The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia

The Russian conquest of Central Asia in the 1860s and 1870s brought that region into contact with modernity, undermining the influence of traditional religios elites and practice. The Jadids, a new group of influential Muslim intellectuals, attempted to reconcile Islam wiuth modernity. Through education, literacy, and use of the Press, the Jadids sought to safeguard indigenous Islamic culture by adapting it to modern conditions. By Maintaining close ties with the rest of the Islamic world, from the Ottoman Empire to India, the Jadids established a place for their traditions, not only within the changing culture of their own land, but within the larger modern Islamic world. Assistant Professor of History at Carleton College, Adeep Khalid offers the first extended examination of cultural debates in Central Asia during Russian rule. Khalid uses previously untapped literary sources from Uzbek and Tajik as well as archival materials, many previously unavailable, from Uzbekistan, Russia, Britain, and France to explore themes such as Russia’s role as a colonial power and the politics of Islamic reform movements. By showing how Jadid efforts paralleled developments elsewhere in the world, in the course of providing a social history of the Jadid movement, Khalid broadens the scope of his work to include a comparative study of Muslim societies, an examination of indigenous intellectual life within the colonial societies, and an investigation of ideas of education and the dissemination of knowledge in the early modern period. Khalid has written a theoretically sophisticated and wide-ranging book that will remedy the dearth of scholarship on this important period.