Abstract:

Stories and dreams featuring prominent Sufi masters such as Ahmad Yasavi are interspersed within local contemporaneous sources discussing the conquest and establishment of Russian rule in Central Asia during the 19th century. Within this period, local stories of Sufi masters and claims of their prophetic intervention represent an indigenous attempt to understand and explain the Russian conquest by tapping into pre-existing communal and historiographical traditions. This can entail figures, such as the 12th century Sufi master Ahmad Yasavi, prophesizing the eventual fall of Turkistan to Russians, or even offering guidance, through dreams to the participants of the conflict. Descriptions of the Russian conquest in these sources also draw parallels to the Mongol Conquest of the 13th century, by underscoring the actions of Sufi masters in the latter. This conference paper will examine these phenomenon through the use of two main primary sources. These are the Tarikh-i Jadidiya-i Tashkend, completed around the year 1886 by Muhammad Salih, and the Khulusat-al-Ahval written by Abu Ubaydullah around 1866. Both authors were residents of Tashkent and participated in the defense of the city against the Russians in 1865. Salih’s Tarikh-i Jadidiya-i Tashkend is an extensive work, a substantial portion of which is dedicated to the history of the city of Tashkent and the Russian conquest of the region in the 1860s. The Khulusat-al-ahval is an autobiographical work which also contains valuable historical information on Tashkent due to the fact Abu Ubaydullah served as a civil servant for the Khoqandi governors of the city during the mid-19th century. Both texts contain anecdotal stories and dreams attributed to important Sufi figures. Utilizing Rogers Brubaker’s concept of groupness as an event for a theoretical framework, I argue that the events of the Russian conquest led to a momentary rise in groupness or communal identity for Central Asian participants. This rise in groupness is represented by textual allusions to Sufi masters and comparisons with the Mongol conquest, both of which drew on wider communal and historiographical traditions in Central Asia.