Abstract:

Uprisings in colonial settings are powerful expressions of agency and discontent, and memories of these events have lasting impacts on collective religious and national identities. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the ways in which Central Asian communities revolted against colonial rule as well as the memories of these revolts were determined by local religious, social, and cultural factors. Ardahbek Amantur describes the complex roles played by Islamic institutions and their leaders during revolts against the Qing Empire in the Ili valley (in present-day Xinjiang). Using several works written by Taranchis and one written by a Sibe shortly after these events, he argues that these revolts were strongly influenced by the actions and interactions facilitated by local institutions which developed during Qing rule of the region. Daniil Kabotyanski examines the impact of uprisings on national identity through the case of the Dungans in the Soviet Union. He identifies the unique historical circumstances of this group during the 1916 Uprising in Semirech’e and explores the ways in which these events catalyzed the Soviet definition of Dungan as a distinct nationality. Ben Storsved investigates Kyrgyz poems about the events of the 1916 Uprising and the different political goals which motivated local scholars to collect them in the early 1920s. He analyzes manuscripts of these poems and the context of their textualization to understand their place in the larger tradition of Turkic oral literature. Michael Krautkramer discusses the implementation of Islamic Law in the Kingdom of Kashgaria established by Yaqub Beg during the Dungan revolts. He examines the implementation of Islamic Law and its implications, arguing that it in fact represented a sharp break from normative Muslim practice in the region.