Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
The relationship between Islam and ethnicity has generally been studied almost exclusively from a theoretical (theological) and/or practical (historical) viewpoint of the Muslims themselves. If we observe this problem from another point of view, that of the Islamized natives, we discover that there exists a tacit consensus as to the three levels or degrees according to which Islamized peoples can be classified: (a) a maximum or even total confluence of Islam and ethnicity, as in the Arab lands and in Daghestan; (b) a partial distinction between Islam and ethnicity, stemming from a certain ‘ethnicization’ of Islam, as in Shia Iran; and (c) a somewhat vague decentralization between these two focal points, as in Turkestan, Subsaharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
1. Rodinson, Maxime, “La notion de minorité et l'Islam”. In Les Minorités à l'ǎge de l'Etat-Nation, Fayard (coll. Géopolitiques et Stratégies) (Paris, 1985) pp 91–124.Google Scholar
2. “L'imagination religieuse, lez èle et l'enthusisme, si ardents chez les Arabes et les Iraniens … n'ont jamias échauffé la froideur des Turks … Dans l'Islam ils sont gauches et empruntés. Ils ont accepté d'autres religions: ils sont devenus mages adorateurs du feu, manichéens, chrétiens nestoriens, musulmans, un peu par hasard … les religions qu'ils ont adoptées, ils les ont pratiquées loyalement, sans altérations ni discussions.” Cahun, L. quoted by Bérard, V. in L'Empire Russe (Paris: A. Colin, 1906), p. 65.Google Scholar
3. Already partially turkicized, but not yet inhabited by properly Kirghiz tribes.Google Scholar
4. See Eliseeff, N., L'Orient Musulman au Moyen-Age (Paris: A. Colin, 1979), p. 111, and Mantran, R., L'Expansion Musulmane (Paris: PUF, 1969), p. 15.Google Scholar
5. Bartol'd, V. V., Istoria Kul'turnoi zhizni Turkestana.Google Scholar
6. “At the time of the Arab conquest, the ethnographic frontier between Iranians and Turks, the cultural one between sedentary and nomadic peoples and the political one between the Muslim Empire and the 'realm of the Infidels' coincided almost exactly” (Bartol'd, p. 25).Google Scholar
7. I am referring here to the philosophy of social groups called kazak in Turkic or dzhetey in Mongolian and described in Russian as razboinich'ia vol'nitsa, prorvavshaia s derzhavoi, rodom i plemenem (brigand-like free men who broke off with the state, their tribes and kin).Google Scholar
8. Bousquet, G.H., Introduction à étude de l'Islam Indonésien (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1938; and Naipaul, V.S., Among the Believers (Penguin Books, 1981) p. 212.Google Scholar
9. , Naipaul, 1981, p. 167: “No religion is more wordly than Islam. In spite of its political incapacity, no religion keeps men's eyes more fixed on the way the world is run.”Google Scholar
10. I allude here to a convenient distinction popularized by Aldous Huxley. In doing so, I insist on the wordly, sociological importance of Islam without denying at all the central role of God in its theology, its theocentrism.Google Scholar
11. Le Tourneau, R., L'Islam Nord-African (Alger: Annales de l'Institut d'Etudes Orientales, t XV, 1957), p. 184.Google Scholar
12. Lattimore, O. considers it to have been common to both pre-‘Barbarian’ and pre-Han ‘godless’ populations. This link, disrupted in the East, has been re-established in the West with West European modern secularism.Google Scholar
13. , Naipaul, 1981, p. 323.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., 213.Google Scholar
15. Ibid., 284.Google Scholar
16. For, Petrov, K.I., according to Satybaldy Mambetaliev in Perezhitki nektorykh musul'manskikh techenii v Kirgizii i ikh istoria (Izd. Mektep, Frunze, 1969).Google Scholar
17. Bernshtam, A.N., Istoricheskoe proshloe kirgizskogo naroda (Frunze, 1942), p. 22.Google Scholar
18. Bartol'd, V.V., Kirgizy (Frunze, 1943), p. 38.Google Scholar
19. Dorzhenov, S.B., Islam bügünkü kündö (Frunze, 1980), p. 9.Google Scholar
20. Ibid., p. 14.Google Scholar
21. Bartol'd, , 1927, p. 98.Google Scholar
22. Kirgizsko-russkii slovar' (Izd. Sovetskaia Entsyklopedia, Moskva 1965), p. 958.Google Scholar
23. This is the thesis commonly supported by Abramson, S.M., Jamger-chinov, B. and others.Google Scholar
24. Ploskikh, V.M.: Kirgizy i Kokandskoe khanstvo (Ḟrunze, 1977), pp. 51, 120, f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25. Tourneau, Le, 1957, p. 184.Google Scholar
26. Bennigsen, A. et Lemercier-Quelquejay, Ch.: Les Musulmans Oubliés (Paris: PCM, 1981), p. 16.Google Scholar
27. Cheveranski, V., Zapiski po delam very musul'man-sunnitov (St. Petersburg, 1906), p. 34.Google Scholar
28. Jamgerchinov, B. (Dzhamgerchinov), Ocherki politicheskoi istorii Kirgizii 19-ogo veka (Frunze: 1966) p. 248.Google Scholar
29. Ibid., 371.Google Scholar
30. Dorzhenov, , pp. 20, 23.Google Scholar
31. Compare with Naipaul, p. 323: “And it was Islam, as the national formal faith of the people that had served Indonesian pride during the Dutch time”.Google Scholar
32. Valikhanov, Chokan, Izbrannye proizvedeniia KazGosIzdat (Alma Ata, 1958), p. 146.Google Scholar
33. Amanaliev, B., Iz istorii filosofskoi mysli kirgizskogo naroda (Frunze, 1963), p. 144. The author gives the following ‘mixed’ formula for a blessing: “Bissmilya irrakhman irrakhim, Ot-eneken koldosun!” (In the name of Allah … may Fire-mother protect you!).Google Scholar
34. I have been unable to find the exact formula against it corresponding to the Maghrebian Arabic: Five in your eye!Google Scholar
35. See Shishlo, B.P.: “Sredeaziatskii ‘tul’ i ego sibirskie paralleli”, Domusul'manskie verovaniia i obriady v Srednei Azii, (Izd Nauka, Moskva 1975) pp. 248–260.Google Scholar
36. Alda in Kirghiz — a linguistically regular, but theologically strange transformation. He is even sometimes referred to by his old Iranian name: Kuday.Google Scholar
37. The nearest living equivalent of such a cultural system can be found northwest of Chitral, Pakistan, among Dardic-speaking Kalash. See Loude, J.Y., Kalash. Les derniers ”Infidèles de I’Hindu-Kush, Espace des Hommes (Berger-Levrault, 1980). It reflects a mixture of old ’Arya‘ beliefs, old Iranian influences and a relatively recent, probably Kirghiz substratum which can be detected through such loanwords as asagal, bahadur (p. 62) or the divinities.Google Scholar
38. See Dermenghem, E., Le culte des saints dans l'Islam maghrébin (Paris: Gallimard, 1954).Google Scholar
39. Abramzon, S.M., Kirgizy i ikh étnogeneticheskie i istorikokul'turnie sviazi (Leningrad: Izd Nauka, 1971), pp. 267–339.Google Scholar
40. Bel, A., La religion musulmane en Berbérie (Paris, 1938).Google Scholar
41. , Dorzhenov, p. 39.Google Scholar
42. , Ploskikh, p. 99.Google Scholar
43. , Dorzhenov, pp. 48–58, 66.Google Scholar
44. Ibid., p. 20.Google Scholar
45. , Jamgerchinov, p. 66.Google Scholar
46. , Amanaliev, p. 46.Google Scholar
47. The Krygyz Soviet Entsyklopediasy (Frunze, 1980) distinguishes between the Russian loanword “sufizm” (p. 476) meaning “the Sufi doctrine as known in Islamology” and its Kirghiz equivalent “sopuchuluk” (p. 386) meaning (a) sufi, (b) piety (c) a bigot (d) muezzin.Google Scholar
48. Depont, O. and Coppolani, X., Les confrèries religieuse musulmanes (Alger, 1897).Google Scholar
49. A. Bel rightly stresses the fact that members of Sufi sects specialized in fighting Christian/Spanish occupation.Google Scholar
50. Bennigsen and Quelquejay, p. 231.Google Scholar
51. Mambetaliev, S.: Sufism jana anin kirgizstandagi agimdari (Izd Kyrgyzstan: Frunze, 1972), p. 63.Google Scholar
52. The first established and the most popular in Central Asia was the Qadiriyya, whose protector was the Sultan in Constantinople. Among its masters, the most famous was Boja Ahmet Yasev, known as Kul Kojo Akmat in Kirghizia and the author of the much-read Ekmet (Khikmetter).Google Scholar
53. Depont, and Coppolani, , p. 263.Google Scholar
54. Ibid., 177.Google Scholar
55. Paz, Octavio, El laberinto de la soledad (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1959), p. 92–93.Google Scholar
56. And even with shamanism, which particularly influenced the Yassawiyya Brotherhood.Google Scholar
57. , Naipaul, p. 302: “In Java, in Hindu Buddhist days a pesantren was a monastery supported by the community in return for the spiritual guidance and the spiritual protection it provided. It was easy for the sufi Muslims when the philosophical system of the old civilization cracked, to take over such places; and it was easy for such places to continue to be counselling centers for village people. It was open to a man to go at any time to the leader of ‘kiyai’ of a pesantren and ask for personal advice or religious instruction. It was not necessary to be enrolled on any formal course … the sufi side, the mystical side was closer to the older religions.”Google Scholar
58. Laachilar in Kirghiz, a nickname possibly derived from ilaa/ilaala: a horse fly/to shake one's head as a horse waving off flies. See Mambetaliev, 1972, p. 54.Google Scholar
59. , Ploskikh, p. 55.Google Scholar
60. Vosstanie 1916-ogo goda v Kirgizstane. Dokumenty i materialy po istorii narodov SSSR (Sotsegiz, 1937), p. 131.Google Scholar
61. This word is now used to mean (party, political, international) organization.Google Scholar
62. , Mambetaliev, p. 33.Google Scholar
63. Duroselle, J. B.: Tout Empire périra (Publications Sorbonne, 1981), p. 46.Google Scholar
64. , Valikhanov, p. 187.Google Scholar
65. Bartol'd, , pp. 166, 205.Google Scholar
