Rahile Dawut (Uyghur: راھىلە داۋۇت; Chinese: 热依拉·达吾提; pinyin: Rèyīlā Dáwútí; born May 20, 1966) is a prominent Uyghur ethnographer whose scholarship has made significant contributions to the study of Uyghur folklore, religious practice, and cultural history. Formerly a professor at Xinjiang University, she founded the Minorities Folklore Research Centre, which became a major institutional hub for research on the intangible cultural heritage of the region. In 2017, Dawut was forcibly disappeared by state authorities, and in 2023 she was reported to have received a life sentence on charges of “endangering state security.”
An ethnic Uyghur from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Dawut had been a member of the Chinese Communist Party for over three decades. She married and later gave birth to her daughter, Akida Pulat, while pursuing advanced academic training in Beijing, where her parents assisted with childcare. Prior to her disappearance, she held a long-standing faculty position at Xinjiang University, where she established and directed the Minorities Folklore Research Center beginning in 2007.
Dawut authored numerous monographs and peer-reviewed articles, and she delivered lectures at academic institutions worldwide, including Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. Her 2002 study on religious shrines gained considerable recognition among rural Uyghur communities, where it was informally used as a practical guide for pilgrimage routes. In December 2018, she was subjected to a secret trial and convicted of “splittism,” resulting in a life sentence; her subsequent appeal was rejected.
Scholars widely regard Dawut’s work as foundational to the preservation and documentation of Uyghur cultural heritage amid intensifying state repression. Through her extensive fieldwork on sacred sites, oral histories, and vernacular religious practices, she created a detailed ethnographic record of traditions increasingly threatened by policies of cultural assimilation. Her research is noted not only for advancing the academic study of Central Asian ethnography but also for articulating and affirming Uyghur cultural identity through rigorous and methodologically grounded scholarship.
Publications by Rahile Dawut
- Dawut, R. (2001). Uygur Mazarliri (Pdf)
- Dawut, R. (2002). Mazar Festivals of the Uyghurs Music Islam and the Chinese State (Pdf)
- Dawut, R. (2009). Shrine Pilgrimage Among the Uighurs (Pdf)
- Dawut, R. (2012). Desert Mazar in Context (Pdf)
- Dawut, R. (2020). Listening in on Uyghur Wedding Videos Piety Tradition and Self Fashioning (Pdf)
