The Madrasa of Sheikh Abdulqasim

In the very heart of Tashkent, near the Parliament of Uzbekistan, lies one of the most revered sites in local tradition—the Madrasa of Abdulqasim. This madrasa bears the name of Sheikh Abdulqasim, a mentor of the Naqshbandi Sufi order. During the cholera riot of 1892, the sheikh managed to prevent clashes between the Muslim population of the city and the colonial administration of the Russian Empire.

It is worth noting that the colonial policy of the Russian Empire in Central Asia was not inherently anti-Islamic. (For more details, see the monograph by Sh.B. Mukhamedov, “Historical and Source Analysis of State Regulation of Islam by the Russian Empire in Turkestan (1864-1917).” Tashkent: “Baktria Press,” 2013). After the successful storming of Tashkent by the two-thousand-strong expeditionary corps of General Mikhail Chernyaev, the Turkestan Governor-Generalship was established here. Its Russian administration sought to maintain the traditional way of life and religious practices of the local population. This approach was considered a guarantee of peaceful coexistence with the conquered people. A vivid illustration of this is the first manifesto of General Chernyaev, addressed to the city’s residents. The manifesto was published on July 18, 1865—the day after a delegation of elders, the aksakals, presented the general with the golden keys to the city’s twelve gates.

“By the command of the great Sovereign, I, appointed as the governor of the Turkestan region, declare:
Matters shall be resolved according to the Mohammedan law, and efforts shall be made to establish peace among the people. Mohammedan rites shall be observed, and prayers to God shall be offered in mosques at the appointed times. In the great school, the mullahs shall teach faith and law. Children must attend schools, and if they are negligent, the mullahs shall punish and compel them to study, while parents who do not send their children to school shall be punished according to Sharia.

All people engaged in crafts shall continue their work, merchants shall engage in trade, and farmers shall cultivate the land. Streets shall be kept clean, and nothing shall be thrown onto the streets. According to their law, Mohammedans are not permitted to drink wine, boza, or gamble. All acts contrary to faith and law shall be avoided, and interest on borrowed money shall be delivered to the mosque on time. All officials shall not take bribes for resolving matters. Strictly prohibited are cheating on scales and sodomy with boys. The qazis of Islam, the qazis of the pen, and the qazis of the sword, as well as the mufti, shall not decide matters arbitrarily but shall resolve them as Sharia commands. If anyone decides a matter without Sharia, they shall be removed from office. On the streets, there shall be no fighting or shouting, and if there is quarreling or shouting, the offenders shall be guilty. The qazi of Islam shall receive two rubles for a wedding, and the rais one ruble, as prescribed by Sharia, but in other cases, nothing shall be given. For affixing seals, nothing shall be taken.

If you abide by all the above, your lands, gardens, and property shall remain in your possession. Your children shall not be taken as soldiers or Cossacks, and soldiers shall not be quartered in your homes. The soldiers themselves have no right to enter your homes, and if they do, they shall be reported to the authorities.

The Sovereign has many mercies for you. Pray for his health. Major General Chernyaev, 1865.”

Immediately after the capture of Tashkent, General Chernyaev convened the city’s prominent residents to draft a petition to the Russian Emperor Alexander II. The essence of the petition was that the city’s wealthy inhabitants had suffered greatly from the arbitrariness of the Kokand Khanate’s governors and now voluntarily requested the annexation of Tashkent to the Russian Empire. According to the testimony of Muhammad Salih Tashkandi, the author of Tashkent’s history, many aksakals did not attend this meeting. They believed that the city, abandoned to its fate by Muslims from neighboring regions, had been forced to surrender to the cunning and ruthless conquerors. For such speeches, six aksakals were immediately arrested and sent to Siberia.

Nevertheless, an agreement between the colonial administration and the city’s elite was eventually reached. From 1867, Tashkent became the capital of the entire Turkestan region and subsequently played the role of a relatively peaceful and reliable rear during the further expansion of Russian troops into the Fergana Valley, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva.

The first major uprising of Tashkent’s native population against the colonial authorities occurred 27 years after the conquest and was rooted in religious disagreements arising from sanitary measures. In the spring of 1892, a cholera epidemic that began in Afghanistan spread north of the Amu Darya and reached Tashkent by summer. The quarantine and sanitary-epidemiological measures taken by the Russian authorities in Tashkent to combat the disease were rational and fully aligned with the practices of European medicine at the end of the 19th century. However, they clashed sharply with the religious beliefs of the city’s Muslim population. According to Sharia law, the deceased must be buried before sunset. Relatives consider it essential to bury their loved ones near their ancestors, strictly observing all funeral rites.

Yet, tradition collided with sanitary necessity. By order of the authorities, Russian doctors were required to conduct mandatory medical examinations of the bodies of those who died from cholera. However, the shortage of medical personnel during the epidemic led to delays in burials by 2-3 days. The Muslim population was further angered by the authorities’ directive to bury the dead in specially designated cholera cemeteries, where graves were to be covered with lime. This was perceived as a violation of Sharia funeral norms and even as a desecration of graves.

The situation worsened because the cholera epidemic in Tashkent coincided with the holy month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims observe strict fasting, engage in prayers and Quranic recitations, and are particularly sensitive to any deviations from religious rules. Some fanatics began spreading rumors that Russian doctors were deliberately contaminating the water in the Bozsu River and giving deadly poison instead of medicine to cholera patients. This, they claimed, was done to ensure people’s deaths and then bury them without respect for tradition, thereby depriving them of the chance to enter paradise.

Despite the growing tension, the initial protests were not public or aggressive. Some began secretly burying cholera victims without informing the Russian authorities. However, this very act became the catalyst for conflict.

The open uprising, often referred to in official historiography as the “Cholera Riot of 1892,” began after rivals of the then-aksakal—the elder of Tashkent’s Muslim community, Muhammad Yaqub Karim Berdi—informed the crowd that the aksakal had reported the secret burials to the city’s military commandant, Colonel Stepan Putintsev. Shortly before this, Putintsev had addressed the Muslims in the Friday Mosque, publicly explaining the purpose of the Russian authorities’ anti-cholera measures and was received favorably by the congregation.

However, the very next day, on June 24, Putintsev was attacked by an unarmed but enraged crowd demanding that he hand over the “traitor” aksakal. The mob beat the commandant and ransacked his office. Putintsev called for reinforcements—a Cossack regiment and a company of soldiers. But before the troops arrived, a group of residents from the Russian part of the city, armed with sticks, attacked the Muslim crowd. The Muslims fled toward the Ankhor irrigation canal, where many fell from a high cliff. According to contemporary accounts, 80 bodies were later retrieved from the canal.

Official Russian records state that 1,657 people died from cholera in Tashkent in 1892, with 1,440 deaths in the Muslim part of the city and 217 in the Russian part. The number of cholera victims secretly buried by their relatives remains unknown to this day. The epidemic began in May and ended completely by August. Following an investigation by the Russian authorities and a military trial of the riot’s instigators in December of that year, 8 of the 60 accused were sentenced to death, 2 to exile in Siberia, and 15 to penal servitude.

However, later, the Governor-General of Turkestan, Baron Alexander Vrevsky, significantly softened the sentences. By his order, the death penalty was replaced with hard labor, and other punishments were reduced. Contemporaries noted that Baron Vrevsky himself was away from Tashkent during the unrest on June 24—he was at his dacha in the Chimgan Mountains. He arrived in the city only on June 25, ordered that the scale of the events not be exaggerated, and then returned to his dacha. After the attack on Colonel Putintsev, two hundred Cossacks and four companies of soldiers were deployed to the Muslim part of Tashkent. However, by June 30, on the Governor-General’s orders, the troops were withdrawn from the Old City.

Russian and Uzbek historians interpret the details and consequences of the 1892 Cholera Riot in Tashkent differently. Ideologues of the sovereign state of Uzbekistan view it almost as the beginning of a national liberation movement. Russian scholars, on the other hand, focus more on misunderstandings and coincidences that may have led to the conflict. However, folk Islam in Uzbekistan particularly emphasizes the role of Sheikh Abdulqasim in these events. According to legend, he played the role of the main mediator between the Muslim population and the colonial authorities.

Abdulqasim was one of the mentors of the Naqshbandi Sufi order and held the title of “ishan”—a leader of Muslims. He enjoyed great authority among the residents of Tashkent due to his erudition: he could recite the entire Quran and many theological treatises from memory. Abdulqasim was also known as the builder (or, according to another version, the restorer) of the madrasa—a Muslim educational institution near the city gates of Besh-Agach. Since the 16th century, this revered site had housed the Sufi khanqah of Muyi Mubarak (“The Blessed Hair”), which, according to legend, held a sacred relic—a hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad. According to the testimony of the Russian ethnographer Nikolai Ostroumov, a contemporary of the sheikh, Abdulqasim allocated 30,000 rubles from his own funds for the construction of the madrasa. Once completed, he annually funded the education of 150 students there. Graduates of this madrasa are said to include the founder of Uzbek literature, Abdullah Qodiriy, the playwright Gulam Zafari, and other prominent figures of culture and religion.

In one of the rooms of the madrasa, a calligraphic Arabic inscription has been preserved:

“How beautiful is this building, as sacred as the heavenly paradise,
For here is kept the venerable hair of the Prophet,
Of which the world proudly writes its history:
‘The majestic temple of the Prophet’s sacred hair.'”

According to Uzbek scholars, the last line of this quatrain contains a hidden “muddat tarih”—the year of the madrasa’s construction. In the traditional abjad system, Arabic letters correspond to numerical values. Based on this, the year of construction is dated to 1849. This means that by the time of the Cholera Riot, the madrasa had already been in operation for 43 years. The question arises: how old could the venerable sheikh, who initiated its construction, have been in 1892?

Folk traditions credit Abdulqasim with interceding before the colonial authorities, leading to the swift withdrawal of Russian troops from the Muslim part of Tashkent and preventing the suppression of the unrest from turning into mass reprisals. The sheikh reportedly sent messages to Governor-General Vrevsky, explaining that the uprising was not directed against the authority of the Russian Tsar but was merely defending the norms of Sharia.

However, even more astonishing accounts of Sheikh Abdulqasim have survived. Legend has it that he sacrificed his own life to stop the cholera epidemic. At the height of the tragic events, it is said that all the respected representatives of the local clergy gathered in his home to discuss two critical issues. The first was how to contain the Muslims’ discontent with the sanitary measures to avoid brutal reprisals by the Russian troops. The second was how to stop the disease without violating Sharia law. According to the legend, Sheikh Abdulqasim declared to those gathered that he would take upon himself the calamity that had befallen the city, and the cholera would soon leave Tashkent. The next day, the sheikh died from a sudden and severe case of cholera, and on that same day, the epidemic ceased.

Of course, there is no scientific evidence linking Abdulqasim’s death to the end of the epidemic. However, folk tradition does not require such evidence. Even those not prone to exaggeration acknowledged the inexplicable connection between these two events. Nikolai Ostroumov wrote: “In his later years, deeply affected by the recent events, Abulkasimkhan died of cholera. Remarkably, after his death, the cholera stopped, and the local Sarts (Uzbeks) believe that the death of a man devoted to Allah softens God’s wrath, which had sent cholera to the sinners.”

The building of the Abdulqasim Madrasa, constructed in the 19th century, has been well-preserved and required only minor restoration in 2002. As mentioned earlier, it is located very close to the Parliament and is not typically visited by religious pilgrims. Today, it houses the “Hunarmand” craft association and a school of traditional national crafts, including wood carving, jewelry making, and miniature painting. It is a stop for tours, including those for foreign tourists, who purchase exotic souvenirs here. However, for those interested in the spiritual and historical significance of the site, the madrasa remains a place of reverence and reflection.

Sheikh Abdulqasim’s legacy extends beyond the events of the Cholera Riot. His madrasa became a center of learning and spiritual guidance, fostering a generation of scholars, writers, and religious leaders who contributed significantly to the cultural and intellectual life of Tashkent and Uzbekistan. The madrasa’s emphasis on education and the preservation of Islamic traditions ensured that it remained a vital institution even during periods of political and social upheaval.

The story of Sheikh Abdulqasim also highlights the complex interplay between religion, politics, and public health in colonial Tashkent. His role as a mediator between the Muslim population and the Russian authorities underscores the importance of religious leaders in maintaining social harmony during times of crisis. The legend of his self-sacrifice, whether historically accurate or not, serves as a powerful symbol of devotion and the belief in the redemptive power of faith.