Cult Structures of the City
Pre-revolutionary Osh was not very rich in historical and architectural monuments; nevertheless, some of them, even those that have not survived to this day, deserve at least a mention, if not a description. Mainly, these are cult structures. We can name the dome of Kurbandzhan-dakhi, built at the foot of Suleiman Mountain in 1907; the mosque of Muhammad Yusupa-Baykhodji, erected in 1909-1910, next to which was the domed mosque of Sydykbay from the 19th century, the mazar of Muhammad Rahim from the early 20th century, and the garrison church of St. Michael the Archangel, built for military officials and Orthodox settlers in the 1880s, which has been repurposed into a House of Culture in our time. In the report on the state of the Turkestan Diocese for 1885, we read: “The Osh church — St. Michael the Archangel... built of raw brick, covered with iron, and even has a wooden dome.
Church bells hang under a canopy, but the church is sufficiently equipped with utensils, a sacristy, and even a library.” From here, from the church, according to the plans of the military administration of Osh, “culture” was supposed to spread among the local residents and settlers.
But the most famous, tracing its origins back to antiquity, was the already mentioned mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya, the last reconstruction of which dates back to the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century. The ancient residential area adjoins the northern slope of Suleiman Mountain, where even today one can find beautiful examples of folk architecture from the 19th — early 20th centuries.
A remarkable cult monument of Suleiman Mountain is the quarter mosque of Muhammad Yusupa Baykhodji-ogly (at the intersection of the modern streets Alabastrovaya and Telmana). In plan, it is a rectangle divided into two almost square rooms — winter and summer prayer rooms. The summer room is an iwan with a mihrab niche and carved wooden columns, the walls of which are richly decorated with carved plaster, and the ceilings are painted with picturesque floral ornaments in tempera and covered with varnish. The winter room is decorated somewhat more modestly. This is a typical architectural monument of modern times for the Fergana Valley, which usually had two iwans and a central winter room.
In addition to the fact that the mosque of Muhammad Yusupa Baykhodji-ogly has only one iwan, it is, according to the qualified conclusion of B. Pomaskin, remarkable for being not a domed structure but having an iron roof, which should undoubtedly be regarded as a manifestation of Russian influence in the architecture of Osh at the beginning of the 20th century.
A mosque named Jami was added to the mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya at the eastern foot of Suleiman Mountain in the early 20th century. At the same time, repairs were made to the mausoleum itself — with bricks of “Russian standard” stamped from Osh brick workshops. The decor of the 17th-18th centuries was replaced so that the Jami mosque (demolished in 1978) and the mausoleum of Asaf ibn Burhiya appeared as a single ensemble in the style of similar architectural structures of the early 20th century.
Nearby was the building of the mosque of Ravat Abdullah Khan from the 16th-27th centuries, which was repeatedly reconstructed by the beginning of the 20th century (now the Osh Regional Museum).
In the late 19th — early 20th centuries, the madrasahs of Alimbek-dakhi (on Karasuy Street, where there was a circus for some time later), the madrasah of Khalmurzabay (at the intersection of modern Sverdlov and Telman streets, at the site of the current cinema "Kosmos"), Turk-madrasah (where later the Uzbek Musical and Dramatic Theater was located), and others continued to function in Osh. In the maktabs attached to the mosques, children were taught basic literacy and reading the Quran, while in the madrasahs, the children of wealthy Muslim townspeople acquired the basics of knowledge.
Development of Education in Osh
The information available in various sources and publications about the number of teachers and students in Osh's confessional schools (maktabs attached to mosques, korikhons, madrasahs) is fragmentary and often contradictory.
It seems that their number was not constant, as teachers were maintained through voluntary donations from the parents of students, and the number of students fluctuated significantly. Although archival and pre-revolutionary sources are contradictory in determining the number of mosques, maktabs, madrasahs, and korikhons in Osh and the district, in all cases, we observe a general trend of their growth. Thus, according to the Osh district chief Colonel Ionov, in 1883 there were 5 madrasahs in the Osh volost, and 6 in the district; mosques — 102 and 193, respectively; maktabs — 10 and 48, with students in them — 110 and 377, respectively. Judging by the report of the military governor of the Fergana region, as of July 1, 1899, there were 96 mosques in Osh, and 114 in the district (excluding the city), for a total of 210 mosques in the district with the city. According to the review of the Fergana region for 1900, there were 154 mosques in Osh (342 in the district) and 7 mazars (8 in the district). According to data from 1903, there were 5 madrasahs, 8 korikhons, 26 male maktabs, and 17 female maktabs in the city.
The low general educational level of students in such schools was determined by the fact that often even for the illiterate teachers — mullahs, Arabic scholastic education was truly a “scripture sealed with seven seals.”
One of the channels for introducing the indigenous population of the mountainous region to advanced Russian culture and world civilization was the few first secular schools with libraries attached to them, and medical and veterinary points, which were opened primarily in district centers. Through the efforts of progressive Russian intelligentsia, the first rays of scientific knowledge penetrated into the lives of Kyrgyz workers. Thus, the first secular schools in Osh appeared only after the incorporation of Southern Kyrgyzstan into Russia (1876). These were parish schools for the joint education of children of both sexes, opened on July 1, 1878, and the Russian-native school opened almost ten years later (January 15, 1887).
The first was intended for the primary education of the children of Russian townspeople, while the second was for the children of the indigenous population.
Teaching at the Osh parish school was conducted according to a special program developed for this type of school in the Turkestan region, so that the children of officials, officers, and wealthy townspeople who graduated from it would be prepared for admission to secondary educational institutions. In 1897, there were only 19 students in the school (7 boys and 12 girls), and in 1905 — 35. But even then, there were only 2 teachers: one was a graduate of the Turkestan Teacher's Seminary in Tashkent and a law teacher; the school did not have a specially built building. With the increase in the number of Russian residents in the city and school-age children (in 1913, there were 64 students in the school, including 31 girls), the townspeople increasingly felt the need to open a city school instead of the parish school (they did not dare to dream of a gymnasium). This was recognized as desirable even by the Osh authorities, who, in general, cared very little about the development of public education.
After the opening of the Russian-native school, only 11 boys studied there, in 1897 — 20, and from 1902 to 1914, the number of students fluctuated from 18 to 42, predominantly children from wealthy families. It is noteworthy that from 1887, evening courses for adults were also opened at the Russian-native school. Their education was limited to the basics of Russian and “Muslim” literacy, as well as the laws of the four arithmetic operations. Initially, only 5 people attended these courses, in 1895 — 13, and in 1914 — 25 people. Thanks to the Russian-native schools and adult courses, representatives of the Uzbek, Kyrgyz, and Dungan peoples acquired knowledge of the Russian language, albeit in small numbers. This, of course, had a positive effect on their communication with Russian labor settlers.
The Importance of Books for Pre-Revolutionary Osh
However, despite such an approach to education, the townspeople in Osh read books, handwritten works circulated, printed and lithographic products were available, and there were even book trading points. According to the materials of the revision of the Turkestan region by K. K. Palen, at the beginning of the 20th century, there were three Muslim bookstores in Osh. The Englishwoman Mary Galsworthy, author of a book on the history of pre-revolutionary Turkestan, provides data on the number of bookstores in Osh where literature in local languages could be purchased before the revolution: in 1904 — 1 store, in 1912 — 4; in 1913 — 3 stores. Of course, these were not bookstores in our understanding, but rather meager trading stalls. Nevertheless, for pre-revolutionary Osh, and for Kyrgyzstan as a whole, this meant a lot. It was here that handwritten Central Asian books and the first lithographic editions were sold, the collection of which by our expeditions began in 1976. Mainly, these are works on Muslim law — fiqh, or the so-called “sharia books.” One of them is the well-known and widely distributed abbreviated exposition of the commentary on the famous “Al-Hidaya” by Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani (died in 593 AH, i.e., in 1197 AD). The comments were made by Shams al-Din Mahmoud al-Bukhari in the early 17th century, the author of a work titled “Mukhtasar al-Wiqaya”
Ubaidullah ibn Mas'ud (first half of the 14th century). Various editions and manuscripts of this work are known. However, the acquired lithographic copy is interesting for its bilingualism: the original Arabic text of the “Mukhtasar” is accompanied by a Turkish interlinear translation and an extensive commentary in verse (“nazm”) also in Turkish. The work belonged, judging by the notes, to the Tashkent ishan Rahim-khodja, son of ishan Ali-khodja. The book was published in Tashkent, printed in the typolithography of V. M. Ilyin in 1900; how and when it arrived in Osh is unclear.
Despite the fact that many works on fiqh, similar to the “Mukhtasar,” are known and found in large quantities throughout Central Asia and Kazakhstan, this particular copy is especially interesting to linguists — Iranianists and Turkologists as a sample of practical book translation of the 19th century, and it is also of interest to those studying the history of Kyrgyzstan's culture as direct evidence of the circulation of such book products among the residents of Osh before the revolution.
In Osh, the “Collection of Treatises of Ibn Abidin” was acquired — a collection of legal works by the famous Syrian faqih of the Hanafi school, Sayyid Muhammad Amin Afandi (1784-1836). The book was published under the auspices of Muhammad Hashim al-Kutubiy by the Cairo publishing house “Dar al-Saadat” and printed in the typolithography of the Ottoman newspaper company in 1325 AH, i.e., in 1907/8.
The collection presents 25 different treatises of Ibn Abidin on issues of theoretical and practical Muslim jurisprudence, the sharia judicial-legal system, which is essentially a comprehensive code and regulator of all aspects of the life and activities of Muslims. Based on such treatises, multi-volume practical guides for qadis and muftis were created.
Diverse Study of Southern Kyrgyzstan
Osh and Suleiman Mountain were well-known centers of Muslim worship, and here, naturally, Islamic religious literature was primarily disseminated. All sorts of “saints,” dervishes, muftis, and qadis were the keepers and disseminators of Muslim canons of faith and life, which replaced enlightenment and science, medicine, and healthcare.
The first medical points in Osh, like secular schools, appeared only after the organization of the Fergana region in 1876. In Osh, as in other districts, there were no medical districts for the rural indigenous population, and the position of district doctor (who was also the city doctor) was filled by a military medic.
By the end of the 19th century, Osh already had, in addition to a paramedic point, 1 hospital with 15 beds. Outpatient care was provided by a doctor and a paramedic (in 1899, they served 3070 patients), and vaccinations against smallpox were done by trained vaccinators. According to some data, in the early 20th century, another clinic for women of the indigenous nationality was opened.
In 1907-1913, the entire medical staff of the city, which had several tens of thousands of residents, consisted of 6-8 people, including a pharmacist, a midwife, and several vaccinators (2-4 vaccinators made about 2000 vaccinations a year).
Overall, the medical and sanitary service for working townspeople, especially residents of the “old” city, remained extremely unsatisfactory on the eve of the Great October. Medical care was primarily extended to representatives of the district-city elite, privileged classes, as well as a few large local merchants.
A brilliant beginning to the diverse study of southern Kyrgyzstan was laid by Alexei Pavlovich Fedchenko (1844-1873) — a talented naturalist and scientific traveler. His research in the newly annexed Central Asian lands from 1868 to the spring of 1871 was conducted on behalf of the Moscow Society of Naturalists. In the summer of 1871, A. P. Fedchenko, with his wife Olga Alexandrovna, a preparator, translator, and accompanied by khan's dzhigits, undertook a difficult journey to Alai, where no European scientist had yet set foot. From the Tengiz-bai pass (Isfayram), they saw the Zaalai ridge, through which lay the path to the “cloud-high Pamir.” However, due to the opposition of Kokand officials, they could not penetrate further south — to the unknown Pamir. They had to return to Tashkent, visiting Osh, Gulcha, and Uzgen along the way. O. A. Fedchenko made several sketches during the journey, including views of Alai and the Zaalai ridge, as well as Uzgen antiquities, a brief description of which was compiled by A. P. Fedchenko. Only in this concluding journey did A. P. Fedchenko discover the Zaalai ridge and its highest point (now peak V. I. Lenin), collected extensive botanical and zoological collections, and clarified the orographic structure of the visited areas.
The wide range of his scientific interests — from physical geography to the ethnography of the Central Asian population — is reflected in his description of the journey to the Kokand Khanate. His scientific works, so interesting to contemporaries, have not lost their cognitive-historical significance even today.
With the liquidation of the Kokand Khanate and the incorporation of southern Kyrgyz lands into Russia, favorable conditions were created for the continuation of research in Eastern Priferghana and the Pamir-Alai mountain system. Among those who contributed to the initiatives of A. P. Fedchenko in this region were participants of the military-scientific expedition of M. D. Skobelev to Alai (naturalist V. F. Oshanin, statistician L. F. Kostenko, etc.), zoologist N. A. Severtsov, academician A. F. Middendorf, geologist D. L. Ivanov, botanist V. I. Lipsky, climatologist A. I. Voeykov, geographer G. E. Grum-Grzhimailo, travelers B. L. Tageev (Rustam-bek), B. L. Grombchevsky, and many other scientists, researchers, and travelers whose paths also led to neighboring countries of the foreign East. At the same time, Osh mostly served as the base, starting, transit, and final point of their routes. In 1891, with the assistance of the Russian Geographical Society, N. S. Golitsin made a journey from Osh to Northern India, and in 1898 — in the opposite direction — V. F. Novitsky, who was awarded the Russian Geographical Society's Small Gold Medal for his report on his journey.
It is quite understandable that all travelers dedicated a number of descriptions to Osh and its residents, who provided friendly assistance to the researchers.
In the absence of publicly accessible clubs, libraries, and other cultural and educational institutions, the so-called “military assembly” played a certain role in the poor events of the city's socio-cultural life (noble assemblies were absent in Central Asian cities, there were either public or military assemblies, given the significant officer stratum among the privileged part of the townspeople). Thus, occasionally, concerts of visiting artists were held at the Osh military assembly, and performances (since 1877) were staged by local amateur dramatists, including plays by N. A. Ostrovsky such as “Poverty is No Vice,” “The Profitable Place,” “The Forest,” and others. Meetings with prominent travelers — researchers of Pamir-Alai were also popular among the progressive part of the townspeople, and lectures by N. A. Severtsov, G. E. Grum-Grzhimailo, I. V. Mushketov, G. D. Romanovsky, N. L. Korzhenyevsky, V. V. Bartold, and other participants of domestic and foreign expeditions attracted the attention of the city's intellectual public.
Osh as a Starting Point for Scientific Expeditions to Alai and Pamir
Osh was a starting point for scientific expeditions to Alai and Pamir not only for Russian scientists but also for foreign travelers. French expeditions led by the Uifalvi couple and G. Bonvalot were equipped here for a campaign to Pamir in the 1880s, as well as the Pamir-Alai expedition of the German-Austrian club R. Rikmers and many others. From here, the Danish scientific expedition of Lieutenant O. Olufsen set out on a dangerous journey to Pamir. Osh was the starting point for the journey of Feuillet and other foreign scientists and travelers. O. Olufsen, for example, noted in his description of the journey to Pamir in 1898-1899 that Osh was the place from which many expeditions began their journey to Pamir and Alai. He particularly pointed out that it was in Osh that the necessary equipment for the expedition was purchased — horses, provisions, various cargoes, and it was also here that guides were hired. However, in their bias regarding the “Russian threat to India,” some authors, especially English ones, saw in Osh a stronghold of the imaginary threat against British India.
But most expeditions, not pursuing political goals, set scientific tasks for themselves. Some travelers were enthusiastic romantics, excessively idealizing the simplicity of nomadic life and even calling for the “corrupted” civilization to return to nature, to the essence. “I understand the life of gypsies, Turkmen, Arabs, and Kyrgyz — all these nomads, like God's creatures freely living in the open air, these children of vast spaces, where neither gaze, nor movement, nor thought meet obstacles,” wrote the Frenchman Guillaume Cato — “... So are the Kyrgyz, riding at a gallop across the steppe to the accompaniment of the melodic songs of their singers; once their untamed detachments fought here with the soldiers of Ak-Pasha. So were the Huns and the warriors of Genghis Khan, who, like a hurricane, descended upon the peoples of the West.”
Osh as a Socio-Cultural Center
It is hardly necessary to say that such a view of history can hardly be called scientific. But the natural-historical research of foreign scientists opened new horizons before Western science, revealing a new, almost unknown world, little-known and unknown eastern tribes and peoples.
And nostalgia for primitive past can perhaps be seen as one of the literary devices: “So that later, when I again experience the influence of another environment,” wrote G. Capu while in the center of Alai, “I can better remember the blissful contentment I feel now in the midst of wild life, I recorded in my diary the cry of my soul: ‘People traveling through Europe, and you, slaves of civilization, you do not know the charm of a yurt and the symphony of D major performed by a boiling kettle, a pot of pilaf, a bubbling hookah, and the howling of the storm, all the poetry of nomadic life, the sharp memories of which and the unquenchable longing for it will forever leave me with regret for the past, which will never repeat itself!’” Soon the author returned safely to Paris and published an interesting book titled “The Roof of the World (Pamir)” in 1890.
The most valuable practical results in the study of previously unexplored regions, in recreating forgotten pages of the history of the Kyrgyz people were obtained by Russian scientists and travelers who contributed to the establishment of the first scientific-practical cells in Osh and southern Kyrgyzstan.
The first very modest of these was the meteorological station established on July 1, 1878, in Osh by the well-known scientist-traveler N. A. Severtsov. Later, academician Chernyshev, who visited Central Asia after the devastating Andijan earthquake of 1902, recommended opening a seismic station of the 2nd category in Osh.
The urgent needs of agriculture and trade in the region prompted the authorities to create a veterinary inspection point in Osh in 1900 for the inspection of herds of livestock passing from Semirechye to Fergana. Then, already in the pre-war period and during the First World War, the city became a place for instructors in cotton growing and beekeeping; a point for renting agricultural machinery was also opened, as well as the Osh experimental field for dry farming in the district.
This brief overview of the state of culture in Osh indicates the significance of the city as a socio-cultural center of the vast Osh district, the presence of sharp social and national contrasts in the sphere of culture and the life of townspeople, between the new and old parts of the city, and the widespread manifestation of the reactionary “educational” policy of tsarism, which, along with the ruling classes, sought to keep the working masses in darkness and ignorance.