One religion, many religions.
With over a hundred ethnic groups living side by side in the same country, and a never-ending history of power changes, conquests and reconquests, how can you answer to a single religious obedience? In fact, most of the states that developed in and around Uzbekistan were vassals of distant Western or Eastern powers; their location on the bangs of empires favored greater freedom of government and worship. Moreover, Sogdiana and Bactria were often places of deportation for people deemed undesirable by the central power, and a refuge for persecuted religions such as Nestorianism, Manichaeism and Ismailism. Most of these cults, which coexisted before the Arab conquest, have now disappeared, but syncretism with Islam has left its mark...
Proto-religions solidly anchored.
Mazdeism was practiced by the Aryan tribes that populated western Central Asia and Iran as early as the second millennium BC. This polytheistic religion recognized Ahura Mazda as the most powerful of the gods. Its rites were celebrated by magi who practiced the cult of purifying fire and ritual animal sacrifices. Around 1000 BC, Zarathustra reformed Mazdaism and founded Zoroastrianism, which was to become the state religion under the Achaemenid dynasty, flourishing in the cities of present-day Uzbekistan and, in particular, in the prosperous Khorezm.
Zoroastrianism was opposed to ritual sacrifice and the cult of Haoma, the god who gave strength through an intoxicating drink. It glorified the god of good, Ahura Mazda, the wise lord, and the struggle between Spenta Manyu, the Holy Spirit, and the destroyer Ahriman. He also conceived of the universe as dualistic: two principles, Good and Evil, opposing each other like day and night, hot and cold. Although monotheistic, the Zoroastrian religion preserved the Mazdean pantheon, whose deities Mithra and Anahita were the most celebrated in Central Asia.
The sacred texts
The sacred texts of Zoroastrianism are grouped together in theAvesta. These texts, which are thought to have been written in the Avestian language in the second millennium BC, were long transmitted orally by magicians and then transcribed, rather late, probably at the end of the Sassanid era.
Fire, water, air and earth are sacred elements that must not be polluted. Thus, the dead are neither buried nor burned, but must be displayed in dakhma, which are sometimes small constructions called naus, as found in Punjikent (Tajikistan), or enclosed spaces on hillsides, like the "towers of silence" seen in Iran or Karakalpakia (Uzbekistan). The most important bones, where the souls of the dead reside, are grouped together in terracotta vessels known as osteotheques, or placed in enclosed spaces known as ostadan.
The official religion of the Sassanid dynasty, it was widely practiced in Sogdiana and Bactria. Ruins of Zoroastrian temples can be found in the Tajik Pamir and in Karakalpakia, around present-day Nukus. In local tradition and craftsmanship, Zoroastrianism is present in the symbolism of the motifs depicted on carpets and suzanis.
Buddhism in Termez (1st-2nd centuries)
The Silk Roads were also those of the spread of Buddhism. Merchants were the first converts, and the first missionaries of Buddhism. Founded in northern India around the5th century BC, the Buddhist religion was introduced into Bactria as early as the 2nd century BC, but only really flourished under the Kushan Empire. The tolerance of the emperor Kanishka, who reigned in the 1st or 2nd century, enabled it to spread throughout Central Asia, reaching as far as China, where it became the official religion of the Chinese emperors in the 6th century.
The largest Buddhist site in Bactria is in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, where the two gigantic Buddha statues made headlines when the Taliban blew them up in 2001. An important monastery was also discovered at Adjina Tepe, in southern Tajikistan. In Uzbekistan, Buddhism has left the greatest traces around Termez, in the south of the country, and excavations are still numerous around the stupas of Sourkhan-Daria.
Manichaeism in Samarkand (3rd century)
Following the assassination of the prophet Mani in the 3rd century, the many followers of this new religion were expelled from Sassanid Persia and fled to Central Asia and Chinese Turkestan. The "doctrine of the two principles", which the Chinese called the "religion of light", became firmly established in Sogdiana, and in the 10th century, Samarkand became the residence of the Manichaean Patriarch. Manichaeans venerated the beauty of nature, worshipping " everything that in their eyes manifests Beauty - lights, flowing waters, trees, animals - because in every being, in every beautiful object, the divinity of light has taken up residence ". Manichaeism opposes matter and spirit, professes celibacy, the sharing of wealth and the prohibition of bloodshed. The most fundamentalists refused to procreate, to treat illness or even to eat. In Europe, its followers, the Bogomils of Bulgaria and the Cathars of Albi, were mercilessly hunted down during the Middle Ages.
Nestorianism (5th century)
Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, denied the divine origin of Christ and the sanctity of the Virgin Mary. He was condemned as a heretic by the Council of Ephesus in 431. His followers, hunted down, found refuge in Persia, Central Asia and China. Several bishoprics were established, including Merv (in present-day Turkmenistan) and Samarkand, under the authority of the Catholicos of Baghdad.
Nestorianism enjoyed great success with Turkic and Mongol tribes. In the 11th century, the Kereit and Naimans converted, and when medieval missionaries visited the khans' courts, they were amazed to find so many Christians in the East... and dismayed that they were Nestorians. The Nestorians remained influential until the 14th century.
Judaism (6th century)
We know that Jewish colonies were established in Central Asia under Tamerlane, but the Jewish presence goes back much further, probably to the 6th century. They were often merchants or bankers, since Islam prohibited usury, as well as goldsmiths and weavers. Excellent doctors, they were reputed to make the most effective talismans. Arminius Vambery describes the surprising status enjoyed by Bukhara's Jews in the 19th century. Marked by overt racism, this status had the advantage of sparing them the slavery to which all other infidels were reduced: " The Jew alone, recognized as 'incapable', i.e. unworthy of slavery, escapes in his own person from their rapacity, a privilege which he owes to the aversion of which he is the object, but the benefit of which perfectly compensates for its origin in the eyes of the children of Israel " The Jewish community in Samarkand numbered over 50,000 in the 12th century. It is the only religious community to have resisted Islam; although in 1990 there were still some 100,000 Bukharian Jews, almost all of them emigrated after the fall of the USSR, but the Jewish quarters of Samarkand and Bukhara are still there, and the synagogues are open to visitors.
The Muslim conquest (7th century)
Islam was introduced to southern Turkestan and then northwards by Samanid Tajik missionaries. It endured, largely thanks to the proselytizing of Sufi brotherhoods. Today, Central Asian Islam is predominantly Sunni, mixed with Zoroastrian, Manichean, Buddhist and animist beliefs, and still strongly influenced by Sufi brotherhoods.
The 12th-century Sufi Akhmad Yasavi was Tamerlane's spiritual father. He is the author of mystical poems, the Hikmet, written in Turkish, the language of the people. Widespread among nomadic tribes, this Islam was imbued with shamanic traditions; today, it has been gradually diluted in popular Islam.
The Sufi brotherhood, founded in the 14th century by Baha al-Din Naqshband, played a dominant role in the religious and political life of Transoxania, and his tomb, a few kilometers from Bukhara, is still a major place of pilgrimage. The Naqshbandis wrote in Persian, the language of scholars, and represented a learned Islam, that of sedentary people and builders. They established numerous rituals governing the practice of Islam. Prayers to the saint often call for healing or fertility. As in Mecca, pilgrims circle the tombs three times, but some rituals come from other, sometimes pagan, religions: tearing a piece of clothing and hanging it on a tree to make a wish, crawling under the huge lectern of the Bibi Khanum mosque in Samarkand, spinning around the gigantic cauldron in the Yasavi mausoleum, or laying one's head on the black stone in the Naqshband mausoleum.
The return of Islam after independence
Islam Karimov, First Secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party and first President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, took account of the continued presence of Islam in society. Although he advocated secularism, he took an oath on the Koran. Islam, re-established as the state religion after independence, had never completely disappeared. Its repression was intense from 1932 to the Second World War: recalcitrant Muslims were sent to Siberia, and mosques and madrasas were turned into warehouses or factories. In the years that followed, however, village mullahs were able to continue discreetly teaching the Koran without too much concern.
After independence, many madrasas (Koranic schools) were rehabilitated. Mosques were restored to worship in most of the country. Religious festivals are once again celebrated, but for the past three decades Uzbekistan has been confronted with the emergence and development of a fundamentalist Islam imported from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, whose most virulent members have fuelled the Uzbek Islamist Movement.
