The Conversion of Polish-Lithuanian Tatars from Islam to Christianity in the Nineteenth Century. A Typology and an Effort to Evaluate the Phenomenon

Abstract

This article is an attempt to present the problem of abandoning the Muslim religion in favor of Christianity. The article is based on materials collected and stored in the archives of Russia (Saint Petersburg), Lithuania (Vilnius), and Belarus (Grodno). These mostly contain either surviving records of baptisms sent to the consistory or police reports. The cases of conversion among nineteenth-century Muslims in the territory of the Russian Empire cited in the article have served as the basis for this phenomenon’s typology in the Muslim Tatar community. Moreover, they have provided the basis for analyzing whether it is possible to fit them into pre-existing conversion models in social sciences. The examples quoted in the text show the kinds of life problems that prompted Muslim Tatars to abandon the religion of their ancestors, e.g., terminal illness, the issue of marriage, or the likelihood of rejection by one’s group. It should be mentioned that there had already been conversions among Muslim Tatars in the early period of their settlement. However, this trend has never taken on a mass character, as evidenced by the relatively good condition of the Muslim community living in the former territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.