Zeki Velidi Togan

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Zeki Velidi Togan
Әхмәтзәки Вәлиди Туған
BornƏxmətzəki Wəlidi
(1890-12-10)December 10, 1890
Kuzyanovo, Bashkortostan, Russian Empire
(now Bashkortostan, Russian Federation)
DiedJuly 26, 1970(1970-07-26) (aged 79)
Istanbul, Turkey
NationalityBashkir
CitizenshipRussian Empire, USSR,
Turkey (later)
OccupationHistorian
Signature

Zeki Velidi Togan (

Turkologist,[2] and leader of the Bashkir revolutionary and liberation movement, doctor of philosophy (1935), professor, honorary doctor of the University of Manchester
(1967).

Biography

Republic of Bashkortostan in Ufa
Monument to Zeki Velidi Togan in the yard of Saint Petersburg State University

He was born in Kuzyanovo (Bashkir: Көҙән) village of Sterlitamaksky Uyezd, Ufa Governorate (in present-day Ishimbaysky District, Bashkortostan).

From 1912 to 1915 Velidi taught in the

Millət Məjlisi, and with Şərif Manatov, he organized the Bashkir Shuro (Council). During the Bashkir Congress in Orenburg from December 1917, he declared autonomous Bashkiria
. However, he was arrested 3 February 1918 by the Soviet forces. In April 1918 he managed to escape and joined the forces confronting the Bolsheviks.

In 1918 and 1919 Velidi's Bashkir troops first fought under Ataman

RSFSR promised autonomy to Bashkirs, Velidi switched allegiance, fighting with the Bolsheviks.[3]

From February 1919 to June 1920, he was chairman of the Bashrevkom (Bashkir Revolutionary Committee). He attended the Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku in September 1920, where he became involved in drawing up the statutes of ERK, a Muslim Socialist organisation. However, feeling the Bolsheviks had broken their promises, he became more critical of them when he moved to Central Asia.

In

Basmachi Movement.[4] From 1920 to 1923, he was chairman of the "National Union of Turkistan". In April 1923, he was part of a delegation to the British embassy in Mashhad requesting support for the Basmachi, which was met with skepticism by British officials.[5]

In 1923 Validi emigrated, after discovering original manuscripts of Ahmad ibn Fadlan in Iran.

From 1925 Velidi lived in

honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester
. At the same time he contributed to the Encyclopedia of Turkic Peoples. His articles about culture, language and history of Turkic peoples have been translated into many languages.

Views

Velidi was a

Jadidist movement. In his view, the Turkic peoples had become "imprisoned in the civilization of the Iranians," criticising the speech and literature of the people of the cities of Bukhara, Fergana and Khiva for being intermixed with Persian vocabulary. He believed that the Persian influence needed to be removed for Turkic peoples to find their own "national spiritual wealth."[12]

References

  1. ^ Censorship and History: 1914-1945: Historiography in the Service of Dictatorships, Antoon De Baets, The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 4: 1800-1945, ed. Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca and Attila Pók (Oxford University Press, 2011), 138, 147.
  2. ^ Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective: Notions of Literature Across Times and Cultures, Vol.1, ed. Anders Pettersson, (Gmbh & Co., 2006), 299.
  3. ^ a b "Togan, Ahmed Zeki Validov | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 2019-10-01.
  4. S2CID 162270663
    , retrieved 18 Dec 2005
  5. ^ Bergne, Paul (2007). The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. I.B. Tauris. pp. 95–96. Perhaps the main listening post outside India maintained by the British after the 1917 revolution, for keeping an eye on events in Soviet Central Asia, was the Consulate-General in Meshed. The mixed feelings about the Basmachestvo harboured by officials in this and other offices is illustrated by correspondence in April 1923 arising from the appearance in Meshed of a delegation claiming to represent Enver Pasha's lieutenant and successor Sami Bey of the so-called "Turkestan Nationalist Committee" (Enver had been killed in August 1922). The leading members of this group, Ahmad Zaki Walidi and Abdul Qadir (described rather improbably as a "Cossack"), approached the Consulate-General hoping to attract British support for the Basmachi. Describing Sami Bey as a leading figure in the Turkestan pan-Islamist movement, Major D. Thompson, the Military Attaché, expressed anxiety lest, not content with exporting Islamic revolution to Russia, he might also wish to take it to India.
  6. ISBN 0905838572
    .
  7. ISBN 978-90-04-32433-6
    .
  8. ^ Late Ottoman and Early Republican Turkish Historical Writing, Cemal Kadafar and Hakan T. Karateke, The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 4: 1800-1945, 574.
  9. ISBN 9780253328694
    .
  10. ISBN 978-1-60781-465-8
    .
  11. ISBN 9780253328694
    .
  12. ISBN 9781501735851. Retrieved 12 January 2024 – via Internet Archive
    . Zeki Velidi similarly did much to transform the parameters of Jadid discourse in this direction. In a series of essays he wrote for a Kokand journal Yurt (Homeland), he laid out the Turkist case in all its clarity. Turkestan was the first land inhabited by Turks to accept Islam and was one of the centers of Islamic civilization during its heyday. But the Turks, in spite of their political and demographic superiority, became "imprisoned in the civilization of the Iranians." Turkic intellectuals wrote in Arabic or Persian and neglected their own language. The literature produced at the courts of Bukhara, Ferghana, and Khiva had not a smidgeon of Turkic element in it, but was a pale imitation of Persian culture, and even the everyday speech of the cities had become intermixed with Persian vocabulary. All of that needed to be reversed: a search for "our own national spiritual wealth" was necessary and possible in the new order.

Further reading

External links

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