The Robbing of the Property of the Madrasas in Samarkand by the Russians

Abstract

This article explores the confiscation of waqf and the financial weakening of the waqf supported madrasas of Samarkand following the Russian occupation of 1868. It describes how colonial reforms of taxation and administrative control over khiraj and tanob, were detrimental to the traditional Sharia based waqf system and resulted in economic constraints for religious educational institutions. While waqf revenues support mosques, schools and madrasas, few studies meticulously reconstruct how certain taxation decisions, such as property seizures, materialised through state legislation and archival practice in the Zarafshan district.

            This study employs qualitative historical methodology based on archival document analysis, supplemented by source criticism and comparative legal interpretation, with source criticism and comparative legal interpretation respectively used to analyze collected documents from the National Archives of Uzbekistan. The chronology of policy shifts tentatively outlined in the first paragraph traces Kaufman’s 1868 taxation measures and the 1870 announcement, to the more formally institutional regulation in the 1886 “Regulation on the Administration of the Turkestan Region.”

            The results illustrate that, in Russia, the authorities intentionally distanced the waqf courts from the direct administration of their incomes, introduced tax regulations inconsistent with the expression of will in the waqf deed, expropriated documentation related to waqfs, and diverted the revenues from madrasas, caravanserais and other waqf properties to the state treasury. For instance, the case details the confiscation of property belonging to the Yusufboy madrasa and the diversion of profit generated from previously protected income streams.

            These results indicate that extracting revenue was not their only purpose, but that the gradual undermining of Islamic institutional sovereignty and local autonomy was also a key goal. Using the case of Samarkand, the article asserts that waqf property policy was a primary colonial mechanism for economic domination, cultural control, and the foundation of a colonial indifference to the future of traditional educational infrastructure.