Today @pen_int highlights detained Prof. Rahile Dawut--one of the world's foremost scholars on Uyghur religious cultures. This thread begins to show just how important her work is (and why the CCP feels so threatened by this scholarship)
Prof Dawut's scholarship reaches many corners of Uyghur pious expression, but she is perhaps best known for her trailblazing work on sacred shrines, which are called mazar in Uyghur
Prof Dawut established deep trust among religious communities in the Tarim Basin, recorded their histories, practices, and published them for Uyghur and international audiences
Focusing on indigenous oral histories and vernacular cultures, Dawut's work simply amplified voices that were overlooked or muted by state-building narratives. Let's look at Toyuq Mazar in Pichan County:
Dawut devotes 9 pgs to it in her book, where she connects it to other Christian-Islamic legends about the "Seven Sleepers", retells an extraordinary legend of the Yemenis men and a spectacular cat, describes the historical importance and sheer size of the mazar complex...
...and demonstrates that it was even an important site for Hajj pilgrims coming from Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai
Today, Toyuq is being desacralized as it transforms into a tourist spot. Tickets simply say China Turpan in Uyghur/Chinese and Toyuq in Chinese; the back notes the village's Buddhist roots & describes the ancient village as a "living fossil" which "retains" ancient Uyghur culture
Even the site's trilingual historical maker only makes vague references to the actual mazar--though little information about the mazar and its importance is provided.
Instead, the village has been decorated by carriage wheels, which attempt to bind the area and people to Chinese dynasties.
One has to dig deep into Toyuq's Baidu 百科 page to find these brief remarks about the site's connections to Islamic histories
Indeed, mazars, their histories, & practices related to them have been fundamental to many Uyghur faith-communities as pious expressions, ethnic markers, & adhesive agents for local and transregional bonds, but "official histories" and current policies are erasing these legacies
Therefore, we must make sure that the knowledge produced by Prof Dawut, other Uyghur scholars, and academics throughout the world can never be silenced.
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