Traditions of Sufi Dhikr in the Musical-Poetical Culture of Tatar Muslims

Abstract

The subject of the dhikr remains one of the unexplored areas of the Tatar religious culture today. The ‘Tatar dhikr’ has received adequate attention from researchers neither as part of the normative liturgical ritual, nor in the context of the Sufi culture that existed in the past. To some degree, it can be explained by the influence of the atheistic campaign of the Soviet decades, which caused a decline in the existence of, as well as competence in, ritual practices. At the present time, together with the return of many religious rituals to the life of the Tatar-Muslims, the dhikr has been re-introuced into the practice of normative service. Much less is known about the Sufi dhikr in the Tatar milieu, where the Yasawiya and the Naqshbandiya traditions were the most widespread. The handwritten and printed sources in Arabic script of the past are still waiting for special studies. Against this background, the materials recorded by Tatar ethnomusicologists in the last decades of the 20th century seem to be especially important: there are texts that reflect the importance of the Sufi dhikr for Muslims and show its structural features. Towards the end of the 20th century, such texts entered the repertoire of Tatar folk monajats and were recited in the style of the monajats. To a certain extent, the study of such samples provides an idea of the forms of the dhikr in the Tatar culture of the past; particularly it shows their connection with the Yasawiya tradition, and as a whole, proves the persistence of Sufi traditions in the folk culture. This paper is based on the survey of little-studied religious and historical sources, recordings, and interviews made during field trips in the 1990-2000s on the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia).