent, 1988-1989), IV: 293.

[53] Personal document in Hamza, Tola asarlar toplami , V: 185.

stead he worked in a printing press in Kagan and returned by way of Tashkent.^[54] It was during this visit that he first saw a new-method school. He also made the acquaintance of a number of Jadids in that city. Upon his return to Kokand, Hamza opened his own school and began teaching. At some point during this period, Hamza had learned Russian (perhaps at a Russo-native school).^[55] In 1912, he married a Russian woman who converted to Islam. Almost immediately afterward, Hamza left, via Afghanistan and India, for hajj. He also visited Syria and Istanbul before returning through Odessa and Transcaspia to Kokand.^[56] Over the next five years, Hamza opened a number of schools in various cities of Ferghana, although some of them do not seem to have lasted very long. He also wrote a number of textbooks and primers for his use, although none was published. Other works did get published: articles in the Jadid press, several volumes of "national" poetry, a piece of fiction that may be considered the first attempt to write a novel in Central Asia, and several plays. Hamza was also involved in publishing and bookselling, a benevolent society (it does not seem to have had a very successful career), and a theater troupe. We have practically no information about Hamza's private life and only the sketchiest knowledge of his financial situation. Teaching seems to have been an economic necessity as much as a passion for Hamza, but he could also look for support from wealthy friends. He had worked for Abidjan Mahmudov in 1908, and when Mahmudov brought out the newspaper Sada-yi Farghana in 1914, Hamza wrote for it. His friends also included merchants such as Mir Zahid Mir Aqil oghli of Kokand and Said Nasir Mir Jalilov of Turkestan, both of whom helped him out with loans in times of need.^[57]

Hamza's roots were firmly in the tradition of Muslim knowledge reproduced in the madrasa, and he could utilize all the resources available to a well-connected man in cultivated society.^[58] Indeed, the number of Jadids who emerged from the cultural elite of the pre-Russian period is striking. A number of the most prominent Jadids were ulama in their own

[54] Hamza, "Tarjimai hol," 293-294.

[55] Rajabov, "Ozbek pedagogik," 15.

[56] Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziyning arkbwining katalogi, 2 vols. (Tashkent, 1990-91), I, 305. The fact that Hamza was a haji was never brought up in his Soviet biographies.

[57] Cf. several unpublished private documents in Hamza, Tola asarlar toplami , V: 189-192; see also Ghaffor Mominov, "Hamza biografiyasining bit sahifasi," Hamza ijodi baqida (Tashkent, 1981), 140-141.

[58] This needs to be reiterated given the misrepresentation of Hamza's life in Soviet biographies. See, e.g., Laziz Qayumov, Hamza: esse (Tashkent, 1989), 17-18.

right. Behbudi and Munawwar Qari both possessed the cultural capital that came from the possession of madrasa knowledge and maintained personal relationships with noted ulama. It is important to remember, too, that the ulama were not as benighted a group as they are often portrayed. Edward Allworth, for instance, in describing the qadimcbilar as "internally governed by fixed habit and rigid tradition.... ultraconservative officials and clerics [who] could not imagine that they might benefit from the notions of these cultural-social thinkers [the Jadids],"^[59] unreflexively adopts the rhetoric of the Jadids. In practice, the lines separating the Jadids from their opponents were considerably more porous. Others active in the Jadid cause were even more closely tied to the madrasa milieu. Sayyid Ahmad Wasli (1870-1920) of Samarqand wrote copious poetry in praise of the new method but accepted an appointment as mudarris at the Hazrat-i Shah madrasa in 1915.^[60] His support for reform was more circumscribed, stopping short, as we shall see, of the embrace of theater and changes in the place of women in society. The Beglarbegi and Kokaldash madrasas in Tashkent were the center of considerable literary activity; such poets as Tawalla, Kami, Khislat, and Sidqi (all of whom appeared as champions of reform in the Jadid press) lived and wrote there.^[61] Abdullah Qadiri's early biography also reminds us of the impossibility of drawing strict boundaries between the ulama and the Jadids. Qadiri (1894-1938), who was to become the first Uzbek novelist after the revolution, came from a learned family. His maternal grandfather was a muezzin , and the poet Miskin (1880-1937) was a maternal cousin.^[62] His father was in his seventies when Abdullah was born, and the family was in dire financial straits. After the maktab, Abdullah held a number of menial jobs in succession before being hired by a merchant as a scribe. His employer put him in a Russo-native school so he could learn Russian.^[63] He spent four years in this school, after which he went to work for another merchant. He became interested in writing and published his first play in 1915. Yet, after all this involvement in Jadid reform, he went back to a madrasa in the years 1916-1917.^[64]

[59] Edward Allworth, The Modern Uzbeks: A Cultural History (Stanford, 1990), 120.

[60] Ayina , 1 June 1915, 430.

[61] Begali Qosimov, "Tawallo (1882-1939)," preface to Tawallo, Rawnaq iil-Islom , ed. Begali Qosimov (Tashkent, 1993), 4.

[62] Habibulla Qodiriy, Otam haqida (Tashkent, 1983), 5-24.

[63] Abdulla Qodiriy, "Tarjimai hol" (1926), in Kichik asarlar (Tashkent, 1969), 205.

[64] Ibid., 206.

Other ulama, in Tashkent as well as elsewhere, were involved with different versions of reform. Abdulqadir Sayyah, for instance, fits the profile of many Jadids: He traveled extensively, he was a copious author and was involved in publishing, and in 1915 he began publishing the magazine al-Islah (Reform). But he was no enthusiast of the new method of education. The reform he advocated in his magazine concerned questions of religious purity and exactitude. Although it too sought to rectify what it saw as the current perversion of Islam, it derived its authority not from the discourse of progress and knowledge but from a strengthening of the tradition itself. We know rather little about such intellectual currents in Central Asia, but it seems likely that the contributors to al-Islah formed a revivalist movement akin to that of the modernized madrasa at Deoband in India. Contacts with ulama in India had survived the Russian conquest, and by the turn of the century older patterns of travel had been reversed and many ulama now went to India to study. The modernized madrasa at Deoband received students from as far away in the Russian empire as Kazan. In 1914, there were enough students at Deoband from Bukhara and Kazan to form an association.^[65] Although al-Islah remained inimical to the main thrust of Jadidism, its pages did see some discussion of proposals to reform madrasas. One set of proposals, submitted by a mudarris from Bukhara, suggested a fifteen-year curriculum, with two subjects being taught every year. These proposals would have gone some way in turning madrasas into colleges, with the introduction of a fixed curriculum, grades, and examinations.^[66]

The distinction between such revivalist ulama and the Jadids is a crucial one, for it points to a significant characteristic of Jadidism; as such, it is well worth a short digression. A number of scholars in the West have sought to ground Jadidism in an indigenous Muslim tradition of re-

[65] "'Dar ul-ulum Deoband'dagi Rusyali Islam talabalaridan tashakkur," Ayina , 16 October 1914, 1225. During the first century of its existence (1867-1967), Deoband graduated 70 students from "Russia (including Siberia)" (Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revwal in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900 [Princeton, 1982], 110-111). Although the figure of 70 students is an aggregate for the entire century, the great majority, if not all, of these students must have matriculated before 1917. To put the number of Russian Muslim students in context, ir must be remembered that the total for all students from outside South Asia was only 431 for this period. The college at Deoband was founded by reformist ulama m the late 1860s; it offered mstruction only in religious subjects, but it was organized along modern lines, with annual examinations, grades, and division into classes (ibid., ch. 3).

[66] Mudarris Sayyid Ahmad Wasli, "Himmat ur-rijal taqla' ul-jibal," al-Islah , 15 July 1915. 392-394; Wasli, "Islah-i, tadris haqinda," al-Islah , 15 September 1915, 514-516; Qari, Ziya'uddin Makhzum b. Damla Fayzurrahman Mudarris, "Insanning birinchi wazifasi wa ham maya-i sa'adat," al-Islah , 15 September 1915, 516-519.

form.^[67] Jadidism was the outcome, according to this view, of a long struggle in Bukharan madrasas to break the bonds of taqlid (obedience to canonical opinion) and for a return to the scriptural sources of Islam. This view was a corrective to Soviet-era conceptualizations of intellectual history as a battle between "enlighteners," secular, antireligious, and progressive by definitions, and upholders of various reactionary ideologies, of which Jadidism was one.^[68] By pointing to the origins in Islamic theology of the reformism of such Tatar figures as Abdunnasir Kursavi (1776-1812) and Shihabiddin Märjani (1818-1889), scholars situated Tatar intellectual history in its Muslim context.

But such a view is much more difficult to maintain with respect to Central Asian Jadidism. To be sure, much of the reformism of Kursavi and Märjani owed a great deal to their educations in the madrasas of Bukhara, but we have very little evidence to date of debates about taqlid among Bukharan ulama, and Jadidism's connection to such debates is even more problematic. The problem is usually solved by seeing the Bukharan savant Ahmad Makhdum Danish (1826-1897) as the "theoretical precursor" of the Jadids, indeed a figure so important that "few men have shaken ... traditional attitudes as deeply as he."^[69] Unfortunately, Danish's own work scarcely bears this heavy burden. Much of his work is marked by a sensibility that belongs very much to the world whose passing he mourns, rather than the brave new world that the Jadids celebrated, and his literary style aims to reproduce the golden age of Persian prose of yore. Furthermore, Danish wrote while in disgrace, and his work remained in manuscript until well after his death. Danish's influence was no doubt substantial in the literary circles of Bukhara, but his name never once appeared in a Jadid publication before the revolution. His reputation as the first of the moderns was created almost single-

[67] This is the theme of several articles by French, Uzbek, and German scholars published in "Le réformisme musulman en Asie centrale: du "primier renouveau" à la so-viétisation, 1788-1937," ed. Stéphane Dudoignon and François Georgeon, in Cahiers du monde russe 37 (1996): 7-240; for comment pertaining specifically to Central Asia, see Dudoignon, "La question scolaire à Boukhara et au Turkestan russe, du "premier renouveau" à la soviétisation (fin du XVIIIe siècle-1937)," 140-146.

[68] Edward J. Lazzerini, "The Revival of Islamic Culture in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Or, Why a Prosopography of the Tatar Ulema? " in Ch. Lemercier Quelquejay et al., eds., Passé turco-tatar, présent soviétique: études offertes à Alexandre Bennigsen (Paris, 1986), 367-372.

[69] Carfare d'Encausse, "The Stirring of National Feeling," 172; Carrère d'Encausse has made the same claim elsewhere as well (Réforme et révolution chez les musulmans de l'empire russe , 2nd ed. [Paris, 1981], 105-109), and the view has recently been repeated by Stéphane Dudoignon, "La question scolaire," 142.

handedly in the 1920s by Sadriddin Ayni, whose view has been accepted much too readily by scholars.

But there is a further, more fundamental problem with a continuity between debates over taqlid and Jadidism, for it places Jadidism in the realm of "religion" (or, to be more precise, theology) rather than in that of cultural transformation. As I will argue, theological argumentation was conspicuous by its absence in Jadid writing, even though the Jadids made use of modernist theology being produced elsewhere. The trajectory of Jadidism that I have outlined in this chapter places it in the transformations of Central Asian society wrought by the Russian conquest, as a modern "response" to modernity, which sought to reconfigure the entire world, including Islam. If there was widespread debate in Bukhara in the nineteenth century on the questions of taqlid and a return to scripturalist Islam, its inheritors were not the Jadids but the revivalist ulama who published al-Islah .

The relationship between the Jadids and the moneyed elite of Turkestan was also ambivalent. Said Karim-bay, Said Azim's son, published the newspaper Tojjar in 1907 and occasionally wrote for it, too. He was a founding member in 1909 of the first Muslim benevolent society in Tashkent, in which the prime movers were Munawwar Qari and Awlani. Said Ahmad, Said Karim-bay's son, was a partner in the Maktab Publishing Company, launched in 1914. Mirza Hakim Sarimsaqov, a textile merchant, was a collaborator of Munawwar Qari and Ubaydullah Khojaev in publishing Sada-yi Turkistan (to which he contributed) and a partner in the Turkestan Bookstore.^[70] But the most prominent merchant in Jadid ranks was Abidjan Mahmudov of Kokand, merchant of the second guild, who, in addition to his substantial business, was active in the publishing trade. In 1914, he established his own printing press and published the newspaper Sada-yi Farghana .^[71] The Jadids and the new moneyed elite were part of the same phenomenon, i.e., the transformation of the Central Asian economy under Russian rule, but the two elites had different stakes in the future. As a new cultural elite, the Jadids proceeded from the assumption that it was necessary to transform the cultural tradition they inherited in order to cope with the new conditions. The moneyed elite, on the other hand, had fared well under the new regime, and most, content to make money from the new opportunities without changing the old ways, saw no pressing need for reform.

[70] TsGARUz, f. 461, op. 1, d. 1311, l. 2420b, 255.

[71] TsGARUz, f. 19, d. 19074, ll. 14, 30-300b.

They flaunted their newly acquired status in ostentatious displays of wealth at various feasts (toys ). For the Jadids, the wealth possessed by the merchantry represented a great resource that could free the Jadids from economic constraints if used according to their priorities. But the merchants (bays ) only occasionally spent their wealth in the service of reform, especially since that reform was articulated by a marginal group of youth. As we shall see, in their literature and drama, the Jadids presented their ideal of the bay as a philanthropist patron of reform. In pressing the wealthy of their own community for help, Turkestani Jadids pointed to the example of the Tatar and Transcaucasian Muslim middle classes, who provided considerable financial assistance to their compatriots. The results were indifferent; Turkestan saw nothing comparable to the large-scale philanthropy of the Taghievs of Baku or the Hüseyinovs of Orenburg.

The Jadids came from various backgrounds. What they had in common was a commitment to change and a possession of cultural capital. This disposed them to conceive of reform in cultural terms, and the modicum of comfort that most enjoyed in their lives allowed them to devote their energies to it. In the end, the Jadids were constituted as a group by their own critical discourse. Their sense of cohesion came from their shared vision of the future as well as their participation in common activities and enterprises. The basic institution of Jadid reform was the new-method school itself. These schools were the site of the struggle for the hearts and minds of the next generation. Through them the Jadids disseminated a cognitive style quite different from that of the maktab and thus created a group in society that was receptive to their ideas. These schools were also crucial to the social reproduction of the movement. If the first new-method schools were founded single-handedly by a few dedicated individuals, by 1917 new-method schools were often staffed by their own graduates.^[72] The Jadids also enthusiastically adopted such new forms of sociability as benevolent societies. Ultimately, though, the structure of the movement was quite diffuse, with a correspondingly wide range of sensibilities and attitudes toward other groups in society as well as the state.

Munawwar Qari represented perhaps the conservative end of the Jadid spectrum. Police documents indicate that many of his closest associates

[72] See, for example, A.F. Ardashirov, "K voprosu o roli novometodnykh maktabov (po materialam Andizhanskoi oblasti)," Uchenye zapiski Andizhanskogo gospedinstituta , no. 6 (1957): 132-172.

were ulama not otherwise associated with the Jadid cause, and his writings remained, in terms of genre and content, the most traditionalist. Other Jadids were far more outspoken in their criticism of the old order and the role of the ulama in it. Indeed, it is possible to discern a second "generation" of Jadids in Turkestan by 1910. Younger, and with a less thorough grounding in the madrasa tradition, they were more impatient with the current state of their society and harsher in their tone. Abdulhamid Sulayman oghli, who wrote under the name Cholpan, began publishing in the last years before 1917. He was the scion of a wealthy family and had attended a Russo-native school after the maktab.^[73] Mirmuhsin Shermuhammadov (1895-1929) attended a new-method school in Tashkent and started writing in TWG in 1914. A prolific writer (he also contributed to other periodicals), he fearlessly took on every topic and every person, including Behbudi himself.^[74] Even Hamza, whose madrasa credentials were impeccable, was fond of harsh criticism, as in this ashula (poem set to a folk tune):

Cry, cry o Turkestan
May soulless bodies swing, cry o Turkestan
Is there a nation like ours, sunk in infamy?
Deceived into foolishness, devoid of chastity?^[75]

This powerful language contrasted to the more cautious tone of Behbudi or Munawwar Qari. When Hamza sent Munawwar Qari a manuscript for publication, he was told to tone down the language and to avoid using impolite (adabdan kharij ) words.^[76]

The first Jadids in Central Asia were, by and large, men of the old order whose personal experiences had convinced them of the need to change. Yet, they were also products of their time. Many of them had traveled extensively. They possessed the cultural capital of the past, but almost none had experienced a purely Russian education. Many of them knew Russian, but it was usually self-taught in adult life; they had not been through the formative experience of Russian education. This con-

[73] A.Z.V. Togan, Hâtrralar: Tiirklstan ve Diger Miisluman Dogu Turklerinin Milli Varlik ve Kiiltiir Mucadeleleri (Istanbul, 1969), 118-119; Ibrohim Haqqulov, editor's introduction to Cholpon, Bahorni soghindim (Tashkent, 1988), 4; for a full biography of Cholpan, see Naim Karimov, Abdulbamid Sulaymon oghli Cholpon (Tashkent, 1991).

[74] Begali Qosimov, "Mirmuhsin Shermuhamedov (Fikri) wa uning adabiy muhiti" (Candidate's diss., Tashkent, 1967); OSE , VII: 274, s.v. "Shermuhamedov, Mirmuhsin."

[75] Hamza Hakimzada Niyazi, Milli ashulalar ucbun milli she'rlar majmuasi (Eski Marghilan, 1916), 1.

[76] Munawwar Qari to Hamza Hakimzada, 4 November 1915, in Hamza arkhivining katalogi , II: 283-284.

trasts markedly with the Jadids of European Russia and Transcaucasia, many of whom had a Russian (and, in some cases, even a European) education. Gasprinskii, who had attended a military academy in Moscow and worked for two years in Paris as Turgenev's secretary,^[77] is hardly unusual in that respect. Central Asian Jadids, on the other hand, remained much closer to the Islamic cultural tradition than Jadids in other parts of the Russian empire.

Yet, for all this, their youth was a striking characteristic. Ishaq Khan and Ajzi, born in the 1860s, were by far the oldest members of the cohort. Behbudi was twenty-eight when he launched his public career and Munawwar Qari only twenty-three; Awlani began writing poetry at the age of sixteen. Those who became active in the last few years before the revolution were even younger. Hamza was twenty-one when he opened his first school in 1910, the same age at which Abdullah Qadiri wrote his first play. When Cholpan sent in his first poem to the newspaper Shuhrat in 1908, he signed the accompanying letter "a maktab pupil." He was probably only ten years old then.^[78] The youth of the Jadids was testimony to their prodigious talent and a source of their seemingly inexhaustible energy but, in a society where age was cultural capital in itself, also their greatest handicap.

They also differed from the small number of Central Asians with a modern, secular Russian education. Ubaydullah Khojaev, the Tashkent lawyer and publisher, and the Samarqand doctor Abdurrahman Farhadi, who was appointed Russian consul in Najaf in 1914,^[79] were perhaps the only representatives of this group prominent in public life before 1917. (Several others, such as Tashpolat Narbutabekov and Nazir Toraqul oghli, became active in that year.) The vast majority of Muslims in Central Asia with a Russian secular education were Qazaq or Tatar. Whereas the Jadids originated in the old cultural elite of the region, these intellectuals often came from aristocratic elites. The Tatars came from among the ranks of the more prosperous sections of the community that had arrived in Turkestan after the Russian conquest. The Qazaqs, on the other hand, often came from aristocratic families and were southern analogues to a secular Qazaq elite that had formed in the Steppe province by the middle of the nineteenth century. The Qazaq elites of the steppe

[77] Seydahmet, Gaspirali Ismail Bey , 12-19.

[78] The newspaper was closed down by the authorities and its papers seized before it could be published. The poem is to be found in TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 489a, l. 31.

[79] Ayina , 7 December 1913, 167; see also Mahmudî, "Muallim Abduqodir Shakurî," 26.

had been sending their children to Russian schools since the first quarter of the nineteenth century.^[80] The absence among the Qazaqs of a tradition of book learning entrenched in madrasas made the transition to secular education easy, since the survival of a cultural elite was not at stake, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, this interaction had produced the genius of Choqan Valikhanov, equally at home in Qazaq and Russian society.^[81] A number of these secular intellectuals received a university education in Russia. Mustafa Choqay (1890-1941), who was descended from the Khivan royal family, attended the Tashkent gimnaziia on a substantial scholarship and went on to study law at St. Petersburg University.^[82] While in Petersburg, he worked at the offices of the Muslim Faction in the State Duma, drafting speeches for Muslim deputies.^[83] In choosing to wage his struggles in the sphere of politics rather than cultural reform, Choqay was typical of the secular intellectuals, whose activities went on in parallel with that of the Jadids. We find little evidence of interaction between the two groups before 1917. The Jadids represented the modernization of the Muslim cultural tradition of Central Asia; the secular intellectuals were fluent in the idiom of European thought. The Jadids spoke to Muslim society in order to achieve cultural change; the secular intellectuals spoke to the Russian state and Russian society in order to achieve political change. With Islam Shahiahmedov, a Tatar born in Tashkent and Choqay's contemporary in St. Petersburg who was arrested in 1907 for spreading revolutionary agitation in the Tashkent garrison,^[84] we have come a long way from Wasli and Munawwar Qari. Although a police report described him as "belonging to the

[80] An "Asiatic school" to teach Russian to Qazaq children with the aim of producing translators was opened at Omsk as early as 1786. A school directed at the children of the Qazaq aristocracy started at Khanskaia Stavka in 1841, followed by another one at Orenburg in 1850 (T. T. Tazhibaev, Prosveshchenie i shkoly Kazakhstana vo vtoroi polo-vine XIX veka [Alma Ata, 1962], 17, 22-23). Many Qazaqs also attended Russian civilian and military schools at Omsk and Orenburg.

[81] The Russian conquest of Turkestan brought the Qazaq steppe under greater influence of the Islam reproduced in madrasas, as madrasa students found it safer to travel to the steppe in the summer. Writing in 1910, Ahmet Bukeykhanov saw two competing new elites emerging in the Qazaq lands, one formed like him in Russian institutions, the other increasingly Muslim and formed in the madrasas of Central Asia and the Volga; see A. Bukeikhanov, "Kirgizy," in A.I. Kastelianskii, ed., Formy natsional'nogo dvizheniia v sovremennykh gosudarstvakh (St. Petersburg, 1910), 597-598.

[82] TsGARUz, f. 47, d. 787, l. 192.

[83] Dzhumabaev, "Nash vozhd'," in Iash Turkestan: pamiati Mustafy Chokai-beia (Paris, 1949), 5-6; see also Ozod Sharafiddinov, "Mustafo Choqaev," Sharq yulduzi , 1992, no. 4, 85-93.

[84] "Spravka" (12 May 1916), TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 1113, l. 28-280b.

so-called Bolshevist-Leninist current of the RSDWP,"^[85] Shahiahmedov contributed to both liberal and radical periodicals in St. Petersburg, and upon his return to Turkestan in 1915, he edited the "progressive, non-party" newspaper, Turkestanskii krai .^[86] In the heady days of 1917, when organized politics became a possibility, Jadids and Russian-educated intellectuals coalesced in a single political movement in which the latter tended to assume positions of leadership. The leading role of the modern educated intellectuals in 1917 was out of all proportion to their numerical strength or to their influence in local society before the revolution. Active politics required a command of the Russian language and of the Russian political idiom, and in this regard the Russian-educated intellectuals held a clear advantage over the Jadids.

Colonial Sensibilities in the Age of Empire

The Jadid project was predicated on a new sense of the world and of Central Asia's position within it. The cornerstone of this worldview was an assimilation of the idea of progress. The Jadids explicitly understood that their age was different from any other: "[In the past], one science or craft [used to] develop [at a time]," a Jadid textbook read. "In this century, [however,] all sciences and crafts develop [together].... This is the century of science and progress. The sciences seen in this century have never been seen before."^[87] Science developed its own authority, as new discourses of hygiene and public health brought more and more aspects of life into the realm of human agency. The term used for "progress" was taraqqi , with a semantic range that covered "development," "growth," and "rise" (those who had achieved progress were mutaraqqi ).^[88] The cen-trality of progress to the Jadid project was underscored by the fact that perhaps the most common term used to describe them as a group, both by themselves and by others (albeit with more derision than pride), was

[85] Ibid., l. 280b.

[86] Turkestanskii krai , 5 April 1916. Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay (La presse et le mouvement national , 168) count Turkestanskii krai as a "Muslim" newspaper. This assertion is not borne out by the evidence of the newspaper itself. The newspaper spoke in the idiom of Russian liberalism; its readership was overwhelmingly Russian, and it had no choice but to cater to their interests. As such, it scarcely differed from any other liberal Russian-language newspaper published in Turkestan.

[87] Ghulamuddin Akbarzada, Ta'lini-i sani (Tashkent, 1913), 27-28.

[88] See O. Usmonov and Sh. Hamidov, Özbek tili leksikasi tarikhidan materiallar (XIX asrning okhiri-XX asrning boshlari ) (Tashkent, 1981), 153, 231, for examples of usage.

taraqqiparwar , "proponents of progress." This progress was a universal phenomenon accessible to all who cultivated knowledge. Europe and Russia had achieved a higher level of progress because of superior knowledge; they were models to be followed. This attitude was subversive of the dichotomy of Russian and native (colonizer and colonized) on which the colonial order was based, but it served a crucial rhetorical purpose for the Jadids.

The idea of progress was predicated upon the growth of a historical conception of time among the Jadids. The Islamic tradition, it is probably fair to say, had never seen history as a road to progress; rather, the past was a sacralized record of divine intervention in the affairs of men. Just how new the idea of constant progress and change over historical time was becomes clear from the pains Abdurrauf Fitrat took to explain the notion from first principles in an article devoted to outlining the goals of life. Humanity was weak and bereft of knowledge and skills at the beginning of Creation, but slowly it conquered the elements:

It is impossible to deny the changes wrought by humans m the world. Are these changes ... progress or decline? That is, have humans [insanha ] been moving forward or backward from Creation to the present day? Of course forward, i.e., they have been progressing, and they have not stopped at a point to our day. For example, a few years ago, we considered the railway the ultimate means of transport. [But] after a while, the power of human knowledge invented the aeroplane and proved us wrong. Thus, it becomes obvious that humanity [bani Adam ] has progressed from Creation to our days, and after our time too, it will progress, that is, move forward."^[89]

Fitrat then relates his theme to that of religion, but even there the notion of progress is prominent. God has provided guidance to humanity through the ages, but earlier prophets conveyed God's message to specific groups. Only after humanity had progressed to a certain level was it ready for God's final message. Fitrat thus grafts Islam on to an evolutionary vision of history. From our point of view, however, the article is important in that it unequivocally treats history as a record of human progress.

Geography similarly provided the Jadids a completely different conception of their place in the universe. Modern geography brought with it new conceptions of space, as something that could be envisioned in the form of a map or a globe but that also was finite. It provided a sense

[89] Abdurrauf Fitrat, "Hayat wa ghaya-yi hayat," Ayina , 14 December 1913, 196-197, and 21 December 1913, 220-222; quote from 220.

of the interconnectedness of peoples and countries.^[90] The study of geography occupied a very important place in Jadid thinking because it provided a graphic appreciation of the modern world. The Europeans had conquered the world by knowing it, Behbudi had implied; conquered nations likewise had to know the world. Munawwar Qari's geography textbook, for instance, provides detailed factual information (population, type of government, and capital city) about every country in the world; Munawwar Qari paid special attention to Muslim populations in each country.^[91] The Jadids' fascination with maps, globes, and atlases went beyond the classroom. Behbudi published a four-color wall map of Central Asia inscribed in Turkic,^[92] and his bookstore carried numerous atlases and maps, mostly of Ottoman provenance.^[93]

The significance of the new writing then appearing in Tatar, Ottoman, and Arabic in shaping the worldviews of educated Central Asians was central. The new bookstores operated by the Jadids in the major cities of Central Asia stocked books published in India, Iran, Istanbul, Cairo, and Beirut, as well as the various Muslim publishing centers of the Russian empire. In Samarqand, at Mahmud Khoja Behbudi's bookstore opened in 1914, the interested reader could find a large number of books in Tatar, Ottoman, Arabic, and Persian on topics such as history, geography, general science, medicine, and religion, in addition to dictionaries, atlases, charts, maps, and globes.^[94] Among these imported books were many translations or adaptations of European works. In the absence of any significant local translations, these Ottoman and Tatar translations became Central Asia's window on Europe, a fact quite obvious to Behbudi: "Ottoman, Caucasian, and Kazan Turks daily increase the number of translations of works of contemporary scholars, which means that the person who knows Turkic knows the world."^[95] But it is easy to overlook the continuing importance of Persian and Arabic. Persian printed books continued to be imported from India (and some booksellers even had their books printed in India),^[96] and Persian-language

[90] Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation (Honolulu, 1994).

[91] Munawwar Qari, Yer yuzi (Tashkent, 1913).

[92] Ayina , 1 March 1914.

[93] Cf. price list in Ayina , 6 September 1914, 1095.

[94] Much of the information in the following section is derived from a number of detailed price lists of books published by Behbudi in Ayina in 1914.

[95] Behbudi, "Ikki emas, tort til lazim," Ayina , 26 October 1913, 13.

[96] G. L. Dmitriev, "Rasprostranenie indiiskikh izdanii v Srednei Azii v kontse XIX-nachale XX vekov," Kniga: materialy i issledovanua , no. 6 (1962): 239-254.

newspapers such as Chihra-numa (Cairo), Habl ul-matin (Calcutta), and the Siraj ul-akhbar (Kabul) were widely read in Jadid circles. The Jadids' madrasa educations also gave them access to Arabic. Hamza corresponded in it; Shakuri worked as a translator in the Russian consulate in Jeddah; and Abdullah Qadiri read the works of the modernist Arab historian Jurji Zaydan in the original.^[97]

Jurji Zaydan was only one example of modern scholarship influencing Jadid thinking. It intruded in other ways as well. Fitrat, in his Tales of an Indian Traveler , quotes a long passage from "the great French professor" Charles Seignobos about the glories of medieval Islamic civilization.^[98] European scholarship on history, linguistics, and anthropology was often held up as validating arguments made by the Jadids. References to Gustav Le Bon, John William Draper, and Reinhart Dozy show up frequently in Jadid writings. Such writing also influenced the style of Jadid argumentation. Fitrat imported Seignobos's anticlericalism whole cloth into his argument against the influence of the ulama in contemporary Bukhara, which he compares to the influence of the Church in the Dark Ages.^[99] Almost all Jadids knew Russian, but it was not a significant channel for the transmission of modern knowledge to Central Asia.

In addition to the printed word, travel provided important links with Muslim movements and intellectuals overseas. When Jadids traveled, they invariably went to other Muslim countries. One of the transformative moments of Behbudi's life was his 1900 visit to Egypt, where he visited al-Azhar and, most likely, met with reformers such as Muhammad 'Abduh.^[100] Behbudi visited Istanbul and Cairo again in 1914. In the meantime, he maintained his contacts in those places, so that when, a decade after his first trip abroad, a disciple of his left Samarqand to attend al-Azhar, Behbudi was able to provide him with letters of introduction to a benevolent society in Istanbul.^[101] The Ottoman empire occupied a special place in the imagination of the Central Asian Jadids, who followed closely the debates of the Second Constitutional Period inaugurated by the Young Turk revolution of 1908, finding them much livelier than anything possible in the Russian empire at the time. They sympa-

[97] Qodiriy, Otam haqida, 59 .

[98] Fitrat, "Bayonoti sayyohi hindî," ed. Kholiq Mirzozoda, Sadoi Sharq , 1988, no. 6, 28.

[99] Ibid., 27-28.

[100] Haji Mum, "Mahmud Khoja Behbudi."

[101] Äbdusalam Azimi, "Behbudi haqqida khatira wa taasuratim," Zarafshan , 25 March 1923. Abdussalam Azimi also carried a letter of introduction to Gasprinskii, with whom Behbudi was on close terms.

thized primarily with the Islamists rather than the Turkists, but. they also picked and chose among other ideas.^[102] There existed a considerable community of Central Asian students in Istanbul in the years preceding the outbreak of World War I. Muhammad Sharif Sufizada (1869-1937), who was born in Chust in Ferghana, spent his life traveling. He went to Istanbul in 1902 and after three years of serving as imam in various Sufi lodges, he entered the Imperial Teachers' College (Darülmüallimin-i Sahane) in 1905. He did not finish the course but returned to Turkestan in 1906, in order, he claimed, "to serve his own coreligionists and compatriots."^[103] Over the next eight years, he taught according to the new method in various cities of Turkestan as well as in Qonghirat in Khiva. In 1913, he opened a new-method school in Chust, but opposition from neighbors forced him to close it and leave town.^[104] He went to Afghanistan where he contributed to the Siraj ul-akhbar . In 1919, when the government of Soviet Turkestan sent a diplomatic mission to Afghanistan (Awlani was one of its members), Sufizada served as its translator and returned home with it.^[105]

The most famous Central Asian to study in Istanbul, however, was Fitrat (1886-1938), who spent the tumultuous period between 1909 and the summer of 1914 in Istanbul.^[106] The son of a merchant who had traveled extensively in the Ottoman empire, Iran, and Chinese Turkestan, Fitrat attended the Mir-i Arab madrasa in Bukhara, but in 1909 the Tarbiya-yi Atfal (Education of Children) society gave him a scholarship to study in Istanbul. Fitrat's years in Istanbul were formative, although the precise details of his activities remain frustratingly elusive. During this time, he published his first three books, at least two of which (Debate between a Bukharan Mudarris and a European and Tales of an Indian Traveler ) achieved great popularity back in Central Asia. He first

[102] The Ottoman Islamists were modernists very critical of traditional practices of Islam; few of them came from traditional Ilmiye backgrounds. Rather, they shared the theological views of the Egyptian modernist Muhammad 'Abduh (whose writing appeared frequently in the leading Islamist Journal, Sirat-i Miistakim [later Sebilurresad ]). Their rhetoric of awakening and strength through knowledge was very similar to that of the Jadids of Central Asia, but their most fundamental problem was to ensure the survival of the Ottoman empire on the basis of Muslim solidarity. See Tarik Zafer Tunaya, Islâmcilik Cereyani (Istanbul, 1962); Ismail Kara, Türkiyede Islâmcilik Diisuncesi: Metinler, Kisiler , 2 vols. (Istanbul, 1986-1987), I: xv-lxvii.

[103] Khurshid , 19 October 1906.

[104] On this incident, see TWG , 3 February 1914.

[105] OSE , X: 478-479, s.v. "Sofizoda."

[106] The only full-length biography of Fitrat is in Japanese: Hisao Komatsu, Kakumei no Chuo Ajia: aru Jadudo no shozo (Tokyo, 1996); otherwise, see Begali, Qosimov, "Fitrat (chizgilar)," Sharq yulduzi , 1992, no. 10, 170-180.

appeared in print the Islamist newspaper Hikmet , published by Sehbenderzade Filibeli All Hilmi, a prominent Islamist whose difficulties with the C.U.P. government led to the closure of the newspaper on several occasions; Fitrat also contributed to Sirat-i Müstakim , the flagship Islamist journal edited by Mehmet Âkif (Ersoy).^[107] But in 1914 Fitrat was enrolled in the Medreset ül-Vâizin,^[108] a reformed madrasa created earlier that year to prepare a new kind of religious functionary. Its wide-ranging curriculum included Turkic history, taught by Yusuf Akçura, the chief ideologue of pan-Turkism.^[109] Behbudi's intellectual range was similarly broad. The reading room he organized in Samarqand received Sirat-i Müstakim , and Behbudi sent its editors copies of his publications (along with a recent copy of TWG) as a gift.^[110] But he also maintained commercial relations with the main Turkist organ Türk Yurdu (whose offices in Istanbul stocked Behbudi's map of Turkestan inscribed in Turkic),^[111] and in his own Ayina , he reprinted articles from the entire spectrum of the Ottoman press until the war cut relations.

Istanbul at the time was probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world, and a cauldron of Muslim opinion, as émigrés and exiles from all over the Muslim world gravitated to it. The role of Muslim émigrés from the Russian empire, such as Yusuf Akçura and Ahmed Agaoglu (Agaev), in laying the foundations of pan-Turkism is generally recognized, but the substantial presence of Iranian exiles in the city has provoked less interest.^[112] Fitrat, who at that time wrote exclusively in Persian, was clearly influenced by the Travels of Ibrahim Bek by the Iranian exile Zayn ul-'Abidin Maragha'i, published in Istanbul, for the parallels between the novel and Fitrat's own Tales of an Indian Traveler are striking.^[113] Simi-

[107] Abdurrauf, "Hasbihal bahamwatanan-i bukharayi," Hikmet , 18 November 1910; Buharali, Abdurrauf, "Buhara Veziri, Nasrullah-bi, Pervaneçi Efendi Hazretlerine Açik Mektub." Tearüf-i Muslimin , 25 November 1910, 10 (only the title and the byline are in Ottoman; the text is in Persian). On Hikmet and its publisher, see Kara, Türkiyede Islâmcilik , I: 3-4.

[108] Ayina , 17 May 1914, 588.

[109] Huseyin Atay, Osmanlilarda Yuksek Din Egitimi (Istanbul, 1983), 308-311.

[110] "Samarkand'dan," Sirat-i Mustakim , 16 September 1910, 66-67.

[111] "Turkistan Bukhara Khiwa kharitasi," Ayina , 1 March 1914, 356.

[112] Jamshid Bihnam, "Manzilgahi dar rah-i tajaddud-i Iran: Islambul," Irannama , 11 (1993): 271-282; Thierry Zarcone and Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr, eds., Les iramens d'Istanbul (Paris, 1994).

[113] The novel was published m several instalments between 1903 and 1910, in Cairo, Istanbul, and Calcutta, and has enjoyed considerable popularity ever since. See H. Kamshad, Modern Persian Prose Literature (Cambridge, 1966), 17-21; M.R. Ghanoonparvar, In a Persian Mirror: Images of the West and Westerners in Iranian Fiction (Austin, 1993), 39-43.

larly, in using the dialogue format in his Debate , Fitrat followed a practice common in Iranian modernism.

The Jadids were part of a cosmopolitan community of Muslims knit together by readership of common texts and by travel. They lived in the last generation when Muslim intellectuals in different countries could communicate with each other without the use of European languages. Central Asian Jadidism was located squarely in the realm of Muslim modernism. It was Muslim because its rhetorical structures were rooted in the Muslim tradition of Central Asia and because the Jadids derived ultimate authority for their arguments in Islam. The Jadids never disowned Islam in the way that many Young Turks had done well before the end of the nineteenth century.^[114] Rather, modernity was fully congruent with the "true" essence of Islam, and only an Islam purified of all accretions of the ages could ensure the well-being of Muslims. Informed by a new vision of the world, the Jadids arrived at a new understanding of Islam and what it meant to be a Muslim.

[114] For an excellent exposition, see M. Sukru Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York, 1995), ch. 2.