ABUBEKIR AHMEDJAN DIVAY 1855-1933. Ethnographer, antiquarian,
professor, translator.
H. B. Paksoy, D. Phil.
Divay, a Bashkurt (in Russian sources, Bashkir), was born on
19 December 1855 in Orenburg and lived most of his life among the
Kazakhs. He attended the Orenburg Nepliuev military academy,
first studying in the Asiatic Division, where the majority of his
classmates were reportedly Kazakhs and second in the division for
the preparation of translators of Oriental languages for the
steppe regions.
In 1876-1877, at the age of 21, Divay left school to accept
an appointment in the Russian bureaucracy of the Turkistan
territory (krai). There in the southern steppe region Divay
travelled and was able to visit many Kazakh, Kirghiz and Uzbek
villages (aul). He held the post of Divisional Inspector of the
Evliya-Ata (in Russian sources Aulie-Atinsk) district (uezd) and
then became translator and junior official of Special Missions
attached to the Governor-General of the Syr-Darya region
(oblast). This latter post gave him wide opportunities to travel
throughout the Turkistan territory.
In 1883, Divay began collecting ethnographic materials. The
following year, the Governor-General of the Syr-Darya region, N.
I. Grodekov, initiated the collection of information on Kazakh
and Kirghiz customary law in order to publish a code of juridical
customs of the nomadic peoples of the region. While working on
this project, Divay reportedly collected "historical legends from
ancient manuscripts, in the hands of educated Kirghiz, [and]
heroic poems, aphorisms, fables, riddles, incantations, etc." A
portion of these materials was published in Grodekov's book and
the remainder, including fables, legends, songs, poems and
dastans (Central Asian ornate oral histories), were published in
Collection of Materials for Statistics of the Syr-Darya Region
(Sbornik materialov dlia statistiki Syr-Darinskoi oblasti) for
1891-1897, 1901, 1902, 1904, 1905, and 1907. These articles by
Divay were reviewed by various prominent Orientalists of the
time.
Divay was active in the field prior to the invention of
recording devices. Collectors of oral works of that time,
recorded recitations on paper, frequently had to interrupt the
narrators to keep-up. Reciters grew impatient and truncated
their narrations. Aware of these pitfalls and given the many
thousands of pages of material he discovered, Divay probably more
than welcomed transcribed dastans which he sometimes received.
This is not unusual, and other primarily oral works, including
Beowulf, were printed from manuscript sources.
According to the Kazakh Academy of Science's Kazak National
Poetry (Kazakhskaia narodnaia poeziia, cited in the
bibliography). Divay often sought out those among the Kazakh
population who owned manuscripts of traditional oral works.
Often the bahshis (reciters) themselves had manuscripts of
dastans. These manuscripts he collected or, when unable to
acquire them, had them copied:
Divaev made a request of the responsible persons of the
Turkestan territory to copy manuscripts for him. In
this way in June 1896 he received a manuscript of the
epic Alpamysh. The manuscript itself is reported to be
in the Manuscript Fond of the Library of the Academy of
Sciences of the Kazak SSR, 'Materialy A. A. Divaeva,
folder 1162.'
In this way, Divay acquired in 1896: "a manuscript of the
Karakalpak of the Turtkul area (volost-tsarist administrative
term) of the Amu-Darya department of the Syr-Darya region
Dzhiemurat [Ziyamurat] Bekmukhamedov [sic], a professional
bahshi." Divay prepared the manuscript for publication in
November 1897 and it appeared in 1901 in the Collection of
Materials for Statistics of the Syr-Darya Region.
Divay began this 1901 version of Alpamysh with a very brief
foreword in Russian. Here Divay notes that "This manuscript was
sent for our use by the former head of the Amu-Darya department
(otdel) of the Syr-Darya province, Major General K. I.
Razganov..." He further states "Although the poem Alpamysh Batir
is a purely Kirghiz work, because of the fact that it was here
set down by a Karakalpak, a near neighbor of Bukhara, the text of
it is sprinkled with Persian and Arabic terms. In the
translation, we have tried, as far as possible, to remain close
to the text [weeding out borrowed words from other languages]."
Divay published his articles in other periodicals in the
1890s including the journal Borderlands (Okraina), the almanac
Central Asia (Sredniaia Aziia) and the semi-official Turkistan
Bulletin (Turkestanskaia Vedomost). Also at this time he began
to publish in scholarly journals of the major Oriental and
ethnographic societies of the tsarist Empire: Notes of the
Eastern Department of the Russian Archeological Society (Zapiski
Vostochnogo otdela Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestva); News
of the Archeology, History and Ethnography Society (Izvestiia
Obshchestva arkheologii, istorii, i etnografii); News of the
Turkistan Department of the Russian Geography Soiety (Izvestiia
Turkestanskogo otdela Russkogo geograficheskogo obshchestva), and
Notes of the Russian Geography Society (Zapiski Russkogo
geograficheskogo obshchestva). In 1896, Divay was one of the
founding members of the "Turkistan Circle of Lovers of
Archeology" ("Turkestanskii kruzhok liubitelei arkheologii"). In
1906, Divay became Director of the Tatar [sic] school in Tashkent
and participated in the compilation of materials on Central Asia
in the Turkistan Collection of Articles and Communications
Concerning to Central Asia 1878-1887. (Turkestanskii sbornik
statei i sochinenii otnosiashchikhsia k Srednei Azii, 1878-1887).
Divay remained aware of the larger issues in Central Asia,
even if he could not voice his opinions openly in the political
climate of tsarist empire. Zeki Velidi Togan (1890-1970), a
fellow Bashkurt, wrote about his visit to Divay's Tashkent home
in 1913. Zeki Velidi had read Ismail Gasprali's (1854-1914)
Russian Moslems (Rusya Muslumanlari), which he had found in
Divay's personal library. In a conversation with Divay (Togan
refers to him variously as "Miralay" [colonel] and "Divay Agha"),
Togan criticized Gasprali's "timidity." Divay responded:
During those times our thoughts were somewhat
different. In addition, if this [cloaked] language had
not been used, that book would not have cleared the
censors. Political repression in Russia in those days
was much more stringent. In those hours of our need,
works such as this gave us some relief.
Divay's twenty fifth anniversary as a Turcologist and
ethnographer was celebrated in 1915. In connection with this
occasion, the journal Living Past (Zhivaia Starina) published
reviews of his work and much biographical material. This was not
the end of his efforts, which continued under the Bolshevik
regime.
Much has been written and said about Divay by his
contemporaries. A few items are revealing. In an issue of
Living Past, V. A. Gordlevskii, noted one of Divay's
"praiseworthy tendencies," "to extract articles from Turkestan
Bulletin and republish them, thus saving them from oblivion."
Available information on Divay's career indicates that he
continued his efforts to record and preserve elements of Central
Asian Turkish culture after the revolution as before. In 1918,
Divay offered courses in Kazakh ethnography and language at the
Central Asian University and at the Turkistan Oriental Institute,
where he held the chair of Kirghiz ethnography and language. He
was first an "independent instructor" and later a professor. He
organized a major expedition to Yedi Su (Seven Rivers; in Russian
sources, Semirechie) in spring 1922 as a member of the Kirghiz
Scholarly Commission of Peoples Commissariat of Enlightnment
(Narkompros --Narodny comisariat prosvesheniia) of the Turkistan
Republic (Turkrespublika). During the following year, Divay is
reported to have gathered, described and systematized
approximately eight thousand pages of notes from this expedition.
As before, Divay's findings were published in the various
scholarly and popular journals in Russian and derivatives of
Chaghatay Turkish during 1922. He also participated at this time
in the special commission for the elimination of the "bride
price" (kalym) and for the "reform of the study of native
languages." A second jubilee for Divay was celebrated in 1923.
Divay's Soviet biographers are silent on the ensuing years of his
life and note only that he died ten years later.
Select Bibliography: A. A. Divay, Alpamysh Batir (Tashkent,
1901); M. Ghabdullin and T. Sydykov, Heroic Poetry of the
Kazakhs (Kazak halkynyn batyrlyk jyry) (Alma-Ata, 1972); A.
Grodekov, Kirghiz and Karakirghiz [sic] of the Syr-Darya Region
(Kirgizy i karakirgizy Syr-Darinskoi oblasti) Vol. I. (Tashkent,
1889); Kazakh National Poetry: Excerpts of the Collected
Writings of A. A. Divay (Kazakhskaia narodnaia poeziia: Iz
obraztsov, sobrannykh i zapisannykh A. A. Divaevym) (Alma-Ata,
1964); Zeki Velidi Togan, Turkistan Today, and its Recent
History (Bugunki Turkili Turkistan ve Yakin Tarihi), 2nd. Edition
(Istanbul, 1981); idem, Memoirs (Hatiralar) (Istanbul, 1969);
The foregoing discussion of Divay, including the sources, is
adapted from H. B. Paksoy, ALPAMYSH: Central Asian Identity Under
Russian Rule (Hartford, Connecticut: Association for the
Advancement of Central Asian Research Monograph Series, 1989);
idem, "Turcologist Abubekir Ahmedjan Divay" ("Turkbilimci
Ebubekir Ahmedcan Divay") Turk Kulturu (Ankara) Sayi 309, Yil
XVIII. [Ocak 1989].
