Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T03:58:54.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shrines and Sovereigns: Life, Death, and Religion in Rural Azerbaijan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2011

Bruce Grant
Bruce Grant*
Affiliation:
New York University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Shrines fill the Eurasian land mass. They can be found from Turkey in the west to China in the east, from the Arctic Circle in the north to Afghanistan in the south. Between town and country, they can consist of full-scale architectural complexes, or they may compose no more than an open field, a pile of stones, a tree, or a small mausoleum. They have been at the centers and peripheries of almost every major religious tradition of the region: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Yet in the formerly socialist world, these places of pilgrimage have something even more in common: they were often cast as the last bastions of religious observance when churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues were sent crashing to the ground in rapid succession across the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 654 - 681
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdullayev, Əbdurəhman. 1989. Şəkinin 30-cu il faciəsi. Kommunist, 15 Aug.: 3.Google Scholar
Abramson, David M. and Karimov, Elyor E.. 2007. Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the Uzbek State. In Sahadeo, Jeff and Zanca, Russell, eds., Everyday Life in Central Asia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 319–38.Google Scholar
Anonymous. 2008. Mir Mövsüm Ağanın möcüzəsi. Münasibət, 20 Sept.: 4.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arutiunov, Sergei Aleksandrovich. 2003. ‘Zakrytoe obshchestvo’—al'ternativa megapolisnomu potrebitel'stvu? In Dmitriev, V. A., ed., Adat. Kavkazskii kul'turnyi krug: Traditsii i sovremennost'. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi nauchno-issledovatel'skii institut narodov Kavkaza, 11–17.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 1986. The Idea for an Anthropology of Islam. Occasional Paper Series (March) of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Balzer, Marjorie Mandelstam. 1999. The Tenacity of Ethnicity: A Siberian Saga in Global Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bartelson, Jens. 1995. A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basilov, V. N. 1970. Kul't sviatykh v islame. Moscow: Mysl'.Google Scholar
Bennigsen, Alexandre and Wimbush, S. Enders. 1985. Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bliev, Mark M. and Degoev, Vladimir V.. 1994. Kavkazskaia voina. Moscow: Roset.Google Scholar
Bobrovnikov, Vladimir. 2006a. Abu Muslim in Islamic History and Mythology of the Northern Caucasus. In Gammer, Moshe and Wasserstein, David J., eds., Daghestan and the World of Islam. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarium Fennica, 23–44.Google Scholar
Bobrovnikov, Vladimir. 2006b. ‘Traditionalist’ versus ‘Islamist’ Identities in a Dagestani Collective Farm. Central Asian Survey 25, 3: 287–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodin, Jean. 1992 [1576]. On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books on Commonwealth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cattelino, Jessica. 2008. High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Clastres, Pierre. 1994. Archeology of Violence. New York: Semiotexte.Google Scholar
Datunashvili, I. I. 1967. Materialy k kharakteristike sovremennogo sostoianiia religioznosti v Belokanskom, Zakatal'skom i Kakhskom raionakh (Azerbaidzhanskaia SSR). In Klibanov, A. I., ed., Konkretnye issledovaniia sovremennykh religioznykh verovanii. Moscow: Mysl', 87–194.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Devin. 2002. Islam and the Legacy of Sovietology: A Review Essay on Yaacov Ro'i's Islam in the Soviet Union. Journal of Islamic Studies 13, 3: 298–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dragadze, Tamara. 1994. Islam in Azerbaijan: The Position of Women. In El-Solh, Camillia Fawzi and Malbro, Judy, eds., Muslim Women's Choices: Religious Belief and Social Reality. Oxford: Berg, 152–63.Google Scholar
Gadzhy-zade, Hikmet. 2005. Otchet o programme “Svoboda veroispovedovaniia v Azerbaidzhane posle 11 sentiabriia.” III Era 6: 5–36.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2002. A Semiotics of the Public/Private Distinction. Differences 13, 1: 77–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geiushev, Z. B. 1980. Bor'ba azerbaidzhanskikh prosvetitelei XIX—nachala XX v. za emansipatsiiu etiki ot religii. Voprosy filosofii 5: 135–40.Google Scholar
Goluboff, Sascha. 2008. Patriarchy through Lamentation in Azerbaijan. American Ethnologist 35, 1: 81–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Bruce. 2004. An Average Azeri Village (1930). Slavic Review 63, 4: 705–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Bruce. 2009. The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Guliyev, Hasan A. and Bəxtiyarov, Alai S.. 1968. Azərbaycanda qədim dini ayinlər və onların məişətdə qalıqları. Baku: Kommunist.Google Scholar
Hadjibeyli, Djeihun. 1958. Anti-Islamic Propaganda in Azerbaidzhan. Caucasian Review 7: 20–65.Google Scholar
Humphrey, Caroline. 1983. The Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society, and Religion on a Siberian Collective Farm. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Husband, William B. 2000. “Godless Communists”: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Iampol'skii, Z. I. 1960. Piry Azerbaidzhana. Voprosy istorii religii i ateizma VIII: 219–39.Google Scholar
Iampol'skii, Z. I. 1962. O pervobytnykh korniakh kul'ta sviatykh v Islame (po materialam Azerbaidzhana). Materialy po istorii Azerbaidzhana 5: 193–204.Google Scholar
Iloliev, Abdulmamad. 2008. Popular Culture and Religious Metaphor: Saints and Shrines in Wakhan Region of Tajikistan. Central Asian Survey 27, 1: 59–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kehl-Bodrogi, Krisztina. 2006. Who Owns the Shrine? Competing Meanings and Authorities at a Pilgrimage Site in Khorezm. Central Asian Survey 25, 3: 235–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemper, Michael. 2009. Studying Islam in the Soviet Union. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. 1998. The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Khalid, Adeeb. 2007. Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kligman, Gail. 1988. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics, and Popular Culture in Transylvania. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohl, Philip and Tsetskhladze, Gocha. 1995. Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology in the Caucasus. In Kohl, P. L. and Tsetskhladze, G. R., eds., Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 149–74.Google Scholar
Kudriavtseva, Elena. 2010. Konkurs na sviato mesto. Ogonek, 19 Apr. Online at: www.kommersant.ru (accessed July 2010).Google Scholar
Ledeneva, Alena. 1998. Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking, and Informal Exchange. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Luehrmann, Sonja. n.d. Secularism Soviet Style: Teaching Atheism and Religion in a Volga Republic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (in press).Google Scholar
Magerramov, Sokhrab. 2005. Islamskoe nasledie v regionakh Azerbaidzhana: Dzhabrail. III Era 6: 65–69.Google Scholar
Mamedli, G. 1959. Sviatye mesta. Bakinskii rabochii, 8 Dec.: 3.Google Scholar
Manning, Paul. 2009. Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred, Sublime, and Secular Objects. Ethnos 73, 3: 327–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meshchaninov, I. I. 1931. Piry Azerbaidzhana. Izvestiia gosudarstvennoi akademii istorii material'noi kul'tury 9, 4: 1–17.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 2008 [1859]. On Liberty and other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. 2000. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Narimanov, Nariman. 1925 [1913]. Pir: Sviashchennyi ochag. Moscow: Nauchnaia assotsiatsiia vostokovedeniia.Google Scholar
Ne'mət, Məşədixanım. 1992. Azərbaycanda pirlər. Baku: Azərnəşr.Google Scholar
Nəzirli, Şəmistan. 2003. Bolşeviklərə qarşı üsyanı (article in fourteen parts). Azərbaycan ordusu qəzəti, 2 Apr. (pt. 1): 4; 5 Apr. (pt. 2): 3; 8 Apr. (pt. 3): 3; 9 Apr. (pt. 4): 3; 19 Apr. (pt. 5): 4; 10 May (pt. 6): 4; 13 May (pt. 7): 4; 14 May (pt. 8): 4; 17 May (pt. 9): 4; 21 May (pt. 10): 4; 24 May (pt. 11): 4; 27 May (pt. 12): 4; 28 May (pt. 13): 4; 31 May (pt. 14): 4.Google Scholar
Peris, Daniel. 1998. Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Privratsky, Bruce. 2001. Muslim Turkistan: Kazak Religion and Collective Memory. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon.Google Scholar
Rodina. 1994. Perevernutyi mir beskonechnoi voiny [Roundtable discussion]. Rodina 3–4: 17–23.Google Scholar
Rogers, Douglas. 2009. The Old Land and the Russian Faith: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Roitman, Janet. 2005. Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rüstəmov, Cahid. 2006. Ağa Seyid Əli Mirmövsümzadə. n.p.Google Scholar
Rzakulizade, S. Dzh. 1982. Panteizm v Azerbaidzhane v X—XII vv. Baku: Elm.Google Scholar
Saroyan, Mark. 1997. Minorities, Mullahs and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union. Walker, Edward W., ed. Berkeley: International and Area Studies.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Carl. 1985. Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sergeeva, G. A. 1962. Fieldwork in Daghestan in 1959. Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 1, 2: 57–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shami, Seteney. 1999. Islam in the Post-Soviet Space: Imaginative Geographies of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 1, 1: 181–95.Google Scholar
Shami, Seteney. 2000. Engendering Social Memory: Domestic Rituals, Resistance, and Identity in the North Caucasus. In Feride, Acar and Ayse, Gunes-Ayata, eds., Gender and Identity Construction: Women of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Turkey. Leiden: Brill, 305–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adam T. 2005. Prometheus Unbound: Southern Caucasia in Prehistory. Journal of World Prehistory 19: 229–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swietochowski, Tadeusz. 1999. Azerbaijan: Perspectives from the Crossroads. Central Asian Survey 18, 4: 419–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swietochowski, Tadeusz. 2002. Azerbaijan: The Hidden Faces of Islam. World Policy Journal (Fall): 69–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap.Google Scholar
Tohidi, Nayereh. 1998. “Guardians of the Nation”: Women, Islam, and the Soviet Legacy of Modernization in Azerbaijan. In Herbert, L. Bodman and Nayereh, Tohidi, eds., Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity within Unity. London: Lynne Reiner, 137–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyson, David. 1997. Shrine Pilgrimage in Turkmenistan as a Means to Understand Islam among the Turkmen. Central Asia Monitor 1: 15–32.Google Scholar
Wagner-Pacifici, Robin. 2005. The Art of Surrender: Decomposing Sovereignty at Conflict's End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Robert. 2001. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Yunusov, Arif. 2004. Azərbaycanda İslam. Baku: Zaman.Google Scholar
Yurchak, Alexei. 2006. Everything Was Forever until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar