Muslim Women of the Fergana Valley

Maria Nalivkina, Vladimir Nalivkin, Marianne Kamp, Mariana Markova

Description

Muslim Women of the Fergana Valley is the first English translation of an important 19th-century Russian text describing everyday life in Uzbek communities. Vladimir and Maria Nalivkin were Russians who settled in a "Sart" village in 1878, in a territory newly conquered by the Russian Empire. During their six years in Nanay, Maria Nalivkina learned the local language, befriended her neighbors, and wrote observations about their lives from birth to death. Together, Maria and Vladimir published this account, which met with great acclaim from Russia's Imperial Geographic Society and among Orientalists internationally. While they recognized that Islam shaped social attitudes, the Nalivkins never relied on common stereotypes about the "plight" of Muslim women. The Fergana Valley women of their ethnographic portrait emerge as lively, hard-working, clever, and able to navigate the cultural challenges of early Russian colonialism. Rich with social and cultural detail of a sort not available in other kinds of historical sources, this work offers rare insight into life in rural Central Asia and serves as an instructive example of the genre of ethnographic writing that was emerging at the time. Annotations by the translators and an editor's introduction by Marianne Kamp help contemporary readers understand the Nalivkins' work in context.

Editor's Introduction Marianne Kamp

A Sketch of the Everyday Life of Women of the
Sedentary Population of the Fergana Valley

Authors' Preface Vladimir Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina
1. A Short Sketch of the Fergana Valley
2. Religion and Clergy
3. Houses and Utensils
4. Woman's Appearance and Her Clothing
5. Occupations and Food
6. The Woman, Her Character, Habits, Knowledge, and Behavior towards the People around Her
7. Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Girl
8. The Maiden: Marriage Proposal and Marriage
9. Polygyny, Divorce, Widowhood, and Death of a Woman
10. Prostitution

Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• 19th Century
• Former Soviet Union
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Uzbekistán
• Russian Empire
• URSS
• General officer
• Orientalism
• Uzbeks
• Uzbekistan
• Russia
• Muslim
• Central Asia
• Anthropology
• General
• Islam
• Orientalisme
• Ouzbeks
• Turkestan
• Ouzbékistan
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 04 juillet 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253021496
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

MUSLIM WOMEN OF THE FERGANA VALLEY
MUSLIM WOMEN OF THE FERGANA VALLEY
A 19th-Century Ethnography from Central Asia
Vladimir Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina
Edited by Marianne Kamp
Translated by Mariana Markova
and Marianne Kamp
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
English translation 2016 by Marianne Kamp and Mariana
Markova
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-02127-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02138-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02149-6 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
Contents
Editor s Introduction | Marianne Kamp
Authors Preface: A Sketch of the Everyday Life of Women of the Sedentary Native Population of the Fergana Valley | Vladimir Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina
1 A Short Sketch of the Fergana Valley
2 Religion and Clergy
3 Houses and Utensils
4 Woman s Appearance and Her Clothing
5 Occupations and Food
6 The Woman, Her Character, Habits, Knowledge, and Behavior toward the People around Her
7 Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Girl
8 The Maiden: Marriage Proposal and Marriage
9 Polygyny, Divorce, Widowhood, and Death of a Woman
10 Prostitution
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Central Asia, including the extent of Russian conquest, late nineteenth century. Source: Margo Berendsen, 2015.
Fergana Valley with cities mentioned by the Nalivkins and present-day boundaries superimposed. Source: Margo Berendsen, 2015.
Editor s Introduction
Marianne Kamp
T HIS WORK , originally titled A Sketch of the Everyday Life of Women of the Sedentary Native Population of the Fergana Valley and first published in Russian in 1886, offers readers a nineteenth-century ethnography focused on women in an Islamic society, as observed by Maria and Vladimir Nalivkin. The Nalivkins were Russians who lived in a Sart (Uzbek) village in a territory new to the Russian Empire, the Fergana Valley. With the exception of Edward G. Lane s An Account of the Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians , very few nineteenth-century ethnographies of Muslim societies were based on the ethnographer s long-term participant observation, and accounts by women were even rarer. Maria Nalivkina learned the Sart language and lived in the village of Nanay from 1878 to 1884, during which she befriended her neighbors and tried to learn all she could about their lives and the ways that Islam shaped their lives. The authors focus on explaining Islam will be familiar to those who have studied nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship: the authors wrote with all the hubris of Western cultural superiority but also with an attention to detail and effort at description that arose from genuine curiosity. The exploration of women s lives is unique, but the Nalivkins focus on everyday life in rural communities exemplifies a dominant trend in nineteenth-century Russian ethnography.
This introduction provides brief biographies of Vladimir and Maria, focusing on their intellectual formation, the milieu within which they worked, and their scholarly production. Comparisons are drawn between their ethnographic work and those of several of their contemporaries in Russian Central Asia. An overview of the book s themes is followed by a discussion of choices that we made in translation.
The Nalivkins
In 1878, a young Russian couple, Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin and Maria Vladimirovna Nalivkina, purchased a courtyard home and some land in the kishlak (village) of Nanay in the Fergana Valley. Nanay, situated in the hills between the Tian Shan Mountains to the north and Namangan to the south, was home to people whom the Nalivkins identified as Sarts. I discuss the meaning of this term later. The Nalivkins lived in Nanay for six years, where they learned to speak and read the local languages, dressed like Sarts, farmed using local techniques, raised a family, and wrote several books.
Until 1876, the Fergana Valley had been part of the domain ruled by the khan of Kokand. 1 The Khanate itself was founded in the 1780s and by the 1850s grew to encompass the Fergana Valley, parts of the Kazakh steppes, and the city of Tashkent. In the same period, the Russian Empire expanded south and east, and the Russian military command in Central Asia became dissatisfied with the perimeter it had established at the fortresses of Vernyi (Almaty), Ak-Mechet (Kyzylorda), and Shymkent, in what is now southern Kazakhstan. General Mikhail Cherniaev s forces conquered Tashkent in 1865, taking control of Kokand s largest city and most important center of trade; the khan s territory shrank to focus on the Fergana Valley. In 1875-1876, after Russian forces defeated and made treaties with the khan of Khiva and the emir of Bukhara, Turkestan s governor-general Konstantin von Kaufman found reason to attack Kokand, after an internal coup drove out the cooperative Khan Khudoyar. Kaufman feared that the new Khoqandi regime might ally itself with Bukhara or other of Russia s opponents, and he ordered Russian forces to take control of Kokand and the Fergana Valley. The Russian administration dissolved the Khanate in a brutal conquest and absorbed its remaining lands into Russia s Turkestan Territory, under Governor-General von Kaufman s Tashkent-based administration. 2
Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin
Vladimir Nalivkin, an officer under Russian general Skobelev s command, had served in several Russian campaigns, including the campaign against Khiva (1873) and another against Turkmens. He arrived in the Fergana Valley with this Russian force but then left military service and took up farming in Nanay. Later he wrote that he resigned his commission because of the conduct of Skobelev s forces at Gurtepa, where Russian soldiers hacked fleeing Sarts, men, women, and children with sabers. 3 Historian Natalia Lukashova interprets Nalivkin s choice thus: His unmediated impression of the Turkestan campaign broke the faith of the young, enthusiastic officer that Russia was carrying out a positive civilizing mission in Central Asia. He viewed Russian conquest as colonialism, Russian military attitudes as hostile to natives, and their actions as cruel toward a peaceful population. 4 If Nalivkin s depiction of his motivation for this career change was honest, those feelings were slow to overcome him and were of a passing nature. In a form that he filled out in 1906 explaining his military service, Nalivkin wrote that he resigned his commission in 1878 because of illness. After Russian forces subjugated Kokand, Nalivkin was transferred to the military administration in Namangan, where he served as assistant to the director and worked for a time with the land-organization commission. In 1878, having built his knowledge of Fergana Valley geography and land use, Vladimir Nalivkin resigned his military post and signed up for the reserve, and only then did he and his wife purchase land in Nanay. 5 The Nalivkins moved to Kokand in 1884, when Vladimir was recalled on reserve, after which he took up new service positions in the Russian colonial administration of Turkestan. 6

Nalivkin family photo, ca. 1898. Left to right: Vladimir (b. 1878), Maria Vladimiovna Nalivkina, Grigorii (b. 1895), Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin, Natalia (b. 1891), Boris (b. 1876). Source: Personal file of Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin, Uzbekistan State Archive, F. 2409, op. 1, photos.
Vladimir Nalivkin was neither a trained ethnographer nor a trained Orientalist. Other scholars who constructed imperial knowledge of Central Asia for the empire were university graduates, and some were specialists in Oriental studies, trained at Kazan or St. Petersburg, but Nalivkin had a military education. 7 He was the son of a military officer and was born in either Kazan or Kaluga, Russia, in 1852. 8 He followed in his father s footsteps and entered St. Petersburg s military preparatory school, Pavlovskii Kadetskii Korpus (Pavlov Cadet Corps, a school for young boys) in 1863. He graduated from the Pavlovskoe Voennoe Uchilishche (Pavlov Military Training School, a two-year institute for those who had finished gymnasia or high school) in 1872. The training for a military officer at this institution focused on topography, mapping, and military law but also included sciences and languages. Lukashova writes that early he proved to have extraordinary linguistic ability: while still in gymnasia, he became acquainted with the Georgian language, and in the Training School he perfected his French. 9 Nalivkin s ancestors belonged to the service noble ( dvoriianin ) estate, meaning that they were hereditary gentry who had originally earned their privileges through military service, but he later remarked that he rejected an appointment to the prestigious Izmailovskii Guards because he lacked the financial means. He took a posting to Orenburg, joining a Cossack brigade there in 1872, and thus became involved in the Russian military campaign against Khiva. He moved to Ce