The Andijan Uprising of 1898: The Roots of Popular Anger

The unpredictable and capricious nature for which Kurmandzhan Datka was known astonishingly combined with the sober calculation and wisdom of a far-sighted strategist. This is evidenced by a fact from the biography of the Alai queen, when her warning once saved tens of thousands of her tribesmen from certain death. This refers to an act that prevented many Alai people from participating in the infamous Andijan uprising of 1898.

As is known, this mass unrest of separatists engulfed a significant part of the Fergana Valley at the end of the 1890s. The uprising, which had a distinctly anti-colonial character, was carried out under the slogans of jihad, or "holy war." The latter was partly due to some miscalculations made by the Russian colonial administration since the conquest of Kokand. As contemporary Uzbek researcher B.M. Babadjanov writes in one of his works, the local

Islamic clergy took a dual position after the fall of the khanate. Most of its representatives formally reconciled themselves to the inevitability of the situation.

Moreover, it is likely that the clergy would not have incited the congregation against the new authorities if it were not for a number of circumstances that offended the feelings of Muslims. According to Babadjanov, for example, in Friday and holiday khutbahs (prayers - Note by V.P.), by order of the colonial administration, after the usual praises of the Prophet and the first four righteous caliphs, the name "His Imperial Majesty the Emperor" had to be inserted.

In a similar manner, with the tacit consent of this part of the clergy, not only the freedom of worship for laypeople was infringed upon, but also the rights of the clergy. According to Soviet researcher K. Kasimbekov, it was precisely due to the partial sequestration of waqf property of madrasahs and mosques that began in 1895, along with the introduction of usurious loans under the future harvest with the knowledge of the colonial administration, and the abolition of sharia taxes replaced by imperial ones, that there was mass land dispossession of peasants, and many small artisans and traders went bankrupt.

Judging by a number of preserved documents, several officials of the local government anticipated a possible tragic turn of events.

There are many letters and petitions in the archives indicating the inflexible and shortsighted policy of tsarism. However, isolated sober assessments drowned in a sea of enthusiastic publications of that time regarding Russian colonization

of Central Asia, "more gentle and liberal compared to British colonial policy in India."

However, the aforementioned reasons for the uprising can be said to constitute only the "visible part of the iceberg." Since among the organizers of the turmoil were many representatives of the clergy who failed (or did not wish) to integrate into the system of the new power and opposed it. There were particularly many dissatisfied among those whose material situation sharply worsened with the arrival of the Russians.

It is evident that the consolidation of two factions of local clergy representatives would have been unlikely if they had not been prompted to unite by the crude administrative miscalculations of the new authorities. However, the tragic confluence of circumstances that prepared the ground for the uprising is rather a regularity for Central Asia, as repeatedly emphasized by a number of Russian and Soviet historians. In their opinion, the lack of convergence of cultural and ideological positions between the colonizers and the most educated representatives of the local population has always served as a detonator for religious wars in the Islamic East.

Thus, the discontent of Muslims with certain innovations and miscalculations of the colonial administration, which had been brewing subconsciously for several years, was fueled by the radical slogans of a marginal layer of the clergy. All that was needed to start the jihad - the holy war against the "infidels" - was a leader endowed with charisma. And he did not take long to appear...

Attitude towards Kurmandzhan Datka and Shabdan-Baatyr in Central Asia and beyond