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Abstract

This paper examines how the Central Asian prison aid committees helped to establish Russian imperial power in Akmola and Turgay between 1871 and 1917. Originating from the late nineteenth century imperial carceral crisis, the state transformed these committees into closely controlled civil society organizations, aimed to bolster state capacity within the corrupt and underfunded colonial penal system and eventually preserve the Russian rule of law on the southern frontier. This paper thus disputes the conventional historiographical depictions of penal aid committees in the Russian Empire as either restricted civil institutions dedicated to improving the well-being of convicts through charitable efforts and other benevolent initiatives, or as insignificant civil organizations primarily concerned with internal financial management. Instead, it highlights their significant role in bolstering the Russian colonial authority in the Kazakh steppe.

Through an exploration of their interactions with the government and their contributions to addressing capacity issues, the analysis underscores the committees' involvement in prison funds, security enhancements, labor provision, and the promotion of moral discipline. In return, the state promoted the religious authority of the Orthodox Church (e.g., by converting non-believers) and supported social mobility of merchants (e.g., by granting them political appointments, estate ranks and exemption from poll tax). Consequently, the committees turned imperial prisons into tools of legitimate state enforcement, aligning punitive measures with imperial legal standards while advocating for humane treatment of convicts. Since 1902, shifts in the geopolitical landscape and public health challenges – such as migration of European peasants to Central Asia, Russian entanglement with both regional and global conflicts including the wars with Japan and with Ottomans in Persia as well as World War I, the local communist movements and anti-mobilization Turkic uprisings, and epidemic of typhus – led the imperial government to steer the committees towards charitable initiatives and increased accountability over prison resources. The hierarchical relationships between the state and the penal aid committees based of bureaucratic paternalism and amalgamation of the Russian Orthodoxy with the imperial power thereby shaped both the “discipline” and the “punishment” approaches in the carceral system in Central Asia, aiming to maintain Russian authority over the steppe and extend it beyond Eurasia in the end of the long nineteenth century.

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According to Hanafi law, a woman should not be coerced into an unwanted marriage. Almost all jurists agreed that the absence of consent from a woman in her legal majority, even if married off by her natural guardian, invalidated a marriage contract. Hanafis also agreed that that a woman can enter into a marital contract by herself without the permission from her guardian. Muslim women in the Volga-Urals tried to push and protect their interests regarding marital consent by referring to Islamic law, especially when they married against the will of their parents or abducted themselves. Women who were forced into marriage utilized sharia law to justify unfair and wrong coercion into unwanted marriage, or they utilized the above-mentioned sharia norm by claiming that sharia allows them to marry without their guardian. Their fathers, on the other hand, claimed that their daughter did not have the right to marry without their consent and accused imams who performed marriage to their daughters, without obtaining the father’s approval. Russian imperial law, article 6 of the Russian Civil Code, provided good basis for such claim. It stated that marriage without the consent of parents, guardians (opekun) and trustees (popechitel’) was prohibited. This paper investigates the question of marital consent in the Volga-Ural region of the Russian empire and looks at the way Muslims utilized such legal pluralism and law-shopping.

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This paper examines how Orientalist preconceptions about Muslims in the Caucasus were applied by the Russians in Central Asia. It focuses on Transcaspia, which was administered from the Caucasus between the 1870s and the 1890s, first from Petrovsk and then from Tiflis. One of the first steps taken by Russian administrators from Dagestan once Transcaspia was transferred to them from Orenbrug was to collect and codify customary law, known as ‘adat, of the Qazaqs and Tukmens. This demonstrates the importance attached to customary law in the Caucasus, where it was promoted against the Shari'a. But after having collected and codified ‘adat for Transcaspia, the Russians concluded that the Qazaqs and Turkmens were less religious than the Muslims in the Caucasus, and subsequently rejected the idea of incorporating them into the Muslim spiritual structures in the Caucasus. The paper draws on an unpublished compilation of ‘adat for Mangishlaq from Sakartvelos Saistorio Tsentraluri Sakhelmtsipo Arkivi within the National Archives of Georgia.