Part II 395

books like the Kuhistani and the Durru Mukhtar related the provision and
manner of exculpation and they spoke to satisfy the people who had come
and analyzed this. Does it jibe with an a Qur’anic verse or the sunna?
That has nothing to do with it. They relate what was seen dishonestly. I
tried to teach that it needs to be done this way and that way. Although is
was a question they were doubtful about, they said, let me go before His
Holiness, and if there’s a mistake, he’ll respond. I did not hold back what
I knew to those who had come in. But a lot of them, one after the other,
kept coming back. Then His Holiness said, “People! People! Don’t bother
yourselves with questions about Islamic law. Even though he explained
it, you keep coming back. I speak once. Understand it and go on. Don’t
bother me by coming back all the time.” And he said, “There are people
among you who’ve been to the city. Do it the same way people in the city
bury the dead. May God have mercy on him.” With that we said goodbye
and parted. After that I never ran into him or saw him again. But we went
to that funeral, that was mentioned above. May God count him among the
good people. His grave is on Keregetas Ridge. He was more than 65 years
old in October 1916.
The Late Molla Muqat
This person’s name was Mukhammetzhan Tölebayulï. One of Uyïm’s
three sons was Qïlshar. Among these was the Toqtawïl clan. That per-
son was exactly the same age as my late father. His home was a place
with flowing water called Qaraghash in the uplands of a mountain called
Törezhalï in the Ereymentau country. He lived with his kinsmen Tukhpï-
khazhï and Tukhpï’s son Ömirbek. Now, I will provide this person’s biog-
raphy on the basis of what his only son, Ghalïmzhan wrote. Ghalïmzhan
and I were students at the same time, and because he is someone who is a
writer too, he is able to write fully about his own father, and provided me
with a letter containing this information, and I will copy that letter below.
Now listen to his words!
The things I know about my father.
1. Riding the winged steed of aspiration.
My father Mukhammetzhan Tölebayulï entered the door of This World
in 1858. When my grandmother Shöki was speaking sweetly to him, she
would say “My Muqat.” That is where his nickname Muqat comes from.
There is some religious information about Tölebay. He was a bright poor
person with a strong desire for scholarship. During his time he was mul-
396 S. Ghïlmani. Biographies of the islamic scholars of our times

lah in the encampment of Pang Sekerbay, of the Süyindik clan, and later
in the encampment of Qazïmbet-bay (among the Bögembay people of the
Qanzhïghalï clan. There he taught his only son, Muqat, and he purchased
for a well-fed horse one of the Qur’ans that Dawïr-khazhï had copied. But
when my father’s religious literacy had begun, and when he was called
“the child mullah,” Tölebay passed away, and Sekerbay invited him to
his encampment to teach, saying, “He is the trough of the winged steed of
learning.
Muqat went to the neighboring Irgeli people, and Zhanshwaq the son
of Bayan wanted to get married probably wanted to receive a blessing.
There, Zhanshwaq said, “My child, you have come to a good place. Good
fortune has fastened your reputation. Don’t play the dombra. Don’t sing
songs. Overpowering a thousand people with the force of your knowledge
is better than overpowering one person with the force of your strength.
Your calf is being raised. Don’t fall into wrestling. Do not recite poems
that bring a shaman’s ass into ecstasy and do not perform miracles!
I have appended to his biography this letter written by the only son of
Mullah Muqat- Mukhammetzhan:
My late father, having gained powerful example of the light of ori-
ental science, was like someone who fastened his gaze especially upon
the Ma’mun Academy. He was interested in the materially abundant and
intellectually rich heritage in all of oriental literature of Abu Raykhan Mu-
hammad b. Ahmad al-Biruni (973-1048) who headed the academy there.
This is because under the leadership of al-Biruni the famous philosophers
of that time like Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Abu ‘Ali ibn Sina, Abu Ja’far al-
Khorezmi, Mahmud Kashghari served there. The majority of scientists
today appear to take pride that they had discovered new things in the fields
of physics, chemistry, mathematics, geography, astronomy, and medicine.
My elder sister’s husband Altay Ghali-molla told me in 1926 my father’s
views on the Ma’mun Academy. At that moment I probably didn’t attach
any importance to this. It was interesting information. (Ghali had taken
lessons from my father). But I hadn’t remembered it. Last year I had not
remembered the recollections about my father.
Signed, “Your sincere student, Ghalïmzhan” dated: 12 November
1964
That is what Ghalimzhan said: Muqat’s religious instructors were
Qondïbay-khalpe and Toqang-khaziret. Because of his poverty he only
studied in the mosque and madrasa of these two among the nomads. Then
 Part II 397

every Friday he would go by horseback and take lessons, and he complet-

ed his studies. Muqat was an advanced religious scholar; he was a truly
clever orator. He liked those who possessed powerful skills and associated
with Tatars and Russians. He learned from them. He concentrated on ev-
ery difficulty with a zeal for learning. As a result my father quickly learned
Persian and Arabic, and especially Russian, and he spoke them fluently,
and he was able to read and write them beautifully.
He read the great Oriental thinkers from Ferdowsi to Nava’i, and the
classic democratic Russian writers such as Krylov, Chernyshevskii, and
Leo Tolstoy. He was alive during the time of the first Kazakh scholars
and enlighteners, Shoqan Wälikhanulï, Abay, and Ibray Altïnsarin. He was
born in the same era as Abay’s cousin Shakarim. He was younger than the
collectors of oral tradition Abu Bakr Divaev and Mäshhür-Zhüsip Köpey-
ulï. [Gïlmani’s note:] (This is the first mistake: he was the same age as the
great Mäshhür). He was two animal cycles older than Abdullah Tuqay,
Mukhammetzhan Serali, Sultan-Mahmud Toghayirov, and Sabit Donen-
tayev. So, it my father took as much example from religious scholars, it
seems the historical personages may have left a greater impression.
One of my father’s peculiarities was that although his consciousness
was awakened by reading Arabic and Persian books, he did not bow to all
of the conceptions that were authoritative regarding the Orient and wide-
spread, and he looked at the Orient critically both valuing it and looking
at it critically. This is because during his whole life my father received
publications such as Galimjan Barudi’s journal ad-Din wa’l-Adab, that
was published in Kazan, the Dala Wilayati Gazeti, that was published in
Omsk (1888-1902), the newspaper Kazakh, from Orenburg (1913-1918),
Ayqap from Troitsk (1911-1915), and the journal Din wa Ma’ishat17.60He
was of the same mind as Musa Bigiyev, who’s name was known from
Omsk to Akmolinsk18.61

At that time there was almost no literature in the Arabic, Persian, Cha-
ghatay, or Russian languages published in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Ufa,
Orenburg, and Omsk that he did not see or read.

17
This was a journal published in Orenburg, associated with more conservatve
Muslim circles.
18
Musa Bigiyev (1873-1949) was a Tatar modernist theologian, particularly
well known in Russia for modernist and reformist commentary on the Qur’an.
398 S. Ghïlmani. Biographies of the islamic scholars of our times

2. When the Flame was ignited from the Spark

Let us now kneel to history.
At just that time was there not a surfeit of people other than Muqat
who combined such education? Who did not honor his contemporary
Bayrewsen-khaziret Ermaghambet? He was not less than Qondïbay and
Toqmaghambet, or Aqtamaq-khalpe, who was his equal.
In order to explain successfully this aspect, it seems it is necessary first
to analyze the historical period, the environment my father grew up in, and
the scholarly and political relations of that time. The period when Muqat
came into consciousness was an era when Kazakhstan was voluntarily
annexed to Russia and when major changes came about in the people’s
economy and culture in connection with that. Although official Russia,
which recognized the tsar’s dominance, was an enemy for the Kazakh
people, there was a second Russia that constantly resisted it. This was the
Russia of the great figures on the path of the free democratic revolution
that struggled against the oppressive government for half a century before
the Great October Revolution. This was time when national minorities in
Russia saw the emergence of enlightened intellectuals in Russia, such as
Abay, Altïnsarin, and Shoqan Wälikhanulï, as well as similar figures in
Georgia, Armenia, Buriatia, Azerbaijan, and Ossetia. In addition, begin-
ning in 1905 Tatar intellectuals began their awakening, and combined the
liberation of peoples with nationalism. Tatar intellectuals included Gayaz
Iskhaqi, Zaki Ramiyev, and others who were jadids and popularizers of
the ideas of Shihab ad-Din Marjani. A second group consisted of Abdulla
Tuqay and Galimjan Ibragimov, who supported the interests of the masses.
Muqat was in this same environment. In Akmolinsk District he was a
brave supporter of jadidism and of the ideas that Marjani had begun. In the
days of fierce struggle, when the ideas of the enlighteners were confused
with respect to organization, Muqat Tolebaev was reading Lenin’s first
political paper Iskra, the newspaper of the revolutionary Marxists, which
was published abroad. The postman would bring it to a relative who lived
in a winter encampment near the modern-day settlement of Bïlagdat. He
subscribed to it in the name of a close friend, a poor Kazakh named Oyïs,
the son of Aytpay. By means of Lenin’s Iskra, Muqat distanced himself
from the nationalists, and in the end the pro-wealthy intellectuals liked the
Mensheviks. But Muqat, who liked the progressive democrats, now went
to the side of the Bolsheviks. It turned his father away from the old and
toward the new.
 Part II 399

3. The Fate of the Spring that Slaked my Father

The scholarly inheritance that teaches who my father was is abundant.
When I went to Karkaralinsk in 1927 to study, and placed all of my books
with my kinsman Mukhametzhan, they buried all of my books helter-skel-
ter in the cemetery. Later, no matter how much I searched, I was unable to
get any information.
I know like the palm of my hand that until then, in our house four
large trunks held, along with the Muslim books, a Russian version of Tol-
stoy’s Krug Chteniia, and Lenin’s Iskra, up to issue No. 25, from Decem-
ber 1916. Our late father nourished himself on the products of those wise
skills that pleased him and furnished examples. Precisely in 1916, when
the tsar’s punitive detachments were sent to Ereymen, they burned the
stores of the insurgents, and seized their livestock and property, and came
to torture the people, my father wrapped those books and his newspaper
file in a sooty piece of felt, and on a moonless night, buried it in an incon-
spicuous spot. After that there was no news of it and it was not found. Not
a trace remained at home.
Some people suggested that what the late Muqan took that day was
not Lenin’s Iskra, but the Orenburg Iskra. However, it was Lenin’s Iskra,
because the Orenburg Iskra was published from 1917 until 1920. And that
time his father knew perfectly well the difference between Socialist Revo-
lutionaries and Social Democrats. And until 1921 the newspaper Mukh-
bir was published in Almaty under the name Ushqïn. Its publishers were
Sabïrzhan Shäkirzhanov and Qaldïbay Abdullin. The newspaper came out
twice a week in Tatar, Kazakh, and Uyghur.
4. When the enemy makes demands, the dog pulls from the floor.
From his ancestors my father was a poor nomad to the core. He knew
the trades of mullah, boot-maker, and carpenter. Having a holy intention,
he built a madrasa in Qaraghash, on the western slope of Ezhal Moun-
tain, and he feasted more than a hundred youths from the nearby encamp-
ments with the fruit of learning. Among my father’s students, especially
Mübarak and Ömirbek obtained learning in two languages, Zhumabay,
Baymukhammet, and Aytmaghambet became mullahs, Nurkey became
his mudarris, and Aqan, Qusayïn, and even Aytemir and Baytemir quickly
learned to read Arabic and Turki.
In summer my late father would hitch a single horse to a droshky
and travel. I would be with him as a young boy. Oh how he educated me!
Until we reached the encampment where we would stop and spend the
400 S. Ghïlmani. Biographies of the islamic scholars of our times

night we would have short talks and he would ask me questions. If I said
it like he did, he would be happy, and if I stumbled on it, he would be
angry and explain it. He taught me according to the jadid method, and he
taught me to read in a month’s time. He taught me the alphabet, the Haft-i
Yak19,62Arabic, Persian, and Russian. The good father is the food to the bad
child for 40 years. I note that today I remember much of what my father
taught me.
He was unhappy at the news about Musa Bigiyev. Musa Bigiyev trans-
lated the Qur’an into Kazakh (Ghilmani’s note: not into Kazakh, into Ta-
tar) and delivered it to the Kazan printing house. The fanatical Tatar mul-
lahs said God only approved of the Arabic language, and Kazakhifying
(Tatarifying) it is a sin, and they wouldn’t allow it to be published. (It was
not Musa who translated it into Tatar, but Ziyauddin Kamali). Muqat was
a little unhappy at this. When a poor Turkmen scholar had come from far
away and was taking lessons, his ears had frozen and swelled. His teacher,
the ishan, laughed at that and said, “Poor man, did you get your ears from
a donkey?” The poor man replied, “You aren’t kidding, your Grace, you
aren’t kidding; when they divided the donkey, they gave you the head,
and I got the ears.” My father laughed and said, “We can say just the same
thing; unhappiness surrouding the Qur’an was given to the fanatics, and
its goodness was given to Musa (Ziya).
It was as though there was a little difference in my father’s view of
the Muslim faith. He could see the rules and method that was the founda-
tion of the Qur’an, and he would not support verses that held women be-
low men, and belittled them, or verses that appeared between heaven and
earth. There are many facts that describe that.
1. When among the authoritative Arghïn ishans, mullahs, and khwajas
who relied on the children of the white bone Saqqulaq family, made the
Qorzhïnköl volost’ obedient to Islamic law, and they would say, “The Sun
and the Moon by God’s command rose from the sea that is in the empty
steppe, and set in the clay. The angle lifted with his shoulder the seven
layers of the Earth. That angel raised a fish over the cliff, placed a blue ox
on the fish, and when it shook its tail there was an earthquake, and when it
struck its horn, the afterlife would approach.

The Haft-i Yak was an elementary primer consisting on one-seventh of the

19

Qur’an.
 Part II 401

At the home of a wealthy person named Shaqiy my father delivered

a fatal blow opposing the discoveries of astronomy to the rubbish of the
religious charlatans. Would the Bögembay clan put up with that? He was
ashamed at the fact that the ishans, mullahs, and khwajas who were pirs
were charlatans, and they decided to punish Muqat, saying he was pro-
jadid, and a threat to religion. When the volost’ chief Olzhabay, who had
originally driven the people with rods, in order to establish his authority,
had prepared to beat my father with birch rods, he fled with the support of
the poor toilers, and left without being caught.
2. He also denounced the greed of pseudo-mullahs, freeloader ishans.
He also said they are prosperous beggars and have little piety. He also cam
out against customs such as praying to pirs, throwing fat in the fire, spend-
ing the night at a saint’s tomb, and tying votive cloths to trees.
3. His father also supported the rights of women, asking if they too
were not people and servants of God? He advised people not to take two
wives or to pay a bride price. He denounced the selling of daughters dur-
ing times of famine, asking how that distinguished people from wolves.
When his sister named Umsïn went to her beloved by her own choice, she
was chased by all forty households of her relatives from several encamp-
ments. The father said that such customs simply come from the ancestors
and are not necessary.
4. He wondered how correct it was to carry out our worship through-
out the year, burning in the heat, freezing in the cold, when people were
hungry and naked. Saying it was not appropriate to punish those with pure
intentions, he exempted his younger brothers Musa, Säbit, Turghïmbay,
and Esmaghambet who worked as farm laborers from observing the fast
or providing gifts during the Eid holiday.
He would counsel you men to be hard working and diligent.
One year the tsar invited a delegate from each volost’ to the Duma,
and the people sent Muqan there. However the next day Akhmet Usam-
bayulï, the volost’ chief of the Zhetiru Qanzhïghalïs, sent someone else,
and said “You will spoil it,” and summoned him back from Akmolinsk,
and didn’t send him. The old men say that the ruling class often unjustly
condemned my father in that way.
5. He passed away without seeing his final wish.
My father Muqan was well built, strong, broad-faced, with an elegant
moustache. His bright eyes gave him a handsome appearance. Today the
old villagers who saw him with their own eyes point, as to a genealogy,
402 S. Ghïlmani. Biographies of the islamic scholars of our times

to the fact that at the beginning of the 20th century he was predicting the
future. He completely believed that the times would change, a law would
be established, and a just rule would be established. He predicted that in
forty years the Kazakh nomadic encampment will no longer exist. The
wealthy will die out, the poor will rule. Energetic action will bring about a
sedentary people, and will put an end to a scattered people, and will make
a niggardly land generous. The day when men make the winged-steed
and fly to the heavens is not far off. He said there was no force that would
stop the wheel of history. When notable would gather for a celebration or
a feast for guests, in his blessing he would say, “God, protect the well be-
ing of all the people, may they encounter no misfortunes in the world. If
Satan closes a door out of evil, may [God] open a thousand doors out of
goodness.”
During the great anti-tsarist uprising in Ereymen in 1916, no one
emerged like my father who calmed down and inspired the unhappy no-
mads who met with bloody extermination. One thing I remember. In the
summer of 1917 all of the leaders of the revolt who were in the district
center were freed, and after that the tsar was removed from the throne,
and Lenin took power. The war ended. There were rumors thundered and
flew about that freedom had completely returned. The people didn’t know
what and whom to believe. At a large gathering that took place in Äldebek
Qïzïlaghash they gathered around and listened to Muqan, who received
newspapers from everywhere
Who will say that anyone but Lenin, who threw the tsar from the
throne, is his protector? May the hero’s honor be increased. The greatest
and most developed force in Russia’s historical trajectory was the Social
Democratic political party, which started in the 1890’s
My father explained to the people that their class enemies were the
biys and the wealthy, and that the workers need to unite against them.
What Muqat said pleased all of the Zhetiru Qudayberdi people who had
assembled. In October a new government formed in the district center. Its
leaders were revolutionaries like the educated democrat Kachenko, Säken
Sayfullin, Zhumabay Nurken, Rakhïmzhan Düysenbayev, and Ömirbay
Dönentayev. They published a paper called Tirshilik.
That winter was a very bad one, with lots of snow and zhuts. In Febru-
ary of 1918 he fell ill with a sort of a flu and did not recover. He was sick
for five days. On the sixth day he had himself surrounded by books, and
 Part II 403

among people of the encampment, he turned his face toward Mecca, and
after the dawn prayer he began to grow weak. His younger brother Musa
and my mother Ghaysha dropped water into his mouth.
This concludes Ghalïmzhan’s letter, which was he sent to Ghilmani
on 10 January 1964. He was buried near his father’s winter encampment,
called Qaraghash.
Mullah Muqan and my [Ghïlmani’s] father, Ghïlman Sälmenulï were
the same age. But whether they were in contact, I do not know. When I
was studying with Aqtamaq-khalpe and we went to the nomads, some-
times we would meet. But being polite, one didn’t talk with someone who
was like one’s father. It seems the children of someone named Tayzhan,
the only child of Birzhanköt, had died. We found out and went to perform
the khatïm for them. Our own teacher, Muqat-molda, Käkibay, and lesser
mullahs were there. My late cousin Beyis was among us students there.
At that gathering Muqat-molda posed a question. “The prophets were
sinless beings. Why do we perform prayers for them five times a day?”
The other mullahs didn’t say a word. Only Käkibay-molla answered. He
said, “Almighty God is the highest of the high, a holy being. As for His
servants, they are the lowest of the low, and have the rank of afsal. The
beings that bring these two centers closer and provide the direction and
His words what we call prophets. Prayers are performed for delivering
our sadness, pain, and desires to Almighty God who is the highest of the
high.” We analyzed that answer, and we felt it was not sufficiently defini-
tive. Then Muqat-molla made it known that he was satisfied with the reply.
“Abdulkhakim has upheld what I am saying, saying that is his teaching.”
However, among the people the two mullahs were on one side, and the
others were on the other. The two of them supported the usul-i jadid, and
the others did not choose it. But that that time we did not support the usul-i
jadid, saying that we followed our master’s way. This is because at that at
that time we did not understand. We have an explanation in the biography
of Toqang-khaziret of the conditions as to why the usul-i qadim was fixed
in the heart.You can read it there.
When I was studying, when I went to the nomads, when I met with His
Holiness Muqat, I remember there was a question about the explanation of
the verse in the sura Ibrahim: “We never sent a prophet who did not speak
the tongue of his people [Qur’an 14:4].” I don’t remember what I had said,
but he said, “Today’s scholars have three ranks. One is ifrat, one is tafrit,
404 S. Ghïlmani. Biographies of the islamic scholars of our times

and one is i’tidal bi’l-mutawasit. Those who publish Din wa Ma’ishat are
ifrit; those who publish Shura2063are tafrit, and those who own ad-Din
wa’l-Adab are i’tidal bi’l-mutawasit. Then he said he is someone who sub-
scribes to ad-Din wa’l-Adab. Galimjan al-Barudi is mutawasit.” I heard
him say that he liked that person.
I heard from my father Ghïlman Sälmenulï that Muqan’s father Tölew-
bay in his time was called molda and was a mullah among the wealthy.
When his father was studying in Akmolinsk with Nazhmiddin-khaziret,
one year the people lost their livestock, and his father made him go to
the wealthy men to serve as a mullah. One year they had Ghïlman serve
as a mullah to Qazïmbet, of the Turanalï clan among the Bögembays. He
was living in the yurt of his son, Boqtabay. He would say to me, “My
child, scratch my back.” He was a very fat person. When Ghïlman was
living there Boqtabay fell ill and died. They called for that person’s däwir
service, and decided for me to take the offering. The offering that they
made for this person was a hundred horses. Ghïlman did not do it. Finally
Muqat’s father, Tölewbay had previously been the mullah among those
wealthy men, and had left. They brought him and had him sit for the däwir,
and gave him the herd of horses. In Ghïlman’s understanding, when he sat
for the däwir all of that person’s sins are put onto into the mullah’s back,
and he said, ‘May he lift off his sin.’ For that reason he was afraid and fled.
Although Ghïlman had not sat for the däwir, they gave him four horses.”
Throughout his life my father never sat for a däwir.
Aqtamaq-khalpe
This person’s name was Akhmet, the son of Ghusman. He is descend-
ed from Barïn, on of Tölenköt’s four sons through Ergizbay. In my Kazakh
genealogy where it says Tölenköt, I will go into a little detail on that.
Ghusman had three sons and one daughter. The oldest was Rakhmatol-
la, who was popularly known as Dolda. Next was Akhmet (Aqtamaq-
khalpe), born in 1880, and the youngest was Khayrolla. But Khayrolla
was born from the junior wife Mekey. The other two sons, as well as
the daughter named Zhamal, were born from the senior wife. According
to what we heard, Ghusman was a clever young man. Erkesarï who was

20
Shura was a reformist-oriented Tatar journal published in Orenburg by
Riza ad-Din b. Fakhr ad-Din, who would later serves as mufti from the 1920’s
until 1936.