EKRĀM, MOḤAMMAD

 

EKRĀM (Ekrom), MOḤAMMAD b. ʿAbd-al-Salām, known as Dāmollā Ekrāmče (contemporary Tajik: Domullo Ikromča), a Bukharan scholar and madrasa teacher (1847-1925). He was born in Bukhara, where he received a traditional madrasa ecducation. In 1896 he traveled to the Near East, where he acquainted himself with a more favorable intellectual milieu, which he compared to that in Bukhara. Upon returning to Bukhara, he used his new experience and the writings of Aḥmad Dāneš (q.v.) to criticize the outdated system of education at the madresas and to advocate reform. When Jadīdīst modern schools (maktabhā-ye oṣūl-e jadīd) were opened in Bukhara in the early 20th century, Ekrām, as a mufti, issued a fatwā, declaring them in harmony with the tenets of Islam and therefore unobjectionable. Conservative religious leaders, who did not condone schools in which the Koran was not the basic subject, revoked his fatwā. His son, ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān, who attended a modern school, was scourged along with Ṣadr-al-Dīn ʿAynī (q.v.) and after receiving seventy five strokes died as a result (Kulliyot, p. 631). About 1910 Ekrām wrote a treatise entitled Efāz al-nāʾemīn wa eʿlām al-jāhelīn, in which he ridiculed backwardness and superstition. In 1918 he was exiled from Bukhara because of his ideas, but he returned in 1920 after the revolution and held various offices in the People’s Republic of Bukhara. He died in Bukhara in 1925. He was a friend of Ṣadr-al-Dīn ʿAynī, who highly praised Ekrām’s dauntless attitudes (Yod-doštho, pp. 241, 578-79).

 

Bibliography:

ʿA. Ḵ. ʿAbdī, Taḏkerat al-šoʿarāʾ, ed. A. Jānfedā, Dushanbe, 1983, pp. 39-40.

Ṣadr-al-Dīn ʿAynī, Yoddoštho (Yāddāšthā), in idem, Kulliyot (Kollīyāt) VII, Dushanbe, 1962.

Idem, Buḵoro inqilobi tariḵi učun materiallar, Moscow, 1926.

Idem Tarīḵi enqilobi Boḵoro (Tārīḵ-e enqelāb-e Boḵārā), tr. R. Hošim (Hāšem), Dushanbe, 1987, pp. 47, 49, 53, 105-06.

Enci-klopediyai sovetii tojik II, Dushanbe, 1980, pp. 551-52.

Enciklopediyai adabiyot va sanʿati tojik I, Dushanbe, 1988, p. 497.

S. Ziyo, Navodiri ziyoiya, ed. M. Shukurov and S. Siddiqov, Dushanbe, 1991, pp. 79-80.

(J. Bečka)

Originally Published: December 15, 1998

Last Updated: December 9, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. VIII, Fasc. 3, p. 289