Curtis, Glenn E. "Religion." In Turkmenistan: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1996, http://countrystudies.us/turkmenistan/14.htm.

Curtis discusses Sufi shaykhs and their role in syncretic Islamic practices, the authority of övlat lineages descended from the four Caliphs who succeeded Muhammad, Soviet atheism, and independent control of Islam.  See also his Bibliography which contains over 90 entries, mostly published in the 1990s and many of them U.S. or World Bank government agency reports.  Some of them relate to Islam in Central Asia. 

Sections: History and Structure; Religion After Independence.

Comments: 4/1/10
With regard to övlat holy lineages, Curtis states: "They attended and conferred blessings on all important communal and life-cycle events, and also acted as mediators between clans and tribes."  With regard to life cycle rituals, he states: "Some religious customs, such as Muslim burial and male circumcision, continued to be practiced throughout the Soviet period, but most religious belief, knowledge, and customs were preserved only in rural areas in "folk form" as a kind of unofficial Islam not sanctioned by the state-run Spiritual Directorate."  Finally, I was not aware of Islamic judges in Turkmenistan; I have to do more research on this topic later: "The governing body of Islamic judges (Kaziat) is registered with the Turkmenistan Ministry of Justice, and a council of religious affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers monitors the activities of clergy."

Descriptors: 1990s, ancestors, bibliographic, bibliography, C, e-article, post-Soviet, Soviet, Sufism, Turkmenistan; ovlat, syncretism, burial, circumcision, shaykh, qazi, pluralism-shari'a/adat.