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Indigenous Islam

An Islamicate Body: A Case Study of a Nomadic Burial from the Core Territory of the Golden Horde.

Un corps islamique : le cas d’étude d’une sépulture nomade au cœur des territoires de la Horde d’Or
Irina Shingiray
p. vol. 143

Résumés

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Résumé : Un corps islamique : le cas d’étude d’une sépulture nomade au cœur des territoires de la Horde d’Or. Cet article revient sur la question de l’islamisation des nomades de la Horde d’Or en basse vallée de la Volga aux xiiie-xive siècles. Pour des raisons tant idéologiques que méthodologiques, ce sujet fut longtemps négligé par les chercheurs. Par ailleurs, le peu de sources fiables, directes ou « émiques », à notre disposition, a conduit à des malentendus dans l’historiographie, dont la sous-estimation du processus d’islamisation – lequel, en réalité, toucha la société nomade bien au-delà de ses seules élites gouvernantes. On ne peut accéder à une perspective plus complète de la question qu’en enrichissant les récentes recherches sur les récits de conversions qui circulaient parmi les populations de la Horde d’Or, par une étude des données archéologiques touchant aux croyances et aux modes de vie des nomades de ces régions. Pour ce faire, l’auteur présente et analyse une sépulture islamique située dans les steppes reculées de la Kalmoukie actuelle (en Fédération de Russie), peuplées exclusivement de nomades à la période médiévale. En analysant en détails cette sépulture, dont la composition et les objets entreposés ne sont pas conformes aux prescriptions de la littérature juridique musulmane, l’auteur défend l’idée que cette sépulture représente un « islam indigène » de la Horde d’Or. Cette étude souligne que les nomades convertis à l’islam tenaient pour central la parenté, l’ancestralité et le statut. Elle montre comment cet islam indigène, accepté, pratiqué et promu par les nomades, ne peut être considéré comme un phénomène superficiel mais constituait un élément essentiel de leurs rituels quotidiens, de leur identité, et du pouvoir politique qui gouvernait leur société et, plus largement, celle de la Horde d’Or.

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Introduction: Understanding Islamisation in the Golden Horde

  • 1 DeWeese, 1994:9; Khalid, 2002 and 2007; Izmailov 2002; Gorelik, 2006).

1The Islamisation of the Golden Horde has been a neglected topic with a difficult past. It has been overshadowed by nationalist rhetoric and limited by ideological and methodological constraints. For a long time, it has been marginalised in mainstream academia (in the East and West) because of some basic misunderstandings of the Islamic discourses and practices among various nomadic people who populated and ruled large portions of Eurasia since the Middle Ages1. Devin DeWeese (1994:9) and Adeeb Khalid (2002:728) noted that assumptions, such as the cliché that Islam “sat lightly” or superficially upon nomads, have rendered the theme of the Islamisation among the Mongols as rather vague, if not superfluous. Modern biases were corroborated by the medieval textual sources—which were by and large external to the nomads—and which often represented Islamic religious practices among the Mongols as insincere, heterodox, and were characterised as “dabbling in sorcery” (see Jackson, 2005:274, 277; Pfeiffer, 2006). Be they Persian, Chinese, Russian, European, or Egyptian, the authors of these reports and eyewitness accounts were foreign outsiders, who were religiously prejudiced and culturally alien to the steppe nomads and their emic perspective of Islam in all the “converted” polities which emerged after the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire. The historicity of these accounts acquires meaning only when they can be substantiated with the evidence of native voices and actions (emic narratives and material culture). However, the search for indigenous nomadic voices, meanings, and practices in relation to Islam has remained in the shadows of scholarly discourse up until recently.

  • 2 Christopher Atwood (2004:252 quoting Cleaves, 1953:26, 40-44) provides a vivid example of such reli (...)

2For the case of the Golden Horde, a real breakthrough in understanding the Islamisation process took place with the publication of DeWeese’s seminal study on the Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde (1994). By analysing the native conversion narratives, legends of origin, sacred histories, and other epic accounts, the author was able to introduce a range of native voices in order to understand the process of how the denizens of the Golden Horde encountered Islam, appropriated Islamic events, characters, and landscapes, and assimilated them to their pre-Islamic sacred universe and values.2 DeWeese (1994:51) stressed that Islamisation should be understood as a two-way process:

on the one hand the introduction of Islamic patterns into Inner Asia involves the ‘imposition’ of Islamic norms in a new setting, an alien environment; on the other hand, the nativization of Islamic patterns involves their incorporation and assimilation into indigenous modes of thought and action.

3Moreover, Islamisation was a community process for the nomads of the Golden Horde, and it was at the center of their identity, whether or not they adhered to normative practices of Islam.

4DeWeese cautions, however, that the modern scientific approach in scholarship, being “divorced from the realities of ordinary life and religion” in the Steppe, often belittles, ignores, or discounts the process of Islamic integration among the indigenous people of the Horde as “merely nominal” or “light” (51-3). These assumptions, he stresses, stem from the lack of serious analysis of the Islamisation process, as well as from political motivations and prejudices of some scholars who privilege “urban intellectual centers of ‘Islamic civilization’” and disregard the non-urban locales and landscapes (52). An Islamic doctrine proper does not dismiss newly converted people no matter how imperfect they are in their “ritual attentiveness,” since the conversion is considered as “a first step toward deeper religiosity” and “God’s greatest gift” to that community which has embarked on the path to salvation (26). DeWeese invokes a passage attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa—the founder of one of the traditional Islamic legal schools very popular among the nomads—in which it is stated that a Muslim “who affirms Islam as a whole but does not know or affirm the Koran or any of the religious duties of Islam” is still considered a believer (1994:26 quoting Madelung, 1985:122-3). What follows from this statement is a different understanding of Islam and its norms of acceptance in the Steppe. And in order to research the Islamisation process in the Golden Horde, the time is ripe to gain a more open-minded perspective and reassess approaches which have been informed by modern purist and political prejudices and which have considered the Islamisation of the Golden Horde as “weak” or “unsuccessful” (see Iablonskii, 1987:151, 158).

  • 3 See for instance studies of Iablonskii, 1980; Rakushin, 1998; Zilivinskaia, 2014; Nedashkovskii, 20 (...)
  • 4 Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:200; Iablonskii, 1987:157.
  • 5 Vasil’ev, 2007:41; Rakushin, 1998:14; Iablonskii, 1987:156-8; Ivanov, 2015:115, 156.
  • 6 Vasil’ev, 2007:30-1, 50-1; Ivanov and Kriger, 1988; Iaminov, 1995; Rakushin, 1998:14; Ivanov, 2015.
  • 7 Vasil’ev, 2007, 2008; Iablonskii, 1987:152. Archaeologists in Russia most commonly rely on the crit (...)

5In this view, it is stunning to observe how little impact the work of DeWeese has had on the archaeology of the Islamisation of the Golden Horde so far. Naturally, it is a complicated topic and there are very few studies dedicated to it (Vasil’ev, 2007:4-5). Most of these studies, however, display similar biases. First, archaeologists concentrate their attention mainly on the cities and their suburbs—the abode of the settled population and the non-nomadic segments of the elite (Ivanov, 2015:5). At the same time, they either ignore or give short shrift to the analysis of the Islamisation process concerning the nomadic denizens of the steppe3. Second, the nomads, who were actually the imperial power house of the Golden Horde, continue to be portrayed by archaeologists as a retrogressive force that “slowed” urban development and incited intertribal conflicts because of the “vestiges” of their “archaic social organization” based on kinship and lateral hereditary succession (see Vasil’ev, 2007:3, 51). The same misrepresentation of the nomads as “backward” communities has led many archaeologists to assume that nomadic groups were gradually forced to settle in the cities and Islamicise4. And whether researchers believe that the nomads settled in the cities or not, most scholars remark on “the vestiges of paganism” that supposedly prevented them from becoming proper Muslims and from leaving behind graves that are representative of Islam5. Third, archaeologists are often biased with their purist outlook on the Islamic norms of nomadic burials—an outlook which is too rigid and ignores variations in local practices and the Sufi style of Islamic conversion in the Steppe. Although most researchers recognise that many nomads of the Golden Horde who accepted Islam did not immediately or completely abandon their pre-Islamic beliefs and rituals6, still archaeologists who study the Islamisation process in that polity largely rely on strictly orthodox criteria in their evaluation of the Islamic burial norms7. This understanding of what “canonical” Islamic graves are (namely simple interments of the dead whose faces turned toward Mecca and who lacked any grave goods) often compels researchers of the Islamisation to exclude nomadic graves from their analysis all together, because those burials deviated from the normative prescriptions of Islam.

  • 8 DeWeese, 1994; Vásáry, 2016; Favereau 2017.

6For instance, in Dmitri Vasil’ev’s recent two-volume survey (2007 and 2008), which is dedicated to Islam and the Islamisation of the Golden Horde and largely based on burial evidence (from 1825 graves) from its core territory in the Lower Volga region, the data derive mainly from the cities and their surroundings. In contrast, very few entries in that database belong to steppe kurgan graves, which are included mainly “for comparison” of the Islamic burials with those of “other” rites (2007:109). This lack of entries, the author himself notes, contributes to the overall skewed picture of the Islamisation process in the region. The author assumes a priori that the emergence of Islam in the Golden Horde is directly linked to the growth of the cities (as major trade centers) from which it spread to the steppe (2007:16; 2008:155) and that, therefore, the process of Islamisation is most evident in the settled areas, while the steppe burials are not representative of Islamic rites (2007:109). This approach of course ignores the historical fact that the official Islamisation of the Golden Horde proper was undertaken by its nomadic Mongol rulers, such as the khans Berke (1257-67) and Özbek (1313-41) and was widely accepted by their nomadic military aristocracy and the community of the steppe at large8. Vasil’ev (2007:18-33) acknowledges this textual information, but when it comes to his archaeological interpretations, he is suspicious of the nomadic ways of practicing Islam, and thus denies them agency and representation in his database.

  • 9 Jackson, 2005:269; Vásáry, 2016; Favereau, 2017; Behrens-Abouseif, 2014:62.

7Islam was widely encouraged among the nomadic military in the Golden Horde already during the rule of Khan Berke. Berke was a practicing Muslim, who made a political alliance with Mamluk Egypt against his rivals—namely the Ilkhanid dynasty of Iran (who at that time had not yet converted to Islam)—and set off on jihād against the latter with his allegedly Islamic army9. The Franciscan Friar William of Rubruck who visited the Golden Horde in 1253-4, noted for instance that Berke “makes himself out to be a Saracen, and does not allow pork to be eaten in his camp” (Ruysbroeck, Jackson, Morgan 2009:127). Khan Özbek promoted Islam in the Golden Horde even further and incorporated the Golden Horde into the Islamic world—a policy that was continued by his son Janibek (1342-57) and his descendants (Vásáry 2016). However, as noted by DeWeese (1994:67-8), the Islamic identity of the Golden Horde

never manifested itself in a complete or even large-scale rejection of the typically Inner Asian political structures and traditions inherited from the Mongol empire; rather, the Golden Horde was marked by the coexistence, assimilation, or even fusion of Inner Asian and Islamic elements in politics, society, and culture…

8This complexity makes the Islamic conversion notoriously difficult to study, especially since there are few textual sources and most of them mention the events and people at court and administrative centers, foreign relations, and the Islamisation policies of the rulers. Yet, they tell us very little about the nomads and “what Islamization meant to this population and how ‘Islam’ was understood and received at the communal or individual level” (70-71). DeWeese argues that sources still exist, which were produced at the grassroots of the Golden Horde empire, and which inform us not about “what happened” during the Islamisation event, but “how conversion to Islam was understood among the people” and “how Islam was fit into the traditional worldview…of people and made suitable for appropriation by them” (71). These sources are popular legends and religious narratives that DeWeese investigated in his monograph. These sources also derive from indigenous archaeology, namely the material culture and practices of non-urban nomadic converts to Islam. The value of these archaeological sources should not be underestimated, because they have the rare potential to evoke the missing native voices that tell the story of Islamisation in its own right. In light of this, I would like to turn to one such example of non-urban nomadic archaeology, namely an Islamicate nomadic grave from the Golden Horde core territory, and investigate its story of indigenous Islam.

A Burial from Bolshoi Tsaryn I Kurgan 2

  • 10 In this report, I use 16-wind compass points in order to describe cardinal: north (N), south (S), e (...)

9In 1977, as a result of rescue excavations 18km SW of the modern settlement Bolshoi Tsaryn in the Sarpa Lowland in the Republic of Kalmykia (Russian Federation), an archaeological team led by Evgenii Tsutskin (1978)—head of the Sarpinskaia Archaeological Expedition from the Kalmyk branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences—investigated a burial mound group named Bolshoi Tsaryn I located at 47 52’38.80”N 45 28’52.80”E10. In this remote steppe region, namely in the interfluve of the Volga and the former Sarpa rivers, burial mounds which were left by migrating nomads, are dispersed in the landscape and do not form any compact groups. The Bolshoi Tsaryn I group was typical in this respect and consisted of two separate kurgans located 40m apart in the flat unplowed terrain of the Kalmyk steppe that was historically inhabited by pastoral nomadic people. The bigger kurgan 2, which is the focus of this study, was circular in plan, about 18m in diameter, and 0.7m in height at the time of its excavation; it was surrounded by ditches on its NW, SW, and E sides, from which the earth was collected in order to construct the mound. The mound fill contained several animal bones, including one of a horse and some of other animals. The kurgan had a single interment, which was located just E of the central datum and which was encircled by a ritual ditch visible in the NS cross-section of the kurgan at the distance of 6.4m to the N and 5.5m to the S of the burial (Tsutskin, 1978:38-42). Fig. 1-2

Fig.1 Plan and profile views of Bol’shoi Tsaryn-I kurgan 2 (after Tsutskin, 1978: fig.34)

Fig.1 Plan and profile views of Bol’shoi Tsaryn-I kurgan 2 (after Tsutskin, 1978: fig.34)
Agrandir Original (jpeg, 152k)

10The grave-pit of this interment was oriented NNE-SSW and was elongated-oval in plan measuring 2.36m in length and 0.75m in width in the NNE and 0.56m in the SSW. This grave-pit was an entryway into a niche burial (podboi), the depth of which was 2.17m below the surface of the mound and 1.47m below the level of the buried soil. The niche proper was located on the SEE side of the grave-pit; it was 0.28m deeper than the grave-pit and 0.70m wide; and it was blocked from the grave-pit with wooden planks, the vertical traces of which were visible in the SSE section of the grave-pit profile. At the bottom of the niche, there was a skeleton of a mature male in a supine position oriented NNE-SSW with his head toward NNE (Fig. 2-3).

Fig.2 Plan and profile views of Bol’shoi Tsaryn-I kurgan 2 and its burial

Crédits :Tsutskin 1978: figs. 34-5.

The grave inventory includes the following: 1-sheep bone; 2-bronze object; 3-silk band; 4-textile fragment; 5, 22-arrow heads; 6-birchbark quiver; 7, 10, 11, 20- fragments of iron objects; 8- fragments of wooden object; 9-leather purse with coins; 12-bridle; 13, 21-bone plaque; 14, 23-iron buckles; 15-iron plaque; 16, 17-stirrups; 18-remains of leather footwear; 19-bone saddle plaque; 24-bone button; 25-oxidized coin; 26-sheep vertebrae (under the human pelvis).

BERJAYA
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Fig. 3 A general view of the niche burial BT-I k2

Crédits : Tsutskin 1978: photo 30.

BERJAYA
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11His skull was somewhat elevated and turned to the right; his hands and feet were stretched out along the body; his feet were touching: the toes of the left foot were pointing downwards and to the left, and those of the right foot pointed to the right.

12This burial contained the following grave goods (see FIGs 1-4). In the N portion of the grave-pit a sheep femur was vertically placed to the left of the head of the deceased. 10cm NW from the skull, there was a conical object made of a rolled up sheet of bronze (7cm long and 5cm in diameter at its base). Around the skull, there was a silk band with an embroidered inscription in Arabic (see below). And under the right side of the skull, an oxidized coin was found, which refers to the common medieval ritual of placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased. A textile fragment was located under the right shoulder of the skeleton (FIG 4).

Fig. 4 The skull of the deceased from BT-I k2 with silk ṭirāz band

Crédits : Tsutskin 1978: photo 31.

BERJAYA
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13Between the left hand and the top of the left hip, there was a leather purse with some “oxidized” silver coins. Along the right side of the body, there was a quiver (85x13cm) covered in birch bark with a vertical seam and a circular iron buckle located underneath it. The upper portion of the quiver contained a rusted conglomerate of several faceted tanged iron arrowheads. Between the quiver and the right hand of the skeleton, there were fragments of some iron object and a bronze stud; and fragments of a wooden object were found under that hand and the pelvis. Several items of horse accoutrements and their fragments were located near the base of the quiver (to its S), horse bridles, two bow-shaped saddle trims made of bone with bone nails for attachment, segment-shaped iron buckle, two arch-shaped iron stirrups, and several other iron fragments (FIG 5).

Fig. 5 Grave goods including fragments of horse bridle, saddle, stirrups, and buckle located SW of the skeleton of BT-I K2

Crédits : Tsutskin 1978: photos 32-3.

BERJAYA
Agrandir Original (jpeg, 243k)
  • 11 Unfortunately, many artifacts and skeletal materials from these excavations in Kalmykia in the 1970 (...)

14Some remains of leather were found near the left foot and between the right foot and the stirrups. There was also a bone button (0.9cm in diameter) with a central hole and an iron object which was possibly associated with the footwear. A bone plaque was found near the right elbow and some sheep vertebrae were placed under the pelvis of the skeleton. His pelvis and legs were covered with brown traces of decayed cloth, clothing, or other organic material. According to the author of the excavations, this burial belonged to Late Medieval nomads and represented a “classic example of dualism in the initial stage of conversion to monotheism” (Tsutskin, 1978:42)11.

Burial Interpretation: “Indigenised” Islam

  • 12 Fedorov-Davydov, 1966; Vlaskin, Garmashov, Naumenko, 2006:43.
  • 13 According to the classification of Fedorov-Davydov (1966:126-7), this burial type belongs to either (...)
  • 14 Kriger, 1986:121; Ivanov and Kriger, 1988:41; Vlaskin et al., 2006:47; Ivanov, 2015:115.

15The burial from Bolshoi Tsaryn I kurgan 2 (further BT-I k2) is a funerary construction typical for the nomadic steppe population of the Golden Horde for the period of the 13-14th c12. These typical characteristics include the kurgan size, its location, the presence of the ritual ditch, the horse bones found in the mound fill which probably relate to the funerary and commemorative actions of the nomadic community; the shape of the niche grave; and the grave goods (Vlaskin et al., 2006:43-47). Niche burials with the S orientation of the niche are common in the steppe (Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:125; Vlaskin et al., 2006:46), although Vasil’ev, who analysed mainly urban and suburban burial sites of the Golden Horde, noted the presence of such burials among urban graves (up to 19.3% of his entire sample) but their total absence among the steppe kurgans of the Lower Volga and Kazakhstan (2007:79, 86). The total absence of this type of burials in the steppe is not possible, because German Fedorov-Davydov (1966:125) assigned several categories to these burials in his classification. In our case of BT-I k2, the niche was oriented toward SEE, and it is difficult to tell whether the intention was to orient it to the S or E—sometimes seasonal variations in the solar position are responsible for such offset orientations of the graves up to 35° (Petersen, 2013:249)13. Another ambiguity regarding the BT-I k2 grave, is the absence of horse skeletal remains, whereas horse tack was present and placed next to the deceased. It has been noted that the presence of a horse burial is common for the nomads of the Golden Horde for the 13-14th c., but toward the 2d half of the 14th c., this ritual began to disappear14. Perhaps, in the case of BT-I k2, it is possible to hypothesise that we witness such a transition, although other explanations are also conceivable.

  • 15 Vlaskin et al., 2006:12-19, 27-29,48,70, 73-4; Kyzlasov, 1980; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:116.
  • 16 Vasil’ev, 2007; Vlaskin et al., 2006:74; Ivanov and Krieger, 1988; Ivanov, 2015; Mys'kov, 2015.

16In general, it is very difficult to determine a more precise chronology for the nomadic burials of the Golden Horde, especially for those that lack coins or lack readable coins, as in the case of BT-I k2. Material culture analogies for these burials provide a broad chronological range during which specific grave goods were widely used. For example, according to Fedorov-Davydov’s well-established typology (1966; Gorelik, 2006:7), horse bridles (B III type), stirrups (E I), a segment-shaped saddle buckle (A II), saddle bone plaques with nails, as well as a bone button (B 4), a quiver and faceted tanged arrowheads—all object types found at BT-I k2—are common items that were widely used in the Eurasian Steppe (including the Golden Horde) during the 13-14th c.15. The problem is that all such nomadic graves in the steppe are indiscriminately considered to be “pagan” because they display traits of “traditional nomadic burial rites” which include the use of kurgans, grave goods, “non-canonical” body and/or grave orientations; and their chronology is often automatically ascribed to the period of the 2nd half of the13th to the 2nd half of the 14th c. due to the presence of the above-stated features and the absence of canonical burial traits prescribed by normative Islam16.

  • 17 See also Behrens-Abouseif, 1995:45-47 and 2014:159; Lamm, 1930; Mackie, 2015:237, 259.

17The more precise dating of the BT-I k2 grave is equally problematic, since the grave goods of the Golden Horde period do not serve as fine chronological markers, especially when the coins are too damaged to be legible. The unique silk textile with embroidered Arabic inscription from the skull of the deceased is a puzzle in its own right, and has no analogies in the published literature familiar to me so far (see FIG 3). Without closer investigation of the actual textile, it is extremely difficult to surmise the context and the country of its production, especially since the material culture of luxury goods was widely shared during the Mongol period (Allsen, 1997; Behrens-Abouseif, 2014; Mackie, 2015:237). The Arabic inscription in naskhī which is difficult to read from the old photograph has a repeated formula consisting of a single illegible letter followed by the word al-‘alīm (the wise, the learned, the knowledgeable). Its probable reading was only possible with the help and expertise of Doris Behrens-Abouseif—an expert in the Mamluk material culture—and Sheila Blair—a leading scholar of Islamic art history and epigraphy (personal communication 2016). Both scholars suggested that the inscribed formula was a “royal attribute” and was used in conjunction with the name of a sultan or an amīr17.

  • 18 This textile can be considered as a later development of ṭirāz, when it became fashionable to subst (...)
  • 19 Behrens-Abouseif, 1995:46; Bierman, 1980:159.
  • 20 See for instance Mackie, 1984:130-1, 136-7, 142 and 2015:251, 260; Behrens-Abouseif, 1995 and 2014: (...)

18Although researchers caution against concretely attributing “multicultural patterns” and textiles to specific countries (Mackie, 2015:237), it is tempting to hypothesise that this embroidered silk ṭirāz from the burial of BT-I k2 has a possible connection to the Mamluk polity18. The repeated usage of a short formula “compartmentalised” or framed in a cartouche and placed on the band in this ṭirāz is found on textiles and metalwork from the Baḥrī period of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1382)19, and invokes the Mamluk aesthetic of “formality” represented in their various arts executed on different media20. Moreover, Sheila Blair has suggested that if the cross-shaped motif confined in a circle that alternates with the inscription on this ṭirāz band can be confirmed as a blazon—a common attribute of Mamluk art—then its Mamluk attribution can be assured (personal communication 2016).

  • 21 Behrens-Abouseif, 2014:7, 24, 28, 63-4, 136.

19From the times of Khan Berke and his initial attempt to convert the Golden Horde to Islam, a political alliance was fostered with the Mamluk Sultan al-Ẓāhir Baybars (1260-77) in order to repel their mutual enemy in the face of the Ilkhanids of Iran and to secure a steady supply of military slaves via the Black Sea—a policy that continued under the successive rulers of both polities (Favereau 2017). This political alliance was substantiated by a lavish exchange of diplomatic gifts initiated by Baybars who famously sent an “opulent package…with precious objects and animals” to Berke in 1263 in order to celebrate the Islamisation of the Golden Horde, as reported by Nuwayrī21. The Mamluk gifts regularly included large quantities of Alexandrian textiles, ṭirāz, and other garments. In 1282, Sultan Qalāwūn (1279-90) sent an embassy to Mongolia via the Golden Horde with 16 loads of luxury textiles, and in 1287, he sent a gift to the Golden Horde which included the following (63-4):

200 embroidered white gowns from Dār al-Tirāz, half of which were embroidered with gold epigraphic bands ‘in the name of the sultan’, and the other half embroidered with silk epigraphic bands containing honorific titles; 150 gowns belonged to another type of Alexandrian textile embroidered with epigraphic bands of gold and silk; 150 gowns of Damietta textile were adorned with epigraphic bands of gold and silk with the ‘usual titles’ (bi-alqāb al-‘ada) and 100 other gowns had silk and gold unspecified epigraphic bands.

  • 22 Vasil’ev (2008:5) notes a gold dinar of Baybars (1260-77) that was found in a Golden Horde mausoleu (...)

20Mamluk historians, such as Ibn al-Dawādārī and Nuwayrī, report that in his diplomatic gifts to the Golden Horde, Qalāwūn’s son and later Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r.1293-1341 with two interruptions) followed a similar protocol and sent textiles of the Dār al-Ṭirāz, gold brocaded gowns and headgear (64-5). Behrens-Abouseif (64, 155-8) remarks that this “Qalawunid passion for honorific inscriptions” with which the gowns of these diplomatic gifts were decorated clearly signifies the desire of the Mamluks to advertise their presence and their luxury textile culture at the court of the Golden Horde. They also advertised, I would add, their luxury culture of Islam. If the silk ṭirāz from the BT-I k2 burial was indeed a Mamluk gift, it would demonstrate that these textiles and other luxury items trickled down from the royal court to the military stratum of the Golden Horde in the steppe—a representative of which was most likely buried in this grave along with his weaponry and horse tack22. Nevertheless, does the mere placement of a ṭirāz textile over the dead body of a steppe warrior make this grave Islamic? Would this grave have been at all considered Muslim by archaeologists, had the inscribed textile not been included or found? In order to answer this very difficult question and provide at least a hypothetical interpretation of this burial, it is imperative to consider what an Islamic burial is in general and what it is in the context of the Golden Horde steppe.

  • 23 Insoll, 1999:167-8; Izmailov, 2002:61.
  • 24 Vasil’ev, 2007:79 and 2008:50; Rakushin, 1998:14-15.
  • 25 Insoll, 1999:168-9; Petersen, 2013:246-8; Iablonskii, 1987:148; Izmailov, 2002:62.
  • 26 See Petersen, 2013:243; Tritton, 2008:441. The use of a coffin (tābūt) to bury the dead—a practice (...)

21Funeral rites and constructions are not discussed in the Qur’an; this information is thus relegated to the hadīth and legal writings, which are always subject to debate23. It is generally known that normative Islamic funeral rites ideally did not support the construction of any specific grave structures, embellishments, or even markers, but social practice was a different matter— “deviations” regularly occurred in different regions of Islam, where pre-Islamic practices of grave marking continued and became incorporated into the Islamic burial rite (Halevi, 2013). In the steppe of the Golden Horde period, kurgan burials with Islamic attributes are well represented24; and many of them do not per se contradict the regulations of Islam (Petersen, 2013:252). As for the grave shape, a niche burial (called laḥd in Arabic)—not unlike the one found in BT-I k2—was one of the grave types actually recommended by sharī’a, provided that the face of the dead buried in the niche was isolated from the earth with wood, reeds, unfired mud bricks or similar materials, and the face or the feet of the body were oriented toward Mecca25. According to Vasil’ev (2007:79, 86), these niche burials in the Lower Volga—the core region of the Golden Horde—were “firmly linked with the Muslim burial rite.” The BT-I k2 burial shares these traits: a niche burial slightly oriented to the south (namely SEE); the isolation of the face of the dead in the niche from the earth with wooden planks; feet pointing to qibla (the direction of Mecca), and an elevated head with the face turned to the right, which was acceptable Islamic practice26.

  • 27 Vasil’ev notes however, that 77% of Golden Horde graves with this orientation were kurgan burials a (...)
  • 28 Vasil’ev, 2007:94; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509; Volkov, 2008:497.

22The body orientation in a burial was indeed very significant in Islam, and in the territory of the Golden Horde, the predominant orientation of the Muslim graves was typically W-E with the head at the W and the face turned to the right facing qibla; the regional range for these was 70-90% with 10-30% representing exceptions (Vasil’ev, 2007:93)27. In the case of BT-I k2, this grave belongs to the category of the regional exceptions, since the head of the deceased was oriented not to the W but to the NNE; the elevated face turned to the right, however, was facing the general direction of qibla. Sharī’a, in fact, does not prescribe burying people pointing W; other orientations were acceptable as long as the face, the head, or feet were oriented toward Mecca (Petersen, 2013:148-9; Khalikova, 1986:47; Izmailov 2002:62). The NNE orientation of the head apparently unconventional for Muslim burials in the Golden Horde was actually a “normative” practice among other Muslim people, such as the Uzbeks and the Tadjiks of Central Asia (see Khismatulin and Kriukova 1997:37). Besides, there is a consensus among archaeologists who work on the period of the Golden Horde that interments with N and NE orientation of the head signify the burial rites of the nomadic populations with roots in Mongolia and Inner Asia28. As in the grave BT-I k2, the latter people also practiced niche burials (Iablonskii, 1986; Vasil’ev, 2008:58), the vertical positioning of a sheep femur near the head of the deceased as “a last meal” offering (Volkov, 2008:497; Nomguunsüren, Ahrens, Piezonka, 2012:327-8), and the use of a “pillow” in a burial to elevate the head of the deceased (Volkov, 2008:497). Therefore, it is possible to interpret the BT-I k2 grave as one that belonged to a community which practiced burial rites rooted in the Mongol tradition, but which simultaneously adopted the burial practices of Islam. These Mongol and Islamic funerary rites were combined in order to bury this Islamicate body and were meaningful to this community for whom their ancestral roots seemed to be as important as the more recently introduced Muslim rites in the context of the mass conversion to Islam in the Golden Horde. It is possible that this burial exemplifies how traditional and political features played an important role in producing “multiple forms of Islam” imbued with multiple meanings (Petersen, 2013:241; Insoll, 1999:172, 181-2).

  • 29 Petersen, 2013:243; Halevi, 2013; Tritton, 2008; Izmailov, 2002:62.
  • 30 Petersen, 2013:243; Insoll, 1999:170-2; Mackie, 2015; Sokoly, 1997; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509.
  • 31 Ekhtiar and Cohen, 2015; Mackie, 2015:125-6; Sokoly, 1997:74.
  • 32 See for instance Dode, 2014 and Woodfin, Rassamakin, Holod, 2010.
  • 33 De Bridia and Painter, 1995:92;.
  • 34 Barthold and Rogers, 1970:216, 224; for similar archaeological evidence from Mongolia see Nomguunsü (...)

23Another important Islamic feature of the burial in BT-I k2 is the likely use of a ritual shroud (kafan). According to sharī‘a, the eyes, the mouth, the jaw, hands and feet of the dead had to be tied, the face covered, and the body shrouded29. Although the shroud did not survive in the burial under investigation—only some organic detritus remained—the “unnatural” compressed position of the skeleton with his tied body and feet provides evidence for such a treatment (see FIG 2). This burial feature is well known to archaeologists of the Golden Horde, whereby 44.7% of the Islamicate graves of this period sampled by Vasil’ev provided evidence of shrouded bodies (2008:101). This author also mentions that “the majority of burials in shrouds are Islamic,” although the smallest portion (15.7%) of all shrouded bodies were found in the steppe burials (2008:106-7). Not only the body of the burial at BT-I k 2 appears to have been shrouded, but the ṭirāz silk band (discussed above) that covered the man’s eyes and/or face could have constituted a trim of the shroud, less likely of a headgear. Although the use of silk in burial shrouds and funerary outfits was not recommended in Islam (Halevi, 2013), the placement of inscribed shrouds, ṭirāz, and other silk textiles in many Islamic burials (including those of the Golden Horde) has been revealed through archaeological excavations30. Moreover, since textiles (as well as other objects) which contained Arabic inscriptions were perceived by many Muslims as being imbued with special religious qualities (Blair, 2017), people often used those fabrics for burial purposes, for instance, wrapping “the head of the deceased with the text covering the eyes”31. According to Jochen Sokoly (1997:77), “The Islamic belief in divine judgment after death would have instigated the use of such garments as part of funerary outfits in order to guard and protect the deceased.” Therefore, in my view, the placement of the silk band with the Arabic inscription over the face of the deceased nomad in BT-I k2 is rather telling. Taking all other traits of the Islamic funerary rites found in this grave into account, it is unlikely that this ṭirāz was used in some non-Islamic way or simply for its magic properties. This example is different from other well-known archaeological cases, whereby textiles with or without royal or religious inscriptions were simply re-used in order to accommodate the fashion styles of the Steppe32. In this particular case, it is more likely that the ṭirāz was appropriated by the nomadic burying community in order to furnish their Muslim dead—a man who was also interred with his attributes of a nomadic warrior, and who undoubtedly maintained some important status in life. The 13th-century report by the Franciscan friar C. de Bridia (known as the Historia Tartarorum or The Tartar Relation) about the nomads of the Golden Horde relates that “when a rich man dies, he is buried secretly in the open country” with a meal, drink, “gold and silver [money],” and with “a horse with bridle and saddle, and a bow with quiver and arrows”33 (see FIG 4) for these attributes were “a sign of rank”34.

  • 35 Khalikova, 1986:45; Vasil’ev, 2008:38; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509.
  • 36 See examples in Petersen, 2013:253; Insoll, 1999:172-3.
  • 37 Petersen, 2013:255; Barthold and Rogers, 1970; Halevi, 2013; Iablonskii, 1987:152.

24In accord with archaeological convention in Russia, the absence of burial goods in a normative Islamic grave is often considered one of the most important determinant factors for distinguishing between a Muslim and non-Muslim grave in the Golden Horde35. Although Islamic legal writings do not mention the placement of the grave goods in burials (Izmailov, 2002:64), archaeological evidence worldwide attests to the relatively frequent use of personal items in Islamic burials in different periods and regions36. Turko-Mongol communities were especially well known for their “deviations” from “canonical” practice37. Vasil’ev (2008:110-1) remarks (based on his database sample) that in the steppe burials of the Golden Horde, 78.4% of all interments contained some grave goods, for instance items of horse harness (37.7%), weaponry (29.4%), coins (21.6%), and other. The burial of BT-I k2 is one of many such examples.

  • 38 Vasil’ev, 2008:113; Kriger, 1986; Vlaskin et al., 2006:47; Iablonskii, 1987:156; Fedorov-Davydov, 1 (...)
  • 39 Rakushin, 1998:14-15; Vasil’ev, 2008:45; Ivanov, 2015.
  • 40 Rakushin, 1998:14; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966; Ivanov, 2015:115.
  • 41 Vasil’ev, 2008:155; Iablonskii, 1987:156; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966.

25Archaeologists have also observed that during the 2d half of the 14th c., these grave goods diminish in the burials across different social strata of the Golden Horde, whereby horse accoutrements and weaponry disappear but some items of jewellery and coins continue to be placed in the graves38. They connect this trend with the increasing tide of Islamisation in the Golden Horde and the ensuing “reassessment of traditional rites in the spirit of Islam”39. Yet many of these researchers also note that even in the 2d half of the 14th c., “pagan” graves persisted among the denizens of that polity and that many “pre-Islamic” practices outlived the Golden Horde proper since the converted communities never entirely relinquished their beliefs when faced with “Islamic dogma”40. Moreover, some scholars believe that Islam as an “ideological religious paradigm” was not established among the nomadic communities of the Golden Horde until the collapse of that polity proper (Ivanov, 2015:115, 156; Mys'kov 2015). As a result, most archaeologists agree that unity (especially dogmatic unity) did not exist in the Muslim burial rites of that polity; instead, ritual diversity was a true marker of its Islam, especially since Sufism provided flexibility allowing the incorporation of some traditional rites into this religion41. Nevertheless, this “syncretic and complex” religious culture of the Golden Horde, which, in the words of Vasil’ev, was characterised by the “struggling forces” of Turko-Mongol shamanism and “trade religion of Islam,” continues to be interpreted through the lens of retrogression and backwardness that presumably existed in the social organisation of the Golden Horde nomads (2008:41, 51, 125) and their “artificially created” polity (Iablonskii, 1987:149). From such a position, the burial of BT-I k2 exhibits typical “vestiges of paganism among the nomads” (Vasil’ev, 2007:3 and 2008:41). Emphatically, such a position turns a blind eye to the “indigenised Islam” (Insoll 1999:189), which nomads adapted to the needs of their society at large with its concerns for kinship, ancestry, politics, and social status.

Conclusion

26The ever-complex dialectics that existed between the Islamic discourse and nomadic practices in the Golden Horde can be best illustrated by the archaeological research of nomadic graves. The burial of BT-I k2 tells its own story—its own “conversion narrative”—by adding indigenous voices to the discourse of Islamisation and its two-way process as mentioned by DeWeese (1994:7, 51 see above). In the words of Timothy Insoll (1999:199-200), Islamic burials cannot be “categorized as something clinical;” death is part of life, and as diverse as lives are, the treatments of the dead differ too depending on the ideas and practices embodied within “multiple forms of Islam” (Petersen, 2013:241). Islamicate bodies and graves in the Golden Horde have their own range of distinction, as the BT-I k2 burial demonstrates. Although we may never know with certainty, whether that buried nomadic warrior was actually converted to Islam or not, we do witness in this grave a symbolic “reformulation” of the traditional values and rites in the age of the mass conversion to Islam. We witness what James Scott (2009:331) calls a process of “bricolage” whereby the nomads actively reassembled the fragments of their dominant cosmology, new religious ideas and symbols, and old and new attributes of power into a “unique amalgam” that helped to promulgate their polity—the nomadic empire of the Golden Horde—to become one of the geopolitical superpowers of Dār al-Islām.

27Acknowledgements:

28I would like to acknowledge the support of the ERC “Nomadic Empires” Project at the University of Oxford. I am also very grateful to the late Evgenii Tsutskin for having shared his archaeological materials and his expertise with me in Kalmykia. Finally, I should like to thank Doris Behrens-Abouseif and Sheila Blair for their assistance regarding the translation and interpretation of the silk ṭirāz inscription.

IVANOV, Vladimir A., 2015, Kochevniki Zolotoi Ordy: istoriia, kul’tura, religiia, Ufa, BGPU.

MYS’KOV, E. P., 2015, Kochevniki Volgo-Donskikh Stepei v Epokhu Zolotoi Ordy, Volgograd, Izdatel’stvo FGBOU VO RANKHiGS.

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Notes

1 DeWeese, 1994:9; Khalid, 2002 and 2007; Izmailov 2002; Gorelik, 2006).

2 Christopher Atwood (2004:252 quoting Cleaves, 1953:26, 40-44) provides a vivid example of such religious appropriation among the Ilkhanids in Iran, who, upon their conversion to Islam, combined reverence for Tengri and Allah, and produced the following religious formula: “By the power of Eternal Heaven, by the support of the prophet Muhammad, and by the protection of the great and glorious fortune.”

3 See for instance studies of Iablonskii, 1980; Rakushin, 1998; Zilivinskaia, 2014; Nedashkovskii, 2004, 2008; Vasil’ev, 2007, 2008.

4 Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:200; Iablonskii, 1987:157.

5 Vasil’ev, 2007:41; Rakushin, 1998:14; Iablonskii, 1987:156-8; Ivanov, 2015:115, 156.

6 Vasil’ev, 2007:30-1, 50-1; Ivanov and Kriger, 1988; Iaminov, 1995; Rakushin, 1998:14; Ivanov, 2015.

7 Vasil’ev, 2007, 2008; Iablonskii, 1987:152. Archaeologists in Russia most commonly rely on the criteria outlined by Elena Khalikova in her study of the Islamisation of the Volga Bulgar. In her case, Khalikova (1986:44, 101) used two Hanafi works: the 12th-century commentary Al-Hidāyah by Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī and the exegesis of it by Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn al‐Khwārazmī al‐Karlānī called Al-Kifāyah fī sharḥ al-Hidāyah written in 1347. Khalikova, nevertheless, recognized the diversity of Islamic rituals associated with different localities and the diversity of pre-Islamic beliefs and practices that influenced the Islamisation of particular groups (1986:98-100). Also see I. L. Izmailov (2002) for his critique of Russian archaeologists who use Khalikova’s work as a “normative” standard for interpretation of the Islamic graves in the Middle Volga region.

8 DeWeese, 1994; Vásáry, 2016; Favereau 2017.

9 Jackson, 2005:269; Vásáry, 2016; Favereau, 2017; Behrens-Abouseif, 2014:62.

10 In this report, I use 16-wind compass points in order to describe cardinal: north (N), south (S), east (E), west (W), intercardinal: north-east (NE), south-east (SE), north-west (NW), south-west (SW) directions, as well as half-winds north-north-east (NNE), south-southeast (SSE), etc. The central (site) datum is a reference point (usually placed in the center of the kurgan), which is used for all horizontal and vertical measurements taken at the archaeological site.

11 Unfortunately, many artifacts and skeletal materials from these excavations in Kalmykia in the 1970s were not preserved and/or conserved, and therefore cannot be accessed for further investigation. In a personal communication (in 2002) with the since deceased Dr. Tsutskin, he mentioned that the textile with the Arabic inscription was sent to Moscow for further analysis but its current whereabouts are not known to me. One may hope that it is not completely lost and that it will be possible to locate and analyse it in the future.

12 Fedorov-Davydov, 1966; Vlaskin, Garmashov, Naumenko, 2006:43.

13 According to the classification of Fedorov-Davydov (1966:126-7), this burial type belongs to either V-5 (a skeleton oriented to the E, placed in a niche grave oriented to the S and sometimes barred from the grave-pit with planks, where the deceased was not accompanied by a horse burial) or D-2 (a skeleton oriented to the N, placed in a niche grave oriented to the E and not accompanied by horse remains). In Leonard Nedashkovskii’s classification (2008:507) of the kurgan graves near Tsarev (near modern Volgograd), there is no category for this type of burial—the closest are the Type 6, Variants L or R.

14 Kriger, 1986:121; Ivanov and Kriger, 1988:41; Vlaskin et al., 2006:47; Ivanov, 2015:115.

15 Vlaskin et al., 2006:12-19, 27-29,48,70, 73-4; Kyzlasov, 1980; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:116.

16 Vasil’ev, 2007; Vlaskin et al., 2006:74; Ivanov and Krieger, 1988; Ivanov, 2015; Mys'kov, 2015.

17 See also Behrens-Abouseif, 1995:45-47 and 2014:159; Lamm, 1930; Mackie, 2015:237, 259.

18 This textile can be considered as a later development of ṭirāz, when it became fashionable to substitute long historical inscriptions with a short formula or a single word of honorific or generic titles, and when the manufacture of these silks was transferred from the ruler’s authority to the textile industry and the market (Mackie, 1984:130 and 2015:245; Bierman, 1980:46, 93).

19 Behrens-Abouseif, 1995:46; Bierman, 1980:159.

20 See for instance Mackie, 1984:130-1, 136-7, 142 and 2015:251, 260; Behrens-Abouseif, 1995 and 2014:159; Lamm, 1930 for similar inscriptions.

21 Behrens-Abouseif, 2014:7, 24, 28, 63-4, 136.

22 Vasil’ev (2008:5) notes a gold dinar of Baybars (1260-77) that was found in a Golden Horde mausoleum burial at the site of Kimsomolski 2.

23 Insoll, 1999:167-8; Izmailov, 2002:61.

24 Vasil’ev, 2007:79 and 2008:50; Rakushin, 1998:14-15.

25 Insoll, 1999:168-9; Petersen, 2013:246-8; Iablonskii, 1987:148; Izmailov, 2002:62.

26 See Petersen, 2013:243; Tritton, 2008:441. The use of a coffin (tābūt) to bury the dead—a practice which existed in some communities prior to Islam—is neither prescribed nor prohibited in Islam, although generally avoided (Petersen, 2013:246). They were however widely employed by the Islamic communities of the Middle and Lower Volga and the Steppe. In the Middle Volga, the majority of the Islamic burials included coffins (Khalikova, 1986:98, 100, 121-2), while in the Lower Volga and the Steppe up to 50% of the Islamic graves of the period contained coffins (Vasil’ev, 2007:105-6).

27 Vasil’ev notes however, that 77% of Golden Horde graves with this orientation were kurgan burials and some of them contained grave goods (2007:92). He also observes (2008:54) that in the graves of the “Islamicized nomads” the faces of the deceased were more often turned toward Mecca than their entire bodies.

28 Vasil’ev, 2007:94; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509; Volkov, 2008:497.

29 Petersen, 2013:243; Halevi, 2013; Tritton, 2008; Izmailov, 2002:62.

30 Petersen, 2013:243; Insoll, 1999:170-2; Mackie, 2015; Sokoly, 1997; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509.

31 Ekhtiar and Cohen, 2015; Mackie, 2015:125-6; Sokoly, 1997:74.

32 See for instance Dode, 2014 and Woodfin, Rassamakin, Holod, 2010.

33 De Bridia and Painter, 1995:92;.

34 Barthold and Rogers, 1970:216, 224; for similar archaeological evidence from Mongolia see Nomguunsüren et al., 2012.

35 Khalikova, 1986:45; Vasil’ev, 2008:38; Nedashkovskii, 2008:509.

36 See examples in Petersen, 2013:253; Insoll, 1999:172-3.

37 Petersen, 2013:255; Barthold and Rogers, 1970; Halevi, 2013; Iablonskii, 1987:152.

38 Vasil’ev, 2008:113; Kriger, 1986; Vlaskin et al., 2006:47; Iablonskii, 1987:156; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966:200.

39 Rakushin, 1998:14-15; Vasil’ev, 2008:45; Ivanov, 2015.

40 Rakushin, 1998:14; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966; Ivanov, 2015:115.

41 Vasil’ev, 2008:155; Iablonskii, 1987:156; Fedorov-Davydov, 1966.

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Pour citer cet article

Référence papier

Irina Shingiray, « An Islamicate Body: A Case Study of a Nomadic Burial from the Core Territory of the Golden Horde. », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 143 | 2018, vol. 143.

Référence électronique

Irina Shingiray, « An Islamicate Body: A Case Study of a Nomadic Burial from the Core Territory of the Golden Horde. », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En ligne], 143 | 2018, mis en ligne le 12 octobre 2018, consulté le 05 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/10777 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.10777

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Irina Shingiray

University of Oxford

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