Muslim Modernisers on the Silk Road
Uzbekistan was a product of Islamic modernism and Soviet might. Free from the latter, the nation now seeks to foreground the Young Bukharans.
On 27 October 1924 the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic came into being as part of the Soviet Union, four years after a group of Muslim modernisers had formed an unholy alliance with a cohort of communist revolutionaries to wipe the ancient Emirate of Bukhara off the map. Out of the ashes of that feudal realm emerged an independent Bukharan state ruled by a group of idealists which – although short-lived – became an experiment in Central Asian statehood that is today celebrated as the precursor to the country that would become Uzbekistan. As the nation marks the centenary of this pivotal moment on its road to independence, the young reformers who sought to bring modernity to their part of the Silk Road are being heralded once more, as their Soviet backers are quietly pushed into the shadows.
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