Abstract:

In this conference report, I intend to consider similar patterns of local collective memory in an attempt to understand what role is played, and what place is occupied, by such narratives in the social lives of small social groups. The object of my research will be a small community of Imamite Shias, Central Asian Iranians, currently living in the city of Bukhara and its suburbs. An ethnic and religious minority in current-day Uzbekistan, the Bukharan Iranians are distinguished by their adherence to Twelver Shiism (in contrast to the Hanafi Sunni majority in the region), some minor differences in religious rites relating to the cycle of life compared to the most widespread practices in the Bukharan cultural realm, and patterns of collective memory which carry representations of collective trauma.

Providing one such framing of trauma were the events leading to the clash between Shias and Sunnis in January 1910 in the capital of the Bukharan Emirate, resulting in casualties on both sides. In conversations during my fieldwork in Bukhara (two times), I discovered that memory about these events plays an important role in self-identification for individuals of the older generation. More religious people apply a more persistent religious framework around their representation of the 1910 events, which adds to and can even mitigate the traumatic experience of the past.

Based on my field notes, I would like to look more closely at this case to understand what role representations of the past play and what place they occupy in the identity of Bukhara’s Shiite community; examine how and why the religious aspect is included in these representations; and determine whether there is a difference in representations of the past among members of different generations. A separate theme is the impact of historical policies by those in power and their influence on local memory. This process can result in either suppression of local memory or the search for suitable niches where it can be inserted into larger narratives of memory about the past of one small community