Abdullah Qodiriy: Bygone days

Otabek, Son of Yusufbek Hajji, 19th century Muslim Reformer, trader, and soon to be husband of two wives takes us through a Turkistan twenty years before the Russian conquest. From the teeming, caravanserais, mosques, and chai khanas of Tashkent and Margilan to the inner sanctum of the Qoqan Khanate our hero bears witness to a world destined for a future of memory and loss, offering reform and resistance as the only hope to save the soul of a people. Not just Otabek, but his friends and enemies alike, face the cultural and political landscape of family, of ethnic conflict, and of a khanate lost to corruption and intrigue. At stake for Otabek and his loved ones is not only the destruction of a way of life--a world cast within the traditions of the Turco-Persian world--but the crisis of faith and identity that has persisted for one hundred and fifty-four years. Published in 1926, the author Abdullah Qodiriy brought his masterpiece to a readership beset with the same concerns held by the beloved characters of this historical novel. Qodiriy uses the lessons of the past as a warning to his own generation experiencing the politically charged period after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Many describe this novel as a guide to the same issues that Uzbek society contends with today-- in what is now seen as the national narrative of modern Uzbekistan, perhaps its origin story.