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2008-07-22 issue:

1880 Great Trek leaves Muslim legacy

Escaping Ukraine, Mennonites shared agricultural practices that still stand.

by John E. Sharp

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At a Muslim mosque in present-day Uzbekistan, Johann Jantzen baptized Jacob Klaassen in the winter of 1882. Recently, descendants of the two men and members of a North American tour group visited that mosque, recounted the story and reflected on the uncommon hospitality of the Muslim villagers of Serebulak, Uzbekistan.

















A descendant of Talas Valley Mennonites shares pictures of her mother at her Johannesdorf home in Bakai-Ata, Tallas Valley, Kyrgyzstan. The other women are tour guides, Marina Allayarova, and Olga Shin. Photo by John E. Sharp.

Serebulak was one stop on the 2008 tour tracing the Great Trek of Mennonites from Ukraine to what is now Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the 1880s. The May 25-June 9 tour explored the stories of Mennonite-Muslim interaction in Tashkent, Bukhara, Khiva and Ak Metchet, Uzbekistan.

In Ak Metchet, the imam prays a springtime prayer of blessing on the year’s crops. He performs the ritual on the site of the former Mennonite cemetery—recognition of the fruitful agricultural practices Mennonites brought in 1884. These positive stories have refreshing relevance for current Christian-Muslim conversations.

The tour group also visited the Talas Valley in modern Bakai-Ata, Kyrgyzstan, 150 miles northeast of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. This valley was the destination of the Abraham Peters wagon train from Molotchna colony, later joined by others from the khanate of Khiva.

In 1880 and 1881, five wagon trains of Mennonites from Molotchna and Am Trakt colonies in European Russia braved hot desert sands and cold rugged mountains in the journey to Central Asia. They traveled the ancient silk trading routes seeking a new homeland where they could escape Czarist military conscription, find economic opportunities, educate their children and prepare for the imminent millennial rule of Christ.

They founded several stable communities in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where they shared new agricultural products and new technologies with their Muslim neighbors. More than a century later, Mennonites are remembered by villagers in Ak Metchet for their nonviolent practices, frugal economics and generous wages. In the old walled city of Khiva, a museum set to open in 2009 will feature the culture and craftsmanship of Mennonites who crafted windows, doors and a parquet floor for Nurullabai, a palace for Khan Muhammad Rahim II.

In the Talas Valley the memory of Mennonites is also alive. There the tour group found descendants of Mennonites—one still living in a sturdy Mennonite-built house—a cemetery with common German and North American Mennonite names, and an art museum featuring the work of Theodore Hertzen (Goertzen), a highly regarded German artist and a son of Mennonite parents. He was educated at Bishkek (Kyrzyztan) and Moscow Institutes of Art. He is most well known as a book illustrator.

In 1882, the 72 families of the Peters group, the third and largest wagon train, founded the villages of Nikolaipol, Gnadental, Gnadenfeld and Keppental in the Talas Valley. In 1890 Mennonites, now numbering over 500, spawned a fifth village, Orlov. These five villages formed the Nikolaipol Mennonite colony, now included in the present town of Bakai-Ata, Kyrgyzstan.

After the turn of the century, more villages were founded—one in the Chu River and two more in the Talas Valley. The last village, Hogandorf, was formed in 1909 by immigrants from Ak Metchet.—John E. Sharp