Islamization and Early Sufism in Central Eurasia during the Pre-Mongolian Period (8th-13th centuries AD (original) (raw)
The historical event rooting Islam among the Turkic population living in the territory of present-day Kazakhstan is the proselytism of the Sufi saint of Turkestan, Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, to whom all dervishes and bakhsy (mediums) of Kazakhstan make reference during their summoning of the ancestral lineages. But the appearance of A. Yasavi during the 12 th century is the crystallization of five centuries of Muslim activities that occurred at the North of the Syr Darya from the first victorious expedition of the Arabs at the battle of Talas (751) to the reorganization of the Muslim communities during the rule of the tolerant but pro-Buddhist Karakitai (12 th c.). The diffusion of Islam on the territory of present-day Kazakhstan is connected with the acceleration of the urbanization, the development of trade and the appearance of a new way of life during the Samanid and Karakhanid rules. The centers of sociability of this new way of life were mosques, public baths, mausoleums, bazaars; craftsmanship played a much important role than before. The sources for the reconstruction of the early Islamization of Kazakhstan are historical, archaeological and literary. The historical material is coming from the Arab-Persian and Turkic accounts with and also the Chinese sources, very laconic, but with key descriptions found in the dynastical annals and traveler records. The archaeological sources are represented mainly by architectural remains (mausoleums, mosques and baths), ceramics and tombs but also by numismatic and epigraphic material. Finally, one of the richest sources of information is coming from the Khwaja hagiographical and genealogical histories of southern Kazakhstan, the "nasab-namas", which can be fruitfully compared with ethnographical sources. There are also interviews made during Soviet times and during the last decades of sufi masters and bakhsy describing their religious affiliation through chronological events sometime similar to well dated historical episodes. 1. The four phases of Islamization In our knowledge, the five centuries from the mid-8 th century to the mid-13 th century can be divided in four phases of Islamization. The first one is the Pre-Samanid phase (750-820) when Sogdian emigrants and heterodox Muslim schools of Mawarannahr find refuge in present-day South Kazakhstan. The second one is the Samanid phase (820-960)..
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