Of Saints, Shrines, and Tractors

Untangling the Meaning of Islam in Soviet Central Asia

Bibliographic Data

ID9378690
AuthorsPaolo Sartori (0000-0003-0325-7840, Austrian Academy of Sciences), Паоло Сартори (Austrian Academy of Sciences, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume30
Issue3
Pages367-405
Publication date2019-01-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Islamic Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0955-2340 • E-ISSN: 1471-6917
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jis/etz001
OpenAlexW2914464285
LanguageEN
Citations received13

In this article I suggest that in the Soviet period Central Asians cultivated and conceptualized Islam as an episteme. They did this by reaching beyond alienating (and often ephemeral) categories offered to them by the state. I argue that the constitution of an Islamic culture was made possible, among other things, by Central Asians’ encounters with the past, most notably with what they perceived as an Islamic past. We observe the curious phenomenon of Central Asians’ continuous interaction with the Islamic historical sites that escaped the bulldozers of the Soviet campaigns of religious repression. For some, encounters with the past might be accidental. For many others, the exploration of the past represented a purposive, self-conscious, and reiterated emotional act. I show that Central Asians in the Soviet period—even if at school they were taught little about, and were usually offered a distorted vision of, the Islamic history of their region—were still able to access their past through the surviving architectural presence of Islam. Monumental sites, however, were not enough for Muslims to understand the past and use it to construct their own identity. Such artifacts acquired meaning through an interpretive framework provided by Sufi narratives about saints and their miracles. Therefore, shrines represented for Central Asia a collective memory space, i.e., a place in which the past was preserved for mobilization in the present through narrative

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Central asia · Construct (python library · Epistemology · Identity (music · Islam · Literature · Meaning (existential · Narrative · Period (music · Sociology · State (computer science · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Philosophy · Soviet and Russian History

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