Abstract

In this research paper, the main topic of analysis is Sufism among Kazakhs in the late 19th century and contemporary commemoration of it, with the focus on two hagiographies about Etzhemes or Etzhimas Ishan or Ishan-baba-Ahund-Shadman-Khodzha-Ishanov (b. 1833) and the sacred sites associated with him. Islam and Sufism among Kazakhs and their complicated relations with the Russian colonial power are getting more and more scholarly attention. The recent excellent book by Pavel Shablya and Paolo Sartori, The Case of Mansurov, which shows how colonial orientalism pervaded Kazakh religiosity, seeks to shape and understand Kazakh religiosity in its own terms (Shablya and Sartori 2025). This article aims to widen the academic knowledge of Islam in Kazakh steppe, which bordered in south with sedentary parts of Central Asia, with focus on the figure of the so-called Etzhemes of Etzhimas Ishan of the Tashkent area, about whom Russian colonial office Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin (1880-1920), left highly positive memories and compared him in the colonial fashion of that time as only pious and “true” representative of Muslim spirituality and Sufism in Tashkenti area. What is essential is that the memory about Etzhemsa Ishan did not vanish after the turmoil of the 20th century and after the collapse of the USSR, the figure of Etzhemes Ishan became reimagined in a new wave of hagiographies in Kazakh about him, but they are based on colonial written heritages, such as works of Lykoshin