{"id":1031,"date":"2018-10-03T12:08:50","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T12:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1031"},"modified":"2018-10-03T12:08:50","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T12:08:50","slug":"how-is-abdukerim-rahman-surviving-without-his-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1031","title":{"rendered":"How is Abdukerim Rahman surviving without his books?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Abdukerim Rahman (L) and Arslan Abdulla (R) in undated photos. (From RFA; Public Domain)<\/h6>\n

F<\/span>or decades there was an inside joke that was told by generations of Uyghur students in the School of Humanities at Xinjiang University. The joke went: \u201cHow can you be a doctoral advisor without having a Ph.D. degree?\u201d In response they would say, \u201cWork as hard as Abdukerim Rahman!\u201d\u00a0 Mr. Rahman is a legendary figure among students and faculty not only for his knowledge but also his humble and caring attitude toward his students. Students know that if a Uyghur language book had been published, it could be found in his home library. Everyone knows that even those books that are not available in the university library can be found there. Mr. Rahman is known for his passionate scholarship, for his love of book. But most importantly students recognize him as the father of Uyghur folklore studies. His humor, inspiration, and positive feedback always encourages their young souls. All folklorists, anthropologists or Uyghur literature researchers who are interested in Uyghur culture view him as an essential resource. His scholarship has become the critical texts in disciplines such as anthropology, ethnology, literature and folklore study.<\/p>\n

Abdukerim Rahman was born in December 1941 in Kashgar. He studied literature at Xinjiang University from 1959 to 1964. In the years that followed he worked as a lecturer and worked for the school for more than 47 years until he retired in 2011. Throughout his life he never ceased to be fascinated by the power of fieldwork. He always passionately encouraged students to do as much field work as possible. Reminiscing about his first fieldwork in 1961 in Ghulja, he described how he fell in love with the Uyghur oral tradition after hearing beautiful folk rhymes on historical themes that showed the vivid history and beauty of Uyghur language. For example, the\u00a0Koch-Koch qoshiqi<\/a>\u00a0(Migration Ballads) he heard at that time, described a large scale forced migration in 1881 from Ghulja to the\u00a0Zhetysu (also called Yettesu)\u00a0Region<\/a>\u00a0of Almaty. The epic tale of suffering and survival starts like this:<\/p>\n

Biz Elidin Kochkenda,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0When we moved from Eli,<\/em>
\nAltinji Ay Roza Idi.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 It was June and Ramadan.<\/em>
\nDehshetlik Ehir Kunde,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In those harrowing days,<\/em>
\nAta-anam Bolsidi.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I wished my parents were with me.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uyghurs have a rich oral tradition like many other Turkic peoples in Central Asia.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rahman often fondly described a year-long period of fieldwork in 1963 and how he and his mentor carried a very heavy mechanized megaphone record player from \u00dcr\u00fcmchi to Lopnur, and then on to Khotan and then Kashgar to collect Uyghur oral literature. \u201cIt was so heavy we had to travel with donkeys or camels to remote villages to interview and record some of those folk artists\u201d he told his students. However, many of his collections were lost during the infamous Cultural Revolution, and scholars like him suffered a great deal during periods of imprisonment. After those dark years ended and he was rehabilitated, beginning in 1979 he spearheaded efforts to collect and research oral traditions. Every year he took literature students from Xinjiang University to do fieldwork in various towns across Xinjiang and subsequently helped them publish the written versions of their notes. In 1983, he started the first graduate program at the university in Xinjiang Minority Literature.\u00a0Rahile Dawut<\/a>\u00a0was one of his first graduate students. He not only sent his students to do fieldwork in Xinjiang, but also to Gansu to visit\u00a0Yugurs<\/a>or \u201cYellow\u201d Buddhist Uyghurs and to Yunnan to visit other ethnic minorities. In 1996, he became the first advisor for doctoral students in the School of Humanities; he mentored more than 30 master students and 13 doctoral students from different ethnic backgrounds. In 2000 he also became a founder of the Folklore Museum at Xinjiang University. Each year, students and faculty members donated their ethnographic and archeological collections to this museum. He donated dozens of volumes of his fieldnotes to this museum and encouraged other people to contribute to this institutional archive.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The inside cover of Abdukerim Rahman\u2019s 1989 book Uyghur Folklore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Over the course of his career his book\u00a0Uyghur Folk Literature<\/em>\u00a0was reprinted more than ten times. He\u00a0published more than 20 books<\/a>\u00a0such as\u00a0Theories of Literature,<\/em>Uyghur Folklore<\/em>,\u00a0History of Uyghur Culture<\/em>,\u00a0Uyghur Folk Tales<\/em>,\u00a0Uyghur Ballads<\/em>. He also published more than 150 articles and oral tradition collections in numerous widely-read journals. After toiling for many years, he published a monumental 12-volume work,\u00a0Encyclopedia of Uyghur Folk Literature,<\/em>\u00a0which contains thousands of legends, folk tales, epic poems, ballads and proverbs. It was a collection of his lifework, a monument he was very proud to give to the world of Uyghur knowledge.<\/p>\n

In March 2018, Xinjiang watchers were shocked to hear the news that Mr. Rahman was taken to the so-called \u201cre-education\u201d camps along with a million other Uyghurs. Although we had previously learned that many prominent figures like\u00a0Rahile Dawut<\/a>,\u00a0Halmurat Ghupur<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Arslan Abdulla<\/a>\u00a0had been taken, it was still a major shock to hear that Mr. Rhaman, a 77 year-old scholar had also disappeared. After all, he had been a Chinese Communistic Party member for 40 years and had been working under the guidance and censorship of the Party since the beginning of his career. Uyghurs around the world were heartbroken by a chilling\u00a0phone conversation<\/a>\u00a0between a Radio Free Asia reporter and a staff member at Xinjiang University\u2019s General Supervision Office. Although the bureaucrat avoided answering the reporter\u2019s questions, she confirmed that \u201cthe news about this and other scholars\u2019 detentions cannot be shared with the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uyghurs have a deep respect and care for elders. Figures like Mr. Rahman are regarded as spiritual guides for the community. Many Uyghurs were cut to the core by the knowledge of his incarceration. Prior to Mr. Rahman\u2019s detention, they were deeply troubled by the news of an another elderly religious scholar\u00a0Muhammad Salih<\/a>\u2019s death in one of the camps. Yet compared to Mr. Salih, it was hard to see the logic behind Rahman\u2019s criminalization since his teaching and research had little to do with religion. With the exception of those ten dark years between 1966 and 1976 he had been accepted and celebrated by the Chinese party-state for over 50 years. How could a man could be celebrated until the age of 77 and then suddenly charged as a \u201ctwo-faced<\/a>\u201d person out of nowhere? Where is his second \u201cface\u201d? The only explanation Uyghurs can conclude is that because he is Uyghur and has a profound knowledge of Uyghur culture, he has become a suspect. He is a victim of the Chinese party-state\u2019s decision to eliminate aspects of Uyghur culture that is no longer \u201cpermitted.\u201d Taking pride in Uyghur traditions is now a \u201ccrime\u201d that deserves punishment.<\/p>\n

\n

How can China justify its treatment of its own Uyghur scholars? These scholar-Party members were an important bridge between the party-state and the local community. What will be the effect of breaking these bridges?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While China is justifying its \u201ctransformation through education\u201d camp system as necessary strategy to achieve \u201clong-term stability,\u201d how can it justify its treatment of its own scholars? These scholar-Party members were an important bridge between the party-state and the local community. What will be the effect of breaking these bridges? Many Xinjiang observers believe that China is carrying out such mass detentions without consequences because of their newly gained economic, technological, and military power. Perhaps the country\u2019s emerging super-power status gives the Party the sense that they do not need bridges like Mr. Rahman anymore and such bridges have become disposable.<\/p>\n

For people who know Mr. Rahman and his habit of reading and writing every day, even when he was in hospital, it is heartbreaking to imagine his present circumstances as a prisoner.\u00a0How is he surviving without his beloved books?<\/em><\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0https:\/\/livingotherwise.com\/2018\/10\/02\/abdukerim-rahman-surviving-without-books\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abdukerim Rahman (L) and Arslan Abdulla (R) in undated photos. (From RFA; Public Domain) For decades there was an inside joke that was told by generations of Uyghur students in the School of Humanities at Xinjiang University. The joke went: \u201cHow can you be a doctoral advisor without having a Ph.D. degree?\u201d In response they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uyghur-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1033,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions\/1033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}