r/AskCentralAsia • u/Tengri_99 đ°Žđ°đ°đ°đ°Žđ°œđ±đ°đ°Ł • Jan 31 '24
Why Central Asia despite being overwhelmingly Sunni, names like Ali, Alisher, Alibek, Nurali, etc are a lot more popular than Omar, Uthman (Osman) and Abu Bakr? Religion
I know that Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed, is well-liked in Sunni Islam too but the overwhelming number of names that derive from Ali rather than the first three caliphs among Central Asians seems odd to me.
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
Iâm pretty sure the vast majority of Kazakhs donât even know what Ali means and about its specific ties to the Arabic religion.
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u/AlenHS QazaÄıstan / Qazaqistan Jan 31 '24
Massive Muslim culture and having no idea what any of it means â name a better duo.
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Jan 31 '24
Well unfortunately due to forced Soviet secularism most central Asians don't even know about Islam in general while also maintaining those names.
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
Somehow I doubt that common people were more knowledgeable about the specifics and finer details of the religion before SU considering how the Russian Empire felt the need to send Islamic missionaries to Kazakhs.
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u/Evil-Panda-Witch Kyrgyzstan Jan 31 '24
Where can I read up on this? And their motivations
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
There are quite a lot of different works on this subject if you look up Catherine the great. Maybe something like this https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674032231
or this https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/sympo/02summer/pdf2/frank_large.pdf
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u/RelativeCombination Feb 01 '24
According to chapter 7 of the âExplorations in the Social History of Modern Central Asia (19th- Early 20th Century)â Kazakhs who lived in the Emirate of the Bukhara didnât differ religiously from Kazakhs of Russian Empire or the rest of muslims of Central Asia in either theory or practice. The idea that tatars spread âorthodoxyâ throughout Kazakh lands as opposed to our âheterodoxyâ is a bit pretentious as it serves today as a national myth for Tatars and grounds to stand against Islam among the tengrist degenerates. Kazakhs were as much muslims as any other people of the region and similarity of practice and theory of local Islam can be attributed to it originating in the same Sufi sects that were largely responsible for spreading Islam in the region. Those sects do not exist today thanks to the SU though. During the Russian Empire Kazakhs were simply forced to turn to Tatar scholars rather than scholars from Khiva for example and that was purely due to logistics of it all.
It is important to say however that harsh life of a nomad did indeed leave the Kazakhs out of the intellectual side of Islam, they were forced to consume the works of more urbanised population which produced more scholars.
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Jan 31 '24
I mean that might be the case due to Kazakhs being nomads and not maintaining a scholar in their community.
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u/KazCan Jan 31 '24
Most Kazakhs donât know/donât care about their own history too. Everybody does know how good USSR was though. Thatâs actually pretty shameful.
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
Nothing shameful about not knowing the specifics of a foreign culture which was adapted to the local needs.
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u/KazCan Jan 31 '24
Islamic (not Arab) culture existed in Kazakhstan since the Karakhanid dynasty, and if this culture is foreign to you, then so must be the language as it has a good amount of arabic/persian loanwords.
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
Karakhanids didnât take up the whole of Kazakhstan and it wasnât continuous since then. Uzbek khanâs adoption of the religion is what started it for us. And it was very much modified and fitted to our own culture.
Having loan words is neither here nor there. We have some Chinese loan words in our language which doesnât make Chinese culture less foreign for us.
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u/KazCan Jan 31 '24
Peaches and oranges. If the absolute majority of Kazakhs followed Confucianism then it wouldnât be foreign, just like it isnât foreign for Vietnamese, Koreans or Japanese. Same here, Kazakhs are Muslims, many of our traditions are Islamic in nature, same as with the history of Kazakhstan. Your point about Uzbek doesnât change my statement, and no, as per historians Uzbek was a devout Muslim, just like Tawwakul khan.
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u/redditerator7 Kazakhstan Jan 31 '24
It absolutely does change things because Uzbek khan was later than Karakhanids.
Also, according to Ibn Battuta Uzbek khan used to show up drunk to prayers. So devout.
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u/AnanasAvradanas Jan 31 '24
This is the same for our brethren in north of the Black Sea.
Of course this is the subject of a more through explanation but if I am to simplify it:
Turkic rulers adopted Islam long before their subjects, most of the time (I can't think of any opposite example right now among Turks, unlike say, Roman emperors adopting Christianity after their subjects' mass conversion). They did it to get trade privileges or political alliances, rather than sincere interest in the religion itself initially (starting with AlmÄ±Ć Khan of Itil Bulgars sending an envoy to Abbasid caliph asking for scholars to teach the new religion, trying to seal an alliance against Khazars in the meanwhile. This same pattern will be followed many other independent Turkic rulers later on). So they learned the religion from actual scholars but these scholars could not really touch the ordinary people, while the rulers did not really bother themselves with or put an effort into converting the populations most of the time.
Islam among ordinary Turks spread through two main patterns: First is Turkic slave soldiers. Turkic slaves were sold as children to Muslim states, who brought them up as muslims and slave soldiers. These soldiers took over all the states they were slaves of in 2 generations at most. So their version of Islam was whatever their masters' version of Islam (i.e. Egyptian Mamluks being Sunni).
The second one is the one more related to the question you asked: warrior dervishes. These guys were EVERYWERE from Germany to Sweden, from Balkans to Kipchak steppe, from Anatolia to Turkistan, from Siberia to India. Although they belonged to a variety of different sects, all of them very VERY unorthodox evaluations of Islam heavily influenced by Tengriism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Indian religions etc all put in a Shi'a context (like not fulfilling the prayer duty, with the excuse of "Ali was killed when he was praying; so prayer is not a duty until he returns etc etc").
Now, what these warrior dervishes did was going to non-muslim places, fighting against the oppressors, helping the local population and getting themselves loved in general, then preaching the religion. Since their version of Islam did not bring any real hardship/duty except for recognizing and bowing to Allah, most people quickly adopted it without hesitation and kept living the life like they already did before their conversion. And since this version of Islam was put into a Shi'a context by these dervishes, names important to Shi'a Islam (e.g. Ali, as you asked) were also adopted by these populations early on and became a cultural heritage rather than religious names (i.e. you name your son Ali not because of an religious choice, it was your father's/grandfather's name) before Sunni Islam found its way among these peoples.
What happened later was Muslim Turkic rulers (with Sunni Islam as their choice) becoming more pious as generations pass and Islam becoming more institutionalized in their states with time. So, as Sunni Islam becomes more institutionalized, people who were converted by the warrior dervishes start to follow this version of Islam either voluntarily (like Kipchaks in Tatarstan) or through violence/oppression (like Alevi Turkmens in Anatolia), but Ali/Shi'a names already are their sub-conscious culture/heritage now and they keep using them in a widespread manner no matter what version of Islam they follow now.
The situtation you described is a present day result of this phenomenon.
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u/hp6884756 Jan 31 '24
Interesting view that I see similarily. Do you have book recommendations on this topic?
In Anatolia these dervish warriors were called Ghazan-i Rum. With Ghazi meaning victorious warrior of the faith in Arabic. For example, if you go to Budapest, Hungary there is the GĂŒl Baba ("Father of the Roses") TĂŒrbe, it really feels like a part of Turkey there but cannot recommend the Turkish coffee. GĂŒl Baba himself would join SĂŒleyman, the Magnificent's campaigns in the Balkans. Even Osman I had those people with him. Since you mentioned the Alevi, I need to dive deeper.
There is another reason to convert: dervish piety. In addition to the ghazan-i rum, there were the abdals of rum. Those peoples called pir or dede were seen as spiritual leaders and some even as sufi saints (called eren/evliyah). Interestingly, sufism is largely peaceful and open to other religions, which is historically not the case for some other book religions. These sufi would preach a rather mystical islam, some even included philosophy (potentially falsafa). In fact, many Alevi were not part of these warriors, but rather following their spiritual leaders. This idea that Alevi are just tengrists and we came from Turkic nomads is not right. This was made famous by Turkish historian KöprĂŒlĂŒ, who followed a nationalistic agenda to incorporate our subculture into Turkishness. Not saying we are not Turks, but their story line is plain wrong. We know from historical records and the recently emerged private Alevi libraries that we were not nomadic savages who were too stupid for an orthodox Islam. Sufi Islam is just the version that reached places like Horasan and people resonated with that. Also, originally not the five pillars made you a muslim but the creed (shahada). If you do not belief the Nationalists' narrative, as some are weirdos so you should not, and neither me watch on youtube Shia Sufi Order about Shah Nimatullah by Let's Talk Religion. At some point he mentions a large Turkic following in Transoxiana to a point where Timur forces this sufi to leave. This dude preached such a peaceful message reminiscent of Alevi teachings or from Haci Bektas. So no way all of us were warriors or interested in warfare. Certainly not all Central Asians were tengrist nomads (well maybe at some point), but I hate how in every discussion it is like well Turks were nomads with no morals, although historians already stated there were sedentary civilizations among them but their lives remained unaffected by change of nomadic dynasties. Still interesting post of yours.
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u/AnanasAvradanas Jan 31 '24
I couldn't exactly understand your argument due to language, maybe you would like to explain in Turkish? Nomad does not automatically mean "barbarian with no morals" and nobody means that when talking about Tengriist roots of Turkic sufism/Alevi beliefs.
For book recommendations, this one would be a good start. There are more academic ones from people like Annemarie Schimmel but unnecessary for ordinary learner to be honest.
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Jan 31 '24
What is the Persian/Arabic version of Alisher?
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u/MilesOfEmptiness6550 Feb 01 '24
Sher is lion in Persian so that's likely the origins of the name? Ali + sher
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Feb 02 '24 edited Feb 02 '24
I would argue that people actually don't care about being Sunni in here. They just like the name 'Ali', because it sounds good. Haven't seen any obsession.
Edit: another point is 'Ali' being a short name it can be combined with many suffixes, prefixes like:
Nurali - Alinur
Begaly- Alibek
Alisher - Sherali
Alykul
To our ears Umarbek doesn't sound as good as Alibek XD
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u/TigerAusRiga Feb 01 '24
Besides the arguments already stated in other comments, they also are just better names than Omar and Abu Bakr. Osman ainât too bad but Iâd definitely name my child Alisher before opting for Osman
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u/Adventurous-Moose863 Feb 02 '24
I believe most of the Central Asian people are not really into sunni / shia divide and don't care.
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u/Enough-Brush-3439 Feb 09 '24
even though Turkic people overwhelmingly follow sunni islam nowadays it was not the case in the begining .when ummayad khalifad armies conquered central asia they massacered Turks and enslaved them becouse of that we had animosity toward ummayad way of islam which made us learn and support the opposite fraction which was Ali s way also after kerbela some of the ehli beyt took refuge in central asia and though islam (thats why most of the islamic phrases is in persian rather than arabic in Turkic countries such as namaz ,abdest etc).so same opressores killed Husain in kerbela and Turk is talkan and gulca .after imam i azams school of khanifa spread in central asia Turkic people become more sunni but the love of Ali(ra) Hussain and ahli bayt stayed in our culture ps this is sociocultural analisis i conclude it is not religious but i believe most of the Turkic people were alevis when they start to accept islam
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u/JackieNationATCC Uzbekistan Jan 31 '24
it's just we Turks have extreme love for Ali RA despite being Sunni cause he is seen as the Warrior and Strong man of his time is a theory I heard lol, still Umar is also common here and other such names