Beyond resistance and nationalism: local history and the case of Afaq Khoja

Abstract

Kashgar's seventeenth-century ruler-saint, Afaq Khoja, is remarkable for the amount of historical writing he has inspired, both outside and within Chinese Turkestan. His reputation among Uyghur historians is one of the few aspects of local Uyghur historical knowledge production that has attracted the attention of foreign scholars. In this essay the author uses the now-familiar example of Afaq Khoja's reputation to show that much of what is distinctive about local Uyghur approaches to history has been so little understood as to be missed even in this often-discussed case. This article describes how the local historical appropriation of Afaq's reputation, particularly the recording of narratives about Afaq in writing, began as a typical product of the Naqshbandi maqāmāt tradition, was reshaped into Kashgarian local history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then reshaped again as an ethno-national history beginning in the 1930s, culminating in the publication of the popular historical novel, Apaq Khoja, and its subsequent burning by officials of the People's Republic of China. While the reputation of Afaq in the present certainly reflects the current political context, it also bears significant marks of these earlier traditions through which it has passed. Thus this article argues for an understanding of ‘local history’ as a form of knowledge production that embraces a host of historical approaches, including transnational devotional literature, popular local oasis history and nationalist historical fiction. The author also suggests that these transformations of local history have reflected shifting senses of what is ‘local’ over the last 300 years. The argument is advanced through philological investigation of the manuscript sources, ethnographic fieldwork and literary analysis of the recent novel Apaq Khoja.

Keywords:

• local history
• transnational devotional literature
• nationalist historical fiction
• Uyghur
• Chinese Turkestan

Notes

Also known as Chinese Turkestan, Eastern Turkestan or Southern Xinjiang in English, Altishähär or Shärqiy Turkistan in Uyghur and Xinjiang Nan Lu in Chinese.

This is precisely how the standard Xinjiang history textbook as used at Xinjiang University, is framed: Xinjiang difang shi [Xinjiang local history].

Although Samarqandi origins carried their own prestige in Kashgar, as did Afaq's claims of descent from key religious figures, including the prophet Muḥammad, an important local source clearly depicts Afaq's non-Kashgarian roots as a source of tension. In one version of the most popular biography of Afaq from the manuscript period, the saint is ridiculed by the children of Kashgar for being an outsider. He then asks his father, ‘where did we come from?’. His father answers, ‘Oh dear child, we came from Dahbid’ (HSAFT, 26v).

Throughout this essay I use the term ‘western Turkestan’ as shorthand for Mavarannahar and the Ferghana Valley.

Here I refer to the hereditary leadership of the tariqāt as opposed to purely spiritual succession. Around the same time, the significance of descent from prestigious figures, especially Chinggis Khan and the prophet Muḥammad, also grew in significance; see Papas (2005).

Of course, other views exist as well, for example among the inhabitants of the village surrounding Afaq's tomb, who still regard Afaq as a saint (Waite 2006). Another historical novel, Jallat Khenim (Choghlan 2003), which itself reflects much of Äli's animosity toward Afaq Khoja, has also become quite influential. Chinese and select Western views of Afaq's history have also entered Uyghur discourse through a study by Liu Zhengyin and Wei Liangtao (1998), which was published in Uyghur translation (2006).

These stays totalled about three years, and were spent primarily in Urumqi, Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan.

However, views inspired by Äli's novel seem to be more prevalent among urban Uyghurs. Rural informants, particularly those from among the minority of Uyghurs who still participate in inter-oasis shrine pilgrimage, were more likely to view Afaq as a saint.

Sa'idiya is a term for the Chinggisid Moghul Yarkand Khanate.

IVAN Ruz 12501/2 was copied in 1292 AH (1875–6). A unique history of Hasan Khoja, written no earlier than the 1870s, was recently discovered in the Ferghana Valley (Kawahara 2006).

The locations of manuscripts suggest readership in both Altishahr and western Turkestan. I have traced the following manuscripts from the Afaqi maqāmāt/manāqib tradition: copies of the Hidāyatnāmah are preserved in Tashkent at the Al-Biruni Institute, IVAN RUz numbers 1682 and 12315/1 (Abu Raihon Berunii Nomidagi Sharqshunoslik Institut 2000); at the British Library, or. 8162, donated by Sir Henry H. Howorth in 1917. The full provenance is unknown to me but western Turkestan seems more likely than Altishahr (Meredith-Owens 1996); in the library of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences in Urumqi (XU 1991); and in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, number C560 (Miklukho-Maklai 1995). Copies of the Taẕkīrat al-Hidāyat are preserved in Tashkent, IVAN RUz numbers 10051/2, 12501/2, 12666/1, 1156/6; in the Bodleian, MS Ind. Inst. Persian 122, this copy comes from the Shaw collection, making an Altishahri source almost certain (Beeston 1954); in the Jarring collection in the Lund University Library, Prov. 300 and Prov. 307. These were collected in Altishahr (Jarring 1997); and in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, B738, B1012 and C559. XKQ 611 in Urumqi (Anonymous 1989, p. 210) may also be the Taẕkīrat al-Hidāyat.

I have traced the following manuscripts of the popular Turki hagiography of Afaq Khoja: in Urumqi, XKQ 987 (Anonymous 1989, p. 196); in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz ms orient. quart. 1316 (Hartmann 1904); in the India Office Library collection of the British Library, IOL MS Turki 9; in the Jarring collection at Lund University Library, Prov. 22, Prov. 48, Prov. 369 (Jarring 1997); in the National Library of India, acc. no. 940; and in the al-Biruni Instute in Tashkent IVAN RUvz 3426. (The colophon indicates an Altishahri source. A version of this text is published in Jalilov 2001). Another popular hagiography, Sirr al-Ahbab, focused on Afaq's son Hasan. Manuscripts are to be found in: the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, ms orient. quart. 1655, ms orient. oct. 1685; in the collection of Jun Sugawara (Kawahara 2006); in a private Urumqi collection (Kawahara 2006); and in the India Office Library collection of the British Library, IOL MS Turki 10.

Like the Hidāyatnāmah, it was written in Persian, a language that was rarely, if ever, used for original compositions in Altishahr after the mid-eighteenth century.

No investigation of the relationship between this work and the Hidāyatnāmah has yet been published. An examination of Bodleian MS Ind. Inst. Pers. 122 (Tadhkirat al-Hidāyat) and British Museum (now in the British Library) Or. 8162 (Hidāyatnāmah), reveals many shared passages. I have been unable to examine the four copies in Tashkent.

Other biographical genres in the Muslim world have also used the word taẕkirah, from the Arabic root associated with remembrance (dhkr). It was probably through these works that the genre name taẕkirah entered Altishahr. However, the Altishahri taẕkirahs usually differ significantly from the taẕkirahs of the wider Islamic world (Thum 2010).

One copy is located in the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley (call number 4MS BP189.7.N35.A23 1700z), where it is misidentified as Jāmi’ al-Maqāmāt, a hagiography of Makhdūm-i A'zam, authored by Abū al-Baqā' (for a description of the Jāmi' al-Maqāmāt, see Beeston [1954], p. 12]). While the first 10 folios of the Berkeley manuscript are copied from the Jāmi' al-Maqāmāt, such an identification for the larger text is obviously impossible given that the work treats saints who lived long after the Jāmi' al-Maqāmāt was written (begun 1026/1617). The correct title of the work, Siyar al-Mukhliṣīn, is to be found on 186b, along with the author's description of the dream in which the title came to him. The Berkeley manuscript was copied by a Mullā Ismā'īl Ibn Qūtlūgh Muḥammad Kāshgharī and bears Chinese stamps from a former owner, ‘Lawuluofu’, probably P.I. Lavrov, the Secretary of the Russian Consulate in Kashgar and a collector of manuscripts. It is the same manuscript cited by Fletcher (1995). A second manuscript was used for a Chinese translation (Anon [19^th c.] 1986), though I have been unable to trace the current location of this manuscript. Presumably the copy in China, like virtually all of the manuscripts related to Altishahr in the possession of the Chinese state, came from Altishahr.

Manuscript numbers Prov 369 and Prov 48 in the Jarring collection (Jarring 1997).

I will refer to Turki translations of the work by this name, though each known copy has a slightly different title. In addition to the popular translation, there is another Turki version known from a single manuscript, which includes material from the Jāmi' al-Maqāmāt regarding early Naqshbandi ancestors, followed by much of the material from the Lives of the loyal, and then a history of the White Mountain khojas through the first decades of the nineteenth century. The manuscript, entitled Silsilat al-Ẕahāb, is reproduced in Hamut (2011).

This excludes the unique Silsilat al-Ẕahāb (Hamut 2011), which is an entirely different version.

IOL9: Risālah-yi Tadhkīrat al-Hidāyat bil-Khayriyat; Jarring Prov. 22: Taẕkirah-i Ḥaẓrat Sayyid ‘Āfāq Khwājam; National Library of India acc. no. 940: Taẕkirahi Sayyid ‘Āfāq Khwāja; Jarring Prov 363: Ḥaẓrat Sayyid ‘Āfāq Khwājaning Tasralar. As has been noted by both Gunnar Jarring and Joseph Fletcher, the word tasra is clearly a corruption of ‘taẕkirah’ (Jarring 1997, p. 653, Fletcher undated).

Based on his visit in 1929 − 30, Gunnar Jarring reported Chinese language flags at the shrine brought by Chinese Muslims (Jarring 1986, p. 193).

For a summary of Zalīlī's travelogue and itinerary, see Papas (2010).

IOL MSS Turki 9 calls it ‘Afaq Khoja's tomb’. All European visitors also called it the shrine of Afaq, presumably following the local usage.

Especially Shadi Khoja (Churās 1695–1713, f 3a).

Bodleian MS Ind. Inst. Pers. 45, f 105b.

That is, the Dzungar Mongols.

Bodleian MS Ind. Inst. Turk. 3, f. 20a-b; Hartmann Ms. Or. fol. 3292. Cited and translated in Sawada (2010, p. 16). I have altered Sawada's translation slightly.

Admittedly the first two of these armies were at least Muslim, but as we have seen, religious identity was not a main theme for the nationalists.

A 1954 Uzbek biographical novel from Soviet Central Asia also circulated in Xinjiang (Mirzi’äkhmät 2003). While its formal qualities differ from the Uyghur biographical novel, it likely served as an important precedent for fictionalizing the lives of historical figures.

The writing dates are given at the end of the novel (Äzizi 1987, p. 1007). Another work appeared in the same year: Khevir Tömür, Baldur oyghanghan adam [The man who awoke early], Ürümchi: Shinjaŋ yashlar – ösmürlär näshriyati, 1987.

The shrine's ritual caretakers.