Character of Central Asians

All Central Asian cultures have been described as high context and formal, especially with
outsiders. Describing a group as high context means that they tend to deal in absolute truths and
spell things out clearly while emphasizing smooth interpersonal relations and, in some cases
using subtle and indirect ways of communicating.

Central Asia has a long tradition of paternalism and Central Asian are known for their patience.
A sense of fatalism in Central Asia is not as strong as among other Muslim groups. Uzbeks and
Kazakhs are regarded as the most individualist of the Central Asians.

Central Asians with strong Turkic roots tend to come on more strongly than those of descent,
Asians, who tend ro be little more mellow and self effacing. In Journey to Khiva Philip
Glazebrook described a famous Uzbek writer he met as a “robust, bullnecked man” with
“friendliness radiating from and a bone-crushing handclasp and a greeting like a loudspeaker
announcement.”

Society in Central Asia

Traditionally there have two kinds of people in Central Asia: 1) the settled people, which
included farmers, merchants, craftsmen and city dwellers; and 2) nomadic herdsman. The type of
society individuals lived in was defined by these two ways of life.

The basic social units were the village. In the case of the nomads their village was an aul, which
tended be small and was comprised of a winter time village or camp and camps at the summer
pastures and intermediary spring and autumn camps. In the case of the settled people, the village
was called a kishlak. It was larger and remained in one place. The structures of the aul and
kishlak have both traditionally been based on kinship ties.

Uzbeks tended to be settled. Their society has traditionally revolved around clans, villages (
kishlak) neighborhoods ( mahallya), and men’s houses or tea houses ( chaykhana), all of which
are clearly defined physically and socially.

Clans have traditionally been very important among Uzbeks and remain so although they are
less important than among Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. Each clan had its own territory, leader and
system of authority. Descent lines traveled along patrilineal lines from a common ancestor but
could be amended, say because of a military or economic alliance. In these cases, the clan
leaders often recognized each other as brothers.

Most Central Asian societies are hierarchally oriented and organized. People have traditionally
shown total respect for local khans, emirs or chiefs, who in turn have traditionally not shared
power or limited it by law. All major Soviet organizations—the Octobrists, the Young Pioneers,
women’s organizations and labor unions—existed in Central Asia.

Marriage and Weddings in Central Asia

Traditionally marriages often took place or were arranged when the couple was very young,
sometimes when they were children. Contracts between the families of the bride and groom were
made by a third party. At the time of the marriage a bride price, which could be quite high and
often consisted of livestock and carpets, was paid with the understanding that the bride was now
a member of the groom’s family. Many of these traditions endure today.

Polygamy has traditionally been allowed in accordance with Islamic rule but was uncommon
because bride prices were so high and under the Soviet system there were few men who were
wealthy enough to support several wives. Marriages between cousins occur but is not as common
a thing as it is some Arab and other Muslim cultures.

Weddings have traditionally featured feasting, the actual wedding ceremony and sometimes
competitions such as horse races. The Soviets discouraged kalym, religious weddings, and
extravagant feasts but they were held anyway. Couples often went through with both a civil
ceremony and a religious one, which is still true today.

Families in Central Asia

Society has traditionally been organized along patrilineal lines, with status and kin relationships
distinguished by gender and by birth order age among siblings. Kinship terminology is very
complex. They are different terms for older and younger brothers and sisters and for patrilineal
and matrilineal uncles and aunts.

Sons traditionally inherited the bulk of property and possession with each receiving roughly
equal shares and each getting part when they are married and part after the death of the father.

Under the Soviet, women went from wearing veils and rarely leaving the home to being doctors
and tractor drivers. In some places there is some segregation between women and men — such in
mosques or in homes during parties — but it is generally not as pervasive and as strict as in some
other places in the mother world.
 Culture of Central Asia

Central Asia and Russia contain a total of six countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Each of these countries has its own culture, but
they're very much related. Central Asia was, after all, once a part of the Soviet Union. The
Central Asian countries also share their religion, Islam. Central Asia is where middle-Eastern
Islamic culture meets Russian Soviet culture.

The countries of Central Asia were once the center of multiple nomadic empires and tribes,
including the Scythians, Mongols, and Turks. This had a big influence on the traditions and
cultures of many Central Asian countries to this day. This is especially true in Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan, which contain huge green plains and pastures that are populated by nomadic groups
even now. Many people in Kazakhstan live in traditional, movable houses called yurts, which are
covered in Turkish felt. Across many of the Central Asian countries, horseback riding
competitions and sports are popular, which reflect the tradition of nomadic herding. A strong
respect for elders is also common across Russia and Central Asia.

The influence of the Soviet Union and Russia is a major factor in Central Asian culture. Russian
is spoken in all the countries of Central Asia. People also put a lot of emphasis and value on
family and the homeland. These values are a direct result of the 70 years that the Communist
Party ruled Russia. Under Soviet rule, people became dependent on the sharing of resources
among family members, and this meant that a strong extended family was valuable. While,
strictly speaking, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan didn't take Russia's side during the Cold War,
there is still a lot of Russian influence in these countries.

Religion

Religion is a big deal in most places, but this is especially true in Russia and Central Asia. The
culture of the area cannot be separated from religious beliefs and practices, especially in Central
Asia. The most significant religion in Central Asia, by far, is Islam. Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and
Turkmenistan are all 90% Muslim, and Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan aren't far behind. Russia, on
the other hand, is 47% Christian, and mostly Russian Orthodox, which is the single largest
group. Considering how Russia has influenced Central Asia, it's no surprise that Russian
Orthodox is second to Islam in every (Central Asian) country. The closer you get to Russia, the
more Russian Orthodox people you find. In Kazakhstan for example, a full 24% are Orthodox
Christians and only 70% are Muslim.

But, what does this mean for everyday life? How does Islam really influence Central Asian
culture? That depends a little on the political situation in each country. Uzbekistan, for example,
is a mostly totalitarian regime, and it isn't easy to be of any religion other than Islam. Islamic law
and regular law are combined together, and the daily cycle of prayer five times a day is simply a
part of life. Islam also affects what you eat: alcohol isn't allowed, meat must be prepared a
certain way to conform to Islamic law, and pork isn't eaten at all. This is in contrast to Russian
culture, where pork is eaten, and vodka is popular - and no, this isn't just a stereotype! Generally,
the further south you go, Arab and Islamic culture is dominant compared to Russian. For
example, some people in Tajikistan even speak Iranian. But wherever you are, there is a respect
for elders, family, and the collective good. Russia's influence goes far.

Turkmenistan

The Turkoman nomadic group came from the Altai Mountains. Their ancestors were the Oghuz
and their traditions have been preserved in the "Book of Oghuz, Oguz Nama. Around the tenth
century they were settled in the region east and south of the Aral Sea, when they came to be
known as Turkoman. In the fifteenth century there were two confederations: Qara-Qoyunlu,
"they of the black sheep", and Aq-Qoyunlu, "they of the white sheep". A number of the leaders
entered Iran as shepherds and conquered it to remain as rulers; however, a large number of them
remained in the area and evolved their own way of life with their swift horses, which were their
pride and their lifeline; and their sheep, camels, and other cattle with which they migrated
according to a seasonal cycle of available pastureland and water. However, their movement was
not very far and it was confined to approximately within the radius of 31 miles (50 km). The
round, felt-covered dwellings called Oy, yurts, were an essential part of the Turkoman way of
life, and even the agricultural groups moved to the summer camps and lived in the yurts.

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan is a mountainous country surrounded by deserts. The Tien Shan ("Heavenly

Mountains") range separates it from the Ferghana Valley, part of which occupies the
southwestern area of the country. The Kyrgyz's rich cultural traditions are seen in the
mountainous areas of the northern part of the country, where they settled as they moved from the
Altai Mountains in southern Siberia. The Chinese chronicles describe them as fair skinned, green
eyed, and red haired. The Mongols arrived in the tenth century and the intermingling created a
very sturdy, handsome people, whom even the Soviets could never change.

The Kyrgyz have traditionally been a nomadic people, living in yurts. Even in the early 2000s
many Kyrgyz have a yurt in their compound, and the death ceremony even in the capital city,
Bishkek, is performed in a yurt. Their 100-year-old epic Manas tells the story of the warrior king
and the migrations, of his people. It is the world's longest epic and the Manaschi, who recite the
story, keep the oral tradition alive.

The traditional dress worn by the men is often leather trousers, terishym, which are also used by
women when they are migrating or helping with the animals. These are worn along with high
leather boots for everyday, chaitik, or embroidered massey. Over that they wear a shirt and often
a leather jacket with fur lining known as ton. For special occasions the older men wear a long
coat, chepken, which may be held together by a sash or a leather belt with silver
buckles, kur. Very fine suede long coats with extra-long sleeves were made with elaborate hook
embroidery. The typical headgear is a conical embroidered felt cap with embroidery and a tassel
at the top, ak-kalpak. For special occasions the urban men wore flat, gold embroidered caps with
fur lining and fur edging the headdress.

The women wore a long shirt, which was often made out of striped red and black cotton known
as kalami or it could be of abr, the ikat of cotton and silk. For everyday use they would wear a
sleeveless jacket and a padded long coat along with leather shoes. They wore a bonnet with
embroidered ear caps over which a turban would be worn or a decorated cap. Long, embroidered
plait covers were worn to cover the nape of the neck, which was considered to be vulnerable to
black magic. The women favored greatly the brightly colored ikat striped cotton of Kodzhent,
which was given a glossy polished surface with the use of egg white. This was used as a sash, as
well as a scarf. Elaborate dresses, koinok, were made from silken patterned cloth known
as kimkap, probably derived from the name for woven gold brocade of India, the kimkhab. For
special occasions they wore a wraparound skirt, beldemehi. It was either made of velvet or silk
with leather and fur lining, and rich embroidery. This could be worn easily on horseback and
would cover them well, giving warmth as they rode their horses.

Traditional costume of the republics of Central Asia

Emir of Bukhara, 1905. Library of Congress
Kazakh couple, 1870-86. Library of Congress
Kyrgyz women and men, 1865-1872. World Digital Library

Trousers worn with the tunic are usually of a loose type, very large at the top and tightened on a
string and narrowing down at the knees , mid-calf, or at the ankles. The upper part of the trousers
is usually made of a plain-woven undecorated fabric and the bottoms of a different, more
expensive and decorated material because only the bottom portions are seen. Very practical.

The third basic article of the Central Asian costume, the coat, comes in different types. It can be
made of different fabric, have sleeves of varying lengths, and be worn left open or tied with a
belt. There are two major kinds of coats, the chapan and the khalat. The chapan is a loose coat of
padded and quilted cotton. The khalat is a lightweight robe made of cotton, silk or a mixture of
the two. There are regional variations in the cut of this garment but, essentially, khalats have
wide sleeves and are bordered with patterned-silk edging tape stitched onto the coat material.
Woman's coat with a richly decorated lining. Bukhara, Uzbekistan, late 19th century. The Israel
Museum, Jerusalem
Turkmen man's khalat, mid.20th century. Gallery of Textiles & Costume

In the 19th century coats played an important part in defining a person's rank. The ruler and
highest court officials would dress in silk velvet coats, with gold embroidery and a large belt.
Men of the next rank were permitted to wear coats made of imported cashmere or silk velvet
with brocade embroidery. Peasants and nomads wore coats of rough cotton or coarse wool. Men
and women from wealthy families wore multiple coats as a display of wealth. Such coats were
specifically designed to show the embroidery on the front edges and cuffs of the multiple
garments.
Turkmen family, early 20th century. Photo source
Tajik girls, photo courtesy Marusia
Uzbek woman wearing a khalat in traditional pattern

An importand part of the Central Asian costume is the headdress. It serves as an item of
identification. The Turkmen men, for example, wear large shaggy sheepskin hats, the Kazakh
fur, and the Kirghiz conic moulded-felt hats. They can be embroidered, quilted, beaded, with or
without tassels and neck extensions. Another type of head covering worn by men, as well as
women from some nomadic groups, is the turban. For the Kazakh, Kirghiz, Karakalpak and some
Uzbek and Turkmen ethnic groups, the turban remained an obligatory part of a nomadic
woman’s headgear until the 20th century. The type of turban identifies the ethnic group, class,
religion and area of origin of the wearer. Silk turbans were and are only worn by the aristocracy.
The skull cap is a head-covering item that is quite popular in Central Asia as well. It can be worn
on its own, beneath bigger hats or serve as a base for wrapping turbans and arranging rumols.
They are usually richly embroidered and can be conic, four-sided, round, and cupola-shaped.

Girls at the National Dress Festival, Uzbekistan, representing Bukhara and Samarkand.
Photo source
Girls at the National Dress Festival, Uzbekistan. Photo source
Headgear specifically worn by women differs among women of different ethnic groups, between
women of different ages and of different social status. The most common is a fine silk shawl
called rumol. It can be tied on a woman’s head in a variety of ways.

Woman in paranja, Samarkand, 1905. World Digital Library

Veils were once a part of traditional woman's costume too but are not worn in the most regions
of Central Asia nowadays. They are divided into two groups: those that cover the face and those
that cover both the head and the body, so called paranjas. The paranja-type head-covering
seems to be a fairly recent innovation. According to the sources paranjas do not appear at all in
medieval miniature paintings, and are not mentioned in written sources until the 18th century.
 Central Asian arts and music

Central Asian arts, the literary, performing, and visual arts of a large portion of Asia embracing
the Turkic republics (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan), Tajikistan,
Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and
China. As used here, the term denotes only those traditions that were not influenced by the
religion of Islām.

This immense tract of land—with its highly varied topography and climate and its diversity of
ethnic and linguistic backgrounds—encouraged the development of greatly varied artistic styles
and traditions among the inhabitants of widely separated regions. These differences were
magnified by the emergence of dissimilar religions, which in turn encouraged the formation of
distinctive schools or traditions of art. Further artistic variances can be attributed to cultural time
lag, for comparable stages of artistic development were not reached simultaneously throughout
the area.

The arts that developed across Central Asia often fed or were fed by those of adjoining cultural
regions or by such supraregional influences as Islam. Although reference will be made to such
cross-cultural interactions wherever appropriate, more detailed information on these other areas
may be found in the articles East Asian arts; Islamic arts; and South Asian arts. (The peoples and
cultures of the region are treated in the articles Asia and Central Asia, and in articles on specific
Asian peoples, such as Pashtun.)

Literature

Of the relatively few Central Asian languages that have developed written literatures, the most
important are Turkic, Tibetan, and Mongol. (For a treatment of these languages, see Altaic
languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.) This article will deal with Tibetan and Mongolian
literatures from their inception to the 20th century and with Turkic literature from its inception to
the 11th centuries, when the Muslim invasion introduced a period of Islāmic culture. Subsequent
Turkic literature and Central Asian literatures written in Arabic and Persian are treated in the
article arts, Islāmic. (For literature in Chinese, see the article Chinese literature.)

Turkish literature

The purely Turkish period in the history of Turkish literatures came before the conversion of the
Turks to Islām and covers approximately the 8th to the 11th centuries AD. The oldest literary
legacy of the period is found in the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon valley, northern
Mongolia, in 1889 and deciphered in 1893 by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen. The
inscriptions are on two large monuments erected in 732 and 735 in honour of the Turkish prince
Kül and his brother Bilge Kagan; they are carved in a script used also for inscriptions found in
Mongolia, Siberia, and western Turkistan and called by Thomsen “Turkish runes.” They relate in
epic and forceful language the origins of the Turks, their golden age, their subjugation by the
Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge Kagan. The polished style suggests considerable earlier
development of the language. Excavations in Chinese Turkistan have brought to light specimens
of writings of the Uighur Turks from the 9th to the 11th century. Maḥmūd Kāshgarī’s
comprehensive dictionary (1071?) contains specimens of old Turkish poetry in the typical form
of quatrains (dörtlük), representing all the principal genres: epic, pastoral, didactic, lyric, and
elegiac.

Tibetan literature

Tibetan was developed as a literary language from the 7th century onward as a result of earlier
cultural contacts with neighbouring Buddhist countries—namely, the small states of the Takla
Makan, especially Khotan (Ho-t’ien) and the kingdoms of ancient northwestern India (modern
Gilgit, Kashmir, and Kullu) and Nepal. Scripts of Indian origin were in use in these countries, so
the Tibetans also adapted an Indian script to suit their own very different language. By far the
greater number of works produced between the 7th and 13th centuries are skillful translations of
Buddhist works, largely from Sanskrit, on which Indian scholars and Tibetan translators worked
side by side. The Tibetans had to create an entirely new (and therefore artificial) vocabulary of
religious and philosophical terms, mainly by ingenious compounding of simple terms available
in their own language. Apart from some religious terms in daily use, this vocabulary remains a
specialized scholarly language. An indigenous literature was also produced: annals and
chronicles, sets of spells and prognostications, legendary and liturgical works, all representing
the remains of ancient oral traditions. Large collections of such manuscript fragments, all earlier
than the 11th century, were discovered early in the 20th century in the Cave of the Thousand
Buddhas near Tun-huang (at the eastern side of the Takla Makan).

The quasi-official work of translating authorized Indian Buddhist texts, which continued for six
centuries, gave incentive to the Bon-pos (the followers of the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet) to
collect and write down their own early traditions; but in so doing they adopted many Buddhist
ideas and, inevitably, used the new vocabulary. The followers of the earliest Buddhist traditions
to enter Tibet (the Rnying-ma-pa, or “Old Order”) also committed their teachings to writing; and,
conversely, these are interspersed with pre-Buddhist traditions.

The official Tibetan Buddhist canon was closed in the 13th century; it consisted of two parts, the
Kanjur (“Translated Word,” teachings or reputed teachings of the Buddhas themselves) and the
Tanjur (“Translated Treatises,” mainly commentaries by Indian teachers). By this time, however,
there already existed some orthodox Buddhist works of Tibetan origin (for example, Mi-la ras-pa
and Sgam-po-pa); and from the 13th century onward, under the impetus given by the prolixity of
religious houses and orders, there were produced such lengthy and numerous collections of
historical and biographical works, treatises and commentaries, and liturgy and religious drama
that Tibetan literature must be one of the most extensive in the world. Just as in the European
Middle Ages there was little secular literature worth the name, so there is none in Tibetan except
for a great epic (Rgyal-po Ge-sar dgra’dul gyi rtogs-pa brjod-pa, “The Great Deeds of King
Gesar, Destroyer of Enemies”) that recounts the exploits of the king and magic hero Gesar. This
work grew through the centuries, assimilating whatever material pleased the fancy of the bards.

After the craft of printing from incised wood blocks was introduced from China, possibly in the
14th century, certain monasteries became famous printing houses. This form of printing
continued until the Chinese invasion in 1959. Manuscripts and block-printed books are always of
elongated shape, thus imitating the form of ancient Indian palm-leaf manuscripts. There are
considerable collections in some European libraries—London, Paris, and Rome—but few
translations are available, because of the small number of scholars of Tibet.

Despite the phonetic changes in the spoken dialects since the script was fixed, the Tibetans have
never changed their system of writing. Thus, once the literary language and the various types of
script have been mastered, the reader has immediate access to all literature of the 7th to the 20th
centuries, though changes in style and vocabulary have left many obscurities in the earliest
works. Since there is no modern style of writing, the 20th-century colloquial language can be
written only in the traditional medium (as though, for example, one had to write modern Italian
with Latin spellings and grammatical forms); the Tibetans themselves compose even personal
letters in a conventional literary style.

Mongolian literature

Mongolian literature begins with the Secret History of the Mongols, an Imperial chronicle
dealing with the life and times of Genghis Khan and his successors, written about 1240. Üligers,
orally transmitted epic stories in verse, form the bulk of native literary expression. Highly
stylized, these tales relate adventures of legendary heroes and villains. In spite of their great
length (sometimes more than 20,000 lines), they are recited from memory by bards. Like other
epics, such as the Greek Iliad and the Roman Aeneid, Mongolian epics are genuine artistic
creations. The verses alliterate in couplets or quatrains, are seven or eight syllables long, and are
characterized by parallelism. In addition to Genghis Khan, the epic stories tell of heroes such as
Erintsen Mergen, Engke Bolod Khan, and Gesar Khan (the last of Tibetan origin). The villain of
the epics is the many-headed monster, the manggus, whom the hero always defeats in the end.

Historical chronicles represent another important form of indigenous literature. Usually

beginning with the creation of the world from primordial elements, they attempt to link the
Indian and Tibetan rulers with the house of Genghis Khan. Such are the Altan tobchi (“The
Golden Button”), composed about 1655 and giving a world history down to Ligdan Khan (1604–
34); another Altan tobchi (written about 100 years later); and the Erdeni-yin tobchi (“The
Jeweled Button”), written in 1662 by Saghang Sechen.

Mongolian written literature was profoundly influenced by the introduction of Buddhism about
the end of the 1500s. Earlier surviving written works (on stone or paper) are mostly official
documents; and no oral epics were written down until the late 1880s. The advent of Buddhism
prompted translations of its sacred writings and related works. A Buddhist canonical collection,
the Bka’-’gyur (or Kanjur; comprising the Sūtra and Vinaya of the Tripiṭaka), was translated and
printed in 1635 in 108 volumes; the Bstan-’gyur (Tanjur), containing canonical commentary and
noncanonical works in its 225 volumes, followed in 1741. Two especially well-known sermons
(sutras) of Buddha are the Altan gerel (“Golden Beam”) and the Chagan lingqua (“White
Lotus”), or, as they are known in Sanskrit, Suvarṇaprabhāsa and Saddharmapuṇḍarīka. None of
these works, however, is indigenous.

Religious but nondogmatic birth stories (called in Sanskrit Jātaka) deal with Buddha’s
meritorious deeds and, like the parables of Christianity, illustrate religious truths. Best known is
the Üliger-Ün dalai (“The Sea of Stories”). Translations of other Indian fables are the Siddhi Kür
(“Tales of the Vampire”) and the Bigarmijid (“Saga of King Vikramāditya”).

In the 18th and 19th centuries Chinese traders brought from China many Mongolian translations
of Chinese novels of enchantment and romance, including the San Kuo chih yen-i (Romance of
the Three Kingdoms) and others.

In the early 20th century T. Zhamtsarano, a Russian-educated Buryat writer and intellectual,
founded the short-lived Mongolian newspaper Shine toli (“The New Mirror”). He also translated
the works of some Western authors, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells.

After a Soviet state was established in Mongolia in the early 1920s, the power and influence of
the Tibetan Buddhist church declined, and with it the literature it sponsored. There began to arise
a revolutionary and socialist literature serving the people according to the current beliefs of the
Communist Party. Popular themes were social criticism of the feudal past, with its exploitation of
the people, and exemplary tales that showed new socialist values and educated readers to
overcome the resistance of reactionary forces. Mongolian reliance on and gratitude for the
fraternal Soviet Union and its assistance was an ever-present undercurrent. The rise of a system
of schooling extending to the university level enabled many young Mongolian writers, poets,
artists, and actors to achieve, within limits, a self-expression never before available to them.
Leading 20th-century modern writers are Dashdorjiyn Natsagorj, Ts. Damdinsürün, D. Sengee,
S. Erdene, and others.

Music

Music in Central Asia flowered along centuries-old caravan routes linking the Middle
East with China and India via what is often referred to as Turkistan, the vast region extending
from the Caspian Sea to the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. Musical instruments diffused
from one region to another, and many of the musical styles still display foreign influence. The
variety of musical styles ranges from the systematically organized classical music of Turkistan to
the notated religious chants of Tibetan Buddhism to the highly varied folk musicstyles of the
region’s numerous ethnic groups. The main thrust of this examination of Central Asian music
will be on the traditions and styles first of Afghanistan and the sedentary population of Turkistan,
then of the Turkic nomads, the Mongols, and the Siberian peoples, and finally of
the Himalayan peoples in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China as well as in Bhutan, Nepal,
and the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim.

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Afghanistan and the sedentary population of Turkistan

This region of Central Asia includes Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the oases of
eastern (Chinese) Turkistan. The region lies within the Persian cultural area, and in the arts and
in language, the Persian imprint has endured over many centuries. In music the links with Persia
appear most clearly in terminology and instruments. Islampredominates in this region, and
because Muslim religious authorities there have largely denounced music as contrary to the
teachings of Islam, musicians and musical performance have generally occupied a low social
position—a situation that is rare in other regions of Central Asia.

The area includes two main streams of musical practice: folk music in a broad range of styles,
often closely linked to specific ethnic groups; and the more exclusive cosmopolitan classical
music, derived from the medieval court music of Bukhara, Samarkand, and other urban centres
of Transoxania (a region spanning present-day Uzbekistan and parts of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,
and Kazakhstan). A third stream is popular music, which is disseminated through the mass
media.

Folk music

Generally characterized by a scarcity of musicians and musical instruments, folk music of this
region is predominantly a matter of solo playing and singing, small ensembles, in absence
of musical notation or codified musical theory. In their general types, the musical instruments are
closely related to those of Persia and the Middle East, but specific forms and playing styles are
purely local. Thus, there are numerous variants of the Persian long-necked lute, with names
derived from the Persian ṭanbūr or dūtār; small spike fiddles, in which the neck skewers the
body, forming a spike at the base; various block or fipple flutes, with air ducts like that of the
Western recorder; transverse (horizontally held) flutes; reed instruments; metal jew’s harps; and
two basic drum types, a single-headed goblet-shaped drum of pottery or wood and a large single-
headed frame drum, or tambourine—all instrumental types widely diffused in the Middle East.
Stylistically, the music relates to that of both the Middle East and the surrounding nomadic
Turkic peoples of Central Asia. Songs are monophonic (i.e., consisting of just a single line
of melody), but instrumental music often includes two-part polyphony (music with multiple parts
sounding simultaneously). The polyphony may take the form of a drone (sustained note) with a
melody played above it, or it may be organum style—i.e., the second part playing the same
melody as the first but at a higher or lower pitch. The most common interval between the two
parts is a fourth or a fifth (respectively, the distance between the first four or five notes of
a major scale). In structure, much of the music is based on small forms, frequently binary (two-
section) or ternary (three-section). Small musical units may be repeated many times and varied
slightly at each appearance. The recurrence of melodic phrases and an emphasis on
marked rhythms is common and is related to the frequent role of music as dance accompaniment.
Thus, in the following example, a dance tune from Afghan Turkistan, sections A and B are
similar in their overall melodic structure and also in the small units of three or four notes on
which they are built. The sequence ABAB and so on is repeated throughout the

dance.

Vocal music may have greater rhythmic flexibility and melodic range, but in form it is almost
always subordinated to the structure of the song text. Quatrains such as
the robāʿī and chārbaytī are the most prominent village verse forms, with the exception of
the landai (or landay), a couplet used by the nomadic Pashtuns of Afghanistan. In the urban
oases, couplet forms based on the classical Persian ghazal, a type of lyric poem, are more
common.

The generally negative attitude toward music among Muslim leaders in Afghanistan has led to
strictures against musical performance and to extremely low social status for musicians in that
country. Music is heard mainly in male-dominated public teahouses or at private celebrations
such as weddings and circumcisions. Women may have their own musical genres within their
enclosures; in this context the strong tradition of women’s music in the Fergana
Valley of Uzbekistan is noteworthy. Since the late 20th century, however, festivities that include
both men and women have become increasingly popular in Central Asia.
Within this general picture there is enormous diversity. The Uzbeks (a Turkic people) and
the Tajiks (an Iranian group), who live side by side across northern Afghanistan and southern
Turkistan, tend to share many musical traits and instruments. In contrast, most groups, such as
the Pashtuns, the Ḥazāras, and the Balochs of Afghanistan and Pakistan or, in the extreme, the
isolated mountain peoples of Nūrestān in Afghanistan and of the Pamirs in Tajikistan and
Afghanistan, have maintained distinctive musical styles and, in some cases, unique musical
instruments. The Nūristāni vaj, an arched harp (having a bow-shaped body with no forepillar), is
a striking case of the possible survival of an instrument type on the margins of a now
disintegrated culture area. There are no other harp traditions today between the Caucasus and
Myanmar, although iconographic evidence indicates that in ancient times harps were widespread
in Central Asia, the Middle East, and India. The music of the Ḥazāras includes vocal effects
produced by striking the throat while singing, causing a break in the sound, and Balochi music
also features a broken-voice style.

Classical music

In contrast to the folk music styles just described, the court-derived classical style
of Bukhara and Samarkand represents a highly systematic, theoretically grounded, cosmopolitan
musical tradition. Lying along the medieval Silk Road trade route, the Turkistani oases were
open to musical crosscurrents. Today’s musical roots may reach back to the period in which
urban Central Asian music was in vogue at Tang dynasty(618–907 CE) courts in China. The
movement of musical instruments across the caravan trail from the Middle East to China via
Central Asia has been well documented since early times. Over the centuries, town musicians
evolved an urban style patronized by the local courts, notably under Timur (Tamerlane) and his
descendants (c. 1350–1500) in Herāt (now in Afghanistan) and Samarkand. The degree of
musical eclecticism characteristic of the era is illustrated by a court historian’s description of the
festivities of Timur’s son:

Golden-tongued singers and sweet-sounding musicians played and sang to motives [melodic
figures] in Persian style, to Arab melodies according to Turkish practice and with Mongol
voices, following Chinese laws of singing and Altai metres.

By the 17th century the court style had been codified into sets of nonimprovised suites of
instrumental and vocal pieces using poetic texts in classical Persian and local court Turkish
(Chagatai). In Bukhara this collection of suites was known as the shash maqām, or six maqāms
(suites), with each maqām (an Arabic term, but changed in meaning) set in one of the classical
Persian musical modes. (The Persian modes are melodic frameworks, each with a given scale,
typical melodic figures, and accepted emotional content.) Regional courts and large towns
developed their own sets of maqāms, which are performed in unison by an orchestra and a male
chorus.
Areas of Turkistan under Soviet rule between about 1920 and 1991 underwent far-reaching
modification of traditional music practice, although the older styles and repertoires such as
the shash maqāmwere also maintained. Changes include the reconstruction of local instruments
to fit the Western musical scale of 12 equally spaced half steps, the establishment of music
schools and conservatories, the creation of orchestras of folk instruments, the introduction of
vocal polyphony, and the writing of works in Western forms (symphonies, operas, chamber
music) by native and European Soviet composers. In Afghanistan musical change began on a
national basis in the 1950s under the influence of Radio Afghanistan, which broadcast
principally popular styles based on Pashtun folk music and songs of the Bollywood(Indian film)
industry. After the Taliban government captured Kabul in 1996, however, the station was
renamed Voice of the Shari’at, and the broadcast of music was forbidden.

Turkic nomads, Mongols, and Siberian peoples

The region inhabited by Turkic nomads, Mongols, and Siberian peoples includes primarily the
great open spaces of Central Asia, from the deserts of Turkmenistan in the southwest through
the steppes of Kazakhstan to the plains of Mongolia in the east, and from the Gobi in the south-
central region to the vast subarctic Siberian taiga (boreal forests) and tundra (Arctic plains),
stretching to the Pacific Ocean. The considerable mobility and often close linguistic affinity of
the peoples in the area led to substantial interchange of musical terms and instruments and to
common social functions of music relating to the traditional tribal social structure of most of the
groups of this region.

Social role of music

Three basic functions of music are common throughout most of the region: music as ritual, with
magical connotations (shamanism); music as tribal record, aiding group solidarity
(epic recitation); and music as entertainment (itinerant performers, festivals). Music is the
medium of the shaman, or priest-healer, who serves as a mediator between the seen, or human
beings, and the unseen, the spirits that inhabit the spheres above and below the earth. Traditional
shamanistic rituals were creative, impassioned musico-dramatic scenes produced by a single
male or female performer—the shaman. Not only is music the shaman’s aid in inducing the
trance that enables contact with the spirits, but in Siberia the shaman’s drum (a very
large tambourine) may be considered a steed for the trip to other worlds. Thus, great attention is
given to each stage of drum construction, from the selection of the wood of certain trees to
the painting of symbolically charged designs on the drumhead. The metal hangings, sometimes
including bells, on the shaman’s costume also play a musical role. Among the Kyrgyz and
the Kazakhsand until recently among the Turkmen, a fiddle with horsehair strings and bow
perform the same function as the Siberian drum. Metal ringlets are attached to the head of the
fiddle, and a niche is hollowed there for a mirror to catch the reflections of spirits. Shamans’
horsehair fiddles can even be found among townspeople of northern Afghanistan. The
occurrence of shamanism has sharply declined in the portions of Central Asia that were part of
the U.S.S.R.

Epic recitation, which may serve as tribal history, also has magical overtones. Among Turkic
peoples, the same term (bakhshi) may be used for both shamans and bards, and both may be
called to their trade by spirits to undergo a difficult period of initiation. Storytellers use a fiddle
or lute as accompaniment, and tales may run through several nights of exhaustive performance;
one Kyrgyz bard was known to have recited some 300,000 verses of the Manas, the major
Kyrgyz epic. Such marathon performances are facilitated by the use of formulaic or otherwise
recurrent melodic motives—standard short melodic figures—often invented by the individual
performer. Local epic traditions vary widely in dramatization—i.e., the proportion of dialogue,
monologue, and narrative.

The third areawide musical function, entertainment, takes many forms. One common diversion is
the singing contest, in which rival minstrelscompete in wit and virtuosity. Such trials of skill are
most notable among the Kyrgyz, the Kazakhs, and the Mongols. The contests follow strict rules
of versification, musicality, and procedure. Often the loser must pay a forfeit to the victor, who
receives acclaim from the audience and gifts from wealthy patrons; a singer’s reputation may be
made or broken in a single afternoon. Frequently a contestant will vilify the clan championed by
the opposing singer and laud his own faction. In Siberia another type of entertainment is the
historically widespread practice of bear festivals at specific times of the year, during which a
bear—considered a sacred animal in Finno-Ugric religion—is killed and its head displayed, to
the accompaniment of music, dance, and games.

Instrumental and vocal styles

Across the region the principal instrument types are plucked lutes, with two or three strings, the
necks either fretted or fretless; bowed lutes, largely horsehair fiddles; flutes, mostly open at both
ends and either end-blown or side-blown; and jew’s harps, either metal or, often in Siberia,
wooden. Few percussion instruments are found, except for the shaman’s magic drum.
Considerable instrumental polyphony is played on lutes and fiddles, particularly among the
Turkic peoples. Vocal polyphony may occur in special ways. In a style known as throat-singing,
Mongol and Tyvan (a Siberian people northwest of Mongolia) vocalists produce two parts while
singing solo by strongly reinforcing upper partials (overtones) while singing a very deep
fundamental pitch. West of the Ural Mountains, Bashkirs may hum a basic pitch while playing
solo flute pieces, and certain Siberian peoples may sing choral overlapping responsorial songs (in
which group and soloist alternate, one beginning slightly before the other finishes).
The vast geographic stretch of the region produces musical links to neighbouring areas as well as
highly distinctive local styles. The Turkmen, who live in Afghanistan and Iran as well as in
Turkistan, manifest some Persian influence in musical terms and instruments, yet they possess
unique vocal and instrumental styles. Particularly striking is their series of guttural sounds
serving as vocal ornaments. The Kyrgyz and Kazakhs, closely related musically, maintain ties to
Mongol and northern styles (e.g., of the Bashkir and Tatar peoples, west of the Urals) as well as
to those of Turkistan. Nevertheless, their relaxed voice quality, musical scales, and distinctive
instrumental polyphony set them apart. Noteworthy here is the versatile polyphonic style of the
three-stringed Kyrgyz komuz lute, based on extensive development of short melodies
called kernel tunes. In the komuz piece shown below, the kernel tune is stated in the first two
measures and is varied and developed elaborately as the piece progresses. Another Kyrgyz-
Kazakh specialty is program music, in which instrumentalists suggest situations or tell specific
stories without words, through musical images alone.
The Mongols display links to both Chinese and Tibetan music. Chinese influence is apparent in
the use of certain instruments (e.g., some flutes and fiddles) and perhaps in the structure of
melodies; Tibetan impact appears in the religious music and musical instruments of Tibetan
Buddhism, introduced in the 16th century. Mongolian music also has its own distinctive profile,
sporadically documented since the 13th-century Secret History of the Mongols, the first written
Mongolian chronicle. Of interest is the fact that Arghūn, Mongol ruler of Persia, sent a musician
as emissary to Philip IV the Fair of France in 1289. Because of the focal position of Mongolia at
the heart of Central Asia, some Mongol epic melodies have spread westward as far as
the Kalmyks on the Volga Riverand eastward to the Ainu of Sakhalin Island, north of Japan.
Mongol songs may be either quick and marked rhythmically or drawn-out in free rhythm, with
extensive melodic ornamentation. The Mongol horsehair fiddle (often called a “horsehead
fiddle” because of the carving of a horse’s head that commonly crowns the instrument)
accompanies a singer with simultaneous variations on the melody, a technique known
as heterophony.

A Mongolian throat-singer accompanying himself on a traditional horsehead fiddle, with strings

and bow made of horsehair.© Testing/Shutterstock.com
Siberian music includes a broad spectrum of styles over a huge geographic expanse. Many
unique traditions occur, such as the bridgeless, often rectangular zithers of the Khanty and the
Mansi, Uralic peoples living along the Ob River; farther east, the solo flute-and-voice polyphony
of the Tyvans and the Bashkirs; and the rapid, compact songs with nonsense syllables of
the Nivkh, the Chukchi, and other peoples of the far eastern Amur River region and the Pacific
coast. At that northeastern shore of Siberia there is a carryover of musical style to the Ainu of
northeastern Japan, and possible musical ties are found between the Eskimos of Asia and
of North America. Other links beyond Central Asia may exist at the far western end of Siberia,
for example, to the music of Lapland in the Scandinavian Arctic; or in the relation of tunes of
certain peoples of the Volga River region, such as the Mari, with old Hungarian folk songs.

Outside the few written Mongol references to music, the only approach to discovery of the
stylistic history of this region of Central Asia is through fragmentary information about musical
instrument types. Perhaps the most remarkable instrument finds were made at Pazyryk in south-
central Siberia, where Soviet archaeologists found wooden objects that possibly form pieces of
a harp and an artifact resembling a vase-shaped drum, both dating from the 5th century BCE.

The Himalayan peoples

The Himalayan region—including the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, the countries
of Bhutan and Nepal, and the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim—occupies an important middle
ground between India and China, and its central position is reflected in the local music cultures.
Of utmost importance for musical life was the introduction of Buddhismfrom India
via Turkistan, beginning in the 7th century CE. Music became an integral part of the official
creed of Tibetan Buddhism, and the considerable cultural influence of Tibet spread
Tibetan religious music to the nearby areas of Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan and, much later,
to Mongolia.

Tibetan music

Tibetan religious music is the only Central Asian repertoire that has a long history of
written notation. This notation, for liturgical chant, consists of neumes—i.e., symbols
representing melodic contour rather than precise pitch, similar to the earliest music writing of
medieval Europe. Also distinctive is the metaphysical aspect of Tibetan Buddhist music, related
to Indian philosophy. Each instrument of the monastery orchestra, as well as the drawn-out tones
of chant, is believed to represent an externalized form of the mantras, or sounds inherent in
the human body, accessible otherwise only through steadfast meditation. For the monks such
music is a basic aid to devotion and prayer. Musical styles vary somewhat among the sects of
Tibetan Buddhism, but the basic approach and instruments are the same.
Tibetan Buddhist monk reading with handbell in Lamayuru monastery, Ladakh, India.© Robert
Frerck from TSW—CLICK/Chicago

The monastery instruments typify the crossroads position of Tibet. Some, such as the
large cymbals, stem from China, while others (the majority), such as the conch-shell trumpet and
handbells, can be traced to Indian influence and are found as instruments of Buddhist worship as
far away as Japan. Still other instruments, such as the large double-reed instrument and the long
(generally from 5.5 to 10 feet [1.7 to 3 metres]) metal trumpet, are perhaps Middle Eastern in
origin. One wind instrument, the short trumpet made from a human leg bone, seems to be of
purely local invention. Similarly, the structure of the music seems basically Tibetan. It is
founded on a principle of greatly prolonged dense, deep sounds, such as unison long and short
trumpets with the double-reed or the seemingly endless bass chant of groups of monks, whose
long drawn-out notes are punctuated by sharp extended bursts of percussion. Each monk is said
to be able to sing two or even three notes simultaneously.
Tibetan ritual objectsDril-bu bell and rdo-rje double sceptre, two principal implements used in
Tibetan Buddhist rituals, 19th century; in the Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey,
U.S.Collection of The Newark Museum, purchase 1920, Shelton Collection

Much of this music emerges from monasteries only at festival time, when the
great ’cham (dance) dramas, which may last several days, are performed for the public’s
entertainment and edification. These plays, which generally show the triumph of Buddhism
over Bon, the earlier shamanistic religion of Tibet, may involve hundreds of musicians in the
guise of masked dancers with drums, backed by a large temple orchestra. Other types of public
music also abound, such as secular, perhaps Chinese-related historical plays with an alternation
of dialogue and songs with orchestral accompaniment. There is also a strong tradition of folk
dance, which may include songs sung by mixed antiphonal choirs (i.e., two alternating groups of
singers). Minstrels ply their trade along the caravan routes and play instruments perhaps more
related to general Central Asian traditions than to the Indian and Chinese background of religious
music.
Tibetan 'cham dramaTibetan Buddhist monk performing in a 'cham drama during Monlam, or
the Great Prayer Festival, Gomar Gompa (Monastery), Qinghai province, China.Frederic J.
Brown—AFP/Getty Images

The music of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim

Little is presently known about the music of Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim. Minstrels play a major
role in the musical life of Nepal, where, under the influence of Indian practice, musicians are
classified according to casteand each group is distinguished by specific instruments and
repertoire. There appears to be a great deal of both Indian-related and indigenous folk music in
the three Himalayan kingdoms. Varieties of lute, such as the long-necked damyan of Nepal and
its Sikkimese relative, may be linked to a similar instrument of the Pamir Mountains, whereas a
Sikkimese flute having an outside air duct (in contrast to the inside duct of a Western recorder)
seems to be a unique instrument. The Sherpas of Nepal and other Tibetan-related populations of
the Himalayas, along with the thousands of Tibetan refugees now living in the area, maintain the
traditions of Tibetan Buddhist religious music. The mani-rimdudance drama of the Sherpas, a
variant of ’cham, is a good case in point.

The study of Central Asian music

In the West the study of Central Asian music was until the late 20th century restricted mostly to
travelers’ accounts and analyses of small samples of music. By far the bulk of collection and
study of Central Asian music of Turkistan and Siberia lay in the domain of Soviet scholars, who
instituted systematic fieldwork as early as the 1920s; much of this literature has remained largely
inaccessible to the non-Russian reader. Mongol music was the subject of sporadic but intensive
fieldwork by Scandinavian researchers in the 1920s and early 1930s, so some of the traditional
music culture was documented before Mongol society underwent the changes brought by war
and the advent of socialism. Tibetan music has attracted increasing attention since the late 1950s,
when large numbers of Tibetan refugees poured into the Himalayan kingdoms and northern
sectors of India, thus making Tibetan music more accessible to outside observation. Afghanistan
has been an object of intensive musical investigation only since the mid-1960s. Thus, outside the
Soviet-era contributions, Central Asia has remained a comparatively lightly studied although
quite fertile area of musical investigation.