Astana the capital of Kazakhstan and Astanas in Siberia as a linguistic-cultural aspect of the national Islam of Eurasia

Abstract

By the time Islam penetrated into the Siberia and Kazakhstan, these territories were inhabited by various Turkic nomadic tribes whose spiritual and religious life was very varied. From the earliest age, a variety of cultural and ideological systems coexisted, including huge range of autochthonous ancient beliefs based on nature worship and ancestor worship, involving magic and the deification of the sky (Tengrism). After unification with Islam, these beliefs could later be found in the culturally-based traditional lifestyles of Siberian Tatars and Kazakhs. This is particularly true in the peripheries of the spread of Islam - in Siberia and Northern Kazakhstan, with their largely nomadic ways of life. The authors speculate on the name, astana, given to a succession of topographical objects, suggesting it represents a method for concealing the sacred in the profane. In modern socio-cultural reality, considering the mythological potential of a name involves examining fundamental characteristics of the culture such as 1. the interactive nature of culture itself, 2. its mythology, 3. its appeal to the potential of the past in search of the lost eternal values, and 4. the primacy of cultural interactions with respect to social processes. Whether the reader agrees or disagrees with this, one thing is clear: everything, even the tiniest shades of meaning that may arise in the human mind, must be considered. The vivid, powerful, multifaceted image that arises from the valuation of toponymical objects is valuable for the modern man; it rebuilds the ruined individualism and immensity of the world, thus broadening our own cultural space. The sacral complex of an astana can be understood as a kind of socio-cultural communication which provides a record of a collective tradition.