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Waqf in Turkestan: the colonial legacy and the fate ofan Islamic institution in early Soviet Central Asia,1917-1924Niccol Pianciola; Paolo Sartori

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2007

To cite this Article: Pianciola, Niccol and Sartori, Paolo (2007) 'Waqf in Turkestan:the colonial legacy and the fate of an Islamic institution in early Soviet Central Asia,1917-1924', Central Asian Survey, 26:4, 475 498

To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/02634930802017929URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02634930802017929

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Waqfin Turkestan: the colonial legacyand the fate of an Islamic institution inearly Soviet Central Asia, 19171924NICCOLO PIANCIOLA and PAOLO SARTORI1

ABSTRACT The paper investigates early Soviet policies regarding the institution of

waqf (charitable endowment) in Turkestan, questioning the issue of the post-colonial character of the early Soviet administration. After taking intoconsideration practices related to waqf management in modern Muslim statesand European colonial empires, the paper briefly describes the tsaristadministrative approach to the issue. We then address the ambiguity inherent inSoviet policies on waqf requisition and restitution during Civil War years. Inthe section that follows we deal with different groups of Muslim intellectualsthat attempted to use the Soviet state in their mutual struggle over authority inCentral Asian society and describe the creation and functioning of thebureaucracies responsible for managing waqf. Finally, we outline some

provisional conclusions on the legacy of tsarist colonialism for Soviet power inCentral Asia and the role played by progressive Muslim intellectuals.

Introduction

With the fall of the tsarist empire, which had seen and treated Central Asia as acolony, and the creation of the new Central Asian republics as integral parts ofthe Soviet Union, we witness a transition in the ways the region was administered.The techniques of governance and administrative practices used by tsarist auth-

orities in Turkestan had features in common both with other contemporaryEuropean colonial empires and with Muslim states attempting to consolidatetheir hold over social groups and socio-economic institutions that for centurieshad been independent from political power. The USSR in Central Asia wasinstead a post-colonial state which, in the first years after its formation, enactedexplicitly anti-colonial policies aimed at eliminating inequalities in the distributionof resources (the most important was the redistribution of land and access to water

Central Asian Survey (December 2007) 26(4), 475 498

Paolo Sartori is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Oriental Studies, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Muhlweg 15, 06114 Halle (Saale), Germany (E-mail: [email protected]).Niccolo Pianciola, is acting Professor of History of Eastern Europe, Universita di Trento, Facolta di Lettere e

Filosofia, Via Santa Croce, 65 I-38100 Trento, Italy (E-mail: [email protected]).

0263-4937 print/1465-3354 online/07/040475-24 # 2007 Central Asian SurveyDOI: 10.1080/02634930802017929


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from Slavic colonists to pastoral Kazakhs and Kyrgyz in Semireche).2 Moreover,the policy of indigenization (korenizatsiia) led to the inclusion of Central Asiansin regional administration.3 Many of them were progressive intellectuals andulama. They joined the administration in places where they hoped to influencethe evolution of society and culture in the direction they had indicated for yearsbefore the fall of tsarism. Given the new states utopian, anticolonial and moder-nizing ideology, they now saw their project as achievable.4 Charitable endowments(waqf, pl. awqaf),5 were an issue at the heart of the progressive Muslims effort tomodernize education in the region, since it was these endowments that funded theschool system in early Soviet Central Asia. Moreover, waqf was involved in theother major area of reform, the land issue. Policies on waqf were thereforelinked both to policies of cultural transformation and those of social reform inthe regions principal economic activity, agriculture. These progressive Muslims

were opposed by traditionalist ulama who wielded religious and legal authorityin Central Asian society and were against the reform of education and the statemanagement of waqf. The matter was further complicated by the fact that up tothe mid 1920s, any figure of religious authority, not only progressive ulama,was seen by Moscows envoys to Central Asia as a valuable ally in the struggleto secure their grasp on a region still ravaged by insurgency. It was in thiscontext that in the first half of the 1920s, among educated Muslims in CentralAsia, a fierce battle was fought over waqf.

Beyond investigating early Soviet policies regarding waqf, this essay addressesthe broader issue of the transmission of administrative knowledge from the tsarist

empire to the Soviet Union in Central Asia, problematizing the issue of the colo-nial character of the early Soviet administration. We have tried to exemplify theproblems involved in the transition from tsarist to Soviet state in the concrete pol-icies implemented regarding key social institutions like charitable endowments,dealing with the individuals and bureaucracies that managed them. After takinginto consideration practices related to waqf management in modern Muslimstates and European colonial empires, the paper briefly describes the tsarist admin-istrative approach to the issue. We then address the problem of the Soviet proto-administration that dealt with waqf during Civil War years in Turkestan, showingthe ambiguity inherent in Soviet policies on waqfrequisition and restitution. In the

section which follows we deal with different groups of Central Asians thatattempted to use the Soviet state in their mutual struggle over authority inCentral Asian society and describe the creation and functioning of the statebureaucracies responsible for managing waqf endowments. Finally, we try toreach provisional conclusions on the issue of the legacy of tsarist colonialismfor Soviet power in Central Asia, the colonial features of the early Soviet admin-istration in the region, and the role played by progressive Muslim intellectuals whobecame part of the Soviet power structure. We hope to show that studies of par-ticular institutions such as waqf, codified under different legal systems (sharaand the law of the state) in both tsarist times and early Soviet Central Asia, canbe a fruitful way to elaborate on the relations between colonizers and colonized,

as well as former colonizers and the formerly colonized, and to put the actors

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back into the network of meanings and norms that the great upheaval of war andrevolution in some cases tore apart and in others configured in different patterns.

State-building in the modern age led administrations to take over assets previouslycontrolled by religious organizations in the Christian world and charitable insti-tutions among Muslims. Parallel to this, secular states replaced religious groupsand charitable organizations in reproducing culture through education, and in pro-viding welfare. In the modern Muslim world, this process took many forms. One ofthem was a struggle between state and religious authorities for control over chari-table endowments, as these played an essential role in Muslim communities, bothfrom a religious and economic point of view. Waqfrevenues provided salaries forimams, mudarris and mullahs, and so made existence possible for primary and sec-ondary schools (maktabs and madrasas), mosques, shrines and Sufi convents, thus

serving to reinforce Islamic religious authority. Moreover, charitable endowmentsfunded important welfare institutes such as orphanages. The majority of piousendowments consisted of land whose value tended to increase over time, assuch property enjoyed more legal protection from government interference thanother forms of estates. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 19th centurybetween a half and two thirds of the land in the Ottoman Empire was waqf prop-erty. In the same period, half the land in Algeria and a third in Tunisia was con-trolled by pious foundations. In Egypt before Muhammad Alis agrarian reform,it is estimated that around a fifth of the land was waqf property, while in 1914the extension of waqf land was around 1015% of cultivated land.6 Precise stat-

istics are not available for Central Asia before and after the tsarist conquest (esti-mates range between one tenth and one fifth of cultivated land).7

During the 19th century, all the major Muslim states established institutions tocontrol the resources stemming from waqf. This phenomenon had to do with thestates attempts to control resources and deploy them for their own projects: agrar-ian reform, creating a more open land market and curtailing the revenues of thetraditional elites. In the Ottoman Empire a Ministry for waqf was founded inOctober 1826. In Egypt, a central administration for waqf was created in 1835by Muhammad Ali, abolished three years later, re-established in 1851 by AbbasI and turned into a Ministry in 1864. While even in the 19th century, state-builders

like Muhammad Ali in Egypt requisitioned significant expansions ofwaqf

land, itwas in the 20th century that the process reached its height. In Turkey, the discri-minating date was 1924: the caliphate and the Ministry of Islamic Law were abol-ished; waqfproperties and their administration were incorporated into the secularKemalist state under the supervision of a Board for Pious Endowments.8 Twoyears later family waqf was abolished and public ones nationalized. After theSecond World War, some Arab states adopted legislation that limited the validityof family waqf and the socialist Arab military regimes abolished waqf in theircountries.9

The expansion of the states role coincided with authority being taken awayfrom the ulama, i.e. the scholars of Islamic law. In fact, waqf constituted a

major part of the domain of the ulama, because they were among waqfs

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direct beneficiaries and overseers. On the one hand, they greatly profited from thepious endowments which covered expenditures for madrasa maintenance and paidtheir teachers salaries; on the other hand, acting as qadi.e. judges in shara -based courtsthe scholars of Islamic law determined the stipulation of endow-ment deeds (waqfiyya/waqfnama). In addition, the qad could be asked to hearlawsuits concerning waqf,10 as public and familial endowments were treatedrespectively as a subject of the Islamic doctrine of rent11 and of the law ofinheritance.

Like Muslim rulers, colonial powers also had to tackle questions arising fromwaqf management. The colonial powers handling of waqf differed significantlybetween European settlement colonieswhere the administrations goal was totake land away from the local population and give it to settlersand colonieswhere European agricultural colonization was not implemented. A case of the

first kind is Algeria. Here the French, after a first attempt at confiscating waqflands,12 were called upon to settle a bitter controversy between the colonistsand the Muslim judiciary. Wanting to acquire land for agricultural purposes,French settlers had incautiously taken over waqf lands which, from the pointof view of the shara, could not legally be sold or purchased on the market.Frustration on the part of the newcomers led to action being taken by the colo-nial administration. Along with the enforcement of new legal enactments con-cerning the ownership of land, a campaign of disrepute of family waqf wasmounted. This was done mainly by French Orientalists, who argued thatMuslim family endowments were illegal from the perspective of Islamic law

as they deviated from the pious goals that are the basis of the establishmentof a waqf.13

The second variation is exemplified more clearly by the evolution of the insti-tution ofwaqfin British India. Among the well-known differences between BritishIndia and French Algeria,14 the most important was that, unlike the French, theBritish allowed Indians a limited degree of political representation. In thiscontext, Muslim politicians and lawyers, with the support of political associ-ations, the press, the ulama, wealthy landholders and some British officials,15

used the judiciary and legislative processes to save family endowments fromthe disappearance they had been condemned to by the decisions taken by the

High Court of India between 1879 and 1893.

16

The approach to the question of waqf adopted by the tsarist authorities inCentral Asia is similar to both that of the French in Algeria, and the British inIndia. As in India, the colonial government was largely indifferent to waqf, solong as land was productive and Muslims paid their taxes.17 As in Algeria, thecolonys government was in the hands of the armybut, unlike Algeria, thesedentary regions of Turkestan (where the great majority of the regions waqfland was concentrated) never became a settlement colony.18 In Turkestan onlythe Semireche oblast, inhabited by Kazakh and Kyrgyz herdsmen, was heavilycolonized by Eastern Slavic peasants. In 1897 the Slavic rural population of Semi-reche comprised two thirds of the total figure for Turkestan.19 Other Russian and

Ukrainian settlements were present in the oblasts of Ferghana, Transcaspia and


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Syr-Darya,20 but agricultural colonists remained a smaller fraction of the totalpopulation of these regions. In Ferghana and Syr-Darya they were concentratedin areas with a pastoral Kazakh and Kyrgyz population.21

It was only for fiscal reasons that the tsarist administration dealt directly withwaqf. In the regions first statute, the Provisional Statute for the Government ofthe Semireche and Syr-Darya Oblasts (July 1867),22 the only article in whichwaqf was named was the one dealing with taxation. This article considered onlyrural property and stated that waqf lands would be taxed like other kinds ofland, with the exception of those waqflands that had been exempted from taxationunder the Khan of Kokand and the Emir of Bukhara. In order for the exemption tobe confirmed, the waqf deeds complete with the Khan or Emirs seal attestingexemption had to be presented to the tsarist administration. These waqf landswere therefore defined by Russian administrators as obelennye, literally, justi-

fied. Newly formed waqfon the other hand was to be subject to normal land taxa-tion.23 The first example of data collection concerning waqf was the land surveyundertaken to organize taxation, immediately after the establishment of Turke-stans general governorship. In 1868, this investigation was initiated in Tashkent,after the Chancellery of the City Commandant (nachalnik goroda) received apetition from the mutawall of the local madrasa, Abdul-Qasim Khan IshanTura Khan. The administrator complained that merchants, who on Sundays occu-pied plots of land whose rent had been bequeathed to the madrasa under the termsof a waqf deed, refused to pay what they owed. The city officer stated he wasunable to resolve the question and proposed that a commission of Muslim admin-

istrators qualified on Islamic property rights be established to collect all the docu-ments relating to waqf at the oblast level.24 The first result, was a survey of theincomes that Tashkents main madrasas received under the terms of waqfdeeds.25 In the regions of Samarkand and Katta-Kurgan, the colonial authoritiesencountered a different problem. There the question was how to divide waqflands between Bukhara and Russian Turkestan for fiscal reasons.26 AleksandrKun (an administrator with an Orientalist background)27 was given the task ofdrawing up a list of waqf properties connected to madrasas and mosques. Afterthe survey, in 1869 an attempt was made to tax family endowments.28 In June1886, the Statute for the Administration of Turkestan was promulgated. Here

too, the administration only dealt withwaqf

from a fiscal point of view, exemptingfrom taxation unpopulated waqfland (i.e. land on which no peasant villages werepresent) (Art. 286). Revenues from mixed waqf lands were partly used formosques and schools and partly to benefit individuals. They were also subjectto taxation (Art. 289).29

Russian Orientalists duly highlighted the limits of tsarist administrative knowl-edge on waqf. In a work published in 1904, Nikolaj Nalivkin30 stressed that up tothat moment the administration had had a distorted conception of the institution ofpious endowments as it only saw waqf from a fiscal point of view. According toNalivkin, many administrators had the wrong idea about rights concerningwaqf, as the 1886 Statute compelled the tsarist administration to collect those

endowment deeds bearing the Khan or Emirs seal which exempted waqf land

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from state taxation, even though Nalivkin estimated that only a tenth of thewaqfnama had such a feature.31 Most probably Russian officers feared that touch-ing tax-exempt waqfland would have stirred public discontent. Accordingly tsaristadministrators only looked for exempted waqfs (at least in the countryside). Oncethese had been found, the administration collected waqfnamas, but the greatmajority remained unread and unchecked.32

Despite repeated proposals from Governor Generals that pious foundationsassets be more closely monitored, in the last decades of the tsarist regime the situ-ation remained virtually unchanged.33 Governor General N. A. Ivanov proposedmore controls on pious foundations in 1903, but his request went unheeded.The following year, his effort led to the convocation of an extraordinary confer-ence on the waqf issue with the participation of regional experts and administra-tors. Similarly, Senator Pahlens commission (which visited Turkestan in 1908)

produced only general indications on the subject, like the proposals put forwardin the last years of tsarism.34

Waqf during the change in regime and the consolidation of Soviet power(19181922)

Lenins decree on land dated 8 November 1917 established that all lands belong-ing to nobility, the Crown, monasteries and churches were nationalized and wereto be given to peasants. Similar measures were extended to Turkestan by a delib-eration of the Tashkent Sovnarkom, in December 1917, which established the

abolition of private property, the prohibition of trading in land and the formationof a Committees for Land and Water ( zemelno-vodnye komitety). The govern-ment was to take control of all lands that were not directly worked by theirowners and oversee their distribution to the poor.35 No exception was providedfor waqf lands. These measures and the restitution of waqf at the beginning ofthe 1920s led historians to the conclusion that land and other waqf assets wererequisitioned during the civil war.36

The Tashkent government was however powerless to apply the decrees on landnationalization in most of Turkestan, because during most of the Civil WarBolshevik power there was limited to the Russian quarters of the towns.37 Through-

out 1918 and 1919, endowments were not generally requisitioned by Bolsheviktur-kestantsy. Only in isolated cases were waqf lands incorporated into theCommissariat for Agricultures funds.38 In 1918, waqf properties were formallymanaged by the Commissariat for Education and in early February 1919 theywere transferred to the Narkomnats, headed by Grigorii Andreev (Dzhurabaev).39

The fact that they were not requisitioned does not mean that in 19181919 therewere no important changes in the way they were managed. From the documentationthat has come down to us, it appears that, if nothing else, in some cases and someplaces, many mutawallwere replaced by the new authorities. A Russian memberof the Kokand Soviet reported in late 1919 that Since January . . ., all the formermutawallhave been replaced and the old city community has named Muslim Com-

munists and members of the Party in their place.40 Kokand might be an unusual


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case, given the massacre that took place there and destruction of part of the old cityat the beginning of 1918.41 In other locations in Ferghana there is evidence ofBolshevik involvement in the election of mutawall (this was in contrast withIslamic lawmutawall were indicated in a waqfnama by whoever establishedthe waqf). On 5 September 1918 an election was held in Namangan to replacethe mutawall of the waqf benefiting the Airitam mosque, a certain Ishan BabaIsmail Khoja Ishan. The 84 electors, inhabitants of the mahalla of Airitam, hadto choose between three candidates probably named by the Executive Committeeof the Namangan Soviet, which had called the meeting and appointed the head ofthe citys Commissariat for Nationalities, the Tatar Tahir Fathullin, to oversee thevoting. In the end a certain Tamal Khoja Tashkhojaev was elected.42 The ExecutiveCommittee of the Namangan soviet then had to ratify the election.43 It is likely thatthese procedures were followed to answer to local initiatives, without, however,

representing a uniform policy in Turkestan, at that time racked by Civil War andfamine.44

In any case, waqf properties were not substantially affected. In April 1919, justafter Muslim Communists were included in Turkestans Bolshevik governmentwith the institution of Musbiuro in March 1919, the Narkomnats statute createda section in the commissariat to deal with waqf. Discussions ensued. From stronglyideological positions, some (including a certain Alferov) argued that waqf was aharmful institution that should be abolished by liquidating waqf property.45

They were contrasted, however, by those who believed waqf could not be com-pared with the Orthodox Churchs assets, which should be confiscated as they

only benefited the clergy. According to its defenders inside the Narkomnats,waqf was already, in terms of its very conception, nationalized, as it had asocial and frequently charitable function, for example enabling the poor tostudy. Additionally, according to the Narkomnats leaders, waqf as an institutionwas a system of social protection and could not be taken away in times of econ-omic crisis and total lack of Soviet welfare institutions in Turkestan.46

In December 1919, a message from the Narkomnats to the Commissariat forAgriculture clarified that, following the joint decision of the Turkestan ExecutiveCommittee (henceforth TurTsIK) and the Musbiuro, for the time being therewould be no change to the situation concerning endowments in Turkestan. This

communication did not reflect the debates that had gone on inside the Narkomnatsand used a much less nuanced language: because of the conservatism andignorance of the Muslim masses, brought up with a strong notion of Islamiclaw, that also includes rights concerning waqf.47

Turkestan Bolsheviks attitude towards waqf was ambiguous. An official fromthe Narkomnats waqf section (set up in July 1919) laconically noted that, as theNarkomnats statute had appointed a waqf properties administration forTurkestan, this could only lead to a single logical conclusion: current lawconsiders admissible recognising the existence of waqf properties in the region,not limited in any way . . ..48

In a draft project on managing waqf written in the second half of 1919, it was

specified that not only public waqf (the document called it spiritual, dukhovnyi)

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should be preserved. Even the existence of family waqf (defined as privatechastnyi) was allowed. Only family waqf overseen by administrators who leftno descendants would be managed by the Narkomnats.49 Nevertheless, newwaqf could not be created, as legislation on waqf was exceptional (iskliuchitel-nyi) in character.50 As the Commissariats bureaucrats highlighted, managementof Turkestans waqf properties by the Narkomnats would be the first experienceof state control of revenues from Turkestani endowments.51 However, thiscontrol remained only on paper. At the end of 1919, the Commissariat of InternalAffairs reported to the TurTsIK that the waqfsection of the Narkomnats limited itswork to some correspondence with other institutions: The waqf section of theNarkomnats has done nothing. To date, a point of view has not even beendetermined for managing waqf properties.52 This observation was certainlyrealistic: on 10 December 1919, we find the Narkomnats waqf section asking

the Narkompros what the procedure for appointing a mutawall was.53The following day, a decree from the TurTsIK decided the passage of the waqf

section to the Peoples Commissariat of Internal Affairsprobably to make thechain of command from the centre to the periphery more effective.54 On 20December 1919 the head of the waqf section sent the Commissar of InternalAffairs a draft project for dealing with waqfproperty.55 The waqfsection proposedtransmitting the management of waqf land to the uezd and town sections of theNarkomnats (uezdno-gorodskikh natsionalnykh otdelov). These sections wouldcheck that management of waqf properties was carried out in conformity withthe endowment deeds.56 In this way, waqf management would be carried out at

local level and consisted of checking that the status quo (respecting the waqfdeed stipulation) was maintained. No strong central institution of managementwas foreseen, even though formally the coordination and central managementremained with the Commissariat of Internal Affairs waqf section. This draft,together with other Narkomnats documents from 1919, shows that there was nodesire to abolish waqf inside the Soviet proto-administration from 1918 to 1921.However, in 1919 (as in 1922) it was believed that public waqfhad more legiti-macy as its aim was to finance education for the poor (The waqfs main objectiveis to give material and spiritual help [ pomoshchi materialnoi i dukhovnoi] tothose who are propertyless and poor, who want to receive an education, Art. 2).

This kind ofwaqf

was called cultural by Soviet legislators. It is also noteworthythat the endowment deeds still had legal significance in Islamic law, as Art. 8and 10 read: The expropriation [otchuzhdenie] of waqf property or changesin its management can only occur in cases foreseen by the shara;Earnings from waqf must be distributed according to precise indications inwaqfnama.57

After the short inclusion in the Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the waqfsection was ultimately assigned to the Commissariat of Education (Narkompros)in January 1920. On 6 March 1920 Munawwar Qar Abd al-Rashdkhan-ughl(Abdurrashidkhanov)probably the most influential modern-oriented Muslimintellectual in Tashkentbecame the temporary chairman of the Commissariats

waqf section.58 The section was transferred to the Narkompros at the same time


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as Turkestans political situation became more stable: Frunze had entered Tashkentat the head of the Red Army on 22 February. On 24 March, Moscow issued a statutefor Turkestans autonomy that overrode the Muslim Communists proposals andalso brought Russian Bolsheviks in Tashkent back into line.59 Turkestans Commu-nist Party became a branch of the unified Party of the Russian Federation.60 It doesnot look as though the Narkompros introduced any significant innovationsregarding waqf over the entire following year and a half, although in October1920 the members of the waqf section discussed a draft statute (polozhenie) toregulate the issue.61 Only in 1921, did the matter cease to a be a question discussedexclusively in Tashkents Commissariats bureaucracies and become a subject ofpublic resolutions. In the meantime, Munawwar Qar had fallen into disgracewith Cheka and remained in prison from March until December 1921.62

Papers on the waqfissue produced by the understaffed administration during the

chaotic years of the Civil War can only help us to understand the intentions of theRussian Bolsheviks of Turkestan, rather than analyse policies that in fact were notapplied. However, this documentation allows us to revise the traditional narrativeabout waqfduring the Civil War in Turkestan, as a period of nationalization andthe requisition of properties bequeathed to religious institutions through piousendowments.

The Sixth Regional Congress of the Turkestan Communist Party, held in Tashk-ent on 11 and 12 August 1921, approved a resolution on waqf: first of all, Muslimpious endowments were not divided into public and familial ones, as theFrench had done in Algeria. Instead, the Congress decided to distinguish

Muslim endowments in terms of their social significance: mosques, shrines(mazar), Sufi convents (khanqah), and qar-khana were labelled religious,while primary and secondary schools along with orphanages were deemed to becultural. The Congress decided that the Soviet power would categoricallyrefuse to confiscate the religious waqf. As far as the cultural were concerned,it was felt that they might be subject to Soviet laws concerning land holdings ifrequested by the local population, while otherwise their revenues would be atthe disposal of the Narkompros,63 but it was only one year later that concretemeasures on waqf restitution were taken.

These measures were put into effect as part of the application of the New

Economic Policy in the ex-colony, one year after its adoption at the Tenth PartyCongress in Moscow: on 11 April 1922, the Turkestan Executive Committeeapproved a decree on a single tax in kind, thanks to which numerous pre-existingtaxes were reduced to one, equal to around 10% of Turkestans gross agriculturalproduction.64 It is reasonable to assume that the proclaimed restitution wasdecided in the spring of 1922, especially because, starting in March, theBolsheviks violently seized assets of the Orthodox Church in Russia, takingadvantage of a devastating famine in the Volga region. From the governmentspoint of view, the 1922 decrees on waqf (and to some extent the founding ofthe GVU) also served to reassure important sectors of Central Asian societythat the same policy towards waqf would not be put into effect. Party directives

instructed Bolshevik propagandists explaining the governments position on

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waqf to highlight the difference between policies towards the Orthodox Churchand those towards Islamic institutions in general and waqf in particular.65 Thesedecisions about waqf had been taken by members of the Partys upper echelons.Moscow agency is clearly shown by a Politburo decree of 18 May 1922, basedon a presentation On Turkestani and Bukharan affairs by Stalin himself, atthat time Commissar for Nationalities. Point two of this decree stated expresslythat the government should return waqf lands to their previous owners.66

Restoring Waqf

On 20 June 1922, the TurTsIK published a decree for the restitution of waqf tomadrasa and mosques (o vozvrashchenii vakufov medressam i mechetiam Turkre-spubliki).67 The revenues from the restored endowments were to be used exclu-

sively to pay the salaries of those working in madrasas and mosques and forbuilding repair. As the resolution on waqf of the Sixth Regional Congress of theCommunist Party of Turkestan had stated, arable waqf lands had to be given topeasants and the disputes regarding these lands were to be settled accordingto Soviet legislation. Restoration must not, however, be seen as a restitutionof what never wasin the vast majority of casesconfiscated. As shown in theprevious section, the state never really managed to appropriate the revenuesgenerated by Muslim pious endowments. Restoration of waqf was instead partof the application of the NEP in Turkestan and helped re-establish trade that hadbeen disrupted by the period of war and revolution. The economic crisis caused

by the war and previous collapse of tsarism and requisitions by the TurkestanBolsheviks (particularly towards the cities Muslim merchants), had completely dis-rupted the regions normal economic life. Moreover, in the chaotic years of the CivilWar, tenants sometimes stopped paying rent to the mutawall, for example, on theirshops in the bazaar, or mosque administrators and personnel agreed to change theconditions of a lease in their favour.68 Consequently, over the following months,a commission was created in Samarkand with the task of making tenants pay themutawall for leasing waqf land that they occupied.69

A further, albeit indirect, confirmation of the fact that the 1922 decree was not areal restitution ofwaqflands is the absence in the archival documentation of voices

from below asking for restoration of previously requisitioned waqf property.Future research might of course change this picture, but no traces were found inthe archives of petitions asking for restitution. Documents of this kind wouldhave presumably flooded the ministries in Tashkent if the assets in the hands ofSoviet government had been significant.70

According to the decree,71 waqfand the madrasas were to be administered at theuezdlevel by a collegial body of five members: two mudarris, one qad, one repre-sentative of the local education department (ONO), and one maktab teacher.72 Theonly Russian in this body was an ONO representative. These institutions were tobe organized in Kokand, Andijan, Namangan, Staryi Margilan, Samarkand andKhojand. The elections of the candidates were left to assemblies of mudarris,

qad and maktab teachers and needed to be confirmed by the Ispolkom. These


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organs were told to oversee the registration of all the madrasas in the uezd,reporting waqfproperties: the location and size of shops, baths and caravansarais.To this purpose they were asked to collect all waqfnama, which had previouslybeen gathered by the Peoples Commissariat for Nationalities. Their dutiesincluded overseeing the appointment of madrasa staff. But the close managementof waqf revenues was still a duty of the mutawall. According to the decree,mutawall were to continue to fill in financial registers, write reports, gather allrevenues (but spend them only with the permission of the collegial body describedabove), be responsible for the upkeep of madrasas and waqf buildings, paystate taxes, and (with the approval of the collegial body), sign leases for waqfproperties.

The decree itself was clear. Nonetheless, the role the ulama, specificallyMuslim jurists and judges, would have concerning the waqf was not clarified.

The latter were represented by the mahkama-i shariyya, a Muslim collegial judi-cial body that had been operative at the uezd level since 1919.73 As early as 10August 1922, Muslims had started discussing this issue publicly. The journal

Haqqat (The Truth) published an open letter signed by a student (Talaba).He wrote that according to rumours, the mahkama-i shariyya was to undertakethe tasks of reforming the madrasa, outlining new programmes and dealing withwaqf issues. Moreover he asked to see the ideas, the advice, and the decisionsof the ulama, and especially those of the mahkama-i shariyya, published inthe press.74 The answer came in the following issue of the periodical. It statedthat according to the government decree, new collegial bodies for pious endow-

ments (waqf shuras) were to be constituted and placed under the control of themahkama-i shariyya.75

The Narkomyust supported the involvement of the mahkama-i shariyya andconsidered it congruous with the general idea of giving the waqf back to theMuslims, since, according to the Narkomyust, they were in fact represented bythe mahkama-i shariyya. The Commissariat even accepted that the waqfcollegialbodies at the uezd level would be overseen by the mahkama-i shariyya. Accord-ingly, elections for running the mahkama-i shariyya included a position of super-visor of waqf issues (waqf mudr).76 Mahkama-i shariyya were opened inKokand, Andijan, Namangan and Margelan for the Fergana oblast; then, in

Samarkand and Khojand for the Samarkandoblast

. The Tashkentmahkama-i

shariyya oversaw the entire Syr-Darya oblast.77

The decision to give the Muslim judiciaries authority over waqf revenues leftthe Soviet statenamely the Narkomyust and the Narkomprosdeprived of thepossibility to exploit these resources for reform in education. Modernization, asconceived by the Communist government in Turkestan, implied a strong commit-ment in the educational and cultural sphere, starting from the reform of madrasacurricula, the improvement of educational standards, and increasing literacyamong the Muslim population. Waqf revenues could have been used to achievethese tasks, but not if they were in mahkama-i shariyyas hands. Only a decadebefore, the reform of Islamic education had become a matter of division among

the Turkestani ulama and had shaped the discourse on progress (taraqq) in

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the Muslim public sphere. After the publication of the first decree on waqf, ittook nearly six months for the Soviet authorities to realize their mistake,namely that they did not foresee the possibility that mahkama-i shariyya wouldnot work for their interests. Accordingly, they drew up a new decree, aimed attaking waqf revenues out of the control of the mahkama-i shariyya.

The second decree was published on 28 December 192278 and introduced a sub-stantial change in the administration of pious endowments, namely the creation ofa Central Waqf Administration (Glavnoe Vakufnoe Upravlenie), an organ withinthe Narkompros staffed by progressively oriented Muslim intellectuals. It hadthree branches: propaganda, education, and finance. The first one was alsoentrusted with the resolution of questions regarding cases of illegal confiscationof waqf property. The second branch was meant to deal with the reform ofprimary and secondary schooling, and the training of mullahs and Muslim judici-

aries according to modern principles. The third one had to verify the adminis-tration of income and expenditures. The GVU was supposed to act as the centreof a network of local waqf sections operating at the local level (na mestakh).In fact, uezd collegial bodies, which according to the first decree were supposedto oversee waqf revenues, were to be replaced by waqf sections at the uezd andtown level (uezdno-gorodskie vakufnye otdely). These institutions also comprisedthree branches: religious, economic and organizational. The creation of the reli-gious section was conceived as a measure to counterbalance at the local levelthe authority over religious waqfnamely those attached to mosques, Sufi con-vents, shrines, and qar-khanaexerted by the Muslim judiciaries and the divines

unwilling to collaborate with the Soviet authorities.79

The Tashkent mahkama-ishariyya reacted immediately. In a petition to Turar Ryskulov, head of the Sov-narkom, it explained that the newly approved decree on waqf would oust themahkama-i shariyya from the administration of both the cultural and religiouswaqfas these would be placed under the jurisdiction of the GVU and its religioussections. In fact the Tashkent Old City Executive Committeeheaded by MannonRamzi, a Muslim who had recently become a Party member and espoused militantCommunist ideas80had ordered the mahkama-i shariyya to transmit all its dos-siers on religious endowments to the local waqfsection. The Tashkent mahkama-i shariyya asked the Sovnarkom to intervene, leaving it with authority at least

over religious matters.

81

This event was to open a series of confrontationsover the waqf issue in 1923.

Disputes over Waqf

The year 1923 opened badly for the mahkama-i shariyya. The GVU was staffedby two militant proponents of the new-method (usul-i jadd): Khal MuhammadAkhun-ughl (Akhunov)previously a member of a benevolent society called

Nashr-i maarifwas appointed as its head; Munawwar Qar was elected as amember of its board. In January they outlined a draft Statute for the GVU. Thisimmediately had an impact in the fierce turf war being fought between different

state agencies, a clash about which we still know very little. Khojanov, Head of


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had to organize a religious branch. The duties of this branch were the very sameones claimed by the mahkama-i shariyya for itself. On this basis Ivanov arguedthat the latters existence served no purpose and unnecessarily burdened waqfrev-enues.88 The GVUs request was to no avail and the GVU was forced to tolerateand work with the mahkama-i shariyya. The GVU had been reporting so exten-sively to the Sovnarkom and to the TurTsIK that this insistence alarmed theControl Commission of the Turkestani Communist Party, which convened a Com-mission for the Solution of the WaqfQuestion to meet in Tashkent from 8 to 18September 1923 in order to draft a definitive Statute on Muslim pious endow-ments. The Commission brought together all members of the GVU, Urazaev,head of the Narkomyust, Prigodisnkij from the NKVD and Semenov from theTsuardep. It tried to state clearly what the legal status of the waqf in Turkestanwas. In order to do so, the Commission coopted Zahr al-Dn Alam,89 a

Muslim jurist from Andijan, who had been a member of the Shuray-i Islamiyyain 1917the first prominent political party to appear in Tashkent under the Provi-sional Governmentand had entered the Tashkent mahkama-i shariyya inOctober 1922 and managed to be re-elected up to 1926.90 This cooptationmeant that the GVU had to cooperate at least with the Muslim judiciaries inTashkent. The liaison between the GVU and the Muslim judiciaries was immedi-ately evident: the Commission accepted the proposal that within the territory ofSoviet Turkestan new waqf could be established only for cultural purposesand this was to be done in shara-based courtswhere the qad had to redraftthe waqfnamaand consequently be registered with the GVU.91 The first step

the Commission took was to state that all the existing waqf in Turkestan andtheir properties which satisfy the cultural need of the indigenous population areto be conceived as state properties, and therefore as the patrimony of the localsociety (obshchestvennoe dostoianie).92 This passage was of crucial importancein the entire discussion on waqf that ensued. In fact, previously (12 July 1923)Ivanova Russian jurist working for the GVUhad attempted to demonstratethat waqf should not be considered a religious institution. Relying on theexample of late Ottoman Turkey, where Muslim endowments were regulated bysecular law and run by an apposite ministry, Ivanov explained that waqf oughtto be seen as a state institution.93 This was done only for one purpose: to convince

the Soviet state that culturalwaqf

should be exempted from taxation. Notwith-standing the negative opinion of the representative of the Peoples Commissariatfor Finances,94 the Congress ruled in favour of cultural waqf being exemptedfrom taxation. Accordingly, only religious waqf(mosques, shrines, Sufi conventsand qar-khana) would be subject to state taxation.95 The second basic step theCongress undertook was to state that all control over religious waqf and theadministration of the cultural ones was exclusively a GVU concern.96 It islikely that this decision was taken to appease members of the GVU. No other insti-tutions, for example the mahkama-i shariyya, could claim any authority over thewaqf, whatever their nature was. In addition, the decision was surely taken in orderto concentrate other waqfrevenues in the GVUs hands. In fact, the Congress ruled

that all waqfsubject to the Central Municipal Economic Administration (Glavnoe


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upravlenie kommunalnogo khoziaistva) was to pass to the GVU.97 What did notcome under GVU control were populated waqf lands situated outside of the city,which were to continue to be used by the people who were working them (as theprevious two decrees on the restoration of waqf had ruled). This land was tobecome state property and be given to the peasants under the terms of thecurrent labour norms (trudovye normy)98 but, as will be seen in the descriptionof the situation in Andijan which follows, it is probable that in many places therevenue from waqf lands continued to be collected and that this rule was notapplied.

The TurTsIK approved the Commissions rulings, but expunged the passage ontax exemption. Accordingly a decree was drafted and approved on 22 October1923.99 To become state law, it was transmitted to the Narkomyust for finalapproval. The Narkomyust contested the expression obshchestvennoe dostoianie

as it suggested the possibility that waqf properties could benefit individuals, thuscreating a conflict with the Soviet Civil Code. Moreover, the Narkomyust arguedthat making waqf tax exempt would curtail the only source of income for theproject of modernization and sovietization of the local schools. Interestinglyenough, in Tashkent, waqfrevenues were used by the state to fund not only madra-sas, but also 24 Soviet schools with 2100 students.100 On the basis of these points,on 30 October 1923, the Narkomyust rejected the entire draft decree.101

Soviet law on waqf remained vague until 1925, when the Conference on waqfadmitted that this institution was still out of state control. This was just a fewmonths before the proclamation of the beginning of the landwater reform

( zemelno-vodnaia reforma) in Uzbekistan, when the lands belonging to the cul-tural waqf would be subject to requisition and were added to the state land fundfor distribution to the peasants. It was the first step towards the abolition ofwaqf,which came at the end of the 1920s in all Central Asian republics.102

The local level ( na mestakh)

While struggling for compromises with the Muslim judiciaries and the highestlevels of the Soviet administration in Turkestan, the GVU had to enforce thedecree at the local level, relying on its waqf sections. These were constituted

in every uezd administrative centre and their work depended, albeit formally, onthe instructions issued by the GVU in Tashkent. On 10 April 1923, four monthsafter the publication of the second decree on the restitution of waqf, the peopleat the waqf section of Katta-Kurgan petitioned the GVU, warning that they hadnot received a new programme of studies for the upcoming academic year. More-over, they did not know how to behave in case the madrasa instructors, whom theKatta-Kurgan waqf section paid, rejected the new programmes.103 The GVUanswered vehemently:

The holidays have started now, so nothing will be given to the madrasa students until lessons start

again. We will only assign one or two more progressive mudarris [taraqq-parwarraq] in the

future, when the students are back, hoping that the reform and [new] programme have been

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approved and that madrasas are solid in structure. [. . .] From now on measures must be taken to

make all parasites and fanatics who do not accept the reform cry over the [new] madrasa [ islahni

qabul tmaydurghan bir khl tiknkhur mutaassiblarn bukundan bashlab madrasalardan uz

iglashdurmaqgha charalar kursh krak].104

On the basis of the information coming from the periphery, it is reasonable toassume that the GVU very soon understood that dealing with the local waqfsections was a nearly impossible task, further complicated by factors that wereoutside the GVUs control: gaps in the command chain; European staff with noknowledge of local languages; negligence and robbery. In this respect,communications between the Andijan waqf section and the GVU are a tellingexample.

The Andijan waqfsection was established in May 1923,105 but only in June was

its director able to issue a first report. The overview given in this account is dis-astrous. The director, Nasr al-Dn Qarzada,106 complained to the GVU thatsince February the section had been troubled with uncertainty: various peoplehad been appointed and dismissed, while the instructions coming from Tashkentcould not be followed as they got lost on the way. Because of budget restraints,the Andijan waqf section had even had to borrow some 3000 roubles. Moreover,the Andijan waqf section had succeeded in corrupting its image among the localpopulation: the former head of the agricultural branch (khwajaliq shubas), acertain Burhan Mashrab, disregarding the directors orders and acting autono-mously, had unofficially leased (ghayr-i rasm suratda) some waqf lands.107

The section did not even have exact data on the waqf it was responsible for.When it asked the mutawalls to transmit the waqf deeds, the administratorsclaimed that all the waqfnama had been confiscated by Munawwar-Qar .108

At the local level, the confrontation between the state-run waqfinstitutions andthe Muslim judiciaries was even more fierce than at the centre. Qarzada reportedthat the Andijan mahkama-i shariyya had leased all the madrasa waqf propertiesin the uezd, asking for a tax of 510 per cent of each propertys rent. He asked theGVU to intervene and take severe measures (qatcharalar) in order to stop thesetraitors who had magnified the name of the ulama (ulama ismin kutargankhainlar).109 The director went on to complain that the mahkama-i shariyya

was spreading propaganda against the waqf section, sardonically asking how theshara viewed the concentration of all waqf revenues in the waqf sectionscoffers. At this point, Qarzada added: This is strange! It has not yet beenmade clear whether the mahkama-i shariyya is playing on the side of the govern-ment or on the side of the dark masses (qarakhalq)?.110 It was not only for econ-omic reasons that Qarzada complained about the mahkama-i shariyya. In fact, inJune the latter still had sufficient authority to appoint the director of the religiousbranch of the Andijan waqf section.111

Just two weeks after submitting its first report, the Andijan waqf section againsent the GVU the same information. Apparently Tashkent had asked the section tosend part of the waqfrevenues it was supposed to collect. Qarzada pointed out that

the waqfsection had realized that the mahkama-i shariyya had embezzled all the


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profits originating from waqfproperties and revenues paid for all of 1922 and until1 June 1923 and the profits stemming from some waqfassets until 1 January 1924.Approaching the end, the reports tone becomes desperate: Obviously we cannotsend you the money you requested for 15th July. [

. . .

] Your exhortation is fair, youare asking for money, money, money . . . . The report the waqf section sent hadsome questions which have not received an answer yet. Why?112

Each month the Andijan waqf section was challenged by new problems. On 26August 1923, the Andijan waqfsection wrote a letter to the GVU informing themthat, according to the orders Tashkent was conveying, the economic branch hadstarted to verify all rent contracts (waqf mulklar jaras tughrsdag shartnama-lar) to know whether they could be confirmed or not. As all the employees wereEuropeans and the contracts were not written in Russian, the economic branchcould not fulfil its duty. The board of the Andijan waqf section therefore asked

the GVU for permission to resolve this issue on its own and to extend this per-mission to the waqf sections in Tashkent, Marghilan and Kokand in order tospeed up their work.113

The chaos reached a peak in the autumn of 1923. On 12 September the Andijanwaqf section sent GVU the following report: On 10 September we received anorder from the [Andijan] Revolutionary Committee [Revkom] informing us thatevery local waqf section must transmit 50 per cent [of waqf revenues] to the Nar-kompros, which would send inspectors twice a month. Strange! Whose orders anddecrees shall we follow? Those of the TurTsIK? The GVU? The oblast Revkom?Or the local section of the Narkompros? We are asking you to resolve this question

as soon as possible!. . .

This is odd indeed! Is every locally based authority in Tur-kestan ruling on its own ? [Ajaba! Turkistan ulkasning har bir mahalladaghukumat qanun bashqa bashqam?].114

At the end of November the situation was unchanged. The Andijan waqfsectiondid not know if it was to follow the orders of the newly appointed representative ofthe Fergana oblast Revkom.115 Even how the previous decree should be inter-preted was still unclear: on 26 November in the Andijan uezd, new endowmentslacking any documentation whatsoever were discovered. The local waqf sectionpetitioned Tashkent, asking whether they were to consider them all cultural(madan) waqf, or a mix of cultural and religious (dn) ones,116 so at least the

latter would be subject to a 10 per cent tax.By late November and December 1923, discussions over waqf in Andijan hadbecome increasingly troubled by fierce struggles with the mahkama-i shariyya.Qarzada informed the GVU that he had taken the decision not to pay the salariesof the Muslim judiciaries in the mahkama-i shariyya, as they had stirred up publicopinion against the local waqfsection. He explained that this was the only measurethat could be taken to stop the actions of the mahkama-i shariyya. Qarzada sar-castically added that the GVU must surely have received a sermon (maruza)delivered by the mahkama-i shariyya against the waqf section. He ended hisreport stating: You asked us if for the reform of the old-method maktabs andmadrasas we rely on the more progressive scholars (taraqq-parwarraq

ulama). The answer is that in our waqf section not a single one (hch bir

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ulamadan) has been used [for that purpose]. We do not have any! Zah r al-DnAclam was the only one, but now he works in Tashkent.117

Reading the reports from Andijan, one has the impression that the state wascompletely powerless at the local level. The reports do not give significantfigures about the revenues the local waqf sections had at its disposal: theAndijan waqf section did not report on how it was using available resources,but rather on its lack of authority.

Conclusions: the legacy of colonialism in the mirror of Waqf

The recent historiography of Central Asia in the first half of the 20th century hashighlighted the need to look at Soviet policies in the region from a comparative

perspective, taking into account what happened in modernizing states such asTurkey and Iran between the two wars.118 In this respect, it is nevertheless import-ant to consider that in Soviet Central Asia the relationship between the state,Islamic institutions and society was very different if compared with independentMuslim states. In the case of Muslim pious endowments, while in the OttomanEmpire and Iran, endowments had undergone a process of centralizationand state supervision since the 17th century,119 the Soviets in Turkestan werethe heirs to a colonial empire whose administrators had been extremely slow toachieve any grasp of the regions Islamic institutions.

The kind of governance that the tsarist empire practiced in Central Asia was a

regime of occupation hovering over a society. Its knowledge of the indigenoussociety was limited and when it intervened it was because it was forced to doso. Consequently its actions tended to be haphazard. As institutional heir to thecolonial tsarist administration, the Soviet regime lacked the tools to design areform policy of an Islamic institution like waqf, as the decrees demanded, orpush through a programme of cultural reform through waqf, as the Muslim intel-lectuals who staffed the GVU wanted. This legacy directly influenced the way theSoviets governed Central Asia in the ten years after they came to power, and, prob-ably, also (but this aspect must be further researched) how they intervened in theirfrontal attack on Islamic institutions in Central Asian society from 1927 on.

Historians agree that the Bolsheviks in Turkestan could not rule local societyand its particular institutions without the help of Muslim activists and intellectualswho were also sympathetic to the new authorities agendas. Bolsheviks could notexamine or control waqfwithout the knowledge of Muslim jurists, who in previousyears had fiercely fought either against or in favour of new method (usul-i jadd)for Muslim education. This makes the fate of waqf fundamentally different fromthe fate of Russian Orthodox Church property. The point here is that also the oppo-site is true: in a post-colonial situation such as early Soviet Turkestan, progressiveMuslim jurists that entered the state administration had to cope with its colonialfeatures, with Russians with a limited grasp of administrative knowledge on thewaqf issue staffing the local departments (as in the case of Andijan, mentioned

above).


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Waqfis therefore a good case study both for understanding the characteristics ofthe tsarist and Soviet state in Central Asia, as well as for studying the evolution ofpower relationships within the Muslim societys educated classes. From this pre-liminary investigation, some points have emerged that require further research.First of all, the so-called restitution of 1922 was actually a legal and administra-tive systematization of the status quo. In other words, the Soviet government inTashkent did not have (and had not had for the whole period 19181922) thepower to requisition waqf lands because, quite simply, they did not know whatthey were (and even if they had known, they would not have had the power torequisition them). As described above, the propagandistic decision to returnwaqf was taken in Moscow at the beginning of 1922 most probably should seenin relation to contemporary policies of violent requisitions against the OrthodoxChurchs assets. The decision was especially necessary given the instable situation

in Central Asia. The government needed the ulamas support in the struggleagainst insurgents, while it was trying to gain control of the regionmanyareas of Turkestan totally escaped government control as late as 1922.120

The capacity to administer an institution like waqf that was crucial to localsociety, did not improve with the consolidation of Soviet power nor was itbetter once the taraqq-parwarlar became involved. Muslim intellectuals wereput at the head of Soviet institutions, such as GVU for example, that had ambitionsto alter the social and cultural situation. Such institutions however had to copewith the legacy of tsarist colonialisms administrative weakness in Central Asia.The newly created Soviet bureaucratic machine tried to appropriate tsarist admin-

istrative knowledge on the waqf issue. From 1919 on the Narkomnats collecteddossiers of archival documents produced by the tsarist administration in theperiod 1900 1917 but found very little useful knowledge in these sources.Munawwar Qar and other modern-oriented Muslim intellectuals who staffedand directed the Glavnoe Vakufnoe Upravlenie were also involved in the last con-frontation with anti-reformist exponents of the ulama over the control of waqfrevenues and reforms in education, but they also had to cope with the character-istics of Turkestans post-tsarist administration. Addressing this point, AdeebKhalid, pointed out that:

Munawwar Qar, Awlani, Ayni, Ajzi, and Haji Muin, to name only a few of the most important

figures,. . .

saw themselves creating a new civilizationmodern, Soviet, Central Asian, Turkic,

and Muslim all at once. They hoped to coopt the state to the work of modernization . . . . As such,

the Jadids in the 1920s were hardly the pawns of a monolithic Soviet regime; rather, they are best

compared with fellow modernists in Iran and (especially) Turkey in the same decade, who also

used the newly established apparatus of a modern centralized nation-state to revolutionize society

and culture.121

They were not pawns, but nonetheless they could not effectively use the insti-tutions they thought would lead Central Asian society towards modernity. Thecharacteristics and shortfalls of the post-tsarist administration in Turkestan hadan important role in stopping modernist Muslim intellectuals from realizing

their objectives. As we have seen, during the 1920s, it is likely that waqfrevenues

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were exploited to pay the salaries of madrasa staff and to restore buildings of reli-gious significance. For the modernist intellectual this was not modernization.The Soviet modernizing transformation, which quickly turned into Stalinsrevolution from above, had very different characteristics from what CentralAsian progressive ulama had hoped.

Notes and references

1. Parts 1, 2 and 6 of this paper were written by N. Pianciola; parts 3, 4, 5 by P. Sartori. An earlier version ofthis paper benefited from the comments and suggestions of Adeeb Khalid, Marco Buttino, Jurgen Paul,Andrea Graziosi, Guido Franzinetti and an anonymous reviewer for Central Asian Survey.

2. Vladimir L. Genis, Deportatsiia russkikh iz Turkestana v 1921 godu (Delo Safarova), Voprosy istorii,No 1, 1998.

3. Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 19231939

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp 125181.4. Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley, CA: Universityof California Press, 1998).

5. As a rule, there are two types ofwaqf: public (khayr) and familial (ahl). The first are endowments whosefounder alienated his property for charitable purposes, therefore providing institutions like schools,mosques and hospitals with revenue. The second are endowments, whose founder bequeathed part of hisproperty to his descendants. From the legal point of view, this difference is irrelevant, while for socialand economic reasons, these two forms were of different nature. In Central Asia waqf developed amixed nature, i.e. both public and familial.

6. For these estimates see David S. Powers, Orientalism, colonialism and legal history: the attack on Muslim

family endowments in Algeria and India, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol 31, No 3, 1989,p 537.

7. The issue awaits further research. Estimates based on Soviet historiography can be found in old works such asHelene Carrere dEncausse, Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia (London:

Tauris, 1988, or French ed. 1966) and Alexander G. Park, Bolshevism in Turkestan, 1917 1927(New York:Columbia University Press, 1957). Park relates that endowment properties comprised between 8 and 10 percent of the cultivated acreage in Central Asia at the end of tsarist rule, and approximately 20 per cent ofcultivated acreage in the Bukharan Emirate (ibid, p 217).

8. T. Zarcone, La Turquie modern et lislam (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), p 140.9. For instance, family waqfs were abolished in Egypt in 1952. Cf. Wakf, Encyclopedie de lIslam, 2nd edn,

Vol. XI (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp 65 109. The section on waqf in Central Asia was written byR. D. McChesney. See also his case study of Balkh in Afghanistan: R. D. McChesney, Waqf in CentralAsia. Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine, 14801889 (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1991).

10. S. Knost, The waqfin court: lawsuits over religious endowments in Ottoman Aleppo, in M. Khalid Masud,R. Peters and D. S. Powers, eds, Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgements (Leiden: Brill,2006), pp 427450.

11. On this issue, see B. Johansen, Legal literature and the problem of change: the case of the land rent, in

B. Johansen, Contingency in a Sacred Law. Legal and Ethical Norms in the Muslim Fiqh (Leiden: Brill,1999), pp 446464.

12. A. Christelow, Muslim Law Courts and the French Colonial State in Algeria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1985), p 23.

13. Powers, op cit, Ref 7, pp 535 571.14. In India, European domination was the product, initially, of commercial enterprise rather than direct mili-

tary conquest. India was not subjected to British agricultural settlement; a far greater number of IndiansHindu and Muslim alikewere present in the colonial bureaucracy in South Asia than in North Africa.

15. Powers, op cit, Ref 6, p 563.16. The best work on waqf in British India is G. C. Kozlowskis, Muslim Endowments and Society in British

India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).17. Powers, op cit, Ref 6, p 563.18. Even though a limited number of Russian and Ukranian peasants settled in the Ferghana and Syr-Darya

oblasts, only the Semireche oblast, inhabited by Kazakh and Kyrgyz nomadic pastoralists, was legally

open to agricultural colonization during tsarist times.


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19. Nishiyama Katsunori, Russian colonization in Central Asia: a case of Semirece, 18671922, in KomatsuHisao, Obiya Chika, John S. Schoeberlein (eds), Migration in Central Asia: Its History and Current Pro-blems (Osaka: The Japan Center for Area Studies, 2000), p 69.

20. In this latter administrative unit especially in the so-called Hungry Steppe, a region to the southwest ofTashkent, important agricultural and irrigation projects began to be implemented in the last years of tsarism.

21. Syr-Darya was the second oblast in Turkestan in terms of Slavic agricultural colonization. In 1911 in Syr-Darya, 8 per cent of the total usable land had been occupied by Slavic settlers (mainly concentrated in theKazakh pastoral areas), while in Semireche the figure was 14 per cent. Cf. State Archive of the SouthernKazakhstan Oblast (GAIuKO), f. 243, op. 1, d. 435, ll. 2, 1ob, report on the economic conditions ofSouthern Kazakhstan (1924).

22. Despite its purported provisional nature, the statute remained the colonys fundamental law until 1886.23. Proekt polozheniia ob upravlenii Semirechenskoi i Syr-Darinskoi oblastei (11 July 1867), Art. 295, in

M. G. Masevich (ed.), Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana, Vol 1 (Alma-Ata: Izd.ANKazSSR, 1960), p 306.

24. Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan (hereafter TsGARUz), f. R-36, op. 1, d. 455, ll. 2 3ob.25. Ibid, ll. 23 25.26. In many cases waqfestablished in Bukhara included lands in the Samarkand region and vice versa: Alex-

ander Morrison, Russian rule in Samarkand, 18681910. A comparison with British India, PhD disser-tation, Oxford University, 2005, p 66.27. Aleksandr Liudvigovich Kun (1840 1888) studied at the Faculty of Oriental Languages of the Sankt Petersburg

University. Aprotegeof the famous Orientalist V. V. Grigorev, he moved from Orenburg to Turkestan in 1867,where he served in the Samarkand region. In 1873 he authored a booklet for administrative use on Land rights

and tax systems in Muslim Law. He took part in the Khiva (1873) and Kokand (1875) expeditions. Apparently,in both cases he was in charge of taking over Khans archives and other valuable documents and manuscriptskept by Central Asian rulers. From 1876 to 1882 he worked as the chief inspector of schools in Turkestan. In1882 he left Central Asia for Vilno (Vilnius), where he died. Cf. B. V. Lunin (ed), Istoriografiia obshchestven-nykh nauk v Uzbekistane. Bio-bibliograficheskie ocherki (Tashkent: FAN, 1974), pp 203208.

28. R. S. Kats,Iz istorii vakufnogo voprosa v dorevoliutsionnom Turkestane i Sovetskom Uzbekistane, 22 February1945, Archive of the Uzbek State Historical Museum, Samarkand, M-916, pp 8, 10. We would like to thank

Marco Buttino for allowing us to use this source. The figure given in the article cited is 59,991 tanap for waqflands in the Samarkand region. Based on archival documentation (TsGARUz, f. 1, op. 14, d. 22, l. 43).

Morrison however reported the figure of 51,991 tanap (Morrison, op cit, Ref 26, p 66).29. Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo kraia (2 June 1886), in Masevich (ed), op cit, Ref 23,

pp 352379. The articles that deal with waqf are no. 265, 266, 267, 285, 286, 289 and 299.30. Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin (1852 1918) was one of the most important tsarist scholars of Central Asia.

He arrived in Turkestan with the army, taking part in the conquest of Khiva and Kokand, but he left shortlyafterwards. He was one of the most extraordinary personalities of the Russian presence in Central Asia andhe wrote, together with his wife, a study on the women in the sedentary population of Ferghana based ondirect observation (V. P. Nalivkin and N. Nalivkina, Ocherk byta zhenzhchiny osedlogo tuzemnogo nase-leniia Fergany, Kazan, 1886). In 1917 he headed the committee of the Provisional Government in Turkestanafter the February Revolution. Cf. M. Buttino, La rivoluzione capovolta. LAsia Centrale tra il crollo del-lImpero zarista e la formazione dellUrss (Naples: lancora del Mediterraneo, 2003); and Z. Validi Togan,

Vospominaniia. Borba musulman Turkestana i drugikh vostochnikh tiurok za natsionalnoe sushestvovaniei kulturu, Moscow, 1997 (orig. Istanbul 1969). See also his Tuzemtsy ranshe i teper (orig. Tashkent,1913), republished in Musulmanskaia Srednaia Aziia. Traditsionalizm i XX vek (Moscow: RAN, 2004),

and biographical notes in ibid, pp 13 17, 276 280.31. V. Nalivkin, Polozhenie vakufnago dela v Turkestanskom krae, Ezhegodnik Ferganskoi oblasti, Vol. 3,

1904, p 37.32. Ibid, p 41.33. A. M. Iuldashev, Agrarnye otnosheniia v Turkestane (konets XIX nachalo XX vv.) (Tashkent, Uzbekistan,

1969), p 75.34. S.N. Abashin, Islam v biurokraticheskoi praktike tsarskoi administratsii Turkestana (Vakufnoe delo dakh-

bitskogo medrese 18921900), Sbornik russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva 155, no. 7 (Moscow: Russ-kaia panorama, 2003), p 183. Given how little research has been done on the subject, these can only betemporary conclusions.

35. Buttino, op cit, Ref 30, pp 246 247.36. For an early Western account based on Soviet secondary literature, see Park, op cit, Ref 7. On requisition of

waqf, see S. Tursunov, Natsionalnaia politika Kommunisticheskoi Partii v Turkestane (19171924 gg.)(Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 1971) p 233; Buttino, op cit, Ref 30, p 248.

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37. On the chaotic situation in Turkestan during the revolution and the Civil War, see Buttino, op cit, Ref 30, andA. Khalid, Turkestan v 1917 1922 godakh: borba za vlast na okraine Rossii, inTragediia velikoi derzhavy:natsionalnyi vopros i raspad Sovetskogo Soiuza (Moscow: Sotsialno-politicheskaia mysl 2005), pp 189 226.

38. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 86ob (20 December 1919).39. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 389, l. 1 1ob (15 March 1919) (message from the Commissariat for

Nationalities to the Provisional Revolutionary Soviet). The Commissariats secretary complained that thepassage of waqf management from one commissariat to another took too much time. The transfer wasdecided on 6 February 1919 (TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 86). Andreev (18891939) was aRussian born in Kzyl-Orda uezd who worked as a teacher in Turkestans Russian-native schools andthen taught Uzbek in the Tashkent commercial school. After the revolution and Civil War, he wasknown principally as a writer on historical and revolutionary subjects. Cf. Lunin, op cit, Ref 27, pp. 84 87.

40. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 404, l. 44ob (10 December 1919).41. Buttino, op cit, Ref 30, pp 292 301.42. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 152, l. 63 (5 September 1920).43. Ibid, l. 62 (7 September 1920).44. For example, on 20 January of 1920 the mutawall of a madrasa in the city of Kokand was elected by a con-

sultative assembly of the mullahs and the elders of the local community, TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 628,

l. 13. On famine as a crucial factor in local politics during the Civil War in Turkestan, see Buttino, op cit,Ref 30, pp. 237268.45. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 71 (9 May 1919).46. Ibid, ll. 70 78ob.47. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 86ob (20 December 1919). This statement was obviously drawn up by an

European officer of Narkomnats. The colonial tone of the phrase is condescending, but similar phraseologywas habitual for Bolsheviks in reference to Russian peasants as well.

48. Ibid, l. 75 (24 May 1919).49. Ibid, ll. 66ob 69 (undated, but probably July December 1919), Pravila o poriadke ustroistva upravleniia i

zavedivaniia vakufnym imushestvam Turkestanskoi Respubliki, especially Art. 4 and 10. This step wasalmost word for word identical to Article 265 of the Turkestan Statute of 1886.

50. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 76.

51. Ibid.52. Ibid, l. 90.

53. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 404, ll. 44 44ob.54. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 389, l. 8.55. Further confirmation of institutional chaos at this time is the fact that the head of the section of the Com-

missariat for Nationalities asked for instructions to be sent to the various provinces before the Commissariat

for Nationalities board, and especially, the TurTsIK, had given their approval, because if they had waited forsanction from these two institutions, they would have risked the initiative reaching a deadlock yet again.

56. TsAGRUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 394, l. 86ob (20 December 1919), Doklad zavedivaiushago vakufnym otdelomkomissaru vnutrennykh del Turkestanskoi Respubliki. The project is in ibid, ll. 83-83ob (nd, but 1919). Thetext refers to the Commissariat for Nationalities and not the Home Commissariat, so we can deduce that theproject was stopped between July and the beginning of December 1919, when the waqf section was stillunder the Commissariat for Nationalities.

57. Ibid, ll. 83 83ob (nd, but 1919).58. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 389, l. 20ob (6 March 1920). Munawwar Qar was immediately requested to

find a suitable person to become permanent head of this section of the Commisariat.

59. For the role of Musbiuro Communists and their proposal at the beginning of 1920, see Buttino, op cit, Ref30, pp 399402.

60. Only limited power was recognized to the Tashkent government, as Moscow directly controlled defence,foreign affairs, railways, mail and telegraphs, finance and the economy. (Buttino, op cit, Ref 30, p 402).However, education and agriculture, the main areas where waqf was an important factor, were left, atleast formally, to the governments of the individual Soviet republics.

61. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 628, l. 6 (October 1920).62. Munavvar Qori Abdurashidxonov, Tanlangan asarlar (Tashkent: Manaviyat, 2003, p 53).63. Rezoliutsii i postanovleniia sezdov kommunisticheskoi partii Turkestana 1918 1924 gg. (Tashkent:

Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo Uzbekskoi SSR, 1958), p 109.64. R. Ia. Radzhanova (ed), Turkestan v nachale XX veka: k istorii istokov natsionalnoi nezavisimosti (Tashkent,

Shark, 2000), p 452.65. TsGARUz, f. R-17, op. 1, d. 45, ll. 16 16ob, Stenograficheskie otchety zasedanyi 6 sezda kommunist.

Partii i 10 sezd Turk.respub. 19211923 gg.


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66. Many thanks to Adeeb Khalid for this reference. The document was published by Dina Amanzholova (ed),

Rossiia i Tsentralnaia Aziia, 19051925 gg. Sbornik dokumentov (Karagandy: Karagandinskii GosUniver-sitet im. Buketova, 2005). See also Radzhanova, op cit, Ref 64, p 393 for a reference to the waqfissue in thedecree.

67. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1414, ll. 55 59.68. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 628, l. 14. The document is a petition dated 29 March 1920, addressed to the

Peoples Commissariat for Enlightenment. The inhabitants of the Mr Abad district of Tashkent complainedthat the mullahs and imams working in two of the districts old mosques had agreed with the mutawall tochange the conditions in the leases of some shops, which was part of a waqfsupporting the mosques. The peti-tioners asked the Commissariat to intervene and restore the previous leasing conditions.

69. Kats, op cit, Ref 28, p 13.70. The research concerning the period 1920 1924 profited from the material gathered in the Narkompros fond

in TsGARUz. It is significant that certificates issued by qadi courts on waqfproperty are nearly completelyabsent from this collection.

71. The articles in the decree are suspiciously similar to the articles onwaqfin the 1886 Statutemaking theSoviet decree a sort of legislative restoration of the status quo ante. Particularly Article 3 of the Sovietdecree ratifying the distribution of agricultural waqf lands to peasants is clearly derived from Art. 265

of the 1886 Statute. The 1922 decree states: The right of use to all waqf lands of agricultural interest isgranted to dehkan and all matters pertaining to this land are regulated following the laws of Sovietpower on land use (TsGARUz, f. R-38, op. 2, d. 254, l. 24, 10 June 1922). This is the text of the 1886Statute: The populated land [naselennye zemli, where peasant communities were present], that is part of

waqf land and recognized by government, shall remain in use by the agricultural communities, based on

Articles 255261, 263 and 264 of this Statute [i.e. the articles regulating land use in the colony, equivalentto the laws of Soviet power on land use in the 1922 decree] (Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogokraia, 2 June 1886, reported in Masevich, op cit, Ref 23, p 373).

72. A similar collegial body was to be established at theoblast level if the number of madrasas was less than 40in whole oblast (for instance in the Tashkent oblast).

73. Differently from the Northern Caucasus where it acted as a shariatic tribunal, in Soviet Turkestan the

mahkama-i shariyya was an institution staffed by Muslim jurists, who advised the indigenous population

on legal matters. At the same time, in issuing authoritative judicial opinions (fatwa) and publishing articlesin the local press, mahkama-i shariyya sided with the major campaigns launched by the Soviet government,

such as the modernization of Islamic education, anti-Basmachi propaganda and land-reform. The procedurewhich led to the establishment of an institution such as this in the year 1919 is still a controversial issue. Theexpression mahkama-i shariyya was certainly in use in Turkestan in the late years of the tsarist empire torefer to the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly established by Catherine II in Ufa, cf. Malumat zhurnal,

al-Islah, 1 March 1916, p 159. This may suggest a close analogy between the two institutions For other infor-mation, see P. Sartori, The Tashkent Ulama and the Soviet State (19201938): a preliminary research notebased on NKVD documents, in P. Sartori and T. Trevisani (eds), Patterns of Transformation In and AroundUzbekistan (Reggio Emilia: Edizioni Diabasis, 2007), pp 161 184. On mahkama-i shariyya in NorthCaucasus during the Soviet period, see V. Bobrovnikov, Makhkama shariya, in Islam na territoriibyvshei Rossiiskoi imperii: entsiklopedicheskii slovar, Vol 1 (Moscow, 2006), pp 263265.

74. Talaba, Achq khatt, Haqqat, No 1, 10 August 1922, back cover.75. Mahkama-i shariyya idaras, Achq khattga jawab, Haqqat, No 2, 15 September 1922, cover page verso.76. Mahkama-i shariyyada, Turkistan, 14 October 1922, p 3.77. TsGARUz, f. R-904, op. 1, d. 40, l. 146.

78. TsGARUz, f. R-39, op. 2, 133, ll. 1 3.79. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2272, ll. 2 4, Polozhenie o poriadke i sposobe provedeniia dekreta TurTsIKa

ot 28-go Dekabria 1922 g.80. His autobiography can be found in RGASPI, f. 62, op. 4, d. 633, ll. 100 100ob. We thank Adeeb Khalid for

this reference.81. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1029, ll. 73 73ob. The original Uzbek-language message of the Tashkent Old

City Executive Committee to the mahkama-i shariyya can be found in TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1029,l. 74.

82. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1423, ll. 112-133ob, V Turkestanskii Tsentralnyi Ispolnitelnyi Komitet. Ot

predsedatelia Glavnogo Vakufnogo Uprovleniia pri Narkomprose Khalmukhameda AkhunovaDoklad.83. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1423, l. 112.84. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1425, ll. 116 117, Zamestiteliu predsedatelia soveta narodnykh komissarov

Turkrespubliki tovarishchu Parkutskomu, ot predsedatelia Glavnogo Vakufnogo Upravleniia TurkrespublikiAkhunova KhalmukhamedaDokladnaia zapiska.

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85. Rezoliutsii i postanovleniia, op cit, Ref 63, p 178.86. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1425, l. 91, V sekretariat Sovnarkoma TASSR.87. Ibid, ll. 92 93ob.88. Ibid, l. 94.89. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2274, l. 23.90. Zahr al-Dn Aclams election in 1926 inflamed Tashkents Muslim population. Cf. TsGARUz, f. R-904,

op. 1, d. 32, ll. 1010ob.91. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2274, l. 25.92. Ibid, l. 23.93. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1425, ll. 105 105ob.94. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2274, ll. 28 28ob.95. Ibid, l. 30.96. Ibid, l. 24.97. Ibid, l. 26.98. These norms stated that a certain amount of farm land should be distributed on the basis of the number of

people who were able to work on it, in accordance with a defined ratio.99. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1414, ll. 49 51.

100. TsGARUz, f. R-25, op. 1, d. 1425, ll. 92 93ob.101. TsGARUz, f. R-24, op. 1, d. 2273, ll. 14 14ob.102. Kats, op cit, Ref 28, p 17. The TsIK decree on Uzbekistan, initiating its land water reform was published

on 2 December 1925; cf. Park, op cit, Ref 7, p 220. According to Joseph Castagne, La Reforme agraire auTurkestan, Revue des Etudes Islamiques, No. 11 (1928), pp 396397, and E. L. Shteinberg, Ocherki istorii

Turkmenii (Moscow, 1934), pp 116117, waqfin Turkmenistan had already been totally supressed in 1925.103. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2284, l. 20.104. Ibid, l. 19.105. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2299, l. 30ob.106. The names of the Andijan waqf sections staff can be verified in ibid, 6.107. Ibid, l. 29ob.108. Ibid, l. 27ob.

109. Ibid, l. 28ob.110. Ibid, l. 27ob.

111. Ibid, l. 6.112. Ibid, ll. 31 31ob.113. Ibid, l. 2.114. TsGARUz, f. R-34, op. 1, d. 2280, l. 136.

115. Ibid, l. 8.116. Ibid, l. 10.117. Ibid, ll. 15ob 15.118. Cf. Adeeb Khalid, Backwardness and the quest for civilization: early Soviet Central Asia in comparative per-

spective, and Adrienne Edgar, Bolshevism, patriarchy, and the nation: the Soviet emancipation of Muslimwomen in pan-Islamic perspective, Slavic Review, Vol 65, No 2, 2006, pp 231251 and 252272. A study ofpolicy towards Muslim women with a strong comparative approach is Marianne Kamp, The New Woman inUzbekistan. Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling under Communism (Seattle: University of Washington Press,2006).

119. For the Ottoman case see Vakf. IV, Encyclopedie de lIslam, op cit, Ref 9, p 97. Under theSafavids, in Iran

the waqfwas administered by a state institution calledsadr, on this issue see B. Fragner, Social and internaleconomic affairs, in P. Jackson and L. Lockhart (eds), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol 6 (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp 519521.

120. On 16 March 1922 the GPU wrote from Samarkand that in many districts the Basmachi had createdtheir own systems for collecting contributions and taxes in kind. Because of the terror they aroused,in several cases Soviet organizations supplied commodities and other goods requested by the guerrillas(A. Berelowitch and V. Danilov (ed), Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VChK-OGPU-NKVD. Dokumenty imaterialy. Vol 1. 1918 1922 (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 1998), p 587).

121. Khalid, op cit, Ref 4, pp 299 300.


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