Belief and Fear in Ungurtas

January 9, 2017 3:53 PM

Many believe Bifatima Dualetova to be one of the last Sufi dervishes in Kazakhstan. I first met her in September 2010 while traveling in Central Asia. The locals that I was staying with in Almaty told me about a shaman woman living on the outskirts of the small village Ungurtas, close to Kyrgyzstan's border. "The last house in the village, at the foot of the 'Sacred Hill,'" they said. ...... I ended up staying with her for more than two months, from January to March 2011, documenting her rituals and practices, herding sheep, and working on my van.

Photographer Denis Vejas documents the practices of one of the country's last Sufi dervishes. Russian language post (Google Translate). Note: some images of animal sacrifice.
posted by Rumple (6 comments total)

Seems like a decent way to get free sheep, at least.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 6:10 PM on January 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wild, I have done the Almaty - Bishkek drive numerous times, never would have imagined this kind of stuff existing right there under my nose. Thank you rumple.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:29 PM on January 9, 2017 [2 favorites]

Those photos were intense.

I've seen animal sacrifice before, and I've attended sufi ceremonies ... but this was something altogether different. I poked around the web to see if I could find any more information in English, and found this art exhibition, a video of the shaman in action (blood free), and a Russian article with photos (lots of blood).

It's fascinating, but I still can't tell what I'm seeing - whether this is part of an older tradition, or if this is a woman who is just doing whatever the voices tell her to do.
posted by kanewai at 7:43 PM on January 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

From my (very limited) experience with traditional practices and Islam in Kyrgyzstan, my guess would be that the more eclectic it seems, the more likely it is pre-Islamic in origin. I saw a lot of fortune telling and other odd traditional stuff that the practitioners claimed was "Islamic" that was most definitely not. Islam came pretty late the these nomads and, at least prior to the new inroads by Wahabbists, sat pretty lightly.
posted by Meatbomb at 11:54 PM on January 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

Fantastic post; this is the kind of thing that got me hooked on MetaFilter back in 2001 or so. And yeah, we think of Sufism as Islamic, but it can make more sense to think of it as the part of that huge sea of traditional mysticism that happens to adjoin and interact with the Islamic world; it uses a lot of Islamic imagery and language, but it varies widely and includes a whole bunch of pre- or non-Islamic material. It's one of those sinkholes I've tried to avoid getting too deeply stuck in, but I've somehow accumulated a fair number of books on it.
posted by languagehat at 8:31 AM on January 10, 2017 [4 favorites]

After living in Kazakhstan for some time, this type of thing isn't wildly surprising. I hesitate to exotify rural Eastern cultures like this, though. Also, I think it's worth mentioning that all religions are like semi-parasitic doctrines usually brought by foreign invaders/colonists, and as someone mentioned above, sort of integrated with pre-Islamic rituals. Worth noting, too, is that there is no set, monolithic Islam- instead Islam has been interpreted and formed by local cultures- there is simply no one Islamic identity. So basically this might have some Islamic attributes, but that's also complicated by a history of colonialism from Soviets, other steppe/nomadic peoples, and Arab influence alike. I think it's important to document this (/really, anything, generally), but that arranging the photos and text to make it seem more "mystical" than it actually...well, is... I find troublesome. These people and scenes (tea drinking, cutting off goat heads, goat birth, etc) is really pretty standard fare for that part of the world and it's not glamorous, simply, normal. The other stuff (like bathing in blood) is wacky but I also would second-guess the so-called ancient ties propositioned here.
posted by erattacorrige at 2:56 PM on January 11, 2017 [2 favorites]