Issues of Attribution of Legislative Acts of the Shrine of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi from the A.L. Kun Collection

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Abstract

This article examines legislative acts (yarliq, farman, nishan, inayat-nama, buyruq) from the 16^th to 19^th centuries, which serve as crucial historical sources for illuminating the history of the Shrine of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi and his descendants in Turkestan. The primary objective of the research is to conduct a source-critical analysis of 61 legislative documents preserved in the personal archive of A.L. Kun within the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg, as well as to determine their precise attribution.

The study employs internal textual criteria for document identification: the names, ranks, and titles of rulers, textual language and style, historical terminology, and explicit dates. The findings reveal that the earliest decree in the collection was issued by the Bukhara ruler Abu Sa’id (1530–1531), Khan of the Abulkhairid dynasty, while the latest dates back to the Khokand ruler Sultan Sa’id Khan (1863). Dynastic analysis indicates that 8 documents belong to the Abulkhairids, 5 to the Janids (Ashtarkhanids), 9 to Kazakh sultans, 6 to the rulers of Bukhara Emirate, 1 to the Tashkent Bekdom, 28 to the Khanate of Khokand, and 2 to Russian Imperial administrators, with 2 remaining unassigned. Furthermore, complex attribution issues were successfully resolved, such as identifying the 1576 decree of Abulkhair Sultan and the 1685–1686 document of Yesim Khan b. Semeke Khan.

The study concludes that these legislative acts were not merely administrative orders, but the product of a mutually beneficial dialogue between political authorities and sacred lineages. Rulers granted tax exemptions, land rights, and social privileges to the descendants of Khoja Ahmad Yasawi in exchange for political and spiritual support. These results contribute significantly to a deeper understanding of the history, socio-economic and demographic conditions, historical geography, and administrative system of the city of Turkestan based on new primary sources.