Biography of my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra, son of Shākir Khūja
By Rūqiyya-Khān, daughter of Yūsuf-Khān Tūra, granddaughter of ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra (April 20, 2010)
Translated from Uzbek and commented by Stéphane A. Dudoignon
NB – Words and sentences written by the author in Arabic are transcribed in Italics (when they have been translated to Uzbek by the author) or translated in caps.
In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate,
Praise be to the Lord of the worlds, who created the entire universe from nothing, created eighteen thousand worlds, guided the believers to the glory and guidance of Islam, and may the infinite mercy and help of God be upon our Prophet Muḥammad, the final of the prophets, who called humanity to enlightenment, moral perfection and knowledge, and upon his Companions and those who follow him until the Day of Judgment. As they say, a jeweller knows the value of gold, having completed the Holy Quran, benefiting from the explanations of its interpretations, realising what a scholar and politician my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra was, I decided to take the pen in order to shed light on his biography, on the occasion of the hundred-and-fortieth anniversary of his birth. Therefore, I would feel very happy if I could describe the anecdotes received from my father Yūsuf-Khān Khūja (may God be pleased with him) and from my maternal aunt Muḥtaram-Pāshshā, as well as those that have remained in my own memory, as much as I could.
Al-ḥamdu’lillàhi bi niʿmatihi tatim bi’l-ṣāliḥāta tum . . . — that is, Praise be to God, the One who brings every matter to a good end, and may He help me in the present one.
My grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra was born in 1882 in Töqmoq, Qirghizstan.[1] His father’s name was Shākir Khūja. This blessed person, from Andijan, was a prominent scholar related to the Naqshbandi rule and known also as Shākir-Jān Īshān. The name of his father’s father was Muḥammad Khūja; the name of the latter’s father, Mīr-Niyāz Khūja; the name of latter’s, ʿAbd al-Qayyum Khūja and, in this line, my twentieth and something grandfather was Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch[2] and this blessed person, in turn, went back to our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon him) in the 17th generation. God knows better, however. As evidence of the genealogy, I will cite the lineage of Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch from K. Kataev’s [sic] book ‘Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam and Dahbīd’ (page 9):[3]
Ḥażrat Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch
- Sayyid Kamāl al-Dīn
- Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn
- Sayyid Shāh Ḥusayn
- Sayyid Shāh Ḥasan
- Sayyid Muḥammad
- Sayyid Aḥmad
- Sayyid ʿAbd-Allàh al-Afżal
- Sayyid ʿAbd-Allah Akmal
- Sayyid Abū-Ṭālib Ḥujjat-Allàh Sayyid Muḥammad-ʿAlī
- Ḥażrat Imām ʿAlī-Musà al-Riżà
- Ḥażrat Imām Musà-Kāẓim
- Ḥażrat Jaʿfārī-i Ṣādiq [sic]
- Ḥażrat Imām Muḥammad-Bāqir
- Ḥażrat Imām Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn
- Ḥażrat Imām Ḥusayn
- Ḥażrat Amīr al-muʾminīn Imām ʿAlī and Fāṭima-i Zahrà
- Ḥażrat Muḥammad Muṣṭafà (peace and blessings of God be upon him)![4]
The miracle-working, high-dignity Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn was considered the pole of the saints of his time. According to the Qandiyya[5] and other books, whoever was rude to Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn or slandered him would certainly be afflicted with some plague. About his blessings, Bābur Mīrzā wrote the following, in his Bāburnāma: ‘This kind of leader, shaykh al-islām and qāżī has made its appearance.’[6] Praise be to God that people like my well-named grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra[7] and my father Shaykh Yūsuf-Khān Tūra have pursued our ancestors’ task, leaving their own indelible mark in the history of the world of Islam in Central Asia. Here, the verse 15 of the Sura ‘The Dunes’ comes to my mind:
‘Rabbi awziʿnī an ashkura niʿmataka’llatī anʿamta ʿalayya wa ʿalà walidayya wa an aʿmala ṣaliḥan tarḍahu wa aṣliḥlī fī dhurriyyatī innī tubtu ilayka wa innī mina’l-musminīn.’ That is: ‘O Lord! Inspire me to give thanks for the favour You have bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and to do a good deed that is acceptable to You. And make my offspring of sound morality. I repent to You and am of those who submit.’
My great-grandfather Shākir Khūja first married in Andijan. His wife’s name was Muḥtaram-Pāshsha. They had two children, a son and a daughter: their son was named Dhākir Khūja (from whom they had a [grand-]son called Īshān-Khān) and their daughter, ʿIzzat-Pāshsha. [My] paternal aunt ʿArāfat-Khān was born from one of ʿIzzat-Pāshsha’s daughters; her only son Mūsà-Khān Aka lived in Andijan. In order to preach Islam, my great-grandfather Shākir-Khūja left Andijan towards Osh, crossing mountains and passes guided by the stars, before settling down in the lower part of Töqmoq. There, he married my grandmother Nār-Pāshsha (also called Nār-Buwī), a daughter of Maʿrūf Khūja (a.k.a. Yūmalāq Khūja) of Kāsān. Maʿrūf Khūja’s wife was named Bēk-Pāshsha. Here, in order to get to know my relatives a little better, we will mention the names of Maʿrūf Khūja and Bēk-Pāshsha’s children, my grandmother Nār-Pāshsha siblings:
- Nār-Pāshsha, from whom were born ʿĀlim-Khān, ʿAlī-Khān, Hamrāh Pāshsha, Sattār-Khān and Qamar-Pāshsha;
- Ḥāl-Pāshsha, whose child was Mamad-ʿAlī Khūja Tāgha;
- Āy-Pāshsha, whose child was Murād Khūja;
- ʿUthmān[8] Khūja, whose children were Rajab-Pāshsha, Bālṭa Khāla, ʿAbd al-Muʾmin;
- Ḥāl Khūja, whose children were Karāmat-Khān Āya, Jamāl-Khān, Jannat-Khān, Jalāl-Khān;
- Maḥsūm Khūja, whose children were ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Tāgha, Qamchī Āyim, ʿUmar Khūja;
- Qāżī Khūja, whose child was Burtāq Khūja.
My great-grandfather Shākir Khūja erected three large mosques in the city of Töqmoq — one of which is still preserved today and continues to serve the community[9] with the name of Shākir-Khān Tūra. Although Shākir Khūja had built three mosques, he himself lived poorly in a hut. He did not even install frames on the windows of his hut, but glued paper and greased it on both sides. When my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra returned from Bukhara after completing his studies and wished to start a family, he laughed and said: ‘Oh, our ʿĀlim-Khān wants to build a house for the Russians.’ Later, in fact, the Russians took over these buildings, and turned my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra’s house into a ‘club’ and my grandfather [sic] ʿAlī-Khān Tūra’s[10] into a ‘radio centre’. Even today, Russians still live in my father ʿAlī-Khān Tūra’s courtyard. This must be a sign of my grandfather’s saintly miracles.
My grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra, the first child of my great-grandfather Shākir Khūja and great-grandmother Nār-Pāshsha, was born in 1882, and my paternal great-uncle ʿAlī-Khān Tūra in 1885. Then came my paternal great-aunt Hamrāh-Pāshsha and, still then, my paternal great-uncle Sattār-Khān. Since my great-grandfather Shākir Khūja Tūra was a religious scholar, he took his children to Mecca, and himself settled there for some time, so that his children would also acquire deep Islamic knowledge. First, he took my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra Tura and stayed there for five–six years. This corresponds to the years 1887 to 1891. The second time he went to hajj, he took my grandfather [sic] ʿAlī-Khān Tūra Sāghūnī (‘History of Muḥammad’, p. 24).[11]

Figure 1: Undated photographic portrait of ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra at the end of his life, when he was the qāżī of the Qirghiz SSR — Courtesy Qutlugh-Khan Tura ‘Ediqut’ Shokirov, Istanbul, May 2024.
In Mecca lived the younger brother of my great-grandfather Shākir Khūja, ʿAẓīm Khūja, penname Miskīn. He used to visit him every time he went. I submit you here a piece of the ghazals written by Miskīn for his elder brother, my great-grandfather:
Life Document
Miskin says of your zeal
Masterly the annal:
Thrice you came, thrice you went,
If life lets, come again!
If they ask: that’s Miskin,
Whom your separation torments,
Who misses your eyes’ light.
If life lets, come again!
You left, that other day,
Darkness fell down, that night.
Don’t remain an orphan,
If life lets, come again!
My dearest ʿAlī-Khān,
You’ve been my glaze’s light!
Take with you ʿĀlim-Khān,
If life lets, come again!
You have to stay away?
May Allah be with you!
May Aḥmad be happy!
If you live, come again!
May God grant, here below,
That your fortune may grow
Threefold, fourfold and more!
If you live, come again!
My soul relies on you,
When I see you, I swoon,
O my dear Sattār-Kān.
If God allows, come again!
May ʿĀlim-Khān be learned,
Behind him ʿAlī-Khān!
Take Sattār-Khān with you,
If you live, come again!
Hamrāh-Khān, my pupils!
Find the security
You’ve not seen in life!
This is my dream, again.
And let the poor man[12] pray,
Let him wheep for your grief.
May your soul caracole:
Heaven is within too!
Who brought this text? How did it get to us? Alas, this is obscure for me. After both sons studied in Mecca, they continued their education at the Mīr-i ʿArab Madrasa in Bukhara. It is in those years in Bukhara that my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra wrote his book Miftāḥ al-naḥw.[13] After completing their studies there, the two brothers returned to Töqmoq. As he was about to leave a third time, with his fourth child Sattār Khān, Shākir Khūja fell ill in Sayram, Qazaqstan, died and was buried there. My grandfathers ʿĀlim-Khān and ʿAlī-Khān Tūra, back to Töqmoq, made my paternal uncle Sattār-Khān continue his journey and, wanting to fulfil their father’s wish, go to Saudi Arabia, where he stayed for a while before moving to Turkey where, by the will of fate, he settled in the Turkish city of Adana. I met his son, my paternal uncle Ṣabrī. My great-grandmother Nār-Buwī gave to my grand-father ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra a wife named Rajab-Pāshsha Ayam[14], the daughter of her younger brother ʿUthmān Khūja. Later, she married to her youngest son, ʿAlī-Khān Tūra, Karāmat-Khān, the daughter of her younger brother Ḥāl Khūja. Rajab-Pāshsha Ayam gave birth to Iqlīm-Pāshsha and Ḥayāt-Pāshsha. Later, he married Sharāfat-Khān Ayam. Sharāfat-Khān Ayam gave birth to ʿĀqil-Khān, Muḥtaram-Pāshsha and Yūsuf-Khān. At that time, my grandfather was thirty-two years old. Later on, he married Qambar-Pāshsha Ayam, who was then aged forty.
Qambar-Pāshsha Ayam had children Ṣafiya-Khān, ʿĀdil-Khān, Waliya-Khān and Yūnus-Khān. On his return from Bukhara, my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra had established himself as imam in a mosque of Töqmoq. In 1919, he was appointed as a teacher at a madrasa to the Friday Mosque of Andijan. This is where my paternal uncle ʿĀqil-Khān was born. In 1921, he was appointed as the imam of a mosque in Söquluq and, in 1922, on the eve of the Qurban Festival, my paternal aunt Muḥtaram-Pāshsha was born. In the meantime, the social and political system in our country had changed: the Tsarist rule had fallen, the government had passed into the hands of a bunch of ignoramuses and the oppression by this tyrannical regime against the men of religion had been intensifying. It had begun to register and arrest people of learning and to jail them. Of course, my grandfather, a scholar of that time, was not immune to this persecution. After several imprisonments, the mosque where he was imam was confiscated by the government, he himself was arrested again, and his family members thrown out into the street.
The government turned the house where they lived into a ‘club’. Supposedly, they were going to save the people from religious obscurantism and to provide them with good manners. My grandfather escaped from arrest and went to Andijan. Then, back to Töqmoq, he was jailed for a long time in 1932, in the Pishkek [sic] prison. According to my paternal aunt Muḥtaram-Pāshsha, when my grandfather [sic] ʿAlī-Khān Tūra heard that his elder brother was detained, he said to himself that if he were to go and give himself up, they would let his brother out. ‘Welcome!’, they said, and jailed my uncle in the Bishkek prison. This incident is a sign of how kind the elder and younger brothers were to each other. In those days, those arrested were sent to remote corners of Russia. First, they were brought to a concentration camp in Tashkent, then scattered further away. My grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra was also brought to Tashkent. At this moment, an ‘ukase’ was issued stating that ‘religious people in local areas should be engaged in their own affairs, but under strict control of the government’. As my grandfather ʿAlī-Khān Tūra’s ‘History of Muḥammad’ and other sources say, these were Years of Silence, when the unarmed local autochthonous population[15] did not open their mouths. And what could have they done, how could they have stood up against people with another religion, another language and a well-organised army, fill with the pride of their unchallenged victory?
If we look at history, the great Prophets sent by the Divine have also submitted to this law of nature. When the enemy had the upper hand, there was no other way out but to be patient for a while, protecting oneself from unnecessary blows. It was probably based on these lessons that my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra, once released from prison, returned to Töqmoq to resume his religious tasks under government control. Here, verses by my grandfather ʿAlī-Khān Tūra come back to me:
Is the garden in enemy hands? Then be patient!
Only strike if the possibility’s present![16]
Back to Töqmoq, he bought back the mosque and houses that the government has confiscated and, having become imam again, permitted people to come and pray. As the Holy Messenger (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said, ‘Religion grows, then fades away, and such times come when it becomes like ember again; if you take it in your hand, it burns, but if you throw it away, it goes out.’[17] My grandfather, by the way, was fine with that era. He submitted to state policy — so that ‘[religion] wouldn’t go out, as if he had thrown it away’ —, but he kept his convictions intact, preserved the Islamic values safe from the fierce storms of that era and maintained the beacon of religion burning, making so many people seek knowledge, raising so many disciples. It is no wonder that, thanks to the beneficial actions of such people, our religion, shining for long like a flickering candle, has illuminated the hearts of our people, and if our people, thanks to these deeds’ brilliance, have not turned away from their religion and piety, it is no wonder either. . . .
Yūsuf-Khān Tūra (may God be pleased with him) thus recalled how my grandfather ʿAlī-Khān Tūra, once released from prison and forced to leave for East Turkestan, came to his brothers to say goodbye and consult them before a long journey:
‘One night, my father woke me up gently. He said, “Get up, your uncle ʿAlī-Khān wants to see you.” I jumped up and saw my father, my uncle ʿAlī-Khān Tūra and my elder brother ʿĀqil-Khān, the three of them sitting and chatting. My uncle immediately took me on his knees, he gave me sweets, kissed me on the forehead and caressed me before making me sit down, with a slight smile, and starting to speak in a low voice again. Suddenly, he began to talk about his discussion with the prison management. “I stammered to the jail director: I’ll kill you,[18] Petrov!”, he said. He stroked me a little more, then sent me to bed. When I woke up in the morning, there was no trace of my uncle. Then I climbed onto the wall that surrounded the yard, punched my hand and shouted in a loud voice “Death to Petrov!”, but my father scolded me, saying, “Hey, son, come down, don’t shout like that!” Later, after some time, I heard that my uncle was in East Turkestan. At that time, politics was so strict that even the slightest word could lead to repression with a label of ‘enemy of the people’. My father acted according to the requisites of the times. For the peace in mind of the family, while all sorts of calamities were befalling religious dignitaries, he changed our surname of Shokirkhöjaev to Shokirov. “You need this ‘Khöjaev’? Then take it. Will this diminish our lineage, our fortune, our knowledge?”’ — as our father ʿAlī-Khān Tūra used to say:
If a stone breaks a golden bowl,
The stone’s value does not increase,
The price of gold does not decrease.
Another incident: Muḥtaram-Pāshsha’s mother stopped sending her to school after she finished the year 10. When my grandfather found out about this, he asked, ‘Why is she not going to school?’, she answered, ‘The women in the neighbourhood say that even after my master’s daughter[19] grows up, she will still be studying on the streets, and this is why I did not send her to school.’ My grandfather replicated, ‘Eh, Mum, let her quickly go to study. This is the time of those people,[20] it requests instruction. Iqlīm-Pāshsha’s was different, I made her a Quran reciter[21] so that people on the streets can follow my example and educate their sons and daughters accordingly.’

Figure 2: Group of teachers of the Mīr-i ʿArab Madrasa of Bukhara, among whom Yūsuf-Khān Tūra Shākiroff (undated photo of the late 1960s, courtesy Qutlughkhon Ediqut Shokirov, Tashkent–Istanbul).
At the end of the war, my grandfather, following his own forefathers’ path, sent to study his son Yūsuf-Khān, my dad, although he was married, to Bukhara where he studied with upper grades for seven years, then to Cairo, to al-Azhar University, where he studied for six other years. During these thirteen years, all our financial and domestic worries relied on my grandfather’s shoulders. So, if my dad became a great scholar, first of all it is by Divine will but at the second place, my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra played a role, too. May God be pleased with this blessed person, accept him into His mercy and forgive him.
My grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra served as an imam in the mosque in Töqmoq until 1944. Until then and since the time of Tsarist Russia, Ufa was considered the religious capital. The religious administration was also there.[22] Geographically, this was very inconvenient since several thousand kilometres away. The tyrannised people, who had been enduring terrible repressions, were still suffering the torments of World War II. Against such a lamentable background, Īshān Bābā-Khān and a number of enlightened persons took the initiative to unite the Muslims of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan under a single religious board. The government of Uzbekistan supported this enterprise and proposed to form a commission to carry out this good deed. This commission consisted of prominent religious dignitaries conducted by:
Shaykh Īshān Bābā-Khān, from Uzbekistan;
Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, from Qazaqstan;
ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra Shākir Khūja Ūghlī from Qirghizstan;
Shaykh Anna Īshān from Turkmenistan.[23]
Once its founding committee was formed, the commission had to send it to Moscow. Once appointed to this founding committee, Żiyā al-Dīn Khān Īshān-Bābā-Khān and ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra Shākir-Khūja-Ūghlī were sent to Moscow. (My grandfather knew Russian very well.) As soon as they were confirmed there, it was decided to convene, in Tashkent, a congress of the Muslims of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan. The congress opened on October 20, 1943. It lasted three days and the decision was taken to establish a Religious Board of the Muslims of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan. A praesidium of eleven members was elected. Selected, my grandfather became qāżī for Qirghizstan. At a time when pressure on religion was increasing and when even offering an entombment to the deceased, with almsgiving and a funeral meal, had become impossible, the formation of such a religious board was an event of global resonance. May God Almighty, the Exalted, have mercy on the prominent scholars who led and directly guided this great and good cause, welcome all the righteous deeds they accomplished in their lifetime and make their resting place among the blessings of heaven! Amen, once more Amen.
My grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra called the Muslims of Qirghizstan for donations of food, warm woollen socks and clothing to the participants of the Great Patriotic War[24], and he raised a large sum of money. During the war against the fascist Germans, he organised propaganda work to collect money, food and clothing from the Muslim population as aid for the front. His children, my aunt Muḥtaram-Pāshsha and my dad Yūsuf-Khān Tūra actively participated in these actions. My grandfather’s self-sacrifice was personally recognised by Stalin and we received a distinct ‘Letter of Appreciation’. This document is kept by Muḥammad-Muʿnib-Khān, the son of my paternal uncle ʿĀdil-Khān.[25]

Figure 3: ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra (centre, behind the samovar, with a white bowl in hand) and his brother ʿAlī-Khān Tūra (in white, to the latter’s left) among their families at the popular rest area of the foothill of Ïssïq-Ata, between Töqmoq and Bishkek, in August 1953 (as indicated by the white in-scription in Cyrillic caps on the photo’s right side). While ʿĀlim-Khān was the qāżī of the Qirghiz SSR, his younger brother lived in Tashkent, where he carried out commissioned work for the Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies, at the Academy of Sciences of the Uzbek SSR. — Courtesy Qutlugh-Khan Tura ‘Ediqut’ Shakirov, Istanbul, May 2024.
Among the works of my father which have survived to us after years of oppression is the Miftāḥ al-naḥw, which means ‘Key to Syntaxis’. Published in 1915, it was prepared out of larger grammar books as a short guide[26] to help students memorise grammar rules. My dad Yūsuf-Khān Tūra (may God be pleased with him) thus explains this manual’s redaction:
‘When after my studies in Arabia, I arrived to Bukhara to continue my curriculum at the Mīr-i ʿArab Madrasa, I observed that many students were spending their precious time in dark and cramped cells, trying hard to learn Arabic and Persian. At that time, almost all books were in one of these two languages. As I perfectly knew Arabic grammar, the idea came to me to write a manual that would help these students to strengthen their knowledge of it, as would do a large grammar book (or textbook[27]), as a key to that book, and I realised it. Thanks to Reconstruction[28], this book has seen the light of day again.’
Thanks to God, it is serving again those in quest of knowledge. May God make my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra enjoy the rewards of the students’ knowledge. Amen. May God, with the blessing of this sublime verse of the Quran, grant my grandfather with His graces, unite him with the prophets, the martyrs and the truthful ones, and increase our own baggage by the dispensation of His favour and beneficial science — Rabbī zidnī ʿilman nafīʿan, āmīn: [29]
Wa man yuṭiʿ-Illàha wa’l-rasūla fāʾūlanika maʿ al-dhīna anʿam’ Allàh ʿalayhim mina al-nabiyīna wa’l-ṣiddīqīna wa’l-shuhadāʾi wa’l-ṣāliḥīna wa ḥasuna awlanika rafīqan. Dhaʾlika al-faḍlu mina’Llahi wa kafaʾà bi’Lllahi ʿaliyman.
Meaning:
And whoever obeys God and the Messenger, those will be with the ones upon whom God has bestowed His favour: the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous. And excellent are those as companions. This is a blessing from God (al-Nisāʾ, 69–70).
In 1943, my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra was elected qāżī for Qirghizstan and he served in this charge until the end of his life. He passed away on September 23, 1966 at the age of eighty-four. May God grant light to his grave and peace to his soul! Amen.
*
Commentary
ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra (1882–1966), son of Shākir-Jān Khūja (Shakirkhodzhaev, Shokirkho‘jayev), remains a poorly known figure in the contemporary history of Islam in Central Asia.[30] This is not, however, without having played leading roles at various times in the region’s eventful history. On the contrary: Born into a religious and pastoral family from Andijan, in the Ferghana Valley, settled at the end of the 19th century in Töqmoq — a market town at an interface between the Qazaq steppe and Qirghiz foothills —, ʿĀlim-Khān hold a charge of Imam in the early Soviet period, during which he was arrested and imprisoned several times, until the mosque where he officiated was confiscated and himself expropriated.
Complete dispossession and deprivation of a roof over their heads by the brutal confiscations of the early Soviet period are at the heart of the family’s if not of the lineage’s experience and memory. They find particular resonance in their abundant biographical or autobiographical materials, which generally insist on the particular hardships inflicted on the lineage by the new regime. Another feature of these vicissitudes, however, was an ability to bounce back (while more than one figure of the Kokand Autonomy, now venerated in Uzbekistan, was forced into definitive exile far from Central Asia, or met an even more dire fate). So, after recovering an imamate in Töqmoq in the 1930, ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra finally became one of the very few figureheads of the Muslim Religious Board of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan, organised by Stalin from 1943 onwards — as the qāżī, viz. the higher Sunni Muslim religious authority, of the Qirghiz SSR from the creation of this charge, in 1943, until his death twenty-three years later.
Besides his public roles, ʿĀlim-Khān maintained a protective relationship for the whole lineage, beginning with his younger brother ʿAlī-Khān Tūra (1885–1976), also a preacher and teacher of religion in the Töqmoq area in the early Soviet years. Also imprisoned several times in the 1920s–30s, according to his own memoirs, ʿAlī-Khān went into exile in Chinese territory, where he was jailed again. There, he led an adventurous, still undocumented life, practicing Galenic medicine before becoming, in 1944–46, the short-lived president of an Islamic Republic of East Turkestan, a proxy state supported by Stalin, Beria and the NKVD. Exfiltrated by the latter in early 1946, installed in house arrest in Tashkent after a period of imprisonment, ʿAlī-Khān became a prolific memoirs writer, poet and translator, and a key figure in Tashkent’s literary and academic sociability until his own death in 1976 — to be celebrated, since the rediscovery of his writings in the late 2010s, as the most important 20th-century Sunni Muslim scholar in Uzbek and Uyghur societies.
The lives of ʿĀlim-Khān and of ʿAlī-Khān interest us in what they are, at the same time, exceptional and representative of modern Central Asian Muslim scholars, closely related to the world of the madrasas as well as to the universe of the bazaar and its many rural extensions, in the most varied landscapes of a region of sharp contrasts between the nomadic and sedentary worlds, highland and steppe pastures. The two clerics seem also to have been in close interrelations with the Soviet political authorities, at regional and metropolitan level, during substantial part of adult lifetime after several arrests and periods of imprisonment in the 1920s and early 1930s.
As ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra’s 140th birthday was approaching — as his granddaughter Rūqiyya-Khān puts it —, she proposed a short biography of him, a typescript version of which circulated within the family in the late 2010s. (Born in Töqmoq on February 27, 1947, Rūqiyya had graduated from school there, before pursuing technical studies, as several members of the same generation in the family. She graduated from the Tashkent Polytechnic Institute, Faculty of Automation Control Systems, before working in accounting at a research institute and in private practice until retirement.)[31]
In this short text in prose and verse, hereby reproduced and translated, Rūqiyya-Khān insists on her grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān’s double status as ‘a scholar and a politician’. Although she does not mention his participation in the Kokand Autonomy (during which he was a member of the Turkestan National Assembly),[32] this double qualification probably refers to ʿĀlim-Khān’s occupation of the dignity of qāżī of the Qirghiz SSR between 1943 and 1966. Rūqiyya-Khān highlights, too, her grandfather’s belonging to a sacred dynasty of Prophetic ascent which had among its members Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch, a pre-Mongol inspirer of the Dahbīdī lineage, from Samarqand, of the Khwājagān/Naqshbandī Sufi rule. In the early 21st century, this allusion took on particular significance as the Dahbīdīs provided the bulk of Sufi guides throughout Soviet Central Asia, where their various branches have remained closely interconnected through the Soviet period.[33]
Also clearly expressed, if not claimed, in this biography: the prominent role played by women in the history of the lineage, and in the latter’s memory. Exceptionally in this kind of half-hagiographic literature, female great ancestors neighbour with men in the genealogical tree. From this point of view as from others, the text by Rūqiyya-Khān can be read as a tribute paid to her paternal great-uncle ʿAlī-Khān — whom she calls ‘my grandfather’ (ex. Алихон Тўра дадамиз) equal to her forebear. Indeed, if her memories are partly nourished by anecdotes and memories transmitted by her father Yūsuf-Khān (himself a former boarder of the Mīr-i ʿArab Madrasa of Bukhara), Rūqiyya seems to have drawn a lot of her information, if not of her very style of writing, from the works of ʿAlī-Khān.
Among them, Rūqiyya explicitly mentions the foreword by ʿAlī-Khān’s to his own ‘Chronicle of Muḥammad’ (Taʾrīkh-i muḥammadī), a life of the Prophet of Islam that was first published posthumously in Cyrillic characters, in April 1991, four months ahead of Uzbekistan’s proclamation of independence. However, Rūqiyya’s writing style and certain of her turns of phrase — such as when she describes her great-grandfather Shākir-Jān Tūra ‘crossing the mountains and passes’ between Andijan and Töqmoq ‘guided by the stars’ — are reminiscent of ‘Turkestan’s Sorrow’ (Tūrkistān qāyghūsī), memoirs written by ʿAlī-Khān about his turbulent youth between Russian and Chinese Turkestan, partly inspired by the sixteenth-century Bābur-nāma, by the former ruler of Ferghana and Mughal emperor Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur, which Rūqiyya also mentions in her testimony. The phrase: ‘How could they have stood up against people with another religion, another language and a well-organised army, fill with the pride of their unchallenged victory’ is pasted and copy from the Tūrkistān qāyghūsī.
Written by ʿAlī-Khān in the Arabic script on school notebooks after the death of his elder brother, between 1966 and 1970, Tūrkistān qāyghūsī remained handwritten until Cyrillic editions in 2003 — in Tashkent, by ʿAlī-Khān’s second son Aṣīl-Khān Tūra (1920–2003) — and in 2011 (in Istanbul, by his youngest child Qutlugh-Khān ‘Īdīqūt’ (b. 1947), followed by many others.[34] Until then, it had been circulating within the family, in the form of a Cyrillic transcription realised by a family member in the late 1980s, and to which Rūqiyya may have had access well before its publications. A key aspect of ʿAlī-Khān’s life and work, as transmitted by his memoirs and by his descendants and collaterals, male and female, consists of the great attention he paid to his three successive wives (he dedicated an ode, marthiyya, to the death of the first), as well as to all the female members of his lineage.
His daughter from his first marriage, ʿAzīza-Pāshshā (1911-85),[35] appears in the Tūrkistān qāyghūsī as a close advisor to her father’s during his presidency of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan in 1944–46. Among other involvements, ʿAzīza chaired an East Turkestan Women’s Society, allegedly from late 1944 to the fall of the Republic in 1949, before joining her father in Tashkent. Such narrative elements are of great importance in a testimony that is focused, on the one hand, on the historical continuity of lineage-based Islam in the territory of the former Qirghiz SSR, throughout the 20th century, but also, on the other hand, on a reminder of the attachment of the lineage of ʿĀlim-Khān and ʿAlī-Khān to a form of modernism not exempt from Soviet models.
They shed exceptional light on the itinerary of a whole sacred lineage of Central Asian Islam through the upheavals of the 20th century on both sides of the Tian Shan, between the nomadic and sedantary worlds, between periods of clandestine activity and of inclusion in officialdom.[36] In doing so, they challenge the long-dominant divisions, in the studies of the history of Islam in the USSR, between officiality and informality, modernism and traditionalism, religion and secularity. At the same time, they inform collective memories — Uzbek but also Uyghur, in situ and in the diasporas — which lie at the source of many contemporary experiences of heroisation, if not of sanctification.
[1] The foothill market city of Töqmoq was then situated in the Semirech’e Region of the Turkestan Territory of the Russian Empire. Since 1926, it has been located in the Qirghiz ASSR, then SSR, then independent Qirghizstan.
[2] Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch (‘The Sword’) b. Sayyid Kamāl al-Dīn Majnūn (‘The Possessed One’) was a late-12th–early-13th-century Ḥanafī Muslim scholar and Uwaysī Sufi guide active in the south of the Ferghana Valley, on the territory of present-day Qirghizstan. Recognised as a miracle-working saint, he became a key pre-Mongol inspirer of the 16th-century guide Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam — himself the founder of the Dahbīdī lineage of the Khwājagān/Naqshbandī Sufi rule, which played a decisive role, in the following centuries, in the political mobilisations of Islam in Moghulistan (the part of Central Asia located east of the Tengri/Tian Shan mountain range), as well as in Sinophone Islam. Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch is an axial figure in the post-Mongol spiritual genealogies of the Naqshbandiyya between the foothills of Transoxiana and Altishahr, on the first hand, and the Steppe on the other. Besides, the presence of sanctuaries linked with him throughout Central Asia, including the region of Aqsu near Kashghar in present-day Xinjiang, explains the central place dedicated to Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch in the genealogy of ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra, a leading religious figure of the Qirghiz SSR from 1943 to his death in 1966, and of his brother ʿAlī-Khān Tūra, the president of the East Turkestan Islamic Republic from 1944 to 1946.
[3] Komilkhon Kattaev, Makhdumi A‘zam va Dahbed, Samarqand: Sughdiion, 1994 (in Uzbek).
[4] A full genealogy of the lineage, centred on the figure of ʿAlī-Khān Tūra, is provided in Cyrillic script in the brochure by Abdulaziz Muhammadkarimov et al., Toshkentning tabarruk ziyoratgohlari [The Holy Places of Tashkent], Tashkent: Navro‘z, 2016, p. 125.
[5] Title of the 12th-century Persian translation, by the historian Abū’l-Fażl Muḥammad Samarqandī, of the Arabic-language Kitāb al-qand fī taʾrīkhi Samarqand by his master Najm al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿUmar al-Nasafī. The second part of the work, a depiction of the holy graves and cemeteries of Samarqand, could be utilised as a guide by the pilgrims visiting the city. Its popularity explains the centrality of mazārs (pilgrimage places) and of sacred geography in general, in the post-Mongol Muslim historiography of Central Asia — notably in the works by ʿAlī-Khān Tūra ‘Sāghūnī’, the younger brother of ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra.
[6] The ‘Book of Bābur’ is the autobiography of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur (‘The Panther’, 1483–1530), a late-Timurid ruler of the Ferghana, Samarqand and Kabul, the founder in 1526 of the Mughal dynasty of India. The first Turkic-language work of this genre, written at the first-person singular, the Bāburnāma remained a key source of inspiration for the historiographers and memoirs writers of Central Asia, until the mid-20th century. See the laudatory mention of Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qilīch and of his lineage in Le Livre de Babur, French translation by J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont, Paris: POF, 1980, p. 58.
[7] The Uzbek term of Arabic origin ʿālim/oлим/olim means ‘scholar’.
[8] Исмон or Ismon.
[9] The author uses the term of Mongol origin īl (эл), which in the Turkic languages of Central Asia designates a population sharing a same ascent; a tribe or a clan; a country or territory. The current building of the Shākir-Khān Tūra Mosque of Töqmoq is now located at 154 Pushkin Street, in a former westerrn suburb of the city; it has been extensively reconstructed since the last decade of the 20th century.
[10] Алихон Тўра дадамиз (p. 4); also, infra p. 6: Олимхон ва Алихон Тўра дадаларимиз (‘my grandfathers ʿĀlim-Khān and ʿAlī-Khān Tūra’): the Uzbek term dada (‘father’, ‘grandfather’, ‘forefather’) is used here in the sense of ‘elder’.
[11] The Taʾrīkh-i muḥammadī is a biography of Prophet Muḥammad that ʿAlī-Khān Tūra ‘Sāghūnī’ (1885–1976) wrote and dictated at the end of its life. Published in Cyrillic in April 1991, it was distributed in the bookshops and book markets near the country’s main madrasas and sanctuaries. Later, it enjoyed enormous popularity, in the social networks notably, after the partial lifting of censorship on religious literature in the late 2010s. In its foreword, ʿAlī-Khān Tūra recalls some of the episodes of his own eventful life.
[12] Мискин/miskīn, ‘the poor one’, penname of the author.
[13] ‘The Key of Syntaxis’, a textbook of Arabic syntaxis, is a work of ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra’s youth, published for the first time in Arabic script at the end of the Tsarist period (Tashkent: Tipografiia G. Ia. Iakovleva, 1915). It was reprinted many times in Cyrillic since the late 2010s, by his son Muḥammad-Akmal-Khān, with support of the Board of the Muslims of Uzbekistan.
[14] The term aya (ая) or āya (оя) is a mark of respect for an elder woman, or a female teacher or spiritual master.
[15] Маҳаллий ерлик халқ: a tautological manner to differentiate the Turkic-speaking Muslim population of local origin of the Töqmoq area from Russian colonisers, but also from the Muslim Chinese-speaking Dungan or Turkic-speaking Taranchi migrants who had been flocking from Qing territory to the Semirechye Region of Russian Turkistan from the early 1880s. From 1917 to the late 1930s in Soviet Central Asia, these different populations were organised into opposed communities by competing ethno-political organisations (on this period, see notably David Brophy, Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia–China Frontier, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016, pp. 181 sq.).
[16] Quotation of a poem present in the Tūrkistān qāyghūsī (‘Turkestan’s Sorrow’), a book of memoirs about his youth in the early Soviet period, written in Chaghatay Turkic by ʿAlī-Khān Tūra Sāghūnī between 1966 and 1969, published for the first time in Cyrillic in Tashkent in 2003. A Cyrillic transcription was realised in the late 1980s and circulated then within the family. It is to this version that Rūqiyya-Khān may have had access — and that the present footnote’s author became acquainted with in 1996, by courtesy of Qutlughkhon ‘Ediqud’ Shokirov, the younger son of ʿAlī-Khān Tūra.)
[17] Approximative quotation of a hadith reported by the traditionist Anas b. Mālik: ‘The Messenger of God (peace and blessings of God be upon him) said: “A time will come upon people when the one who is patient with his religion will be like one who clings to a burning coal”’ (no. 2260 in the Sunan of al-Tirmidhī). Commentators interpret it as an allusion to the end times.
[18] In half-Russian in the text.
[19] Viz. her husband ʿĀlim-Khān and . . . her daughter, Rūqiyya-Pāshsha.
[20] The Russians and the communists.
[21] The author uses the feminine form qoriia qiz (qāriyya qiz).
[22] After the conquest of the Crimea in 1784, at the eve of the Russian Empire’s expansion towards the Caucasus and Central Asia, Islam had been endowed by Catherine II’s government with representative institutions inspired, notably, by Peter the Great’s Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church. A ‘Spiritual Assembly of the Muhamadans of Russia’ was opened in 1789 in Orenburg, in the south of the Urals. It was transferred some years later to Ufa, further north, where it was gradually endowed with a bureaucracy organised into a table or ranks. Contested by the Muslims at the end of the Tsarist period, the Assembly survived the revolutions of 1917, under guidance of reformist ulama. In 1943, it was transformed into an ensemble of regionalised ‘Boards’ (Rus. upravleniia), in charge of the control and mobilisation of the Muslim populations of the USSR, for the war against Nazi Germany. The Mufti of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan, with his siege in Tashkent, was assisted by a qāżī in each federated republic of the region (in the Uzbek SSR, but also in the Qazaq, Qirghiz and Turkmen SSRs, as well as in the Persian-speaking Tajik SSR, which Rūqiyya-Khān forgets to mention).
[23] Īshān Bābā-Khān b. ʿAbd al-Majīd-Khān (c. 1858–1957) was a Tashkent-born scholar and gnostic of Islam, specialising in the Hadith. In 1943, he was appointed as the first Mufti of the Muslims of Middle Asia and Qazaqstan. His son and assistant Żiyā al-Dīn-Khān (1908–82) held then the position of qāżī (‘judge’, the main Sunni Muslim religious dignitary) for the Uzbek SSR, until he succeeded his father upon the latter’s death. Both had to cope with the scripturalist line, hostile to shrine worship, imposed by such scholars as ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra relying on the Quran and the Hadith. Īshān Bābā-Khān adopted an ambiguous line, justified notably by the incomes provided by the major Central Asian Islamic or Islamised shrines (see notably Paolo Sartori, A Soviet Sultanate: Islam in Socialist Uzbekistan, 1943–1991, Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2024, pp. 79–83).
[24] Улуғ ватан уруши: the author copies the Russian terminology (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina).
[25] No trace of this document seems to have been preserved.
[26] . . .Катта грамматик китоблардан қисқача справочник сифатида. . . : Russian terms are used for ‘grammar’ (grammatik[a]) and ‘guidebooks’ (spravochnik).
[27] Spravochnik: the author uses again the Russian word.
[28] Қайта қурилиш: an allusion to Perestroika.
[29] Approximate quotation, in Cyrillic transcription, of Sura 20 (Ṭa-ha), verse 114, of the Quran (Qāl: Allàh taʿālà, wa qul rabb zidnī ʿilman: ‘Say: Almighty God, grant me more knowledge’) and of a hadith by Prophet Muḥammad, several versions of which coexist (notably by Tirmidhī, no. 3599: Allàhumma anfaʿnī bimā ʿallamtanī wa ʿallamnī mā yanfaʿunī wa zidnī ʿilman: ‘O God! Benefit me with what You have taught me, teach me what will benefit me and grant me more knowledge’).
[30] See the short portrait given by Eren Tasar (Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Soviet Central Asia, 1943–1991, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 60–61) and the historical reconstruction by Sartori of ʿĀlim Khān’s struggle, in the 1950s–60s, against the veneration of holy graves (A Soviet Sultanate, pp. 61–81).
[31] Information kindly provided to the author by Qutlugh-Khan Shakirov, in an e-mail of April 24, 2025.
[32] Developed by his younger brother’s Tūrkistān qāyghūsī.
[33] See notably Stéphane A. Dudoignon, ‘A Surrogate Aristocracy? Sufi Adab, Rurality, Modernity and Civilisation in Ex-Soviet Central Asia’, in C. Mayeur-Jaouen, ed., Adab and Modernity: A ‘Civilising Process’ (Sixteenth–Twenty-First Century, Leiden: Brill, 2020, 527–51.
[34] A French translation is currently being prepared by the author of the present commentary, augmented by the translation of the Junghāriya inqilābī wāqiʿalārī (‘Revolutionary Events of Dzungaria’, written by ʿAlī-Khān Tūra in 1947–48 as a report of his presidency of the Islamic Republic of East Turkestan). Based on the manuscripts and enriched by a substantial apparatus of notes, these translations are due to be published by Bleu autour, in Paris, in September 2025.
[35] Her own daughter Dilshād has authored in 2023 a short biography of ʿAzīza Pāshsha, still in handwritten form, for the present author. It is to be published and translated soon.
[36] A separate study should be dedicated by the present author, in the next years, to the history of the lineage since the departure of its great ancestor Shākir-Jān Tūra from Andijan, a large commercial and industrial city of the Ferghana Valley, at the end of the 19th century.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Red Gold (September 24, 2025). Biography of my grandfather ʿĀlim-Khān Tūra, son of Shākir Khūja. RedGold. Retrieved November 16, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/14qnp









