There are only a few studies of the Muslim peripheries of the Russian Empire that apply a gendered lens. This article explores representations of Muslim women in pre-revolutionary Turkestan. It focuses on the research and practices of colonial ethnography, which supplied the authorities with knowledge about locals. Images of Muslim women in the Turkestan Album, a state-sponsored photography project, and French traveler Hugues Krafft’s independent volume Through Russian Turkestan, are analyzed and compared to explore how external observers depicted Muslim women. In addition, the article examines how the observers assessed the morality of Muslim women, as well as the impact that male affinities for effeminate young boys (bachas) had on the segregation of women.
