Being Natural and Supernatural: Animals between Spiritual Sense-Making and Environmentalism from 19th to 21st Century CentralAsia

Abstract

The history of pastoralist and agricultural societies in Central Asia is intimately interlinked with the non-human world: non-human animals shared their habitat with humans, domesticated animals were used as meat, fur, milk and fuel suppliers, drought animals, beasts of burden, mounts and wealth. Wild animals were cherished as heralds of upcoming seasonal weather change, hunted for meat, fur, prestige and the alleged medical-magical faculties of their body parts or feared for their destructive potential. The close cohabitation of humans and non-humans is reflected in a complex cosmological order. Without denying the fundamental religious importance of canonical texts in an Islamicate context, vernacular texts that belong to the so-called “small genres” were more important sources of information for large parts of Central Asian populations, and shaped the spiritual map for the majority of Central Asians and guided them in making sense of their natural and supernatural environment. This article examines Central Asian conceptualisation of animals as shaped by these texts as a departure to the mundane and spiritual relationship between human and non-human animals in Muslim Central Asia and explores how these different conceptual registers reverberate in contemporary, global debates on animal rights, sustainability and environmental protection.