Jadid
The Jadid movement or Jadidism was a Turco-Islamic modernist political, religious, and cultural movement in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century. They normally referred to themselves by the Tatar terms Taraqqiparvarlar, Ziyalilar, or simply Yäşlär/Yoshlar. The Jadid movement advocated for an Islamic social and cultural reformation through the revival of pristine Islamic beliefs and teachings, while simultaneously engaging with modernity. Jadids maintained that Muslim peoples in Tsarist Russia had entered a period of moral and societal decay that could only be rectified by the acquisition of a new kind of knowledge and modernist, European-modeled cultural reform.
Modern technologies of communication and transportation such as telegraph, printing press, postal system, and railways, as well as the spread of Islamic literature through print media such as periodicals, journals, newspapers, etc. played a major role in dissemination of Jadid ideals in Central Asia. Although there were substantial ideological differences within the movement, Jadids were marked by their widespread use of print media in promoting their messages and advocacy of the Usul-i Jadid or "new method" of teaching in the maktab of the empire, from which the term "Jadidism" is derived. As per their Usul-i Jadid system of education, the Jadids established an enterprising institutions of schools that taught a standardized, disciplined curriculum to all Muslims across Central Asia. The new curriculum comprised both religious education and material sciences that would be resourceful for the community in tackling the modern-day challenges.
A leading figure in the efforts to reform education was the Crimean Tatar intellectual, educator, publisher, and politician Ismail Gasprinsky. Intellectuals such as Mahmud Khoja Behbudiy, author of the famous play The Patricide and founder of one of Turkestan's first Jadid schools, carried Gasprinsky's ideas back to Central Asia. Anti-colonial discourse constituted a major aspect of the Jadid movement; leaders like Gasprinskii promoted anti-Russian political activism. Following the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, the Jadids extended their anti-colonial critiques against the Allied great powers like the British and other Western European empires. Jadid members were recognized and honored in Uzbekistan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Relationship with the Muslim clergy
Jadid thought often carried distinctly anti-clerical sentiment. Many members of the Muslim clergy opposed the Jadid's programs and ideologies, decrying them as un-Islamic, heretical innovations. Many Jadids saw these "Qadimists" not only as inhibitors of modern reform but also as corrupt, self-interested elites whose authority lay not in the Islamic faith as dictated by the Quran, ḥadīth literature, and sunnah, but rather in local tradition that were both inimical to "authentic" Islam and harmful to society. In his Arabic publication al-Nahḍah, the Crimean Tatar educator and intellectual Ismail Gasprinsky published satirical cartoons in Cairo, British-ruled Egypt that depict Muslim clerics, such as mullahs and sheikhs, as rapacious and lustful figures who prevented Muslim women from taking their rightful place as social equals and exploited the goodwill and trust of lay Turks.Jadids asserted that the Ulama as a class were necessary for the enlightenment and preservation of the Turkic community, but they simultaneously declared Ulama who did not share their vision of reform to be unacquainted with authentic knowledge of Islam. Inevitably, those who opposed their modernist project were decried as motivated by self-interest rather than a desire to uplift their fellow Turks. Sufi mystics received an even more scathing indictment. Jadids saw the Ulama and the Sufis not as pillars of Islamic principals, but rather as proponents of a popular, unorthodox form of Islam that was hostile to both modernization and authentic Islamic tradition. Central Asian Jadids accused their leaders of permitting the moral decay of Islamic societies, as seen in the prevalence of alcoholism, pederasty, polygamy, and gender discrimination among Muslims, while simultaneously cooperating with Russian officials to cement their authority as elites.
Despite their anti-clericalism, the Jadids often had much in common with the Qadimists. Many of them were educated in traditional maktab and madrassas, and came from privileged families. As historian Adeeb Khalid asserts, Jadids and the Qadimist Ulama were essentially engaged in a battle over what values should project onto Central Asian culture. Jadids and Qadimists both sought to assert their own cultural values, with one group drawing its strategic strength from its relationship to modern forms of social organization and media and the other from its position as champion of an existing way of life in which it already occupied stations of authority.
Educational reform
One of the Jadid's principal aims was educational reform. They wanted to create new schools that would teach quite differently from the maktabs, or primary schools, that existed throughout the Turkic areas of the Russian empire. The Jadids saw the traditional education system as "the clearest sign of stagnation, if not the degeneracy, of Central Asia." They felt that reforming the education system was the best way to reinvigorate a Turkic society ruled by outsiders. They criticized the maktabs' emphasis on memorization of religious texts rather than on explanation of those texts or on written language. Khalid refers to the memoirs of the Tajik Jadid Sadriddin Ayni, who attended a maktab in the 1890s; Ayni explained that he learned the Arabic alphabet as an aid to memorization but could not read unless he had already memorized the text in question.The traditional education system was not the only option for Central Asian students, but it was far more popular than the alternative. Beginning in 1884, the tsarist government in Turkestan established "Russo-native" schools. They combined Russian language and history lessons with maktab-like instruction by native teachers. Many of the native teachers were Jadids, but the Russian schools did not reach a wide enough segment of the population to create the cultural reinvigoration the Jadids desired. Despite the Russian governor-general's assurances that students would learn all the same lessons they could expect from a maktab, very few children attended Russian schools. In 1916, for example, less than 300 Turks attended Russian higher primary schools in Central Asia.
In 1884, Ismail Gaspirali founded the first, the very first "new method" school in Crimea. Though the prominence of such schools among the Tatars rose rapidly, popularized by such thinkers as Ghabdennasir Qursawi, Musa Bigiev, and Gaspirali himself, the spread of new method schools to Central Asia was slower and more sporadic, despite the dedicated efforts of a close-knit community of reformers.
Jadids maintained that the traditional system of education did not produce graduates who had the requisite skills to successfully navigate the modern world, nor was it capable of elevating the cultural level of Turkic communities in the Russian Empire. The surest way to promote the development of Turks, according to the Jadids, was a radical change in the system of education. New method schools were an attempt to bring such a change about. In addition to teaching traditional maktab subjects, new method schools placed special emphasis on subjects such as geography, history, mathematics, and science. Probably the most important and widespread alteration to the traditional curriculum was the Jadids' insistence that children learn to read through phonetic methods that had more success in encouraging functional literacy. To this end, Jadids penned their own textbooks and primers, in addition to importing textbooks printed outside the Russian Turkestan in places such as Cairo, Tehran, Bombay, and Istanbul. Although many early textbooks came from European Russia, Central Asian Jadids also published texts, especially after the 1905 Revolution. The physical composition of new method schools was different as well, in some cases including the introduction of benches, desks, blackboards and maps into classrooms.
Jadid schools focused on literacy in native languages rather than Russian or Arabic. Though Jadid schools, especially in Central Asia, retained a traditional focus, they taught "Islamic history and methods of thought" rather than just memorization. Unlike their traditional predecessors, Jadid schools did not allow corporal punishment. They also encouraged girls to attend, although few parents were willing to send their daughters.
The press and print media
Many Jadids were heavily involved in printing and publishing, a relatively new enterprise for Turks in Russia. Early print matter created and distributed by commoners in Turkestan were generally lithographic copies of canonical manuscripts from traditional genres. From 1905 to 1917, 166 new Tatar language newspapers and magazines were published.Turkestani Jadids, however, used print media to produce new-method textbooks, newspapers and magazines in addition to new plays and literature in a distinctly innovative idiom. Private newspapers in local languages were available to Tatars earlier and Gasprinski's newspaper Tercüman was a major organ of Jadid opinion that was widely read in all Turkic regions of the Empire.
The first appearance of a Turkic-language newspaper produced in Turkestan, however, dates to after the 1905 revolution. Adeeb Khalid describes a bookstore in Samarqand that in 1914 sold "books in Tatar, Ottoman, Arabic, and Persian on topics such as history, geography, general science, medicine, and religion, in addition to dictionaries, atlases, charts, maps, and globes." He explains that books from the Arab world and translations of European works influenced Central Asian Jadids. Newspapers advocated modernization and reform of institutions such as the school system. Tatars who lived in Central Asia published some of these newspapers. Central Asians, however, published many of their own papers from 1905 until the Russian authorities forbade their publication again in 1908.
The content of these papers varied – some were extremely critical of the traditional hierarchy, while others sought to win over more conservative clergy. Some explained the importance of Central Asian participation in Russian politics through the Duma, while others sought to connect Central Asian intellectuals to those in cities like Cairo and Istanbul. The Jadids also used fiction to communicate the same ideas, drawing on Central Asian as well as Western forms of literature. For example, the Bukharan author Abdurrauf Fitrat criticized the clergy for discouraging the modernization he believed was necessary to protect Central Asia from Russian incursions.
Central Asian Jadids used such mass-media as an opportunity to mobilize support for their projects, present critiques of local cultural practices, and generally advocate and advance their platform of modernist reform as a cure for the societal ills plaguing the Turkestan. Despite the dedication of their producers, Jadidist papers in Central Asia usually had very small circulations and print runs that made it difficult for publications to maintain their existence without significant patronage. Jadids publishing in Turkestan also sometimes ran afoul of their Russian censors, who viewed them as potentially subversive elements.