A Soviet Sultanate
Islam in Socialist Uzbekistan (1943-1991)
by Paolo Sartori
“A Soviet Sultanate” is the first English-language social history of Islam in Soviet Central Asia after WWII, and it focuses on a key question: what did it mean to be a Muslim in Socialist Uzbekistan? The notion that in the eyes of many Soviet citizens Socialist Uzbekistan was an abode of Islam forms the book’s framing device for understanding how the atheist project of the Soviet empire ultimately failed, but also how it simultaneously helped shape the range of meanings of Muslimness. The book’s central aim is to tell an epic narrative of resilience, resistance and subversion. It follows men and women who did not genuflect before the aggressive policies of forced secularization and did not abandon their sense of commitment to the otherworldly. By triangulating the bureaucratic output of atheist institutions with unpublished ethnography, hagiographical literature, and petitions addressed by Uzbeks to the Soviet muftis in Tashkent, “A Soviet Sultanate” brings together vignettes portraying lives lived in the company of God and His prophet, together with a teeming cast of saints, angels, and evil spirits.
- By (author) Paolo Sartori
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
Ismail Hakki Bursevi’s translation of and commentary on Fusus al-Hikam By Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi
Volumes 1-4
Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie
The Arts and Archaeology of Funerary Cultures in Islam
Volume 10.0
Boğazköy Tablets in the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations (Bo 95–Bo 3993)
Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesinde Bulunan Boğazköy Tabletleri (Bo 95–Bo 3993)
Volume 3
Co-production of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
Artefacts, Rituals, Communities, Narratives, Doctrines, Concepts
Volume 1
Discerning Religious Truth
A Didactic Exposition of the Logic and Epistemology of the Islamic Sciences
Volume 1
Explorations in Islamic Archaeology
Material Culture, Settlements, and Landscapes from the Mediterranean to Western Asia
Volume 7
Gender in Gandharan Art
Representations and Interactions in the Buddhist Context (1st-4th centuries CE)
Liberating the Repressed Self among Contemporary Chinese
A Theoretical Study Involving Tu Weiming and Jürgen Moltmann
Volume 41
Life on the Farm in Late Medieval Jerusalem
The Village of Beit Mazmil, its Occupants and their Industry over Five Centuries
Occasionalism Revisited
New Essays from the Islamic and Western Philosophical Traditions (2nd ed.)
Volume 2
Oil Lamps in the Holy Land during the Early and Later Islamic Periods (7th–16th/17th CE)
The Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority
Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Volume 54 2025
Papers from the fifty-seventh meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 27–29 June 2024
The Archaeology of Irrigation Technology and Water Management in the Islamic World
Proceedings of the Bahrain Conference, January 2024
The Identity at Death of the Old and Young from the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages on the Southeast Asian Mainland
The Lizhi 荔枝 (Lychee) in Chinese Literature
Translation of Chinese Sources by Michael J. Hagerty. With an introduction and edited by Hartmut Walravens
Volume 66
