RELIGIOUS SYNCRETISM, SUFISM AND THE ROLE OF ISHANS IN NOMADIC KAZAKH SOCIETY

Abstract

The article investigates the influence of the natural-geographical environment of Kazakhstan on the process of rooting Sufi traditions and religious syncretism in the medieval nomadic Kazakh society. The article identifies the main routes of seasonal migration and specific features of the nomadic process in medieval Kazakh society and indicates the cause-and-effect relationship between the theory of geographical determinism and the spread and rooting of Sufi traditions in local culture.

Particular scientific attention in the article is paid to the phenomenon of the later Sufi tradition, known as “Ishanism”, which has been studied in this article in the context of the socio-political developments that took place in the nomadic Kazakh society of the early 18th - late 19th centuries. This gives an understanding of why the religious mission of the Ishans succeeded in the process of reintroducing the Kazakhs to Islamic traditions. Eventually it should be assumed that their religious and missionary activities lay on the fertile soil of the social and political realities, which had matured by that time among the nomadic Kazakh society and thus gave this process a powerful spiritual impulse and dynamics.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, Central Asia, natural environment, Islam, Sufi traditions, nomadic Kazakh society, ishans.