Osh. The Madrasah and Its Waqf
Archives of Unknown Documents on the History of Osh
Having become a prominent Kokand dignitary, Datka Alay, the hakim of the Andijan province, and finally, for a short time, the chief vizier of the Kokand Khanate, Alymbek continued to regard the Alay pastures almost as his ancestral estate, while the city of Osh became the base for the Kyrgyz nomads. It was in Osh that Alymbek built a madrasah at his own expense, which, according to contemporaries, rivaled the khan's madrasah in Kokand in its architecture and beauty. The madrasah has not survived to this day; it was destroyed somewhere in the 1950s of our century, but photographs and descriptions of it remain, as well as official legal documents (waqf-nama) formalizing the ownership of this spiritual institution — the so-called waqf — land, trading shops, and other property.
According to archival documents, the madrasah was built in the late 1850s on the right bank of the Ak-Bura River along the Kara-Suy road, opposite the bazaar. It was constructed of burnt brick and consisted of a darshana, khanaka, and 28 hujras — cells, which housed three mudarris (spiritual teachers) and from 80 to 100 student-mullahs.
Architecturally, it was a structure typical of Muslim cult purposes. It was essentially a rectangle, measuring 40X50 m with an overall height of 5 m. The facade was adorned with two 15-meter minarets. Inside the courtyard, there were four gumbezi, a mosque, and ayvans, which could accommodate thousands of believers on festive days. Since the madrasah was located on the opposite side of the river from the city center and bazaar, Alymbek built a large hanging bridge over the Ak-Bura. The first chief mudarris at the madrasah was the well-known scholar Khadzhimat-alam.
The archives hold many unknown documents on the history of Osh and its institutions. Somewhere in their repositories, the waqf case, coded under No. 449 from 1901 about the madrasah and waqf of Alymbek-datka, has been lost. However, we discovered another, later document — from the Office of the Turkestan Governor-General, titled "The Case on the Most Humble Petition of Mullah Hasanbek Alymbekov for the Restoration of the Waqf Rights of the Madrasah 'Alymbek-chek' in the City of Osh, Fergana Province," which outlines the general picture of the accumulation and concentration of land and trading shops in the economy of Alymbek's madrasah, i.e., the formation and expansion of the waqf of Alymbek's madrasah.
On the pages of this original document, we read that in 1276 AH (1859), Alymbek-datka donated 5,000 sheep (approximately 1660 desyatins, i.e., about 1825 hectares) of land to the madrasah he built himself. These were the lands of the entire village of Chin-Abad. However, personal household plots of the peasants, measuring 2 tanaps, were excluded from the donation. As stated in the waqf-nama, they constituted "the inalienable property of their inhabitants and should be considered free from any obligations in favor of the waqf establishment — the madrasah."
It can be assumed that this was once a free expanse of land that, by Alymbek's order, was irrigated and made suitable for agriculture. For their labor, each peasant received 2 tanaps of land as a full tax-exempt property for their household plot, while the tax from all other land was to be directed to the benefit of Alymbek's madrasah. Thus, the foundation of land ownership for the madrasah was laid, which expanded year by year. Both Alymbek himself and later his heirs continued to purchase various plots of land both in Osh and its surroundings, formalizing them ("donating") to the waqf.
