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Constructing Colonial Legality in Russian Central Asia: On Guardianship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2014

Paolo Sartori
Paolo Sartori*
Affiliation:
Institute for Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences
*
Paolo.Sartori@oeaw.ac.at
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Abstract

The history of Islamic law in Russian Central Asia defies many of the categorizations offered by both global and Russian imperial history. Recent studies of law in the age of colonialism have concluded that the attainment of legal hegemony in the colonies was consequent upon the initiative of indigenes that strategically manipulated jurisdictions; as colonial subjects increasingly involved the state in their private conflicts, they effectively pushed their masters to consolidate the institutional arrangements through which the state dispensed justice. Historians of the Russian Empire have reached a diametrically different conclusion: under tsarist rule, they argue, Muslims continued to access the services of the “native courts,” which remained mostly untouched following Russia's southeastward expansion. As the empire promoted a policy of differentiated jurisprudence, Russians effectively safeguarded the integrity of Islamic law. I argue that both of the aforementioned approaches are confined to the level of institutional history, and thus fail to consider that the creation of colonial hegemony rested on ways in which colonial subjects understood law and viewed themselves as legal subjects. I show that Russians, from the outset of their rule in Central Asia, initiated Muslims into colonial forms of legality by overcoming the jurisdictional separation they had themselves put in place. In allowing the local population to file their grievances with the military bureaucracy, the Russians effectively pushed Central Asians to reify colonial notions of justice, and thereby distance themselves from the tradition of Islamic legal practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , April 2014 , pp. 419 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2014 

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References

1 The unpublished material upon which this paper is based comes from post-Soviet archives, and my citation of it follows the standard system in the field of Russian studies. The archival collection, the inventory, the file, and the folio are thus indicated respectively with the following Russian abbreviations: f. (fond), op. (opis'), d. (delo), and l. (list). All the translations from Russian, Persian, and Chaghatay are my own.

2 When reading the royal warrants of appointment to the office of judge, one can discern formulaic expressions indicating that it was incumbent on the qadi to “manage the possessions of orphans and the demented as well as appoint guardians” (ẓabṭ-i amwāl-i ītām wa majānīn wa naṣb-i awṣiyāʾ). See A. Urunbaev, G. Dzhuraeva, and S. Gulomov, Katalog sredneaziatskikh zhalovannykh gramot iz fonda Instituta vostokovedeniia im. Abu Raikhana Beruni Akademii Nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan (Halle and Saale: Mitteilungen des Sonderforschungsbereich, 23 Oct. 2007), documents 18, 22, 23, 68, 69, 80, and 120. These texts attest to practices in Kokand and Bukhara, but royal warrants issued in Khorezm display a similar formulaic phrasing: “[It is incumbent on the qadi] to safeguard the possessions of the orphans” (ītām amwālī muḥāfiẓatīgha iqdām kīltūrūb). See Karimov, El'ior, Regesty kaziiskikh dokumentov i khanskikh iarlikov Khivinskogo khanstva XVII—nachala XX v. (Tashkent: Fan, 2007)Google Scholar, document U-r 3, p. 201.

3 Appeal to the Tashkent city commandant, 27 Apr. 1896, Central State Archive of Uzbekistan (henceforth TsGARUz), f. I-17, op. 1, d. 5775, ll. 9–9ob.

4 Receipt (in Chaghatay), 21 Feb. 1892, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 5775, l. 33.

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6 The original in Chaghatay is in TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 5775, l. 22.

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32 See a circular regulating the office of the qadis in Astana (Khorezm), Jan. 1910, TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 579, ll. 1–2 (in Chaghatay).

33 TsGARUz, f. I-125, op. 1, d. 498, l. 29, three early twentieth-century qadis' seals.

34 This goes against the presumption that locals filed their grievances in colonial courts rather than in the bureaucratic apparatus of the colony. See Merry, “Colonial Law and Its Uncertainties,” 1068.

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38 Ibid., 13.

39 Ibid., 148–49.

40 Ibid., 168.

41 Benton, “Law and Empire,” 1098.

42 Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, 168; Comaroff, “Colonialism, Culture, and the Law,” 305–14.

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52 Nineteenth-century Central Asian jurists did not utilize al-Hidāya to deliver legal opinions on every point of law. It would be thus helpful to clarify in which cases muftis referred to al-Hidāya in order to situate this text within the broader Ḥanafī literature.

53 Polozhenie ob upravlenii v stepnykh oblastiakh, in Kraft, I. I., Sbornik uzakonenii o kirgizakh stepnykh oblastei (Orenburg: Tipo-litografiia P. N. Zharipova, 1898)Google Scholar, 103, 108 (articles 119–20, 125); Materialy po kirgizskomu zemlepol'zovaniiu: Syr-Dar'inskaia oblast': Aulieatinskii uezd (Tashkent: Tipo-Litografiia V. M. Il'ina, 1915), 54–55Google Scholar; Materialy po kirgizskomu zemlepol'zovaniiu raiona reki Chu i nizov'ev reki Talasa Cherniaevskogo i Aulieatinskogo uezdov Syr-Dar'inskoi oblasti (Tashkent: Tipo-Litografiia V.M. Il'ina, 1915)Google Scholar, 100. See also Campbell, Ian W., “Settlement Promoted, Settlement Contested: The Shcherbina Expedition of 1896–1903,” Central Asian Survey 30, 3–4 (2011): 423–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 425.

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56 Werth, Paul, “Changing Conceptions of Difference, Assimilation, and Faith in the Volga-Kama Region, 1740–1870,” in Burbank, J., von Hagen, M., and Remnev, A., eds., Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, 178.

57 Dingel'shtedt, N., “Zametki. Sudebnoe preobrazovanie v Turkestane,” Zhurnal grazhdanskogo i ugolovnogo prava 9 (1892): 1–75Google Scholar, here 5.

58 See, for example, the fatwā issued by the Tashkent muftis in 1868, which backed the Russian statutory laws changing the procedures for appointing qadis. The text has been discussed in Sartori, “Judicial Elections,” 85.

59 Martin, Virginia, Law and Custom in the Steppe: The Kazakhs of the Middle Horde and Russian Colonialism (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2001)Google Scholar; Bobrovnikov, V. O., Musuĺmane Severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow: Vostochnaia literatura, 2002)Google Scholar; Jersild, Austin, Orientalism and Empire: North Caucasus Mountain Peoples and the Georgian Frontier (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Kemper, Michael, Herrschaft, Recht und Islam in Daghestan: Von den Khanaten und Gemeindebünden zum ğihād-Staat (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2005)Google Scholar; Crews, Robert D., For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

60 Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 273.

61 Ibid., 258.

62 Ibid., 259.

63 This opens up interesting parallels with British India, where “we do not have a simple recurrence of older forms of address; instead, we have a palimpsest of experiments”; Bear, Laura, Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 116.

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68 While it is true that Qazaqs, following a request of the Russians, produced summaries of their rulings so that these could serve as legal precedents, there is no evidence to date that they resorted to these codes when applying customary law; Sartori, Paolo, “Murder in Manghishlaq: Notes on an Instance of Application of Qazaq Customary Law in Khiva,” Der Islam 88, 2 (2012): 217–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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70 A revealing parallel can be drawn here by considering the French treatment of customary law in North Africa. See Scheele, Judith, “A Taste for Law: Rule Making in Kabylia (Algeria),” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, 4 (2008): 895–919.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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72 TsGARUz f. I-36, op. 1, d. 6009, ll. 163ob–164; 169ob.

73 Morrison, Russian Rule, 269.

74 See articles 252, 253, and 254 in the 1886 statutory laws: Polozhenie ob upravlenii Turkestanskogo kraia, repr. in Masevich, M. G., ed., Materialy po istorii politicheskogo stroia Kazakhstana (Alma-Ata: Izdatel‘stvo Akademii Naukh Kazakhskoi SSR, 1976)Google Scholar, 372. The articles were left unchanged in the revised version of the statutory laws that was published in 1901.

75 Nil S. Lykoshin, “Kazii (Narodnye sud'i): Bytovoi ocherk osedlogo naseleniia Turkestana,” in Russkii Turkestan: Sbornik 1. Prilozhenie k gazete “Russkii Turkestan” (Tashkent: Tipografiia “Russkii Turkestan,” 1899), 51–52.

76 Otchet po revizii Turkestanskogo kraia po Vysochaishemu poveleniyu Senatorom Gofmeisterom Grafom K. K. Palenom: Narodnye Sudy Turkestanskogo Kraia (St. Petersburg: Senatskaia Tipografiia, 1909), 31–32Google Scholar.

77 See Morrison, A., “Sufism, Pan-Islamism and Information Panic: Nil Sergeevich Lykoshin and the Aftermath of the Andijan Uprising,” Past and Present 214 (2012): 255–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 262–64.

78 Raport, 19 May 1892, TsGARUz, f. I-36, op. 1, d. 3367, l. 8ob.

79 Here the qadi showed compliance with the prescriptive rules of the khans. See the royal warrants for the appointment of qadi, which made it incumbent upon the judges to act as guardians of the wealth of minors (see note 2).

80 This is clearly reflected in the deeds that sanctioned the position of the qadi vis-à-vis the minors. Such records clarify, for instance, that in acting in the capacity of guardian the qadi was allowed to seize the minors' money (ba-wilāyat-i ʿāmma-yi khwud qābiż-i mablagh). See TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 6, l. 60. Other records emphasize that the custody (Ar. muḥāfaẓa) of such money is among the prerogatives of the guardianship performed by the qadi (mablagh-i madhkūr dar taṣarruf wa muḥāfiẓat-i qāżī-i madkūr barāy-i muḥāfiẓat ba-wilāyat al-qażā būd). See TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 7, l. 10; see also TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 7, l. 17: this deed clarifies that the monies were kept at the disposal of the qadi in order to safeguard them (ba-wilāyat-i qaẓā īstāda barāy-i jihat-i muḥāfiẓat).

81 Muḥyī al-Dīn Khwāja to Putintsev (in Chaghatay), 20 Jan. 1892, TsGARUz, f. I-36, op. 1, d. 3367, ll. 3–6.

82 4800 rub: Mukhitdin sdal v bank po prikazaniiu Kapitana Lykoshina, General Office, Syr-Daria Provincial Government, Zhurnal, no. 482, 8 Oct. 1897, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 5775, l. 53ob.

83 On 26 January and 24 April of 1892, Muḥyī al-Dīn Khwāja entrusted, among other things, bank checks to Fāṭima Bībī and Fażīlat Bībī, respectively. On those occasions the women also discharged the qadi from any obligations regarding the minors’ wealth: TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 48, 46.

84 Ruling of the Tashkent qadis' assembly, 5 Oct. 1893, TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 23, l. 28.

85 18 Mar. 1892, TsGARUz, f. I-36, op. 1, d. 3373, ll. 20–21ob.

86 This translation is based on the Chaghatay original of the fatwā (unstamped), TsGARUz, f. I-36, op. 1, d. 3367, l. 2, 7.

87 Putintsev to the military governor, 19 May 1892, TsGARUz, f. I-36, op. 1, d. 3367, ll. 8–9.

88 Āja Bībī to Tvertinov, 24 Dec. 1896, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6468, ll. 99–99ob.

89 Āja Bībī to Tvertinov, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6468, l. 101–1оb (4 Jan. 1897), 103–103ob (24 Mar. 1897); 112 (17 Apr. 1897).

90 TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6468, l. 101–101оb.

91 See three receipts for bank checks notarized before Tashkent qadis in 1892 and entrusted to three widows, in TsGARUz, f. I-164, op. 1, d. 7, ll. 46, 47, 48.

92 General Office, Syr-Daria Provincial Government, Zhurnal, no. 291, 14 June 1897, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6468, ll. 39–39ob.

93 Ibid.

94 In the year 1900, the qadi of the Kukcha district in Tashkent transferred minors' money to the state bank in twelve cases: TsGARUz, f. I-364, op. 1, d. 50, entries 22–31, 59, 79.

95 Nāẓira Bībī to the governor-general, 10 July 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 36ob.

96 Nāẓira Bībī to the city commandant, 10 Apr. 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, ll. 1, 5ob (15 May 1898), and 24ob (25 June 1898); Nāẓira Bībī to the military governor, 19 June 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 23; Nāẓira Bībī to the governor-general, 10 July 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 36.

97 TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 5ob.

98 City commandant to the state bank, 17 July 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, ll. 30–30ob.

99 State bank (Tashkent Section) to the military govenor, 24 July 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 28.

100 City commandant to the Syr-Darya Provincial Chancellery, 23 July 1898, TsGARUz, f. I-17, op. 1, d. 6366, l. 33–34ob.

101 Ibid., 40ob.

102 Crews, For Prophet and Tsar, 308, 317.

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