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Abstract

Georgia is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state where the dominant Orthodox Church (83.4% of the population) shapes national identity and often marginalises ethnic and religious minorities. As most non-dominant religious groups, Azerbaijani Muslims in Georgia face challenges related to the construction and management of religious infrastructure, including strict state regulations, limited official recognition, and restrictions on building mosques.

This study examines how the Azerbaijani minority establishes, maintains, and uses religious spaces through grassroots activism, private initiatives, and transnational support. In response to the lack of official permission, some communities convert private homes into mosques without minarets, creating semi-formal (uncertain-status) yet functional religious spaces. Others face long-term procedures and other obstacles to build and register the mosques. At the same time, official religious authorities regulate imam appointments, pay salaries, and coordinate with external actors such as the Azerbaijani SOCAR (The State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan), through its Georgian representative, for material support, including gas supplies.

By analysing the interplay between informal, community-driven initiatives and formal, state or institutionally sanctioned structures, this research highlights the complex dynamics of religious life for Azerbaijani Muslims in Georgia. It explores how religious infrastructure not only preserves cultural identity and encourages religious development, but also reflects broader social and political negotiations, the limits of minority rights, and the role of transnational actors in supporting these communities.

The presentation will focus on the tension between grassroots improvisation and institutional regulation, the creation of mosques, the negotiation with local authorities, and the involvement of international actors, including Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia, in sustaining religious infrastructure. This approach illuminates how Azerbaijani Muslims navigate legal, social, and material constraints while asserting their religious and cultural presence in Georgia.

The presentation is based on long-term field research conducted between 2024 and 2026 within the project: “Religious Domains of Infrastructure and its Role Among Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Georgia.”

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This paper is devoted to the study of Islamic manuscripts of Central Asian origin currently preserved in libraries in the United States. Central Asia historically was a major center of intellectual and cultural life of the Muslim world, where manuscript culture flourished until early twentieth century. The major cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva were centers of manuscript production.

The study analyzes twenty-five manuscripts originating from Central Asia, now housed in major American libraries. Their provenance has been established primarily through colophons, ownership notes as indicated in catalog records.

The paper provides an overview of the manuscripts’ chronological range and their subject matter. The collection includes works in Arabic and Persian, covering Qur’anic studies, Islamic law, theology, Arabic philology, literature, and astronomy. The attention is given to valuable manuscripts produced by renowned calligraphers and artists.

By bringing together dispersed materials, this study contributes to a better understanding of the book culture and intellectual history of Central Asia.

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The collapse of the Soviet Union necessitated the reconstruction of state institutions responsible for managing cultural and religious diversity across Central Eurasia. Three decades later, the region exhibits distinct models of cultural governance that reflect varying combinations of Soviet institutional legacies, post-independence nation-building projects, and contemporary geopolitical pressures. This paper examines the institutional architecture of state-religion management in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan—three countries that share a common Soviet past but have pursued divergent trajectories in organizing state authority over the cultural sphere.

Drawing on institutional analysis and comparative case study methodology, this research addresses two central questions: First, how have Soviet-era institutions (such as the Council for Religious Affairs) been transformed, replaced, or perpetuated in each national context? Second, what relationships exist between these institutional arrangements and broader state strategies of legitimation, particularly regarding national identity formation and regime stability?

Preliminary findings suggest three distinct patterns. Kazakhstan has pursued a hybrid model, maintaining a centralized Spiritual Administration of Muslims while simultaneously expanding secular cultural institutions that emphasize interethnic harmony—a strategy aligned with its multi-vector foreign policy and international image as a mediator. Uzbekistan, following the 2017 succession, has initiated a partial institutional restructuring, shifting from a highly repressive oversight model toward co-optation of religious institutions into state-led cultural nationalism. Tajikistan represents the strongest continuity with Soviet institutional logic, where cultural governance remains tightly securitized, reflecting elite concerns about regional instability and the lingering memory of the civil war.

This research contributes to broader discussions on state-society relations in Central Eurasia by demonstrating that institutional choices in cultural governance are not merely technical administrative matters but reflect deeper configurations of power, historical memory, and geopolitical orientation. The comparative framework reveals how post-Soviet states have selectively appropriated, reinvented, or rejected Soviet institutional templates in their efforts to construct legitimate cultural orders. By focusing on institutional structures rather than theological content, this study engages scholars across political science, sociology, and Central Eurasian studies, offering a framework for understanding contemporary cultural politics in the region beyond essentialist narratives of “tradition” versus “modernity.”

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The spiritual consciousness of the 12th-century Sufi cleric Khoja Ahmad Yasawi spans hundreds of years of Central Eurasian history, among other things informing more than five hundred anti-colonialist and later anti-Soviet popular rebellions. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought a revival of Islamic discourse and thus an unprecedented opportunity for a public discussion of this thinker’s legacy. The discussion did not occur solely within a religious context. It also took place in secular institutions – in universities and publishing houses, in cultural organizations and mass media – as scholars sought to rescue Islamic tradition from decades of official campaigns against “religious obscuritanism.” They rethought Yasawi as a philosophical name to stand alongside Al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Al-Khwarizmi.

This paper investigates the circumstances behind the first secular work on Islam to be produced by the post-Soviet RK Ministry of Education: "The Spiritual Heritage of Yasawi" by Aidar Abuov. Published thirty years ago under the title Духовное наследие Яссавы, the book was received as a landmark in the young nation’s effort to take ownership of its religious history as it emerged from more than seventy years of official state atheism. When situated in the context of secular Islamic studies, and of Central Eurasian studies as a whole, it can be seen as the beginning of an emic scholarship, “writing tradition from within.” The book was translated into English in 2024 and is searchable globally on WorldCat.

The paper will be co-presented by the book’s author, now a professor at the Kazakh University of Business and Technology in Astana, and by his English-language translator, Dr. George Rueckert of KIMEP University in Almaty. Although intended as an individual paper, it may also contribute to scholarship-in-progress forums, insofar as it draws from on-going research, including contemporary interviews with Abuov and his original collaborators and editors and a literature review of the book’s 1990s reception and commentary. "The Spiritual Heritage of Yasawi" was the first major scholarly attempt to redefine the place of Islam within Central Eurasian intellectual life, treating Yasawi as both a religious and a national figure and rethinking the Sufi tradition as an integral component of the region’s cultural identity. In tracing how the book took shape through the late-Soviet and early independence periods, our paper sheds light on broader processes: the revaluation of Sufi tradition, the search for national cultural foundations, and the emergence of an emic tradition of scholarship on Islam.