Islam as a part of the Kazak identity and Chokan Valikhanov

Abstract

This thesis will deal with the first Kazak intellectual, i.e. Chokan Valikhanov. He was among the Kazak intellectual elite which emerged due to interconnections with Russian education and culture. This elite holds an important place in the Kazak people’s history. Although being mostly pro-Russian, for the reason that they considered Russia as the only and shrewd power, able to bring progress to the backward Central Asian peoples, these people raised and discussed important for the Kazak society issues. Chokan Valikhanov will be discussed here in view of his harsh anti-Islamic statements and opposition to the role, played by the Volga - Ural Tatars in the Kazak steppes. Valikhanov came to regard that Islam represented by the Tatars and Maveraunnehr was detrimental to enlightenment of the Kazak nomads, since it was alien to Kazak culture. Moreover, this Islam symbolized for him not only a threat to Kazak culture, as Valikhanov understood it, but also fanaticism and intolerance which would be a barrier to the gradual integration of the Kazaks into the Russian Empire. Such integration, Valikhanov believed, would open to the Kazak people the way to civilization.