Chapter 4
The Politics of Admonition

Publics and Public Spheres

Jürgen Habermas's notion of the public sphere has attracted much attention in recent years. Since Habermas very consciously defines his public sphere as a specific moment in the history of bourgeois Europe, its utility as a model for comparative research is limited (although it has been attempted). We are unlikely to find private individuals (each both "owner of goods and persons and one human being among others, i.e., bourgeois and homme ") "com[ing] together as a public [and] soon claim[ing] the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves" in settings other than the ones Habermas investigates, and least of all in the colonial world.^[1] Indeed, as a number of scholars have argued, Habermas's description of the public sphere remains highly idealized even for eighteenth-century Europe.^[2] Nevertheless, the emergence of the press, a substantial publishing trade, intensive sociability in discussion groups and benevolent societies all reconfigured the nature of cultural production in Central Asia. There may not have been any bour-

[1] Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society , trans. Thomas Burger with Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, 1989 long. 1962]), 27, 55.

[2] Robert Darnton, "An Enlightened Revolution?" New York Review of Books , 24 October 1991, 34. See also the essays in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, 1992).

geois, but the transformation of the context in which culture was produced and reproduced was significant. In our disappointment at not finding an exact match with Habermas's description, it is easy to overlook the similarities. Jadidism as a critical discourse arose in a realm of public debate that had come into existence as a result of the transformations wrought by the Russian conquest. The advent of print had begun to redefine the parameters of debate in Muslim society, in which the authority of older elites could be challenged in public. The Jadids' enthusiastic advocacy of print and new forms of sociability was not incidental, for Jadidism's strength as a cultural or political force was directly related to the strength and extent of the new public sphere constituted by these new forms. This proved to be a formidable problem, for neither the economic nor the political situation was particularly salubrious for the public sphere, and Jadidism had constantly to maneuver between the twin perils of a weak market and a hostile colonial state in order to propagate its reform.

The colonial context marked the new public sphere in two fundamental ways. First, the state had a significant presence in it, both as protagonist and antagonist. From the earliest period, the authorities attempted to inculcate "useful knowledge" among the local population to counter what they considered its inherent fanaticism and to render it more amenable to Russian rule. They also kept a stern watch on the public, using their wide-ranging powers of censorship and oversight with abandon. Second, the "native" public sphere existed alongside, and alterior to, a local Russian public sphere. The existence of a public sphere in Russia, where autocracy jealously retained control over all matters of state import, is problematic in itself, although recent scholarship has seen plentiful evidence of it in the flourishing of a popular press and voluntary organizations in the postreform period.^[3] This form of public life also appeared in Turkestan, where a nonofficial Russian-language press emerged early.^[4] Although its relationship with officialdom remained tense, it could engage the state in political dialogue, especially after 1905. By contrast, the native public sphere was subject to different rules and the object of much greater offficial suspicion. Permission to publish newspapers was

[3] Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, 1985); Louise McReyholds, The News Under the Old Regime (Princeton, 1992); Edith Clowes, Samuel Kassow, and James West, eds., Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia (Princeton, 1991).

[4] M.P. Avsharova, Russkaia periodicheskaia pechat' v Turkestane (1870-1917) (Tashkent, 1960).

granted by the governor-general himself. Once in business, editors had constantly to worry about the censors, for the slightest misstep could result in the closure of a newspaper. The administration could go to extremes of bureaucratic obscurantism to deny permission or to revoke it once it was granted. Writing in emigration, Mustafa Choqay recalled how an application he submitted was rejected because it was "too simply worded."^[5] With few qualified personnel to monitor vernacular newspapers, local authorities erred on the side of caution and suspended publication of newspapers at the slightest excuse.^[6] As Munawwar Qari wrote of the forced closure of Taraqqi in 1906: "When a Russian newspaper is arraigned before a court or prohibited from publication for some reason, it is allowed to publish under a new title so that subscribers keep receiving something. But this system apparently does not apply to Muslims."^[7] Officialdom also attempted surveillance over native society through a network of police agents whose presence, judging by the volume of the reports they filed, must have been quite pervasive. Given this suspicion, and Turkestan's disenfranchisement from imperial politics after 1907, the native public sphere became largely depoliticized. Eschewing a discourse of political rights aimed at the state, it focused largely on debates about culture and society. This accounts for the fact that the re-formist project was articulated in terms of a harsh critique of Central Asian society itself, in which all problems were the result of shortcomings of Central Asians themselves, and where the solution lay in self-improvement.

The difference between the Russian and native spheres was, however, primarily a matter of language, for there were no legal restrictions on the entry of "natives" into the Russian press. Rather, the exclusion was primarily based on cultural capital—the knowledge of Russian and professional or academic accomplishment in "Russian" domains, although attempts by natives to enter the sphere never failed to provoke official suspicion. Until 1917 the spheres remained distinct. The Russian-language

[5] Mustafa Chokaev, "Dzhadidizm" (ms., 1931), L'Archive de Moustafa Tchokai Bey, carton 7.

[6] Immediately after Sada-yi Turkistan began publication in April 1914, the governor of Syr Darya oblast asked the governor-general to delegate the task of monitoring it to a competent orientalist such as Ostroumov or Semenov because no person higher m rank than a translator could be found in the Syr Darya chancellery with the necessary linguistic skills. The chancellery of the governor-general, however, could not spare the services of the men requested and the task remained with the translator. The correspondence is in TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 957, ll. 1-5.

[7] "Afsus," Khurshid , 6 September 1906.

press in Turkestan had little in common in theme, tone, or content, with its vernacular counterpart. Few people were active in both spheres. Ubaydullah Khojaev, a trained lawyer who also published the newspaper Sada-yi Turkistan , was perhaps the only such figure. The Jadids were not hostile to the Russian sphere, however, for as I shall argue, the central goal of Jadid reform was to enter this sphere while retaining the bifurcation between Russian and native.

Beyond this dichotomy of Russian and native publics, as we have seen, Central Asia was also located on the fringes of two other publics: one composed of the Muslims of the Russian empire and centered around Terjüman and other Tatar newspapers; and the other an international, cosmopolitan public of readers of newspapers from all over the Muslim world. Debates in these other publics influenced the tenor of Central Asian Jadidism, but the fortunes of the Jadids were determined on the ground.

Print and the Public

Printing arrived in Central Asia with the Russian armies. The new authorities' faith in the power of the printed word equaled that of the Jadids a generation later. One of Kaufman's first acts was the establishment of a printing press, complete with Arabic characters, which were used also to print TWG from 1870. The state also published a small number of booklets and brochures (some of them reprints from the TWG ) containing useful information (such as books about the history of Russia and the Romanov dynasty, a history of Egypt, a life of Columbus, but also pieces from Pushkin and Tolstoy in translation) or official reports and proclamations in Turkic. Commercial publishing took off only after the appearance of lithography in 1883, but then developed rapidly. In 1898, two British orientalists visiting the book market in Bukhara found "the counters of its shops ... piled high with standard works in lithograph editions, and here and there a manuscript. Great finds may sometimes be obtained by connoisseurs, though there are still enough native bibliophils in Bokhara to render good finds by Europeans exceptional."^[8] Manuscripts might have become a rarity, but it is impossible to speak of a printing revolution in Central Asia in the manner that many scholars

[8] F.H. Skrine and E. Denison Ross, The Heart of Asia (London, 1899), 371.

claim for early modern Europe.^[9] The new trade was coopted by the existing network of manuscript trade, and dealers in manuscripts (sahhaf, warraq ) were the first Turkestani publishers. The local publishing trade remained in the hands of the nashir (publisher), the individual who bore the cost and the risk of putting a new book on the market. The role of the publisher could range from that of a sponsor, responsible only for the financial outlay, to that of calligrapher, printer, and bookseller as well. The output of the printing trade was dominated by traditional genres. Lithographed books did not look any different from manuscripts, although they were far more ubiquitous. New genres appeared in local publishing only after the turn of the century and were largely the work of the Jadids.^[10]

Print was central to the strategies of the Jadids, many of whom were deeply involved in publishing. The bulk of publishing remained in the hands of individuals and hence subject to limited resources and the frailties of individual initiative. The Jadids sought to put the business on sounder footing and pioneered bookstores (kutubkhana ), larger corporate entities that served also as publishing houses. In 1910, seven men, including such well-known Jadids as Munawwar Qari, Abdussami Qari, and Abdullah Awlani, applied for permission to open a bookstore called Umid (Hope). The request was categorically denied,^[11] no doubt because Munawwar Qari and Awlani had earlier incurred the ire of the authorities with their involvement with independent newspapers between 1906 and 1908. Awlani was more successful in 1914, when he opened the Zaman (Time) Bookstore in the Russian part of Tashkent.^[12] In 1916, he joined with a number of Tashkent professional booksellers and philanthropists to form the Maktab Nashr-i Maarif Shirkati (Maktab Education Company).^[13] Behbudi's diverse activities included operating a bookstore, located in his house in Samarqand,^[14] where Abdulqadir Shakuri also started the Zarafshan Bookstore in 1915.^[15] The largest growth of bookstores, however, took place in the towns of the Ferghana valley,

[9] The strongest statement is made by Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent for Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe , 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1979).

[10] For more attention to this point, see Adeeb Khalid, "Printing, Publishing, and Reform in Tsarist Central Asia," International Journal of Middle East Studies 26 (1994): 187-200.

[11] GARF, f. 102, op. 244 (1914), d. 74, ch. 74B, 1. 442.

[12] TsGARUz, f. 17, d. 17273, ll. 94, 95.

[13] "'Maktab' nashr-i maarif shirkatining qanuni," Turan (Tashkent), 5 May 1917.

[14] "Behbudiya kutubkhanasi," Ayina , 27 April 1914, 522.

[15] Wadud Mahmudî, "Muallim Abduqodir Shakurî," Sadoi Sharq , 1990, no. 8, 30.

where several such companies were launched between 1913 and 1915. Such bookstores had larger financial resources and, as corporate entities, were less vulnerable to the fickleness of individual fortunes. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that these bookstores were able to function like modern publishing concerns. Maktab, which began operation with a capital of 5,500 rubles, paled in comparison with such Tatar publishers as the Karimov Brothers of Orenburg, not to mention established Russian publishers.^[16] Ghayrat (Energy) was a larger operation. It had hoped to raise 50,000 rubles through the sale of shares, although success was limited. Primarily concerned with supplying textbooks and stationery to new-method schools and selling books and newspapers when it first received permission to operate on 27 February 1915, its executives were, by late 1916, aiming to acquire a printing press with the eventual goal of publishing a newspaper.^[17]

For all the moral urgency with which the Jadids invested it, publishing was a commercial enterprise in which the decision to put a certain text in print was largely, but not solely, determined by the need to sell. This was a fact of crucial importance for the fate of Jadid reform, since the Jadids constantly came up against the stark realities of a market in which they occupied only a small niche. Benedict Anderson has argued that "print capitalism" went a long way toward creating standardized languages and fostering a new sense of community in many parts of the world.^[18] For the Jadids, however, the market proved to be the most formidable obstacle. The market imposed harsh limits on what the Jadids could accomplish. They sought, instead, to bypass the market through recourse to philanthropy, patronage, and charity, but they were not entirely successful in institutionalizing philanthropy in Turkestan, and Jadid reform remained subject to significant economic pressures. (Indeed, it was only after the revolution, when the market was abolished, that print produced the kind of change that Anderson ascribes to "print capitalism" in early modern times.) Although books and newspapers were the stock in trade of Jadid reform, Jadid publications occupied only a

[16] The Karimov brothers received permission to start a company to publish and sell books in 1898. They began with an operating capital of 20,000 rubles; Abrar Karimullin, Tatarskaia kniga nachala XX veka (Kazan, 1974), 22; The Moscow firm of I.D. Sytin & Co. began with a capital of 75,000 rubles in 1884; by 1914, when it was the largest publishing concern in Russia, the company was worth 3.4 million rubles; Charles A. Ruud, Russian Entrepreneur: Publisher Ivan Sytin of Moscow, 1851-1934 (Montreal, 1990), 27, 141

[17] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 1144, ll. :340b-36.

[18] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities , 2nd ed. (London, 1991).

small part of local production. According to the only accurate and reliable bibliographical information we possess, of the seventy printed editions of sixty-nine different works that appeared in Central Asia between October 1910 and August 1911 only eleven could be classified as Jadid publications. The balance of the publishing output comprised new editions of classical works or new works of poetry in the traditional idiom.^[19]

Publishing remained a precarious business, and many Jadid publications continued to be financed by their authors. The publishing career of Hamza Hakimzada's Milli ashulalar (National Songs), a collection of poetry for use in new-method schools, provides an example of publishing practices from the period. Hamza apparently completed the manuscript in February 1913, when he wrote to the printing press of the newspaper Vaqït in Orenburg for quotes on the price of printing the collection of verse. The Vaqït press was well known for the quality of its work, but apparently the quality work came at a price. The press asked 80 rubles for printing 1,000 copies, although an order of 1,500 copies would have cost only 105 rubles. This was apparently beyond Hamza's means (he had just returned from a long trip abroad), and he dropped the matter. In 1915, he approached Munawwar Qari at Turkistan Bookstore in Tashkent for publishing the work piecemeal. He was offered royalties of zoo copies for each printing if Turkistan were to publish the book of its own accord. Hamza chose a different option, whereby Turkistan supplied the paper and covered other expenses, but Hamza still had to pay the cost of printing, which, for 1,000 copies, came to 28 rubles. For its services, Turkistan retained 285 copies (another 15 went for "censor, etc."), leaving Hamza 700 copies to sell for himself. For publishing later parts of the series, however, Hamza turned to two friends, Iskandar Baratbaev and Said Nasir Mirjalil oghli, who published seven parts during 1916 and 1917, receipts from the sale of one part apparently financing the publication of the next.^[20] Hamza could, moreover, count on the support of friends in his search for ready cash needed to publish his work.

[19] L. Zimin, "Bibliografita," Sredniaia Azua , 1911, nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 8. It should be noted that as low as these figures might be, they are significantly higher than those generally quoted in the literature. Soviet sources usually cited a figure of thirty-three titles in "Uzbek" for the year 1913 (Istoriia knigi v SSSR 1917-1921 [Moscow, 1986], III: 168); these figures were also used by Edward Allworth, Central Asian Publishing and the Rise of Nationalism (New York, 1965), 36.

[20] This correspondence can be followed in Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy arkhivining katalogi , 2 vols. (Tashkent, 1990-1991), II: 9, 28, 283-284, 286-290, 293-294, 305; see also Tokhtamurod Zufarov, "Milliy She"rlar Majmualari"ga doit yangi hujjatlar," Ozbek tili wa adabiyoti , 1989. no. 1, 42-52.

In July 1914, for instance, sixteen friends raised a total of 139.50 rubles among them for printing and publishing Yangi Saadat .^[21] But the onus for mustering resources remained on the authors themselves in the publishing world of Turkestan before 1917.

The Press

Economic constraints similarly haunted attempts to establish an independent vernacular press in Turkestan, although officialdom was responsible for the demise of many newspapers. The newspaper held a particular fascination for the Jadids, who celebrated the mere existence of newspapers as a sign of progress and a source of enlightenment. A writer in one of the earliest Turkic-language newspapers in Tashkent likened newspapers to true sages and skilled physicians (hukama-yi sadiq wa atibba-yi haziq ) who cure the ills of the community, and several years later, Behbudi saw newspapers as leaders of society through their constant criticism of its shortcomings.^[22] Newspapers also provided information about the rest of the world, making their readers aware of world affairs and of progress achieved by other peoples. Articles extolling the virtues of newspapers became a staple in the Jadid press, and protagonists in Jadid literature spent a lot of time reading newspapers.^[23]

We do not know whether the TWG owed its monopoly solely to officialdom, which denied permission for publication of other vernacular periodicals, but we do know that Turkic and Persian newspapers published in the Ottoman empire, Iran, and Europe, as well as Terjüman , were widely read in Central Asia. The postal system, which reached Central Asia with the conquest, made this possible, and although officialdom saw censorship as an immutable right, it did not extend to a complete ban on imported publications. The political liberalization in the wake of the revolution of 1905, along with the political enthusiasm it aroused, led to the appearance of the unofficial press in March 1906. The first independent vernacular newspaper was also the most unusual. It was published by I.I. Geier, a local Russian of moderate socialist persuasion, with the aim of acquainting the local population with the new political ideas. Much of the copy was translated from Russian newspapers by Mu-

[21] Hamza arkhivi katalogi , I: 306.

[22] Behrambek Dawlatbaev, untitled article, Taraqqi , 23 July 1906; Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Gazit chist" Samarqand , 3 May 1913.

[23] E.g., Behbudi, "Gazet ne dur?" Tojjar , 11 November 1907; "Ba'zi fawa'id-i ruznama," Bukhara-yi sharif , 11 March 1912.

hammadjan Aydarov, an interpreter retired from official service. This made for ponderous prose, which showed up even in the title of the newspaper, Taraqqi —Orta Aziyaning umr guzarlighi (Progress—Central Asian Life). There were already several new-method schools in Tashkent, and the Jadids, then still a small group, took the opportunity to appear in print. Munawwar Qari, who never contributed to TWG because of personal and political differences with Ostroumov, published his first articles here. Nevertheless, the brief career of this newspaper (it folded for financial reasons after seventeen issues spread over three months) is important mostly because it represented one of the very few attempts by local Russians to include the native population in political dialogue.

The newspaper's failure did not deter Ismail Abidi (Gabitov), a Tatar Social Revolutionary, from trying again. Abidi brought out Taraqqi (Progress), which managed to appear nineteen times before being shut down by the Tashkent high court. Taraqqi had much in common with its predecessor, except that its political views were more radical and it avoided the infelicities of language that had plagued Taraqqi-Orta Azyaning umr guzarlighi . Again, local reformers flocked to the newspaper to take advantage of the forum and to air their criticisms of society. Such criticisms created their own scandals, but the undoing of the newspaper was its radical tone, directed in the fashion of those days against bureaucracy as the enemy of the newfound liberties of the land, which proved too much for local officialdom to bear. Problems began early as police raided its offices after the publication of its third issue and confiscated several hundred unsold copies because inaccurate translations of two editorial articles had led them to believe that the newspaper favored killing members of educated nationalities. Abidi was called to the police station and released only on bail.^[24] The newspaper was shut down after nineteen issues by court order for publishing an editorial containing unacceptable material.^[25]

Within three weeks of Taraqqi's closure, Munawwar Qari brought out his own newspaper, Khurshid (The Sun). It had Taraqqi's feisty tone and did not shun explicitly political topics (it published several articles about Russia's still volatile political situation, as well as covering political events in Iran, Egypt, and India with overt anticolonial sympathies).

[24] See his account of the incident m "Baylar, buyraqaratiya wa ghazita," >Taraqqi , 27 July 1906.

[25] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 4, d. 1003, ll. 117, 119, 188.

All of this invited official wrath, and after only ten issues the newspaper was ordered closed for its "extremely harmful direction."^[26] The same fate befell Shubrat (Fame), published in December 1907 by Abdullah Awlani with the cooperation of Ahmetjan Bektimirov and Munawwar Qari, which also lasted ten issues, as well as its successor Aziya (Asia), which could manage only five issues. The much more moderate Tojjar (Merchants), published by Said Karim-bay, the decorated notable, shunned politics ("Our purpose is not opposition to the government [unlike Taraqqi and Khurshid ] but rather to be the friends and supporters of the Russian state in a way that does not harm religion"),^[27] but could not attract enough readers to pay its way, and Said Karim-bay apparently being unwilling to foot the bill himself, folded after thirty-seven issues. By March 1908, the independent vernacular press had ceased to exist in Central Asia.

The first attempt to revive it came in Bukhara in 1912 and took a more institutionalized form. In 1912, a group of Bukharan Jadids managed to secure permission for the publication of a Persian-language newspaper called Bukhara-yi sharif (Bukhara the Noble) in Kagan. The newspaper was financed by a joint-stock company for which 9,000 rubles were raised almost immediately.^[28] Mir Jalil Mirbadalov, the chief translator at the Russian Political Agency, was apparently instrumental in securing permission, although the agency reserved the right to censor the newspaper. Edited by an Azerbaijani, Bukhara-yi sharif published daily (although in July, when it launched a biweekly Turkic supplement titled Turan , its frequency declined). The two newspapers survived on their own for several months but were closed down in January 1913 by Russian authorities at the request of the amir.^[29] In April of that year, Behbudi, who by this time was deeply involved in writing and publishing, launched Samarqand as a biweekly newspaper. The venture was not successful financially, and in September he abandoned the newspaper and channeled its finances into Central Asia's first magazine, Ayina (The Mirror), which he managed to put out almost weekly for the next twenty months. Again, sales were poor and the onset of war did not help matters. At the end of the first year, the number of paid subscribers was 234, and

[26] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 31, d. 536, l. 16.

[27] "Matbuat alami," Tojjar , 21 August 1907.

[28] A. Samoilovich, "Pechat' russkikh musul'man," Mir Islama 1 (1912): 478n.

[29] Sadriddin Ayni, Bukhara inqilabi tarikhi uchun materiyallar (Moscow, 1922), 94-101.

the situation does not seems to have improved.^[30] When Behbudi was told by his doctors in the summer of 1915 to take the waters, he closed the magazine down.^[31] It was never published again.

But 1914 had been the banner year for journalism in Central Asia. In March, Munawwar Qari, Abdullah Awlani, Ubaydullah Khojaev, and four others launched Sada-yi Turkistan (Voice of Turkestan) as a joint-stock venture in Tashkent.^[32] Almost simultaneously, Abidjan Mahmudov, Jadid activist and merchant of the second guild in Kokand, began Sada-yi Farghana (Voice of Ferghana). The two newspapers, alike in many ways, shunned politics and focused on educational and cultural goals, ceaselessly exhorting their compatriots to wake up (a favorite metaphor) to the necessity of reform. In early 1915, when reformist ulama in Tashkent launched their own magazine, al-Islah (Reform), five periodicals (including TWG ) were being published in Turkestan. But this situation did not last; although political caution saved them from the censor's axe, all but al-Islah fell victim to the market, the small readership being unable to sustain them. Sada-yi Turkistan folded in May 1915 for financial reasons, Sada-yi Farghana followed soon afterward, and Ayina's last issue came out in June 1915. There were two attempts to publish news sheets containing only agency reports in translation and an unsuccessful bid to revive Sada-yi Turkistan in Andijan in 1916.^[33] When the old order was cast asunder by revolution in March 1917, the only unofficial vernacular periodical being published in Central Asia was al-Islah. .^[34]

The Jadid press had a marked didactic flavor. For the Jadids, the newspaper was a platform from which to broadcast their exhortations to reform. The model for the Central Asian press was provided, of course, by Gasprinskii's Terjüman , which for a generation had stood as the only unofficial Muslim newspaper in the Russian empire of any consequence, but Turkestan newspapers shared the general attitudes and style common to much Muslim journalism of the turn of the century, in both the

[30] "Muhtaram khwanandalargha!" Ayina , 16 November 1914, 40-41.

[31] "Idaradan," Ayina , 15 June 1915, 442.

[32] GARF, f. 102, op. 244 (1914), d. 74, ch. 84B, l. 125.

[33] Ziyo Said, Ozbek waqtli matbuoti tarikhiga materiallar (1927), in his Tanlangan asarlar (Tashkent, 1974), 101.

[34] On the press m Central Asia, see Said, Ozbek waqtli matbuoti ; the sections on Central Asia in Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Pans, 1964), otherwise the standard work on the subject, are often incorrect and should be used with caution.

Russian and Ottoman empires, as well as in the Ottoman and Iranian diasporas. Newspapers ran to four pages and appeared usually twice a week (the exception being Bukhara-yi sharif , which appeared daily). They carried news, mostly from other newspapers or from telegraph agencies, since none could afford to post correspondents, but the bulk of the space was occupied by essays, editorial and opinion pieces dealing with the usual themes of education, progress, and admonition. Poetry, usually critical or exhortatory, was a prominent feature. Readers from all over Central Asia wrote to comment on shortcomings or problems in their localities or in Central Asia in general. The central feature of all newspapers remained the filyatun (feuilleton via the Russian), a long essay which often took up as much as a quarter of each newspaper. The filyatun was either critical or informative, usually both, as authors managed to inform readers about the achievements of other societies while using the invidious comparison to Turkestan to exhort their readers to reform, to act as the "society's physicians." Sometimes the filyatun was written as fiction; Cholpan's Doctor Muhammadyar , perhaps the first modern short story in Central Asian Turkic, appeared as a series of filyatuns in Sada-yi Turkistan in the summer of 1914. Behbudi's Ayina had a similar tenor of exhortation and admonition, although he also published a great deal of informational material, such as a series of articles on the antiquities of Samarqand, a long essay on "Why Did the Turkish State Decline?" reprinted from Terjüman , and Behbudi's own observations on a two-month trip to the Ottoman empire in 1914.

It was this content that distinguished the Jadid press from the TWG on one side and al-Islah on the other. The earliest voices of reform appeared in TWG , which also featured the filyatun . The tone, however, was never so single-mindedly exhortatory as it was in the Jadid press. Filyatuns in TWG were generally "informational," such as numerous articles on the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913, the centenary of the Napoleonic invasion, or the history of the conquest of Turkestan. Indeed, the appearance of an independent Muslim press after 1905 brought about a change in the character of the newspaper, which seems to have become more circumspect in giving voice to reform. Much of the copy in the last decade of its existence was written by its native editor, one Mulla Alim, a protégé of Ostroumov, who frequently sparred with editors of other periodicals, both Central Asian and Tatar. Al-Islah , on the other hand, did not write about seeking admonition from Europeans; the reform to which it was committed emanated from different

sources. Its prose, heavily larded with Arabic and Persian expressions, was also broken up with lengthy quotations in Arabic (without translation) which served, among other things, to demarcate its readership.

With the exception of al-Islah , the ulama did not attempt to join the fray by launching their own publications. Because they did not leave a published record, it is difficult to surmise their reasons. Significant no doubt was the traditionalist ulama's distaste for engaging in debate with those outside their own circles, those who had not dedicated themselves for years to the acquisition of knowledge and adab . However, a second, more fundamental reason for the ulama's absence from the world of journalism was that the bulk of their constituency continued to exist in a largely oral world in which literacy remained a sacralized skill. For the traditionalist ulama, written knowledge was still transmitted through face-to-face interaction, and the impersonal use of the written word inherent in the newspaper was not widely accepted by them. Reading, even for those who were literate, was primarily a devotional activity. Attention to such different uses of the written word and different (culturally valued) reading habits might also help explain the lack of financial success the Jadids met in their publishing efforts. The obvious reasons for the low demand for newspapers and magazines, and for the printed word in general, were the low purchasing power of consumers in a poor agrarian economy and the low levels of literacy among the population. But as I argued in Chapter 1, low levels of literacy did not in themselves mean a lack of education or of interest in the literate tradition. Texts could always be read aloud and shared by those who could not read themselves. Therefore, we have to look further than low levels of literacy for possible explanations of low demand for the printed word.

Historians of Europe have remarked on the transition from "intensive" to "extensive" reading practices in the eighteenth century. "Intensive" reading involved the communal reading and rereading, often aloud (and accompanied by memorization) of a small number of texts belonging to only a few genres; such reading was embedded in reverential attitudes toward both the act of reading itself and the book being read. "Extensive" reading, which developed in the age of print, is marked by the reading, silently and individually, of a large number of texts devoid of any reverential or sacral meaning.^[35] Such a line of inquiry yields fruit-

[35] For an excellent introduction to this literature, Roger Chartier, "Du lire au livre." in Chartier, ed., Pratiques de la lecture (Marseilles, 1985), 69ff.

ful insights into the Jadid experience with disseminating reform through the printed word.

In the tradition reproduced by the maktab, texts were sacralized objects accessible only through the mediation of a recognized master. The newspaper represented a completely new use of the written word. Its impersonal text, usually in quotidian language rather than rhymed prose or verse, was a desacralized commodity that did not fit existing patterns of usage for the written word. And while the newspaper itself was the best source for the dissemination of new reading habits, the continued existence of older reading habits proved to be the major obstacle in its growth. The new-method schools inculcated different reading practices, and a new generation of their graduates might have formed a reading public to support Jadid publishing efforts, but in the period under review, such was not the case. Newspapers published by the Jadids therefore failed to attract a wide readership and consequently faced severe financial hardships. Shuhrat had a print run of only 300 when it was closed down by the administration,^[36] and as noted above, the number of paid subscriptions to Behbudi's Ayina hovered around zoo for most of its existence.

A New Literature

The Jadids' first attempts to write prose fiction also date from this period. Ostroumov had published pieces by Tolstoy in the. TWG , and prose fiction in Tatar and Ottoman had made its appearance in Central Asia. A translation from Azerbaijani of Robinson Crusoe published in 1912 by Fazilbek Atabek oghli introduced the term roman to Central Asia. Hamza Hakimzada Niyazi called his 1915 story of the happiness brought by knowledge a "national novel" (milli roman ). The Jadids hoped for nothing less than to create a new canon more in keeping with the needs of the moment than the existing literature, which they harshly criticized for its obsolescence and decadence. Hamza wrote his New Happiness for the following reasons: "This book is not for use in the maktab; rather it was written with the aim of providing a book for reading [qiraat risalasi ] for use in place of the books currently read by the common people, such as Jamshed, Zarqum, Aldarkusha , [various] bayazes, Dalla Mukhtar, Gul andam, Afandi , etc., which are all full of superstition and

[36] TsGARUz, f. 461, op. 1, d. 57, l. 6070b.

nonsense, injurious to morals, and [entirely] baseless."^[37] Much like the press, Jadid literature remained firmly subordinated to an overriding didactic concern. This was especially true of the plays which usually culminated in lengthy speeches in which a mouthpiece of the Jadids would rouse the audience by pointing to the moral of the story. There is no character or plot development and no concern with the internal struggles of human beings. The interiorized self of bourgeois modernity is nowhere to be found in the Jadid literature of this period. For all their denigration of the oral romance tradition, the Jadids could not escape its conventions. Many characters did not even have individual names but rather represented social types. The plot served to highlight social ills and to present Jadid remedies for them, but assertion took the place of demonstration through plot development. The effect was rather lugubrious, and most theater evenings were leavened with the inclusion of light comedy (although the didactic intent was never far beneath the surface even in comedy: a skit called Tim Fool puts the difficulties encountered by a country bumpkin in the city to generic ignorance, whereas in Is It Easy to Be a Lawyer? , the lawyer frequently rises above the antics of his humbling clients to lecture the audience about the need to reform).^[38] Nevertheless, many of the writers who began writing in the last years before 1917 went on to become accomplished men of letters in the following decade, and the history of modern Central Asian literature can scarcely be imagined without the names of Fitrat, Cholpan, Qadiri, and Hamza (although generations of Soviet scholarship attempted to do precisely that).

Poetry, however, retained its central place in Central Asian literary life, and much of the Jadid exhortation took this form. Sadriddin Ayni's characterization of "Tajik" literature of this period as "old in form but with new topics" applies also to literary output in Turkic.^[39] The Jadid press regularly published poetry (odes to the press were a standard feature), and poetry had an important place in the curriculum of new-method schools. Sayyid Ahmad Ajzi wrote two long poems in the masnawi tradition ruing the fallen state of the Muslim community and exhorting it to reform. But there were new uses for poetry, too. The advent of the gramophone had made folk tunes respectable, and both Aw-

[37] Hamza Hakimzada Niyazi, Yangi saadat: milli roman (Kokand, 1915), 2.

[38] Abdullah Badri, Ahmaq (Samarqand, 1915); Abdullah Awlani, Advokatlik asan nu ? (1916), in Abdulla Awloniy, Toshkent tongi , ed. B. Qosimov (Tashkent, 1978), 300-319.

[39] Sadriddin Ayni, Namuna-yi adabiyat-i Tajik (Moscow, 1926), 529.

lani and Hamza wrote lyrics with "national" (i.e., reformist) themes for folk melodies.

Modern Theater

Theater exercised a deep fascination for Jadids throughout the Russian empire. Looking back on a quarter century of reform, Ismail Bey Gasprinskii could write in 1901 on the emergence of theater as a major achievement.^[40] As with newspapers, the mere existence of theater was deemed a sign of progress and civilization. Modern theater came to Central Asia with the Russian conquest, but until the turn of the century, theatrical activity was confined to the Russian community in the larger cities. A dramatic literature and professional troupes had developed among the Muslims of Transcaucasia and the Tatar lands by the end of the nineteenth century. Transcaucasian and Tatar troupes toured Turkestan in 1911, after which such tours became common.^[41] In addition, dramatic activity was sustained locally by expatriate Tatars who began staging plays for their community at least as early as 1905, and by 1913, this activity was strong enough to support a standing Tatar theater group in Tashkent led by Zeki Bayazidskii.^[42]

The repertoire of these troupes came whole cloth from European Russia or Transcaucasia, and it was performed in the languages of those areas. Local Jadids realized the advantages of the medium and sought to use it for their own goals. Mahmud Khoja Behbudi wrote The Parricide , the first play to be set in Central Asia, as early as 1911, but difficulties with the censor delayed its publication until 1913 and its performance until 1914. When it did first play, in Samarqand on 15 January 1914, it was an instant success.^[43] The group that performed it, composed of seven Central Asians, a Tatar, and an Azerbaijani, traveled to Kokand,

[40] Ismail Bey Gasprinskir, "First Steps toward Civilizing Russian Muslims," trans. Edward J. Lazzerini, in Lazzerini, "Gadidisni at the Turn of the Century: A View from Within," Cabiers du monde russe et soviétique , 16 (1975): 257.

[41] Gulam Mammadli, "Azarbayjan teatri Orta Asiyada," in Iskusstvo Azerbaidzhana , vol. 3 (Baku, 1950), 228-229; M. Buzruk Salihov, Ozbek teatr tarixi ucun materiallar (Tashkent, 1935), 58.

[42] Salihov, Ozbek teatr , 57, 61.

[43] According to the report m Ayina , admittedly written by Behbudi himself, the audience numbered 370 (the theater seated 320, so another 50 seats had to be installed temporarily) and many others had to be turned back; Behbudi, "Turkistanda birinchi milli tiyatir," Ayina , 25 January 1914, 227. The play again attracted a sellout crowd when it came to Tashkent on 6 March 1914; see TWG , 6 March 1914.

Tashkent, and Katta Qurghan in the next few weeks.^[44] By early September, The Parricide had been performed fifteen times by different groups in Turkestan, often without the permission of the author.^[45] The next three years saw intense activity in local theater.^[46] Central Asian Jadids favored plays that dealt specifically with local issues over those translated from Tatar or Azerbaijani, and therefore many of them turned playwright and produced a number of plays addressing questions of purely Central Asian interest.^[47] Samarqand was the greatest center of this activity where Behbudi's disciples Haji Muin b. Shukrullah and Nusratullah b. Qudratullah produced a number of scripts. In addition, Hamza in Kokand, Awlani in Tashkent, and Abdullah Badri in Bukhara wrote numerous plays in this period, several of which were never published.^[48] Theatrical performances, often in the form of artistic soirees, became commonplace even in smaller towns like Osh, Namangan, and Katta Qurghan. This activity was paralleled by visits from Azerbaijani and Tatar troupes, who also began to perform local plays. Moreover, a number of Tatar and Transcaucasian plays were translated into local Turkic and sometimes adapted to a Central Asian setting.^[49] Local amateur theater groups began to form immediately after the first performance of The Parricide . The original cast of the play, which rehearsed at Behbudi's house in Samarqand, coalesced into a troupe and began touring Turkestan. Behbudi had apparently directed the troupe in the beginning, but later the position passed to the Azerbaijani director Ali Asghar Askarov.^[50] Other amateur groups formed in Tashkent and Kokand as well as in smaller towns. Hamza was at the center of one such group in Kokand, which performed plays written or translated by Hamza himself. The first

[44] Mamadzhan Rakhmanov, Uzbekskii teatr s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 goda (Tashkent, 1968), 280.

[45] Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Padarkush wajhidan," Ayina , 13 September 1914, 1130.

[46] For an overview, see A. Samoilovich, "Dramaticheskaia literatura sartov," Vestnik Imparatorskogo Obshchestva Vostokovedemia , 1916, no. 5, 72-84; Edward Allworth, "The Beginnings of the Modern Turkestanian Theater," Slavic Review 23 (1964): 676- 687; Allworth., The Modern Uzbeks (Stanford, 1990), 147-152.

[47] See, for instance, Khalmuhammad Akhundi, "Namangandan maktub," Ayina , 16 May 1915, 399. Local reviews and reports of theatrical performances m Ayina also expressed disapproval of Tatar actors for various reasons: "Samarqanda tiyatir," Ayina , 1 February 1914, 263; "Katta Qorghanda tiyatir," Ayina , 29 March 1914, 349.

[48] Buzruk Salihov (Ozbek teatr , 82-84) lists seventeen locally written plays that were staged before February 1917. In addition, another twenty-four plays of Tatar, Transcaucasian, and Ottoman origin had been staged by that time.

[49] Samoilovich, "Dramaticheskaia literatura," 73.

[50] Rakhmanov, Uzbekskii teatr , 280.

engagement of the group was Hamza's Zaharli hayat (A Poisoned Life), performed in October 1915.^[51] In Tashkent, a group formed around Awlani, who had been involved in local Tatar theater since at least 1909. In 1916, the group was formalized as the Turan Amateur Dramatic Society, with the mission to "develop the love of serious drama among the population . . . [and] to stage spectacles for the people, [in order to] provide healthy diversions to them."^[52] In Bukhara, dramatic activity remained in the hands of local Tatars, who were, however, allowed to stage their plays in old Bukhara.

In founding a modern theater in Central Asia, the Jadids sought to distance it from the long tradition of folk theater known as maskharabazlik . Satire was the stock in trade of this theater, and maskharas could poke brutal fun at various aspects of society, including the khans and Islam itself.^[53] Yet, in preconquest Central Asia, the whole enterprise was located beyond the pale of adab (adabdan kharij ) and hence denied any moral authority. Moreover, the maskharas' use of music was always susceptible to attack by the ulama on Islamic grounds, and their bodily movements contravened the rules of proper deportment conveyed by the maktab. To be a maskhara was the opposite of being a cultured individual; for cultured individuals to take on the activities of the maskharas was scandalous. The Jadids sought to make theater respectable through an appeal to the nation and the needs of the age. For Behbudi, for instance, "theater is a place for preaching and exhortation [majlis-i wa'z-u nasihat ]" for society and in its lofty purpose had nothing in common with the crude craft of the maskharas.^[54] The Jadids drew inspiration from the modern, print-based theater of Europe, which had also been adopted by other Muslim communities of the Russian empire. Indeed, the print antecedents of Jadid theater need to be emphasized. Unlike the maskharas, the Jadids transmitted their theatrical work in print. The Jadids published the transcripts of many of their plays, partly in the hope that all productions of the same play would convey a uniform message. In conveying its message orally, Jadid theater still aspired to the uniformity made possible by print.

Theater was immediately put to philanthropic use. The play itself spread the message while the performance was used to raise money for

[51] Ibid., 290.

[52] Quoted in T.T. Tursunov, Oktiabr'skaia revoluitsna i uzbeksii teatr (Tashkent, 1983), 10.

[53] See Rakhmanov, Uzbekskii teatr , 195-198, for examples.

[54] Behbudi, "Tiyatir, musiqi, she'r," Ayina , 18 December 1914, 111-114.

other Jadid causes. Since all the actors were amateurs, usually Jadid activists, there were no performance fees and a large percentage of the revenue could be used for other purposes. In the three years of its existence, Jadid theater was staged to benefit reading rooms, new-method schools, a Muslim field hospital on the war front, and wounded Muslim soldiers. Thus, the first ever performance of The Parricide in Samarqand raised 329.69 rubles for the city's Muslim Reading Room. This figure represented the entire net income from the evening after expenses of 170 rubles had been paid.^[55] A performance of the same play in Khujand raised 590 rubles for the Red Crescent in January 1915,^[56] and a performance of The Feast in Samarqand the previous December raised 245 rubles, a quarter of which was donated to the war wounded and the rest to new-method schools in the area.^[57] The popularity of theater led to the emergence of cultural soirees that combined cultural, economic, and political functions in one event. A soiree typically included at least one play in addition to music and a program of songs. The Tatar singer and Jadid activist Kamil ul-Mutigi Tuhfatullin toured Central Asia at least twice between 1913 and 1915, giving concerts of Tatar music, including poems by such prominent Tatar Jadids as Abdullah Tuqay set to music.

New Forms of Sociability

The activity surrounding the theater was crucial m forming a public that came together under new rules to discuss issues concerning society. It eschewed overtly political matters, but it redrew the boundaries of debate about cultural and social issues. Similarly, informal discussion circles remained the primary institutional form of Jadidism in Turkestan. (The situation was different in Bukhara, where official hostility drove the Jadids into secret societies.) The Central Asian tradition of gap , circles that brought together men of various crafts or neighborhoods for weekly or monthly gatherings of mutual hospitality, was appropriated for new aims by the Jadids. Munawwar Qari was reported by the tsarist police to be leader of one of the largest gaps in Tashkent.^[58] But for many Jadids such "modern" gaps were merely the beginning. For the Jadids, the key to progress and development lay in organized effort. Hamza saw all asso-

[55] Ayina , 25 January 1914, 237.

[56] Ayina , 30 January 1915, 206.

[57] Ayina , 30 December 1914, 135-137.

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

ciational endeavors, even commercial ones, as an expression of unity. When he wrote to prospective investors in 1914, he expressed this hope: "Maybe in this way our unity will develop, and the rule of joint organization [shirkat qanuni ] will take root among the Muslims of Ferghana and Turkestan, and soon all our affairs, currently decaying, will again turn to progress and development."^[59] The bookstores and publishing ventures described above were the most successful in this regard, and they do show a process of greater institutionalization throughout the decade preceding 1917. These ventures were commercial, to be sure, but by their nature they also served as an institutional basis for cultural reform. The Jadids, though, invested their highest hopes in benevolent societies, such as those which had flourished among the Tatars since the 1890s. As forms of institutionalized philanthropy geared to social (rather than individual) goals, such societies neatly tied together the various strands of Jadid reform in an institutional framework. The issue of establishing a benevolent society in Turkestan was raised in 1906 in the general atmosphere of enthusiasm,^[60] but nothing came of it until 1909, when the Imdadiya (Aid) society was formally established with Munawwar Qari and Abdullah Awlani, who had collaborated on the newspaper Shuhrat the previous year, among its founders. The society defined its aim as "the improvement of the moral and material position of needy persons of the Mohammedan faith in the Syr Darya oblast," through opening shelters for the poor, supporting hospitals, and helping students.^[61] The educational goals were broadened in 1913 to include the opening of schools and reading rooms and the establishment of scholarships.^[62] The society secured the financial help of Said Karim-bay (who also served as chair for a year), and it lasted until the revolution. It acquired a niche for itself in the public life of Muslim Tashkent without ever making the kind of difference its founders had hoped for. Membership dues (a modest six rubles) were the main source of revenue, although the advent of theater provided another. Still, the total expenditure for 1914 stood at only 1,975.20 rubles, roughly one-third of which went to students in various kinds of schools.^[63]

[59] Hamza arkhivi katalogi , I: 38.

[60] Taraqqi, 27 July 1906; 3 August 1906; 12 August 1906; "Tashkand Jamiyat-i khayriya," Khurshid , 21 September 1906.

[61] Ustav musul'manskogo obshchestva "Pomoshch'" v Tashkente (Tashkent, 1909).

[62] TsGARUz, f. 17, d. 17416, l. 29.

[63] ST , 21 January 1915.

Imdadiya remained the only benevolent society to operate among the native population of Turkestan, although numerous such societies existed among the European and Tatar communities in various cities. Other attempts at organized philanthropy also had limited success. Thirteen activists led by Behbudi founded a "Muslim reading room" (qiraatkhana wa mutaliakhana islamiyasi [sic]) in Samarqand in 1908. It began with 125 subscriptions, but by 1912, only seven members remained and daily attendance averaged barely ten persons a day.^[64] In 1912, Abdullah Awlani opened the Turan reading room in Tashkent, which received periodicals from all over the Muslim world, most of them obtained gratis from their publishers. Nevertheless, financial worries never left it, and it seems to have folded in early 1917.^[65]

A Public Sphere

Numerous stalled initiatives to publish newspapers and a small share of the publishing market do not seem to indicate huge success for Jadid reform. However, two points should be kept in mind. The Jadid presence in the publishing field increased rapidly in the years after 1912, both in terms of titles published and publishing ventures launched, and modern theater, perhaps the most successful medium of Jadid reform, began in 1914 and was hugely successful in the following years. This in spite of an economic slump that hit Turkestan about that time and worsened at the onset of the world war, with its inflation and often crippling paper shortages. The collapse of the periodicals launched in 1913 and 1914 was at least partly due to this slump, since even the officially bankrolled TWG was feeling the pinch; its frequency had been reduced in 1916, and there was talk in early 1917 of cutting it back even further.^[66] Second, the lack of success of local publishing (especially of the periodical press) was to some extent compensated for by the appearance of Turkic-language newspapers from other parts of the Russian empire. Terjüman had always been popular; after 1905, it was joined by the very vibrant periodical press that emerged among the Volga Tatars. Indeed, the success

[64] Behbudi, "Hisabi-atchut," TWG , 4 March 1910; Behbudi, "Qiraatkhana wa mutaliakhana islamiyasi babinda mukhtasir bayannama," Samarqand , 11 June 1913; Ayina , 7 December 1913, 144.

[65] A. Abdurazzakov, "Pedagogicheskoe nasledie uzbekskogo prosvetitelia Abdully Avloni" (Candidate's diss., Tashkent, 1979), 56-58; A.G. Kasymova, Istorua bibliotechnogo dela v Uzbekistane (Tashkent, 1981), 32-33.

[66] TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 8, d. 528, l. 5.

of Tatar newspapers, much better produced and often cheaper than their local counterparts, worked to the disadvantage of Central Asian press by encroaching upon an already small market.^[67]

Yet, for all these difficulties, print had subtly transformed the manner in which culture was produced and reproduced in Central Asia. As in early modern Europe, print helped sever the link between intellectual production and courtly patronage.^[68] It also redefined the boundaries of debate. Beginning with the informational pieces in the TWG , it had led to the creation of a public in which entree was gained by the ability to read (or hear) the printed word. Moreover, the new ubiquity of the written word carried in it seeds of a profound change in cultural attitudes toward knowledge and its place in society. The scarcity of the written word in the scribal age endowed it with a sacral aura. Writing itself was the object of reverence and the mnemonic, ritual, and devotional uses of the written word overshadowed its more mundane documentary functions. Further, in the tradition of Islamic learning entrenched in the madrasas of Central Asia, access to the written word was mediated by authoritative, face-to-face interaction with a recognized master. The ubiquity of print undermined these relations by making the written word more accessible and tended to render the mediation of the learned unnecessary, thereby producing two interrelated results.

On the one hand, print allowed the Jadids to challenge the monopoly of the traditionally learned over authoritative discourse. In their writings, the Jadids tended to address a public composed of all those who could read. The use of print allowed the Jadids to go beyond the concerns of intellectual pedigree and patronage that provided the framework for literary production in the manuscript age. The Jadid project involved nothing less than the redefinition of the social order, for when Behbudi claimed that newspapers were spiritual leaders of society, or that the theater was a "house of admonition" (ibratkhana ) where society could take stock of its ills,^[69] he was directly challenging the authority of the traditional cultural elite. The knowledge of the ulama was now neither necessary, nor sufficient to cure society's ills. Similarly, the new prose literature, with its critical posture, independent of the constraints of adab , was crucial to the Jadids' attempt to carve out a discursive space

[67] Siddiqi, "Turkistan jaridalari," Ayina , 27 September 1914, 1181; Abdurrauf Muzaffer, "Turkistanda bugunke hayat," Shura , 15 February 1917, 83.

[68] E.g., Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Princeton, 1987).

[69] Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Tiyatir nedur?" Ayina , 10 May 1914, 550-553.

for themselves in their society. The printed word redefined the boundaries of the public space within which debate was carried out. The creation of a print-based public space led to a new cultural politics in Central Asia.

The ubiquity of print also contributed to a certain desacralization of writing itself. Combined with the spread of functional literacy, the ubiquity of print tended to shift the focus of learning from the master to the text, the secrets of which were now available to all who could read. Newspapers and printed forms further tended to encourage quotidian uses of writing. The Jadids' denigration of the medieval commentaries and glosses used in the madrasa, and their call for a "return" to the textual sources of Islam were rooted in this new attitude toward writing. The market-oriented print trade also led to the commodification of the written word: unlike manuscripts, printed books had to be sold, much like any other commodity. Publishers were not patrons, and although sometimes putting a godly book in print was seen as a pious act, few publishers could afford to do so regularly. This cornmodification further contributed to the desacralization of writing in the age of print. Both these phenomena were highly subversive of the authority of the ulama. Access to printing allowed the Jadids to reconfigure cultural debate in their society and to lay the foundations for a broad-based movement of cultural reform beyond the control of the older cultural elite.

The Mirror of Admonition

The following assessment by Munawwar Qari, published in Khurshid , perhaps the most outspoken of the newspapers of 1906-1908, is fairly typical of Jadid thought:

[A]ll our acts and actions, our ways, our words, our maktabs and madrasas and methods of teaching, and our morals are in decay.... If we continue in this way for another five or ten years, we are in danger of being dispersed and effaced under the oppression of developed nations [mutaraqqi millatlar ].... O coreligionists, o compatriots! Let's be just and compare our situation with that of other, advanced nations; ... let's secure the future of our coming generations [awladimiz uchun ham fa'idalik yollar achib ] and save them from becoming slaves and servants of others. The Europeans, taking advantage of our negligence and ignorance, took our government from our hands and are gradually taking over our crafts and trades. If we do not quickly make an effort to reform our affairs in order to safeguard ourselves, our nation, and our children, our future will be extremely difficult.
Reform begins with a rapid start in cultivating sciences conforming to our times [zamanagha muivafiq ulum-u funun ]. Becoming acquainted with the

sciences of the [present] time depends upon the reform of our schools and our methods of teaching.^[70]

Much about Central Asia and its culture had to be reformed and recast if the challenge were to be met properly; continuation in the old ways could lead to the extinction of the community. The Jadids saw as their mission the awakening of their nation (millat ) from the sleep of ignorance through combining exhortation and self-criticism with warnings of dire consequences if the call were not heard. Faith in the power of knowledge (and education) to ameliorate the situation was central to the Jadid project, and I will examine it in greater detail in the Chapter 5. Suffice it to note here the connection between the decay in morals and ignorance as well as the intimation of mortal danger if society does nor change its ways. The reverse of progress was decay. The Jadids espied not just stagnation but decline in their society. If knowledge needed proper social organization in order to flourish, the Jadids saw only disorder and chaos around them. Earlier Muslims had cultivated knowledge, but succeeding generations, through their heedlessness, had forgotten even the names of their forebears. Jadid writers often evoked the names of Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Farabi, al-Bukhari, and Ulugh Bek as exemplars of a previous age of learning that had been forgotten. The Bukharan writer Mirza Siraj, surveying the decline around him, asked, "If the Minar-i Kalan [the thirteenth-century tower that is Bukhara's most imposing structure] were to fall down today, would we be able to rebuild it?"^[71]

Knowledge for the Jadids was universal, not culturally specific. Comparisons with "developed" nations were therefore not just permissible but mandatory, and the Jadids constantly made them. The central rhetorical tool for the Jadids was ibrat , seeking admonition or heeding laudable example. The Jadids saw themselves as showing their society the mirror of admonition so that society could reform itself. Much of what the Jadids wrote about other societies (or their own) stemmed from this rhetorical purpose. Their accounts of "developed" countries were entirely positive. Behbudi in particular was fond of publishing statistics showing numbers of newspapers, theaters, schools, or expenditures

[70] "Islah ne demakdadur," Khurshid , 28 September 1906. This message, in its broad outline as well as in its details, was repeated time and time again in the following decade; see, e.g., Jalal, "Che bayad Kard?" Bukhara-yi Sharif , 14 March 1912; Behbudi, "Ihtiyaj-i Millat," Samarqand , 12 July 1913; Haji Muin b. Shukrullah, Eski maktab, yangi maktab (Samarqand, 1916), 27-28.

[71] M.S. Mirza Khurdaf, "Qadari fa'aliyat lazim ast," Bukhara-yi Sharif , 22 March 1912.

on education in various countries of the world. Newspapers wrote of technological progress, philanthropy, and collective effort in other countries, all the while exhorting their readers to heed the call and follow the example. Even when dealing with questions of morality, Europe presented a positive image. This is worth noting, since all too often scholarly literature on Muslim perceptions of Europe focuses on criticism of the loose morality of Europeans. There is virtually no condemnation of European morals in the writings of the Jadids of Central Asia. An article on "Alcoholism among the French," for instance, described not the moral decrepitude of Christian (or capitalist) society but efforts at countering alcoholism that the Muslims of Central Asia might emulate.^[72] And when they described travels abroad, they painted a uniformly positive picture.

In 1902, Mirza Siraj Rahim, the son of a wealthy Bukharan merchant, embarked on a six-month visit that took him through Russia to Istanbul and then to all the major capitals of Europe. Almost immediately upon his return, he left again for India, Afghanistan, and Iran, where he ended up staying for many years. Returning to Bukhara in 1909, he became prominent in local reform circles, editing Bukhara's first Turkic newspaper in 1912, and contributing to periodicals in Turkestan, Iran, and Istanbul until his premature death in 1914.^[73] In 1911, he published an account of his travels of the previous decade that provided the first extensive Central Asian portrayal of the outside world to the local audience.

Mirza Siraj takes great pleasure in describing the wonders of Europe to his readers, with the focus squarely on progress, order, and material achievement. He traveled first class across Europe. There is no mention of any difficulties he experienced or any sense of alienation in being in a foreign land. In his bourgeois cosmopolitanism there is not a trace of the native fanaticism that frightened Russian administrators. Upon arriving in a city, he would hire a cab to be driven around the sites before settling down to a round of visits that included museums, schools, universities, and theaters. (Only in London did he visit a factory.) In Vienna, he provides a detailed description of the etiquette involved in a visit to the theater. In Berlin we get copious detail about his hotel, which was "as good as, or rather, better than the palaces of the monarchs of Asia." He was especially fond of Paris ("Whoever comes into this world and does not

[72] Basit Khan Zahid Khan oghli, "Firansuzlarda ichkulik," Khurshid , 12 November 1906.

[73] See his obituary in Ayina , 11 January 1914, 291-292.

see Paris might as well not be born"), with whose boulevards and cafes he fell in love.^[74] The descriptions are repetitive and perhaps superficial, but they always serve to remind the reader of the achievements of developed states. The source of this progress was not far to seek. "The instruments of progress and improvement [taraqqi wa tarbiyat ] that I saw in the cities of Germany are also present in villages and towns in proportion to their size. Every village has a complete elementary school, an organized secondary school, a hospital, a theater, a hotel, and a recreational park.... The expenses of these are the responsibility of the constitutional state of Germany."^[75] In Vienna, "every person, big or small, man or woman, reads the newspaper. Every day, several newspapers are printed in the presses of this city. An idle, illiterate person is never to be found."^[76] The comparison, invariably invidious, with Central Asia, is always implicit, and occasionally bursts out in impassioned prose.

I did not see in Europe a single person whose clothes were old or torn, not one building in ruins, nor a street that was unpaved.... But in our country, our poor merchants and shopkeepers, in their cells and shops dark with dust and [surrounded by] crowds of beggars, cannot find a minute to breathe properly.... Pity on us, pity on us. All the time I toured Paris, [my] beloved homeland was constantly in my mind, and all the time tears flowed from my eyes.^[77]

Leaving Paris for the last time, he felt very sad until he reminded himself, "No matter what, I am going to my country and the lands of Islam."

Even if it is bad, it is our homeland.... One should nor despair of one's homeland, and one should not exile its love from the heart. The fault is not with our country, it is with its children for they are ignoble and do not know the rights of their mother. Whatever there is comes from the homeland, and its love has been decreed by the Pride of the Universe to be a pillar of the faith: "hubb ulwatan min al-iman " [love of the homeland is part of faith]. We do not know the worth of our land, and do not attempt to work for its prosperity and improvement. The fault does not he in our country, but in ourselves.^[78]

For Behbudi, who provides us the other Jadid view of the world beyond, this didactic purpose is firmly foregrounded. Behbudi traveled in the Ottoman empire in 1914 and described his impressions in detail in Ayina . Again we get detailed descriptions of the order and cleanliness of

[74] Mirza Sirajiddin Haji Mirza 'Abdurrauf, Safarnama-yi Tuhaf-I Bukhara , ed. M. Asadiyan (Tehran, 1992), 107-109, 113, 121. This book was originally published as Tuhaf-I ahl-I Bukara (Kagan, 1911), but I have been unable to locate a copy of the original.

[75] Ibid., 115.

[76] Ibid., 106-107.

[77] Ibid., 133-135.

[78] Ibid., 149.

Russian cities (in Transcaucasia) and the industry and effort of Europeans, but every such description is turned around to a criticism of the present state of the Muslim world. The reader is constantly reminded of the backwardness and ignorance of Muslims and of the price they are paying for it. In Rostov, the 5,000 Muslims do not have their own school. In Edirne, all the trade is in the hands of non-Muslims while the Turks only govern; he finds the same situation in Palestine, where all the shops were owned by Jews. All grocery stores sell wine, which is gladly imbibed by the local Arabs who do not go to the rusdiye schools opened by the state because they consider them haram (forbidden).^[79] Similarly, he is appalled to find a brothel overlooking a cemetery in Jaffa but disagrees with his interlocutors, who place the blame on foreign consuls and their Jewish or Christian protégés; the blame must rest squarely with the Muslims and their ignorance.^[80] Pilgrims and tourists come from afar to visit the Holy Land, all equipped with guide books describing the sights in detail. Muslim pilgrims are the exception. No guide books exist in any Muslim language, and Behbudi notes that he was one of only three Muslims visiting the sights. Even when Behbudi is delighted at the number of wealthy Muslims in Baku, he rues the fact that they do not support the city's newspapers sufficiently. Behbudi rhapsodizes over the glory of the Selimiye mosque in Edirne and the Umayyad mosque in Damascus as examples of the effort and zeal of early Muslims and their support for Islam. The contrast with his contemporaries could not be more starkly drawn. Standing amidst the ruins of the recent war in Edirne, he declares them to be "part of the ruins of ignorance and disorder [ilmsizlik wa idarasizlik ]."^[81]

Travelogues and foreign Muslims had other rhetorical uses, too. Fit-rat used a fictional Indian Muslim traveler to present his desiderata of reform in Bukhara. The Tales of an Indian Traveler was published in Persian in Istanbul but was freely available in Turkestan (although the amir of Bukhara attempted to ban it from his domain). While some of the criticism in it pertains specifically to Bukhara, the tract became a favorite of the Jadids of all Central Asia and Behbudi published a Russian translation in Turkestan.^[82]

[79] Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Sayahat khatiralari—XVIII," Ayina , 25 October 1914, 1238.

[80] Behbudi, "Sayahat khatiralari—XXIII," Ayina , 8 December 1914, 104-105.

[81] Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Sayahat khatiralari—VIII," Ayina , 10 August 1914, 1003.

[82] Abdurrauf Fitrat, Bayanat-i sayyah-i hindi (Istanbul, 1911); I have used a modern Tajik edition of this text: Abdurauf Fitrati Bukhoroi, "Bayonoti sayyohi hindî," ed. Kholiq Mirzozoda, Sadoi sharq , 1988, no. 6, 12-57. The book was widely read m Central Asia at the time of its publication, and Behbudi published a Russian translation in 1914: Abd-ur-Rauf, Razskazy induskogo puteshestvennika: Bukhara kak ona est ‘, tr. A. N. Kondrat'ev (Samarqand, 1913); a Turkic edition, however, did not appear until 1991, when it was published m modern Uzbek: Abdurauf Fitrat, "Hind sayyohining qissasi," trans. Hasan Qudratullaev, Sharq yulduzi , 1991, no. 8, 7-39.

The Traveler arrives at the city gates to find them closed for the night. While he is arguing with the gatekeeper, carriages containing Armenians and Jews are allowed into the city without any questions being asked. Then the doors open again, an Armenian emerges and calls out to someone. His dog, accidentally left behind, appears and is admitted to the city while Muslim travelers wait outside for dawn. The next morning, the Traveler finally enters the city and takes a carriage to an inn in the city but immediately runs into a traffic jam in the narrow streets, as oncoming carriages refuse to yield out of honor ('ar ). As fighting erupts, the Traveler asks his driver, "Brother, aren't there the ruler's men around to settle this?"

"What do the ruler's men have to do with this?" comes the reply.

The affair is settled only after a physical confrontation, but the theme of chaos and disorder is firmly established in the narrative, as is its connection with the state's incompetence and dereliction of duty. Both are repeated continuously throughout the narrative. Later, when the Traveler visits the town of Qarshi, he has the following exchange with a master weaver:

"Really, the people of Qarshi are very skilled in weaving alacha [the Traveler said]. Thanks to this noble skill they reap a great deal of profit these days. But what is your opinion of the future of this craft?"
The owner of the workshop did not understand my question and looked at me in surprise. I explained my question further. "Will the affairs of the craftsmen of Qarshi be in the same healthy state ten or twelve years from now or not?"
The master understood me this time, but since such a question had not even occurred to him until now, was surprised again, and said nothing. I added, "Esteemed master, Europeans, when they set their hands on something, keep their eyes on how it will develop over ten, twenty, even a hundred or two hundred years. You people of Qarshi are highly skilled, bur do you not think of the future of this trade?
Master: "Our trade was good a few years ago. Now too it's not bad. But only God knows its future."
I: "True, but have you done anything [to ensure] the development of your trade over the next ten years?"

Master: "Our affairs are good now; who knows who'll be dead and who alive in ten years?"^[83]

Planning and foresight were essential to progress and modernity, and they were lacking in Central Asia. For Fitrat, they constituted an essential duty of the state, for the Traveler then proceeds to outline an economic policy that Bukhara should follow in order to secure its prosperity.

The theme of sanitation and public health also figures prominently in the Indian Traveler's account. He finds Bukhara unhygienic and employs the discourse of public health to criticize it. In the middle of the trip, he falls ill and finding that none of the practitioners of Bukharan medicine can explain his illness to him, refuses to be treated by them and insists of calling a Russian doctor. Modern medicine cures him, of course, and he recounts in detail his conversation with the Russian doctor on sanitation, public health, and medical education.

The superiority of modern medicine over its traditional Central Asian counterpart, demonstrated by experience, had become an arena of contestation early on. We will remember Governor-General Dukhovskoi's suggestion of harnessing medical science to the task of overcoming native fanaticism. But while individual patients cured by modern medicine were doubtless impressed, public health, a major concern of officialdom, encountered many difficulties as the local population resented the extension of state power into newer domains that such initiatives represented. The most extreme case were the so-called cholera riots in Tashkent in 1892, when attempts by the authorities to regulate burials during an epidemic led to the most serious outbreak of violence in Tashkent of the tsarist period.^[84] The Jadids also embraced this discourse of public health, while criticizing traditional medicine. As a contributor to Ayina wrote, "Our tabibs are ignorant of the science of medicine and have no skills other than that of worsening the disease and sending off the patient to the other world speedily."^[85]

Ignorance led to corruption of Islam itself. The Indian Traveler also visits the tomb of Baha'uddin Naqshband on the outskirts of Bukhara and is dismayed at what he sees there. Pilgrims kissed sacred relics such as rams' horns and a flagpole bearing the mazar's banner and prayed to

[83] Fitrat, "Bayonoti, sayyohi hindi," 40.

[84] This episode remains little studied. The last full-length treatment of the subject was V. Zykin, Vosstanie v Tashkente v 1892 g. (Tashkent, 1934).

[85] H.M., "Tib wa hifz us-sihhatda ri'ayatsizlikimiz," Ayina , 7 June 1914. 778-779.

the buried saint. The Traveler considers this idolatry, and asks, "Is it possible that you consider others 'infidels' for idolatry and worshipping the cross, and but worship flagpoles in mazars, ask Baha'uddin about your needs, and yet consider yourself Muslims?"^[86] Criticism of customary practices for being not "truly Islamic" and hence connected to ignorance was a common feature of Jadid discourse.

Matters of Survival

The sense of impending doom evoked by Munawwar Qari was widely shared by the Jadids, who had to do no more than read their newspapers, which they all did diligently, to be reminded of this Darwinian fact. The middle of the first decade of this century, when the first Jadid newspapers appeared, was a time of great optimism in the wake of revolution in Russia (as well as in Iran), and the hope of a liberal constitutional regime in Russia was very much alive. But the situation changed rapidly. Political life in Russia chilled after 1907, while the news from the Muslim world was uniformly bad. Morocco's rapid subjugation to France and Spain coincided with the virtual disintegration of Iran, but it was the numerous wars faced by the Ottoman empire in the period after the Young Turk revolution of 1908 that shaped a sense of crisis among the Jadids of Central Asia (as indeed among Muslim intellectuals the world over). The wars were covered extensively in the Muslim press of Russia, including the TWG , and brought to the Jadids a certain sense of urgency. Haji Muin cited the example of recent territorial losses suffered by the Ottoman empire and Morocco to bring home the same point: "With the help of the development of science and technology [ilm-u fan ], Europeans can keep an eye on the affairs of all kinds of people in the world. The world has become a struggle for life in which every powerful thing destroys the powerless."^[87] To stay in the game, every nation had to acquire the means necessary for survival, of which knowledge was the most basic. "No nation can survive in the battleground of life without knowledge," wrote a contributor to Ayina . "Any such nation, whether master [hakim ] or subject [mahkum ], will succumb to other nations who possess industry and skills .... If subject nations wish to survive without losing their religion and nationhood [din wa milliyat ], they must

[86] Fitrat, "Bayonoti sayyohi hindî," 19-20.

[87] Haji Muin b. Shukrullah, "Istiqbal qayghusi," Ayina , 2 November 1913, 11.

acquire wealth."^[88] Fitrat once wrote that a nation lacking resolve and determination had no right to exist.^[89] The responsibility for survival therefore lay with the nation itself.

Progress and enlightenment were sources of both power and danger. Jadid authors constantly pointed to Jews and Armenians as both sources of danger and models for emulation. On the steamer from Odessa to Istanbul, Behbudi had a long conversation with a Jew bound for Palestine. "'How are the new cities around Jerusalem?' I asked. 'Praise the Lord, they progress by the day,' he said. 'Doctor Herzl founded these cities with money collected from people with great effort .... Now there is a Jewish bank there, teachers' colleges, gimnaziias, etc. Now at the invitation of the Doctor we are learning the old Jewish tongue (Hebrew). I did not know anything other than Russian. But I studied Hebrew two hours a week for a year and now I can speak, read, and write it.'... And we study Arabic for twenty years and still cannot speak or write it!"^[90] Jews and Armenians, small stateless communities, even more than the powerful imperial nations of Europe, proved to the Jadids the truth of their general assertion that knowledge was the key to progress.^[91] At the same time, they were the perfect example of a Darwinian world in which survival was assured only by disciplined effort.

Ignorance could be fatal. Death constantly stalks Jadid literature. In Behbudi's The Parricide , a rich merchant refuses to send his son to school; the latter, unable to tell right from wrong, falls in with bad company. One night, in need of money to pay for a prostitute, the group attempts to break into the merchant's house and ends up killing the merchant.^[92] In Abdullah Qadiri's The Unfortunate Groom , an impecunious young man forced to conform to custom and celebrate his wedding with an expensive feast (toy ), goes bankrupt and commits suicide along with his wife.^[93] In Hamza's A Poisoned Life , a young woman married off by

[88] Niyazi Rajabzada, "Ibtidai maktablarimizning tartibsizligi, yakhud taraqqining yoli," Ayina , 12 July 1914, 908-909.

[89] Abdurrauf Fitrat, "Himmat-u sabati bolmagan millatning haqq-i hayati yoqdur," Ayina , 14 January 1915, 162.

[90] Behbudi, "Sayahat khatiralari—V," Ayina , 17 July 1914, 929-930.

[91] This is worth noting, for the Jadids' views on this question have usually been cited in the Soviet literature (and occasionally m non-Soviet works as well) as examples of their national chauvinism and even anti-Semitism; see, e.g., Buzruk Salihof, Özbek adabijatida mrllätcilik korunislari (Tashkent, 1935), 11-12; Z. Radzhabov, Iz istorn obshchestvenno-politicheskot mysli Tadzhikskogo naroda vo vtoroi polovine XIX i v nachale XX vv . (Stalinabad, 1957), 401-402.

[92] Behbudi, Padarkush (Samarqand, 1913).

[93] Abdullah Qadiri, Bakhtsiz kiyaw (Tashkent, 19915).

her ignorant parents to a wicked old ishan , takes her life and is followed to the other world by her erstwhile suitor, a young man of modern learning and good intentions.^[94] In Cholpon's Doctor Muhammadyar , murder takes place almost at random, the result of the ignorance that reigns in Central Asian society.^[95] (Occasionally the wages of ignorance are other than death. In Qadiri's The Pederast , the protagonist murders several rivals and is sent off to Siberia as a result.^[96] ) And Ajzi painted a portrait of his city in the future, when splendid prosperity reigns over it but all its madrasas have been turned into restaurants and its mosques replaced by churches; there are no Muslims left.^[97]

Public Morality

The road to death and destruction passed through immorality, and the Jadids saw plenty of evidence of that in their society. Russian rule had brought with it legal prostitution and the sale of alcohol, both of which were quite popular in Turkestan. We read of a brothel in Samarqand with "nearly 400 Turkestani, Bukharan, Tatar, and Russian prostitutes," without any indication that it was in at all unusual.^[98] Even more troubling to the Jadids, however, was the widespread practice of dancing boys (bachcha, jawan, besaqqal ) who, dressed as women, figured in evenings of entertainment (bazm, ma'raka ) and who were often also prostituted. This form of pederasty was a widespread practice (and perhaps had become more widespread under Russian rule).

For the Jadids, the practice was a sign of the worst depths of degradation to which Central Asia had sunk. Fitrat's Indian traveler is appalled when he witnesses pederasty at the tomb of Baha'uddin Naqshband:

Woe to me! Next to this noble paradise were open the doors to hell. Next to these sacred tombs had arisen the vileness of the tribe of Lot! Among the tea stalls people sat in circles of five or ten; in the center of each circle was a young boy who with innocence and modesty read several verses from memory. All those around him pressed up against him, staring at the poor child with eyes full of lust, just like the devil!!! This terrible and impious spectacle made my whole being shiver .... I said to myself, "O Muhammad! ... Rise! O edu-

[94] Hamza Hakimzada, Zaharh hayot (1916), in Tola asarlar toplami , ed. N. Kanmov et al., 5 vols. (Tashkent, 1988-1989), III: 15-41.

[95] The story was serialized in ST in 1914; cf. Cholpon, "Dokhtur Muhammadyor," Sharq yulduzi , 1992, no. 1, 131-138.

[96] Qadiri, Jawanbaz (Tashkent, 1915).

[97] Sayyid Ahmad Siddiqi [Ajzi], Tarjima-yi mir'at-i ibrat (Samarqand, 1914), 25-26.

[98] Ayina , 8 February 1914, 281.

cator, take a look at the actions of these savages! O reformer of people! Either find a way of reforming them, or else show them a place under the earth, like the people of Lot! Don't let the filthy existence of these shameless people harm the glory of the Qur'an.^[99]

For Munawwar Qari, "Forbidden acts such as drinking, gambling, pederasty, feasting, turning men into women and women into men' [erkekni khatun qilmaq wa khatunni erkek qilmaq ], adultery, backbiting" were the reason why "our lands were captured and we were reviled and demeaned [khwar-u zalil bolduk ]."^[100]

Many of these practices came together in the often extravagant feasts (toys ) celebrating circumcisions, weddings, and deaths that were an integral part of Central Asian life. They were defended, even by ulama, as worthy ancestral traditions. By the turn of the century, they had become a means for the newly rich to celebrate their wealth and to assert their social status. The more extravagant feasts lasted several days, with guests (often numbering in the hundreds) arriving from all over Central Asia; the central feature was a party featuring alcohol and dancing boys. The Andijan millionaire Mir Kamil-bay hosted a toy in 1911 that lasted twenty-five days; guests came from all over Turkestan, and charity and food were provided for "widows and travelers" throughout this period. The awestruck report in TWG ("a royal feast neither heard, nor seen, nor known to people of previous generations") estimated the total expenditure to have been 25,000 rubles.^[101] The Jadids took a dim view of such practices, which they saw as a waste (israf ) of resources that should better be spent for the public good, and especially after a wave of bankruptcies during the economic slump of 1913, as a sign of ignorance leading to destruction. Jadid authors expressed opposition to toys in newspapers and school textbooks, much of which was encapsulated in the 1914 play The Feast by Behbudi's disciples Haji Muin and Nusratullah b. Qudratullah.

The play depicts the dire consequences of ignorance and wastefulness. A rich merchant plans to celebrate his son's circumcision with a toy , brushing aside exhortations against wastefulness and other acts "forbidden by the shariat." Vanity and selfishness govern his actions ("If you give a huge feast, your wealth will be known and you will be fa-

[99] Fitrat, "Bayonoti sayyohi hindi," 21.

[100] Munawwar Qari, ibn Abdurrashid Khan, untitled article, Taraqqi —Orta Azyaning umr guzarlighi . 7 March 1906.

[101] TWG , 28 April 1911.

mous"); only the rich are invited, while the poor are insulted ("I didn't have this feast for beggars and the poor; get lost!"). The feast, complete with alcohol and bachchas , is duly celebrated, but goes 4,000 rubles over the already extravagant budget of 15,000 rubles, leaving the merchant with a bank balance of precisely 130.23. rubles. He has to default on a payment of 5,000 rubles to the Moscow Bank, which had conveniently (for the plot) fallen due at that time, and as a result his store is sealed. The stage is set for the protagonist to deliver his speech:

When will we Muslims of Turkestan [save ourselves] from this ignorance? Ignorance has turned us into drunkards, pederasts, fools, and wastrels. And now it has dishonored us and laid waste our homes. Other nations spend their money in the path of knowledge and learning, on religious and national causes, and therefore progress by the day. We, because of our ignorance, waste our money, and even sell [lose] our houses and orchards on feasts parties, and kobkari , and soon will be begging for a piece of bread. If we Muslims don't take advantage of this time [remaining] and do not change our wasteful customs, soon we'll be deprived of what we have [left] and be cast into the streets. May God grant all Muslims the eyes of admonition.^[102]

The cause of moral corruption was ignorance, and knowledge was the only true guarantee of good morals and piety. "Schools are blessed places built for our good," a textbook informed pupils. "Mosques are also extremely sacred places built for Muslims to worship in. If there were no schools in the world, who would enter a mosque and worship there?"^[103]

It was a crisis not because the morals of individuals were at stake or because sin was widespread but because immoral acts led to dereliction of duty to the community, which had come to be the locus of Jadid reform. A correspondent for Shuhrat calculated that at a recent Feast of the Sacrifice (Id-i qurban ), Muslims of Tashkent spent 100,000 rubles on alcohol and prostitutes. "If this is not progress, what is?" the writer asked. "But what kind of money was this? This was money enough to educate millions of children, to bring them from bestiality to humanity, to produce thousands of servants of the nation [millat khadimi ]."^[104] Narcotic addicts, lampooned in a play by Haji Muin, were similarly immoral not so much because Islamic law forbade the use of narcotics but because they wasted time, money, and human resources.^[105]

[102] Nusratullah ibn Qudratullah with Haji Mum, Toy (Samarqand, 1914).

[103] Abdullah Awlani, Birinchi muallim (Tashkent, 1912), 30.

[104] Dimashqi (pseud.), "Musulmanlarda ichkulik balasi," Shuhrat , 11 December 1907; the issue was also taken up in "Ichkulik balasi," Tojjar , 13 January 1908.

[105] Haji Muin Shukrullah, Koknari (Samarqand, 1916).

The Politics of Admonition

Locating morality in the public realm provided a new vision of the rights and responsibilities of different groups in society. In showing the mirror of admonition to society, the Jadids asserted a claim to cultural and moral leadership in it. Their knowledge of the path to a better future qualified them to lead the society. This was, of course, profoundly subversive to the authority of the established elites in society, who derived their authority from their mastery of the past and their role in the compromises with Russian authorities. What ensued as a result of the emergence of a Jadid voice in society was a struggle for leadership in which the fundamental stakes were cultural. The struggle was over the definition of Central Asian Muslim culture: How was it to be defined and by whom? It was not simply a struggle for cultural capital; the Jadids' challenge put the very definition of this capital in question. This politics was every bit as real, and more important, than the politics entrenched in formal institutions of state.

The Jadids commonly asserted that their society rested on the twin pillars of the wealthy (aghniya ) and the learned (ulama ), for whom they professed great respect if they did their duty to society. But they also bore the blame when problems arose. "The number of those imprisoned in the mire of pederasty, alcohol, and gambling has increased recently," wrote a concerned Ayina reader from Awliya Ata, "because our leaders [ulugh wa kattalarimiz ] and our qazis have done nothing to counter these ills."^[106] As we saw, the wealthy were open to criticism for wasting their wealth on extravagant feasts rather than using it to benefit the nation. The ulama fared no better. None of the portraits of ulama in Jadid literature is particularly flattering. In The Feast , the neighborhood imam makes an attempt to dissuade the merchant from wasting his money on the feast by arguing that such acts are forbidden by the shariat, but quickly backs down when someone makes a pointed reference to his livelihood depending on the goodwill of the bay .^[107] Haji Muin's protagonist in his play, The Oppressed Woman , a new-method teacher, makes the following speech:

In the old days, the common people were subservient [tabi ‘] to the ulama, but unfortunately now the ulama are subservient to the people and have become

[106] Begi In'am oghh, "Awliya Atadan," Ayina , 10 May 1914, 562.

[107] Nusratullah, Toy , 11-12

flatterers. For this reason, a number of forbidden things such as pederasty, drinking, and ill treatment of [multiple] wives are growing daily....
[Aside:] In this respect, the fault lies with our ulama, not the people. It is because of this that they say, "fasad ul-alim fasad ul-alam [The corruption of the learned is the corruption of the world]."... Ah! O God, grant our ulama justice and discernment!^[108]

Ulama hostile to reform were, for the Jadids, ignorant of Islam, venal, weak-willed, and concerned only with their own material well being. This was especially the case with criticisms of Bukhara. Fitrat's Indian Traveler found it offensive that the ulama in Bukhara charged high fees for affixing their seals and signatures on documents. Shariat was for sale in Bukhara. The Traveler puts the matter in historical perspective for a Bukharan interlocutor:

The activities of your self-proclaimed ulama are the reason for the extinction of your nation. But there's no need m grieve, brother, since your ulama aren't the only ones like this. The fact is, ulama all over the Muslim world in the last three centuries have committed similar crimes. Until yesterday, the majority of ulama among Turks and Tatars, and in Iran and India, like yours, all drank the blood of oppressed people. But these nations scrutinized matters before you have done, and they overthrew the ulama from their pedestal. Quickly they distinguished real scholars from mullas who only worshipped their own bellies; they placed crowns on the heads of the former and trampled the latter underfoot.^[109]

Ishans, connected with the world of Sufism and its related "superstitions," received even shorter shrift. Every ishan in Hamza's writing is a mean-looking glutton who takes a new wife every year, while the Tashkent poet Shawkat Khandayliqi let them have it thus:

Why are there so many dogs in Bukhara in the winter, but so few in the summer?
In the summer, they all become ishans and go to the country, that's why.^[110]

It was in this context that the rest of society responded to Jadid criticism. The opponents of the Jadids were motivated by very real concerns: They were defending nothing less than a social order that privileged them. The Jadids put to question not just the credentials of the ulama but also the compromises the latter had worked out with the colonial regime,

[108] Haji Muin b. Shukrullah, Mazluma khatun (Samarqand, 1916), 23-25.

[109] Fitrat, "Bayonoti sayyohi hindî", 26.

[110] Quoted in A. Jalolov, Inqilobiy dawr ozbek adabtyoti wa Sbawkat ijodi (Tashkent, 1988), 58.

which ensured them a status as intermediaries between the local population and Russian officialdom. Much of the social landscape within which the qadimchi operated was the product of Russian rule and the compromises forced by it.

Many simply ignored the Jadids, although this was increasingly difficult to do at least in the urban centers. Others responded in kind. The main arguments against the Jadids are encapsulated in the following attack by a Tashkent Tatar on other Tatars that doubtless was read as applying equally to local Jadids:

How have they awakened [the nation]? To wearing narrow trousers, patent-leather shoes, and short jackets... to wasting money on all sorts of music and useless things, money that could be used to benefit the nation .... Our esteemed writers say, "The new method has arrived, the western sun has arisen, everyone has received the light, has arisen and become human." Why don't you show us a teacher who is a perfect Muslim, who works for the rejuvenation of religion [ahya-yi din ] and who explains it to common people? But you cannot .... This method of Yazid [usul-i Yaazid ] of yours will cause poor Muslims to be left without faith; [it] will cause women to discard their veils.^[111]

The anonymous author went on to berate the Jadids for their duplicity and insincerity (their concern for the nation exists only on their tongues, not in their hearts, and is motivated by the need to sell their newspapers). Other arguments were more pointed. Sayyid Ahmad Wasli, the Samarqand mudarris who had considerable sympathies for the Jadid cause, wrote that one of the major shortcomings of the Jadid project was its constant criticism of the ulama. "New-method teachers are merely teachers of reading and writing; for them to criticize the teaching of the ulama was a great impropriety [buyuk adabsizlik ], especially when most of them had never even attended such lessons. If they had only stuck to teaching," Wasli added, "all of Turkestan would have phonetic-method schools by now."^[112] , The point was made more forcefully by an author in al-Islah as few months later. Praising the Sada-yi Turkistan and the Sada-yi Farghana for their intentions, the author found it

unfortunate that in every single issue, these esteemed newspapers accuse the ulama, the pillars of the faith of Islam, of every kind of ignorance, indeed of foolishness, and insult them by attacking the path shown by the noble shariat as ignorance or error. Rather, [these newspapers] are published in the spirit

[111] Turkistanlik bir Noghay Mulla, "Yangi fikrchi, eski fikrchi," TWG , 7 January 1910.

[112] Wash, "Jarida wa usul-i jadida," SF , 6 November 1914.

of our Europeanized youth who, without regard to divine commandments [amr-i haqq ] or the requirements of the shariat [hukm-i shar ‘], claim to be the renewers of the epoch ....
All of them are ignorant, [men] of unopened eyes and unsound intellects, who have wasted their lives in maktabs and madrasas for none of their lessons seems to have done them any good.^[113]

Generational conflict was never far below the surface. After all, the most common appellation for the Jadids was yashlar , "the youth." Hamza's A Poisoned Life was as much about the relations between the generations as about ignorance. It is a tale of eighteen-year-old Mahmudkhan, "most open-minded . . . [and] nation-minded [millatparast ]," and seventeen-year-old Maryam khanim, the daughter of a craftsman who "although educated in the old maktabs had read novels, newspapers, and magazines under the influence of her love for Mahmudkhan,... a slave of the nation [millat jariyasi ]." They are in love and plan to open a school, but their wishes are quashed by their parents. Mahmudkhan's father refuses outright to marry his only son to the daughter of a poor craftsman. Maryam's "ignorant and money-worshipping" parents, on the other hand, have promised her hand to a sixty-year-old ishan who already has six wives. The result is disastrous, and both young people take their own lives rather than acquiesce to the dictates of their parents. Hamza attempts to portray them as victims of ignorance and martyrs to the nation, but the most memorable lines in the play involve the two protagonists cursing their ignorant (jahil ) and loveless (shafqatsiz ) parents for riding roughshod over their wishes.^[114] The generational aspect of conflict was prominent also when the qadimchi turned tables on the Jadids and, after Behbudi's Patricide began touring, began calling the Jadids "parricides."

All the major sites of Jadid reform—the new-method school, the periodical press, the theater—were criticized by the ulama, and the Jadids spent considerable energy trying to justify their enthusiasm for new cultural practices. The newspaper aroused deep suspicion. Early in its career, the TWG found it prudent to remind its readers that "reading or listening to a newspaper does not harm religion, but rather it informs [the reader] of all manner of things."^[115] But the suspicions lingered. In 1906, an article by Munawwar Qari (who himself had proper creden-

[113] Khalmuhammad Toraqulov. "Talab-i islah," al-Islah , 15 June 1915, 336-338.

[114] Hamza, Zaharli hayot, yokhud ishq qurbonlart (1916), in his Tola asarlar toplami , III: 15-41.

[115] "Ma'lumnama," TWG , 8 January 1874.

tials as an ,alim ) criticizing the old-method maktabs in the first issue of Taraqqi so irked the ulama of Tashkent that they sent a delegation to the city administrator requesting him to suspend publication of the newspaper.^[116] Although the delegation did not achieve its aim, the newspaper was soon shut down for other reasons.

Similarly, the Jadids' use of music and theater provoked heated debate, with many traditionalist ulama, and even some of the more conservative Jadids, criticizing it on Islamic grounds. Music and theater had, of course, long existed in Central Asia, but they both occupied an ambiguous place in the cultural tradition. The Jadids' insistence that their theater was different only compounded their problems, since they could never shake off the ambiguities of maskharabazlik and had to deal with suspicions over what they insisted was new. The two issues that came to the fore involved women and music.

Women acted on the stage in Tatar plays staged in Tashkent. This was cause for scandal, especially among the local population. In 1910, a Tashkent Tatar who happened upon a benefit performance was dismayed by what he saw ("What benefit will come from girls dancing shamelessly with unrelated men?").^[117] When Central Asian Jadids began staging their own plays, they avoided the problem by having men play all roles on stage. A dual-track system developed in which outside plays could have women on stage, but not locally produced ones. For instance, when The Parricide first played in Tashkent in February 1914, the merchant's wife was played by Abdussami Qari Ziyabaev, but a woman played a female role later in the evening during the Transcaucasian comedy Khor khor .^[118] Apparently, even local troupes could include women when putting on performances of imported plays.

The questions over music were less easily dodged. Music was widely used by the Jadids: not only were theatrical performances accompanied by music, but most fundraising cultural evenings also featured performances of folk and traditional music. As we have seen, Hamza and Awlani also wrote poetry specifically for music. The Jadids' open use of music in nonreligious contexts rendered them vulnerable to the charge of introducing illegitimate innovations into Islam. Because of these associations, the theater aroused the opposition of many who were generally supportive of Jadid reform. Nor was such criticism restricted to the

[116] For later comment on the incident in Taraqqi's columns, see Mulla Zulfiqar, "Madrasalargha aid," Taraqqi , 5 July 1906.

[117] Tahir Sami'ullin, "Ibratnama," TWG , 7 February 1910.

[118] Taziljanbaev, "Tashkanda [sic] milli tiyatir," Ayina , 22 March 1914, 324.

printed page. Before the first Tashkent performance of The Parricide , a number of ulama and merchants attempted to have the city authorities ban the play, failing which they sought to buy out the troupe by offering to pay an amount larger than what the performance would have raised. According to a contemporary observer, these men sought to prevent the performance because they feared that the actors, including many new-method teachers, would henceforth be counted as maskharas and excluded from polite company.^[119]

This debate is most clearly documented in a polemic between Wasli and Behbudi, perhaps the most enthusiastic proponent of theater among the Jadids of Turkestan, over the permissibility of theater from the Islamic point of view. Wasli saw theater as completely contrary to the shariat:

Now, among the things forbidden by the shariat are games and amusements. Basically, they destroy [personal] dignity and credit, waste one's time and life, and keep [one] from one's duties as a human being. They also bring [with them] calamities such as spendthriftness .... If other forbidden [things] such as musical instruments, singers, gambling, and women are added to these games, they become doubly forbidden and bring heavenly retribution upon the head of the community.... Obscenities (fuhushiyat ) are not entirely without some profit, and I am afraid that if the custom of considering permissible every forbidden thing which has some good in it takes hold, obscenities too will gradually flourish.^[120]

By thus condemning music, Wasli was also condemning the new phenomenon of musical soirées and benefit concerts, which had become increasingly important to the Jadid cause.

In his response, Behbudi cited hadith and instances from the life of the Prophet to argue that music and games were permissible provided they did not contain obscenity. He acknowledged that theater was an innovation (bid'at ), but, he argued:

Innovation is that which did not exist in the time of the Prophet. Innovations that have arisen since then are of two kinds: If an innovation brings benefits to the faith and the community [din wa millat ], it is called a good innovation [yakhshi bid'at ]; if it brings harm..., it is called a sinful innovation [gunah bid'at ]. The Parricide is also an innovation, but we consider it a good innovation because it admonishes the audience. It enjoins good and forbids evil by showing the audience as a warning the murder and abasement that come from being caught in drunkenness and obscenity. Indeed, the theater is a place for preaching and exhortation [majlis-i wa'z-u nasihat ].^[121]

[119] Salihov, Ozbek teatr , 74-79.

[120] Mudarris Wasli, "Shariat-i Islamiya," SF , 21 November 1914.

[121] Behbudi, "Tiyatir, musiqi, she'r," Ayina , 18 December 1914, 111-114.

Behbudi also pointed out that Wasli himself wrote poetry incorporating rather racy themes of love and drink, which, although they followed received patterns, were not permitted by the shariat.

Wasli denounced theater as a wasteful pastime because it threatened to bring into public use behavior that had hitherto lain on the fringes of the acceptable. By putting women on the stage and having men act as people they were not, by openly acknowledging, indeed exhibiting, practices that were immoral, and by using music to appeal to the audience, Jadid theater threatened to upset the rules of proper deportment according to which the traditional elites had negotiated their life struggles. Wasli's support of the new method did not extend to this radical redefinition of acceptable behavior.

The debate over the permissibility of music continued after the polemic between Wasli and Behbudi came to an end. It was given a new lease of life by Russian officialdom. The Tatar singer Kamil ul-Mutigi Tuhfatullin sought permission to tour Turkestan in 1915 for a series of concerts to benefit various war-related causes. In a fit of zeal, acting Governor-General F.V. Martson referred the matter to the Muslim Spiritual Administration in Orenburg, whose opinion about the permissibility of the concert he sought, even though Turkestan lay beyond the board's jurisdiction. The matter leaked to the press and debate began anew, this time in the pages of al-Islah . In response to a reader's question, a certain Fazlulwahhab Qari of Marghinan declared all use of music and song as haram . Ashurali Zahiri, a teacher in a Russonative school in Kokand who had studied in Bukhara, joined the fray. He took on the author on his own turf, citing evidence from the requisite texts and discussing quotations from the hadith in the Arabic to show that none of the hadiths used by Fazlulwahhab were trustworthy. Music and song were not haram, but mubah (permissible), and their use in the time of the Prophet was attested to in historical accounts.^[122] Zahiri's intervention did not end the matter, of course, but it was a sign that many Jadids could take on their critics on their own terms. At the same time, the ulama found themselves debating issues in print, in a public forum where the rules of entry were not of their making.

[122] Ashur Ali Zahiri, "Shariat-i Islamiya wa musiqa, yaki Fazlulwahhab Qarigha raddiya," al-Islah , 15 January 1916, 51-53; Zahiri, "Ashab-i karam, tabi'in wa mujtahidin-i azzamning musiqa wa naghmatga nazarlari," al-Islah , 15 February 1916, 104-110.