The ‘holy groups’ (Sayyid, Khoja, Ishon etc.) had a particular position in the social hierarchy of Muslim communities in Central Asia. As in many other Muslim societies, they have long enjoyed a privileged status. Scholars have come to the conclusion that the Sayyids or Alids emerged as one of the local elites in Central Asia in the late ninth century (Bernheimer 2005:44).
The terms Khoja or Khwaja (which mean ‘master’ in Persian) were first mentioned in written sources in the tenth century; they were applied to some government officials (Rezvan 1991:280). Apparently, the use of Khoja as the name of a group of religious descent started in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Different groups of Khoja use various explanations for their origin. Some Khoja groups are believed to be the descendants of the first caliphs Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali (excluding his descendants from the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, Fatima) (Rezvan 1991:280), whereas some other groups claim to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. It is worth mentioning that in some areas the term Khoja has various meanings today; for example, a teacher, a mullah, a title of honour, etc.
In Central Asia, the so-called ‘holy groups’ also differ in their names:
Khoja, Qoja, Ovlat, Sayyid, Khan, Mir, Mahdum-zada, Shaykh, Ishon, Tura, etc. According to Muminov, the descendants of Ali ibn Abi Talib from the Prophet’s daughter Fatima (Sayyid, Sharif) in some Central Asian societies have equal status with the Khoja groups, and sometimes are less revered than these families (Muminov 2011:26). According to my observations, in some regions of Central Asia the term Sayyid is a synonym of Ishon, which means ‘they’ in Persian, while in some areas Sayyids and Ishons are perceived as different groups. The designations given to ‘holy families’ are very diverse; for example, some of them refer to the titles of rulers (Shah, Khan, Amir), others refer to the upper class of society (Tura, Ishon, Mahdum, Khwaja, Sayyid); ‘the descendants of the saint’ (aulad, Mahdum-zoda, Ishon-zoda), etc. Researchers call them by the generic term ‘descendants of saints’ (aulad-i awliya) (Muminov 2011:26).
Before 1917, Uzbek and Kazakh societies were divided into two hereditary social groups, named Oqsuyak or Aksuyek (White Bone) which included ‘holy groups’ (Sayyid, Khoja, Ishon etc.) and Qorasuyak or Qarasuyek (Qoracha, Black Bone), the term used to denote commoners.
In different regions there are smaller gradations of ‘holy groups’ and there were various criteria that determined the position of certain ‘holy lineages’. According to Abashin, in the Fergana Valley, the first rank of nobility took Tura, the second Eshon (Ishon), the third Khoja, and the last Makhsum (Abashin 2006:269–71). The degree of nobility of ‘holy groups’ depended on marriages with political leaders and the sanctity of those families. One man could have several or even all of the above titles. He could be a Khoja, and in some cases at the same time he could be a Sayyid, i.e., the Prophet’s descendant. He could have a right to the titles of Ishon and Sheykh as well (Abashin 2001a).
In general, the ‘holy groups’ follow the cultural traditions of the majority of the population among whom they live. However, they have some traits that mark them out from the rest of population. Frequently, the members of these families add the titles of Khoja, Sayyid and Khon to their names (Muminov 2011:27). According to written sources, in the nineteenth century Sayyids were included in the composition of the Khoja; nevertheless, the Kazakhs gave them higher status than other
‘holy groups’ (Beysenbayuli 1994:95). Among experts in genealogy, there are different versions of the classification of lineages of the
Kazakh-speaking Khoja (see Muminov 2011). According to one version, just seventeen clans (ru) of the Kazakh Khoja are specified as equal in status (Muminov 2011:26).8
The name and authority of the holy Sufi leader Khoja Ahmad Yassavi is used in different ways at the consecration of the alliances of different Khoja families. For example, among the Kazakh-speaking Khojas of Alty shaykh balalari, the succession continues only by patrilineage through Ahmad Yassavi’s brother, Sadr-khoja, and among the contemporary Uzbek-speaking Khoja of Turkistan, through the line of his daughters (his biological daughter, Gaukhar Shakhnaz, and foster daughter Djamila-bibi). Their descendants are the following groups of Khoja:
Shaykh al-Islam, Nakib, Shaykh-‘azlar (DeWeese 1999:514).
In other regions of Central Asia, one can find other classifications of ‘holy groups’. For example, Sadriddin Aini (1878–1954), who was one of the Bukharian reformist intellectuals (jadids), gave a panoramic overview of rural life in Bukhara during the nineteenth century in his unfinished Reminiscences. He considered the Khoja as a distinct regional group and gave the classification of Khoja to his village, Soktare, which was near the town of Ghijduvan in the modern Bukhara province of Uzbekistan. Khojas of this village constituted four clans: Mirakoni, Sayyid Atoi, Ghijduvoni, and Soktaregi (Aini 1998:31–32).
Gellner (1995:160) mentions that in northern Africa the distinction between religious orders and holy lineages is a loose one. Religious orders are led by holy lineages, and in turn successful holy lineages may expand their following into tariqa, an order (Gellner 1995:160).
One can say the same thing about the Central Asian Khojas or Shaykhs, who became leaders of the Naqshbandi and Yassavi Sufi orders in the region (DeWeese 1999). Not all Khojas were mullahs even in pre-Soviet times. Many Khojas were simply peasants, some nomadized with the Kazakhs, and others, as in Tashkent, were successful merchants. Also, not all members of the Khoja or Sayyid groups were socially equal; some families were very rich, others not. For the male Khoja and non-Sayyid it was not possible to become a member of a non-Sayyid or Khoja group that had hereditary rights (Sukhareva 1960:66–67).
8 Among others, these include Akorgandik, Akkoja, Baksayis, Khorasan, Duana, Seyit, Qilishti, Sabult, Qilavuz.
Fig. 3.2 Family tree of the descendants of Khoja Ahmad Yassavi.
Photo © Azim Malikov (2010), CC BY 4.0
In the pre-Soviet period, the Khoja (Qoja) title was widespread among the sacred lineages of Kazakhs and Uzbeks in the Turkistan region.
Kazakh-speaking Khoja groups are comprised of lineages operating as components of complex, segmented societies. Most ethnic Kazakhs belonged to one of three ‘hordes’ (djuz). While these Kazakh tribal confederations were regarded as the ‘Black Bone’ (qara süyek), the Khoja (as well as the Tore, the offspring of Genghis Khan) were considered honour groups belonging to the ‘White Bone’ (aq süyek). Accordingly, the Khoja and Tore groups are not included in numerous Kazakh genealogies (Qazaq shezhiresi) (Privratsky 2004:167).
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the most famous and noble lineages of Khoja in the Turkistan region of Kazakhstan consisted of many groups: Sayyid Ata, Qilishti khoja, descendants of the third son of Caliph Ali, Muhammad Khanafiya, descendants of Khoja Ahmad Yassavi etc. (Sukhareva 1960:66–67). Before 1917, genealogy had several purposes. It was the main legal and symbolic record of sacred lineages and it granted these groups certain rights; in some cases it was confirmation of the special status of the lineage. According to Sukhareva’s research, particularly ‘noble’ Khoja lineages maintained written genealogical records (shajara) (Sukhareva 1960:67–68).
When studying the Khoja in Kazakh society, it is necessary to distinguish those groups that formed independently in the Kazakh steppes from groups of representatives of famous Khoja lineages already known and politically influential in the Central Asian states. For example, Mahdumi Azam9 (1461–1542), an outstanding theologian and Sufi leader of the sixteenth century, had thirteen sons, each of whom became progenitors of Khoja lineages among Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and the Uyghur. Kazakh sultans and biys invited Khoja to control religious rituals and customs such as wedding ceremonies, funeral ceremonies, circumcisions, etc.
Similar to the ideas of Donahoe and Schlee about how trans-ethnic groups emerged in Eastern Africa and Siberia (2003:79–80), translocal Sayyid identity in Central Asia was formed in two different ways.
Firstly, Sayyid predates the emergence of the ethnic identities Kazakh and Uzbek. Secondly, after the boundaries between modern ethnic groups had started to come into being, individuals or groups crossed
9 Shaykh Aḥmad ibn Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Khwājagī Kāsānī ‘Mahdūm-i Aʻẓam’.
them and affiliated themselves with another ethnic group. In the cases in which they started to follow a nomadic lifestyle, they did not give up their original affiliation. These collective adoptions did not supersede the older clan relationships by descent or putative descent, particularly in urban areas and adjacent territories.
According to Abashin, each family of the ‘descendants of saints’
was fixed to a particular territory, a particular group of the population, of which they have been trans-generational spiritual leaders (pirs). In Tashkent, the pirs of local rulers were descendants of Shaykh Hovand-i Tokhur, who lived in the fourteenth century (Abashin 2001b:127). Some Khoja and Sayyid lineages have links with local shrines, which constitute an important symbolic resource for them. A shrine for a Khoja is first of all a place of memory, i.e., the memory of an ancestor’s historical activity. These major shrines act as symbols for the imaginary translocal communities of Khoja. Thus, the role of shrines as a geographic place or locality, and also as a sacred site, can be conceptualized with reference to ‘translocality’.
In the pre-Soviet and early Soviet period (the 1920s), Sufi shrines in Central Asia played a strong role as concrete physical or material
‘places’ within the more geographical places of the oases or regions; i.e., they served as ‘mediators’ or ‘communicators’ of ideas and practices, or as nodes in the connections between the different geographic places.
In the pre-Soviet period, cemeteries, shrines and tombstones of some outstanding Khojas with a tugh (top of a banner which was attached to the grave of famous saint, i.e., a wali) (Babajanov, Nekrasova, 2006:384–
85) were among the symbols of Uzbek-speaking Khoja. In general, Sufi actors, groups, and networks have had a big impact on the history of Islam in Muslim Central Asia (Sukhareva 1960).
The main shrines of Central Asia were located in Samarkand (the shrine of Qusam ibn Abbos and the shrine of Mahdumi Azam in Daghbit, Samarkand province), Tashkent (the shrine of Shaykh Hovandi Tokhur), Turkistan (the shrine of Khoja Ahmad Yassavi), and Bukhara (the shrine of Bahauddin Naqshband). Thousands of pilgrims from the different parts of Central Asia visit these shrines annually. The graves of the ancestors of some groups of Kazakh-speaking Khoja are in Samarkand (Mahdumi Azam, his sons), and some shrines of the Uzbek-speaking Khoja are located in the Turkistan region.
Some Khoja and Sayyid studied in the Bukhara’s and Samarkand’s famous Islamic schools (madrasa). Besides their religious activities, members of sacred lineages migrated from one region to another due to economic reasons. Those involved in Sufi practice often had thousands of disciples in different parts of Central Asia. Moreover, Uzbek-speaking Khoja and Ishons usually had disciples among Kazakhs in border territories.
The following elements united the Khoja and Sayyid of Central Asia into one translocal group and formed a sense of ‘translocal imagination’:
the shared idea of an origin from the Prophet, the first caliphs, or a Sufi saint; shrines; a shared sacred genealogy; and commoners’ perceptions of the group as sacred. The stories about holy ancestors were spread through oral narratives passed on from one generation to another as well as through religious books. Later, Soviet national identity policies played an important role in destroying these translocal communications.
According to Barth, the state is ‘a specifiable third player in the processes of boundary construction between groups, rather than confound the regime, and its powers and interests, with the more nebulous concepts of state and nation’ (1994:19). In 1924, the existing political-administrative organization was broken up by the national delimitation of Central Asia and replaced by ethnically defined Soviet republics. This national delimitation was seen as the implementation of the people’s right to self-determination. Language was viewed as the central criteria for affiliation to an ethnic group (Fedtke 2007:21–24). The formation of Soviet republics laid the structural foundations for a reformulation of the parameters of identity in modern Central Asia (Akiner 1998:12–13).
Accordingly, Soviet state policy also had a great deal of influence on the identity of ‘sacred lineages’ and it had dramatic consequences for many Khojas in Central Asia. Khoja communities lost their property and their sources of income. In the 1920s and 1930s, a significant proportion of Central Asian Khoja intellectuals were arrested and killed, especially if they were mullahs and teachers of Islam (Privratsky 2001). Nevertheless, according to Schoeberlein-Engel: ‘Later, during the 1960–1980s in some areas descendants of religious elite groups were well-represented in the local KGB, police force, and positions of authority controlled by the Communist party. Members of this group were maximizing their
benefit from structures of significance that contribute to the construction of legitimate elite status’ (Schoeberlein-Engel 1994:259).
In Central Asia, ‘the descendants of the saints — despite the strength of both nationalism and fundamentalism — has not dissolved into modernized society, but on the contrary, has preserved its position to a great extent’ (Abashin 2005:70). This is despite the fact that some Tashkent Khoja families sacrificed their religious identity in order to announce themselves ‘bearers of national consciousness’ and ‘the intellectual elite’
(Abashin 2005:78). There were also changes to marriage traditions in the Soviet period, meaning that more Khoja families formed marriage alliances with the non-Khoja elite (Abashin 2005). Additionally, a transformation of identity and the loss of the social and economic status of the holy families occurred during the Soviet period. Pilgrimages to shrines were prohibited, and pilgrims were prosecuted by the authorities (Muminov 1996:366). Many sacred places were destroyed, abandoned or turned into museums on the orders of the Soviet state.
Any transfer of ideas of sainthood through books and manuscripts was rigorously prosecuted.
During the first years of the post-Soviet period, a new interest in local history was supported by a revival of sacred places and the publication of books on the history of sacred lineages. Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Central Asian republics in 1991, the Khojas, particularly in Kazakhstan, have recovered some of their former prestige. The Soviet policy of societal homogenization in Central Asia and the creation of national identities could not eliminate some specific groups in the region. Despite the strictures put in place by Soviet ideology, some Khoja families kept alive their memory of the past and maintained the symbolic capital of shrines and genealogies during the 1980 and 1990s.
The scale of the translocal relations (or even translocal imagination) of sacred lineages differed. I distinguish several levels: between villages, between rural and urban areas, across regions, and between states. It should be noted that not all groups of the sacred lineages of the pre-Soviet period can be called ‘translocal societies’. It was common for a few Khoja families to live in one village, and they had to seek marriage partners belonging to their ‘sacred group’ in other villages.