THE INTERPRETATION OF ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURE AND THE ETHICS OF LABOUR IN THE WORKS OF ABDURAUF FITRAT

Abstract

This study investigates the conceptualisation of entrepreneurial culture and the ethics of labour in the works of Abdurauf Fitrat (1886–1938), one of the foremost intellectuals of the Bukharan Jadid movement and a foundational figure of modern Uzbek thought. Drawing on a hermeneutic and historical-comparative analysis of his major reformist treatises — Munozara (1909), Bayonoti sayyohi hindi (1912), Oila (1914) and Rahbari najot (1916) — supplemented by selected journalistic essays of 1917–1918, the article reconstructs the discursive framework through which Fitrat diagnosed the economic stagnation of Muslim Central Asia and articulated an alternative vision grounded in productive labour, technical education and civic entrepreneurship. The analysis identifies five interrelated dimensions of his thought: a diagnostic critique of economic stagnation; the rehabilitation of labour as a moral and religious imperative; the modern entrepreneur as a civic ideal; education as the institutional foundation of a productive culture; and an anti-colonial conception of national economic awakening (vatan iqtisodi). The findings show that Fitrat's economic-cultural thought is neither a passive importation of European liberalism nor a mere echo of Tatar Jadidism, but a culturally embedded synthesis that combines an ethical reactivation of early Islamic mercantile values with selective adoption of modern economic rationality. The study argues that this synthesis offers a historically grounded resource for contemporary Uzbek debates on entrepreneurship, vocational education and human capital formation.