A history conducive to religious cohabitation
With more than a hundred ethnic groups living together in the same country, and stories of power changes, conquests and re-conquests to no end, it would have been very fortunate for everyone in Uzbekistan to be of the same religious persuasion. In reality, the states that developed in and around Uzbekistan were for the most part vassals of far-flung Western or Eastern powers, and their location on the margins of the empires favoured greater freedom of government and worship. Moreover, over the centuries, Sogdiana and Bactria were often places of deportation of people deemed undesirable by the central power, and refuge for persecuted religions, such as Nestorianism, Manicheism or Ismailism. Most of these cults that coexisted before the Arab conquest have disappeared but, based on Islam, have left their imprint, giving it the "colour" specific to Central Asia.
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 performed by magi who practiced the cult of purifying fire and ritual animal sacrifices. Around the year 1000 BC, Zarathustra reformed Mazdeism and founded Zoroastrianism, which was to become the state religion under the Achaemenid dynasty and flourish widely in the cities of present-day Uzbekistan, particularly in the prosperous Khorezm. Zoroastrianism opposes, among other things, the ritual sacrifice and worship of Haoma, the god who gives strength through intoxicating drink, and instead glorifies the god of goodness Ahura Mazda, the wise lord, and the struggle between Spenta Manyu, the Holy Spirit, and the destroyer Ahriman. He conceives the universe as the struggle of two principles, Good and Evil, opposing each other like day and night, hot and cold. Although monotheistic, the Zoroastrian religion preserves the Mazdean pantheon, whose deities Mithra and Anahita are the most celebrated in Central Asia.
The sacred texts
The sacred texts of Zoroastrianism are grouped together in theAvesta. These texts, which would have been written in Avestic language in the second millennium BC, were transmitted orally by the Magi for a long time 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 defiled. Thus the dead are neither buried nor burned, they must be exposed in the dakhma, which are sometimes small constructions called naus, as found in Penjjikent (Tajikistan), or enclosed spaces located on hills, such as the "towers of silence" seen in Iran or Karakalpakia (Uzbekistan). The most important bones, which contain the souls of the dead, are gathered together in terracotta vessels, the osteotheques, or placed in enclosed spaces called ostadan. Zoroastrianism was the official religion of the Sassanid dynasty; it was widely practised in Sogdiana and Bactria. There are ruins of Zoroastrian temples in the Tajik Pamir and Karakalpakia, around the present-day Nukus. Zoroastrianism is still very present in local tradition and craftsmanship, especially 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 propagation of Buddhism. Merchants were the first converts, and also the first missionaries of Buddhism. Founded in northern India around the5th
century B.C., the Buddhist religion was introduced into Bactria as early as the 2nd century B.C., but did not really flourish until the Kushan Empire. The tolerance of Emperor Kanishka, who reigned in the 1st or 2nd century, allowed the spread of this new religion, which spread throughout Central Asia 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 statues of Buddha 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 most traces around Termez in the south of the country, and there are still many excavations around the stupas of Surkhan-Daria.Manichaeism in Samarkand (around the 3rd century)
After the assassination of the Prophet Mani in the 3rd century, the many followers of this new religion were expelled from Sassanid Persia and took refuge in Central Asia and Chinese Turkestan. The "doctrine of the two principles", which the Chinese called the "religion of light", gained a strong foothold in Sogdiana, and in the 10th century Samarkand was the residence of the Manichean patriarch. The Manicheans worshipped the beauty of nature, worshipped "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 is an uncompromising religion which opposes matter and spirit, and which professes celibacy, the sharing of wealth and the prohibition of bloodshed. The most fundamentalist refused to procreate, to cure themselves in case of illness or even to feed themselves. In Europe, its followers, the bogomiles of Bulgaria and the Cathars of Albi, were also ruthlessly hunted down.
Nestorianism (5th century)
Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, denied the divine origin of Christ and the holiness of the Virgin Mary. He was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Ephesus in 431. His followers were hunted and found refuge in Persia, Central Asia and China. Several bishoprics, including that of Merv (in present-day Turkmenistan) and Samarkand, were established; they depended on the Catholicos of Baghdad. Nestorianism was a great success among the Turkic and Mongolian tribes. In the 11th century, the Kereit and the Nayman converted, and when the medieval missionaries went to the court of the khans, they were amazed to meet so many Christians in the East, but they were ulcerated that they were Nestorians. The Nestorians retained great influence until the 14th century.
Judaism (6th century)
It is known that Jewish settlements were established in Central Asia under Tamerlan, but the Jewish presence goes back much further, probably to the 6th century. They were often traders or bankers, since Islam forbade usury, or goldsmiths or weavers. Very good doctors, the Jews had the reputation of making the most effective talismans. Arminius Vambery describes the surprising status enjoyed by the Jews of Bukhara in the 19th century. Marked by a declared racism, this status had the advantage of saving them from the slavery to which all the other infidels were reduced: "The Jew alone, recognized as 'incapable', that is to say unworthy of slavery, escapes 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 the origin in the eyes of the children of Israel. "The Jewish community of Samarkand numbered more than 50,000 faithful in the 12th century. It is the only religious community to have resisted Islam; while there were still some 37,000 Bukharian Jews in 1989, almost all of them emigrated after the fall of the USSR, but the Jewish quarters of Samarkand and Bukhara are still there.
The Muslim conquest (7th century)
Initially, the conversion of the khans to Islam must have been quite formal, although the Muslims had a special aura, as their missionaries were also warriors. Islam was able to endure, largely thanks to the proselytizing of the Sufi brotherhoods. Today, Central Asian Islam is predominantly Sunni, with a mixture of Zoroastrian, Manichean, Buddhist and animist beliefs, and still strongly influenced by the Sufi brotherhoods. The Sufi Akhmad Yasavi, who lived in the 12th century, was Tamerlan's spiritual father. He is the author of mystical poems, the Hikmet, written in Turk, the language of the people. Widespread among the nomadic tribes, this Islam was imbued with shamanic traditions; today it has been gradually diluted in popular Islam.
The Sufi brotherhood, formed in the 14th century by Baha al-Din Naqchband, played a dominant role in the religious and political life of the Transoxian, and its burial site, a few kilometres from Bukhara, is still a major place of pilgrimage. The Naqchbandi wrote in Persian, the language of scholars, and represented a learned Islam, that of the sedentary and builders. They established many rites that regulated the practice of Islam.
As in Mecca, pilgrims go around the tombs three times, but some rituals seem more "pagan", such as the practice of 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, circling around the gigantic cauldron of Yasavi's mausoleum, or resting one's head on the black stone of Naqchband's mausoleum. Prayer to the saint often asks for healing or fertility
The return of Islam after independence
Islam Karimov, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan and First President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, took into account the maintenance of Islam in society. Advocating secularism, he nevertheless took an oath on the Koran. Islam, which had been re-established as the state religion after independence, had in fact 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. But in the years that followed, the village mullahs were able to continue to teach the Koran discreetly and without too much concern.
After independence, many madrasas were rehabilitated. Mosques were given over to worship in most of the country. Religious festivals are celebrated again, but Uzbekistan has been confronted for three decades with the emergence and development of a fundamentalist Islamist movement imported from Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, whose most virulent members have fed the Uzbek Islamist movement with men and ideas.
