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‘He Causes a Ruckus Wherever He Goes’: Saʿid Muḥammad al-ʿAsali as a missionary of modernism in north-west China
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2019
Abstract
This article examines the activities of the Syrian hadith scholar Saʿid Muḥammad al-ʿAsali al-Ṭarabulsi al-Shami (1870–1932?), better known as Shami Damulla, as a window onto the relationship between the Ottoman empire and the Muslims of Xinjiang, or Eastern Turkistan. Scholars of Islam in the Soviet Union have identified al-ʿAsali as an influential figure in Soviet Turkistan in the 1920s, but much remains to be clarified about his formative years, and his multiple sojourns in China prior to the Russian Revolution. Here, I seek to fill some of these gaps by tracing al-ʿAsali's connections to modernist and revivalist scholarly circles in India and the Middle East, his activities in Xinjiang, and the strategies he adopted to insert himself into the relationship between the Ottoman court and China. These strategies were both political and intellectual. While moving within Muslim communities across Eurasia, al-ʿAsali also sought to engage the Chinese tradition on its own terms, authoring a 1905 study of Qing institutions entitled The Law of China (Qanun al-Sin)—a rare example of intellectual exchange between late-Ottoman Islamic reformism and the revitalized Confucianism of the late Qing. From a diverse range of sources, a picture emerges of a figure much more complicated, though no less controversial, than can be found in existing characterizations of al-ʿAsali.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019
Footnotes
This research was carried out with the support of an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE170100330), funded by the Australian government. The article has benefited greatly from the comments of its reviewers, as well as from colleagues at various presentations, including at the Middle East Institute at Columbia University and Sydney University's China Studies Centre. The title is taken from a hostile article on al-ʿAsali in the Soviet press: Babur, ‘Qay Yerga Barsalar Tinch Turmaydilar’, Qizil Özbäkistan, 17 May 1925, p. 4.
References
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16 Hartmann gives the name of this shrine as ‘Paqaltschaq Mazar’, a location that I have been unable to identify. Martin Hartmann, Chinesisch-Turkestan: Geschichte, Verwaltung, Geistesleben, und Wirtschaft, Gebauer-Schwetschke Druckerei und Verlag, Halle, 1908, p. 101.
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29 Xin, Xia, ‘Shengyu shiliutiao fu lü yijie’ [‘The Sixteen Sacred Maxims with Simple Explications of the Code’], in Zhongguo lüxue wenxian [Documents on Chinese Legal Studies], Yifan, Yang (ed.), vol. 4 of Di-si ji, Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, Beijing, 2007, pp. 545–624Google Scholar.
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31 Two copies of the Book of Li survive in the collection of the Al-Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Tashkent, accession nos Bosma 11721, 11867. Wolfram Eberhard was the first to point out that the Turkic text diverges considerably from Xia Xin's work. See ‘Bemerkungen zum “Li Kitabi”’ [‘Comments on “Li Kitabi”’], Türk Hukuk Tarihi Dergisi, vol. 1, 1941–42, pp. 193–9. The maxims are reduced to the simplest of moral exhortations (with the first, on filial piety, omitted entirely) and, at times, the text borrows from other works, including the Yuan-dynasty Twenty-Four Exemplars of Filial Piety (Ershisi xiao).
32 Three of al-ʿAsali's contemporaries produced studies of the Turkic text of the Li Kitabi. The linguist Nikolai Katanov published a transcription and translation in 1902. In March–April of 1905, Prussian archaeologist Albert von le Coq read through the text in Turfan with the help of a translator and eventually published a study on it in 1925. Finally, the Turkistani Jadidist Ẕakirjan Furqat came across the book while living in Yarkand. He transmitted its contents to the organ of the tsarist administration in Tashkent, Türkistan Vilayatining Gazeti [Turkistan Provincial News], which printed a serialized edition of the Turkic text. See Katanov, N., ‘Man'chzhursko-Kitaiskii “li” na narechii tiurkov Kitaiskago Turkestana’ [‘The Manchu-Chinese “Li” in the Dialect of the Turks of Chinese Turkistan'], Zapiski Vostochnogo Otdeleniia Imperatorskago Russkago Arkheologicheskago Obshchestva, vol. 14, 1902, pp. 31–75Google Scholar; Albert von le Coq, ‘Das Lī-Kitābī’ [‘The Book of Li'], Kőrősi Csoma-Arkhivum, vol. 1, no. 6, 1925, pp. 439–79; Ẕakirjan Furqat, ‘Qavaʿid-i Chin va Umurat-i Siyasi’ [‘The Laws of China and Its Political Affairs’], in Asarlar Mazhmuasi [Selected Works], Qo'lyozmalar Instituti, Tahrir va Nashriyot Bo'limi, Tashkent, 1991, pp. 262–80.
33 This tradition could be said to begin with Aleksei Agafonov's translation of the Sacred Edict into Russian in 1788: Manzhurskago i Kitaiskago Khana Kansiia kniga pridvornykh politicheskikh pouchenii i nravouchitelʹnykh razsuzhdenii sobrannaia synom ego Khanom Iun-dzhinom [Courtly Political Exhortations and Moral Disquisitions by the Manchu and Chinese Emperor Kangxi, Collected by His Son the Emperor Yongzheng], Aleksei Agafonov (trans.), v Tipografii Vil'kovskago, Saint Petersburg, 1788. Nineteenth-century works include W. Milne, The Sacred Edict: Containing Sixteen Maxims of the Emperor Kang-He, Amplified by His Son, the Emperor Yoong-Ching, Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen, London, 1817; A. Théophile Piry, Le saint édit: étude de littérature chinoise [The Holy Edict: Study of Chinese Literature], Bureau des statistiques, Inspectorat général des douanes, Shanghai, 1879.
34 [Rashid Riḍa], ‘Qanun al-Ṣin’ [‘The Law of China’], al-Manar, vol. 9, no. 12, 1907, p. 948.
35 [Muḥammad Kurd ʿAli], ‘Qanun al-Ṣin’ [‘The Law of China’], al-Muqtabas, vol. 1, no. 12, 1907, pp. 663–4.
36 Tunji Khangdi, Qanun al-Ṣin, p. 58.
37 Ibid., p. 24.
38 Ibid., p. 58.
39 Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2016, pp. 471–82.
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42 Ibid., pp. 26, 36.
43 Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi imperii [AVPRI below], f. 188, op. 761, d. 768, ll. 56–57ob.
44 AVPRI f. 188, op. 761, d. 768, ll. 12–13ob, 56–57ob. India Office Records [IOR below] L/PS/7/217, doc. 1234. I have discussed this episode at greater length in Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2016, Chapter 3.
45 In his biographical dictionary, Qurban ʿAli Khalidi records that al-ʿAsali visited Tarbaghatay twice in 1327/1909–10, while consular reports indicate that he had already been in Tarbaghatay once in 1908. Frank, A. J. and Gosmanov, Mirkasym A. (eds), An Islamic Biographical Dictionary of the Eastern Kazakh Steppe, 1770–1912, Brill, Leiden, 2005, p. 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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50 Commins, David Dean, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990, pp. 137–8Google Scholar.
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52 Shinichiro, Ōishi, ‘Kashugaru ni okeru jadīdo undō: Mūsā Bayofu ke to shinhōshiki kyōiku’ [‘The Jadidist Movement in Kashgar: The Musabayev Family and New-Method Education’], Tōyō Gakuhō, vol. 78, no. 1, 1996, p. 8Google Scholar.
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55 Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011, p. 93.
56 ‘Kaşgar Şeyhü’l-İslam Mı, Baba Tahir'in Refik-i Sabıkı Mı?’ [‘The Sheikh ül-Islam of Kashgar, or Baba Tahir's Former Colleague?’], Tearüf-i Müslimin, vol. 1, no. 8, 14 Receb 1328/July 22, 1910, pp. 136–7. The ʿAbd al-Qadir mentioned here may refer to Kashgar's chief qadi ʿAbd al-Qadir, or to the reformist scholar ʿAbd al-Qadir Damulla, who is known to have visited the Ottoman empire in this period.
57 In 1903, Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamid exiled Baba Tahir to North Africa for fraud. See Aynur, Hatice, ‘II Abdülhamid Dönemi Basın Yayın Dünyasının Kötü Adamı Malumatçı Baba Tahir’ [‘A Villain of the Printing World in the Age of ʿ Vi al-Ḥamid II: The Informationist Baba Tahir’], Toplumsal Tarih, vol. 20, no. 128, 2004, pp. 62–5Google Scholar.
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60 Foreign Office Records, FO 371/1016, p. 156.
61 Archive of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica (IMH below), 03-32-103-02-001.
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63 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Babıali Evrak Odası (BOA BEO below), 4204/315286, p. 5. IMH 03-36-044-03-043. Note that Ghabdullah Bubi's account contradicts this version of events: he says that it was the Kashgar ʿulama who stripped al-ʿAsali of the hair, and that they installed it in a local mosque, on display to the public. See ‘Shäekh Saʿid ʿAsäli Kem Ol?’ [‘Who Is Shaykh Saʿid ʿAsali?’], in Öch Tomlïq Saylanma Äsärlär [Selected Works in Three Volumes], Ghabdullah Bubi (ed.), MS Nikolai Lobachevsky Scientific Library, Kazan, vol. 2, fols 131a–132b.
64 BOA BEO, 4204/315286, p. 6.
65 BOA BEO, 4204/315286, p. 2.
66 Ahmed Kemal Habibzade, Çin-Türkistan Hatiraları [Memoirs of Chinese Turkistan], Kitabevi, İstanbul, 1996, p. 160.
67 Bey, Asya'da Beş Türk, pp. 238–40.
68 On al-ʿAsali's intervention into conflict around school reform in Ghulja, see Mai-ha-mai-te-han Ka-ma-li, ‘Yili xueye zhi zhong de xinjiu jiaoxuefa zhi zheng’ [‘The Struggle between Old and New Teaching Methods in Education in Ili’], Yili wenshi ziliao, vol. 1, 1984, p. 79.
69 Bubi, ‘Shäekh Saʿid ʿAsäli Kem Ol?’.
70 von Hentig, Werner Otto (ed.), Von Kabul nach Shanghai: Bericht über die Afghanistan-Mission 1915/16 und die Rückkehr über das Dach des Welt und durch die Wüsten Chinas [From Kabul to Shanghai: Report on the Afghanistan Mission of 1915/16 and the Return over the Roof of the World and through the Deserts of China], second ed., Libelle Verlag, Konstanz, 2009, pp. 180–1Google Scholar.
71 Xie Bin, Xinjiang youji [A Travelogue of Xinjiang], Wenhai chubanshe, Taibei, 1974, p. 183.
72 IMH 03-36-044-03-043.
73 İsa Yusuf Alptekin, Esir Doğu Türkistan için [For Captive Eastern Turkistan], Doğu Türkistan Neşriyat Merkezi, Istanbul, 1985, p. 134.
74 Ziya Yergök, Sarıkamış’tan Esarete (1915–1920): Tuğgeneral Ziya Yergök’ün Anıları [From Sarikamish to Exile: The Memoirs of Brigadier Ziya Yergök], Remzi, Istanbul, 2005, pp. 188–91.
75 Muminov, ‘Fundamentalist Challenges to Local Islamic Traditions’, p. 254.
76 Sartori, Paolo, ‘What Went Wrong? The Failure of Soviet Policy on sharīʿa Courts in Turkestan, 1917–1923’, Die Welt des Islams, vol. 50, nos 3–4, 2010, pp. 397–434CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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78 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii, f. 514, op. 1, d. 181, ll. 31ob–32. Note that the catalogue of the Yanbian Prefectural Archive (online at time of writing, but now unavailable) describes a document dating to January 1927, entitled ‘Order of the Governor of Jilin Province on the Turk Shami Damulla (Xia-mi Da-mao-la) Spreading His Pan-Islamic Ideology (da Huiguo zongjiao zhuyi)’. If this is indeed a reference to al-ʿAsali, then his trip to China evidently took him all the way to Manchuria and must be considered a significant part of his activities in the 1920s.
79 Yergök, Sarıkamış’tan Esarete, p. 205.
80 Note, though, that Paolo Sartori and Bakhtiyar Babajanov have recently questioned the existence of this circle and argued that al-ʿAsali's intellectual influence in Soviet Turkistan may have been exaggerated. ‘Being Soviet, Muslim, Modernist, and Fundamentalist in 1950s Central Asia’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 62, 2019, p. 137Google Scholar.
81 Ibrahim ibn ʿAbd Allah Ḥazimi, Mawsuʿat Aʿlam al-Qarn al-Rabiʿ ʿAshar wa-l-Khamis ʿAshar al-Hijri fi al-ʿAlam al-ʿArabi wa-l-Islami: min 1301–1417 H [Encyclopaedia of Luminaries of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries AH in the Arabic and Islamic World: 1301–1417 AH], Dar al-Sharif, Riyad, 1998, vol. 1, p. 70.
82 Baoerhan, ‘Fan yisilan zhuyi he fan tuerqi zhuyi’, p. 186.
83 Zhao Zhenwu, Xixing riji [Diary of a Journey to the West], Chengda shifan chubanbu, Beijing, 1933, pp. 294–5, 299–300. Zhao's statement here that he studied with al-ʿAsali in the eighth year of the Chinese Republic (namely 1919) must be corrected in light of what we know of al-ʿAsali's itinerary through this period.
84 Commins, Islamic Reform, p. 5.
85 ‘Umum Türkistan-i Çini ve Moğolistan-i Çini ahali-i müslimesi tarafından, hilafet-i İslamiyye merkezi İstanbulda bulunan wa-amrahum shūrá baynahum kavl-i keriminin mısdakı meclis-i mebʿusanda okulmaq içün bir arıza’ [‘A Petition from the Entire Muslim Population of Chinese Turkistan and Chinese (Inner?) Mongolia to Be Read in Istanbul, at the Centre of the Islamic Caliphate of Istanbul, in the Parliament which Represents Confirmation of the Noble Words “Whose Affair Is (Determined by) Consultation among Themselves”’], in Bubi, Öch Tomlïq Saylanma Äsärlär, vol. 2, fols 127a–130b.
86 More of al-ʿAsali's own writings may yet come to light and give us greater purchase on this question. Apart from al-ʿAsali's history of Eastern Turkistan of Eastern Turkistan mentioned above (note 49), we also have evidence that he wrote a travelogue of his time in China. Al-ʿAsali mentioned this work, entitled al-Raḥl wa-l-Naql, in his speech to the Ulama Association in Istanbul in 1910 (see note 53) and its existence is confirmed by the Russian archaeologist S. F. Ol'denburg, who met al-ʿAsali in 1910, and noted in his diary that he was the author of ‘a simple sayaḥatnama’. S. F. Ol'denburg, ‘Dnevnik Turkestanskoi ekspeditsii, snariazhennoi po Vysochaishemy poveleniiu Russkim komitetom po izucheniiu Srednei i Vostochnoi Azii' [‘Diary of the Turkistan Expedition, Outfitted at Imperial Command by the Russian Committee for the Study of Central and East Asia'], prepared for Publication by Bukharin, M. D. and Kamalov, A. K., Vostochnyi Turkestan i Mongoliia: Istoriia izucheniia v kontse XIX–pervoi treti XX veka [East Turkestan and Mongolia: A History of Study at the End of the First Third of the Twentieth Century], Pamiatniki istoricheskoi mysli, Moscow, 2018, vol. 2, pp. 556, 568Google Scholar. My thanks to Ablet Kamalov for bringing this reference to my attention.
87 Lauzière, Henri, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press, New York, 2016Google Scholar.