The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform

part of the Jadid project. In common with modernists elsewhere in the Muslim
world, the Jadids of Central Asia criticized the practice of polygyny, the poor
treatment of women, and their lack of education. Again, the Jadids sought
legitimacy for these criticisms from an understanding of "pure" Islam acquired
through modern education, but it was the nation, not religious reform, that
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drove them.
A proper assessment of the place of the "women's question" in Jadid thought is
made difficult by our sketchy knowledge of changes affecting urban women's lives
during the tsarist period. The lot of urban women was difficult in Central Asia:
In the late nineteenth century, za'ifa ("weak") and naqis ul-aql ("deficient in
judgment") were common terms
[18] Hamza Hakimzada Niyazi, Yangi saadat: mi11i roman (Kokand, 1915), 21-22.
[19] M. Sukru Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York, 1995), 203-208.
[20] Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton, 1992).
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for "woman" in learned usage. The impact of the Russian conquest on local gender
relations is difficult to gauge. As we have seen, the immediate result of the
conquest was the valorization of traditional practices as hallmarks of local
Muslim identity. It is likely that the need to assert respectability and
propriety in the new conditions led to an increase in the seclusion of women.
Several other factors tended to heighten the role of respectability as a status
marker. The new wealth accumulated in the cities, which led to the marathon
feasts often criticized by the Jadids, created new demand for it (it likely also
made polygyny into a form of conspicuous consumption), while the appearance of
legal prostitution further made respectability significant. (Most of the
prostitutes counted in the census of 1897 were Central Asian; Russian and Tatar
women remained a minority in the profession.)
We know even less about the Jadids' personal lives or their private attitudes
toward women. Hamza married a Russian woman who converted to Islam and seems to
have played a small role in Jadid activities (she was invited to the annual
examinations at new-method schools).[21] We also have a photograph, although of
unknown date, of Munawwar Qari with his wife, who is unveiled.[22] Our main
source, therefore, are the Jadids' writings. These are marked by a great
sympathy for women and a concern for bettering their position. Again, the
inspiration came from Tatar and Ottoman debates. Magazines by and for women,
such as Ælem-i nisvan (Women's World), edited by Gasprinskii's daughter Shafika
Hanum in Bahchesaray, and Suyüm Bike , which appeared in Kazan from 1913 to
1917, had created a women's voice in the new discourses of the nation then being
articulated. Veiling had disappeared among the Tatars by the turn of the
century, and Tatar women in Central Asian cities were visible symbols of the
change local Jadids wanted to bring about in their society; and to the extent
that women had a voice in this debate, Tatar women were also agents of reform.
Women wrote poetry, of course, and in 1914 the Kokand poet Ibrahim Dawran
published an anthology of verse written by women. Some of the poets included in
the anthology had lived in the nineteenth cen-
[21] Hamza Hakiimzoda Niyoziy arkbivining katalogi , 2 vols. (Tashkent,
1990-1991), II:10.
[22] The photograph is reproduced m San"at , 1990, no. 12, 9. Soviet sources
provide some information on individual women's lives: Islam i zbensbchiny
Vostoka: istoriia i sovremennost ' (Tashkent, 1990); OSE , 1: 343-44, s.v.
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"Anbar Otin"; ibid., IV: 39, s.v. "Dilshod otin." See also Marianne R. Kamp.
"The Otin and the Soviet School: The End of Traditional Education for Uzbek
Girls," paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boston, 1996.
―
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―
tury, but most were contemporaries. The anthology had a marked reformist
character, with numerous poems lamenting the difficult position of women in
Central Asian society, exhorting women to acquire knowledge, and calling on men
to enable women to do so.[23] Women, especially Tatar women, also wrote in the
press, particularly in Sada-yi Turkistan , which debated the women's question at
some length. The themes as well as the mode of argument remains embedded in a
nationalist discourse on women.
"In case you do not know [already], know clearly: We too are human beings and
Muslims [biz insan balasi insan, musulman balasi musulmandirmiz ]," wrote a
woman schoolteacher from Tashkent, "and as such we need, and have the right to,
education." Similarly, Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada of Bukhara wrote in an article
entitled, "Women's Rights": "Women are the mothers of all humanity: Prophets,
messengers, kings, scholars, writers, and poets are all children of these
esteemed mothers." Therefore, he argued, citing the Qur'an, Islam had accorded
equal rights ("apart from a few partial exceptions") to them. "But we leave them
without education, we marry off fourteen-year-old girls to old men of sixty or
seventy for money, and we lock women up in dungeonlike houses as if they were
thieves. Is this justice? Is this equality? Is this the condition of women who
are the lights of civilization [madaniyat chiraghi ]?"[24] 
All these themes appear in Jadid literature and theater. In Abdullah Awlani's
comedy, Is It Easy to Be a Lawyer ?, the only sympathetic character is a woman
who comes seeking divorce from her abusive husband. Dawran-bek, the
Russian-trained lawyer who is Awlani's protagonist, is agitated:
O cruel civilization! When will you take root among us Turkestanis? When will
you liberate us from this dungeon of ignorance? Until we start domestic
education and enlighten our women, such terrible things will continue in our
midst. Instead of being married to a man of her own choice, one she had seen
and wanted, she was given off, like an animal . . . to a cruel man. The whole
life of this innocent has passed in suffering, sorrow, and distress. . .. Now
to abolish such terrible things from our midst, we must expend all our might
in the way of educating our women and acquainting them with knowledge and
civilization [maarif wa madaniyat ].[25] 
[23] Ibrahim Dawran, Ash'ar-i niswan (Kokand, 1914). I have not been able to
locate a copy of this book, but it is discussed (with extensive quotations) by
Tokhtamurod Jalolov, Ozbek shoiralari, 3 rd ed. (Tashkent, 1890), 125-173.
[24] Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada, "Huquq-i niswan: musawat," ST , 12 November 1914.
[25] Abdulla Awloniy, Advokatlik oson mi (1916), in Toshkent tongi , ed. Begali
Qosimov (Tashkent, 1979), 312-313.
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225 
―
Haji Muin's play, The Oppressed Woman , describes the evils of polygyny. Ozaqbay
is a rich merchant contemplating taking a new wife: "New wives bring back a
man's lust and make his mouth water. Now I too have to take a fourteen-year-old
for a wife and enjoy life. This [present] wife of mine has borne three or four
children and is approaching thirty. There's no joy left in life with her." He is
egged on in his thoughts by Ishan Baba, a man who has performed the hajj seven
times and appears on stage with a long string of prayer beads. A new-method
teacher, on the other hand, tries unsuccessfully to dissuade Ozaqbay. Polygyny
is permissible, he argues, only if the husband can treat all his wives justly
and equally, which is never possible in practice. Ozaqbay's present wife, Tunsuq
Ay, is a devoted mother and a loving wife who insists that their
fourteen-year-old son attend a new-method school. She is devastated by the news
that Ozaqbay is contemplating taking a new wife, but her feelings are of as
little consequence as the imprecations of the teacher, and Ozaqbay, on the
strength of his wealth, finds himself an eighteen-year-old wife. But the new
wife, Suyar Ay, spells disaster from the beginning. After six months of this
menage, Suyar Ay accuses Tunsuq Ay of theft; Ozaqbay believes the allegation and
in a fit of anger begins beating his first wife. The play ends in tragedy:
Ozaqbay discovers the error of his ways ("I didn't take a second wife, I took on
a calamity"), but Tunsuq Ay is already mortally ill and dies in the last
scene.[26] 
The biggest cause of Jadid concern, however, was the fact that women were denied
education. Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada's argument that women's right to knowledge
was granted by Islam itself was repeated again and again by other writers and
accompanied by exhortations to men to educate women.[27] Not only were women
being denied a right granted by Islam itself, but doing so was bringing
irreparable harm to the nation. "The progress and civilization of a nation is
dependent upon the educational, moral, and intellectual progress and
civilization of women,"[28] because of the crucial role of women as mothers of
the next generation. "In the hands of ignorant [jahila ] mothers, the young,
innocent children of the nation grow up untrained, unclean, and deprived of
delicacy and morals. Full of meaningless tales and superstitions heard from the
mouths of their mothers, children's brains become insensate, like roses pulled
up from their
[26] Haji Muin b. Shukrullah, Mazluma khatun (Samarqand, 1916).
[27] See, e.g., Hamza, "Erlar wa qizlar laplari," in his Tola asarlar toplami ,
ed. N. Karimov et al., 5 vols. (Tashkent, 1988-1989), II: 31; many poems in
Ash'ar-i niswan also take this view.
[28] "Khanimlar tawushi," ST , 11 July 1914.
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―
roots. Removed from reason and reality, they incline toward unnatural
suppositions."[29] The solution, of course, was education: Child rearing was a
science just as engineering or accountancy, and in civilized nations, it was
taught to women in schools.[30] The nation demanded changes in the status of
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women, and the nation's needs were to determine what the new status was to be.
The nation also demanded a strong, stable family, for that alone could provide
the preconditions for progress. This was the fundamental reason behind the
Jadids' opposition to polygyny. In The Oppressed Woman , the second wife
disrupts the tranquillity of the family and distracts attention from the
education of Ozaqbay's fourteen-year-old son. Taking child brides or very early
marriage similarly made for insecure families and inadequate upbringing. The
idea of the monogamous family as the bastion of the nation was introduced to
Central Asia by Behbudi, who, in a long series of articles on "Family Health,"
expounded the latest wisdom on the matter extracted from contemporary Ottoman
and Arabic manuals. Marriage was a natural instinct for human beings, but its
place in society must be clearly understood. Puberty introduces thoughts and
ideas that, if left unchecked, could cause great harm; therefore civilized
Muslims make their children read books explaining these dangers. Semen has to be
used in the right manner, for "just as it is incorrect to use it before its
time, so it is to delay its use."[31] Late marriage or bachelorhood were equally
harmful, and Behbudi cited statistics from France and Holland to prove that most
"crimes, murders, and sins" are committed by unmarried men and women. Sex
outside of marriage creates limitless disease and is, moreover, a sin. Similar,
only greater, dangers lurk behind other misuses of semen and lust: adultery,
pederasty, masturbation, and excessive intercourse of any kind weaken the body,
deaden the brain, and make it impossible to develop one's intellectual
faculties.[32] Similarly, Awlani, saw "lust [as] a valuable treasure. If used in
a legal manner [surat-i mashru'a ], it becomes the alms of the body, indeed the
center of life itself.... If used improperly, it represents the embezzlement of
a trust... [which] destroys virtue and ruins life."[33] Fitrat wrote a
full-length book, appar-
[29] Nushirvan Yavushev, "Khatun-qizlarimizga bir nazar," ST , 3 June 1914.
[30] Tashkandlik bit muallima, "Turkistan muslimalari tarfidan bir sada," ST ,
20 May 1914; Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada, "Huquq-i niswan," ST , 10 December 1914.
[31] Behbudi, "Hifz-i sihhat-i aila," Ayina , 13 September 1914, 1127-1129.
[32] Behbudi, "Hifz-i sihhat-i aila," Ayina , 27 September 1914, 1172-1173; 4
October 1914, 1196-1197; 16 October 1914, 1218-1120.
[33] Awlani, Turki Gulistan , 65-66. The societal aspect is foregrounded here as
well, for Awlani presents, by way of the consequences of improper use of lust,
the example of "many of our youth . . . [who] fall victim to the oppressive
disease of syphilis" and spend their hard-earned money (and waste their precious
lives) in finding a cure.
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ently no longer extant, called Family, or the Duties of Housekeeping , in which
he set out to define the true Islamic (sbar'i ) manner of taking a wife,
performing the ceremony of marriage, and raising children, as well as the rights
and obligations of spouses as prescribed by Islam. He was especially critical of
polygyny, on which he took the usual modernist position, seeing it as
permissible, but only under conditions that are impossible to fulfill in normal
life. Practiced in the absence of the required conditions, polygyny only caused
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grave moral harm.[34] 
The invocation of the norms of scripturalist Islam should not blind us to the
real source of this new sexual morality, which lay squarely in contemporary
bourgeois Europe. Behbudi's Ottoman and Arabic sources banked heavily on
contemporary European medical science and reproduced whole cloth the sexual
morality that underpinned it. (Not only did Behbudi cite crime statistics from
France and Holland, but he also reproduced in great detail the tale of a
fifteen-year-old English boy whose addiction to masturbation could not be cured
by anything other than marriage.)[35] Modernist Muslim discourses on women
invoked the authority of science as quickly as they invoked that of the shariat,
but their concerns were strictly circumscribed by the broader interests of the
nation.
The impact of this discourse on actual social practices was minimal.
Traditionalists rebutted Jadid claims about the equality of women's rights with
equally authoritative verses from the Qur'an.[36] The connection of the debate
with Tatar practices also had its disadvantages; and although Jadid authors
could point to Tatar (and Istanbul) women as proof that the changes they
advocated were the norm among other ("more civilized") Muslims, their opponents
could dismiss the whole argument as one more example of the Jadids aping the
Tatars, who, for many, existed at the outer limits of Muslimness. Sayyid Ahmad
Wasli, a Samarqand mudarris with substantial Jadid credentials, parted company
with other Jadids on this issue. He was happier publishing doggerel in honor of
veiling ("The veil is a beautiful treasure for women and girls/the veil is the
curtain of chastity on the face of shame and honor,"
[34] Abdurrauf Fitrat, 'A'ila. yakhud waza'if-ikhanadari (Bukhara, 1916); my
discussion is based on a review by Haji Muin (in Hurriyat , 22 September 1917)
and an advertisement for the book that reproduced its table of contents
(Hurriyat , 28 November 1917).
[35] Behbudi, "Hifz-i sihhat-i aila," Ayina , 25 October 1914, 1241-1244.
[36] "Mozhet h zhenshchina byt' kaziem," TWG , 15 July 1912; Bir Musulman,
"Zhenshchina ne ravna s muzhshchinoi," TWG , 20 Septmber 1912; "Sotrudmku gazety
'Sadai Turkestan'," TWG , 30 November 1914 (a direct response to Fathiddinzada).
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228 
―
and so on[37] ) than following the Tatars in their misguided ways: "[Turkestani
newspapers] take inspiration directly from Tatar life and therefore alienate the
people of Turkestan. For example, if a Tatar writer describes Turkestanis as
polytheists [mushrik ], all local newspapers also start calling [Turkestanis]
polytheists. Trying to imitate the Tatars, they are also call for letting loose
our women [khatun-qizlarimiz qachmasun dedilar ]. Therefore, the number of
buyers for these newspapers is small."[38] A pseudonymous author wrote in TWG
that the "freedom of Tatar women is nothing more than the freedom to go around
barefaced and mix with unrelated men." All his suspicions were confirmed, he
stated, when a Tatar family moved in next door: "The women do not cover their
faces, do not pray, and have no idea of adab or proper manners."[39] 
Regardless of what Wasli insinuated, the question of unveiling was never
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explicitly raised in Central Asia before 1917, and Jadid attitudes on gender
issues remained conservative. In 1915, Abdulwahhab Muradi, a locally resident
Tatar fired off another letter to Sbura with the usual criticisms about the
position of women in Turkestan and the lack of attention given to their
education. No local newspaper has published anything on the issue, Muradi
informed his Tatar audience, and al-Islah , far from discussing the need to
educate women, has started to talk about veiling. Ignorant women in a veil only
bring harm, as the author himself had witnessed at a fair in Tashkent recently,
where all sorts of illicit things happened under the veil.[40] In response,
Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada, who had argued for the equality of women's rights,
jumped to the defense of al-Islah and Turkestan: "Sir! No Muslim journal
(including al-Islah ) desires the unveiling of women, and no son of Turkestan
[Turkistan balasi ] (and the editorial team at al-Islah is not exempt from this)
would agree that his mother or sister should dress up her hair in the Paris
fashion and promenade on boulevards in a décolleté dress."[41] 
The Jadids in Politics 
Official Russia feared political awakening in the borderlands of the empire
primarily for its potential for "separatism." The same fears that cul-
[37] Wash, "Tasattur-i niswan haqqinda," al-Islah , i October 1915, 542-545.
[38] Mudarris Wasli, "Jarida wa usul-i jadida," SF , 6 November 1914.
[39] Bit Musulman, "Tatar khatunlarida hurriyat," TWG , 24 September 1915.
[40] Abdulwahhab Muradi, "Turkistanda khanimlar," Shura , 1 November 1915,
659-660.
[41] Bukharali Zuhuriddin Fathiddinzada, "Turkistanda khanimlar," al-Islah , 21
December 1915, 730.
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229 
―
tural reform would inevitably lead to separatism (here made worse by the
fanaticism of the local population and the intrigues of Ottoman emissaries)
underlay the reaction of the local administration to the growth of Jadidism in
Turkestan. Russian official discourse therefore treated Jadidism primarily as a
political phenomenon, a view that historians, both in Russia and the Soviet
Union and abroad, have tended to adopt. This fear was largely unfounded, though,
for two fundamental reasons: There existed no institutional framework within
which local political interests could be articulated, and Jadidism had not
vanquished its opposition within Muslim society. Jadidism remained a cultural
movement rather than a political movement asserting claims against the state.
What little political activity the Jadids engaged in before February 1917 bore
the marks of these constraints.
The elective offices introduced by the Provisional Statute of 1867, and largely
retained by the legislation of 1886 (see Chapter 2) were not meant to, and did
not, lead to the emergence of organized politics. Russian legislation intended
these offices to mediate between state and society, not to articulate any
political goals. As such, these offices remained the domain of the informal
politics of personalities.[42] Such notables also monopolized the "native" seats
in the Tashkent City Duma when the city was brought under the Municipal
Legislation of 1870 (modified to restrict Muslim representation to only
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one-third of all seats).[43] Said Azim-bay won election to the body early in its
existence, and the seat stayed in the family for most of its existence.[44] The
Tashkent City Duma did not serve as a forum for the articulation of political
demands, Russian or Muslim.
The Jadids were a fledgling group when the revolution of 1905 created vast new
possibilities for political action. Although they lacked any organizational
basis or experience, they attempted to make use of the new freedoms in the cause
of their reform. However, they could not always turn their energies into
practical results. Although many writers exhorted their compatriots in the newly
founded newspapers to make use of the new freedoms, they were unable to play a
significant role in the brief period of political activity that followed.[45]
Much of that activity in-
[42] N.S. Lykoshin, Pol zbizm v Turkestane (Petrograd, 1916), 140-143.
[43] F. Azadaev, Tashkent vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka: ocherki
sotsial'no-ekonomucheskoi i politicheskoi istorii (Tashkent, 1959), 107-112.
[44] Ibid., 114. 
[45] See, for example, Munawwar Qari, untitled article, Taraqqi-Orta Azyaning
umr guzarlighi , 7 March 1906; or Fazlullah Yunchi, letter, Taraqqi —Orta
Azyaning umr guzarlighi , 22 March 1906.
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230 
―
volved petition campaigns waged by the established elites. However, these
petitions seldom went beyond religious issues to the question of political
rights of the Central Asian population.
A common demand in these petitions was the creation of a Muslim "spiritual
assembly" patterned after the three that existed in European Russia, and whose
creation in Turkestan had been opposed by Kaufman. In a petition signed by the
notables of Kokand in December 1905, for instance, seven of the sixteen demands
concerned the formation and functions of such an assembly, while another seven
concerned the reform of the office of the qazi. It also demanded complete
freedom to import and publish locally books and periodicals. The petition thus
sought to rescue the process of the appointment and removal of qazis from the
electoral principle and to return it to the ulama. The petitioners also wanted
the qazis to have jurisdiction over foreign Muslims visiting Turkestan and for
them to have freedom from intervention by Russian courts in cases involving
blasphemy. The last section of the petition, asking for the abolition of Section
64 of the Turkestan Statute of 1886 (which gave police officers sweeping rights
of imprisonment without charge), was the only part of the petition with any
directly political implications; it was also the only one to mention the term
"Turkestan."[46] 
Petitions for the creation of a "spiritual assembly" were no doubt political to
the extent that they asserted local rights against the state and demanded a
change in the structures of power. Purely religious demands could turn into
political ones, as was the case with the Tatars' struggle to wrest control of
the Orenburg spiritual assembly from the state. But whereas the Tatar movement
sought to make the assembly entirely elective, and hence free of government
control, the petitions in Turkestan were geared toward undoing some of the
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damage done to the moral authority of the ulama by Russian legislation. Hence
the insistence on revoking the electoral principle in religious alfairs in
Turkestan and its replacement by the moral authority of the traditionally
learned. In any case, such petitions often disappeared into the abyss of the
bureaucracy without a trace.[47] 
[46] Taraqqi —Orta Azyaning umr guzarlighi , 10 January 1906.
[47] Muslim notables of Semirech'e met m Alma Ata on 13 March 1906, to draft a
petition demanding the creation of a "spiritual assembly" for Turkestan. The
petition was handed to the military governor of Semirech'e on 4 April 1906, for
transmission to Count Witte. Eight years later the petitioners were still
waiting for a response: "Yettisu wilayati Musulmanlarining iltimasi," reprinted
from Vaqit (Orenburg) in Ayina , 3 May 1914, 542-544.
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231 
―
The All-Russian Muslim Movement 
The October Manifesto of 1905 conceded the right of political assembly and
popular representation to the population of the empire. The nascent elites of
the Muslims of European Russia and Transcaucasia seized this opportunity to
launch an empire-wide political movement that sought to speak in the name of all
the Muslims of the empire in the newly granted institution of popular
representation, the State Duma. Both in the All-Russian Muslim movement and in
the Duma, however, Turkestan's participation remained minimal.
Existing scholarship has tended to endow the All-Russian Muslim movement with
immense authority. Its creation, and the convocation of three congresses in the
years 1905-1906, is seen as proof of the existence of a political and cultural
unity among the empire's Muslim population. In fact, the movement was dominated
by Tatar and Transcaucasian public figures, many of whom had received foreign
educations, and the third congress was the only one to include delegates from
Turkestan. That congress decided to create a political party (Rusya
Musulmanlarïnïng Ittifaqï, Union of Russian Muslims) to work for the defense of
the religious and cultural rights of the Muslims of the empire through the new
quasiconstitutional means allowed by the October Manifesto.[48] As such, this
congress marked the political victory of Jadidism among the Muslims of Russia
and Transcaucasia, but it had little impact on Turkestan. The congress also
decided to ally the movement with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) in
mainstream Russian politics. This alliance was hardly surprising. Jadid thinking
consistently saw the enlightenment of individuals as the true path for the
progress of society. This individualistic thrust of their thinking gave the
Jadids a natural affinity for political liberalism. The political program
adopted by the Muslim Faction was hardly distinguishable from that of the Kadets
except for a few clauses specifying Muslim religious rights.[49] Tatar and
Transcaucasian Muslim elites could by now speak the language of Russian politics
and engage the state (and other political parties) in a discourse of political
rights that
[48] On Muslim political activity in this period, see Musa Jarullah Bigi,
Islahat esaslari ; A. Arsharuni and Kh. Gabidullin, Ocherki panislamizma i
pantiurkizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1931), 23-33; Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and
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Islam in Russia (Cambridge, 1960), ch. 4.
[49] Programma Musul'manskoi gruppy v 2-oi Gosudarstvennoi Dume (St. Petersburg,
1907), art. 15n, 22-25, and 41, were the only parts of the document specific to
the Muslim community.
―
232 
―
required a vocabulary entirely different from the discourse of cultural reform
within Muslim society. In Central Asia, on the other hand, no groups yet existed
that could participate in such an enterprise. The disparity between the language
of the program of the Muslim political movement and that of cultural debate in
Turkestan is indicative of the marginal position Turkestan occupied in the
political movement. The agenda of the political movement was set by the largely
secular elites of the Muslims of European Russia, with little contribution
coming from Turkestan. There were no Central Asian delegates at the first two
congresses and only a few at the third,[50] where the question of creating a
Muslim spiritual assembly for Turkestan received some attention.[51] Only one
Central Asian was elected to a commission of the congress.[52] In any case, the
congress's deliberations never took practical form, and the organs of
empire-wide organization of the Muslim community remained on paper only.
On 3 June 1907, Prime Minister P. Stolypin dissolved the Second Duma and
revamped electoral laws in an attempt to manufacture a more pliant legislature.
Representation of inorodtsy was cut drastically, and Turkestan was completely
disenfranchised. This coup also put an end to the Muslim congresses, and their
deliberations came to naught. The state never allowed the Ittifaq to register as
a political party[53] and in the increasingly repressive political climate after
1907, even the purely cultural and educational activities of the body atrophied.
Muslim political activity was restricted to a small Muslim Faction in the Duma.
Legal action had strict limits, as the attempt by members of the Muslim Faction
to organize a Fourth Muslim Congress with official permission showed. The
conference, convened in St. Petersburg in June 1914 to allow members of the
Muslim Faction to discuss educational and religious issues with their
constituents, was attended by forty officially approved delegates, who met
behind closed doors. In this era of restricted activity, Turkestan again took a
back seat. Now that the Muslim Faction in the
[50] The available documents of the congress do not provide a complete list of