The series Islamkundliche Untersuchungen was founded in 1969 by the Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Since then, it has become one of the most important venues for publications in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Its more than 350 volumes cover a wide range of topics from the history, culture and societies of the Middle East and North Africa as well as neighboring regions in central, south and southeast Asia.
The series Islamkundliche Untersuchungen was founded in 1969 by the Klaus Schwarz Verlag. Since then, it has become one of the most important venues for publications in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Its more than 350 volumes cover a wide range of topics from the history, culture and societies of the Middle East and North Africa as well as neighboring regions in central, south and southeast Asia.
The first history-based integrated overview of Islam and Muslims in present-day Central Asia Between the tenth and sixteenth centuries Central Asia was one of the most prestigious cultural areas of the entire Muslim world, playing a pivotal role in the Silk Road trade. Throughout that history, and up to the present, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and other Muslim peoples of Central Asia have developed their own unique understanding and practice of Islam which has shaped their national identity and particular social and political evolution. These special characteristics of Central Asian Islam ensured its survival during seventy years of Soviet atheist rule, while in the post-Soviet period Islam has been integrated into nation-building projects in constitutionally secular Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan. This absorbing history is traced in this fascinating study which shows how, from the seventh century to the present day, the region's people have negotiated their distinctively Central Asian Islamic identity in the face of enduring external Islamic and non-Islamic dominations, ethnic nationalisms and, more recently, global transnational Islamic influences. Key Features - The first integrated account of the Muslims of the present-day states of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan - Synthesises up-to-date research with existing Western, Russian and Central Asian scholarship on Islam and Muslims in Central Asia - Employs a Central Asia-centric approach focusing on the region as a geographically and culturally self-sustained entity, with strong links to Russia, the Middle East, South Asia, Iran, Turkey and China - Includes numerous photographs taken during field-work in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan Galina M. Yemelianova has researched and taught for over thirty years on various aspects of Middle Eastern and Eurasian history and contemporary Muslim politics. Among her books are Russia and Islam: A Historical Survey (2002), Islam in post-Soviet Russia (2003) and Radical Islam in the former Soviet Union (2010).
Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system. The volume pays particular attention to the dissemination of a supranational ideology of political legitimacy in a variety of media - written sources and primarily public ritual, painting, and particularly architecture. Beginning with foundational features, such as geography, climate, demography, and geopolitical situation, The Russian Empire 1450-1801 explores the empire's primarily agrarian economy, serfdom, towns and trade, as well as the many religious groups - primarily Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. It tracks the emergence of an 'Imperial nobility' and a national self-consciousness that was, by the end of the eighteenth century, distinctly imperial, embracing the diversity of the empire's many peoples and cultures.
First Published in 2001. This volume contains the proceedings of the international colloquium held by the IAS Project in October 1999. These papers deal with the modem and contemporary history of Central Eurasia, for a comprehensive reflection on various phenomena that led to a political valuation of Islam under non-Muslim domination, whether Russian or Chinese, since the beginning of the 18th century. A comparative approach to the current situations in the Russian Federation and the newly independent states of Central Asia has allowed us to study the various modes of the political instrumentalization of Islam, by both political power and opposition, in such various areas as the Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan and the Volga-Urals region of Russia.
In Bukhara and the Muslims of Russia Allen Frank examines the relationship of Tatars and Bashkirs with the city of Bukhara during the Russian Imperial era. For Muslims in Russia Bukhara’s prestige was manifested in genealogies, fashion, and in the elevated legal status of Bukharan communities in Russia. The historical relationship of Russia’s Muslim communities with Bukhara was founded above all on Bukhara’s reputation as a holy city of Islam, an abode of great Sufis, and a center of Islamic scholarship. The emergence of Islamic reformism critiquing Bukhara’s sacred status, led by Tatar scholars who were trained in Bukhara, created a number of paradoxes. The symbol of Bukhara became an important feature in theological and political debates among Russia’s Muslims.
With the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, a major turning point in all former Soviet republics, Central Asian and Caucasian countries began to reflect on their history and identities. As a consequence of their opening up to the global exchange of ideas, various strains of Islam and trends in Islamic thought have nourished the Islamic revival that had already started in the context of glasnost and perestroika--from Turkey, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, and from the Indian subcontinent; the four regions with strong ties to Central Asian and Caucasian Islam in the years before Soviet occupation. Bayram Balci seeks to analyse how these new Islamic influences have reached local societies and how they have interacted with pre-existing religious belief and practice. Combining exceptional erudition with rare first-hand research, Balci's book provides a sophisticated account of both the internal dynamics and external influences in the evolution of Islam in the region.
This book analyzes how Central Asians actively engaged with the rapidly globalizing world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In presenting the first English-language history of the Khanate of Khoqand (1709–1876), Scott C. Levi examines the rise of that extraordinarily dynamic state in the Ferghana Valley. Levi reveals the many ways in which the Khanate’s integration with globalizing forces shaped political, economic, demographic, and environmental developments in the region, and he illustrates how these same forces contributed to the downfall of Khoqand. To demonstrate the major historical significance of this vibrant state and region, too often relegated to the periphery of early modern Eurasian history, Levi applies a “connected history” methodology showing in great detail how Central Asians actively influenced policies among their larger imperial neighbors—notably tsarist Russia and Qing China. This original study will appeal to a wide interdisciplinary audience, including scholars and students of Central Asian, Russian, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and world history, as well as the study of comparative empire and the history of globalization.
During the 1990s, there was a general consensus that Central Asia was witnessing an Islamic revival after independence, and that this occurrence would follow similar events throughout the Islamic world in the prior two decades, which had negative effects on both social and political development. Twenty years later, we are still struggling to fully understand the transformation of Islam in a region that's evolved through a complex and dynamic process, involving diversity in belief and practice, religious authority, and political intervention. This volume seeks to shed light on these crucial questions by bringing together an international group of scholars to offer a fresh perspective on Central Asian states and societies. The chapters provide analysis through four distinct categories: the everyday practice of Islam across local communities; state policies toward Islam, focusing on attempts to regulate public and private practice through cultural, legal, and political institutions and how these differ from Soviet policies; how religious actors influence communities in the practice of Islam, state policies towards the religion, and subsequent communal responses to state regulations; and how knowledge of and interaction with the larger Islamic world is shaping Central Asia's current Islamic revival and state responses. The contributors, a multidisciplinary and international group of leading scholars, develop fresh insights that both corroborate and contradict findings from previous research, while also highlighting the problem of making any generalizations about Islam in individual states or the region. As such, this volume provides new and impactful analysis for scholars, students, and policy makers concerned with Central Asia.
The end of the eighteenth century was a transformational period for the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire and their relationship with the tsarist state. Though they had been under Russian rule since the sixteenth century, it was at this time that they were incorporated into the imperial bureaucracy, most significantly through the founding of an official hierarchy for the Islamic religious scholars in 1788. The introduction of a state-backed structure for Muslim religious institutions altered Islamic religious authority and, in turn, religious discourse. One of the major figures to emerge from this new context was Abu Nasr Qursawi (1776-1812). A controversial figure who was condemned for heresy in Bukhara in 1808, Qursawi put forward a sweeping reform of the Islamic scholarly tradition. Focusing on taqlid, the principle of conformity to established doctrine, Qursawi argued that its overuse had weakened scholarship in the areas of Islamic law (fiqh) and theology (kalam) and undermined scholars' ability to serve as religious guides. In Preserving Islamic Tradition, Nathan Spannaus presents the first detailed analysis of Qursawi's reformist project, both in its contours and broad historical setting. Spannaus shows how state control of Muslim institutions impacted religious discourse, but also how it altered the entire religious environment into the twentieth century. Addressing issues of modernity, secularity, tradition, and intellectual history, Preserving Islamic Tradition demonstrates how the interaction with a European imperial state transformed the Islamic tradition, both directly and indirectly, and elicited new forms of religious thought and discourse.
