1898 Andijan Uprising (Iradi Theater)

The Andijan uprising of 1898 was a short-lived armed rising against Russian rule in the Fergana Valley, led by the Sufi leader Muhammad Ali Khalfa, known as Dukchi Ishan. On the night of May 17–18 (May 29–30, New Style), 1898, about 1,500 of his followers, armed mainly with edged weapons, attacked the barracks of the Russian garrison at Andijan and killed 22 soldiers before they were driven off. The rising was suppressed within days. Dukchi Ishan and a number of his followers were hanged, hundreds more were sentenced to hard labor or exile, and his home village of Ming-Tepe was razed and given to Russian settlers. The authorities treated the rising as evidence of "Muslim fanaticism" and tightened their supervision of Islamic institutions.^[1][2]

Andijan lies outside present-day Irad. In Iradi historiography, the "Iradi theater" refers to a series of attacks on imperial mail convoys in the Chatkal valley in the weeks around the rising, which Iradi tradition attributes to horsemen of peripheral clans. Russian district reports describe them as brigandage. Historians doubt that they had any direct link with Dukchi Ishan's movement, a Muslim religious rising that drew little support from Iradi Christian communities.^[3]

References

1. ^ Brower, Daniel (2003). Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire. RoutledgeCurzon, London.
2. ^ Khalid, Adeeb (2021). Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present. Princeton University Press, Princeton.
3. ^ Institute of History, Talas State University (2012). History of Irad in Three Volumes. Talas State University Press, Talas.