Abstract
This article explores the religious policy of the Russian Empire in the Kazakh Steppe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the state's institutional efforts to co-opt and instrumentalize the Islamic clergy for colonial governance. Drawing on administrative and archival data, the study examines how Tsarist authorities leveraged imperial religious frameworks to deploy state-appointed Tatar mullahs into Kazakh society and formalize the middle-tier religious office of the akhund. Taking the Bukei Horde under Jangir Khan as a critical case study, the author illustrates how religious titles were integrated into the imperial bureaucratic apparatus to enforce political loyalty and maintain social control. However, the paper demonstrates that this policy of constructing a highly regulated "Russian Islam" ultimately faltered. By the mid-nineteenth century, the influx of Tatar clergy—often perceived by locals as corrupt or religiously incompetent—triggered what authorities labeled "Tatar tyranny," causing severe cultural and religious friction among the nomadic population. The article concludes that the empire's rigid administrative supervision failed to establish a durable local institutional foundation, instead fostering internal social stratification and anti-colonial sentiment within the Steppe.
Recommended Citation
Akhan, Zharas and Uskembaev, Kanat
(2026)
"The Bureaucratization of Faith: Appointed Clerics and the Limits of Tsarist Administrative Control in the Kazakh Steppe,"
Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 46
:
Iss.
10
, Article 8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2229.2970
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol46/iss10/8