It was the enthusiastic addresses from Ministers in whom they had confidence, in whom they placed reliance, that turned the scale in favour of the F.C. in the Highlands in ‘43 … In the present, publications and pamphlets will no doubt prepare the way but agitation conducted with the same spirit, with a tenth of the enthusiasm of ‘43, meetings held in every parish, and in every clachan, resolutions put, petitions ready prepared for signatures to be presented to Parliament, any number of signatures to be obtained, and a spirit would be aroused that would take no denial, and could not be denied … Four gallant, enthusiastic fellows as well versed in Gaelic as in English, with the aid of the F.C. ministers, to lend assistance, and from the Press, and blazing advertisements would set the Highlands in a flame in 4 months.

The Leckmelm evictions

In December 1879 the Times reported that

discussions on the land laws are becoming frequent in Scotland and the subject of the reform of these laws is coming to take a prominent place among the pressing, if not the burning, questions of the day.

Whilst it is Scottish agriculture as a whole that is being referred to here, these quotes demonstrate that the climate of opinion throughout Scotland was becoming more sympathetic towards land law reform in 1879–80. Addressing farmers in a speech at Dalkeith during his celebrated Midlothian campaign, Gladstone referred to the unscriptural aspects of the land laws, especially the law of entail, thereby adding political and religious credence to the growing demands for land reform.

[Persian Translator's Preface]

[SP1-211b] In the name of God, the most merciful, the most compassionate, for those who need help, thanks and praise are due wholly to the Creator, who with omnipotence has created the land of the human body and has lodged in it the kinglike soul and the external and internal senses, which are like the subordinate administrators under his [the soul’s] command; and to each He has appointed its place. Boundless praise be to the Prophet, who is the cause of the glory of humankind and the reason for the creation of the world – God bless him and grant salvation to him and to his family. May it not be hidden from the minds of the masters of discernment that this poor, incapable wretch, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim al-Ḥusaynī, in accordance with the request of some like-minded friends that a book be written on the merits of Balkh so that they be recorded in the annals of time, has spent a lifetime thinking about this idea. [P-1a] Then a happy event occurred, and a glorious morning dawned in the East, and a book was discovered on the merits of Balkh [P-1b] and the qualities of its people, composed by the Shaykh al-Islām, the descendant of the predecessors, the master of the successors Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Wāʿiẓ Ṣafī al-Milla wa-l-Dīn al-Balkhī, may God grant him repose and make paradise his resting place, in his blessed handwriting and in the Arabic language, with elegant diction, pure composition, and boundless eloquence.

Here the proprietor of the soil stocks the farm; at the close of autumn, the produce of the farm is valued, the proprietor appropriating one half and the tenant retaining the other. Does not this seem an admirable arrangement? Would it not exactly suit the state of things in the Highlands? Only, to prepare for such an arrangement, money should be supplied by the Government to meet the expense of trenching a sufficient amount of ground to furnish a thirty-acre croft to each family, with an outrun for cattle on hill pasture. This appears to me the most feasible scheme for meeting the wrongs under which our poor Highland crofters have so long been suffering. I have been thinking of ventilating this scheme, and I wish you to think it over, ere I say publicly anything about it.

The policy impact of the Napier Report was minimal but the effect of the public enquiry was to promulgate and intensify the expectation for land reform throughout the crofting areas. This heightening of the agitation from 1884 forced the crofters’ grievances into the forum of national politics, a process which eventually led to the passing of the 1886 Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act. At the same time both ministers and elders were forced to respond to the escalation of the land reform campaign, not least when troops were sent to bolster the authority of the law. The quote from John Kennedy's letter to Gustavus Aird above demonstrates the extent to which the agitation and the resolution of crofters’ grievances were coming to preoccupy spiritual leaders as well as legislators and landlords.

A number of distinctive and innovative epigraphic styles emerged in Ma Wara’l-Nahr in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In this short penultimate chapter comparisons are made between the monumental epigraphy on the various surviving buildings, which have been examined in detail in previous chapters, and the related smaller-scale scripts found on Qarakhanid coinage and tombstones. Combining numismatic, lithic and architectural evidence, it is possible to demonstrate that regionally distinctive letter forms and delineations of certain words were employed across various scales and media.

For all the architectural remains, and increasing archaeological evidence of lost buildings, the main remnants of the dynasty, in both the eastern and western realms, are coins, and there is an extensive literature on the subject of Qarakhanid numismatics. However, limited attention has been devoted to the epigraphic style, as opposed to the textual content of the inscriptions, and its use in deciphering the almost impenetrably complex system of changing names and titles of the Qarakhanid rulers. Aside from the clear orthographic links between the miniature scripts seen on coins and the monumental scripts on Qarakhanid buildings, the increased use of the Persian language over the previously ubiquitous Arabic is another significant development during the period of study. This is in notable contrast to the Samanid period, where Persian names and terms are virtually absent from the coinage of that dynasty, and it was not until the Qarakhanid era that a major shift from the canonical form of Islamic coinage began.

As long as Gaelic sermons are preached in Highland parishes the Highlanders will have good reason to say that they are a peculiar people.

This chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part comprises a theological and cultural analysis of the Highland evangelical movement. Evangelical Christianity and its social effects lie at the heart of this book and, therefore, an examination of the nature of Highland evangelical belief and culture is of paramount importance to the whole study. The second main division of the chapter enquires into the development of Highland ‘peoplehood’ and the cultural awakening of pro-Gaelic sentiment. The social and economic aspects of these processes are examined and there are case studies of the contribution of two prominent Highlanders, the journalist John Murdoch and the leading Free Church minister, John Kennedy.

Evangelicalism in the Highlands 1843–88

Calvinist, covenant theology, ‘linking land and people in a powerful grip’ is one of the factors that maintained the long-term hegemony of presbyterianism in the modern Scottish Gaidhealtachd. Highland presbyterianism was rooted in the Genevan Reformed tradition and refined by the growth of the British Puritan movement in the seventeenth century. This calvinism was distinctly evangelical in ethos. Ansdell holds that the beliefs and spirituality of a characteristically Highland presbyterianism in the nineteenth century were given ‘form and substance by the Westminster Standards and emotional intensity by the Evangelical impulse’. Much of this ‘impulse’ was initially imparted from the south, where the influence of the great evangelical revival was dominant until the 1850s. But, as we shall come to notice, the success and longevity of this gospel religion was greatly facilitated by the cultural environment which evangelicalism shaped for itself in the Gaidhealtachd.

In 1893 a sizeable number of the most conservative Free Church members and adherents followed two ministers out of the Free Church to form a body which soon became known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The motivation for this action was the refusal of the Free Assembly in its jubilee year to repeal the Declaratory Act passed at the 1892 Assembly. The Act altered the terms of subscription to the Westminster Confession for office-bearers and was designed to give liberty of opinion to the many liberal voices in the Lowland Free Church calling for theological change and credal revision. But to Donald Macfarlane, formerly of Moy and now on the isle of Raasay, to Donald Macdonald of Shieldaig, Wester Ross, and to thousands of others who followed them, the Declaratory Act was a betrayal of the theological position of the Reformation. Whilst the Free Presbyterians represented only a minority of the Free Church in the north, the events of 1893 crystallised the deep division which had become more and more apparent since the 1860s between the Highland and Lowland sections of the Free Church.

Neither Macfarlane nor Macdonald left any comments on record concerning the land question although it was reported that Macfarlane criticised the Land League at the Stratherrick Communion in 1886. We do know, however, that a number of early Free Presbyterians were vocal in their advocacy of the crofters’ claims. At a meeting to rally support for the fledgling Free Presbyterian movement at Flashadder, Skye, an elder, John Macaskill, claimed, ‘for some years back, we had been fighting against aggressive land laws, but now it is Church laws we are fighting against – a much more serious cause of complaint’.

[Y]our petitioners, fully aware of their unfavourable position, under hostile proprietors, and their equally hostile agents, opposed by alien sheep and corn farmers – who acquired power and influence in the country as adventurers for worldly gain – and surrounded as the petitioners were, by a disheartened and poverty-stricken population, felt deep anxiety as to the effect of the Disruption amongst them; yet persuaded of the truth of the principles for which the Church contended, of the decided and deep attachment of the native and Christian population to these principles, and of the Lord's own gracious interposition on behalf of His own cause, and witness … they felt no misgivings as to the issue … and the whole population, with the exception of a very small and special minority, became adherents of the Free Church.

The Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland in 1843 and the misery which followed the widespread failure of the potato crop in the years after 1846 had the effect of bringing social and religious matters together more closely in the minds of many Christian leaders, as can be seen in the quotation above from the Free Presbytery of Dornoch's petition to the Free Church General Assembly. This chapter discusses the opinions of leading ministers in order to gain a fuller understanding of the presbyterian response to the social crisis. Particular emphasis is given to the views of two prominent Highlanders who were deeply engaged in the amelioration of destitution, Mackintosh Mackay, minister of the Free Church at Dunoon, Argyll; and the Established Church minister Norman MacLeod, of St Columba's Gaelic congregation in Glasgow.

This chapter examines the specifically Bukharan iteration of the Qarakhanid architectural style which developed in Ma Wara’l-Nahr in the twelfth century. There are five structures within the city and its environs, all of which were built relatively close together, both temporally and spatially. What follows is a comparative study of three of the buildings, all of which date from the early twelfth to the early thirteenth centuries. The structures, comprising a large mihrab and qibla wall, along with the portals of a mosque and of a mazar, all share a number of decorative and formal elements, thus demonstrating the problems inherent in focusing on any one particular structural or functional typology.

The first building to be studied is the Qarakhanid-era portion of the qibla wall of the Namazgah. It is located to the south of the old city of Bukhara, on the site of an earlier Qarakhanid royal palace and garden. The qibla wall has been extended, and a large open domed structure was added to the east in the sixteenth century. The original section appears to have been built in 1119–20, and there have been extensive losses to the lower portion of the mihrab and the surrounding decoration, as well as the south section of the qibla wall. Nevertheless, the surviving areas act as a pattern book for the decorative vocabulary employed in terracotta on buildings erected under Qarakhanid patronage across a large portion of Central Asia6 in the period spanning from the eleventh to the early thirteenth centuries.

I.1. Faḍāʾil-i Balkh and its importance

The work known as Faḍāʾil-i Balkh and referred to in the manuscripts as Faḍāʾil-i Balkh wa-shamāyil-i ahālī-yi way (“The merits of Balkh and the qualities of its people”) survives in a Persian version dated 676/1278, which its translator-adaptor, ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusaynī, purports to be a translation of an Arabic original written by the Shaykh al-Islām Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Wāʿiẓ in 610/1214. Balkh was one of the most illustrious cities of the eastern Islamicate world in the early centuries of Islam, yet we know very little about life in the city at this time. Faḍāʾil-i Balkh contains some of the oldest surviving Islamic-era accounts of the history of Balkh and can shed some light on this topic. In broad strokes, Balkh was an oasis city and province in the medieval region of Khurāsān, in what is today northern Afghanistan, situated between the foothills of the Hindukush Mountains and the Oxus River, and on the routes from Transoxania and Khurāsān to India. It had been a province of the Achaemenid Empire (sixth to fourth century BCE), the capital of the Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria (third to second century BCE) following the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the capital of the Kūshān Empire (fi rst century BCE to third century CE) that followed, which built one of the most impressive Buddhist temples and monasteries of its time, the Naw Bahār of Balkh.

‘Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art’ is a venture that offers readers easy access to the most up-to-date research across the whole range of Islamic art. Building on the long and distinguished tradition of Edinburgh University Press in publishing books on the Islamic world, it is a forum for studies that, while closely focused, also open wide horizons. Books in the series, for example, concentrate in an accessible way, and in clear, plain English, on the art of a single century, dynasty or geographical area; on the meaning of works of art; on a given medium in a restricted time frame; or on analyses of key works in their wider contexts. A balance is maintained as far as possible between successive titles, so that various parts of the Islamic world and various media and approaches are represented.

Books in the series are academic monographs of intellectual distinction that mark a significant advance in the field. While they are naturally aimed at an advanced and graduate academic audience, a complementary target readership is the worldwide community of specialists in Islamic art – professionals who work in universities, research institutes, auction houses and museums – as well as that elusive character, the interested general reader.Professor Robert Hillenbrand

It was during the final stages of my doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh, examining the development of Rum Seljuq architecture, that I came across an image of the original section of brick strapwork decoration on the façade of the tomb of Nasr ibn ‘Ali in Uzgend. I subsequently received funding from the university to travel to Kyrgyzstan in order to study the surviving Qarakhanid monuments in Uzgend, Safid Buland and Balasaghun. From this trip grew a project to reassess the surviving corpus of buildings and examine the increasing volume of archaeological material from the region. The award of a three-year post-doctoral research fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust allowed me to conduct this project in full. The aims of this book are to present the individual monuments in close detail, and to integrate the study of Qarakhanid architecture into the architectural and cultural context of the wider region of Central Asia and eastern Iran in the period from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries.

This interdisciplinary volume uses a range of methodologies, but in essence the overall approach taken is to return to first principles, and the primary aim is to provide as detailed a study as possible of all of the surviving monuments in the corpus. Whilst all the buildings covered have been published somewhere over the last century and a half, for the most part they are quite poorly documented and the material is widely dispersed throughout the huge body of scholarship produced during the Soviet period. Much of the work is admirable, if hard to find, but in many cases it is hidebound by the nationalist methodologies enforced by the authorities from the 1920s onwards. This nationalist paradigm has only intensified since the establishment of the post-Soviet republics in the region. One aspect of this study is to move away from the anachronistic nationalist approach to monuments that were built under the aegis of a decentralised dynasty whose territory now falls within the boundaries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China.