Muslim Women of the Fergana Valley: A 19th-Century Ethnography from Central Asia

242 Pages·2016·5.435 MB·English

by  Vladimir Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina

MUSLIM WOMEN of the FERGANA VALLEY
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MUSLIM WOMEN
of the FERGANA VALLEY
A 19th-Century Ethnography
from Central Asia
Vladimir Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina
Edited by Marianne Kamp
Translated by Mariana Markova
and Marianne Kamp
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
English translation © 2016 by Marianne Kamp and Mariana
Markova
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association
of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions consti-
tutes the only exception to this prohibition.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-02127-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-02138-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02149-6 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
Contents
Editor’s Introduction | Marianne Kamp 1
Authors’ Preface: A Sketch of the Everyday Life of Women
of the Sedentary Native Population of the Fergana Valley | Vladimir
Nalivkin and Maria Nalivkina 29
1 A Short Sketch of the Fergana Valley 31
2 Religion and Clergy 57
3 Houses and Utensils 79
4 Woman’s Appearance and Her Clothing 89
5 Occupations and Food 103
6 The Woman, Her Character, Habits, Knowledge,
and Behavior toward the People around Her 120
7 Pregnancy and Childbirth: A Girl 142
8 The Maiden: Marriage Proposal and Marriage 158
9 Polygyny, Divorce, Widowhood, and Death of a Woman 175
10 Prostitution 185
Glossary 191
Notes 201
Bibliography 221
Index 227
Caspian Approximate borders of the Russian Empire
Sea in Central Asia, late 19th century
Borders of the Khanate of Khiva
and Emirate of Bukhara
Rivers
Aral
Sea
RRUUSSSSIIAANN
Khanate EEMMPPIIRREE
of
Khiva
Urgench
Khiva Syr D
arya
Darya Emoirf ate
mu Bukhara
A Tashkent Pishpek
Bukhara (Toshkent) (Bishkek)
PPEERRSSIIAA (Buxoro) Jizzax
Samarkand Namangan
(Samarqand) Andijon
Kokand
Zarafshon(Qo'qon) Skoblev Naryn
AAFFGGHHAANNIISSTTAANN
CCHHIINNAA
0 50 100 200 Miles
Central Asia, including the extent of Russian conquest, late nineteenth century.
Source: Margo Berendsen, 2015.
Twenty-first-century
international boundaries
and country names
KKYYRRGGYYZZSSTTAANN
KKAAZZAAKKHHSSTTAANN M o u n t a i n s
a l
h a t k Nanay N a ry n
C
Tashkent Fergh
a
n
UUZZBBEEKKIISSTTAANN a
M
o
Namangan u
n
t
S a
yr Dar F e r g a n a Va l l e y Andijon Kara ins
ya Qo’qon Darya
Osh
TTAAJJIIKKIISSTTAANN Fergana
KKYYRRGGYYZZSSTTAANN
M o u n t a i n s
A l a i
T u r k e s t a n Mo untains
TTAAJJIIKKIISSTTAANN
Fergana Valley with cities mentioned by the Nalivkins and present-day boundaries superimposed. Source: Margo Berendsen, 2015.
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Editor’s Introduction
Marianne Kamp
T
his work, originally titled A Sketch of the Everyday Life of Women of the
Sedentary Native Population of the Fergana Valley and first published in Russian
in 1886, offers readers a nineteenth-century ethnography focused on women in
an Islamic society, as observed by Maria and Vladimir Nalivkin. The Nalivkins
were Russians who lived in a “Sart” (Uzbek) village in a territory new to the Rus-
sian Empire, the Fergana Valley. With the exception of Edward G. Lane’s An
Account of the Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians, very few nineteenth-
century ethnographies of Muslim societies were based on the ethnographer’s
long-term participant observation, and accounts by women were even rarer.
Maria Nalivkina learned the Sart language and lived in the village of Nanay from
1878 to 1884, during which she befriended her neighbors and tried to learn all she
could about their lives and the ways that Islam shaped their lives. The authors’
focus on explaining Islam will be familiar to those who have studied nineteenth-
century Orientalist scholarship: the authors wrote with all the hubris of Western
cultural superiority but also with an attention to detail and effort at description
that arose from genuine curiosity. The exploration of women’s lives is unique, but
the Nalivkins’ focus on everyday life in rural communities exemplifies a domi-
nant trend in nineteenth-century Russian ethnography.
This introduction provides brief biographies of Vladimir and Maria, focus-
ing on their intellectual formation, the milieu within which they worked, and
their scholarly production. Comparisons are drawn between their ethnographic
work and those of several of their contemporaries in Russian Central Asia. An
overview of the book’s themes is followed by a discussion of choices that we made
in translation.
The Nalivkins
In 1878, a young Russian couple, Vladimir Petrovich Nalivkin and Maria Vladi-
mirovna Nalivkina, purchased a courtyard home and some land in the kishlak
(village) of Nanay in the Fergana Valley. Nanay, situated in the hills between the
Tian Shan Mountains to the north and Namangan to the south, was home to
people whom the Nalivkins identified as Sarts. I discuss the meaning of this term
later. The Nalivkins lived in Nanay for six years, where they learned to speak and