Book Review

Asia

Modernizing and reformist trends appeared in several parts of the Islamic world in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, mostly under the impact, direct or indirect, of contacts with European colonial empires. Notable examples are to be found in the history of Iran and the Ottoman lands, as well as of Muslim peoples under British, French, and Dutch rule. Such movements have received substantial scholarly attention in recent years. A similar phenomenon occurred in Central Asia, which was incorporated into the tsarist empire in the second half of the nineteenth century. The latter development, however, has been largely neglected. This is not entirely surprising. The reformist movement here was quite short-lived and fragmented. It had very little infrastructural support, emerging in the face of considerable opposition from the local rulers, the colonial administration, and conservative Muslim clerics. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that it had scarcely progressed beyond a rudimentary level when it was abruptly terminated by the imposition of Soviet rule in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Thereafter, Soviet scholars either ignored the history of Muslim reform in Central Asia or depicted it in a wholly negative light. Researchers from the West (very few scholars from Islamic countries evinced any interest in this subject) had almost no first-hand access to primary sources from the period and were thus unable to present a convincing alternative interpretation. Also, they tended to examine this episode mainly in the light of Central Asian-Russian confrontation, with very little understanding of the broader context of social and economic ferment in the region. Consequently, their analysis was almost always very superficial.

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