A Kokand poet who was one of the first Uzbek playwrights and a founder of modern Uzbek song forms. Celebrated in Soviet times, his legacy is being reassessed by historians since independence.
Hamza Hakimzoda Niyoziy was born in Kokand on 6 March 1889 (22 February Old Style) to a healer's family. He studied at a maktab and a madrasa and began writing verse early under the influence of Muqimiy and Furqat. Drawn to Jadid ideas, he opened a free school for poor children, taught there and wrote textbooks. In 1915–1917 he compiled the song collections “National Poems for National Songs”, titled “White Flower”, “Red Flower” and so on — new songs set to folk tunes. His drama “Poisoned Life, or the Victims of Love”, published in 1916, is among the earliest Uzbek plays.
Revolution and death
After 1917 Hamza sided with the Bolsheviks, set up touring theatre troupes, wrote plays such as “The Rich Man and the Servant” and “Maysara's Tricks”, and campaigned for literacy and women's emancipation. He was named People's Poet of Uzbekistan in 1926. On 18 March 1929 he was killed in Shohimardon, in the Fergana Valley, by a group of locals during a religious and political conflict over the local shrine. The Soviet state hailed him as the founder of Uzbek Soviet literature; since independence historians have been reassessing his role, especially in anti-religious campaigns.
His memory today
The house in Kokand where he was born has been a museum since 1959, the city has a second Hamza museum, and a memorial complex stands in Shohimardon. Many places were named after him in Soviet times, and several were renamed after independence: Tashkent's academic drama theatre (2001), the town of Hamza, now Tinchlik (2012), Tashkent's Hamza district, now Yashnobod (2014), and the Hamza metro station, now Novza (2015). His songs are still performed.
On the night of 29 May 1898 some 1,500 armed men led by the Naqshbandi sheikh Muhammad Ali Madali, known as Dukchi Ishan, attacked the Russian army camp at Andijan. The rising fed on resentment of colonial rule, taxation and land policy, as well as on religious appeals. The troops quickly recovered and beat off the attack, and within days the revolt was crushed. Dukchi Ishan and other leaders were executed, many participants exiled and their villages punished. The episode pushed the authorities to tighten control over Muslim institutions in Turkestan.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a reform movement took shape in Turkestan: the Jadids, advocates of usul-i jadid, the “new method”. Inspired by the Crimean Tatar educator Ismail Gasprinsky, Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy, Munavvar Qori, Abdulla Avloniy, Is'hoqxon Ibrat, Abdurauf Fitrat and others opened schools teaching literacy by the phonetic method and wrote textbooks. From 1906 Uzbek-language newspapers such as Taraqqiy and Khurshid appeared in Tashkent, and Behbudiy's play “The Patricide” (Padarkush), staged in 1914, launched a national theatre. The Jadids sought to renew society through education, the press and reform. Many were repressed in the 1920s–1930s; their legacy is being rediscovered today.
On 25 June (8 July) 1916, at the height of the First World War, Nicholas II decreed the conscription of Turkestani men aged 19 to 43 for labour behind the front. Issued at harvest time and enforced through unfair lists, the decree provoked mass unrest. In July there were protests in Khujand, Tashkent and towns of the Fergana Valley; in Jizzakh the rising turned into armed fighting and was crushed with great brutality by punitive detachments, which left the old town badly damaged. The revolt also spread across Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Tens of thousands of labourers were eventually sent to the front zone regardless.
After the October Revolution of 1917, power in Tashkent passed to a Bolshevik-led soviet that excluded the local Muslim majority. In response, the Fourth Extraordinary Congress of Turkestan Muslims, meeting in Kokand on 27 November 1917, proclaimed a Turkestan Autonomy within a Russian federation. Its government was led by Mukhamedzhan Tynyshpaev and then Mustafa Chokay, with Jadids among its members. In February 1918 Red Guard units sent from Tashkent stormed Kokand; much of the city was destroyed and thousands of civilians were killed. Short-lived as it was, the autonomy is seen as a milestone in the region's pursuit of national statehood.
After the Turkestan Autonomy was crushed, an armed movement against Soviet rule spread through the Fergana Valley from 1918. Soviet sources called it the Basmachi movement; Uzbek historians today more often describe it as a struggle for independence. It was led by local commanders, or kurbashi, such as Ergash, Madamin Bek and Shermuhammad Bek (Kurshermat). After 1920 the fighting shifted to Eastern Bukhara and the mountains of Kashkadarya and Surkhandarya, where Ibrahim Bek was a leading figure; the Ottoman general Enver Pasha joined in 1921–1922 and was killed in 1922. Large Red Army forces had largely suppressed the movement by the mid-1920s, though isolated bands held out into the early 1930s.
In February 1920 the Red Army and Young Khivan forces ended the Khanate of Khiva: the last khan, Said Abdullah, abdicated, and in April the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic was proclaimed. On 2 September 1920 the Red Army under Mikhail Frunze, together with the Young Bukharans, took Bukhara after a bombardment that set the Ark and parts of the city ablaze; Emir Alim Khan fled to Eastern Bukhara and in 1921 to Afghanistan. In October the Bukharan People's Soviet Republic was created, headed by Fayzulla Khodjaev, with Fitrat among its ministers. Both republics were dissolved in the national delimitation of 1924.
