SPEAKING BUKHARAN: PERSIAN TEXTS IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA

Abstract

Abstract. This article describes the cases in the literary history of Russia’s Muslims, where the Persian language, often mixed with other tongues, comes in the forefront. The present article thus includes three geographically distinct cases. The fi rst one is about a scholar’s journey from the Volga region to Bukhara and Eastern Turkestan: here we see that by 17th century the Persian language had already become crucial for Quranic exegesis, Sufi writings (particularly, for the Naqshbandiyya tradition) and legal matters. The second case highlights the role of the Persian language for the communities of Siberian Bukharans settled around the city of Tobolsk in early 18th century: Sufi texts were dominated by this language and were full of references to Central Asian literature. The third case considers a Daghestani Sufi Shaykh in exile, who used some Persian in his letters to another Shaykh in Tatarstan. Thus, the last part of the article demonstrates that migrant literati from predominantly Arabic-dominated region, Dagestan, had to adapt themselves to the three-language mosaics of Islamic literature in Russia, heavily infl uenced by the Central Asian literary canon.