How is the Lost Enlightenment we are seeking to be found? Will tourism reviving in Uzbekistan bring Enlightenment too?

TASHKENT

For many years, Uzbekistan was one of those countries right beside the world, yet in a way far removed from it. We had always known the names Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. Imam Al-Bukhari, Imam Al-Maturidi, Bahauddin Naqshband, Al-Biruni, Al-Khwarizmi, and Ulugh Beg were already part of our civilization's memory. However, reaching the geography where these figures lived, wandering through their cities, and observing the traces of the great civilization they produced on site were not equally part of our lives. Under Socialist Soviet rule for long years, Uzbekistan was both isolated from the Islamic world and had its rich presence suppressed and left to dry up. Even after the dissolution of the Soviets and the independence of the Turkic states, the opening up did not happen immediately at the same time.

In recent years, this situation has been changing rapidly. Uzbekistan is opening its doors to the world; Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva are facing an ever-increasing influx of visitors. Those who go share their impressions. A while ago on these pages, we read the highly valuable impressions of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva, particularly from our friend Taha Kılıç. Caught up in this wave, we too came to Uzbekistan.

First of all, it must be said that looking at what is happening here through the window of "the development of tourism" leads to missing perhaps the most important side of the matter. Because the things being unearthed here again are not merely elements of Uzbekistan's national history; on the contrary, the scholars, philosophers, mystics, and scientists raised by Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khwarazm are the shared cultural capital of the entire Islamic world.

The moment you confine Al-Bukhari to the borders of present-day Uzbekistan, Imam Al-Maturidi to Samarkand, or Al-Biruni to Khwarazm, you actually simply diminish them. Because the scholarly network created by these people was part of a vast civilization geography stretching from Baghdad to Damascus, from Cairo to Andalusia, and from Anatolia to India.

This is why the meaning of the memory revival taking place in Uzbekistan today extends far beyond Uzbekistan itself. In fact, it carries special importance in terms of prompting the Muslim world to rethink certain things it has learned about itself over the last two centuries.

Colonialism was not merely the occupation of lands. It was also the seizure of how history would be narrated. The modern Eurocentric historical narrative largely depicted humanity's intellectual development within a trajectory stretching from Ancient Greece to the European Renaissance, and from there to the Reformation and the Enlightenment. In this narrative, Islamic civilization was often portrayed either as a secondary intermediate stop or as a "bridge" conveying Ancient Greek knowledge to Europe.

Yet when you come to Samarkand, Bukhara, or Khwarazm, you can see with the naked eye how incomplete this narrative is.

The comparative method developed by Al-Biruni in the 11th century to understand the religions, languages, and thought of India; Al-Khwarizmi's contributions to mathematics; Ibn Sina's medicine and philosophy; Al-Farabi's political and social thought; the system established by Al-Maturidi regarding the relationship between reason and revelation; the astronomical circle Ulugh Beg formed in Samarkand…

All of these point to another enlightenment experience where human reason, observation, calculation, debate, and systematic thought reached an extraordinary intensity centuries before the European Enlightenment. The phrase Lost Enlightenment, popularized by S. Frederick Starr in his recently published book, is neither a fanciful characterization nor an exaggerated expression. Indeed, as you travel around here, it is impossible not to feel that you are walking on ground illuminated by all these stellar names mentioned. So, what happened to this ground, and what is happening to it now?

First of all, an important aspect of this enlightenment experience is that it did not view reason and revelation, or science and religion, as enemies that could exist only by destroying each other.

Therefore, bringing this heritage back to light is not merely a nostalgic romanticization of the past. It is one of the strongest answers to the colonial epistemology that the Muslim world has been subjected to for nearly two centuries, which claims: "You did not think, you did not produce, you did not develop science; modernity came to you from the outside."

The answer is given not through slogans, but through works. Samarkand is there. Bukhara is there. The observatory is there. The books are there. And the people who wrote those books lived there. Perhaps this is the greatest significance of Uzbekistan's opening up to the world from the perspective of the Islamic world: Muslims encountering once again the forgotten or obscured elements of their own civilization.

Of course, this magnificent past must not be confined within today's national borders and identities. Uzbekistan's embrace of al-Bukhari, al-Maturidi, Naqshband, Ulugh Beg, or the scholarly heritage of Samarkand is understandable and valuable. However, this heritage is simultaneously the shared history of Central Asia, the Islamic world, and various languages. Presenting them as unilinear pioneers of contemporary national identity could obscure the very encounters that make Samarkand significant. Uzbekistan's stronger claim lies not in saying, "These belong solely to us," but in being able to say, "This place is one of the principal centers of this shared history."

When framed this way, Uzbekistan's historical heritage ceases to be merely an inventory of national pride and transforms into a cultural capital that the entire Islamic world can rediscover.

Speaking of cultural capital, how this capital is utilized and presented offers us a noteworthy model through Uzbekistan's current experience. Naturally, this model also provides a solid ground for us to reflect thoroughly on the subject, with all its strengths and shortcomings.

For if the way to save the past from being forgotten is merely to put it in a museum, illuminate it, and show it to tourists, we may confront another form of forgetting. Indeed, as one wanders through all this cultural heritage in Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva, one cannot help but feel at every step that the Uzbek administration has set high standards in many respects, presenting an unprecedented model regarding the restoration and museification of cultural heritage. Those exquisite tiles, the architecture shaped by brickwork, the revitalization of all formal structures underlying the tomb culture, and in the midst of it all, unobtrusive bazaars offering handmade souvenirs unique to Uzbekistan. Although it gives the impression of strolling through history, for anyone with even a passing knowledge of al-Bukhari, al-Maturidi, or Naqshband, a complex web of emotions regarding the meaning of all this is bound to emerge.

As they say, when history returns, it may lose its meaning. We shall continue writing as we travel from Tashkent to Samarkand.