This book explores how to locate the sources which influenced the political, social, and ideological stance of a famous Turkestani Jadid thinker, writer, journalist and scholar, ‘Abdurra’uf Fitrat (1886-1938), thus also putting in perspective some overall intellectual trends in Turkestan, especially in Bukhara in the early 1910s. Based on Fitrat’s early publications the book discusses what intellectual milieu it was that shaped his worldview in the early 1910s, a worldview that could be designated as a first attempt at “freedom and sovereignty through Islam”. A thorough review of...