Abstract

I present an analysis of the poem "Soz basy", more commonly known as "Kel, balalar, oqylyq" by Kazakh educator Ybyrai Altynsarin written in 1879. This poem encourages children to study in the name of one God and presents awareness of God as the purpose of education. I argue that Altynsarin's motivation as an educator was rooted in his religion rather than a secular ideal of education. I conduct the close reading of the original text and compare multiple Soviet and Kazakhstani editions published across Arabic, Latin and Cyrillic scripts. The poem has survived three states: Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Kazakhstan, whose state ideologies affected its reception. The Soviet revisions of this poem either removed direct mention of God and kept Quranic metaphors or removed all religious allusions. Removing religious references separated the poem not only from its religious origin, but also from the Islamic knowledge ecosystem it belonged to. Current school editions in Kazakhstan continue to omit the religious framing of the original. This shows that the post-independence circulation of literary works is not faithful to the original work and is filtered through Kazakhstan's secular nationalist ideology.