Tuesday, July 4, 2023

2023: Basasiri - Basmachi

 

Basasiri, al-
Basasiri, al- (Arslan al-Basasiri) (d. 1060).  Turkish slave who became one of the chief military leaders at the end of the Buyid dynasty.  He Basasiri was a slave that staged a revolt against the Seljuks in Iraq.

Basasiri had been a favorite of the Buwayhid amir al-Malik al-Rahim. When the Buwayhids were expelled from Iraq by the Seljuks in 1055, Basasiri began a rebellion against their authority. The fighting dragged on for a few years with neither side able to gain a definitive advantage over the other. Basasiri eventually turned to the Fatimids for aid. They provided the necessary help and appointed him as Fatimid viceroy of Iraq.

With the support of the Mesopotamian Arabs, Basasiri managed to take Baghdad at the end of 1058. The Caliph al-Qā'im was removed from the city and confined at Haditha and the Fatimids were mentioned in the Friday prayers. When the Seljuk ruler Toghrïl Beg marched on the city, however, Basasiri lost support. His rebellion collapsed, and was forced to flee Baghdad about one year after capturing it. His flight was useless, however, as he was killed in a nearby skirmish.

During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Al-Qaim; Al-Basasiri constantly paid his due to the Caliph in Baghdad. Until at one point when the Saljuks were away in campaigns. Al-Basasiri put siege over Baghdad and claimed the leadership of the Fatimids as the only legitimate rule over Baghdad. This lasted one year. In 1059 Saljuks returned from campaign and Al-Basasiri was killed.

Arslan al-Basasiri see Basasiri, al-


Bashkir
Bashkir (Bashgird) (Bashgurd) (Bashkurt) (Bashkirt) (Bashjirt). .   A people of extremely mixed origins who, like the nearby Tatars, are related in part to the Oguz, Pechenegs, Volga-Kama Bulgars, Kipchak Turks and a variety of Mongol tribes.  The first recorded evidence of the existence of a people named Bashkir (Bashgird or Bashgurd) appears in the Arab chronicles of the ninth and tenth centuries of the Christian calendar.  Although loosely organized even into the twentieth century, the Bashkir are believed to have experienced their ethnogenesis sometime in the sixteenth century.  The Bashkir religious preference is Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school. 

The Bashkirs, are Turkic people, living in Russia, mostly in the republic of Bashkortostan. Some Bashkirs also live in the republic of Tatarstan, as well as in Perm Krai and Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Samara, and Saratov Oblasts of Russia.

Bashkirs are concentrated on the slopes and confines of the southern Ural Mountains and the neighboring plains. They speak the Kypchak-based Bashkir language, a close relative of the Tatar language. Most Bashkirs also speak Russian: some as a second language, and some as their first language, regarding Bashkir as a language spoken by their grandparents.

The name Bashkir is recorded for the first time at the beginning of the 10th century in the writings of the Arab writer ibn Fadlan who, in describing his travels among the Volga Bulgarians, mentions the Bashkirs as a warlike and idolatrous race. According to ibn Fadlan, the Bashkirs worshiped phallic idols. At that time, Bashkirs lived as nomadic cattle breeders. Until the 13th century they occupied the territories between the Volga and Kama Rivers and the Urals.

The first European sources to mention the Bashkirs are the works of Joannes de Plano Carpini and William of Rubruquis. These travellers, who fell in with Bashkir tribes in the upper parts of the Ural River, called them Pascatir or Bastarci, and asserted that they spoke the same language as the Hungarians.

According to medieval sources, until the arrival of the Mongols in the middle of the 13th century, the Bashkirs were a strong and independent people, troublesome to their neighbors: the Volga Bulgarians and the Petchenegs, but by the time of the downfall of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552 they had dissolved into a number of weak tribes. They were converted to Islam by the Volga Bulgarians in the 13th century.

In 1556, the Bashkirs voluntarily recognized the supremacy of Russia, which in consequence founded the city of Ufa in 1574 to defend them from attacks by the Kyrgyz and the Nogays, and subjected the Bashkirs to a fur-tax.

In 1676, the Bashkirs rebelled under a leader named Seit, and the Russian army had great difficulties in ending the rebellion. The Bashkirs rose again in 1707, under Aldar and Kûsyom, on account of ill-treatment by the Russian officials. The third insurrection occurred in 1735, at the time of the foundation of Orenburg, and it lasted for six years.

In 1774, the Bashkirs, under the leadership of Salavat Yulayev, supported Pugachev's rebellion.

In 1786, the Bashkirs achieved tax-free status; and in 1798 Russia formed an irregular Bashkir army from among them. Residual land ownership disputes continued.

Some Bashkirs traditionally practiced agriculture, cattle-rearing and bee-keeping. The nomadic Bashkirs wandered either the mountains or the steppes, herding cattle.

Bashkir national dishes include a kind of gruel called öyrä and a cheese named qorot.

Bashgird see Bashkir
Bashgurd see Bashkir
Bashkurt see Bashkir
Bashkirt see Bashkir
Bashjirt see Bashkir


Bashshar ibn Burd
Bashshar ibn Burd (Bashar ibn Burd) (714-784).  Famous Arabic poet of eighth century Iraq.  He was considered one of the glories of Basra.

Bashshār ibn Burd, nicknamed "al-Mura'ath" meaning "the wattled," was a poet in the late Umayyad and the early Abbasid periods. Bashshar was of Persian origin; his grandfather was taken as a captive to Iraq, his father was a freedman (Mawla) of the Uqayl tribe. Some Arab scholars considered Bashshar the first "modern" poet and one of the pioneers of the badi' in Arabic literature. It is believed that he exerted a great influence on the subsequent generation of poets.

Bashshar was blind from birth. He grew up in the rich cultural environment of Basra and showed his poetic talents at an early age. Bashshar fell foul of some religious figures, such as Malik ibn Dinar and al-Hasan al-Basri, who condemned his poetry for its licentiousness. He exchanged Hija with several poets. being anti-Mu'tazili, he criticized Wasil ibn Ata, who by some accounts is considered the founder of the Mutazilite school of Islamic thought.

After the Abbasids built Baghdad, Bashshar moved there from Basra in 762. Bashshar became associated with the caliph al-Mahdi. Due to his libertinism, he was ordered by al-Mahdi not to write any love poetry. This ban was quickly breached and as a result, Bashshar was charged with heresy and zendiqism, imprisoned and beaten to death.  His body was thrown into the Tigris river.

Most of Bashshar's Hija' (satire) is in traditional style, while his fakhr expresses his Shu'ubi sentiments, boasting the achievements of his Persian ancestors and denigrating the "uncivilized Arabs".

Bashar ibn Burd see Bashshar ibn Burd
Mura'ath, al- see Bashshar ibn Burd
"the wattled" see Bashshar ibn Burd


Basmachi
Basmachi.  Term which was applied by Russians to opponents of the Bolsheviks who were active in Central Asia between the Russian Revolution and the early 1930s.  This name – as the character of the movement – parallels the case of the Mujahidin forces which opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, whom the Russians referred to by the Persian word dushman, meaning “enemy”. “Basmachi” is similarly a pejorative term, meaning “bandit.”  Like the Afghan “Dushmany,” those whom the Bolsheviks called “Basmachi” included a great variety of people who did not call themselves by this name, nor did they operate as a unified movement.  The Soviet government was able to exploit internal divisions within the Basmachi movement to quell it fairly rapidly, once the Red Army had consolidated power elsewhere in Russia and Central Asia.

The roots of the Basmachi movement extend to the Russian conquest of Central Asia.  Most of the region now comprised by the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan came under Russian domination between the 1830s and the 1880s.  The native, overwhelmingly Muslim population strongly opposed the “infidel” conquest, but the Russians exploited military superiority and rivalries within the region to subjugate all opposition.  Sporadic outbreaks during the tsarist period, such as the Andijan Uprising under the leadership of a Naqshbandi Sufi Ishan, were quickly suppressed.  A more significant uprising occurred in 1916 when, hard pressed by the war with Germany, the tsarist government instituted military conscription of Central Asians.  This, combined with a range of humiliating and impoverishing policies of the colonial administration, was decisive in mobilizing Central Asian opposition to rule from Moscow.

When the Bolsheviks seized power in Saint Petersburg in 1917, their counterparts from among the very narrow Russian immigrant proletariat established a “Soviet” government in Tashkent in Russian Central Asia.  In spite of the Bolsheviks’ affirmed support for “national self-determination,” this self-declared regional government included only Russians.  Some Central Asian intellectuals and reformers had considered alliance with the Communists in hopes that this would lead to autonomy within the new Soviet framework; however, the Qoqand government established in December 1917 by such Central Asians was quickly crushed by Tashkent Communists with support from Moscow.  The Russian Bolsheviks in Central Asia entered on a campaign of seizing lands, looting the native population, and generally affirming their intention of maintaining Russian domination.

The leadership of the Basmachi movement, which derived its widespread popular support from the resulting hostility toward the Russians, was composed of the most diverse elements:  reformists, including Jadidists and “Young Bukharans”; the traditional Islamic leadership, whose authority had been severely undermined by the colonial government; Central Asian rulers such as Said Alim Khan, emir of Bukhara; and even brigand-leaders of outlaw groups that had preyed on the Russian colonists and Central Asians alike.  In 1921, Enver Pasha, leader of the deposed Young Turk government in Turkey, appeared in Central Asia, seeking to unify the opposition under his opportunistic leadership; however, the movement remained divided by leadership rivalries, and Enver Pasha was killed in a skirmish in 1922.

At its height (1920-1922), the Basmachi movement was in control of the entire Ferghana Valley, aside from Russian railroad and military installations, as well as most of what is now Tajikistan and some other areas.  During this same period, however, the Moscow government established control over the Central Asian Bolsheviks and began to conduct a policy in the region that was friendlier to the Muslim population, reopening markets, returning seized lands, and encouraging native participation in state institutions.  Support for the opposition was thus undermined, and military action was intensified now that other regions such as Bukhara and Khiva were under Red Army control. 

By 1924, the movement was largely crushed.  The Soviet government was successful in encouraging substantial defections from Basmachi ranks and in winning over the populace simply by promoting stability and allowing prosperity under the reforms of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s.  Basmachi resistance persisted only in the mountains of the southeasternmost region of Central Asia bordering on Afghanistan until the early 1930s.

After losing their best commanders and many men, the Basmachi movement was destroyed as a political and military force and the few rebels remained decided to hide on the mountains and to start a guerrilla warfare that consisted in terrorist acts, hostage taking, sabotage, blackmail and brutal raids. This kind of warfare and the conciliatory measures of the Soviet Government caused them the loss of the support of the local population who began to see the Basmachi as purely criminal elements. The Basmachi revolt had largely died out by 1926; however, skirmishes and occasional fighting continued until 1931 when the Soviets captured the Basmachi leader Ibrahim Beg. In the area of present-day Kyrgyzstan, the last seats of the Basmachi were destroyed in 1934.

The indigenous leaders started to cooperate with Soviet authorities and large numbers of Central Asians joined the Communist Party, many of them gaining high positions in the government of the Uzbek SSR, a republic established in 1924 that included present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. During the Soviet period, Islam became a focal point for the anti-religious drives of Communist authorities. The government closed most mosques, and religious schools became anti-religion museums. Uzbeks who remained practicing Muslims were deemed nationalist and often targeted for imprisonment or execution. Other developments that took place under the Soviet rule included the emancipation of women and industrialization. With time, a higher standard of living was attained and illiteracy virtually eliminated, even in rural areas. Only a small percentage of the population was literate before 1917.  This percentage increased to nearly 100 percent under the Soviets.

The Red Army took 1,441 casualties during its operations against the Basmachi, of which 516 were killed in action or died from wounds.

The rebellion was a popular subject for Red Westerns, and featured as a central part of the plot of the films White Sun of the Desert, The Seventh Bullet and The Bodyguard.

“bandit”   see Basmachi.
dushman see Basmachi.
enemy see Basmachi.

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