A Salafi Pioneer of Saudi Anti-CommunismMuhammad Sultan al-Ma'sumi al-Khujandi (1880–1961)
Scholarship on Saudi involvement in the Cold War emphasizes key developments under King Faisal. This article demonstrates the merits of extending the study of the Saudi role in the Cold War to earlier periods. Examining the career of a little-discussed migrant scholar both prior to and in the early years of the Cold War reveals important precedents that shed light on Saudi Arabia's strategic policy at the height of the Cold War. Barely remembered as the Saudi author of a Salafi da'wa pamphlet, Muhammad Sultan al-Ma'sumi al-Khujandi's (1880–1961) legacy stands as testament to the fluidity of reformist Islamic discourses in the early twentieth century. Al-Khujandi's biography is first established before subjecting two aspects of his legacy to closer analysis. First, his authorship of some of the earliest examples of Muslim anti-communist literature in Arabic, providing templates widely replicated during the Cold War. Second, the abortive attempt to instrumentalize his stature in the service of state-legitimation by drawing on preexisting cosmopolitanisms. Though his overzealous commitment to "puritan" Salafism initially curtailed this potential, it soon proved key in his redeployment as an asset in the earliest Saudi experiments in Cold War pan-Islamic solidarity, establishing another template much replicated during the Cold War.
Saudi Arabia, Cold War, pan-Islamism, Central Asia, Salafism
The study of Saudi involvement in the Cold War often follows the same beats: labor activism at Aramco in the 1950s, the Free Princes movement, Faisal ibn Abdulaziz's competition with Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the deployment of pan-Islamic rhetoric in the fight against communism and Arab nationalism.1 As important as these events are, this article argues for the extension of the study of the Saudi role in the Cold War to earlier periods. Current historiographic scholarship on Saudi Arabia emphasizes Abdulaziz's efforts to consolidate the nascent kingdom internally in the first half of the twentieth century and Saudi Arabia's alignment with the United States during the Cold War in the latter half, as reflected in the aforementioned developments. Examining the career of a little-discussed migrant scholar both prior to and in the early years of the Cold War reveals important precedents that shed further light on what would become key aspects in Saudi Arabia's strategic policy at the height of the Cold War. The promotion of anti-communist Muslim literature and the establishment during the 1960s of institutions such as the Islamic University of Medina, the Muslim World League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference as bulwarks against Arab nationalism, socialism, and communism are rightly seen as emblematic of Saudi Arabia's Cold War efforts in line with US interests.2 However, as will be shown, anti-communist literature written in a distinctly Salafi register circulated in Saudi Arabia as early as the 1930s, and early institutions—such as the Dar al-Hadith and the World Muslim Congress—served as direct precursors to those mentioned above in both form and function.
Today, Muhammad Sultan al-Ma'sumi al-Khujandi (1880–1961) is only barely remembered as the Saudi author of a popular Salafi pamphlet, most commonly known by the title Is a Muslim Required to Follow a Particular Madhhab from among the Four Madhhabs? (Hal al-Muslim mulzam bi-ittiba' madhhab mu'ayyan min al-madhahib al-arba'a?).3 The work gained notoriety, and countless republications and translations, after receiving a book-length response from the prominent neotraditionalist Syrian scholar Muhammad Sa'id Ramadan al-Buti (1929–2013), titled Anti-Madhhabism: The Most Dangerous Heretical Innovation Threatening the Islamic Shari'a (Al-la-madhhabiyya: Akhtar bid'a tuhaddid al-shari'a al-Islamiyya).4 The publication in 1970 of al-Buti's provocatively titled book—arguably the most well-known contemporary work on the topic—was occasioned by the immediate context of polemics within Damascene scholarly circles between traditionalists around al-Buti and Salafis around Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (1914–1999). However, it was framed as a response to al-Khujandi's book, first published over two decades earlier as The Gift of the Sultan to the Muslims of the Nation of Japan (Hadiyyat al-sultan ila Muslimi bilad Jaban), then recently republished by the Damascene Salafis, who appended to it the aforementioned title by which it would become most known.5 Although researchers have acknowledged the importance of al-Khujandi's text, often citing it as a representative example of Salafi methodology, the author himself remains practically unstudied.
Al-Khujandi is uniquely interesting beyond his posthumous involvement in the Damascene polemics. He migrated to Saudi Arabia from Soviet western Turkestan after sojourns in Chinese eastern Turkestan and British [End Page 398] India. He was already well-traveled prior to the 1917 Russian Revolution and was fifty-five years old when he settled in Saudi Arabia in 1935. Al-Khujandi's biography is testament to the fluidity of reformist Islamic discourses in the early twentieth century and how they lent themselves to reinvention and transformation, especially through acts of migration and translation.6 This article first briefly establishes al-Khujandi's biography before more closely considering particular aspects of his legacy. Of interest is his authorship of some of the earliest examples of Muslim anticommunist literature in Arabic, providing templates that were widely replicated in the Cold War era. Of further interest is his status as one of the earliest non-Arab migrant scholars to enjoy the favor of King Abdulaziz (1876–1953). Al-Khujandi's erudition, his wide travels, and his multilingualism presented him as a promising candidate to join the ranks of figures helping the Saudi state bolster its legitimacy by drawing on preexisting overlapping cosmopolitanisms. Although his overzealous commitment to the "puritan" trajectory of Saudi Salafism from a relatively early stage soon curtailed this potential, it eventually proved instrumental in his redeployment as a valuable asset in the early years of the Cold War, establishing a key template for Saudi policy in the following decades.7
A small handful of academic studies have briefly touched on al-Khujandi, mostly in the context of the polemical scene in 1970s Damascus or Salafi ideas more generally. Jonathan Brown, Aria Nakissa, Farah El-Sharif, and Emad Hamdeh each mention al-Khujandi's aforementioned text, Hadiyyat al-sultan, in their broader discussions of Salafism and Salafi polemics.8 Henri Lauzière and Azmi Özcan each discuss al-Khujandi more briefly, drawing on texts besides Hadiyyat al-sultan.9 Al-Khujandi's name also appears in an area of study quite distinct from that of contemporary Arab Islam and intra-Islamic polemics. Mohammed Al-Sudairi briefly discusses al-Khujandi's lasting impact upon the emergence and proliferation of Salafism in China, noting that Dru Gladney appears to have been the first to highlight al-Khujandi's influence on Chinese Salafism.10 Finally, a pair of German-language articles have focused much more directly on al-Khujandi, although they are once again primarily concerned with al-Khujandi's famous text, Hadiyyat al-sultan. Jasser Abou Archid presents a German translation of part of this text, preceded by a brief introduction discussing the topics of scripture and madhhab authority in Islam.11 Stefan Wild's 1979 article is both the earliest and the most in-depth academic study directly concerned with al-Khujandi.12
Muhammad Sultan al-Ma'sumi al-Khujandi: A Biographical Sketch
Al-Khujandi's name refers to the place of his birth: the city of Khujand, located in the Ferghana Valley in what is present-day Tajikistan, which, at the time of his birth, was part of the Ferghana Oblast of Russian Turkestan.13 Born into a scholarly family in February or March, 1880, he recorded his full name as Muhammad Sultan b. Muhammad Urun b. Muhammad Mir Sayyid b. 'Abd al-Rahim b. 'Abd Allah b. 'Abd al-Samad b. 'Abd al-Latif b. Muhammad Ma'sum al-Khujandi. His parents taught him Farsi, Turkish, and Quranic recitation, after which he studied Arabic language, grammar, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and logic. He continued his education in Kokand and Bukhara, spending up to seven years in the latter city, where he completed the study of numerous texts of logic, philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, hadith, and Quranic exegesis.14 He mastered the local curriculum and attained the capacity for independent reading (al-mutala'a) at the age of twenty-three.15 Soon after this, al-Khujandi resolved to journey to the Hijaz to continue his education.16
Al-Khujandi departed for Mecca on December 25, 1905. He traveled by railway and ferry through several cities in the Russian Empire, the Ottoman lands, and Egypt, finally arriving in Mecca on February 6, 1906, just in time to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.17 He spent approximately two years furthering his studies in the Hijaz—over a year in Mecca and several months in Medina—with an apparent focus on the study of hadith and Sufi texts. Al-Khujandi then travelled to Damascus, where he spent several days studying with a number of renowned scholars at the Dar al-Hadith al-Ashrafiyya and beyond.18 He then traveled to Beirut, where he studied with prominent scholars, including Yusuf al-Nabhani (1849–1932), before proceeding onward to Jerusalem to visit al-Aqsa.19 Al-Khujandi then journeyed to Cairo, which he found to be particularly intellectually stimulating. While there, he met and studied with Muhammad Abduh's (1849–1905) most illustrious student, Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935); the former shaykh of al-Azhar, Abd al-Rahman al-Shirbini (d. 1908); and the soon-to-be mufti of Egypt, Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti'i (1854–1935)—one of Abduh and Rida's most ardent opponents.20 Furthermore, he subscribed to Rida's periodical Al-Manar and purchased its entire back catalogue as well as everything authored by Abduh, to [End Page 399] whom al-Khujandi refers by the use of the honorific "al-'allama." He also acquired all of Ibn Taymiyya's and Ibn al-Qayyim's published works.21 After Cairo, al-Khujandi returned to Istanbul via Alexandria and Athens, spending several months there studying with Ottoman scholars such as Isma'il Haqqi al-Manastirli (1846–1912) and Jamal al-Din Effendi (1848–1919). From Istanbul, he traveled back to Khujand by railway, passing via Kharkiv, Moscow, Penza, Samara, Orenburg, and Tashkent.22
Al-Khujandi returned to his hometown in 1909. The security afforded by his family's wealth facilitated the most intellectually active period in al-Khujandi's early career. He immersed himself in the catalog of Al-Manar and the works of Abduh, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and other "verifying scholars."23 He was appointed to deliver sermons at a local mosque and as a lead mufti in the local courts in 1910. Al-Khujandi seeks in later writings to frame this transformation as a shift toward the sort of "puritan" Salafism that came to be dominant in Saudi Arabia. However, the reform movement in which he was in fact involved at this stage was the genealogically distinct—and more avowedly modernist and progressivist—Jadid movement, prevalent in Russia and Central Asia at the time.24 This can be gleaned from his lists of intellectual allies and periodicals to which he contributed during this period. Of thirty-seven individuals named across present-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia, five have been identified: Sadr al-Din 'Ayni (1878–1954), the founder of modern Tajik literature under the Soviets; Mahmudkhodja Behbudiy (1874–1919), a learned mufti and perhaps the most prominent Central Asian Jadid; Sayyid Ahmad al-Wasli al-Samarqandi (1870–1920), a jurist, teacher, and poet who represented the conservative wing of the movement; Muhammad-Sadiq Imanqoli (1870–1932), a poet who later perished in a Soviet labor camp; and Zeki Velidi Togan (1890–1970), a historian and leader of the Bashkir liberation movement. Publications to which al-Khujandi contributed included Al-Isloh, Al-Izoh, Din vä Magishet, and Farghona, representing competing trends affiliated with the Jadid movement.25
However, this reformist period was relatively short-lived, interrupted as it was by the Russian Revolution in 1917. Al-Khujandi's experiences during the revolution and under Soviet rule will be explored in more detail shortly. For now, it is sufficient to note that he remained within Soviet western Turkestan for another eleven years, after which he was forced into exile in 1928. He fled to Chinese eastern Turkestan, where he settled in the city of Ghulja for over five years. There, al-Khujandi encountered a multiethnic Muslim population receptive to his reformist overtures. He reinforced his religious instruction through his authorship of a number of Turkic texts, two of which he claims were published by the republican Chinese government press in Korla.26
A series of upheavals in eastern Turkestan beginning in late 1933 resulted in grave instability and eventual Soviet involvement, leading al-Khujandi to flee once again. He departed Ghulja in mid-February 1934, intent on settling in the Hijaz. He traveled via the Himalayas to India, where he was afforded opportunities to write and publish, ultimately extending his trip by several months.27 Al-Khujandi arrived in Mecca in February 1935 and soon managed to secure a prominent place within the ranks of the burgeoning religious institutions of the recently established Saudi state. He received appointment to teach at both the Meccan Grand Mosque and the Dar al-Hadith, newly founded in 1931.28 At the Meccan Dar al-Hadith, he taught alongside two Egyptian Azhari migrants who also worked as imams of the Grand Mosque: the institute's director, Abd al-Zahir Abu al-Samh (1882–1950), and Muhammad Abd al-Razzaq Hamza (1893–1972).29
Al-Khujandi's thorough integration into the nascent state's religious institutions is further evidenced by the long list of prominent religious figures with whom he became closely associated. These included the head of the judiciary, Abdullah b. Hasan Al al-Shaykh (1870–1959); his predecessor, Abdullah b. Bulayhid al-Najdi (1867–1940); the chief mufti, Muhammad b. Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh (1893–1969); the head of colleges and scholastic institutes, Abd al-Latif b. Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh (1897–1967); the prominent scholarly publisher Muhammad Nasif (1885–1971); and the head of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Husayn Nasif (1903–1960). Furthermore, he met with leading state officials, including the minister of finance, Abdullah b. Sulaiman (1887–1965); Prince Faisal (1906–1975); and King Abdulaziz himself, who was personally fond of al-Khujandi and brought him into his inner circle.30
Despite enjoying such prestige so soon after settling in Mecca, al-Khujandi's prominence appears to have waned toward the end of his life. After King Abdulaziz's passing in 1953, al-Khujandi's overtures to King Saud appear not to have been reciprocated. When introducing al-Khujandi, his family continued for years to employ titles related to prestigious, albeit temporary, appointments bestowed upon him by Abdulaziz, implying that he received no comparable honors during Saud's reign. Furthermore, he no longer received [End Page 400] financial support for intellectual endeavors. He failed to secure funding to publish his three-part work The Firm Rope of the Sharia (Habl al-shar' al-matin), which he nonetheless published in 1956 using his remaining personal savings.31 Tragically, the book's eventual publication did not occasion a happy ending; it received a scathing review in the Saudi press that charged al-Khujandi with the propagation of heresy.32
Al-Khujandi's final years thus portray an embattled figure, locked in conflict with several groups, most notably an apparently sizable portion of the Turkestani migrant community in the Hijaz.33 This eventually led al-Khujandi to abandon his Turkestani identity altogether, asserting that he was an Arab who disliked speaking any language besides Arabic—except for necessities of teaching—and advising his children to follow suit.34 Al-Khujandi passed away in Mecca on Tuesday, October 17, 1961, and was buried the following day in al-Mu'alla Cemetery north of the Grand Mosque.35
Al-Khujandi's Cold War Legacy
The major focus of al-Khujandi's intellectual contributions lies in the areas of theology, particularly in defense of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), and in promulgating a "puritan" Salafi jurisprudence, which served as a precursor to the likes of Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani. However, of concern here are two aspects of his legacy that contributed to Salafi discourse and Saudi policy, with implications for the Cold War in Asia. The first is al-Khujandi's contribution to the earliest wave of anti-communist literature after 1917. Uniquely, these contributions are inflected through an Islamic register and represent some of the earliest literature of this kind written in Arabic. The second is the early, abortive attempt to instrumentalize his cosmopolitan credentials in service of legitimating the Saudi state. Soon after he arrived in Saudi Arabia, al-Khujandi came to enjoy privileges afforded to few other—and for a time no other—migrant scholars, including Arab migrants. Although al-Khujandi's commitment to relatively narrow religious concerns would eventually forestall such ambitions, it was that very commitment that would later make him an asset in the earliest Saudi experiments in pan-Islamic solidarity during the Cold War.
Contributions to Early Anti-Communist Muslim Literature
Al-Khujandi made a number of direct contributions to early anti-communist Muslim literature. On the one hand, he wrote a number of works explicitly addressing the topic framed in religious terms. On the other, he presented a number of narrative threads in his autobiographical writings that offer some of the earliest accounts of Soviet religious persecution published in Arabic. These accounts are noteworthy in that they offer some of the earliest templates and tropes for narrating stories of Muslim persecution, perseverance, and miraculous divine protection under communist rule.
The vast majority of al-Khujandi's works directly addressing the topic remain unpublished, with the exception of a single title. Authored during his time in Bombay in 1934–35, al-Khujandi's historical and autobiographical Turkic poem, written under the Farsi title Ayineh e Turkistan dar mazalim e Bulshuvikan (The Mirror of Turkestan in the Injustices of the Bolsheviks), was published decades later in 1954–55 as part of a collection of Turkic works.36 Though his unpublished works on the topic appear to have been lost to history, their titles offer a glimpse into his position toward the Soviets, with titles explicitly naming the Bolsheviks, socialists, communists, and Russians: Reports of the Prophets Elucidating the Innovation of the Socialists and Their Sects; Dispelling Doubts Regarding the Injustices of the Bolsheviks, or Clarifying the Condition of the Bolsheviks; The Ma'sumic Arrows in the Throats of the Communists; Uncovering the Misery in the Coup in Russian Lands; and The Sharp Sultanic Sword for Beheading the Satanic Bolshevik.37 Furthermore, al-Khujandi published several articles in the Indian press on the events of the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet injustices.38
In addition to these explicit titles, al-Khujandi's autobiographical writings include a number of important anti-communist narrative threads. These represent a series of early templates or tropes used to relate Muslim experiences under communist rule, which saw parallels in later Cold War–era writings.39 The first narrative element relates al-Khujandi's experiences during the first year of the Russian Revolution, including his participation in Jadidist political efforts. He wistfully recalls initial Muslim enthusiasm upon the tsar's overthrow, recounting how flags were erected that bore the Muslim shahada (testimony of faith), underneath which was written "Freedom, Justice, Equality." He also recounts the establishment of "Islamic shura" (consultation) councils, which he was elected to lead—a position that entrusted him with overseeing educational and judicial reforms and with traveling to Moscow several times as a political representative.40 What al-Khujandi refers to here is the Shuroi Islami, an organization representing the progressive wing of Jadidist sociopolitical [End Page 401] interest groups. However, these efforts were plagued by internal divisions, most notably between the progressive Shuroi Islami and its conservative rival, the Shuroi Ulamo, representing traditionalist religious scholars.41 After nine short months—congruent with the time period between the February and October Revolutions—the situation changed once the Bolsheviks took power. Al-Khujandi complains of Lenin's and Stalin's purges, which led to mass confiscation of property, and anti-religious campaigns, which led to the persecution and imprisonment of many scholars, several of whom perished after being exiled to Siberian gulags; others only survived through exile.42
The second noteworthy narrative element in al-Khujandi's autobiography relates to his own experiences of religious persecution, including two bouts of imprisonment and one instance of migration within western Turkestan. He relates that he was imprisoned twice in his hometown Khujand as a result of his religiosity, first for two months in 1923–24 and then again for an unspecified period in 1925–26. Upon his release, the pressure of government surveillance compelled him to migrate from Khujand to the city of Margilan, whose locals welcomed him, appointing him imam of the old mosque and electing him to replace the local judge. However, he soon resigned from public office, feeling that the position attracted increased government scrutiny, precluding the possibility of just adjudication.43 Al-Khujandi's presentation of this narrative element is somewhat brief and vague, omitting any mention of specific charges brought against him. Rather, he interweaves the narrative with anecdotes of his reform efforts, people's positive impressions of him, and fears of government surveillance, strongly implying that he was simply targeted for being a good Muslim. The story thus gains its narrative strength precisely from its vagueness and power of suggestion.
Al-Khujandi's third story is significant for its inclusion of two distinct narrative elements: one relating to the intellectual superiority of Islam and the other to an instance of heavy-handed persecution by the communist government. The story narrates events that al-Khujandi credits for his third and final imprisonment under Soviet rule, upon which he was sentenced to death. Al-Khujandi claims that he traveled to Tashkent to partake in a debate on God's existence, which was reportedly attended by more than ten thousand Muslims, Christians, atheist communists, and others. The story relates that, after the head of the atheist contingent concluded his arguments against God's existence, al-Khujandi stepped forward to speak. He claims to have deftly countered his opponents' arguments, leading them to sheepishly defer to their mentor in Moscow, thus dealing them an embarrassing defeat that was met with the audience's boisterous applause and cries of "Allahu akbar" (greater is God). However, only two days after he returned to Margilan, the authorities raided his homes in Margilan and Khujand, uncovering secret stores of valuables concealed in the buildings' tiles. All of al-Khujandi's property was confiscated, and within a few days of his arrest, he was sentenced to death by firing squad.44
Al-Khujandi's third and final imprisonment offers the site of the fourth narrative trope: the miraculous prison break, liberally peppered with allusions to the Prophetic migration (hijra). Just as al-Khujandi's autobiography offers one of the earliest Arabic accounts of Soviet religious persecution, it also offers one of the earliest templates for narrating stories of Muslim perseverance and miraculous divine protection under communist rule.45 Awaiting his fate in prison, al-Khujandi experienced a dream that reassured him that he would survive after falling ill, upon which he indeed fell very ill and was treated by the prison's doctors. On a particularly hot day on August 17, 1928, when prisoners were allowed out into the courty ard, an ill al-Khujandi was left to lie outside in the building's shade. At sundown, when prisoners were returned to their cells, the guards left al-Khujandi in the courty ard, believing he had died or was close to dying. As the evening progressed, al-Khujandi observed that the guards' preoccupation with drinking slowly led to their ever-increasing intoxication. He then noticed a drunken guard forget to lock the prison gates after having chained them. Implicitly likening his experience to that of the Prophet Muhammad on the eve of the hijra, al-Khujandi recited the same verse the Prophet did as he approached the exit.46 Escaping undetected, he successfully evaded recapture in the ensuing search. By the time he began to hear rifle fire and the bustle of guards, he had reached a graveyard, where he proceeded to seek refuge. Despite being greeted upon entry by a pack of barking dogs, the dogs calmed down when they saw him, allowing him to hide among some thorny bushes. When guards attempted to enter the graveyard, the dogs attacked them, which convinced them that this could not possibly be the escapee's hiding place. This reflects yet another implicit allusion to the Prophetic hijra, recalling the story in which the Prophet and Abu Bakr hid in a cave while evading a Qurayshi patrol. A spider's web woven across the entrance and [End Page 402] the placement of a dove's nest and eggs next to it led the patrol to believe no one could be hiding inside. Al-Khujandi departed before dawn and followed a remote path near the desert, noticing that all checkpoint guards he came across were asleep. This reflects a third allusion to the hijra, recalling the Prophet's departure under cover of darkness, during which Qurayshi tribesmen posted outside his house miraculously fell asleep. Al-Khujandi eventually contacted friends and students who helped him escape, marking his first major exile from Soviet-controlled lands. After four months on the run, al-Khujandi arrived in the city of Ghulja in Chinese east Turkestan, which he would call home for more than five years.47
Al-Khujandi's fifth narrative relays how Soviet forces effectively caught up with him, leading him to migrate once more to his second, and final, place of exile in the newly established Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Al-Khujandi's presence in Ghulja coincided with heightened political tensions in Chinese east Turkestan. The region's ethnically Turkic Muslim majority came into conflict with the influential ethnically Chinese Hui Muslim minority as well as the non-Muslim Han Chinese administrators. This all came to a head in the 1933 establishment of the first Islamic Republic of East Turkestan by revolutionary Turkestani nationalists, under the presidency of Khoja Niyaz Hajji.48 Al-Khujandi criticized the revolutionaries, particularly Khoja Niyaz, portraying him as manipulable fool with delusions of grandeur who had fallen prey to Soviet machinations. He estimated that the entire project was a ploy driven and supported by the Soviets to establish a pretext for intervention.49 He condemned the revolutionaries' Islamic sloganeering, woefully noting that two of the opposing parties to the conflict—separatist Turkic nationalists and loyalist Chinese Dungans/Hui—claimed to be Muslims.50 The Soviets invaded in January 1934, and the republic collapsed by April. So committed was al-Khujandi to denying the Soviets any advantage that he had no qualms about securing help and financial aid from the commander of the Dungan/Hui army to support his journey into exile, reflecting little interest in maintaining good relations with fellow Turkestanis.51 Al-Khujandi's fifth narrative thus establishes an uncompromising stance against Muslims who allow themselves to be manipulated in Bolshevik power plays, even if these Muslims are one's well-intentioned countrymen. No clearer example of the instrumentalization of this sentiment during the Cold War exists than 1980s Afghanistan, when figures such as Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood activist Abdullah Azzam emphasized pan-Islamic solidarity over national belonging in the effort to repel the Soviets and, significantly, their local clients.52
The year of al-Khujandi's passing, 1961, saw a number of important changes reflecting Saudi Arabia's increasing involvement in the Cold War. This included Prince Talal b. Abdulaziz's dismissal from government and his relocation to Cairo and Beirut, where he led the Free Princes opposition movement (al-umara' alahrar), and the establishment of the Islamic University of Medina as a bulwark against "Soviet atheism."53 Though al-Khujandi may not have been present to witness such developments, studying him provides insights into Saudi Arabia's emergent position in the Cold War. While some authors have noted the presence of both communist and anti-communist discourses in the Hijaz even prior to World War II, most academic literature focuses on Saudi Arabia's development of distinctly Islamic anti-communist discourses beginning in the 1960s, particularly under King Faisal.54 Al-Khujandi's career shows that, far from constructing such discourses ex nihilo, the Saudi state drew on preexisting anti-communist sentiment among Muslims. Turkestani migrants from Soviet- and Chinese-controlled lands, with firsthand experience of life under communist rule, were especially well placed to furnish such discourses with detail and, crucially, authenticity. It is difficult to determine whether al-Khujandi's anti-communist writings had a direct influence on other authors writing during the Cold War. However, his work demonstrates that discursive elements that became salient in the Cold War—from narratives of communist persecution and Muslim perseverance to stories of miraculous divine protection and wielding pan-Islamism against Muslims deemed too radical—were present in Saudi publications as early as the 1930s.
From Short-Lived Instrument of Saudi Cosmopolitanism to Pan-Islamic Cold Warrior
Al-Khujandi's proximity to King Abdulaziz so soon after his migration to Saudi Arabia in 1935 brought several benefits. His status as a well-travelled multilingual non-Arab Asian scholar appears not to have been lost on Saudi authorities, who were then drawing on various overlapping cosmopolitanisms—Hijazi, pan-Arab, and pan-Islamic—in their efforts to shore up legitimation for the nascent state.55 The reliance on Arab migrant intelligentsia to staff intellectual, diplomatic, and government posts—the likes of Shakib Arslan, [End Page 403] Yusuf Yasin, Fu'ad Hamza, Hafiz Wahba, and Khayr al-Din al-Zirikli—had served this end well, furnishing weight and dexterity on the international stage.56 The new state exhibited analogous ambitions in its quest for religious legitimation. The 1927–30 rebellion by the ikhwan—Abdulaziz's Wahhabi tribal militia—was eventually quashed after Abdulaziz obtained requisite sanction from the ulema of Najd. However, the relative proximity between the Najdi ulema and the ikhwan up to that point, new exigencies resulting from territorial expansion, and Abdulaziz's long-standing weariness of the Najdi ulema led him to search for alternatives. Though they would continue to play a central role in his consolidation of power, Abdulaziz no longer accepted the disadvantage of total reliance on Najdi Salafism as the sole legitimizing discourse. In principle, the cosmopolitan ulema of the Hijaz may have represented one possible alternative. However, memory of the Saudi conquest of the Hijaz was fresh, and most Hijazi notables and ulema—until recently, Ottoman government employees—were not receptive to Saudi rule, if not actively opposed to it.57 It was in this context that Abdulaziz sought legitimation from a different class of cosmopolitan: migrants from Egypt, the Levant, South Asia, West Africa, and, in the case of al-Khujandi, Turkestan, who espoused a host of intellectual commitments—from Arab nationalism to pan-Islamism and various brands of Islamic reformism.58 The newly established Dar al-Hadith institutes in Mecca and Medina, which employed al-Khujandi, reflected one such site of legitimation. Boasting a South Asian founder with close links to the Ahl e Hadith movement and a faculty of graduates from al-Azhar and Bukhara, the institutes would also soon be led by successive generations of West African scholars.59 However, for all the official support and attention lavished upon al-Khujandi soon after his arrival, he was largely left to his own devices for the majority of the 1940s and 1950s. As will be shown, al-Khujandi's overzealous commitment to the increasingly "puritan" trajectory of Saudi Salafism during this period would severely undercut the utility of his linguistic and cultural skills. However, it was precisely this commitment that would eventually revive al-Khujandi's relevance in the eyes of the state in the postwar era, as it engaged in its first experiments in deploying pan-Islamic rhetoric in the Cold War.
Al-Khujandi's potential and his eventual undoing are most readily reflected in his instruction at the Grand Mosque, which he delivered in five languages: Arabic, Farsi, Bukhari (Uzbek), Turkish, and Urdu.60 Perhaps the most noteworthy alumnus of his study circles during this period was Ma Debao, the don of Chinese Salafism, who had found in al-Khujandi an inspirational mentor. Debao returned to China with a number of his teacher's books, which were soon translated and studied locally.61 The symbolic significance of a loyal government-appointed scholar offering instruction at the Grand Mosque in several Asian languages may be clear, particularly at a time when other multilingual Meccan scholars were sidelined for their opposition to Saudi rule. However, the limitations of this symbolism are exemplified by the career of al-Khujandi's illustrious student: al-Khujandi's instruction lent itself most readily to the propagation of "puritan" Saudi Salafism on the international stage. Though this would become a strategic desideratum later in the twentieth century, it had not yet achieved that status at this early stage.
The promise that al-Khujandi represented to Saudi Arabia's early ambitions to marshal cosmopolitanism in the service of legitimation is reflected in the support he received for his written works. The government funded the publication and distribution of his works, several at the personal expense of members of the ruling family, including King Abdulaziz.62 Uniquely, al-Khujandi was the first—and for a time the only—living migrant scholar among a very small handful to receive such support for the publication of original works.63 The likely motivation behind this may be gleaned from one of his first works to receive Abdulaziz's backing, The Gift of the Sultan Regarding the Witr Prayer of Ramadan (Tuhfat alsultan fi witr Ramadan). The work primarily addressed Asian pilgrims and included translated summaries in Farsi and Turkic.64 Both facts are particularly noteworthy considering that, at this time, the Saudi government was almost exclusively preoccupied with the publication of classical premodern works and those of the scholars of the Najdi da'wa.65 Such singular support for publishing al-Khujandi's multilingual works may plausibly be read as enthusiasm for the prospect of an erudite Saudi scholar fully committed to the Saudi state and equally capable of addressing local and foreign audiences.
This tension between al-Khujandi's promise and the reality of what he delivered can be traced by examining a selection of his works, each addressing non-Arab Asian audiences. First, The Ruling of God, the One Eternal Refuge, Regarding the Status of One Who Seeks Aid from the Dead (Hukm Allah al-Wahid al-Samad fi hukm al-talib min al-mayyit al-madad) represents an example of al-Khujandi's participation in contestations over Turkestani Islamic identity in South Asia. He wrote [End Page 404] it in response to a query from a Turkestani student in Deoband regarding a Turkestani scholar based in Bombay named Mahmud al-Tarazi. The student felt embarrassed in front of his Indian teachers, whom he feared had come to negatively judge all Turkestanis as sharing in al-Tarazi's opinions. After reviewing al-Tarazi's works, al-Khujandi penned this scathing critique strongly condemning al-Tarazi. However, what would have otherwise been a relatively minor spat festered into a lifelong rivalry.66 Al-Khujandi continued to condemn al-Tarazi, perhaps most ironically even long after the latter had not only migrated to Saudi Arabia but had likewise become close to the Saudi religious establishment, refashioning himself as the Salafi translator of the Uzbek edition of Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahhab's Book of Oneness (Kitab al-tawhid).67
Second, al-Khujandi's book Answers to the Eight Questions (Ajwibat al-masa'il al-thaman) represents an example of his engagement with Islam in China.68 The work tackles questions posed to al-Khujandi by one Muhammad Hasan Jinzi Shinway al-Sini. Al-Khujandi demonstrates his familiarity with Chinese customs as he sets out to clarify misconceptions prevalent among Chinese Muslims regarding the Wahhabi movement.69 Once again, the significance of a figure capable of effectively defending Wahhabi teachings and the Saudi state, in as far-flung a locale as China, cannot be overstated. However, the work's fixation on theology and jurisprudence demonstrates the limitations of what such interventions can achieve.
Third, al-Khujandi's most famed work perfectly encapsulates his cosmopolitan promise and the narrower avenues into which his legacy was eventually filtered. Originally written in March 1939, the work addressed Muslims in Japan, as indicated by its original title, The Gift of the Sultan to the Muslims of the Nation of Japan (Hadiyyat al-sultan ila Muslimi bilad Jaban), responding to a question sent by a pair of "Russian migrants" in Tokyo. According to the letter, the Muslim Association in Tokyo faced a dilemma when a cohort of Japanese individuals expressed interest in converting to Islam. They were soon harangued by the Indians present, who insisted they convert to the Hanafi madhhab, and by the Indonesians, who urged them to convert to the Shafi'i madhhab. This caused the Japanese to relent in their intent to convert, leading the letter's authors to seek clarification from al-Khujandi regarding the reality of Islam, the meaning of madhhabs, and whether following one was necessary.70 Although this episode is sufficient to establish al-Khujandi's cosmopolitan credentials, the sheer extent of his international network becomes clear when it is revealed that one of the two "Russian migrant" coauthors of the letter was the Tatar Muhammad Abd al-Hayy Qurban Ali (1892–1972). A pan-Islamist activist and former commander of a Bashkir militia that had fought the Soviets, Qurban Ali now led a sizable Tatar migrant community that established two of Japan's first three mosques, in Nagoya and Tokyo in 1936 and 1938, respectively.71 Though al-Khujandi's reply came in response to this Japanese context, its eventual fate was to gain notoriety as a general statement in favor of eschewing madhhab adherence, as implied by the title appended to it by the Damascene Salafis. Al-Khujandi's transformation was thus complete, from potential source of cosmopolitan legitimation to author of a popular Salafi da'wa pamphlet.
Although the Saudi state may have tempered its ambitions regarding al-Khujandi's potential as the years went on, it saw fit to call upon his services once again after World War II. The postwar period brought a number of significant changes, including the end of British rule in India, the establishment of Israel and Pakistan, and the start of the Cold War. It was in this transitional context that al-Khujandi received his appointment to personally represent King Abdulaziz at the World Muslim Congress. He was entrusted to serve as the king's envoy to the third and fourth congresses, held in Karachi, Pakistan, in January 1949 and February 1951.72 Al-Khujandi's knowledge of several Asian languages and close familiarity with Asian cultures gave him a clear advantage over other potential appointees, as did his experiences under Soviet rule and his opposition to communism. Though Saudi Arabia would not become involved in the Cold War in earnest until later, it emerged from World War II firmly aligned with US interests.73 The World Muslim Congress events were significant in that they presented the contours of the shape of things to come in the Cold War. In the preceding era, al-Khujandi's turn away from transnational networks and modernist discourses in favor of an emergent "puritan" Saudi Salafism had severely limited the potential value that may have been gained from his linguistic and cultural skills. However, in this new postwar era, it was precisely al-Khujandi's commitment to "puritan" Salafism that enabled the Saudi state to effectively redeploy his linguistic and cultural skills in the service of an experiment in pan-Islamic solidarity from a grounded Saudi position. Whereas most defenders of "puritan" Saudi Salafism lacked the requisite linguistic and cultural knowledge to render them effective in this [End Page 405] context, those who possessed this knowledge would have been ill-equipped to render their Islamic rhetoric in a distinctly Saudi register. Al-Khujandi's early postwar foray into the world of government-led pan-Islamic projects thus foreshadowed much of what would follow during the Cold War.
The 1961 establishment of the Islamic University of Medina, the 1962 establishment of the Muslim World League, and the 1969 establishment of the Organization of the Islamic Conference may be viewed as continuations of Saudi Arabia's earlier projects of the Dar al-Hadith and the World Muslim Congress. The only difference was that now these institutions included among their aims the (often explicit) purpose of combatting the ideologies of Arab nationalism, socialism, and communism.74 However, King Abdulaziz's appointment of al-Khujandi to represent the kingdom twice within the first decade of the Cold War shows that the template for what would become strategic policy under Faisal had already been pioneered by Abdulaziz. Faisal's overtures to the Muslims of Asia, his stance against communism and revolutionary republicanism, his hosting of exiled Islamists, and his instrumentalization of pan-Islamic rhetoric all had precedents in al-Khujandi's writings, his career, and his appointment as state representative.75 The case for extending the study of Saudi Arabia's role in the Cold War to periods preceding Faisal's era is strengthened once it becomes clear that al-Khujandi was not the only Turkestani migrant to become involved in the Cold War during Abdulaziz's reign. Al-Khujandi's archrival, Mahmud al-Tarazi, was closely affiliated with the Turkestan National Unity Committee (Türkistan Millî Birlik Komitesi/National Turkistanischen Einheitskomitee), an organization with roots in the Turkestan Legion, a Nazi German military unit formed in World War II from Turkestani Soviet prisoners of war. Active in postwar West Germany, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, the committee agitated for an independent nation of Greater Turkestan, whose government-in-exile appointed al-Tarazi as national mufti (al-mufti al-qawmi li-'umum Turkistan) in late 1949.76
Conclusion
An examination of the distinctive figure of al-Khujandi sheds light on the history of anti-communist discourses and exercises in state policy that became hallmarks of Saudi involvement in the Cold War. The various stages of his biography—his travels prior to the 1917 Revolution; his involvement in Jadid reform in Turkestan; his experiences under Soviet rule, in China, and in India; and his reinvention as a "puritan" Saudi Salafi—stand as testament to the fluidity of reformist Islamic discourses in the early twentieth century. His overtly anti-communist works were among the earliest written on the topic in Arabic. Furthermore, his autobiographical narratives represent some of the earliest templates and tropes that would become commonplace in the retelling of Muslim experiences of persecution and suffering under communist rule. Finally, although his migration to Saudi Arabia in the 1930s appeared to present the fledgling kingdom with an opportunity to appeal to a global pan-Islamic cosmopolitanism, al-Khujandi's preoccupation with "puritan" Salafism severely limited this potential. Although this turn of events caused al-Khujandi to become largely forgotten to history, his anti-communist writings, his enthusiasm for Salafi proselytizing, and his representation of the kingdom in its earliest experiments in Cold War–era pan-Islamism foreshadowed strategies that soon became ubiquitous in Saudi policy.
Mohammed El-Sayed Bushra is a teaching fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Otago, New Zealand, where he has taught in the Politics Program and the Religion Program. He received his PhD in Islamic studies from Georgetown University in 2021 and has previously studied political theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has presented his research at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University. He is also the translator and editor of the Arabic edition of S. Sayyid's Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (Hurst, 2014), published in 2018 by the Arab Network for Research and Publishing.
Notes
1. Al-Rasheed, History, 95–96, 102–19, 124–29; Vassiliev, History, 351–62, 368–76, 385–88; Vitalis, America's Kingdom; Matthiesen, "Saudi Arabia and the Cold War."
2. Al-Rasheed, History, 127–29; Determann, Historiography, 180; Al Tuwayjiri, "Encircled," 166–67; Ahmed, West African ʿulamāʾ, 141–42; Matthiesen, "Saudi Arabia and the Cold War," 221–22.
3. al-Khujandi, Hal al-muslim. The term madhhab here refers to a school of Islamic jurisprudence. The "four madhhabs" are the four canonical schools of Sunni jurisprudence: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali madhhabs.
6. Al-Khujandi was party to several reformist discourses, modulated at different stages and in different languages on the basis of shifts in his own convictions and those of his anticipated audiences. See notes 24 and 64 below.
7. Early aspirations to legitimate the Saudi state relied in part on appeals to overlapping cosmopolitanisms: Hijazi, reflected in adopting the Hijaz as administrative center and appealing to Hijazi elites; pan-Arab, reflected in government appointments and appeals to the emergent Arab world; and pan-Islamic, reflected in responsibility for the Holy Sanctuaries. See note 32 on the role of government publication Majallat al-Hajj in this regard. Furthermore, early twentieth-century Salafi discourses, prior to the "puritan" trajectory's entrenchment, reflected a cosmopolitanism of their own. See Freitag, History of Jeddah; Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism; Spannaus, "Evolution"; Coppens, "Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī's Treatise."
8. Brown, "Is Islam Easy?" 142–44; Nakissa, Anthropology, 265; El-Sharif, "Rhetoric," 4–8; Hamdeh, Salafism and Traditionalism, 85, 136, 141.
12. Wild, "Muslim und Maḏhab." Despite this, the article remains more concerned with modernist discourses and the Damascene polemics than with al-Khujandi himself.
13. Al-Khujandi's biography is primarily reconstructed from his own autobiographical (often auto-hagiographical) writings. Where possible, these are supplemented with insights from critical secondary scholarship. Primary sources were authored 1908–56: al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 8–9; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 45–99; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:14–16, 2:214–18, 2:219–32. The second source is the basis of most secondary source biographies, e.g., Yurdagür, "HUCENDÎ"; Karaman, İki din mazlumu.
14. al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:14–15; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 46–48; al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 8, 15–16; al-Andijani, 'Ulama', 93.
15. al-Khujandi, Hukm, 51, 53. Independent deep reading (al-mutala'a) is a hallmark of the late classical tradition. See El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 97–128. Al-Khujandi's account affirms James Pickett's description of early twentieth-century Bukharan madrasas and their curricula. See Pickett, Polymaths, 110–11.
16. Al-Khujandi presents conflicting accounts of his motivation for this journey. In some sources, he portrays it as a yearning for the Holy Sanctuaries reflecting a natural progression from his studies in Bukhara. In others, he presents it as the result of reaching a dead end in intellectual disputes with closed-minded Bukharan scholars, offering a scathing evaluation of religious learning throughout Asia. See al-Khujandi, Hukm, 48–53; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:15; al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 8.
18. al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 8–9, 16, 82; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:15; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 56–59; al-Zirikli, Al-a'lam, 3:283; 6:22, 180; 7:157–58; al-Mar'ashli, Mu'jam, 2:378–79, 428–30.
19. al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 9; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:15–16; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 59–60; al-Zirikli, Al-a'lam, 7:74; 8:218; al-Mar'ashli, Mu'jam, 2:397.
20. al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 9; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:16; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 60; al-Mar'ashli, Mu'jam, 2:430–32; al-Zirikli, Al-a'lam, 3:334; 6:50, 126.
22. al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 9; al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:16; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 61; İpşirli, "CEMÂLEDDİN EFENDİ," 309–10; Yavuz, "MANASTIRLI."
23. al-Khujandi, Habl, 1:16; 2:214; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 61. On tahqiq as "verification," both in general and in the late imperial Russian context, see El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 129–231; Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition, 94–98.
24. The classification of different Salafi orientations has been the subject of much debate in recent scholarship. Though this article does not aim to contribute substantially to this debate, its findings support Bruckmayr and Hartung's thesis regarding the multidirectionality of Salafi Islam, as well as their questioning of the mutual exclusivity of Salafi and Sufi orientations within Islam. Al-Khujandi's Central Asian education, his self-identification with the Hanafi-Maturidi-Naqshbandi tradition, his pivot toward the study of hadith during his study with Naqshabandi-Mujaddidi scholars in the late Ottoman Hijaz, and his association with the Jadids all point in these directions. Of particular note is al-Khujandi's self-presentation as having undergone only one intellectual transformation, from Hanafi-Maturidi-Naqshbandi traditionalism to "Salafism." Though this may be read as an attempt to obscure his association with the "modernist" Jadids, whom he never directly names, he emphatically does not dissociate from the "modernist" Abduh. It is, therefore, equally plausible that al-Khujandi genuinely saw his various reformist commitments as part of a "Salafi" continuum. Thus, insofar as this article finds in al-Khujandi a liminal figure who reflects continuities between "modernist" and "puritan" Salafis, it is in agreement with Coppens's recent critique of Lauzière's sharp distinction between the two orientations on genealogical grounds. The classification of "puritan" Salafi used here is adopted from Coppens's article. See al-Khujandi, Al-'uqud, 8, 15–16, 82; al-Khujandi, Hukm, 55–56; Bruckmayr and Hartung, "Introduction"; Coppens, "Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī's Treatise"; Lauzière, The Making of Salafism. The terms Jadid and Jadidist are used interchangeably to indicate the Muslim intellectual reform movement that proliferated in Russia and Central Asia in the first decades of the twentieth century. See Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. "Jadidism," http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jadidism (accessed June 5, 2023); Khalid, Politics.
25. Encyclopædia Iranica, s.v. "'Aynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn," https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ayni-sadr-al-din (accessed June 5, 2023); Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, s.v. "'Aynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn," 点击下载; Encyclopædia Iranica, "Jadidism"; Khalid, Politics, 99, 121–27, 150–54, 227–28; Bustanov, "Against Leviathan," 202; Frank, Bukhara, 13, 97–106; Garipova, "The Protectors," 129–35; Paksoy, "The Basmachi Movement," 373–96. Al-Khujandi provides Arabic approximations for the titles of these journals: Al-Islah, Al-Idah, Al-Din wa-l-Ma'isha, and Al-Farghana. Al-Khujandi also lists the approximated Arabic title of a fifth journal, Al-Mar'a wa-l-Islam, the original of which it has not been possible to identify. See al-Khujandi, Hukm, 63.
28. al-Khujandi, Hukm, 73, 95; al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:216; al-Khujandi, Al-mushahadat, 7–8; Spannaus, "Evolution," 161; Ahmed, West African ʿulamāʾ, 81–86. The Dar al-Hadith was a novel Islamic educational institution established under Saudi rule as a means of consolidating power in the Hijaz, with branches in both Medina and Mecca. Al-Khujandi taught at both branches, though his primary appointment was at the latter. The Dar al-Hadith was founded by an Indian scholar affiliated with the Ahl e Hadith movement with the assistance of West Africans and Arabs, particularly Egyptians affiliated with the Salafi da'wa (missionary) organization, the Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya. The Dar al-Hadith thus represented an early site of Salafi cosmopolitanism capitalized upon by the Saudi state.
30. al-Khujandi, Hukm, 95; al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:216, 218; al-Sulami, "Al-shaykh," 96; al-Zirikli, Al-a'lam, 2:259; 4:19–21, 58, 91–92; 5:166–68, 306–7; 6:107–8.
32. al-Jammaz and al-Tawil, Maqalat, 5:155–213. This source reproduces the review of al-Khujandi's work by Isma'il al-Ansari (1922–1997), as well as some of al-Khujandi's rejoinders and al-Ansari's subsequent rebuttals, all of which were published in Majallat al-Hajj in 1957–58. Published by the General Directorate for Hajj (Idarat al-Hajj al-'Amma)—subsequently the Ministry of Hajj and Islamic (Waqf) Endowments (Wizarat al-Hajj wa-l-Awqaf)—the journal did include official government messaging, including multilingual updates on pilgrimage tariffs and statements from members of the ruling family and other government officials. However, the journal's editors—Hashim al-Zawawi and, from 1951, Muhammad al-'Amudi—appear to have enjoyed considerable editorial freedom that allowed for the sort of exchange in which al-Khujandi and al-Ansari engaged. Furthermore, the journal provides a snapshot of the government's early aspirations to appeal to a global pan-Islamic cosmopolitanism, reflective of the Hajj itself, with literary contributions from Hijazi, Arab, and south- and southeast Asian intelligentsia. The journal archive was consulted during a research trip to the Library of Congress in November 2022: KSA, Majallat al-Hajj. For more on al-Ansari, see al-Rajihi, Hady, 77–128.
37. Respectively, Anba' al-nabiyyin fi bayan huduth al-ishtirakiyyin wafiraqihim, Raf' al-tashkik 'an mazalim al-bulshuwik, aw al-mukashafa 'an halat al-balashifa, Al-siham al-ma'sumiyya fi nuhur al-shuyu'iyya, Jala' al-bu's fi inqilab bilad al-rus, and Al-sayf al-sarim al-sultani li-qat' 'unuq al-bulshufik al-shaytani. See al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:225–28.
39. The significance of the narrative threads explored here arises not out of scrutinizing their historical accuracy, but rather in observing how al-Khujandi constructs them and presents them to his audience.
40. al-Khujandi, Hukm, 64. The concept of shura (consultation), which lends itself to the title of the forty-second chapter of the Quran, is variously interpreted either in broad democratic terms or more narrowly as a limited consultative process involving political elites and notables. According to al-Khujandi's account, in the wake of the February 1917 revolution, Muslims throughout the land who were enthusiastic about the tsar's overthrow established councils and courts whose members were elected, and which they collectively named "Islamic shura." He thus appears to imply to his Arabicspeaking audiences that he was involved in an Islamic consultative effort in some general sense, when he is in fact referring to a specific Jadid-affiliated organization.
45. A representative example is: 'Azzam, Ayat. Turkestani and Turkish migrants relate similar stories, e.g.: al-Andijani, 'Ulama'; Bukhari, Turkistan; Kasani, Rihlat; Turkistani, Al-i'lam; Karaman, İki din mazlumu.
46. "and We have put before them a barrier and behind them a barrier; and We have covered them, so they do not see" (36:9).
49. al-Khujandi, Hukm, 70; al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:216. Though not quite as straightforward as he paints it, al-Khujandi's estimation of Soviet instrumentalization of the conflict is supported by recent scholarship. See al-Andijani, 'Ulama', 29–38; Hasanli, Soviet Policy, 22–26, 30–38.
50. Al-Khujandi's portrayal of the 1933–34 conflict indicates an awareness of several other agents, including the duban (military governor) of Xinjiang, Sheng Shicai; Manchurian regiments; and White Russian regiments. However, his own interest appears restricted to two concerns: lamenting intra-Muslim violence and condemning Soviet intrigue. It is also worth noting that al-Khujandi's impressions are those of a somewhat remote observer, located as he was in Ghulja, at a considerable distance from major flashpoints: over three hundred miles from Ürümchi, the Chinese provincial capital of Xinjiang, and nearly four hundred miles from Kashgar, the declared capital of the East Turkestan Republic. See al-Khujandi, Hukm, 70; al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:216; Forbes, Warlords, 112–27; Hasanli, Soviet Policy, 16–52.
52. 'Azzam, Ayat.
54. Bsheer, Archive Wars, 41; Determann, Historiography, 180; Al-Rasheed, History, 124–29; Al Tuwayjiri, "Encircled."
55. See notes 6 and 31 above. Also see Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism, 30–31.
59. Ahmed, West African 'ulamā', 80–89.
62. Two 1938 works were personally funded by Abdulaziz. The distribution of two works published in 1937–38 and 1946 was funded by Abdulaziz and Saud. Two 1949 titles were republished by the General Presidency for [Islamic] Scholarship and Ifta'. See Muhammad, Awa'il al-matbu'at, 7–11, 78; al-Mamlaka al-'Arabiyya al-Su'udiyya, Mu'jam al-matbu'at, 61–62; Tashkandi, Al-tiba'a, 178; al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:216, 218, 221–23; al-Sulami, "Al-shaykh," 98–99, 100–102, 104–6; al-Khujandi, Tuhfat, 1; al-Khujandi, Awdah, 1, 392–93, 414.
63. Previously, Abdulaziz published the work of only one late non-Arab migrant. The West African Salih al-Fullani's (1753–1803) Awakening the Resolve of the People of Insight (Iqaz himam uli al-absar) was published in 1935–36. Works by two Egyptians received Abdulaziz's funding. Muhammad Abd al-Razzaq Hamza edited one of Ibn Taymiyya's works, published in Mecca in 1932–33. Abdulaziz reportedly funded an original work by Hamza, but its earliest edition is dated 1958–59, after Abdulaziz's passing. Muhammad Khalil Harras's commentary on another of Ibn Taymiyya's works was also funded by Abdulaziz, though almost certainly in the late 1940s or early 1950s, after Harras's doctoral studies. See Muhammad, Awa'il al-matbu'at, 7–11; al-Zirikli, Al-wajiz, 338–40; Tashkandi, Al-tiba'a, 147–210; al-Mamlaka al-'Arabiyya al-Su'udiyya, Mu'jam al-matbu'at, 23, 63; Hamza, Zulumat; Harras, Sharh, 10–11, 41–42; al-Fullani, Iqaz; al-Zirikli, Al-a'lam, 3:195.
64. al-Khujandi, Tuhfat, 68–76. These summaries demonstrate al-Khujandi's eclecticism and ability to write in varying registers. In contrast to his typical "puritan" Salafi tone, his summaries marshal the voices of the decidedly Sufi Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273), the confessionally ambiguous Husayn Wa'iz Kashifi (1436–1504), and Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938).
65. Among classical titles, Hanbali works received most attention. Works by Najdi scholars were presented as extensions of Hanbali inheritance. Hamza's edition of, and Harras's commentary on, Ibn Taymiyya's works likewise reflected this continuity. Abdulaziz's funding of al-Fullani and al-Khujandi's original works thus stands out as unprecedented. See Muhammad, Awa'il al-matbu'at; al-Mamlaka, Mu'jam al-matbu'at; al-Zirikli, Al-wajiz, 338–40; Tashkandi, Altiba'a, 147–210.
72. al-Khujandi, Habl, 2:219, 230–31. The 1949 and 1951 congresses, at which the World Muslim Congress was formalized as an organization, were the first to be held after World War II and the establishment of Pakistan. The first two congresses were held in Mecca in 1926 and Jerusalem in 1931. In notable contrast to the post–World War II congresses, Soviet delegates played a central role in the interwar congresses in an effort to outmaneuver British interests. This included acting to secure chairmanship of the 1926 congress for Abdulaziz while securing vice chairmanship for Rizaeddin Fakhreddinov, head of the Soviet delegation. See Haleem, "Baghdad World Muslim Conference"; Naumkin, "Soviet Muftis"; Barmin, "How Moscow Lost Riyadh."
74. Al-Rasheed, History, 127–29; Determann, Historiography, 180; Al Tuwayjiri, "Encircled," 166–67. The Dar al-Hadith was incorporated into the Islamic University of Medina in 1965. See Ahmed, West African ʿulamāʾ, 122.
