By Paolo Sartori
In 1956 rumors spread in Socialist Kyrgyzstan that the apocalypse was imminent, and it would happen in the early summer of that year.[1] A date was set for this major event, and that was June 16.[2] The news caught the attention of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults (henceforth CARC), the institution that supervised all confessional activities in the USSR. CARC commissioners specifically monitored Muslim religiosity in Central Asia, and it was to CARC that the Tashkent-based Muslim Spiritual Board of Central Asia (SADUM) reported directly. On Аugust 9, 1956, CARC representative for Kyrgyzstan Hakim Akhtiamov wrote a detailed report to his superiors in Moscow about the circulation of pamphlets about the end of times.[3] Even though it was after the catastrophic date of June 16, Akhtiamov nonetheless reported a growing concern about the supernatural among Muslims in Socialist Kyrgyzstan:
Beginning in April 1956, anonymous pamphlets called vasiyat-nāma have begun to circulate among the Muslim population of the republic. These tracts exist in several variants. One of them states that a certain Sheikh Ahmed has heard a voice coming from the tomb of the Prophet Muḥammad saying that at the present time Muslims have become corrupted and have lost their faith, and that a considerable number of them are coming to the other world as infidels and are being subjected to infernal punishments. The voice from the grave of the Prophet foretold that the end of the world would come on June 16, 1956, and that in order not to share the fate of the infidels who have come to the other world, Muslim believers should pray with fervor, perform sacrifices, and repent. The voice commanded Sheikh Ahmed to write a vasiyat-nāma about it and distribute it among the believers. […] Believers also talk about other versions of the tract, as if it fell from the sky or came out of the city of Mecca, but we did not manage to see them. According to the available data, the vasiyat-nāma spread widely in the Tien Shan. In the town of Naryn people say that on June 16 the Alamyshyk-Too mountain range, which is not far from Naryn itself, will slide down and destroy the town. A rumor spread in the village of Kochkor in the Tien Shan that there would be a strong earthquake. […] On June 10, one Abdulhaq Duisenov, a Kazakh living in the "Stalin" district [located] in the region of Frunze visited us [to report] that his son, one Shakirbekov, who studies at [the Miri Arab] madrasa in Bukhara, came [home for the summer] holidays and fell ill. He ended up in a neurology clinic in Frunze. Duisenov told us that there were rumors that there would be a big earthquake on June 16, and therefore Shakirbekov's mother, who was worried about her son, took out an old yurt ["tent"], placed it far away from [the city] buildings and demanded that her son be transferred [there] from the hospital because he could die under the rubble. When Duisenov went to the clinic, they refused to discharge Shakirbekov, who was [still] ill. Therefore, Duisenov turned to us for help to have his son discharged from the hospital. We explained to Duisenov that rumors about the end of the world are baseless, and that we cannot apply for early discharge of a person seriously ill on this ground. […] When [Soviet] authorities in Kochkor became aware that the believers talk about the imminent end of the world and have begun to slaughter cattle for sacrifice, they took emergency measures and sent agitators to collective farms. In some places [ritual] sacrifices were prevented. However, in many places the collective ritual slaughter of animals has taken place together with communal prayers. The deputy head of the propaganda and agitation department of the Kochkor Party Committee […] told us that in the village of Cholpon, where the distribution of these influential tracts about the imminent end of the world first started, an elderly imam, one Salahuddin Baigabylov, has objected to these rumors and has dismissed them as absurd. Many local mullahs (i.e., wandering mullahs), however, have criticized Baigabylov: they have accused him of disbelief in prophecy and called him a kāfir.[4]
While producing evidence about the popular influence that this eschatological literature enjoyed in the Tian Shan, Akhtiamov concluded his report by complaining that SADUM did not react swiftly to the circulation of the vasiyat-nāmas.[5] In fact, Akhtiamov expected SADUM to issue a fatwā to declare such apocalyptic tracts inadmissible from the standpoint of sharī'a.[6] The mufti Eshonkhon Bobokhonov (1863–1957, in office between 1943 and 1957), so claimed Akhtiamov, took action only on June 18, however.[7] Chaos ensued: authorities reported about pockets of communal panic spreading across many rural settlements.
Reviewing this case in his Soviet and Muslim, Eren Tasar has observed that by the time SADUM reacted against the vasiyat-nāma and issued a fatwā, "its content had become a moot point".[8] Tasar is of course right in noting that the old mufti Bobokhonov proved somewhat uncooperative in this case.[9] It is important to note, however, that just five years earlier, in 1951, SADUM had already intercepted several vasiyat-nāmas circulating among the Chechens who had been exiled to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.[10] At that time SADUM's personnel reacted immediately by reporting to the CARC commissioner of Uzbekistan Khudoyor Iskanderov (1905–?) and drafting a fatwā.[11] Consequently, Iskanderov wrote to the head of CARC in Moscow, Ivan Polianskii (1898–1956) and proposed to distribute the fatwā among the personnel of the mosques in Central Asia to offer "believers a clarification [on the matter]."[12] The fatwā needed only Polianskii's sanction to be officially issued by SADUM. Surprisingly, Polianskii rejected the proposal by explaining that it considered it "inappropriate" (netselesoobraznoy) to circulate the text.[13] He furthermore suggested that if Muslims were specifically to request a clarification on the subject of the vasiyat-nāma, then SADUM should proceed by offering a simple answer, and thus avoid the "extensive" (prostrannyi) argumentation of the fatwā.[14] Polianskii's opaque and terse wording meant only one thing: he did not like the fatwā drafted by Eshon Bobokhonov. And the fatwā never made it to print.[15]
Why? What was wrong with this fatwā? The text opened with a categorical declaration: "the content of this vasiyat-nāma contradicts the principles of sharī'a," and for the "Muslim brothers" it is "wrong to believe and lend credit to such vasiyat-nāmas." [16] The mufti Bobokhonov further held that the vasiyat-nāmas included various weak elements.[17] The first one addressed the nature of the rumors about the imminence of catastrophic events:
The vasiyat-nāma is a false concoction made in the name of some unknown Sheikh Ahmed from Mecca, whose identity is unattested in historical books: it is unclear who he was. Nor is his family known. We do not know in which city he lived, what works he wrote.[18]
Having dismissed the historical attribution of the apocalyptic prophecy as historically unattested, Bobokhonov proceeded to note that in the past "the learned scholars of Islam had refuted as false all the ḥadīths which predict specific events in connection to certain years of the Hijra."[19]
The second argument developed by the Soviet mufti addressed the claim by the author of the vasiyat-nāma that the Prophet Muḥammad had talked to him in a dream and warned him about the imminent catastrophe.[20] Here again, the mufti reminded his readership that "the authoritative righteous scholars of theology found it inadmissible to do anything in the name of the Prophet on the basis of what a man sees in a dream."[21]
Thirdly, the mufti took issue with the fact the vasiyat-nāma claimed that "when the end of the world is near, the Archangel Gabriel would descend to the earth and take away ten objects of prosperity."[22] Indeed, the vasiyat-nāma employed a motif typical of Islamic eschatological literature which holds that, after the death of the Prophet Muḥammad, the Archangel Gabriel would descend to the earth ten times to deprive humankind of various goods and virtues.[23] While he acknowledges here that this tradition was transmitted by the 17th-century Shiite polymath Bahā' al-Dīn al-'Āmilī, commonly known as Sheikh Bahā'ī (d. 1621) in his works al-Kashkūl ("The Bowl of the Beggar") and al-Mikhlāt ("The Nosebag"), the mufti offers a categorical opinion on the subject: when read against the background of the Sunna, such a tradition is absolutely incorrect because on the day of Prophet's death the Archangel Gabriel is said to have descended to the earth for the last time.[24]
Having exposed the fallacies of the vasiyat-nāma, the mufti proceeds to remind "Muslim believers" that there is no need to worry about the end of times.[25] In fact, if one interprets catastrophic events as manifestations of the wrath of God, then the Qurʾān (8:22; 21:106) is enough to reassure the believers that "the Prophet serves as a barrier against divine punishment both during his life and after his death, as long as his followers perform prayers and repent."[26] In short, the mufti Bobokhonov reminds everyone that, as long as they believe in the Islamic prophecy and they perform their religious duties, there is nothing to worry about.
At this point, the fatwā morphs into a formal admonition against the idea that Central Asia had become an impoverished religious landscape conveyed by the apocalyptic pamphlet, which, as mentioned in Akhtiamov's report to Polianskii, specifically emphasized that in the region "many had lost their faith."[27] In the 1950s, many would immediately interpret such a claim – that Central Asians inhabited a cultural environment destitute of Islam – as a direct consequence of violent Soviet secularist policies. In the attempt to reassure his audience that the Soviets had failed to actualize atheism and that therefore they were not doomed to the apocalypse, the mufti painted a comforting picture of pervasive Muslim religiosity:
According to the reliable ḥadīths of the Prophet, the apocalypse should take place a hundred years after the disappearance of the last individual on earth who worships God. Meanwhile in Central Asia alone millions of Muslims pray the Almighty God, thousands of qārīs [individuals who have memorized the Qurʾān by heart] read the scriptures, thousands of elders perform prayers without closing their eyes at night, thousands of Muslim believers freely perform their daily prayers five times a day in officially opened mosques. In Tashkent alone, there are 17 congregational mosques, where thousands of Muslims perform the prayer and cry aloud ameen to the heavens. Officially existing mosques in other cities are also crowded with Muslim believers who pray. In the city of Bukhara, a former center of religious culture a madrasa was opened several years ago, where hundreds of students receive a religious education. In Central Asia, the religious spirit is growing stronger and stronger day by day. The shrines of the famous and revered companions of the Prophet and saints are well-maintained and are visited by pilgrims. The latter find consolation there for their spiritual worries. For example, in Samarqand, the tomb of his Excellence [ḥaẓrat] Qusām ibn ʿAbbās[28] preserves the noble remains of the latter. In Tashkent, the tomb of his Excellence Imām Abū Bakr [Muḥammad] Ismāʿīl Kaffāl al-Shāshī,[29] the tomb of his Excellence Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband[30] in Bukhara, the tomb of his Excellence Pahlavan Zanjī[31] and his Excellence Uvais al Anbiyā[32] in Khorezm are places of mass visitation where people can pray.[33]
Polianskii must have frowned upon this section of the fatwā. Indeed, Bobokhonov was effectively explaining to Central Asian Muslims that, while the Soviets had made massive investments into the fight against religion and especially into atheistic propaganda, there was still a sizeable number of people who practiced Islam. Emphasis on the existence of "millions" of Muslims and widespread mosque attendance represented a direct challenge to CARC's regulating authority.[34] Throughout its existence, CARC walked a tightrope, so to speak, helping Muslims in the defense of the constitutional right of freedom of conscience, on the one hand, and catering to the whims of Party authorities, on the other. Manipulating statistics on levels of worship, especially mosque attendance, was one of the tactics employed by CARC bureaucrats to reassure Communist zealots that Muslim religiosity was not only under control but also losing social significance.[35]
There was another problem with this fatwā, however. Besides pointing to an uptick in mosque attendance, it claimed that shrines were now functioning and some of them represented objects of popular visitation, a manifestation of Sufism which was abhorred by the Soviets.
This was not the first time that Eshon Bobokhonov crafted a fatwā which emphasized the presence of holy places in the region. In 1943, in the attempt to rally Central Asians to join the war effort against the Third Reich, the mufti had issued a fatwā which called for a jihad against Hitler.[36] The mufti had argued on that occasion that Nazi Germany was threatening to destroy all the major Islamic shrines of the region, and it was a duty of all the Muslims to defend the integrity of local culture as embodied by shrine-centered religious practices. The mufti's formulation was no doubt gesturing at textual traditions which presented Sufism, and especially shrine visitation as inextricably interwoven with the texture of lived Islam. "Every speck of heart is the body of a saint," [37] claimed a local shrine guide penned at the end of the 19th century to emphasize that during shrine visitation pilgrims move across a landscape, which actually consisted of the bodies of the saints; and in his 1943 fatwā the mufti was establishing a connection between such a deep-seated, powerful spirituality and Soviet patriotism.
But in the context of his 1951 fatwā, Eshon Bobokhonov did something else: not only did he mention the fact that the cult of saints was central to Central Asian Islam, but he also explained that shrines were open to visitors, had undergone restoration, and were now attracting massive pilgrimage. And here is the rub. While Islam could be tolerated after 1943, Sufism remained something openly detested by the Soviets: by referring to shine visitation the mufti accidentally touched a raw nerve with CARC.[38]
The concern about the end of times resurfaced cyclically among Central Asian Muslims under Soviet rule.[39] Only once, however, did it again become the subject of a fatwā. It was the year 1979, and the mufti in office, Ziyouddin Bobokhonov (Eshon Bobokhonov's son), took issue with a wave of leaflets claiming that once again the apocalypse was imminent. The leaflets in question claimed that the approaching end of the world had been announced by Khoja Ahmad Yasavi (d. 562/1166–67), a 12th-century Sufi sheikh, who had "appeared to someone in a dream and told him that people were drowning in sin."[40] This time, however, it was easier to issue a fatwā against such eschatological literature than it had been back in 1951: the impending end of the world as supposedly announced by Yasavi could be dismissed as a manifestation of mysticism and thus the quintessence of superstition.
Notes:
[1] Eren Tasar, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia, 1943–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 160.
[2] Ibid.
[3] The report is now housed at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (henceforth GARF), f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 434, ll. 109–122, available online as "Из информационного отчета о деятельности уполномоченного Совета по КиргССР Х.Ахтямова в Совет по делам религиозных культов при Совмине СССР за 1 полугодие 1956 г.," Russian Perspectives on Islam, https://islamperspectives.org/rpi/items/show/17014, last accessed May 31, 2025.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Tasar, Soviet and Muslim,161.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] National Archive of Uzbekistan (O'zbekiston Milliy Arxivi, henceforth O'MA), f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 10. I am grateful to Bakhtiyor Bobojonov for sharing this file with me.
[11] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 10–14.
[12] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 9.
[13] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 15.
[14] Ibid.
[15] See the list of published fatwās issued between 1944 and 1962, O'MA, f. R-2457, op. 1, d. 184, l. unnumbered. The list was signed by Ziyouddin Bobokhonov.
[16] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 10.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] He did so by referring, though briefly, to the authority of Ḥanafī experts of Prophetic traditions such as Imam Abū l-Faḍāʾil Raḍīy ad-Dīn al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣaghānī (1181–1252), Imam Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad al-Ṭaḥāwī (853–933) and 'Alī al-Qārī b. Sulṭān b. Muḥammad Hirawī (1523–1605).
[20] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 11.
[21] In support of this argument, he mentioned the work Tanwīr al-ḥawalik sharḥ 'alá al-Muwaṭṭā' Mālik by Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), the fatwās of Sheikh ʿIzz al-Dīn b. Salām (d. 660/1262) and a Persian-language collection of fatwās known as Hidayat al-sā'il ilá idalat al-masā'il crafted by the South Asian scholar Muḥammad Ṣiddiq b. Ḥasan b 'Alī al-Qinnawjī (d. 1307/1890).
[22] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 11.
[23] Alfrid Bustanov, "An Emotional History of Soviet Experience: Muslim Eschatology and the Great Terror, 1920s–1930s," in Socialism in One Room: Studies in Honor of Erik van Ree, ed. A. Bouma and M. Kemper (Amsterdam: Pegasus Oost-Europese Studies, 2022), 26.
[24] Bobokhonov here makes a cursory reference to 11th-century Shāfi'ī jurist from Khorasan Abū Bakr Aḥmad al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066) and his celebrated exegetic work Dalā'il al-Nubuwwa.
[25] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 12.
[26] Ibid.
[27] GARF, f. R-6991, op. 3, d. 434, l. 109.
[28] A cousin of the Prophet Muḥammad, whose shrine is at Shāh-i Zinda (in present day Samarqand) and in honor of whom the shrine complex is named.
[29] Imam Kaffāl Shāshī (d. 365/976) was a renowned scholar whose works were particularly influential within the Shāfiʿī school of law. In Central Asia he is venerated as a saint and his tomb is situated in Tashkent within the shrine complex known as Hast Imom (an abbreviation of Hazrat-i Imom). Famously, mufti Bobokhonov's family claimed genealogical descent from him. As noted by Tasar, by fighting to have SADUM's main office located in the Hast Imom complex, Eshon Bobokhonov effectively projects the saintly aura of his descent on the activities of the Spiritual Board and claimed authority over the people connected to the saint. See Tasar, Soviet and Muslim, 49.
[30] Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband (d. 791/1389), the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi brotherhood. His name is associated with the practice of the silent litanies (dhikr) preferred to the vocal ones. The influence of the Naqshbandiyya extends beyond the region of Central Asia into the Middle East and South Asia.
[31] Pahlavān Maḥmūd, known also as Puryār, was a wrestler, poet, and mystic. He became the patron saint of Khiva when the oasis of Khorezm was ruled by the Qonghrat dynasty at the end of the 18th century. See Devin DeWeese, "Mapping Khwārazmian Connections in the History of Sufi Traditions: Local Embeddedness, Regional Networks, and Global Ties of the Sufi Communities of Khwārazm," Eurasian Studies 14 (2016): 69–70; Angelo Michele Piemontese, "La leggenda del santo-lottatore Pahlavān Maḥmūd Xvārazmi 'Puryā-ye Vali' (m. 722/1322)," in AION, n.s., XV (1965): 167–213.
[32] Sulṭān Uvays al-Qarānī (d. 37/656), otherwise known as Sulton Bobo, Sulton Veys, or Veys Bobo. Hagiographic traditions tell us that he was a mystic of Yemeni origin who received training from the Prophet Muḥammad in absentia. His shrine is part of a massive devotional complex situated on the right bank of the Amu Darya River in the Qyzyl-Qum desert, today in the territory of Qaraqalpaqstan. On the lore of Sulṭān Uvays recorded after the Second World War, see Paolo Sartori, A Soviet Sultanate: Islam in Socialist Uzbekistan, 1943–1991 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2014), 171–80.
[33] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 13.
[34] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 134, l. 12.
[35] Tasar, Soviet and Muslims, 323–25.
[36] Jeff Eden, "A Soviet Jihad Against Hitler: Ishan Babakhan Calls Central Asian Muslims to War," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59 (2016): 253–54.
[37] Devin DeWeese, "Encountering Saints in the Hallowed Ground of a Regional Landscape: The 'Description of Khwārazm' and the Experience of Pilgrimage in 19th-Century Central Asia," in Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes: Emplacements of Spiritual Power across Time and Space, ed. Daphna Ephrat, Ethel Sara Wolper and Paula G. Pinto (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 211.
[38] Sartori, A Soviet Sultanate, esp. ch. 1.
[39] A number of vasiyat-nāmas was intercepted in Khorezm in 1948. See O'MA, f. R-2456, op.1, d. 120, ll. 1–19. Parts of the document in question was published online as https://islamperspectives.org/rpi/items/show/19881, last accessed on April 30, 2025.
[40] O'MA, f. R-2456, op. 1, d. 608, l. 37.
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