Äsäd Sulayman

The Formation and Development of the New Uyghur Identities under the Influences of Kazan Tatar Cultural Elites in Modern Xinjiang

50^th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007

In the late 19^th — early 20^th centuries, the Crimean and Kazan Tatars have been blessed with a number of outstanding cultural-intellectual elites whose reform ideas and thoughts came to play an important role in the process of Central Asian Turkic people’s modernity, as well as Xinjiang Uyghur’s. After the Russian revolution of 1905, a number of Kazan Tatar intellectuals including modern educators, scholars, writers, teachers, journalists, merchants moved to Xinjiang and gave their great help to the modern Uyghur cultural and educational movements. Before the Soviet Russia influence over the Xinjiang in the 1930s, the cultural and educational activities of the Kazan Tatar intellectuals, especially their nationalistic ideas took an important role to the formation of modern Uyghur identity. This can be considered as a tremendous event in the 20^th century Uyghur cultural history.

This paper will describe the leading role of Kazan Tatar intellectuals among the Xinjiang Uyghurs in spreading enlightenment ideas, national consciousness, and social reforms, and how their efforts shaped the founding of ethnic and cultural identities of modern Uyghurs. Particular attention will be paid to Tatar Jadidism and modern literati such as Noshurwan Yaushev (1883–1917), Abdulla Toqay (1886–1913) whose ideas and literary influences took an important role to the formation of modern Uyghur nationalist literature. At the same time, this paper has emphasized the cultural, educational and social activities of Kazan Tatars as Heyder Sayrani (1886–1943) among the Xinjiang Uyghurs and their close relationship with the Central Asian modernity and transition during the first half of the 20^th century.