Maxsus ta’lim vazirligi nizomiy nomidagi Toshkent davlat pedagogika universiteti qoshidagi akademik litsey Nurmatov J. N, Kudratov K. X

RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY ASSOCIATIONS OF UZBEKISTAN
1. Early each morning, men converge in the side streets of Uzbekistan’s thousands of neighborhoods, locally known as Residential Community Associations or “mahalla”, to converse and partake from platters of traditional Uzbek “osh”, a national pilaf dish, and drink green tea, all prepared with ingredients provided by each individual mahalla. Such group activity not only provides the inhabitants of the mahalla with the public goods, but also helps to create order, to promote solidarity, and to sustain community life.

2. The modern mahalla can trace its origins to large urban centers that existed in Central Asia well before the invasion of Chingiz (Ghengis) Khan in the 13th century. Many of them specialized in trades such as metalworking, music, or food production. There are nearly 10,000 mahalla in Uzbekistan today, each one averaging roughly 2,000 residents. In the cities, mahalla consist of modern apartment complexes or blocks of densely organized single-family dwellings. Membership in the mahalla is based on residency, and no one is excluded because of class, profession, or religion. Traditionally the mahalla are places where both Sunni and Shi’ite, rich and poor, laborers and professionals can interact with one another.3. In the modern mahalla, a chairperson leads the mahalla committee, or “kengash”. The kengash oversees the day-to-day activities of the mahalla.

4. According to a 1999 Mahalla law, the chairperson is a state employee who is elected for a 30-month term. Next in the hierarchy is an “aksaqal” or “whitebeard”, who is chosen informally by consensus for his wisdom and ability to guide. Finally, a senior mahalla woman also assumes an informal leadership role.

5. Mahallas are involved with several institutions that mediate between mahalla and family, mahalla and culture, and mahalla and commerce. Mahallas also externalize the most meaningful and intimate relations of nuclear families. Families mark births (beshik toi, aqiqa), male circumcisions (sunnat toi), weddings, and deaths (khudoii). Often, the mahalla owns or possesses a supply of tables, chairs, cooking supplies, and other implements that it lends or leases to community members for such occasions.

6. To the same degree that mahallas assist with family events, they also shape Uzbek cultural celebrations. For national holidays, mahallas work together to clean public areas, cook national desserts for distribution to all mahalla residents, and provide small presents to poorer residents. Outside of these formal occasions, mahallas are a primary source of social services for community residents.

7. Mahalla residents call on each other to provide labor for repairs to houses, hand-me-downs to children, and a variety of other informal services that are easily described as “neighborliness”. Uzbeks have a well-developed conception and practice of mutual assistance called hashar that transcends mutual relations. Mahalla rais and members draw on hashar to motivate residents to, among other things, maintain the cleanliness of streets and gutters and improve the look of their mahalla on the eve of celebrations and state holidays.

8. Mahallas frequently also provide substantial support to the elderly, intercede in cases of domestic abuse (and deter divorce), provide adjudication to quell disputes between neighbors and, conversely, pressure more wealthy residents to share some of their wealth with the wider community. Each mahalla has a community center, called guzar. It is the

place of collection of institutions such as a bazaar, a mosque, a barbershop, a tea house (choikhona), and a general store.