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DICTIONARY OF CENTRAL ASIAN ISLAMIC TERMS

ALLEN J. FRANK

JAHANGIR MAMATOV

2002

Dunwoody Press

(dunwoodypress.com)

(703)-921-1621

ISBN:1-881265-88-9

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:2002111215

Printed and Bound in the United States of America

This dictionary owes its existence to several features evident in the development of Central Asian languages over the course of the twentieth century. The first feature is the development of vernacular "national" languages, to a large degree created by Soviet academic establishments both in the ethnic republics and in Moscow. Beginning in the 1920's these formalized vernacular languages, declared to exist for each of the titular ethnic republics, supplanted existing and more or less standardized classical languages of Islamic scholarship and discourse, namely, Persian, Arabic, and Turki, also known as Chaghatay. As Soviet lexicographers codified and established languages for the respective Central Asian republics, they not only formalized literary norms in grammar and lexicons, but also consciously excluded vocabulary believed to be obsolete or irrelevant.

Thus, another feature of Soviet Central Asian lexicography was the minimal inclusion of Islamic terminology in these dictionaries, which form the lexicographic foundation for all modern Central Asian languages. As a result of Soviet ideological dogma, the bulk of Islamic terms were excluded from these dictionaries, and those that were included were often labeled "obsolete" or were given erroneous or misleading definitions. Most dictionaries of the Central Asian languages produced in the West have themselves in large part been translations of earlier Russian or monolingual dictionaries, and for various reasons have offered little in the way of an expanded treatment of Islamic terms.

It should be added that the modern Uyghur literary language evolved under very similar circumstances, albeit under the aegis of the Chinese Communist Party, which differed little from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its evaluation of religion and its general lexicographic approaches to documenting "minority" languages. As a result, the standardization of the modern Uyghur literary language followed largely the same patterns as the Soviet Central Asian languages.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islamic institutions and Islamic discourse have been reestablishing themselves throughout the Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union. Both Westerners seeking to read Central Asian Islamic texts, as well as Central Asians themselves, are lacking basic lexicographic resources to define an important body of vocabulary that is at best poorly documented in existing dictionaries. Thus, at a minimum, it is hoped this dictionary can serve as a supplement to the existing lexicographic corpus.

Identifying and documenting Islamic terminology is admittedly a subjective, and even prescriptive, task. Nevertheless, some explanation is in order as to the criteria by which Islamic terminology was identified, selected, and included in this dictionary. The authors first of all determined that words simply borrowed from Arabic, or in the case of the Turkic languages, from Persian as well, were not necessarily Islamic terms. Rather, terms relating specifically to Islamic concepts, Islamic ritual and law, technical terms relating to hadith, hajj, philosophy, Sufism, hagiolatry, and pligrimage, as well as proper nouns relating to the names and epithets of God and the prophets, those relating to specific religious locales central to the Islamic faith as a whole, and the names of the suras of the Qur'an, were the central features of the Islamic terminology the authors sought to document. The authors expressly refrained from an encyclopedic approach, thereby avoiding very extensive definitions and leaving out the bulk of names and locales relating to Islamic history following the rule of the first four Caliphs. Readers who require a more detailed discussion of a given term can consult an encyclopedia, such as the various editions of the Encyclopedia of Islam. In short, the compilers did not seek to use Central Asian Islamic terminology to exclusively define what is Islamic, but rather sought to inclusively determine what can be considered Islamic terminology in the Central Asian languages.

Another principle underlying the documentation of Islamic terms is the emphasis on a common and shared Islamic vocabulary among the modern Central Asian languages. To be sure, the Islamic vocabulary of each Central Asian language is a unique phenomenon, and it is hoped this dictionary encourages the examination of Islamic terminology on a regional level as well as for each language individually, both historically and in terms of current usage. While the structure of this dictionary documents the semantic variance of some specific terms across region, nevertheless, it is hoped that this dictionary can at least partially establish the survival of a common Islamic vocabulary among Central Asians through the Soviet era. As a result, each entry appears in a classical Arabic-script spelling (as it would appear in Chaghatay or Persian), a standard romanized transcription (without diacritics), and a common definition. The cognate forms (or occasionally the semantic equivalents) in the modern languages appear underneath, with accompanying variants in the common definitions where applicable.

The dictionary is based entirely on verifiable sources. The authors expressly avoided "reconstructing" terms, and only included vernacular forms that appeared in graphic or audio texts or that could be corroborated by native speakers. Native speakers were extensively consulted for Uzbek, Tajik, Karakalpak, and Uyghur terms. In addition to the admittedly inadequate Soviet dictionaries–although the treatment of Islamic terms in Soviet dictionaries varies widely by language and deserves a study in its own right–the authors made use of a large body of published materials. This included popular Islamic dictionaries, educational literature about Islam, hagiographic pamphlets, calendar books, explanations of Islamic legal principles, and collections of legends concerning prophets. Another important source was vernacular translations of the Qur'an. The authors had access to complete Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, and Uyghur translations of the Qur'an. The authors also made use of literature produced by Uzbek and Tajik Islamic opposition groups, including leaflets and press releases, but also audio cassettes of sermons and recordings of press interviews. While the corpus of materials was far from exhaustive, given the volume of Islamic publishing in Central Asia, the authors are confident it is a sufficiently representative corpus. Nevertheless, the sources for some languages remain better than others as the volume (and availability) of religious publishing varies widely among the nine vernacular languages covered in this dictionary.

The user should be made aware that the Islamic terminology, as it appears in the sources, displays a great variety of spellings and even semantic values. The absence of most Islamic terms in Soviet-era dictionaries makes such a situation inevitable. However, it is also important to realize that the educational levels of the authors of these Islamic texts vary widely as well. Some are well-educated Islamic scholars who are conversant both in the Islamic terminology and may or may not be equally at ease in their vernacular literary languages. Others have no Islamic education at all or are the exclusive product of the Soviet education system Indeed, many "specialists" on Islam who have emerged since 1990 had in Soviet times been "specialists" on Scientific Atheism and the authors of anti-religious treatises, in which understanding the fine points of Islamic religious practice or terminology was, to say the least, not required. The immediate result, then, is a wide variation in spellings and, occasionally, in definitions as well.

A note is also in order regarding the definition of Central Asia. In defining this region the authors have in mind the accepted scholarly definition of Islamic Central Asia as a specific and unified historical and cultural region within the Islamic world at large. This region comprises the republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, plus the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Linguistically it comprises the respective titular literary languages of these republics, namely: Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Turkmen, as well as Karakalpak, the titular literary language of the Karakalpak Autonomous Republic in northwestern Uzbekistan.

Tatar and Bashkir have also been added to this dictionary, two languages spoken by Muslim nationalities residing in the Volga-Ural region of Russia, centered in the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. While the Volga-Ural region is itself a specific historical and cultural region within the Islamic world and is not, strictly speaking, part of Central Asia, these languages were included because of the Volga-Ural region's close ethnic, historical, and religious connections with Central Asia. As a particular region of the Islamic world, the Volga-Ural region's religious bonds with Central Asia are closer than with any other part of the Islamic world, and the development of virtually every aspect of Islamic culture in the Volga-Ural region, especially before 1917, can be directly linked to Central Asian models and institutions. Furthermore, since the mid 1980's Islamic publishing has been especially intense in the Tatar language throughout Russia.