Tatar Scholars Research Articles

«I Know You as a Venerable Scholar and a Great Connoisseur of Oriental Nationalities, a Defender of Their Interests in the Academic Field...». Scholars and Educators G. Rakhim and G. Saadi (Unpublished Letters to Academician V.V. Bartold (1927–1929))

The period from the late 19th to the first third of the 20th century witnessed a revival and advance of national science, culture, and art. It was also marked by a growing sense of national identity and a historical and cultural pursuit by the Tatar intelligentsia. In the 1920s, the formation and development of national humanities research in Kazan were driven by the efforts of dedicated Tatar scholars and educators. Among the most prominent figures were Gali Rakhim (Mukhametgali Mukhametshakirovich Gabdrakhimov) (1892–1943)–a writer, poet, literary historian, and folklorist, Gabdrakhman Saadi (Saadi Gabdrakhman Gainanovich (1889–1956)–a literary critic and orientalist. They were the pioneers of the Tatar Renaissance and contributed substantially to the development of scholarly studies in history, literature, linguistics, and archeography of the Turkic peoples, with a particular focus on the Tatar people. Engaged in solving a variety of problems, they were the encyclopedists who determined modern academic and pedagogical trends in many university and educational centers of Kazan during the 1920s. This article considers their previously unknown epistolary heritage: one letter of G. Rakhim (1927) and two letters of G. Saadi (1928 and 1929) to V.V. Bartold, an outstanding orientalist and academician, from his personal collection stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg Branch. These letters provide clear and strong evidence of the enduring professional and personal contacts between the Tatar scholars and leading Russian orientalists in the late 1920s.

Г. Гобәйдуллин хезмәтләрендә «халык», «милләт» төшенчәләре

The end of the 19th – early 20th century in the history of the Tatar people is a time of comprehension of their past, reflection on historical and cultural issues, determination of the main tasks of development. During this period, analysis and reasoning about the national issues come to the foreground in the works of Tatar scholars and publicists; they discuss the concepts of "people", "nation", raise the question "Who are we?" In this article, the author refers to the works of historian G. Gubaydullin "Millätne nichek tagrif kylyrga?" (1913), "Törekme, Tatarmy?" (1918), "Revisiting the Question of the Origin of the Tatars" (1928), who, using the example of the listed works, examines his reasoning about the name of the Tatar people, about the formation of the Tatar nation and also shows the evolution of his understanding of the problem of Tatar identity. A comparative analysis of G. Gubaydullin’s views on this issue with the arguments of his contemporaries has been conducted. The fact that recently interest in the problem of Tatar identity has increased remarkably is of particular note. In this respect, the relevance of studying the given problem in the reflections of famous scientists of the early 20th century has increased. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that, the formulation and understanding of the scientific problem of the national identity of the Tatar people at the beginning of the twentieth century is presented based on the works of G. Gubaydullin, the first Tatar professional historian.

THE ROLE OF DR. SHERALI TURDIEV BETWEEN UZBEK AND TATAR LITERARY RELATIONS

Uzbek and Tatar nations have had strong literary relations since the beginning of XX century. In building such a good friendly bonds, particular individuals play a significant role with their attempts. Dr. Sherali Turdiev did a lot in the development of literary relations between Uzbek and Tatar nation. It can be proved by his written works also exchanged letters. In this article, request, gratitude and invitation letters by Tatar scholars towards Dr. Sherali Turdiev will be discussed. KEY WORDS: literary relations, correspondences, publication, mutual literary supports

Ризаэддин Фәхреддиннең дини һәм милли мәктәпләр турындагы фикерләре

The article analyzes the famous Tatar scholar, teacher, enlightener, and public figure Riza Fakhreddin’s opinion on Muslim national and religious schools. Fakh-reddin’s publications published in the Tatar periodical in 1913–1914 served as a source for writing the work. In 1913, Mufti M.Sultanov received an official letter from the Department for Foreign Confessions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The letter requested Muslims’ opinions about the situation of religious schools from the Islamic perspective. In his works, Fakhreddin gives the questionnaire answers and covers the Muslim community's opinion about this document.

The works of Shihab ad-din al-Marjani on Islamic scholastic theology

The well-known Tatar historian and theologian Shihab al-Din al-Marjani (18181889), who worked as an imam and teacher of religious disciplines in Kazan, left behind more than 30 scientific and didactic written works. Some of his works were published in Kazan, Istanbul and Cairo. The subjects of the treatises of Marjani touch upon the Islamic faith, law, ethics, Quranic sciences and the history of Islam and Muslim peoples.The most important contribution to Islamic science is his books on Islamic scholastic theology and Sunni dogma. There are seven works on the abovementioned topics from Shihabuddin Marjani’s heritage on Islamic sciences: “al-Hikma al-baligha”, “al-‘Adhb al-furat”, “al-Mathal al-a‘la”, “Haqq al-bayan”, “at-Tariqa al-muthla”, “Haqq al-‘aqida” and “Sharh mukaddimat ar-risalya al-shamsiyya”.This article provides an overview of these works, gives a brief description of them, discusses the prints. It also sheds the light on their issues and points out the inaccessibility of some of them to researchers. Particular attention is paid to the work “al-Hikma al-baligha” (“Mature Wisdom”), which is a commentary on the well-known text in Sunni world, al-‘Aqida al-nasafiyya.The study uses descriptive and historical scientific methods with elements of theological analysis. Accessible sources in Arabic were directly investigated, and the works of contemporaries of the Tatar scholar were also used.

Издание научного наследия выдающегося крымского ученого-краеведа Усеина Боданинского

Under the given book`s review are the two volumes of works of Usein Bodaninskiy, issued in common with Sh. Marjani Institute of History AS RT, and SBEEHE RC “F. Yakubov Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University”. First volume from the collection of works and manuscripts of Usein Bodaninsky has already been published, it represents his scientific and creative heritage as of an outstanding Crimean Tatar scholar, ethnographer and archaeologist, painter and a person utterly devoted to museum works. He was the founder and the first director of the Bakhchisaray Museum Palace. The second volume contains his manuscripts, dairies, which has never been published before in full volume. The materials, collected in the books, are precious sources of history of the Crimean Tatars on the archeology and museum development in the Crimea as well.

Рукописное наследие татарских ученых в фондах Института востоковедения Академии Наук Республики Узбекистан

The article is dedicated to the manuscript heritage of Tatar scholars held in Abu Rayhan Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, one of the richest manuscript repositories in the world. Works of manuscripts of Tatar theologians such as Abdurahim Utyz-Imyani, Abu al-Nasr Qursawi, Shihabaddin Mardjani, and Hisam al-Din b. Sharaf al- Din al-Bulgari, Kamal al-Din b. Siraj al-Din al-Uribfori al-Kazani, ̒Ayn al-Din b. Jalal al-Din al-Kazani, Abu al-Sharaf Husain b. Abu Umar al- Bulgari, Muhammad Latif b. Abdulislam al-Bulgari are analyzed. Based on a review of the manuscripts, it is established that some of them have not yet been catalogued. It is argued that the works of Tatar scholars were mainly devoted to religious subjects. The role of Tatar scholars in the creation of commentaries and works on legal, medical and Sufi terms is analyzed in order to make the works accessible to a wide range of people seeking knowledge.

Sharīʿa Debates and Fatwas among Nomads in Northern Kazakhstan, 1850–1931

Legal debates among Kazakh nomads and on the Kazakh steppe more broadly have, for the most part, addressed the effects of Russian colonial policy on the administration of law among these nomads. The official and scholarly Russian fixation on Kazakh customary law, based largely on a tendentious categorization of Kazakh Muslims as quasi-shamanists, resulted in policies designed to separate Islamic law (sharīʿa) from customary law (ʿādat), and to suppress the role of sharīʿa in the areas of criminal and civil law. As Muslims, however, Kazakh nomads were directly affected by sharīʿa debates taking place both among Tatar scholars in their midst as well as among Kazakh scholars. These discussions, which occurred largely outside the field of vision of Russian officials or officially-mandated customary law courts, have so far eluded scrutiny. Recorded primarily in recently-published biographical dictionaries of Muslim scholars on the steppe, these discussions addressed a range of issues, including questions of ritual, but also, more significantly, the application of Islamic legal norms to commercial matters.

XIX. YÜZYILDA KAZAN TÜRKLERİ ARASINDA EĞİTİM-ÖĞRETİM VE AYDINLANMA (MAARİFETÇİLİK) HAREKETİNİN BAŞLAMASI VE BUNUN ÖNCÜLERİ

The first modern Kazan Tatar Turkish scholars, historians, reverends and madras ulama who were accepted as the pioneers of innovation movements which developed in Turkish world from the beginning of XIX. Century and who were brought up among Turkish people in Russia became famous among Russian Muslims and even in Islam world with the thought sand views the adopted. Especially Mercani play important role in enabling a specific identity and personality to his nation while raising ideas in religion on one hand and analyzing all the aspects of his own nation on the other. Mercani and other great Tatar scholars would have great contribution to the modernization of the people with their Works and students and also due to establishing movements of “Jadidism” and “Enlightment” which would start later on in this region. With his historical works, Mercani is the person who wrote a modern work among Kazan Turks for the first time. His Work served as a means forth nation to become aware and learn about their past and be proud of themselves. These works of Mercani were appreciated by Russian and Western scientists Infect works of Mercani are used as a basic resource in all science world even today. Moreover as a pioneer, Mercani founded the ground to bring out various Works about history of Kazan in fact, various philosophers and scholars were brought up in this region after him. We can list the names of preeminent people such as Musa Carullah Bigi, Alimcan Barudi, Hadi Atlasi, Fatih Kerimi, Abdurresid Ibrahim, Abdullah Tukay, Fatih Emirhan, Kerim Tinsur, Hadi Maksudi, Sadri Maksudi, Yusuf Akcura among the most important ones. There was a revolution in Kazan region in the field of politics, economics, administration, literature, ideal and thought. In this movement of revolution Russia has an indirect effect as much as the Ottoman

Šihāb al-Dīn al-Marǧānī on the Divine Attributes: A Study in Kalām in the 19th Century

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, very vibrant debates regarding the question of the divine attributes (ṣifāt), one of the central issues in the history of Islamic theology, arose among the Muslims of the Russian Empire. A continuation of pre-existing debates taking place at the time in Central Asia, the controversy over the attributes revolved around the question of their ontological relationship to the divine essence (ḏāt), and whether the predominant view, that of Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī, rendered the attributes too distinct from the essence, thus violating God’s oneness. One very prominent participant was the Tatar scholar Šihāb al-Dīn al-Marǧānī (d. 1889), who crafted a sophisticated critique of Taftāzānī and articulated a novel view of the attributes, based on the work of another Tatar scholar, Abū Naṣr Qūrṣāwī (d. 1812). This paper argues that not only do these debates show the continuation of the kalām tradition into the modern era, but they also represent important developments of that tradition in their own right, against the view that post-classical theology had become repetitive and derivative.

Karaimistyka jako nieodłączny element turkologii w Wilnie

The main aim of this article is to describe the role played of two Turkic communities residing in the territory of the Great Duchy of Lithuania from the 14th century onwards – the Karaims and the Tatars – in the appearance and development of oriental and Turkological studies in Vilnius. A short overview of the state of Oriental Studies in Vilnius, in particular in Vilnius University in the 18th–19th centuries, and its correlation with the local “Orient”, is given in the first part of the article. Most of the article focuses on the period between the two world wars, when Karaim and Tatar scholars, educationists and spiritual leaders took a very active role in investigating and popularising their own cultural heritage and Turkic culture in general. Through publications in magazines, the activities of societies and communities, an available pool of effective and skilled experts Karaim and Tatars courses emerged in Vilnius as an equivalent subject to traditional Oriental Studies and Turkology. Their achievements paved the way for the great resurgence in national identity and the revival academic research and teaching on Lithuania’s national heritage after it regained its independence in 1990. Research on the Oriental heritage of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy was out of the question during the Soviet period. Today when linguistic and cultural studies and research on Karaim and Tatar culture have become an important feature of Turkology, the Oriental studies programme in Vilnius constitutes a relevant part of professional academic life.

НОВЫЕ ГРАНИ ИСЛАМСКОГО ДИСКУРСА

SUMMARY: Rafik Mukhametshin reads the book by Michael Kemper on Sufis and Islamic scholarship in 1789–1889, in the region of present-day Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, from the perspective of current Russian Islamic studies, and finds it uniquely qualified and highly innovative. He explains the originality of Kemper’s methodology against the approaches that have been typical of Soviet and post-Soviet Islamic studies. From the Soviet perspective, the Volga region presented a political and ideological periphery of Islamic civilization, and thus did not deserve close attention. During the post-Soviet period, so-called Russian internal Islam acquired new significance; however, the field attracted many political scientists and historians who had never been trained in Islamic studies. Local Tatar scholars of the late Soviet and post-Soviet generations were trained within the Kazan school of studies of “popular thought.” They are inclined to approach the dynamics of Islam as if studying some generic process of progressive ideological development. Other scholars have difficulties interpreting Arabic-language sources and their complex religious content. Therefore, Kemper’s sophisticated examination of the local Muslim discourse in its own terms, in the general Islamic theological, ideological, and social contexts and comparative perspective, presents a challenge to Russian scholars. In particular, Kemper’s analysis calls for a reconsideration of accepted notions of intellectual history, such as “traditionalist,” “progressive,” or “enlightenment.” He also undermines the accepted understanding of “Islamic discourse” by broadening this concept to include Sufi traditions and practices. Kemper has reconsidered some trends of Islamic discourse that have been defined as “reformist” and “traditionalist” and has explicated their meaning within the theological and social contexts to which they belonged. Mukhametshin encourages Russians to read Kemper’s book as it opens up avenues of thought that are simply unknown to many local specialists on Islam.

Tatar Alimlerden Rızaeddin B. Fahreddin (1859-1936) ve Hadisçiliği

Ridauddin b. Fahruddin : A Tatar Scholar of The Hadith. Ridauddin b.Fahruddin, a famous Islamic Tatar scholar, was born in 1859 in Almad-Tataristan. After completinghis education he used to work in different duties like al-imam and al-mudarris (teacher) al-qadiand al-mufti in Orenburg and Ufa-Russia. He wrote more than 50 books and 410 articles and he left40 volumes manuscripts. When he died in 12 April 1936 in Ufa, he had left a lot of valuable works.Furthermore he was the publisher of the journal of al-Shurah.Because of his huge contribution to Islamic sciences two Ph.D. theses were prepared and publishedabout him in Turkey; but none of them dealt with his contribution to The Hadith. He wrote onalmost every aspect of Hadith. Because of this lack we wanted to make clear his views about TheSunna and The Hadith depending on his two important works on the hadith. One of this works isThe Six Books and Their Authors (Kutub-i Sitte Ve Muellifleri), and the other is the Commentary ofJawamiu’l-Kalim (Cevâmiu’l-Kelim Serhi). We found out that his works also made importantcontributions to The Hadith and its history, although his works give us very important informationon The Hadith and The Sunnah in Tataristan at his ages

Russia's Stillborn Democracy? From Gorbachev to Yeltsin by Graeme s> Gill Roger D. Markwick (review)

372 SEER, 79, 2, 200I Tatarstan'sexceptional autonomy in the Russian Federation.Another weakness of the study is that Kondrashov leaves almost unmentioned the Russian federal centre's policies towards Tatar nationalism, which have played a crucial role in propping up the Tatar political establishment against Tatar nationalists. Finally, a word on Kondrashov's sources. He seems to have relied disproportionallyon Russianlanguage sources.As a result,his analysisof the debate on Tatar nationalism is limited to those Tatar scholars writing in Russian. The exclusion of sources in Tatar is an important weakness for a study on Tatar nationalism. Moreover, Kondrashov'ssources are not up-todate . Noteworthy sources in Russian published after I995, such as Damir M. Iskhakov'swork Problemy stanovleniia i transformatsii tatarskoi natsii(Kazan', I997), are absentin his listof bibliography. Despite these weaknesses, I would strongly recommend this book to all researchersspecializingon Russia'sethnic republics. Schoolof SlavonicandEast EuropeanStudies OKTAY F. TANRISEVER University ofLondon Gill, Graeme and Markwick, Roger D. Russia'sStillbornDemocracy? From Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. X + 280 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. [4o.oo; [i6.99. A shift has taken place in the debate over the emergence of Gorbachev and his successors.If at firstwe focused on what could be called 'Sovietological' issues,the degree to which the changes repudiatedthe Communistlegacy and fitted in with detailed patterns of national history, then today the focus has shifted firmly to broader issues of comparative politics, and in particularto problems of democratization.This book, curiously,seeksto do both, and this reviewer is not fully convinced (despite its many qualities) that it has satisfactorilyachieved either. On the one hand, it providesa detailed blow by blow account of the Gorbachev and El'tsinyears in power, with every main turn in the political strugglepresented in considerable detail. On the other, we have a formal frameworkestablishedat the beginning that this would be an attempt to examine the fate of democracy in Russia, applyingsome of the critical broader literature to the Russian case. This second objective is achieved at best fitfully. The worksets out to explain the gap between the democratic ideal and the somewhat sordidresultsseen in post-CommunistRussia. Other scholarshave provided a whole bestiaryof 'democracywith adjectives',whereasthe present authorslimit themselvesto a detailed discussionof institutionaldevelopments and intra-elite conflicts from the time Gorbachev came to power in i985 to the late i99Os. The story they have to tell is a familiar one, but they have contributedto the literaturein three main ways. First,they provide us with a relativelythorough overview of the main strandsof thinkingdeveloped in the secondary literature,mainly by Anglo-American social scientists.They have done a thorough trawl of the mainstream English-language literature, and appliedthisto good effect. Secondly, they have a suregraspof the aetiology of REVIEWS 373 the post-I985 reformprocessin the country.The historicalbackgroundof the late Soviet years is presented in a concise and convincing manner, and the broader context of the Gorbachev-El'tsinreforms is suggested. Thirdly, and this is the meat of the book, every twist and turn of the Gorbachev-El'tsin years is examined, includinga usefulreminderof the personalchallengesthat faced the two leaders. This is largely a narrative account which leaves out many of the underlyingintellectualissues.The contrastbetween liberalization and democratizationiseffectivelyemployed,but thisonlyscratchesthe surface of the significanceof the process. As with so many books of this type, the evolution of policy, and the contrastingpolitical and ideological schools, are not discussedin great depth. Instead the discussion shifts to another plane, as it were, by analysing the forces promoting democracy, and the impediments that the democratization projecthas encountered.At the heartof theiraccount is the stuntedgrowthof civil society. Although their assessmentis relativelybleak, the retention of the question markin the title suggeststhat the end of the storyof the democratic adventurein Russia has not yet been told. Although the authorsare sensitive to the nuancesof the concept of civilsociety,itsoperationalizationin thisbook stillcarriesechoes of the starkcivil societyversusthe state approachof earlier times. The attempt to divide civil society into three groups, ranging from private associations through to general advocacy organizations and up to political representativebodies is useful, but does not get us very far, and in any case is hardly referred to in the bulk of the analysis. Civil society is a concept that...