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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

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Abstract

This paper analyzes Soviet efforts to standardize and “modernize” funeral practices in Kazakhstan by promoting socialist forms of ceremonial life. During the Soviet period, practices surrounding death became an arena for ideological intervention, as authorities sought to regulate and transform customary and religious traditions associated with life-cycle events. Publications in Soviet Kazakhstan promoting “new socialist rites and traditions” provided guidelines for organizing weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies, proposing ceremonial scenarios, recommended speeches, musical accompaniment, and spatial arrangements intended to establish uniform models of public ritual.

Drawing on Soviet ethnographic and ideological publications alongside contemporary ethnographic material collected during field research among Kazakhs in the Oral (Uralsk) and Aqtobe regions of western Kazakhstan, the study compares prescriptive Soviet texts with ethnographic accounts and field observations. The analysis shows how authorities attempted to standardize funeral ceremonies through practices such as burial in coffins, organized farewell ceremonies, and the introduction of classical music, together with traditional elements, such as joqtau, however they became marginalized and today survive only rarely.

Soviet reforms thus produced a process of selective adaptation: some ritual elements disappeared while communal practices connected to mourning and kinship persisted, contributing to broader anthropological discussions on ritual change and state regulation in socialist contexts.