Islam in Russia: The Four Seasons 0700710108, 9780700710102

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface: The Unknown Ummah
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Introduction
Part One: Spring (922–1229)
1 The Trials of Ibn Fadlan: The delegation from Baghdad and the acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars
2 The Birth of the Ummah: Islam takes root
3 That Time of Bloom: Volga Bulgaria develops as an independent Islamic state
Part Two: Summer (1229–1400s)
4 Enter the Sufis: Peculiarities of the development of Islamic thought
5 The 'Tartars' versus Islam: The Mongol onslaught
6 Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde: The acceptance of Islam after the conquests of Genghis Khan
7 The Silver Age: Uzbek Khan and the triumph of Islam
8 Collapse and Disintegration
9 Who were the 'Tartars' of history? The enigma and paradox of the name misapplied
Part Three: Autumn (1400s–1583)
10 Astrakhan and Noghais: Events in the south
11 Kazan and Kazimov: Ulug Muhammad and the Moscow principality
12 The Suyumbika Tower: Islam beheaded
13 Terra Incognita: Islam in Siberia
Part Four: Winter (1583–1800s)
14 The Momentum Lost
15 The Survival Test: A new religious leadership emerges
16 The Official Ulama Re-appears: In every winter, there is spring in the making
Glossary
Select Bibliography

Citation preview

Islam in Russia

THE FOUR SEASONS

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Islam in Russia

THE FOUR SEASONS

Ravil Bukharaev

CURZON

First Published in 2000 by Curzon Press This edition published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 © 2000 Ravil Bukharaev Typeset in Sabon by LaserScript Ltd, Mitcham, Surrey Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-7007-1010-8

To my grandmother Latifa who taught me my ®rst Muslim prayer

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Contents

Preface: The Unknown Ummah Acknowledgements List of Maps Introduction

ix xii xiii 1

Part One: Spring (922±1229) 1 The Trials of Ibn Fadlan: The delegation from Baghdad and the acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars

19

2 The Birth of the Ummah: Islam takes root

59

3 That Time of Bloom: Volga Bulgaria develops as an independent Islamic state

83

Part Two: Summer (1229±1400s) 4 Enter the Su®s: Peculiarities of the development of Islamic thought

107

5 The `Tartars' versus Islam: The Mongol onslaught

121

6 Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde: The acceptance of Islam after the conquests of Genghis Khan

133

7 The Silver Age: Uzbek Khan and the triumph of Islam

147 vii

Contents

8 Collapse and Disintegration

165

9 Who were the `Tartars' of history? The enigma and paradox of the name misapplied

185

Part Three: Autumn (1400s±1583) 10 Astrakhan and Noghais: Events in the south

203

11 Kazan and Kazimov: Ulug Muhammad and the Moscow principality

213

12 The Suyumbika Tower: Islam beheaded

229

13 Terra Incognita: Islam in Siberia

251

Part Four: Winter (1583±1800s) 14 The Momentum Lost

269

15 The Survival Test: A new religious leadership emerges

285

16 The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears: In every winter, there is spring in the making

305

Glossary Select Bibliography

323 327

viii

Preface The Unknown Ummah

Just as the ®nal touches were being applied to the manuscript of this book, the southern Caucasian region of the Russian Federation became yet again engulfed in civil strife. The local insurgents supported by international pro-Islamic revolutionaries started what they claimed to be a Holy War of Islam against Russian oppression. When this book went to the printers, this war was still being waged on without an end in sight. However dubious any Islamic justi®cation for such aggressive actions might be, the editor of the Russian newspaper Islam Minbari, Professor T. Saidbaev, in an interview for the BBC Russian Service also argued that the of®cial Islamic Ulama (body of religious scholars) is chie¯y to blame for the present-day uncertainty within Russian Islam. He also maintained that the policies of the Ulama and pan-Russian administration threaten civic peace among the non-Caucasian Muslims of Russia. Beyond the historically militant Islam of the Northern Caucasus, Islam in Russia is credited with around 17 million followers. They, however, receive much less scholarly attention than the some 3 million Muslims of Chechnya and Daghestan. In the wake of the earlier Chechen-Russian war, many books were written and published in English on the history and the present state of Islam in that part of the world. Moreover, many books on the Northern Caucasus and its peculiar Su® background already existed even before the collapse of the USSR. Works on Islam in the USSR and its Ummah (community of believers) have frequently been prompted by political, rather than scholarly interest. But, whatever the underlying reasons, the Ummah of the Northern Caucasus and Central Asia, which is also presently ix

Preface

in turmoil under similar Islamic slogans, remains a highly topical issue. Yet the reader will search this book in vain in an attempt to boost his knowledge about Islam in Northern Caucasus and other hot spots of the former USSR ± its chronology of events ®nishes about 1800 AD ± before the Russian conquest of the Northern Caucasus ever took place. Despite its title, `Islam in Russia', this book deals with the almost unknown Ummah of the former Soviet Union, and the fact that it remains unknown is all the more intriguing given that it was present on what is now Russian territory for more than a millennium and has continued to in¯uence pan-Russian politics and history ever since. This story is about the Muslims of regions such as the Republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, the federal districts of the Lower Volga region, Urals and Siberia, as well as about Muslims living in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and all the major cities of Russia. For all previous research efforts, Western knowledge of this Ummah living in the heart of today's Russia, is still believed to be undeservedly insuf®cient. It is especially true in respect of the earliest, Volga Bulgar history, which is why a special emphasis is laid in this book on the events and achievements of Russian Islam in the tenth to twelfth centuries. This book will try to show how Islam, vis-aÁ-vis Orthodox Christianity, and in the Russian heartland, shaped its own highly sophisticated and extremely resilient civilisation. Its tells of the ideological struggle between Islam and Orthodox Christianity as well as between various forces within the Russian Islam and about the role played by the of®cial Ulama in this process. Structurally, the book has four main chronological parts: 1. 922 AD±1229 AD ± The spring of Islam from the time it arrived on the banks of the Volga River until the onslaught of the hordes of Genghis Khan. 2. 1229 AD±1400s AD ± The summer of Islam comprising the history of the Golden Horde until its eventual collapse and split into separate Muslim polities. 3. 1400s AD±1583 AD ± The autumn of Islam incorporating history of the Kazan, Astrakhan, Kasimov and Siberian Khanate until the fall of the latter into Russian hands. 4. 1583 AD±1800s AD ± The winter of Islam presenting the history of its survival until the decree of Empress Catherine the Great x

Preface

returning to the Muslims the right to openly profess their faith and the lifting of the ban on Muslim book-printing in Russia. Such divisions may seem somewhat controversial in that these historical periods quite often overlapped. However, this book is no attempt at a scholarly treatise. It rather presents one person's narrative, a chain of essays linked by time and space, in which the historical drama of the Russian Islam is slowly unfolded. The writing is based on the author's personal cultural experience, and, at the same time, on scholarly sources not readily available in the English language. It must therefore be noted that the author had himself to translate all quotations from the Russian and Kazan Tatar sources used. He is completely aware of the fact that he is not a trained scholar of history (he is a creative writer and former mathematician). Feeling the lack of formal historical schooling and realising his other shortcomings, he may well apply to himself the words of H. G. Wells who in his book The Outline of History wrote: `The writer is not in any professional sense a historian, but he has been making out his private Outline from beginnings of his career. He has been always preoccupied with history as one whole and with the general forces that make history. It is the twist of his mind. Even when he was a science student he kept a notebook for historical reading.' This book is the result of twenty odd years of the author's intensive interest in some enigmatic paradoxes of history, many of which will be introduced to its reader. Only if, at the end, it makes the reader question certain hitherto `obvious' concepts and preestablished attitudes in respect of Islam at large and Islam in Russia in particular, will the author consider his work ®nally accomplished.

xi

Acknowledgements

Special debts of gratitude are owed to the authors and the publishers of the materials used as sources for this book. Unconditional credit in this respect is due, ®rst of all, to the creators and publishers of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition, Leiden, E. J. Brill, London, Luzac & Co, 1971). The author is also most grateful to the Russian and Western scholars who supported his work for many years of his research. Among many others, he wishes in particular to thank Dr Shirin Akiner of SOAS of the University of London; Dr Marie Bennigsen-Broxup of the Society for Central Asian Studies; President of Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan academician Mansur Khasanov, Director of the Institute For Historical Studies of Tatarstan Dr Rafael Khakimov. Special thanks are extended to Professor Dr Mirkasim Usmanov of the Kazan State University and other scholars in Kazan Tatar history and archaeology. The author also is very grateful to Yoram Allon, Jenny Oates and Jonathan Price for their meticulous work of editing his original manuscript.

xii

List of Maps

1 The route followed by Ibn Fadlan on his way from Baghdad to Bolgar in Volga Bulgaria in 922 AD 2 Volga Bulgaria in the 12th century 3 The Golden Horde in the second half of the 13th century 4 The Kazan Khanate in the 15±16th centuries

17 18 106 202

xiii

O, be some other name! William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet

There were ± and there are ± cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the West. Edward W. Said Orientalism

Introduction

In the golden August of 1989, in the city of Ufa, above the middle reaches of the Agizel River at its merger with the river Dema, I was standing on the edge of the steep headland, from where I could once again, as in my youth, gaze at the green expanses of the Eurasian plains stretching all the way to the Urals and further, to Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan. There, in the middle of an ancient country not placed on any map and therefore unknown to the general public and most geographers, I was in a land remembered by only a handful of scholars and political historians who could recollect its name: Idel-Ural. This country, conceived and developed as a political idea by a group of radical Kazan Tatar nationalists, most notably Ayaz Iskhaki, during and after the October Revolution of 1917, never did exist in reality, and the very idea of the Tatar-Bashkir state between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains has been eventually squeezed out of use by waves of communist oppression and petty local nationalisms. Still, there it was lying in front of my eyes, in all its natural beauty and spiritual signi®cance. To the south, it extended to the boundaries of the Kazakh steppes, stopping short of embracing the delta of the Volga River down to its in¯ux to the Caspian Sea. To the north, it adjoined the thick taiga woodlands of the Finno-Ugric Udmurt and Mary Republics. Its eastern perimeter went along the European edge of the Urals, whereas, to the west, it spread out beyond the middle reaches of the Volga or Idel, Izel, Atil, as the neighbouring Tatar, Bashkir and Chuvash nations would call it in their own respective languages. It had everything that a country of 211,600 sq. km could have desired: 1

Introduction

an educated and skilful population in excess of nine million people, arable land and timber forests, roads and railroads, big navigable rivers and industrial cities, rich natural resources and a beauty to lure hordes of tourists. But in fact all that did exist of this imaginary domain was its fractured history and peculiar Muslim culture, which have somehow survived for centuries amid the unwelcoming Orthodox-Christian environment. There, in Ufa, looking forward from the cliff and backward to the past, I was thinking of a book conceived some twenty years earlier during time spent working in the Soviet archives in the city of Orenburg. I was interested in many things concerning the Kazan Tatar culture, but not in Islam as such. Yet it was Islam which laid ®rm ground for the creation of the my culture and those of other nations now constituting the main body of Muslims in Russia. Visiting the famous Orenburg compound of Caravan-Saray build in 1846, I examined the former Mosque, which had been turned into a planetarium. With the naive eagerness of youth I persuaded the staff to allow me to go into the loft, through the starry universe painted on the arti®cial wooden ceiling. The original ceiling also had stars, golden on blue, and Arabic inscriptions, which I could not read, but was still very much in awe of. I remember myself standing there, above the fake universe of Soviet times, touching the reality of history. Ancestral blood resounded in me, I could feel a sort of physical connection with former generations. I could even imagine the genetic ladder (not unlike the one which helped me onto the loft), that brought me, step by step, to the 20th century from time immemorial. Only many years later, already myself pronouncing the formulae of the Muslim prayer, did I suddenly realise an altogether different phenomenon of spiritual belonging to the ancient civilisation of my forefathers. Indeed, if one comprehends that the very same formulae, the very same words in the very same positions were being pronounced daily by dozens of generations, through the network by which one can ®nd his own path back into the dawn of history, the ancestral chain is then felt in an entirely different way. Such a spiritual perception permits one to not only visualise someone distanced from you by a millennium, but also to imagine and to some extent even understand his feelings, urges and priorities. There in Ufa I met different people who remembered something of these earlier times. I collected precious data from them, travelling by 2

Introduction

rail, by air, by bus, and on foot. I passed through all of the area of my interest, neither daring to name it, nor knowing how to, because, if you mentioned Idel-Ural then, you may well not be travelling that freely any more. I was very naive and nationalist-minded then. If I was going to show the greatness of the Kazan Tatar culture to the world, then ®rstly I had to explain who these Tatars were. I tried to proceed with this ®rst clari®cation and demonstrate that only after the Russian conquest of the Kazan Khanate were the Kazan Tatars given, by the Russians, the derogatory nickname of Tatars; further, that they had very little to do with the infamous Genghis Khan and are, in fact, the direct progeny of the ancient Turkic tribe of Bulgars, who in the 8± 10th centuries formed a prosperous state on the banks of the Volga river. Thus, a new question arose: what connection is there between the Volga Bulgars and those of the Danube, the ®rst being Turkic Muslims and the latter Slav Orthodox Christians? This question implied numerous others and it appeared that I had to explain the entire history of an as yet unde®ned region within the Russian Federation from time immemorial to the present day. Culturally and historically, politically and economically, fairly little is known about these areas, but much less was known to the outside world before the break-up of the Soviet Union. This vast area, spreading between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains and overlapping huge regions of Siberia, with its big secretive cities, military-industrial complex plants and munitions factories, oil and gas ®elds, copper mines, its fascinating and rather instructive history, has for the last 500 years remained virtually unknown to the outside world, being a part of a much bigger mystery of the USSR or Russia. Indeed, in 1989, during the celebrations of the 1100-year (AH) anniversary of the of®cial arrival of Islam on the banks of the Volga River which had once again brought me to Ufa, it was still dif®cult to explain to the foreign guests that the USSR and Russia were not the same thing at all. My adolescent quest proved to be unending. The obvious scholarly obstacles, of which I had no idea then, emerged and piled up as time went on. All available scholarly information about the region in question is scattered in different volumes and academic journals, and despite the existence and availability of numerous scholarly works dedicated to certain aspects of the subject, there remains no study which attempts to cover the theme in its 3

Introduction

chronological entirety, demonstrating how Islam vis-aÁ-vis Orthodox Christianity shaped national, political, economic and cultural developments in the vast regions of European Russia and Siberia. The history of Islam in central Russia is a fascinating story of spiritual survival, which, in the course of time, brought about not only a very special national and cultural awareness, but also laid down ®rm foundations for the revival and renovation of Islamic thought throughout the Muslim world. The historical importance of Russian Islam, however, is all but forgotten by contemporary Muslim communities, both in the West and the East. The Muslim world, which at the end of the 20th century still relishes the bygone grandeur of the ages of the Caliphates and the Indian Mogul Empire feeling nostalgia for the epoch of Islamic Renaissance of the 13±14th centuries, suffers from too many inner ills and outer fears to be able to assess something which has always seemed to be at the far edge of the Islamic oecumena. This has been mirrored in the scholastic study of the ®eld. For a researcher of today, other than a specialist in some very speci®c ®eld of turkology and ethnography, any interest in Islam in the predominantly Orthodox Christian environment of Russia has been conditioned by political necessities. Furthermore, it has almost died away after the break-up of the Soviet Union as it was presumed that these Islamic groups, given the huge Russian population, are too small to represent any substantial driving force in Russia's new development. Thus, in the eyes of Western sponsors supporting any further research into current and potential developments in the Russian Federation, the problem of the historical evolution of Russian Islam became an issue of pure academic interest without any foreseeable application to current Russian problematics. They seem to have forgotten the saying of Winston Churchill: `The farther backward you look, the farther forward you are likely to see.' Besides, for the West and for Russia, during the extensive period of their bitter antagonism through Soviet times and before, historical science became so politicised that any historical research often was, deliberately or unwittingly, prone to ideological bias and tendentious outlook, and, as a former Director of the Central Asian Research Forum, Colonel Geoffrey E. Wheeler, once observed, `The reason for the inadequacy, not to say misleading character, of much of existing 4

Introduction

literature is that it amounts to little more than propaganda either for or against the Soviet regime.' The reason why the history of Islam in Russia did not receive appropriate attention is still very much in place, the disappearance of the Soviet regime notwithstanding. In the words of the above researcher: A proper treatment of the subject postulates an exceedingly rare combination of quali®cations: an ability to read the relevant source material, the vast majority of which is in Russian; a thorough understanding of Islamic religious beliefs, practice and culture; a knowledge of the ethnographic and sociological structures of the Muslim peoples of the USSR and the way in which these have been affected by russi®cation as well as by Marxist socialism; and, ®nally, a complete grasp of the theory and practice of communism.

In addition, one may say that however extensive the knowledge of just the Russian language is, this is not suf®cient for this kind of research, as the vast number of necessary sources happen to be mostly written in the Kazan Tatar language and other lesser known languages of the former USSR and Eastern Europe, such as Hungarian. Thus, without a working knowledge of the Kazan Tatar tongue, no book on Russian Islam can be comprehensive enough. But then, what is Russian Islam anyway? In the understanding of the English-speaking world, the ®rst and most natural connotation of the word `Russian', until very recent times, was that of a person of Russian citizenship, Russia being the name of a vast mother country surrounded by its colonies. However, since the collapse of the USSR, many propagandists from this area started, in their quest for independence from this failed state, to use the label `colony' in respect of the autonomies of the Soviet regime. Such identi®cation of any autonomy, though serving as an essential tool in the shaping of new ideologies for the populist nationalist movements was not, anyway, completely accurate, and fell pray to many arguments within the newly-formed Russian Federation and abroad. In many cases, however, the reader will naturally understand Russian Islam as that of Central Asia under Russian rule. But the as yet unde®ned area I have in mind is, initially, spread over Russian eastern Europe and Siberia. So, in this book, I will be speaking of essentially European Islam, or Islam of Russia proper. 5

Introduction

Yet what is `Russia proper'? Russia as a uni®ed state was being created and formed throughout the whole course of its uneasy history. Sometimes it grew bigger, sometimes it diminished, although a permanent outward expansion is the most characteristic feature of this country from the 15±20th centuries. So, about which `Russia proper' can we speak in different historic times? This book title is Islam in Russia. Perhaps for the sake of precision I should have amended it to that of The Story of Islam in Orthodox Russia. But then, are there many who will realise, that, in respect to the area in question, Islam as a reality is much older than Orthodox Russia? In the 8th century Islam was already in existence, whereas Russia was con®ned to the pagan Kievan Rus, lying about two thousand kilometres away from today's Ufa. The Russian historian S. Solovyov, for instance, writing about the area in his History of Russia since Ancient Times, acknowledges: In times long ago, when the Russian Slavs had not yet begun to build Christian churches on the Oka river, and had not yet occupied these places in the name of European civilisation, the Bulgars were already listening to the Quran on the banks of the Volga and Kama rivers.

Solovyov explained the supposed inevitability of Russia's expansion along the Volga river by simply stating that `a nation living in the upper reaches of a river is naturally driven towards its lower reaches'. However accurate such an observation may appear, what is still open to doubt is whether such a view can justify or, for that matter, make any more natural the subsequent and almost complete destruction of ancient civilisations along the way. When the USSR suddenly collapsed, the outside world was amazed to learn how many nations of different tongues and cultures were previously circumscribed and depicted simply as Russians. The frustration of these nations and ethnic groups, many of whom suffered through the centuries an abrupt or gradual seizure of their historical independence and cultural heritage, was all the more deep and angering, if and when they realised that the achievements of the multi-cultural USSR, were being presented to the world as successes of Russia and the Russians. The true importance of understanding the real meaning of Russia and Russians lies not in ethnic nor in etymological research, however, 6

Introduction

but in appreciating the concept of civic rights and freedoms upon which rests the very idea of Russian citizenship in its historical evolution, and so let us elaborate upon this and the idea of Russian nationality in greater detail. In short, being a Russian citizen always meant incontrovertible loyalty to the idea of the state, far too often at the expense of one's civic rights and personal freedoms. This idea was and still is largely based upon the concept of a God-given role of the Orthodox Russian Slav nation in the world affairs. This concept of a speci®c Divine Guidance for the Russian Slavs was ®rst put forward in the beginning of the 16th century, by the Orthodox writer and monk Philotheus, who, in his epistle to the Great Prince Basil III, wrote: `Two Romes have fallen. Moscow is the Third Rome, and a fourth shall never be.' This basic axiom of Russian statehood, further developed during the so-called `Hundred Chapters' Assembly of the Russian Orthodox Bishops in 1551, was echoed in the late 19th century by the Russian Slav orientalist and Orthodox missionary Father Nikolas Ilminsky who, in Kazan, concentrated his efforts on baptising and russifying, among other peoples, the local Muslims. In his letters to the High Synod in Saint Petersburg, published in 1862, he unambiguously stated: `First and foremost, one has to suggest to the inorodsy the idea of the moral superiority of Russian ethnicity.' It is less surprising then, that the ethnic groups of the Russian Empire were not at all happy to become Russians, feeling rather uneasy between the Scylla of losing their respective national and religious identity and Charybdis of remaining hapless and politically suspect outcasts of the Empire. If Solovyov, as we saw earlier, justi®ed the conquest of the Muslim dominated Volga-Urals area solely by the need to introduce to its indigenous population the rule of law and personal freedoms of the `European civic society', then this noble goal has not been achieved even today, some ®ve hundred years later. To be Russian, therefore, never did imply being `civilised' in the European sense; it rather meant that a non-Russian person had to subdue his own national ideology to that of the Russian State obsessed by the need to expand for the sake of economic superiority and religious dominance. From this vantage point, even the term Russian Islam seems dubious, if not self-contradictory. This is bound to mean either Islam of the ethnic Russians, which never existed on a large scale, or Islam somehow owned by Russia. In this book therefore, I will try to show that the latter interpretation is also non-applicable, inasmuch as 7

Introduction

Islam in the Russian Empire and, subsequently, in the Russian Federation, always tended to rebel against the of®cial dictate of the state and nearly always succeeded in so doing. The term Russian Islam was ®rst used by a Muslim not as a rightful means of self-de®nition, but mainly with a view to attract the attention of the authorities to the needs and requirements of the Russian Muslims. Hence, it was devised in appreciation of the political truism that one has to display, if not prove, his utmost loyalty and faithfulness to the idee ®xe of the people in authority before proceeding to request something previously unheard of. The very idea of presenting the Muslim case to the Tsarist administration was, in any case, somewhat utopic because, as Alexandre Bennigsen has noted: It was perfectly indifferent to the aspiration of its Muslim subjects and remained ignorant of the problem of their identity. This is clearly revealed by the local confusion in the of®cial terminology. `Tatar' was used to designate not only the Volga and the Crimean Tatars but also the North Caucasian Turks, the Nogays, and the Azeris.

To the best of my knowledge, the ®rst Muslim person who used the term Russian Islam was Ismail Bey Gasprinski, a Crimean Tatar intellectual and political philosopher, in his 1881 essay entitled Russian Islam: Thoughts, Notes and Observations of a Muslim. Hailed by Bennigsen as `the greatest Muslim reformer of the nineteenth century' and as `the man who awoke the Turkic world', his desperate attempts to bring about educational, cultural and political revolution in the lives of the Muslims of the Russian Empire, had to appease the sense of moral superiority of the Russian authorities when trying to identify the large group of the Russian Muslims as a separate nation. Such identi®cation implied ®nding a common name for all Islamic peoples under the Russian rule, and so the term Russian Islam came into being, notwithstanding Gasprinski's personal statement in his 1881 booklet that The Russian Muslims do not realise the interests of the Russian Fatherland and have not developed any feeling for those interests; they are barely aware of its grief and joys, they do not share the Russian stately aspirations, nor ideas.

8

Introduction

Thus, I will further refer to Russia as the European and Siberian part of the Russian Tsarist Empire with the exception of Baltic countries, Ukraine, Byelorussia and Moldova and, in due context, as the Russian Federation, which comprises the same geographical areas as the curtailed Tsarist Russia before the conquest of Central Asian states. By a Russian or the Russians, I will further understand a person and people of Russian Slav origin and Russian Orthodox culture. I will refer to any other person historically domiciled in the geographical borders of Russia as the Russian subject. Otherwise, I will proceed with naming various peoples and ethnicities in Russia by their own cognomens: Tatars, Bashkirs, Marys, Chuvashs, Mordvins, and so on. Venturing into a narrative on the roots and developments of Islam in Russia, I ®nd myself in an even more tricky situation than Edward Said in his work Orientalism. He tried to outline an approach to the issue that would build a lasting bridge between Eastern and Western comprehension of the Orient and the Oriental. Keeping in mind all the dif®culties which such an attempt has to face, it is fair to say that before it was undertaken, the concept of the Orient was already a universally accepted European concept. It was extensively worked out upon huge masses of information, which in the course of time became available to Western travellers, merchants, religious missionaries, diplomats and, ®nally, scholars. Even if we con®ne our interest of the Orient to the question of Islam only, volumes have been written about Islam in the Middle East, the Maghreb and Spain, South-Eastern Asia and the Paci®c region, even about that of China. There is already a whole range of universal geographical, political and historical de®nitions of the terms involved, although the tribute of Professor Said towards removal of cultural misapprehensions cannot be underestimated. Yet, the issue seems inexhaustible. If Western Civilisation possesses at least a vague idea of the Orient as a concept, the same can hardly be said about it in respect of the more relatively unknown lands of this study. This is also true in regard of the main theme of this book. That cultural and spiritual conglomerate, the so-called Russian Islam, which largely forms my own background, cannot easily be listed under any of the existing titles of Western or Russian classi®cation precisely due to the mosaic nature of the subject. Such a task however, as we have seen, can hardly be left to an `outsider', as to progress on this path one has to 9

Introduction

combine not only amassed chronological and other systematic knowledge with comparative political philosophy, but, also to try to associate the `inner' cultural awareness and sense of history with the accepted facts of historical and political science. Thus, the necessity of the personal dimension becomes, for my research, even more urgent. Furthermore, the background of Western authors has the natural advantage of not having any traces of Soviet-style methodology imprinted upon their ways of thinking. It would be rather fanciful on my part to pretend that forty years spent in the USSR will not have left any imprints of this kind. At least, this experience has taught me to be sceptical of anything considered `self- evident' or `obvious' by public opinion. One of the implications one has to derive from Edward Said's writings for example, is that historiography cannot be impartial almost by de®nition. This may be evident from the sources and quotations I will use to illustrate certain ideas in this book. This inherent partiality is all the more notable if we refer to the Russian sources which have been feeding the explorations of Western scholars for so many years. Interestingly, Russian historians, naturally trying to bene®t from the rare narratives of foreign visitors to their lands as well as from ancient Russian chronicles, often complained about the anti-Russian prejudice and bias deeply rooted in these alien perceptions of Russian life, habits and traditions. If we realise that for the Russians many of those traditional outlooks are even today sacrosanct and immune from any scrutiny unaffected by speci®c nationalistic ideology, we will be less surprised to stumble upon such views as that put forward by V. O. Kluchevsky in the introduction to his Narratives of the Foreigners about the Muscovite State: It is clear how scrupulous and cautious we must be while availing of the accounts of the foreigners on the Muscovite State: but for a few exceptions, they wrote by guess-work, upon rumours, and made general conclusions from irregular and incidental phenomena, whereas the public which read their compilations could neither protest nor verify their testimonies. Not without reason, one of the very same foreign authors, even at the beginning of the 18th century was forced to say that the Russian nation through the course of many centuries had bad

10

Introduction luck inasmuch as all and sundry could spread about it all kinds of absurdities without fear of objection.

I have to add that a great majority of these foreign narrators, especially in the early 16±17th centuries, were compiling their observations not for the sake of their home public. Being as a rule ambassadors of the Western courts or the Holy See, they had the task of gathering information for speci®c use and in such capacity were obliged to be as objective as possible. There were, of course, numerous russophobic and vilifying compilations as well, but, for the most part, the foreign narratives can offer a valuable insight not only into the `holy mystery' of the Russian character, but also into the day-to-day life and traditions of many nations under Russian dominance, as is the case with, for example, the accounts of S. Herberstein (1549) and A. Possevini (1587). There is one further aspect which has to be mentioned while setting the context of my study. It is worth observing that one of the most striking manifestations of the inherent partiality of history displays itself in the belief that historical events and developments in some areas of the world are of much more importance than those of others. Such classi®cation, presumed by many to be obvious and indisputable, is in fact highly ideological in nature, and, being projected from the present state of things onto the past, does not foresee the future which can and will change the view of history as it has done so many times in the past. One example is the question of European unity, which surfaced so prominently ®rst in Roman times, then under the rule of Clovis and Charlemagne, but than again, despite all the zeal of the Crusades, was out of favour for centuries only to return in the form of the present day European Union. For Western historians, the evolution of Western civilisation was always of prior concern, and in this light and in the setting of world history, certain events sometimes obtained disproportionate signi®cance, were they to be judged from a different vantage point. Writing about the rise of Muslim Spain and the early expeditions of the Arabs into France, for example, the Russian historian of art Oleg Grabar claims that The most celebrated of these expeditions led the Arabs all the way to central France, where they were turned back in 732 AD at a battle variously associated with Tours or Poitiers. Little

11

Introduction noticed in the Muslim world itself, the battle assumed monumental proportions in Christian European, especially French, history. It was seen as a heroic brake applied to the expansion of an alien world by the West, yet as a minor skirmish by the Arabs. From the very beginning there is thus established a difference in the perception and appreciation of the same event by Muslim and Christian sources.

Another example concerns the battle of Kulikovo Polye of 1380 when the combined Russian troops under the command of Dmitry Donskoy defeated the motley army of Emir Mamay, the unsuccessful usurper of the throne of the Golden Horde. In Russian accounts, this victory is hailed as a turning point in relations between the Moscow Principality and the Golden Horde, but, as we will further see in the relevant chapter of this book, in the context of this historical period, the alleged weight of this particular battle is, to say the least, asymmetric. That said, the goal of this study is in no way a naive attempt to rewrite history or to change the accents of it. Such a task may only result in yet another controversial treatise and may only add to the battle of ideologies, having no real signi®cance in terms of objectivity. As a Kazan Tatar, I am of course satis®ed with the view of Volga Bulgaria placed on maps of recent atlases of European history from the period preceding the death of Charlemagne in 814, before the appearance of the ®rst Russian state on the map of 910. But looking at it, one cannot fail to notice the vast grey area surrounding that state on the junction of the Volga and the Kama rivers, as if the Volga Bulgaria existed all by itself in some black hole of history, and, due to it's remoteness, did not in¯uence any of the developments further west. Later, the evolution of the Russian state quickly over-shadows any progress of this area on such maps as well as in the annals and chronicles increasingly affected by the growth of Russian ideology. So, if this study has some intention to re-emphasise the evolutionary developments of that part of the world, this is a wish to free them from ideological impacts, preconceived notions and the dictate of any theoretical `laws of history'. The attitude of this study may be summed up, then, by the following excerpt from the 1907 Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church by the Russian Orthodox Professor V. Bolotov who stated that 12

Introduction History does not belong to the range of deductive sciences at the base of which there lies a form of analytical assertion. On the contrary, the synthetical assertion dominates everywhere in history, as it thrives upon the actually existent material, borrowed from the sphere external to our soul and intellect. Such sciences, if they reach in their development the bona ®de scienti®c stage, must allow the mathematical processing of their contents. In other words, they must reveal the laws of phenomenas and research the course of their development. But is it that history really knows the laws of its own evolution? True, we can ®nd books written in scholarly language which speak a lot about the laws of historical development. But if we look closer we'll see that the value of such books is rather insigni®cant: all laws revealed by them are much more of loud phrases than something real. There are laws operating in history, but only the possibility to forecast events beforehand might prove that these laws are indeed known to us.

Now I have to de®ne the geographical boundaries of my research. It is, however, not as easy as merely to list the presently existing republics, autonomous regions and provinces of the Russian Federation. There is a number of historical as well as political and cultural reasons for that. Firstly, we cannot just cease to notice that Islam in Russia cannot be taken out of the context of Islam of the Tsarist and then Soviet Empire, because so many developments of the two are inter-related and have a mutual impact on each other. Secondly, Islam in Russia, the Unknown Islam at the focus of our attention, can by all means be looked upon as a separate entity, with a history and evolution of its own. Thus, by the Tatar National Communists, most notably Said Sultan Galiyev, in the 1920s it was perceived as natural, that after the formation of the uni®ed TatarBashkir state in the imaginary borders of Idel-Ural, the process would further proceed to the creation of a Muslim Republic of Turan, thus embracing all the Turkic nations and ethnicities of Asiatic Russia. This ideal never materialised primarily because it was based on two rather wishful presumptions, both of which proved wrong. On one part, the Tatar Communists were entertaining the utopic Marxist conviction that the enslaved and impoverished Muslim nations and ethnic groups will be happy to unite under the red banner of 13

Introduction

liberating socialism. The end of this utopia was witnessed by the whole world seven decades later. On the other hand, the same Tatar Communists argued that Islam, if rightly understood, is in fact a kind of socialism and so there would be no need to ®ght the Islamic beliefs of the people; rather, it must be put into socialist perspective. In other words, the National Communists believed that the Islamic unity of the Muslim peoples of Idel-Ural and Central Asia, along with the Caucuses, will bring about the socialist unity of the same. However, as Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay demonstrated in their early study, Islam in the Soviet Union, `The unity of the Muslim peoples of Russia existed only as an ideal'. So, for the prospect of Muslim uni®cation, also in terms of geographical borders, there were two ideals too many and their manifestation is as far away now as it was then. At the same time, I cannot restrict the geographical span of my study to the boundaries of Idel-Ural only, because, as mentioned in the beginning of this introduction, that theoretical state of the 1920s did not include many areas far distanced from each other or parts of other theoretically independent states, some of which, however, have recently became a reality, such as the sovereign state of Kazakhstan. However, Idel-Ural, or the combination of the present-day Tatar and Bashkir Republics will be at the centre of attention, if only for the fact that many other islands of the archipelago of Islam in Russia were, as we will further see, created by the descendants and eÂmigreÂs of this particular region. This study is based on historical documents from the annals and archives of the Russian Federation, foreign chronicles and archives, and the family archives and memories of the Tatar diaspora scattered all over the world. Many, if not the majority, of the documents and quotations from the Kazan Tatar and Russian historical and scholarly works will appear, in the English language, for the ®rst time.

14

Spring 922±1229

PART

1

Place, O God, in the mountain waste, Fir and acacia, myrtle and elm. Give those who teach and those who obey, Abundant peace, like the ¯ow of a stream. Dunash Ha-Levi Ben Labrat, Jewish poet of Cordoba, circa 942

God is enough Ku®c inscription on a 10th-century gold ®nger ring in the Benjamin Zucker Collection

Ka

Bolgar B

ma

Bilyar S H K I R S B A

T A S U R

yi Ya

k (U ra l)

P

K S H A

Volg a

K

I

C

A

A

R

S

O g h u z

Itil

Aral Sea

K

H

Z

C

a

Dzhurdzhania

s

p

zm are Khaw

Bukhara

i a n

a S e S A

r Tig

A R A B Khamadan

M

A

R

I

D

S

is C A L I P H A T E Baghdad

0

km

300

Route of Ibn Fadlan Regional boundaries

Map 1. The route followed by Ibn Fadlan on his way from Baghdad to Bolgar in Volga Bulgaria in 922 AD.

C H E R E M I S ( M A R I )

OR DVI NS

Bolgar

R S K I B A S H

ma Ka

Bilyar Suvar

M

lg Vo

a

S T A B U R

S

Volga Bulgaria

am

0

km

100

Map 2. Volga Bulgaria in the 12th century.

ara

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan The delegation from Baghdad and the acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars

1

On a cool day in April 922, a large caravan heading north from Khawarism through the lands of the sky-worshipping Oguz Turks made a stop by the river which the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta four centuries later would describe as `the great and swollen river called Ulusu, meaning ``the great stream'''. This was an old Turkic name for the present day Ural River; the Arab travellers otherwise called it Yaiyk or Jayih. The river, known to Greek and Eurasian merchants and warriors for hundreds of years, looked much the same as it would appear to Ibn Battuta, as it did before the Arab visitor who presently stood on its bank and watched in awe how the stream, enlarged by the spring thaw of the steppe snows, destroyed people, camels and horses daring to cross it at this time of high water. His name was Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, secretary to a delegation sent by the Abbasid Caliph Jaffar al-Muqtadir to the Tsar of Volga Bulgars. He came to this remote place from Baghdad, at the time the largest and most glorious city of the world, matched only by the excellence of Muslim Cordoba. In the accounts of his dangerous expedition, Ibn Fadlan recollected the episode of the river crossing in the following way: The people took out their traveller's sacks made of camel skins and spread them on the ground. Then they brought on them the fat Turkish she-camels, in order to make the sacks softer. After that, they ®lled the sacks with clothes and other things, tied them tight, launched them on the water, and from four to six persons seated themselves upon them. In their hands, they took wood of the Khadang tree, put them up as oars and started

19

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan rowing. The river rushed them down the stream, rotating them at will, and it continued until they moored onto the opposite bank. As far as the horses and camels were concerned, those were forced to swim by men yelling at them. During passages of this kind, the ®rst to cross is a unit of armed men to defend the caravan lest the local Bashkirs take the caravan unawares . . . That was the biggest river we had seen, and its current was the rapidest. Verily, I saw how one of those traveller's sacks overturned, and the people drowned. And, in general, we lost many people, camels and horses at this crossing. We crossed the Jayih with great dif®culty.

But the caravan did cross the river and rested for a while on the right bank of the Yaiyk. Ahead, there were still many rivers to cross and many hazards to escape; behind Ahmad's back, there stretched a precarious route across the desert plateaux of Ustyurt covered in ice and snow. But Ibn Fadlan did not look back. The route from Baghdad via Persia and Khawarism across the country of heathen Oguz tribes, that great and vital caravan road by which they came to the Yaiyk, was, for all its hardships and trials, well known to the Arabs and Turk Northmen alike. It seems justi®able that these caravans, while crossing between the lands of the Northern Darkness and Khawarism, did not venture to explore new river crossings, following instead routes that had already proved less dangerous. If we place the route of Ibn Fadlan on the present day map, the point of his passage across the Yaiyk matches the site of the town of Uralsk or, as it was called until 1775, Yayitsky Township, which according to Russian sources, had been founded as a Cossack fortress in 1613. It looks very possible though that the settlement at the in¯ow of the lesser river Chaghan to the Yaiyk, was founded long before that and ®rst prospered as a staging point for trade caravans which needed rest and recuperation after the strenuous passage across the river. The same may also be said about the origins of the city of Samara which was founded, as Russian sources claim, in 1586 also as a forti®cation, but which was most probably converted into a Cossack fort from a much earlier trade settlement of the indigenous Turkic inhabitants of the area. Indeed, although the city of Uralsk now lies within northern Kazakhstan, before 1932 it was an administrative centre of the Russian Federation and, before 1868, was a town in the Astrakhan 20

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

province of Tsarist Russia. Years later it would become one of the most enlightened Muslim cities within Orthodox Russia. But why would the caravan cross the Yaiyk precisely here? The answer is that this point of crossing lies just up the river from the border of the Khazarian lands which most Muslim caravans tried to avoid even at the price of placing themselves in danger of being robbed or killed by savage local nomads. The less troublesome routes, especially the one straight up the Volga River, had for almost three centuries been controlled by the now Jewish Khazars whose vast, mighty but unfriendly domain had to be circumvented for the sake of one's life and merchandise, particularly if one was a Muslim or belonged to the independent-minded people of the north. The powerful Khazar Kingdom, the shape of which was reminiscent of an immense Chinese fan spread out from the northern shores of the Caspian or Khazar Sea all the way northwards to the small, idolworshipping, yet more unruly principality of Kiev, cleaved Eurasia in two, hindering trade and thus disjoining the Muslim south and the still heathen north, which was fabulously rich in fur, timber, tar, honey and the gold of Hyperboreans. Such vital commerce, being as ever the engine for the politics of war and peace, developed for itself a detour around the inhospitable domain of the Khazars, and this circuitous track, the peculiar Fur Road, trailed from the northern kingdom of the Volga Bulgars down past the shores of the Aral Sea to Khawarism and to Bactriana. Here, in the city of Merv, or directly through Transoxiana, in the Soghdian Samarkand and Ferghana it joined the great Silk Route. We know very little about the background of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. Some insight is to be derived from his long nisbah, or `full' name: Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al Abbas ibn Rashid al Khasimi, which points to a long chain of Arab ancestors. The Encyclopaedia of Islam limits itself to only suggesting that `he was probably not an Arab by birth'. The German scholar of ancient geography Paul Herrman, albeit without much substantiation, speaks of him as of `a Greek resident in Baghdad who had been converted to Islam and held a position of trust in the court of Caliph Muqtadir (908±932)'. The account of his northbound journey is all that remains of him in history. An extended version of his of®cial account of the deeds of the delegation survived only in larger fragments transmitted through the works of Yakut al-Khamawi, yet this nevertheless became a rich source of information about the countries and peoples of the north. 21

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Even from the surviving pages of Ibn Fadlan's own account, or kitab, which was sometimes referred to as risala, legend, one can conclude that Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was not just a talented man of letters and, to some extent, a politician and spy in his own right, but also a very keen observer and natural writer who recorded his experiences in the most meticulous detail. From sources which relay to us the contents of Ibn Fadlan's account, we can also suggest that this man was a client of the Muslim general Muhammad ibn Sulaiman who fought the Carmathians in Syria and cruelly conquered Egypt in 905. There Muhammad ibn Sulaiman is said to take such an immense booty, including over a million dinars in gold, that on his way back to Baghdad his trophies had to be carried by a caravan of 24,000 camels. On accusations of embezzlement he was put in jail, from where he was freed only after the ascension of al-Muqtadir, in 909. Following this, Muhammad ibn Sulaiman was appointed a manager of the Caliph's Persian estates in Kazvin and used his military skills in collecting taxes and kharaj, or tribute, on land from non-Muslim tribes. He died in battle at Rey in 919 during the punitive campaign against Ahmad ibn Ali who usurped power in this important city yet after two years persuaded the Caliph of his loyalty and remained as a governor of Rey. If Ahmad ibn Fadlan was indeed the client of Ibn Sulaiman, his life would not have been at all peaceful and quiet. However another source, that is, Yakut al-Khawami, states that Ibn Fadlan was `a client of the Commander of the Faithful as well as a client of Muhammad ibn Sulaiman'. If this was the case, which looks most plausible due to the his nisbah al-Khashimi and the subsequent appointment of Ibn Fadlan as a secretary of the delegation, he was not a complete stranger either to Baghdad or to the Caliph's court with all the intrigues and controversies of that volatile age. If he indeed was a Greek convert, one could speculate that he might have been under the protection of the in¯uential Queen Mother Shaghib, or Sayyida, formerly a Greek concubine of Caliph Al Mu'tadhid (892±902). Greek converts sometimes played very important roles in the affairs of the Caliphate. According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, during the reign of Caliph Al-Mukta® (902±908) one of the Greek converts, Leo, `undertook a number of raids on the Greek coasts with his ¯eet of 54 ships'. Whether he was of Greek origin or not, 22

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

one thing seems clear: Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was a learned man worthy of his appointment as secretary to the delegation, a fact which was further proved by subsequent events and his detailed account of the travels he had to endure under very precarious circumstances. Still on his outbound journey, on the right bank of the Yaiyk, we might well imagine that the task he had to face appeared daunting. The trouble was that he was left absolutely alone to ful®l the ultimate goal of the Caliph's delegation, which had considerably decreased in numbers since they had left Khawarism. It now consisted only of himself, the Caliph's ambassador Susam ar-Rassi, a former slave and a proteÂge of the Grand Chamberlain Nasr al-Kharami, the unnamed brother-in-law of Ar-Rassi and two Turkish gulams, or servants, of the Caliph's court, Baris the Bulgar and Tegin the Turk, the latter apparently being the former attendant or, as his name might well have been a title, even a remote kin of the Tsar of Bulgars. The of®cial task of the delegation, prompted by the letter of the Bulgar Tsar Almush son of Shilky Eltabar, which was brought to Baghdad in 921 by Abdallah son of Bashtu the Khazarian to the Caliph Jaffar al-Muqtadir, was to convoy to the Volga Tsardom of Almush `the teachers of faith, in order to instruct him in the laws of Islam' and to `build for him a mosque, in which there would be a mihrab (pulpit), from where he, the Tsar, would, on behalf of the Caliph, deliver a khutba (sermon) for his own country and for all the provinces of his domain.' In addition, the Bulgar Tsar `requested the Caliph to build for him a fortress, where he could seek shelter from other kings his adversaries.' Now, the problem was that all the `Fakihs, Mu'allims and Gulams', who ventured with the delegation out of the City of Peace, deserted the group in Dzurdzania, the capital of Khawarism. They became afraid of the unexpected and were already frozen to near death, but, most importantly they realised, that no one was going to pay for their of®ces now, nor in the foreseeable future. On route, in the Emirate of Bukhara, the delegation failed to procure the money which was not only supposed to sustain those teachers of Islam, but was also meant to cater for all the forti®cation requirements of the Bulgar Tsar. So why was the expedition left penniless even before the expedition could meet its objectives? In 922, the Baghdad of the Abbasids still considered itself the centre of the known world, but the 23

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

split in the political unity of the boundless Arab Muslim Empire, comparable in its vastness only with the Empire of Alexander the Great, had already occurred and was becoming more and more evident. The best days of Baghdad were probably gone. Due to inner mutinies and disturbances perpetrated by the Turkish and Berber guards, the capital of the Caliphate was even moved from Baghdad to Samara, but in 892 Baghdad was again reinstated as the seat of the Abbasid Caliphs. After this, the Caliph's palace was greatly enlarged, and, according to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, due to the efforts of Al-Muqtadir, A whole collection of palaces and gardens arose which, covering a third of the whole area of the east side, was separated from the rest of the town walls. A circle of new, thickly populated quarters soon grew up around the extensive quarter occupied by the Court. Under the active rule of Mu'tadid and Mukta® Baghdad again had peace to develop in. Under these two the Turkish troops did not dare raise their heads. But on the death of Mukta® the rapid, irresistible decline of the temporal power of the Caliphate set in. Disturbances, especially mutinies of the soldiers, often accompanied by con¯agrations, raping, and rioting increased more and more in the capital and caused its prosperity quickly to decline.

Caliph Jaffar al-Muqtadir remains in history as a weak ruler who never had a grip on the affairs of his vast Empire. The Emirate of Cordoba was about to become a Caliphate in its own right, and did so in 929 under the surviving Umayyad Abd Al-Rahman III. In Africa, the new-born Fatimid dynasty was attaining supremacy since 909, invading Egypt in 915. In Azerbaijan and Iran, mutiny followed mutiny, revolt succeeded revolt; Khawarism and Soghdiana only professedly acknowledged their subordination to the Baghdadi Caliph, whose troops without any vigour and any apparent success challenged Byzantium for control over Asia Minor. Although in 919 a shaky peace between the Caliphate and Byzantium had been concluded following the initiative of Constantinople, it did not hold for long. The Carmathians, that controversial sect raiding the lands of the Caliphate from Bahrain, were increasing their power, and were soon to capture Mecca and take away the Black Stone of the Kaaba, considered by them to be a place of idol worship. 24

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Baghdad, the place of luxurious amusements and constant merriment of the rich and powerful, was still a seat of learning and arts, but was increasingly conceding that character to Cordoba, where the surviving members of the Umayyad dynasty tried to preserve and develop the virtues of early Islam, all but forgotten in the Abbasid capital. Here religion, for all the arguments of Fakihs and scholars of different mazhabs, had long since became an instrument of worldly politics. Still, the Baghdad of Caliph Jaffar al-Muqtadir was a leading city of the world matched in growth and population only by the ancient cities of China, whereas its only Christian rival, Constantinople, was, in terms of population, half the size of Cordoba. Trade and commerce continued to prosper, wealth grew enormously, yet the state was being weakened by the plottings of self-interested emirs who tried to rule their provinces with an iron hand, crushing popular rebellions of the oppressed and needy in the name of purity of faith. One has to note that, under the Abbasids, the spiritual and earthly monopoly of power enjoyed by the Arabs was steadily giving way to the Turkish and Iranian elements. The army of the Caliphate was becoming more and more turkicized and, as H. G. Wells observes with regard to the end of the Umayyad era, `While Islam was already decaying in the centre, it was yet making great hosts of new adherents and awakening a new spirit among the hitherto divided and aimless Turkish peoples.' During the reign of Caliph al-Muqtadir the Turks of Central Asia, that is to say, Margiana, Transoxiana, Soghdiana and Ferghana were, since 641, already ®rmly brought into the fold of Islam. These Turks served as a vital tool in spreading Islam further east and north and, being mostly followers of the Hana® school of thought, counterweighted the Shiite in¯uences in northern Iran and Azerbaijan. Still, the great states of Khawarism, Bukhara and Samarkand were already craving for independence, if not yet from the spiritual authority of the Baghdadi Caliphs, then from their august rule, and in dealing with them, the Caliph had to apply the most delicate and appeasing policies possible. But Islam itself had already developed into the prevalent popular faith in the region. The epoch of early conquests was over and Islam was spreading along the ancient Eurasian trade routes in rather peaceful and convincing ways. Tenth-century sources report that a 25

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

large number of towns in the steppes had mosques and that these merchant and urban peoples brought the material achievements of prosperous Muslim lands to the nomads of Central Asia. The lure of Islam as a civilisation became very strong and the major impetus for nomadic tribes embracing the new faith. This nomad element, for all its roughness, eventually provided a new momentum and gave fresh strength to the Muslim Empire. It maintained the zeal and austere modesty of early Islam, which was all but lost in the lavish self-indulgence and growing decadence of the Muslim ruling classes of the time. When weighing the worthiness of despatching a missionary delegation through the lands of Oguz nomads to the far away Volga Bulgars in 921, the Caliph and his courtiers were unlikely to have thought that it would be the `barbarous Turks' who, in the wake of the Shiite coup d'eÂtat of 946 and the subsequent civil confusion, would restore the spiritual and stately authority of the Caliphate itself some 115 years later. So when in the spring of 921, the emissary of the Tsar of Volga Bulgars, one Abdallah son of Bashtu, called The Khazarian, arrived in Baghdad, he brought with him a number of letters. One was addressed to the Caliph and the second to the Grand Chamberlain and the most in¯uential courtier, Nasr al-Kharami. There might have been a third letter addressed to the wesir Khamid al ibn Abbas, since, upon his arrival to the Volga Bulgaria, Ibn Fadlan had to read out the response of this wesir to the Tsar of the Volga Bulgars. However urgent the letters might have been, the Caliph seemed too busy enjoying life and his entourage and so it proved very dif®cult even to deliver the letters into the hands of the Caliph. However, a patronage ± that vital and apparently everlasting component of the mechanism of Eastern affairs ± helped. One of the Turks serving at the Caliph's court, the gulam called Tegin managed to persuade the Grand Chamberlain Nasr al-Kharami to pass the most vital letter to the Caliph. The ethnic descendance of the people involved in this very ®rst phase of setting up of®cial liaisons between the Volga Bulgaria and Baghdad gives us an insight into the relations which existed between the two before 921. Both of them are spoken of as gulams but they might have been, in fact, members of the Turkish guard at the Caliph's Court. About the role of these guardians at the Abbasid courts, the Encyclopaedia of Islam speaks in no uncertain terms: 26

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan The Caliph al-Mu'tasim (833±842) took the fatal step of creating an army composed principally of Turkish mercenaries. These foreign praetorians became more and more arrogant, so much so that in 908 the Caliph al-Muqtadir was forced to give the title of Amir al-Umara to the captain of the guard, the eunuch Mu'nis, and, under that title, to entrust him with almost unrestricted civil powers.

One wonders, though, whether it is correct to say that a 13-year-old child who had just ascended to the throne in August 908 `was forced to' distinguish the man who in December of the same year saved his life and his throne during the attempted coup d'etat by his uncle Ibn al-Mu'tazz. This Mu'nis and his Turkish `mercenaries' saved the Caliph once more in 929 during the military rebellion under the leadership of Nazuk and, overall, the Turkish guard and Mu'nis in particular played a most decisive role in the military campaigns of the Caliphate. Indeed, the intrigues directed against Mu'nis eventually brought about the death of the unfortunate and impotent al-Muqtadir who, being persuaded that the man who twice saved his life and numerous times served his reign with utmost ®delity, was plotting to unseat him, eventually fell in battle against the army led by Mu'nis. Even then Mu'nis, though unsuccessfully, tried to elevate al-Muqtadir's son onto the place of the Caliph, thus once more proving his loyalty to the deceased ruler of the Caliphate. Of Tekin it is known, from the narrative of Ibn Fadlan, that before joining the circle of the Caliph's trusted servants, he lived in Khawarism, where he apparently had a forge or a hardware shop and was selling iron goods to the `in®del' Bashkir and Oguz tribes, wandering in the remote lands up to and beyond the Yaiyk River. From Ibn Fadlan's story as well as from a fuller version of his narrative related by the Persian writer Nadzib Khamadani in the 12th century, it can be deduced that Tekin also lived for some time at the court of Tsar Almush Eltabar in the Volga Bulgaria. The very biography of this man, however mythological it may appear being based on a single adapted manuscript recovered in Meshkhed in 1923, nevertheless points to the existence of well-known routes of communication between the Volga Bulgars and the rest of the world. The fate of the other Turk gulam at the Caliph's court, Baris, only adds to this conclusion. His nick-name, Sakhlab, meant `Slav' or, in a broader connotation, `one of the northern peoples'. A. Kovalevsky in 27

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

his research into the book of Ibn Fadlan, suggests that this Baris was, in fact, a Volga Bulgar who later returned to his homeland with the Caliph's delegation. Explaining the title of `Tsar of Slavs' in regard of the Tsar of Volga Bulgars, Kovalevsky says: In the Arabic language, the term `Sakaliba' according to its roots and common usage meant Slavs. But, as the authors were not well versed in ethnic peculiarities, let alone in the tongues of the northern peoples, by this term they nearly always designated the widest variety of the northern peoples: genuine Slavs as well as Finns and Bulgars.

Ibn Fadlan narrates that the Khawarism Shah Muhammad ibn Iraq, while trying to prevent the delegation from moving forward, called the Tsar of the Bulgars by the title of Tsar of Sakaliba. As the two countries, Khawarism and the Volga Bulgaria were in constant exchange of goods and commodities, the Shah was by all means well acquainted with the actual title of the Volga Bulgar sovereign. This also implies that at the Caliph's Court, Sakhlab could well have meant a Volga Bulgar. The outstanding Kazan Tatar scholar Shigabetdin Mardzani was of a similar opinion. He states: Arab scholars understood the term `Sakaliba' in two different ways. The ®rst meaning designates people of the Turkic, Bashkir, European and Slav tribes. For instance, Ibn Fadlan says: `Russians are a separate tribe, their land borders the lands of Turks and Sakaliba. They have got their own tongue and they wage war against Sakaliba. They are sold as slaves to Bulgars and Khazars, and also trade slaves. In the Bulgar cities, since the time of [pre-Islamic] ignorance, there lived people of various origins. Among them, there were Sakaliba and Russians. They usually lived in one particular part of the city. There was a judge appointed for Sakaliba, Russians and other tribes. These judges dispensed justice as they used to do in the time of ignorance, and their verdict was in accordance with reason. The Sakaliba we speak of here are heathen people who serve as slaves and warriors to the King [of the Bulgars].' By this meaning, Sakaliba designates Chuvash, Chirmesh and other similar Finnish tribes. In a different place, the term, commonly, designates the people of this land.

28

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

At the court of Caliph al-Muqtadir then, there was already certain knowledge about Volga Bulgaria. Many Arab travellers and geographers mentioned this state and its capital Bulgar in their writings. In the Book of Precious Jewels of Ibn Rusta compiled before 913, the author refers to the kingdom of Bulgars, placing it between the Slav (Sakaliba) and Khazar lands. He apparently even names the King by his own name, Almush. In spite of the fact that the Arab authors from time to time confused the Volga and Danube Bulgars, they still knew of the Great Bulgaria on the Danube and the Inner Bulgaria on the Volga river. Of course, in the eyes of the Caliph al-Muqtadir, who had at his disposal access to the most luxurious goods from all over the world, the commercial importance of Volga Bulgaria was less attractive than that of, say, China. But there were other considerations that increased the interest in these lands, and these were of major political importance. A valuable insight into the politics of the time can be derived from the origins of the name of the third person involved in the court intrigue regarding the letter of Almush, Tsar of the Bulgars. The background of this third man, the Volga Bulgarian ambassador Abdallah son of Bashtu, speaks volumes about the contemporary state of affairs in the area. This Abdallah called `the Khazarian' was, in fact, a Muslim, whereas the ruling classes of the Khazars were at the time professing Judaism. Essentially Turkic people, with whom were mingled a very considerable proportion of Jews expelled from Constantinople, the elites of Khazars accepted Judaism as a state religion under the Great Khaghan Obadya in the 8th century, and since then became not just geopolitical, but also ideological enemies of the Muslims. Since the very beginnings of the expansion of Islam north and westwards from Persia, the Khazars fought the Arabs in the Caucasus, becoming a bulwark against the spread of Islam in Europe. This warfare, beginning in 661, continued well into the 8th century, when the Khazars were forced to withdraw altogether from the Transcaucasia and settle beyond the Caucasian mountain range. These initial victories of the Khazars over the Arabs were highly signi®cant since they had the effect of permanently blocking Arab expansion northwards to Eastern Europe. From the very dawn of their imperial history after the divorce from the grand Turkish Kaghanate of the East, the Khazars became allied with Byzantium, an alliance further strengthened by the royal 29

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

intermarriages and acception of Christianity by one part of the Khazar population. N. Karamzin, writing about the Khazars, says: In the 7th century, they appear in Byzantine history with great brilliance and might, presenting a numerous army in support of the Emperor and along with him, enter Persia, attack Magyars, Bulgars weakened by the split among the sons of Kubrat, and subdue all lands from the mouth of the Volga to the Black and Azov seas, Phanagoria, Bosphorus and the major part of Tavrida [Crimea], which, for several centuries after that, was called Khazaria. The feeble Greece did not dare repel the new conquerors: its kings sought shelter in their camps, seeking friendship and kinship with the Khaghans. Out of reverence, during some solemn occasions they put on Khazar clothes and their guard consisted of those brave Asians. The Empire, indeed, could boast their friendship, but, while leaving Constantinople in peace, they raged in Armenia, Georgia, Midia, fought bloody wars with the then already powerful Arabs and several times defeated their famous Caliphs.

Further to the earlier meditations on the impartiality of history, it is not surprising that the Muslim sources were not favouring the Khazar Empire, whereas in the Christian annals and historical essays the Khazars are often praised for their religious tolerance and civil way of life. Karamzin favours them and though stating that the Slavs had to pay tribute to the Khazars, nevertheless notes: `The yoke of these conquerors apparently did not oppress the Slavs; at least our chronicler, having depicted the troubles suffered by his people from the side of the Obrys, says nothing of the kind in respect of the Khazars.' The story of the Khazars is yet another historical mystery. Apparently, they could indeed boast a high level of both nomad and urban civilisations; they built such great cities as Sarkel on the Don and Itil on the Volga river. Apart from collecting tribute from the peoples of their huge empire, they also engaged in trade; the levied transit duties on the passing goods presented one of the major sources of their stately income. The Khazars, as it appears, were inclined to the sedentary life: they readily tilled the soil, were good and able ®shermen, planted fruit gardens and vineyards. They were also well lettered: while using Hebrew, Arabic and Greek alphabets, 30

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

which came along with the new religions, they also maintained the ancient knowledge of Runic signs. M. Z. Zakiev and Y. F. KuzminYamanadi, write, for instance, that, `The Khazars often used the Runic characters as their personal seals (Tamgha). In particular, during the nation-wide construction of the Sarkel fortress each dweller of Khazaria put his own seal on the personally made building bricks.' In short, the Khazars seem to have maintained a highly developed culture. Their military might for almost three centuries remained practically indisputable, they possessed a state system and a ®scal structure of good quality, and they were experienced in trade and commerce. Yet, after being outwitted by the cunning politics of Byzantium and overpowered by the Russian onslaught in the second half of the 10th century, they failed to maintain their national identity and, as a nation, disappeared almost without leaving a trace! Who in the world can without a shadow of doubt proudly claim his descendance from the Khazars? Maybe the Karaites of Lithuania, a tiny minority group who still speak a Turkic language while professing a non-rabbinical Judaism and who, in 1994, numbered only 289 people? Some scholars try to maintain that the posterity of the Khazars can be found among the Russian and East European Jews, but this is also open to doubt from many sides. It proves much more rewarding to look for the Khazar traces in the culture of the Turkic peoples of the northern Caucasus or among the Crimean Tatars with their highly developed agricultural and irrigation systems which, in their origin, seem to spring from much earlier times than the Seljuk conquests of the 12th and 13th centuries. As we will see further, the original Turkic and later Muslim culture of the Khazars may be to a certain extent mirrored in cultures of the Volga Bulgars and even Hungarians, but of their Judaic culture nothing can be said for sure. One asks, then, why did it happen? Why did the civilisation of the Khazars prove incapable of sustaining itself in the face of new developments and the new threats of the 10th century? There seem to be two main reasons for this, the ®rst being the lack of a centralised state structure. While their supreme head, the Khaghan, had and exercised little authority over the military aristocracy, the members of that elite, the Khazar Begs, in fact, managed the state affairs, each of them viewing the priorities in their own way. Ibn Fadlan, for example, writes: 31

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan As far the King of Khazars, who has the title of Khaghan, is concerned, he appears in front of the people not more often than once in four months. Even on these occasions, he can be seen only from the reverential distance. He is called The Big Khaghan. His deputy is called the Khaghan-beg. The latter heads and commands the army, manages the state affairs, directs the Big Khaghan, associates with the people and undertakes military expeditions. It is to him that the neighbouring nations offer their obedience . . . The Khaghan-beg has his own deputy called Kundur-khaghan, whereas the latter, in his turn, also has a deputy of his own, called Dzavshigir. The conduct of the Big Khaghan is peculiar in that he meets no people, nor does he speak to anyone and nobody is allowed to appear in front of him except those already named. The full power to execute state duties, punish the wrong-doers and manage state affairs belongs to his deputy the Khaghan-beg.

That is why the Khazar empire, formidable as it used to be, could not return the challenge of the more centralised and thus more expedient powers in the region: the Viking Russians from the north and the Pecheneg Turks from the west, the latter being directed by the timetested Byzantine intrigue. In those ages the legitimate authoritarian rule was rather an imperative, than a choice, and it is well proved by the astounding successes of the rule of Charlemagne in the West and the reign of autarchic Caliphs in the Umayyad and Abbasid empires. If, at the time of our discourse, the reign of the Caliph was not effectively absolute, his highly developed state nevertheless possessed a mighty unifying and rather inspirited ideology, which was also of a prior necessity for survival and expansion of the state. Here we come to the second apparent reason of the eventual fall of the Khazar Empire, which was, it seems, the lack of a ®tting national, that is to say, religious identity. The empire was indeed tolerant in a religious sense: in its lands, paganism, Christianity, Islam and the Judaism of the ruling classes coexisted, though the relationship between the last two creeds was more strained than, say, between Judaism and ancestral idolatry. When in 740 the Khaghan Obadya undertook a religious reform and converted to Judaism along with a considerable part of the Khazar nobility, he was apparently driven by the necessity of unifying the ideology of his vast empire in the view of strengthening its state structure. But, 32

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

in the long run, this reform failed. The Khazars, so arrogant in the might of their heyday, did not foresee the future need for religious allies and were left alone when, in the second half of the 10th century, they had to endure treacherous Byzantine intrigues along with the heathen pressure from the north and west. In vain they tried to ®nd an ally among their previous foes, the Muslims, in Khawarism. The very existence of the Khazar empire and its control over the major trade arteries of the region, the Don and the Volga, was already a brake and a nuisance not only for the Muslim and Byzantine economies, but also for the rising economy of the Kiev Principality. The Khazars were thus unable to adapt to the aspirations of their neighbours and had to give them the right of way. We are especially interested here in the relations which existed between the Muslims and the Jews within the Khazar nation. The Muslim portion of the Khazar population, `the lower Hun-Khazar commoners' who in the course of time accepted Islam, strongly protested against the Judaic reform of the Khaghan. Indeed, the forcible conversion to Judaism provoked a major revolt among the Khazar Muslims, which was suppressed, as the pagan part of the population did not support the Muslim mutiny. The Muslim Kavars or `Plotters', as they were called by the Khazar rulers, had to ¯ee and join the ancient Magyar tribes who at the time were roaming the Pecheneg steppes to the west of the Caspian Sea. Along with Magyars, the Muslim Khazars came to the Carpathians and played an important role in the formation of the Hungarian state on the Danube. In the eastern part of present day Hungary, scholars point to many Khazar traces in geographical names like Haidubeszermeny near the city of Debreczen, because this in¯ux from the east continued until the 13th century. Such in¯ow was determined not only by the feeling of nomad kinship which existed between the Magyars and the Turkic peoples of the east, but also by the fact that the Turkic Muslims were much more educated in comparison with the heathenish Magyar tribes. In the words of Zakiev and KuzminYamanadi, the Muslim Khazars were needed in the new-born Hungarian state, because They constituted the nucleus of the cavalry army; they were good shots and ensured success in the battles not just during the process of the conquest of the homeland by the Magyars but

33

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan also in subsequent wars with the European states. The Hungarian kings used them in the struggle with their domestic adversaries and made them collect taxes from the population . . . The fall of the Khazar Kaghanate and the acceptance of Islam by many of its citizens created for it most favourable conditions: having been deprived of their statehood and having turned Muslim, the Khazar besermens readily went to Hungary, to their kin and co-religionists.

However, not all of the Khazar Muslims left the Khazar Empire after the revolt against forceful conversion to Judaism had been suppressed. Some of them apparently did not participate in the open hostilities and managed to stay back from the civil unrest of the 8th century. Also, the process of Islamization of the Khazars continued throughout the 9th and 10th centuries through the family chains and the arrival of merchants and learned people from the south. By 922, there were special Muslim quarters in the Khazar cities with mosques and schools, and the Muslims inhabiting these parts were naturally rather keen to expand their links with the Caliphate. Albeit on the accounts of other travellers and partly on hearsay from Volga Bulgaria, Ibn Fadlan describes the Khazar city of Itil, which had about the same bearings as the modern city of Astrakhan in the Volga delta, in the following words: On the river of Itil the Khaghan of the Khazars has an immense city. It is constituted of two parts: one is inhabited by the Muslims, the other by the Khaghan with his retinue. One man out of the number of the Khaghan's persons in attendance serves as the chief over the Muslims and has the title of the Khaz. He himself is a Muslim and the judicial power over the Muslims of the Khazar land and over those who temporarily visit this land on commercial needs, is given to this Muslim gulam. All cases are investigated and judged upon only by him. The Muslims possess in the city a Dzami Mosque, where they offer their Prayers and gather on Fridays. By the Mosque, there is a tall minaret and several Muezzins . . . When in the year 310 [923 AD] the Khaghan received the news that in the estate of Al-Babunadz [in the territory of the Caliphate or in Baghdad itself] the Muslims destroyed a synagogue, he ordered the minaret of the Mosque to be demolished, executed the Muezzins

34

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan and said: `If I would not apprehend that there in the lands of Islam no synagogue will be left intact, I would certainly have destroyed the Mosque as well.'

Such continuing tension between the dominant Judaic and subdued Muslim fractions of Khazar society were a natural reason for the emergence, in the course of time, of pro-Caliphate parties who were interested in encouraging the spread of Islam not only within the Khazarian domain, but also beyond its frontiers to the east and north. If we now return to the third personality standing at the very beginning of the uneasy arrangements leading to the forwarding of the Caliph's delegation to the northern Bulgar Tsardom, we cannot fail to notice that despite being called a Khazarian, this Abdallah son of Bashtu was, at the Tsar's court, a political refugee, a member of the Muslim party within the Khazar Empire which was dreaming of turning this empire into an Islamic one. His name suggests that there were already established channels by which the Muslims of Khazaria could communicate with the Volga Bulgars and their rulers. In Volga Bulgaria, even before the arrival of the of®cial Baghdadi delegation, there were Muslim settlements with their own mosques. These were founded by the Central Asian merchants who used Volga Bulgaria as an important trade centre in their dealings with the peoples living further north. For them, it was also important to expand Islam in Volga Bulgaria, thus establishing ®rmer commercial and political connections with the Caliphate in Baghdad at the expense of the Khazar economy which ¯ourished in the mouth of the Volga on the Caspian Sea and the mouth of the Don on the Azov Sea leading to the Black Sea and, from there, to the Mediterranean and to Africa and Spain. The prospect of a thriving commerce free from the political and economic dictate of the Khazars induced the Muslim groups within the Volga Bulgar Tsardom to seek opportunities to weaken the Khazar Empire, and so the Muslim political exiles from the Khazar Empire were by all means welcomed and helped. It looks credible that exactly these Muslim groups were most instrumental in persuading the Tsar of the Volga Bulgars to send the letter to the Caliph and to introduce to the latter the Khazarian exile Abdallah. After the appropriate moment was seized and the letter passed into the hands of the Caliph, the rest was up to Nasr al-Kharami, the closest adviser to the Caliph. He acted upon information received 35

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

from the two Turk gulams and the Bulgarian ambassador. The vision of Volga Bulgaria, and even the Oguz Turks living along the way to the north clearly captured the imagination of the Caliph. In such a case, the Khazar Empire would become encircled by the Muslim lands from the north and east, and the Muslim entity within that empire might gather additional strength, even gaining the upper hand in Khazar affairs. Furthermore, a chance to strengthen the position of the Caliphate itself presented itself. The wounds of the 919±920 Carmathian raid on Basra, with all the looting and killing that occurred, were all too fresh and were to be repeated in 923. Soon after, in 930, the Carmathians were also to capture the Holy City of Mecca, desecrating the Black Stone of Kaaba. In western Iran, the religious schism galvanised uprisings of the lower classes. On the south banks of the Caspian Sea, in Iranian Ghilyan and Tabaristan, yet another Alid state was emerging on the wave of popular discontent provoked by the sudden and bloody onslaught of the Russian Vikings in 912. The Caliphate thus faced a real threat of disintegration into separate Muslim provinces, which was already happening in the Maghreb and Spain. In such circumstances, the Volga Bulgars and the Oguz Turks would be welcome allies in the north of the Caliph's empire. Properly enlightened and guided in the matters of faith, they might be even helpful in maintaining the Caliph's rule in the Hana®te Khawarism and Bukhara. In respect of Central Asia, the conversion of the Oguz Turks was even more important due to the long history of their dislike for Central Asian Turks, with whom they constantly engaged in open warfare. Being brought under the hand of the Caliph, the Oguz could serve as a handy tool in restraining the growing ambitions of the Central Asian Emirates. And so, after all such considerations, the Caliph's consent had been granted. The delegation had to be dispatched with the view to bless, on behalf of the Commander of the Righteous, the of®cial reception of Islam by the Volga Bulgars and ful®l other requests of their ruler. Still, the bene®ts of such a venture were illusory enough, to fund it from the Caliph's own treasury, which was all but empty. In these circumstances, however, the shrewd mind of the Grand Chamberlain Nasr al-Kharami was quick to ®nd a way out and thus serve an important stately purpose. The delegation was not to go straight to the north, but initially reach Bukhara and pay the ®rst 36

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

of®cial visit to the young Emir Nasr the Second Ibn Ahmad who ascended the Samanid throne seven years earlier, in 914. On the way from Bukhara to Khawarism though, the delegation was to collect monies for the Tsar of the Bulgars who needed them in order to sustain the Islamic teachers sent with the delegation and, of course, build the required mosque and fortress. These monies were to come from the sale of a certain estate, which previously belonged to the wesir Ali ibn al-Furat, well known in history for his risky ®nancial speculations as well as for his persecution of the great Su® al-Hallaj. This Ali ibn al-Furat had, in 918, by embezzlement and speculative ventures, yet again brought the state ®nances to the most pitiful condition. All his estates were already con®scated, except for the most remote, and one of those, the estate of Arsakhushmisan, was located in Khawarism. Its price was ®xed at 4,000 dinars, the sum mentioned in the Caliph's letter to the Tsar Almush of the Volga Bulgars and in the accompanying letter of the wesir Khamid ibn al-Abbas. However, this money was never received. The story of this particular failure is quite fascinating and, it seems, very characteristic for the era. It appears that the estate of the ashamed wesir was promised by the authorities to one Ahmad ibn Musa the Khawarismian who, for the purpose of purchasing it in cash, had had to embark on the journey together with the delegation but actually stayed back in Baghdad for reasons unknown. In the words of Ibn Fadlan, when the delegation arrived in Bukhara and greeted the local Emir, his excellency was read the letter from the Caliph. He then asked `And were is Ahmad ibn Musa himself?' `We left him behind in the City of Peace, so he could follow us in ®ve day's time,' we answered. He then said: `The news about this has reached also Ibn al-Furat's manager, al-Fadl ibn Musa the Christian,' and he started to plot around this business of Ahmad ibn Musa. He wrote to all the guard's chiefs along the Khurasan road from the garrison town of Sarakhs and up to Beikend, ordering them to send spies to the coaching inns, caravan-sarays and guardian posts to trace Ahmad ibn Musa and those were given description of his appearance. He also commanded that the one who captures him, shall put him under guard until the arrival of our letter, which was then to be complied with.

37

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan `So, Ahmad ibn Musa was been arrested in Merv and put in jail. We afterwards stayed in Bukhara for 28 days. In the meantime it appeared, that Al Fadl ibn Musa the Christian had beforehand come into agreement with Abdallah bin Bashtu and some other co-travellers of ours, and they started demanding: `If we stay here, the winter will take us unawares, and the time for the journey to Khawarism will be lost. Let Ahmad ibn Musa catch up with us, when he ®nishes his business.'

Ibn Fadlan then states that the others managed to persuade him to leave Bukhara for Khawarism, where they also waited in vain for money to arrive. This never happened, partly due to the sagacity of al-Fadl ibn Musa and partly to the apparent bribery of prominent members of the delegation by the latter. Abdallah bin Bashtu seemingly preferred his own bene®t over that of the delegation and the same can be suspected of some others who remain unnamed in Ibn Fadlan's account. Of course, one has to keep in mind that this account was written after the delegation returned to Baghdad two years later, when Ibn Fadlan had to justify, above all, the integrity and well-meaning of his own actions. Finally, the Caliph's delegation left Khawarism without the `Fakihs, Mu'allims and Gulams', and with a letter of further promises instead of the actual money. Ibn Fadlan, being the secretary of the delegation had, from then on, to ful®l all duties which required education and knowledge, and he thus apparently became the unof®cial head of the venture. Others could boast experience of courtly politics and the understandings of their own business requirements, but they were not men of letters and Ibn Fadlan remained the sole well-read person in what remained of the delegation. Those in greater authority, it seems, were only too glad to place the responsibility for their ®nancial failure on the shoulders of one `foolish intellectual' among them, especially in the view that the Tsar of the Bulgars would by all means enquire about the monies mentioned in the Caliph's letter. However, before this eventuality, the group had yet to cross many more rivers in order to reach Volga Bulgaria. Further developments regarding the 4,000 dinars may prompt a sceptic to suppose that the lack of these funds was the main reason for the failure of meeting the delegation's goal of converting the Volga Bulgarians in the Islam Baghdad wanted most, that is, any 38

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Sunni mazhab except the Hana®te one predominant in Central Asia. The whole idea of the delegation was to create allies for Baghdad, and not for Khawarism, Bukhara and Samarkand. The Volga Bulgars and, possibly, the Oguz Turks were meant to become a counterweight for Central Asian states, and their choice of mazhab was therefore a crucial choice. The ®rst Abbasid Caliphs favoured the Hana®te school of law, and the principles of this widely acknowledged understanding of the Shari'ah had been established in Khawarism and Soghdiana along with the strengthening of Islam itself. Apparently the locals, already possessing a highly developed culture of their own and being engaged in trade with the Chinese and Romans for many centuries, preferred the inter-ethnic ¯exibility of the moderate Hana®te vision over more rigid pro-Arab visions of Islam and Islamic law. It was especially important that Abu Hanifa allowed the usage of traditional and customary law as a supporting but still independent source of Shari'ah. Thus, the Central Asian Muslims did not have to abandon their own national customs and ethnic traditions in their reception of Islamic culture. Further to this, the Hana®te urf, or allowance for customary law, proved very useful in commercial relationships as it permitted the locals to facilitate business relations, enter into commercial and social relationships with adherents of different faiths and enjoy signi®cant ease in their social life. On a popular level, the distinction of the Hana®te rite was emphasised by the difference of iqamah, or secondary call to prayer: the line `Qad Kamatis-Salaat', indicating readiness for prayer, was being repeated twice instead of once in Sha®'i, Maliki or Hanbali rite. Since this distinction was being underlined ®ve times daily, it became more of a gesture pointing to the independence of national culture, than to a sheer difference in the religious customs of the Arabs and Turks. Independence of culture as well as independence of national thought were laying the ground for state independence, and the maturing countries of Central Asia were slowly but steadily escaping from the sway of the Caliphate. For Baghdad, the question of which mazhab the Volga Bulgars should follow was a very important one as it would from the very outset determine the priorities of Muslim Volga Bulgaria, if not necessarily of religious than of political and economic allegiance. Politically, as we have seen, by receiving the Volga Bulgars into the fold of Islam the Caliphate served several goals of its own. The 39

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

principal goals were to enfeeble the Khazar Empire and eventually establish therein a Muslim government, thus also strengthening the Caliphate's hold on Central Asia, already only super®cially acknowledging the supremacy of the Baghdadi Caliphs. If, for the Caliphate, the fall of the Judaic Khazars and the subsequent emancipation of the trade with the north was a welcome perspective, for the Central Asian states of Khawarism and Bukhara it was less desirable, inasmuch as the liberated trade route down the Volga river would undermine their already well established commercial routes by land. The Volga Bulgars, having a strong vested interest in removing the Khazar grip on Volga trade, were politically and ethnically bound to maintain their status quo vis-aÁ-vis Khawarism and Bukhara, with whom they enjoyed a rather fruitful commercial and cultural relationship. However, the fact that the Volga Bulgars wanted to embrace Islam from the hands of the Baghdadi Caliph over the heads of the Central Asian Emirs shows how sophisticated their political requirements were at the time. The balance of politics for the Volga Bulgars lay in establishing an alliance with the Caliphate against the Khazars, whilst taking all precautions not to sever their ties with Central Asia. Abiding by the Hana®te rites would serve the latter purpose very well, since it would demonstrate preferential reverence for the religious culture of Central Asia, whereas acceptance of Islam from the hands of the Caliph of the time would stage the political show of obedience to Baghdad. Easy as it may seem, the practical embodiment of such a subtle political balance was prone to endure many a trial. Indeed, as the following events will show, the lack of money proved to be a major de®ciency of the delegation, but not because of an assumption that these monies could dramatically effect the religious choice of the Volga Bulgars and their Tsar Almush Eltabar. As the choice of the Hana®te mazhab was already predestined by the on-going trade links and diplomatic liaisons between the Volga Bulgars and predominantly Hana®te Muslim Central Asia, those reasons were much more powerful than any hegemony of a single person, be he the Tsar or any other dignitary. But one is nevertheless tempted to think that the unwillingness of the Emir of Bukhara and the Shah of Khawarism to help the Caliph's delegation in procuring those 4,000 dinars was not at all incidental. They apparently did not want to provide the Volga Bulgar Tsar with 40

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

inducements, fearing that he might fall prey to mortal temptations and forsake the Hana®te culture for the religious in¯uences of the Baghdadi court. In this light, they might have deemed it worthwhile not to allow these in¯uences to threaten the innocence of the Volga Bulgar converts through the labours of the Fakikh and Mu'allims of the delegation. Despite this, the retreat of the Fakihs and Mu'allims appointed by the Baghdadi authorities was nevertheless an important factor. What kind of Islam would they have taught the Volga Bulgars were they fully paid for their services? This is a question worth considering. In the same year of 922, when Ibn Fadlan was still on his way to Volga Bulgaria, the Baghdadi religious arbiters committed a heinous deed, for which they will be long unfavourably remembered by future generations of Muslims. They convicted and executed the man who is widely believed to be the glory of Islam of his own age. This execution represented the quintessence of the religious hubbub which befell the Abbasid Caliphate since the notorious times of Mihna, or religious inquisition, instituted by Caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 and followed by his successors al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathik. The question as to whether the Holy Quran is created or is the eternal Word of God everlasting and existing from before time, then turned from a purely theological into an extremely violent political one. In reality, it was a fundamental question of the freedom of human will, a principle consistently advanced by the Mu'tazilites. The same principle was not less consistently opposed by the Dzabrites, the preachers of the Absoluteness of Predetermination and the Murdjites who taught that the faith of a man is superior to his deeds. The latter postulate implied that the outward profession of faith is enough for a man to be counted among the righteous. The Orthodox Christian scholar P. Jouset, who by birth was a Palestinian Arab, praising the Mu'tazilites in the Orientalist vogue of the 19th century, wrote Al-Ma'mun extended his protection over the Mu'tazilites to such extents, that he established one of their principal dogmas ± the dogma of the Creation of the Quran ± as the state doctrine, and declared that everyone refusing to subscribe to this doctrine shall be punished for high treason. The subsequently shed streams of blood of traditionalists who refused to endorse the new doctrines, is clear evidence that his was not an empty threat.

41

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Many scholars, including the Kazan Tatar Mardzani, also in the 19th century and Montgomery Watt in the 20th, argued that al-Ma'mun's attitude towards the Mu'tazilites was not at all one of admiration and full endorsement of their principles, since he himself shared the views of Jabrites and Murdjites. The only doctrine, which the Inquisitor Caliph shared with the Mu'tazilites, was that of the Createdness of the Quran. But we do not want to examine here all the bloody events of this uneasy process of the establishment of universal Islamic doctrines; it is enough to note that when, in the reign of Caliph al-Mutawakkil, the discussion was de jure over and the Holy Quran was acknowledged to be the Everlasting Word of God, one section of the Islamic society started to acquire more and more powers and soon became a separate class of their own. This was the class of religious Ulama who appropriated the right to comment on the Word of God. Their judgements, for all their importance, lacked universality and were far too often passed for political reasons. It is to their efforts that we owe some of the darkest pages in the history of Islam. Abu Hanifa, al-Bukhari, Ibn Hanbal and other great scholars who tried to seek the truth all present a most unambiguous critique against the deeds of the Ulama in the process of its formation as a powerful class of Islamic society. In the time of Ibn Fadlan, it was the turn of another great Muslim thinker to face martyrdom at the hands of Ulama of the age: Abul Mughis al-Hussein bin Mansur al-Halladj, the great Su® philosopher, whose ideas in¯uenced so many great thinkers and scholars of the Islamic world. Since 912 he spent his days in seclusion for alleged propaganda of the Carmathian creed. In 913 he suffered three days on the pillory, but the then wesir Ibn Isa saved him from the death sentence. In 922 though, despite the protests of some Fakihs and Su®s, the protection of certain courtiers and even the Queen-Mother Sayyida, al-Halladj was again found guilty of being a Carmathian preacher, whipped, dismembered, cruci®ed and eventually beheaded. His maimed body was then burned and the ashes dispersed, from the minaret, over the waters of the Tigris. This happened on 27 March 922, when Ibn Fadlan was still travelling in the Oguz steppes and had not yet reached the bank of the Yaiyk. The Qadi who presided over the court which sentenced al-Halladj was a Maliki by the name of Abu Umar ibn Yusuf. The Hanbali witness refused to testify against al-Halladj and was himself beaten to death. The Hana® Qadi did not give his judgement, but his 42

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

assistant supported the president of the court. As records show, there was no Sha®'i present at the trial. For all the seeming tolerance of different Sunni mazhabs in the reign of Caliph al-Muqtadir, which was marked even by some in¯uence of the Shi'a circles at his Court, religious disorders were common place. The Hanbalis bitterly struggled against the Shi'as and Mu'tazilites for the reform of the Caliphate along the lines of `early Islamic righteousness'. The pro-Shi'a and pro-Alid mutinies tried to achieve the same from their own point of view. The Carmathians, for their part, showed no respect for any sacred pillars of faith, plundering the pilgrim caravans and taking Muslim cities by the sword. There was little unanimity either in political outlook or in Islamic doctrines, an absence of unity that was only further helped by the weakness of the Caliph who was manipulated by his wives and advisers throughout his reign. If the delegation's Fakihs and Mu'allims would have come to the Volga Bulgars and settled there to teach the new converts, they might well have brought with them the seeds of such religious disorder from the very beginning. But this did not happen then and the Volga Bulgars were not introduced to the differences of opinions before they had even grasped the essence of Islam. Strangely enough, all the religious turmoil and bitter disputes in the south of the Islamic world never really stretched to the banks of the Volga, despite the well developed communication channels between these two parts of the world of Islam. Whatever was happening in the north in the ®eld of religious disagreements, it was at the most a feeble echo of the great disturbances of the south. But let us return to Ibn Fadlan who during his journey was unaware of the martyrdom of al-Halladj. The intrigues and potential dangers of the Caliph's Court stayed, for the time being, very far away. Ahead, there were other hazards, the ®rst of which was the danger of being robbed and killed by the Bashkirs, since, after crossing the Samara river the delegation entered the territory under their control. Fortunately for the delegation, the hostile encounter with the Bashkirs did not happen as the caravan was too big and well guarded. In any case, the travellers' route tried to keep closer to the Volga, circumventing the ¯ooded marshy lowlands also disliked by the nomad tribesmen, of whom Ibn Fadlan provides a most uncomplimentary judgement, saying that `they are the worst kind of Turks . . . who are more than others inclined to murder.' His 43

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

verdict appears to be based on rumours though, since he himself appears not to have observed any savagery on the part of the Bashkirs. The only thing that unpleasantly impressed the Godfearing writer in regard of the Bashkirs he did meet, was the kind of idolatry they were engaged in, because, apart from already known sky-worship and peculiar versions of totemism, the Bashkirs were apparently worshipping the phallus. Ibn Fadlan narrates: Each of them carves a stick of the size of a phallus and hangs it on his neck. When he embarks upon a journey or encounters an enemy, he kisses the stick, worships it and says: O Lord, perform for me this and that. I said to the interpreter, `ask one of them why do they do this and what meaning do they see in doing so.' The Bashkir answered, `I do it because I came to this world through this and I do not know any other creator than this.'

Interestingly, as Mardzani ®rst observed, the account of Ibn Fadlan gives the impression that on informal occasions he was speaking to the Bulgar Tsar directly, whereas in his conversations with Bashkirs he used the services of an interpreter. The latter was a Muslim Bashkir from among the servants of the delegation. Mardzani states: Since Ibn Fadlan, from his association in Baghdad with the Turk guardsmen and other Turk people, knew the Turkish tongue, he was able to speak with the Bulgar ruler in the Turkish language. As the Bashkir tongue has some major differences from the other Turkic languages, the fact that he had to speak to them through an interpreter is not at all surprising.

We will yet have the chance to discuss the ethnogenesis and linguistic variance as well as the heathen beliefs of the Russian Muslims later in the book. The question of which language Ibn Fadlan might have known and spoken with the Bulgar Tsar is nevertheless relevant here, because the very existence of such a common language sheds additional light upon the evolutionary stage of inter-Muslim communications in this part of the world. In his research of the Volga Bulgar-Khazar connections, Mardzani repeatedly states that these two nations were, in fact, one nation from an ethnic point of view. With reference to Arab writers, he also 44

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

maintains that the language of the Khazars and that of the Volga Bulgars were very similar, if not one language: From various accounts of the Muslim scholars of history and from the knowledge derived from their numerous books, it follows that in ancient times the Khazars and the Bulgars were two names of one nation which inhabited that country [the Khazar Empire]. In later times, when that great independent state broke into two, the southern part of it was called Khazaria, whereas the northern part became famous under the name of Bulgaria.

If this statement of Mardzani is to a large extent correct, which we will try to investigate further in the next section the language spoken by Ibn Fadlan in Bulgaria was essentially the Khazar language. Being of Turkic origin, this tongue, as well as its northern Volga Bulgar dialect was, in comparison with the Turkic dialects of the steppe nomad Turks, already in¯uenced by the terminology of urban life enjoyed in 922 by both the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars. It meant that the basic culture of the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars was very similar, and that Baghdad's plan to enforce the pro-Muslim element in the Judaic Khazar oligarchy by converting the whole of Volga Bulgaria into Islam was even better thought of than was discussed before. Moreover, as we will see, this plan actually paid off when, upon the eventual fall of the Khazars, the Volga Bulgaria started to play a major economic and cultural role in the area. It is important that both Ibn Rusta and al-Ma'sudi were contemporaries of Ibn Fadlan. Whenever their accounts of the region might have been compiled, that is, slightly before or almost immediately after the sojourn of the Caliph's delegation, it is clear that Islam was already if not fully established, than very much present on the lower reaches of the Volga. The question for the delegation thus was rather of increasing the political importance of Islam in the area than of its actual introduction to the Volga Bulgars. From this point of view, it is apparent why Mardzani and other scholars speak of the introduction of Islam to the Volga Bulgars as early as at the end of 8th century. Precisely when and why the future Volga Bulgars became distinct from the Khazars is not known although there are some suggestions which will be dealt with in coming sections. At the time of Ibn 45

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Fadlan's journey Volga Bulgaria, as we have already seen, was a separate state still under the dominant in¯uence of the Khazars. In the 10±11th centuries references to the Khazars disappears from the historical annals, whereas references to the Volga Bulgars becomes all the more frequent. One can imagine that no nation can vanish into the darkness of history almost immediately after the fall of their state, as happened with the Khazar Empire. As the Khazars faded as a nation, the Volga Bulgars rose and ®gured in history more and more prominently. Wherever the Jewish Khazars might have gone, it is highly likely that the main body of the Khazar Muslims eventually dissolved among their ethnic kin within the lands of the rising Volga Bulgaria, whose borders at the time of the Mongol onslaught in 1229 are said to have stretched as far south as to the Yaiyk river. Furthermore, it is interesting that at about the same time that Ibn Fadlan's journey took place, there was another major in¯ow of Byzantine Jews into the Khazar Empire. They ¯ed Constantinople and other Christian cities because of yet another wave of persecution unleashed upon them during the reign of the Emperor, the usurper Romanus Lecapenus (919±944). Those Khazarian Jews were mostly merchants and ®nanciers who were, at the expense of the Muslims and perhaps also Christians, gaining the upper hand in the importexport commercial activities of the Empire due to the favourable protection extended upon them by the Khazar rulers. That lucrative trade came to an abrupt end, when the Khazar Empire suffered a major blow in the second part of the 10th century and its cities, most notably, Sarkel on the Don and Itil in the mouth of Volga, fell into the hands of the Russian Varangian invaders. As the Empire did not have much produce of its own, it fell apart politically and economically, and the commercial dominance on the Volga river became a well deserved legacy of the Volga Bulgars who, their continuous import-export operations notwithstanding, were at that time already actively producing goods and even minting silver coins of their own. But at the time of Ibn Fadlan all this was still to come and the natural penetration of Islam along the trade routes and kinship connections from Khawarism and Khazaria had to be crowned by the oath of political allegiance to the Caliph of the time. However, our mapping of the routes of the penetration of Islam into the region will not be complete if we say nothing about yet another nation inhabiting the banks of the Volga between the Khazars and the Volga Bulgars. It was another tribe of, most 46

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

probably, Finnish origin, who in the course of time dispersed among the peoples living in Volga Bulgaria. These were the Burtas who, as Mardzani points out, lived along the Volga between present day Kazan and Saratov. In the account of Ibn Rusta, cited by Mardzani, it is said: The land of the Burtas lies between the lands of the Khazars and the Bulgars. They owe obedience to the Khazar king. Between them [Burtas and Khazaria], there is a 15 days journey. They live in a three days journey from the Bulgar border, on the ¯at ground. Among themselves, they can raise about 10,000 armed horsemen. They actively engage in the production of weapons, farming and stock-raising. The Bulgars, who ®ght with them, take them as prisoners of war. When the Muslim traders visit them on boats, the former have to pay levies at one-tenth of their goods; the Burtas have no money of their own and the money in circulation comes from the Muslim land . . . Their clothes and graves are similar to those of the Muslims; every community has its own Sheik who judges among them, for they have no other judges.

It is impossible to establish how far reaching or how fruitful were the accompanying missionary activities of the Muslim merchants in the Burtas country at the time of Ibn Fadlan. In any case, the Granadian author and traveller of the 12th century, Abu Abdullah Muhammad Gharnati, writes about the Burtas in the following words, again related here by Mardzani: `Their language is different from that of the Khazars and Bulgars . . . They are Muslims and possess a Jami [principle] mosque.' Further mention of the Burtas is to be found in the chronicles by al-Ma'sudi in his account of the pitiful fate of the Russian Varangian expedition through the Khazar domain to despoil and plunder the Muslim lands around the Caspian Sea in 912. With the reluctant consent of the Khazar Khaghan, these ancient Russians sailed into the Caspian on 500 warships and ravaged Tabaristan, Azerbaijan and a part of Khawarism. On their way back with the booty, they were confronted by the joint army of the Khazarian Muslims keen to avenge the misery of their Muslim brethren in Persia and the Christians of the Itil city. In the subsequent battle, which lasted three days, the troops of the Russian adventurers were defeated. 47

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

On whatever stage of embracing Islam the Burtas might thus have stood in 912, this event implies that they were, in the course of an allMuslim affair, allied with both the Khazar and the Bulgar Muslims, despite their feuds with the latter. If we recall that al-Ma'sudi wrote his accounts between 943 and 956, he might have either interpolated the later acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars onto the events of 912 where Islam was not only present in the Volga Bulgaria as early as in 912, but had already become a major driving force in regional affairs. Again returning to Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, we see him approaching the borders of Volga Bulgaria in the unsafe lands of the Bashkirs who, despite the presence of a Muslim Bashkir servant and interpreter amongst the Caliph's delegation, were still far away from naming Islam their faith and further still from having the All-Russian Muslim Spiritual Board placed in their as yet non-existing capital city of Ufa, where we began our story of Islam in Russia. The big trade caravan was always a welcome sight in Volga Bulgaria. Besides, the Tsar was already informed of the arrival of the delegation by his border posts, and a day before reaching the residence of Almush Eltabar the delegation was on its approach greeted by his vassal kings, sons and brothers. Among them was the Crown Prince of Volga Bulgaria Ahmad, son of Almush, who during the time of Caliph al-Muqtadir visited Baghdad on his pilgrimage to Mecca and was awarded, in the words of Mardzani, `many goods, animals, clothes, banners and musical instruments'. Al-Ma'sudi writes that the Volga Bulgar delegation also brought with them a banner and a certain amount of money as a tribute to the Commander of the Faithful and, most probably, the precious fur of the black Burtas foxes, which was in great demand among the kings of the age. On 12 May 922, the Caliph's delegation ®nally arrived at its destination. The Tsar himself, a `chubby, pot-bellied man' whose appearance was `rather impressive and even magni®cent' and who `spoke as if from the bottom of a big jug', met them at the distance of two farsahs or about twelve kilometres from his quarters, dismounted his horse and prostrated himself before the Caliph's messengers, `saying praises to Allah the Almighty, the All Powerful'. Following this, says Ibn Fadlan, he showered the delegation with silver dirkhems and ordered his servants to put up several yurtas, or nomad tents, for the members of the delegation, where these 48

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

important guests were at last able to take rest after their seventy-daylong journey from Khawarism. Whatever can be said of the habitual amenities of travelling in a big caravan of these times and on these routes, Ibn Fadlan and the others in the delegation were apparently much less comfortable than Ibn Battuta who, some four centuries later, wrote that during his journey `everybody eats and sleeps in his wagon while it is actually on the move, and I had in my wagon three slavegirls.' This, at the time of Ibn Battuta, was not something unusual, but rather customary, for, concerning his sea trip from the Indian port of Calcutta, he states, `I needed a cabin for myself because of the slavegirls, for it is my custom to take them with me.' Ibn Fadlan, however was unable to enjoy these luxuries not only because his superior, the Caliph's ambassador Susam ar-Rassi was himself a eunuch, but also because the ®nancial circumstances of the delegation were too inadequate for such an extravagance, and which would be, above all, rather unseemly for a religious delegation. So, whilst the Bulgar nobles and commoners gathered for the occasion, Ibn Fadlan was left to gather his thoughts, for it was he, the delegation's secretary, who had to account for the ®nancial failure of the whole venture. If it was not enough that others imposed this weight on his shoulders, the Bulgar sovereign also made him solely answerable for the lack of money, distinguishing him as `the only Arab' in the delegation. It is ironic that it should have been so because this peculiar attitude to `the Arabs' has persevered among the Muslims of the area up to the present: they are just happy to see an Arab dressed in burnous, whatever the latter may say or do. For the majority of the Muslims of Russia,`Arab' somehow still stands for `Muslim'. For Ibn Fadlan, however, this special disposition became nothing short of an ordeal, since he was made a pawn in the game of a higher politics and, before the game was over, his Arab descendance or appearance indeed put him in a dif®cult situation. Four days passed since the arrival when, amongst a huge congregation of people, the Caliph's gifts were presented to the Tsar and the Caliph's letter was read to him aloud, after which the hail Allah Akbar was voiced so resoundingly that, in the words of Ibn Fadlan, `the earth trembled'. The ceremony ®nished with a kingly feast, during which Ibn Fadlan observed a number of the local customs and partook of the local dishes. Thus, the of®cial acceptance of Islam by the King of the Volga Bulgars from the hands of the 49

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

Caliph of the time was consummated as well as the formal establishment of the diplomatic liaisons between Volga Bulgaria and the Caliphate. But the public adoption of the faith by the tribes of Volga Bulgaria, the thousandth Hijri anniversary of which was celebrated in Ufa in 1989, was still about two months away. Meanwhile, the Tsar of the Bulgars who took in honour of the Caliph the Islamic name of Jaffar ibn Abdallah and changed his kingly title to that of Emir started his inquiries about the money. He proceeded to interrogate Ibn Fadlan and remained dissatis®ed with the story of the plot of Ibn Musa the Christian which the poor Arab told to justify the lack of the 4,000 dinars promised in the letters of the Caliph and his wesir. Such interrogations continued for several days and eventually Emir Jaffar summoned the members of the delegation and proclaimed: You deceived the Muslims and from now on I do not recognise you as guardians in the matters of my faith until such time when from among you will arrive a man whose words will be sincere. If such a man will come then I will endorse him as a supervisor of my faith.

With these words he dismissed the delegation, but from then on, and to the surprise of Ibn Fadlan, the royal attitude towards him swiftly changed and the Emir proceeded to call him `Abu Bekr the Truthful'. This honourable epithet showed that Emir Jaffar knew the history of Islam, but more importantly the sudden metamorphosis revealed that the Emir's ®nal decision to remain with the Islamic rites he already knew was based on very deep political considerations and was not just a whim of a cheated and thus offended monarch. The Emir's resolve concerned the issue of the Iqamah. Ibn Fadlan recollects: While calling to prayer, [the Emir's] Mu'ezzin called the Iqamah twice, which is not customary at the Caliph's Court. Keeping this in view, I told the Tsar: `Do you know that your master, the Commander of the Faithful, lets the Iqamah be proclaimed only once?' After that the Tsar ordered his Mu'ezzin, saying: `Do as he tells you and do not contradict him.' The Mu'ezzin acted according to the given rule for many days, while the Tsar constantly turned to the issue of money and

50

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan argued with me. For my part, I could not encourage him in any way and that was bringing him to despair, yet all the time I had to justify myself. When the Tsar lost all hope for the obtaining money, he commanded his Mu'ezzin to repeat the Iqamah twice, which the latter obeyed . . . Upon hearing this, I shouted at the Mu'ezzin and forbade him to do that.

In vain Ibn Fadlan tried to bring the Islamic rites already existing in Volga Bulgaria in line with the Caliph's tradition. He failed and since then, the overwhelming majority of the Muslims of the area are Hana®te Sunnis. The Tsar, on his part, used the lack of money to justify the action which was for him an imperative for maintaining the existing good relations with the Hana®te Central Asian community in Volga Bulgaria and abroad, as the ruler of the Volga Bulgars did not need that money very much in the ®rst place. Ibn Fadlan writes: Once I inquired from the Tsar: `Your country is so vast, there is a lot of money and your income is huge. Why then did you ask the Caliph to build the fortresses at his own expense?' He answered: `I consider that the kingdom of Islam brings luck, since its ®nances are gained from the sources sanctioned by Islam. Because of this, I applied with my letter. Indeed, would I have desired to build a fortress with my own silver or gold, and I would not have faced any dif®culty in that. For me, though, it was very important to receive a blessing by the means of the money of the Commander of Faithful, so I asked him about it.'

The fortress in question, however, was not built during Ibn Fadlan's presence in Volga Bulgaria. Apparently, on behalf of the Bulgar Emir, this was a far-reaching idea whose ful®lment he foresaw in the more distant future. The mere fact that he openly became a vassal of the Caliph was enough to bring about the anger of the Khazar Khaghan who held the Emir's son hostage and proceeded to demand his daughter for a wife. Regarding the circumstances preceding the Emir's letter to the Caliph, Ibn Fadlan relates: Once the King of the Khazars heard about the unsurpassed beauty of the daughter of the King of the Bulgars he sent an envoy to arrange a match for him. The King of the Bulgars,

51

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan however, refused this wish of his. Upon that, the King of the Khazars sent an army and took her by force, despite the fact that he is a Jew and she was a Muslim. Very soon, she died there. The King of the Khazars demanded the second daughter of the King of the Bulgars. Having heard of this, the King of Bulgars gave his daughter in marriage to the Prince of the Eskel tribe, which was under his rule. These were the circumstances, which made the King of the Bulgars to send a letter to the Caliph.

We cannot tell whether all of this is true, but the overall situation shows that the Tsar of the Volga Bulgars sought allies by means of marriage among his own vassals and among the Oguz Turks. The Emir's wife was a daughter or a sister of the Oguz military commander. If we now recall that the Oguz Turks were sworn enemies of Khawarismians, with whom the Volga Bulgars maintained fruitful commercial and cultural ties, we can appreciate the political wisdom of the Volga Bulgar Tsar even more. The fact that the Tsar gave his daughter to the prince of the vassal tribe reveals two things. First, it shows that the Tsar tried to consolidate and strengthen the emerging statehood of the Volga Bulgars, in which the introduction of the common faith was an important factor. Secondly, since the daughters of the Tsar were Muslims, it indicates that the Prince of the Eskels was already a Muslim or became a Muslim to marry the daughter of the Tsar even before the arrival of the Caliph's delegation. This is easily suggested given that the laws of Islam, in particular those forbidding the Muslims to give their daughters to in®dels, were already well known to the Tsar. Ibn Fadlan had to be satis®ed that he was excused of the responsibility of accounting for the money . While the preparations for the public acceptance of Islam were made by the Emir Jaffar and his noblemen, Ibn Fadlan did what he could, observing the nature and daily life of the people and preaching Islam among the commoners. He was not alone in this: some other Muslims also did what the could to propagate the faith, as their forerunners did long before them. Ibn Fadlan himself observed the Muslim funeral of one Khawarismian woman who was buried in a special Muslim cemetery, which existed in the land along with the pagan graveyards. Also, he discovered a whole settlement of Muslims, the people called the Barandzar, of whom other Arab authors, notably Ibn Rusta, also spoke. Ibn Fadlan says: 52

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan We saw among them a tribe of about 5,000 men and women, all of whom had accepted Islam. This tribe is called the Barandzar. For them, we built a wooden mosque, where they now offer their prayers. They, however, do not know how to pronounce the prayers, so I taught a group of them to say the prayers.

Among others, the outstanding Kazan Tatar archaeologist and historian A. Khalikov maintains that those Barandzar Muslims were, in fact, the remnants of the dwellers of the ®rst capital of the Khazar city of Baradzar, overrun in 736 by Arab troops under the command of general Merwan. In his raid against the Khazars, Merwan travelled along the Caspian shores as far as to the mouth of the Volga, where he also defeated the army of the Silver Bulgars. Twenty thousand were taken captive, the others had to ¯ee north. Thus, the Barandzar also migrated, eventually settling with the Bulgars in the lands adjoining the intersection of the Volga and the Kama rivers. Khalikov writes: The Barandzars presented the most civilised part of the population of the early Volga Bulgaria. Most probably, these were the descendants of the inhabitants of the ®rst capital of Khazaria destroyed in 723 and 736 by the Arabs.

Ibn Rusta also mentions the Volga Bulgar settlements with mosques and primary schools. All of this presents the Volga Bulgaria in 922 as a country leading a half-nomad, half-sedentary way of life and being in a period of transition from the former to the latter. This process was greatly helped by the gradual introduction of urban traditions by the Barandzar and Central Asian settlers who built their own villages near the trade centres. These villages very soon, in a matter of only 25±50 years were to become towns and cities with stone houses, schools, workshops, palaces and caravan-sarays. The giant leap of the Volga Bulgar civilisation after the consolidation of the state in the name of Islam is remarkable. In a matter of a few decades Volga Bulgaria became an largely urban country and in the course of time one of its principal cities, the city of Bilyar, became the largest city in the entire area. Ibn Fadlan proceeded with his meticulous missionary work: Once, under my guidance, a man by the name of Talut accepted Islam, and I named him Abdallah. In response he said: `I want

53

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan you to name me with your own name of Muhammad.' I did so. After that, his wife, mother and children accepted Islam and people proceeded to call them the family of Muhammad. I taught the head of the family the Surahs of the Quran: `Allah be praised' and `Allah is One'. His joy of it was enormous. It could not have been bigger if he would have become the Tsar of the Bulgars.

Here, Ibn Fadlan most probably has in mind the surahs Fatiha and Al Ikhlas. He apparently instructed his converts in most short surahs of the Quran, while also teaching them how to perform the prayers in congregation. Performance of the congregational prayer was most important in bringing the converts together and establishing real bonds of religious communion between them. To achieve that, the premises of a larger mosque were much needed. One wonders what shape the mosque built by Ibn Fadlan and other members of the delegation for the Volga Bulgar Muslims would have been. None of the examples of the wooden architecture of the 10th century have survived and we can only guess about the architectural style of the ®rst Bulgar mosques, only on the basis of much later patterns of the Kazan Tatar and Kasimov Tatar village mosques. It is most likely that the ®rst mosque built under the supervision of Ibn Fadlan had no particular shape and was based on the main requirements for the wooden dwellings of those times. Niaz Khalit in his booklet The Mosque and its Architecture says: In the condition of a more severe climate than that of Arabia the place of worship was being steadily transformed from the completely open yard towards a heated house protected from the bad weather. The Mosques of the Volga-Kama regions had not become an exception. Based upon the traditions of local architecture, those buildings bore upon themselves the traces of the peculiar culture of the Volga region: it concerned small mosques as well as grand constructions like the Jami Mosque of the city of Bilyar of the 9±11th centuries comparable with the greatest mosques of the mediaeval Islamic world. In these climatic conditions the mihrab of a mosque is oriented towards the south, where Mecca is situated, and the mosque itself should be well protected against rain and show and be well heated. The doors towards the prayer hall should be located opposite the

54

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan mihrab, on the northern side. Along with all buildings of this climatic zone the roof of a mosque should have a slope for water to run down.

Interestingly, Ibn Fadlan never mentions who actually performed the duties of the Imam during the congregational prayers, in which he participated whilst in Volga Bulgaria. One is tempted to suggest that it was he that had been assigned to perform this honourable duty. From among the members of the delegation no-one could match his knowledge and education, whereas the Tsar would naturally want the representative of the Caliph to lead the prayers of his people. Such a suggestion is further strengthened by the remark of Ibn Fadlan that he had to reprimand the Mu'ezzin who, on the order of the Tsar, resumed the Hana®te Iqamah. If he were a member of the congregation, such impromptu action would mar the solemnness of the occasion, which the Caliph's own mentor wanted to introduce to new the converts. Being a diplomat, Ibn Fadlan also would not want to cast any shadow on his personal image in front of the Central Asian Muslims of the congregation, who would be only too quick to point out his shortcomings to the Tsar and those in authority. Yet, as the Imam and educator, Ibn Fadlan could reproach the Mu'ezzin in a bid to put things straight. Soon the time came when the Emir ordered his subjects to convene at his summer residence on the banks of the Dzavshir river, where the public conversion to Islam was to take place. Unfortunately, the description of this memorable event is missing from the account of Ibn Fadlan. What we do know is that the Bulgar Emir was determined to execute this conversion. His resolute insistence Ibn Fadlan demonstrates in his account of the message to one Bulgar tribe who was not very keen to obey him: Verily, Allah the Almighty and All Powerful has granted me Islam and a supremacy of the Commander of the Faithful, and I, Allah's servant, am bound to ful®l the duty entrusted to me. Those who will resist me in that, I shall punish with my sword.

Here, we have to note that Ibn Fadlan mentions only one tribe which refused to follow the Emir to the place of public conversion: the tribe of the Suwars under the chiefdom of Vyryg. Kovalevsky suggests that after the Emir's warning, a part of the Suwar tribe, probably the 55

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

nobles, obeyed him and accepted Islam along with other indigenous inhabitants of the Volga Bulgaria. It is they whose capital city Suwar was to become an economic and cultural rival of the kingly city of Bulgar. The rest of the Suwars, Kovalevsky further supposes, crossed the Volga and settled at its right bank. These were to become ancestors of the present day Turkic Orthodox Christian Chuvash people. Sometime in July or August 922 the grand event ®nally took place. The majority of the Volga Bulgar population accepted Islam as their faith which became dominant in their country. In our century the millennium of this event has already been celebrated twice: in 1922 and 1989, when, in Ufa, Kazan, Orenburg and lesser cities and towns of the region, the 1100 Hijri anniversary of the arrival of Islam on the banks of the Volga river was of®cially and publicly commemorated with a series of functions, festivities and, of course, congregational prayers. And so here we have to gratefully bid farewell to Ahmad Ibn Fadlan. His life after the events described is as unknown to us as before them. It appears he had to return to the Caliph's Court and present his account of the journey. The Muslim Volga Bulgaria subsequently remained in closer relation to the Central Asian Emirates than to the seat of the Caliphate; the Oguz tribes refused to accept Islam; in the Khazar Empire, the Muslim entity suffered a major blow as a direct consequence of the acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars. The immediate results of the delegation were thus miserable. Yet in the long run, everything came into being as it was planned by the Caliph's visionaries, at least in regard of the fall of the Khazar superstate. To foresee this, the Caliph and his wesir had to place hope on the political and economic abilities of the Volga Bulgars whom they still considered to be illiterate and uncivilised nomads dwelling somewhere at the world's end. Caliph al-Muqtadir had heard about the Volga Bulgars only once more before his tragic death in 932, when the Volga Bulgar delegation returned him a stately visit on their way to pilgrimage. His reign, marked by domestic turmoil and rebellion, remains in Islamic history as one of the most unsuccessful, and one which laid the ground for the further disintegration of the Caliphate. Yet, in the Volga region, he is always remembered with high respect, for it was he who sent his delegation to the Volga Bulgars with the royal message of Islam. 56

The Trials of Ibn Fadlan

As for Ibn Fadlan, it is to him we owe the precious information about the very ®rst people who readily and voluntarily accepted Islam in this part of the world. It is highly likely then that any of the Muslims of Russia could subscribe to the following words of the Kazan Tatar writer Sultan Shamsi, who stated: When one contemplates the tribute of Ibn Fadlan to the BulgarTatar history and the signi®cance of his legacy, one unwittingly tends to compare him with Herodotus who was called the father of history. Indeed, Ibn Fadlan had done for our history the same that was done in ancient times by Herodotus for the history of the European nations. In fact, Ibn Fadlan, that modest and industrious Arab, has saved our history, having, at the same time, immortalised his own name . . . I dream about the time, when grateful heirs of the Bulgar-Tatar culture, in commemoration of his great human and scholarly exploit, shall erect a monument to Ibn Fadlan. He has already erected such a monument to himself by his own labours. Now, it is our turn to do just that.

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The Birth of the Ummah Islam takes root

2

In the summer of 1971 I worked in the State Archives of the city of Orenburg, whose sanctuary somehow avoided being closed for laymen like myself and did not require special permission to look at documents from before 1936, as others at Ufa and Kazan had done. With only a reference from the Kazan Museum of Folklore, I managed to get access to ®les of the Third Department of Gendarmerie, containing many documents relevant to my peculiar interest. There I discovered something concerning my family tree. It appeared that in 1914 my paternal great-grandfather and his relatives were brie¯y arrested for alleged participation in the socalled Pan-Turkist movement. This happened during World War I, when the Tsarist authorities once again became suspicious towards all Muslims, and the Tatars in particular, for their supposed cooperation with the Ottoman Empire. However, my great-grandfather was quickly discharged from custody. There I ®rst learned that he, Garif Bukharaev, was a rich merchant trading in fur in the Siberian city of Tomsk, where my father was born in 1929. I travelled to Tomsk many years later. Some of my distant kin still lived there and a few ancestral houses still stood on their original sites. But one thing concerning the family had been lost forever. It was our Shadzarah, or Family Tree, the safeguarding and handing down of which has been an obligation for each Tatar family since the 16th century. With the fall of the Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberian Khanates in that century, the of®cial written history of these states came to an abrupt end. In the hope of preventing any further development of Muslim civilisation in the rapidly expanding Russia, the Muslim state archives, libraries, books and manuscripts were 59

The Birth of the Ummah

burnt down by zealous Orthodox Christian `civilisers'. Since then, every Muslim family kept its own historical record: sometimes very brief, other times more detailed and meticulously maintained. By 1971, my Shadzarah could still have been saved: in Tomsk there lived an old man who was rumoured to have it. Alas neither I nor my father found the time to go and check it then. Now, many years later, my father and our elder relatives are trying to restore this record by gathering together family memories and recollections. Some data has been thus recovered but, unfortunately, not all of the list of our cousins seven times removed! A decent Tatar family, whether urban or rural, is required to know at least seven generations of its genealogy to pass the record over to the next generation. The work, however, is on-going and the urge to accomplish it exists. So much for my personal remorse regarding this irrevocable loss. In 1971, however, I discovered that my family tree has two main branches: my father's line coming from Siberia and my mother's line from Kazan. The surname Bukharaev also spoke for itself, as it indicated some sort of connection to Bukhara. But when and how did this connection come to be? In the informative book of A. Bennigsen and E. Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire, it is said of my Siberian ancestors that in 1926 the Tomsk Tatars numbered between 2,000±3,000. This was the time when my young grandfather and grandmother with their two children left Tomsk for Kazan, ¯eeing from the Commissars who exiled many other members of both families even further east to the Krasnoyarsk region where they died in poverty and despair. It seems, however, that the line of Bukharaevs came to Tomsk also from farther eastern regions. Bennigsen and Wimbush state that the Bukharlyks were originally ®fteenth- and sixteenth-century fur merchants from Central Asia and western Siberia. With time, they blended with the indigenous Siberian Tatars and adopted their spoken dialects. In the 1926 census, they were listed as an ethnic group composed of 11,659 individuals.

Family legend has it that our ancestors were these fur merchants who used to trade with Central Asia. These were called Bukharais since their ®nal destination was the city of Bukhara. In the Kazan Tatar language my surname sounds as Bukharai and not Bukharaev, which 60

The Birth of the Ummah

is the russi®ed version. It seems therefore, that at least some of my ancestors used to travel along the very same caravan route which brought Ahmad Ibn Fadlan to Volga Bulgaria in the year 922. Returning to the question of the Tatar Shadzarahs, we discover that almost all of them list their forefathers as Muslims springing from the Volga Bulgars. That usually extends to the 14th century and not deeper than the 13th century, and there is a reason for that. In 1229 the notorious Mongol invasion took place, which caused many Volga Bulgars to ¯ee to the north of the present day republic of Tatarstan, and many Tatar villages there were founded precisely during these times. The next major exodus to the north happened between 1361±1376, when in the wake of the onslaught by BulatTimur Khan, Volga Bulgaria fell prey to the ravaging raids by the Novgorod Slav Russians. So, one can only imagine how many family records of earlier centuries were thus lost forever. As with every ethnogenesis, the formation of the Kazan Tatar nation was a complex and many-faceted process. In my genealogy alone one can ®nd traces of the Volga Bulgars, Central Asian Muslims and Bashkirs. My grandmother was half-Bashkir. In this one genealogy, as in a historical mirror, we can see how various peoples mixed and blended to form only one nation out of a number inhabiting the region from ancient times. Nevertheless, our research is not con®ned to this one family tree, however revealing and instructive it may be. We already know when and how the Volga Bulgars embraced Islam. But the question remains as to who were those Volga Bulgars, where they came from and what af®liation do they have with the Volga, Siberian and even some of the Caucasian Muslims of contemporary times? To try to establish this, we will have to return to times even earlier than those we have already visited, namely, to the 6th century. By 540±550, on the vast territory stretching from lake Baykal and the Altay mountains to Central Asia, the nomad Turkic peoples apparently descending from the famed Huns had formed a powerful state known in history as the Turk Kaghanate. By the Chinese they were called the Northern Barbarians; their own name was the Tyurkyuts, or Celestial Turks. The deepest insight into their history was gained by the discovery in 1889, in the valley of the Mongolian 61

The Birth of the Ummah

Orkhon river, of a burial ground of the Prince Kyul Tegin, with the now famous Runic stone engravings known as the Orkhon-Enissey inscriptions. These were decoded in 1893 by the Danish scholar V. Tomsen and translated by W. Radloff. The contents of this history carved on stone revealed some of the might and grandeur of the once great and permanently expanding state of the Celestial Turks. The lands of this state united many different Turkic tribes, some of which later, in the process of the disintegration of the Kaghanate, created their own states on the territories under their tribal control. So it happened with the Khazars, of whom we have already spoken in the previous section and of whom the historians start to speak of as a separate nation from the mid-7th century onwards. Yet in the ®rst quarter of the 7th century, another state formation adjacent to the Caucasus came into being in the steppes between the Caspian and Azov seas. It was a tribal alliance called `Greater Bulgaria' and its capital Phanagoria on the Taman Peninsula was well known to the Byzantines. Greater Bulgaria had its heyday during the reign of Khan Kubrat, but after his demise in mid-7th century, without the powerful authority of this great leader, the tribal alliance led by him fell apart as a result of inner feuds and pressure from other Turkic tribes who were to become known in history as the Khazars. As we have already seen in the previous chapter, during these early times it is dif®cult to differentiate between the Bulgars and the Khazars, either in ethnic or religious terms, or in terms of their spoken language. All Turkic languages, stemming from the same root, were in fact dialects belonging to various kindred tribes of the erstwhile Turkic Kaghanate. The on-going feuds between these tribes were dictated by power struggles founded on the urge to dominate on nationalistic grounds, as characteristic of the Turkic peoples in their early medieval history as it is today. We, however, cannot endorse the popular view promulgated by some sources that the `good' Bulgars and the `evil' Khazars were antagonistic toward one another from the very beginning of their shared history. It is not incidental that Syrian sources from the 6±7th centuries advance an important legend of three brothers who came from Asia: Bulgar, Khazar and Barsil. Such a myth further points to the common descendance of these tribes which came onto the world scene from their Asian cradle around Lake Baykal. The fall of Greater Bulgaria on the Azov Sea occurred in the wake of its partition by Kubrat's sons Asparuch and Batbai. Conceding to 62

The Birth of the Ummah

mounting pressures from outside and within, Asparuch Khan, along with his horde, went westwards and in 681 founded his own state on the Danube. This state is known now as Bulgaria. With time though, the Turkic Bulgar founders of Bulgaria blended with Slavs and having accepted, by sword and ®re, Christianity at the end of the 9th century, dissolved in the sea of their co-religionist Slavs. So what really remains among the modern Bulgarians of their Bulgar ancestry is not more than the name of their country. Most Turkic features which today can be found among the Bulgarians of the Balkans were probably introduced during Turkish colonial rule, and may have little to do with their Bulgar ancestry. The historic feeling of ethnic brotherhood between the Bulgarians and the Turks, on one side, and the Turks and the Hungarians on the other, survive only in popular memory and political imagination, and are much stronger from the Turkish side. The principal religious difference between these Christian and Muslim nations has played a vital role, severing most of the ethnic ties once present in history. Legend has it that upon the death of great Khan Kubrat, the Bulgars split into three hordes which moved into three different directions, towards the Danube, the Caucasian Mountains and the Volga, where at present their descendants can be found among the Danube Bulgarians, Kazan Tatars and other nations of the VolgaUrals region. In fact, though the latter apparently comprise the descendants of the Bulgars and Khazars who remained in the lands they so powerfully occupied in 8±10th centuries. The only exodus at the end of the 7th century was that of Asparuch's Bulgars who, upon establishing themselves on the Danube, essentially continued their policies of opposition to Byzantium. But theirs is quite another slice of history. The one-time blood brethren of the Danube Bulgarians, Batbai's Bulgars, and among them the so-called Silver Bulgars or Barsils, remained in the Azov and Caspian steppes for another hundred years or so, until the middle of the 8th century, playing their part in the formation of the Khazar Kaghanate. Further to the credibility of the legend, they indeed tried to reach the intersection of the Volga and Kama rivers by the 7th century, but then failed to overpower the local Finno-Ugric tribes. The second and this time successful attempt to penetrate the Volga-Urals region was undertaken by the Silver Bulgars after the ®rst great defeat of the Khazars by the Arabs in 736, of which we have already spoken. From the mouth of the Volga, the 63

The Birth of the Ummah

Silver Bulgars travelled up the river and settled in what later became known as Volga Bulgaria, but, as further developments of history show, they never really severed their cultural links with their kin in the once common motherland Khazaria. The later Khazar-Bulgar antagonism developed apparently not along ethnic but rather religious lines. The early Silver Bulgars were introduced to Islam together with the Khazars in the beginning of the 8th century. Although the Khazar rulers bitterly fought with the Arabs and readily sided with Byzantium, on a popular level Islam penetrated Khazar-Bulgar society more successfully. From Khazaria, the seeds of Islam were brought to Volga Bulgaria by the early Bulgar-Khazar settlers. These seeds took root and germinated, and the whole process of this sprouting growth was consummated by the of®cial acceptance of Islam in 922. The Khazar upper classes, as we have seen, accepted Judaism under obscure circumstances, and apparently from that time on a real discord between their interests and those of the Volga Bulgars set in. This situation was only worsened by the steady economic growth and national self-realisation of Volga Bulgaria itself. On the ethnic level, much fermentation was going on in the region during these times. The Volga Bulgar nation was being formed in constant fusion with other ancient ethnicities, both of Finno-Ugric and Turkic origin. The middle and the end of the 9th century, however, was marked by the most signi®cant events. First of all, the Volga Bulgars under the command of Aidar Khan who had already accepted Islam succeeded in overpowering the ancient Hungarian (Magyar) tribes and squeezing them out of their Volga-Urals domain. The majority of these protoHungarians afterwards wandered for some time in the Oguz-Pecheneg steppes and, ®nally, also travelled west along the ancient routes of the Hun conquests. Under King Arpad in 895, they eventually settled in the Carpathians, where they have lived up until today. Until the ascension of Saint King Stephen (997±1038), when the Hungarians, again, by sword and ®re, embraced Christianity, they were regarded in Europe as the Scourge of God: they mercilessly and very pro®tably ravaged Poland, Bohemia, Germany, France and the rest of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire. Still, a small minority of these proto-Hungarians remained settled in the region contributing their blood and genes to the formation of later ethnicities, whether along the heathen Finno-Ugric (Mary-Cheremis, Udmurt, Mordvin), or Muslim Turkic (Kazan Tatar, Bashkir) lines. 64

The Birth of the Ummah

In 864 the Danube Bulgars accepted Christianity, which in 865 was followed by the most bitter and bloody revolt led by the local Bulgar nobility, resulting in the slaughter of the Roman clergy. But with the acceptance of Christianity, Bulgaria on the Danube had sealed the process of its formation as a distinct state within Europe. Further to the west, in 887, Germany and France ®nally separated, thus postponing the prospect of a United Europe for eleven centuries. In the north of what was to become Russia, Rurik the Viking captured Slav-founded Novgorod in 862 and established the ®rst Russian dynasty, bringing with him and his fellow noblemen the common name of Rus to the various Slav tribes of Northern Eurasia. In 865, these Scandinavian Viking Russians attacked Constantinople for the ®rst time. In 879, Rurik is succeeded by Oleg who soon became the Prince of Kiev, previously controlled and probably even founded by the Khazars. By the end of the 9th century, then, the map of the region began to take a more or less de®nite shape, with the Volga Bulgaria in the north and Khazaria proper in the south. The distillation of different ethnicities was also about to enter a different stage, from a somewhat anarchic and less civilised fusion to the creation of nations bound together by common faith and common economic interests. Thus, as far as the Volga Bulgaria is concerned, by the beginning of the 10th century, the situation was ripe for the acceptance of Islam not just as a faith of certain groups of the population, but as an of®cial state religion essential in the process of the uni®cation of the state. Out of the separate tribes and tribal groups, a distinct nation was about to be born. Although the main tribes of Volga Bulgaria led a semi-nomadic way of life, they had their traditional centres which very soon after 922 evolved into settled towns and cities. Thus, the Suwars founded the city of Suwar; the Silver Bersils established the city of Bilyar, also called the Great Bolgar, and the Eskels, for their part, set up the city of Oshel, which existed until 1220. Despite the ethnic diversity of the population, the Turkic constituent played a dominant role in the region, if only because they settled there as victors over the local Finnish natives and from the very outset established themselves as a governing force. Thus, the prevailing language was, despite its local dialects, a Turkic one in its conservative origin: Khalikov writes:

65

The Birth of the Ummah All these tribes ± the southern Barsils, Savirs, Barandzars, eastern Eskels ± were most likely related by their language, Turkic in its origin, but one cannot exclude the presence among them of different linguistic groups ± ancient Hungarian, Alan and so forth. Still, the groups with the similar tongues probably formed the majority of the population.

Now, we are about to step onto a very precarious path that may well lead us to the bitter arguments which were current in the 19th and early 20th centuries by people who wished to establish the origins of the indigenous nations of the Volga-Urals region. Starting as seemingly innocent scholarly research, this process of determination of the ethnic and linguistic roots of the different ethnicities eventually resulted in a sour dispute, in particular between the modern scholars of Kazan Tatar and Chuvash origin. The primary cause of this scholarly debate proceeded from the earliest question of who can claim ethnic, linguistic and, moreover, cultural descendance from the medieval population of Volga Bulgaria? Indeed, ethnically and linguistically, the Kazan Tatar and Chuvash nations could both claim Turkic origin, each having a long history of sedentary life in the area. Unfortunately, the research of the earlier scholars of the subject was very much affected by various political considerations. These scholars, impartial as they may have been in their own terms, were avowedly anti-Islamic and, subsequently, anti-Tatar by ideology. W. Radloff, for instance, was known to believe that Islam destroyed the innocent nature of the Turks. N. Ilminsky, who heavily contributed to both turcological research and the process of the Christianization and russi®cation of the Muslims in the region, was an Orthodox Christian missionary by professional calling. N. Ashmarin, to whom the present dispute owes its intensity and controversial initial postulates, was a Tsarist censor who kept a close eye on the emerging Muslim press. We could name here quite a few others, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of those who enjoyed an undisputed scholarly authority in the 19th century were either Orthodox Christians by birth, or Orthodox Christian converts naturally prejudiced against Islam. Thus the idea was very simple: to show that Islam is an alien faith brought upon the region by the Tatars who are, for the most part, the Golden Horde invaders, whereas the indigenous Turkic and Finno66

The Birth of the Ummah

Ugric peoples of the region have nothing to do with Islam. To achieve this, it was necessary to trace the ancestry of the Chuvash nation to the Volga Bulgars. In 1865, Ilminsky argued that the Chuvashs are the main and, in fact, only descendants of the Volga Bulgars. Ashmarin in 1902 produced this own theory in which he refused to accept any relation between the Kazan Tatars and the Volga Bulgars, arguing that it is the Chuvash people who are the rightful successors of the population of Volga Bulgaria. This Bulgar-Chuvash theory was refuted by the works of N. Karamzin, C. Fraehn, S. Shpilievsky, and I. Berezin who believed that the right of posterity belongs mainly to the Kazan Tatar nation. From the Kazan Tatar side, the same view has been shared by S. Mardzani, G. Ahmerov and many others. After 1917, however, the Bulgar-Chuvash theory gained new strength under the patronage of the new Communist leadership of the Chuvash Republic. In 1925, the then Secretary of the Chuvash District Committee of the Communist Party, M. Petrov, published a book called On the Descendance of the Chuvashs, which was inspired by Ashmarin, the censor-turned-turcologist and the ideological leader of the Bulgar-Chuvash movement which is very much in existence today. The students of Ashmarin developed his controversial theory upon the few Chuvash words in the account of Ibn Fadlan. Their energy in propagating the Bulgar-Chuvash theory in the 1950s made the keen translator of Ibn Fadlan's book Kovalevsky re-write his translation taking into account the Chuvash origin of certain words which he `over-looked' in the ®rst translation of the famous account. However, we are interested not as much in the ethnic roots of the present day Kazan Tatar or Chuvash people, as in the origins of the Ummah, which was born at the very moment of the public acceptance of Islam by the Volga Bulgars in the summer of 922. Firstly, the Ummah bonds seem to have played a major role in the processes of establishing the ethnic origins of the nations in question. Secondly, since an Ummah is not just a group of co-religionists, however large, but also a community abiding by the same law of shari'ah, research of the Volga-Urals civilisation thus takes on a much bigger scale and becomes more fully comprehensive than separate excursions into the history of this or that nation of the region. Any exploration of ethnic or racial roots in this century is marred by various trends of nationalism, but this is a deep pit into which we 67

The Birth of the Ummah

do not want to fall. We shall avoid here any popularly accepted de®nition of a nation, either as presented by Ernest Renan and Max Weber, or Josef Stalin, not because we could not critique these views, but rather because any of these de®nitions will lead us astray from our own path of describing the evolutionary process of the Russian Ummah at large. In response to any arguments that ¯ared after the break-up of the Soviet Union, we can only quote the observation by Ernest Gellner that Nations as a natural, God-given way of classifying men, as an inherent political destiny, are a myth; nationalism, which sometimes takes pre-existing cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates preexisting cultures: that is a reality.

The remarkable truth of this observation is being proved time and again by the blind nationalistic pursuits of some neighbouring peoples within the Russian Federation, if not so much on the political, then on the cultural level of their contemporary existence. Interestingly, the idea of religious af®liation plays very little or no role whatsoever in these disputes, since all of them are, as a rule and as a tradition, conducted on purely materialistic and atheistic bases. Looking into the core of these scholarly and popular nationalist arguments within Russia, one cannot fail to recognise old Stalinist trends and de®nitions in many disguises even now, when we could have assumed that there are may be some new trends at play in the philosophy and historical self-realisation of the new Russia. Reading all these antagonistic works on the descendance of this or that nation, one starts to wonder whether all these nations became neighbours just yesterday or co-existed and inter-mingled with one another for over a millennium in the same region. And so let us avoid the precarious path of the question of nations and nationalisms by staying closer to the research on the Ummah. This question of the de®nition of what makes up an Ummah is also not one of the easiest. Here, we shall not apply this term in its Quranic usage: in terms of our study, where the idea of a distinct ethnicity and nationality appeared and is bound to re-appear over and over again, the Quranic usage will many a time contradict the historical reality. In the later centuries of Islam, political and other worldly causes were so much at play that even the Quranic idea of 68

The Birth of the Ummah

the Ummah of the racially and ethnically equal people fell pray to those earthly causes. However energetic might have been the attempts to restore the reality of the Muslim Ummah to its Quranic purity, at the end of the 19th century the idea of a national Ummah was already in use, as it is broadly in use now. It is suggested that the ®rst to use the word ummah in the meaning close to European nation, was Napoleon who in 1798 appealed to the religious leaders of Egypt to pray for Al-Ummah Al-Misriyah, or the people of Egypt. However, this does not at all mean that the Muslims of the region wilfully distinguished themselves as members of a separate Ummah either in medieval times or in the 19th century. My remark concerns more the philosophy of this term in its application to the present research than the realities in which this term may appear. Thus, the term Ummah shall, at least in this section of the book, remain an intuitive term encompassing the Muslims of the region in 922 and later centuries, as opposed to any nationalist attempts to trace their origins as members of the present day nations of the region. We are led to acknowledge that the idea of a national ummah appeared in Islamic political thought and historical reality in the very same way, as the sign of the crescent was introduced into Islamic culture: out of opposition. If the crescent apparently became a military symbol of Islam as opposed to the cross during the Crusades, the idea of national Ummah also came, in the wake of the colonial decline and resulting split of the Muslim world, to oppose the idea of a Christian nation. However, this can not be said about the early Muslim population of the Volga Bulgaria as far as the idea of a European nation was simply non-existent. However clever and shrewd the linguistic, ethnic and anthropomorphic arguments of the scholars may appear, one important question stands unanswered in their works: if the contemporary Chuvash nation is indeed the principal descendant of the Volga Bulgars with all the achievements of their civilisation and highly developed culture, why then did the Chuvashs remain pagans for so long, slowly accepting Orthodox Christianity only in the wake of the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552? Further, why did their language acquire the written alphabet only after they became Orthodox Christians, and why is their spoken tongue is so distanced from the major Turkic tongues that none of the Turkic peoples are able to understand it? This contrasts with the surviving medieval apocrypha 69

The Birth of the Ummah

of Volga Bulgar literature, written in a literary language so close to the modern Kazan Tatar language. The easiest reply to all these questions is given by the famous Russian turcologist W. Barthold, writing in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, in which he states: The question has hitherto, even by Ashmarin, been only treated from the point of view of a philologist; but there are other dif®culties in the eyes of the historian. The Chuvash, who are mentioned as early as the year 1551, were known to the Russian to be heathen. Ashmarin gives a few words which had obviously once been borrowed from Muhammadan peoples, but have assumed quite a different meaning among the Chuvash. Pagan prayers begin with the word, psemelle (Arab. bismillah); the god who rules over the wolves is called pikhampar (Pers. paighambar), the soul of the dead, kiremet (Arab. karamat, `grace, miracle'). If the Chuvash are really descended from the Bulgars of the Volga, who lived in towns, and inherited those expressions from their forefathers, we would have here such an incredible lapse to barbarism as cannot be paralleled anywhere in the Muhammadan world. This lapse would be all the more dif®cult to explain as the Bulgar towns arose again immediately after their destruction by the Mongols, and did not succumb until much later, not in wars against barbaric conquerors but in peaceful struggle with other, newly founded towns. The modern Chuvash obviously cannot be descended from the inhabitants of the towns on the Volga but only from such divisions of the Bulgar people as always lived in forests and were little affected by the Muhammadan culture of the cities.

Despite all the evidence, the theory of the sole descendance of the Chuvash nation from the Volga Bulgars lives on. There are many history books, both in Russia and abroad, where this theory is taken as an axiom needing no further proof. However, the fact that in the medieval epigraphs of the Volga Bulgars we see Chuvash words does not contribute to the proofs of the sole descendance of this nation from the Volga Bulgars. On the gravestones of the period we see even Armenian words within the Arabic inscriptions, as the Armenian Christian community is known to have lived in Volga Bulgaria as early as the 8th century. The population of the Volga Bulgaria in 922 70

The Birth of the Ummah

was already a conglomerate of different related and unrelated ethnic groups and, given the desire, we can also trace Hungarians and Russians to Volga Bulgaria. Hungarians especially are very much linked to the Bulgars, albeit not directly, but through the Muslim Khazars. As for the Russians, several Russian historians, namely, Y. Venelin in 1829, D. Ilovaisky in 1881 and V. Florinsky in 1894±1896 argued that as the Volga Bulgars, like their Danube brethren, were in fact Slavs, their descendants can be only found among the Russian Orthodox population of the region, that is, among those peoples who settled there after 1552. The Volga Bulgar Ummah, then, was born as an entity in 922, but as far as the Finno-Ugric peoples of the region are concerned the process of Islamization was long and slow. From the account of Ibn Fadlan we may guess that some tribes who were less dominant than the Turkic Volga Bulgars engaged in international trade and had no kindred Muslim peoples in the south, had also less reasons for acceptance of Islam. The split of the Suwars before the public acceptance of Islam, when one section of the tribe followed the Bulgar Emir to the place of the ceremony, whereas the other section crossed the Volga and settled on its right bank, also points to the above assumption. The Suwars, who preferred to remain in the heathen faith of their forefathers, give us only one example of how the paganism of the Finno-Ugric tribes in the area persisted through the centuries of Islamic civilisation in the Volga-Urals region. The name of their leader was recorded by Ibn Fadlan as Vyryg. At the same time the Eskels who obeyed the Emir and accepted Islam along with the Turkic Volga Bulgars, were also of Finnish origin. So the Ummah was formed not solely along ethnic Turkic lines, but, as is the case with every territorial Ummah, consisted of many different people of different ethnic origins, including the forefathers of the present day Chuvash, Mary, Mordvin and other nations of the Volga-Urals region. As we have seen, no religious af®liation plays openly any part in archaeological, linguistic or other scienti®c arguments between the Kazan Tatar and Chuvash scholars of the Bulgar past. Hence when the Chuvash scholars, backed by their co-religionist Bulgarian colleagues, argue for their nation as the sole successors to the Bulgar civilisation of the region, they do not want to recognise that this part of their history cannot but be an Islamic one. 71

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In this sense, however, we have to speak of their ancestors who contributed their blood to the Muslim Ummah of the Volga-Urals region and not the heathen posterity baptised by the Russians in the 16th century. Mardzani, mentioning that the Turks of Bulgaria accepted Islam earlier that the Finnish peoples, says: As the Finns mixed with the Turks, they slowly and gradually started to take over their faith and language, and ®nally became completely turkicized, so much so, that the tribes living in the neighbourhood of the central city of Bolgar eventually became one tribe and one ethnicity with the Volga Bulgars. To the east of the city of Bolgar, there lived the Bashkirs. Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Asir, Shamsetdin ad-Dimashki, Ibn Haldun and others all thought them to be of Turkic origin. They, as well, being essentially a Finnish tribe, having taken over from the Turks their religion and language, eventually became Turks. It is said that in their tongue, there is a ratio of one Finnish word to every seven or eight Turkic words. Under the Islamic rule, at the time when the city of Bolgar had been already built, the Finnish peoples were Muslims. However, after the fall of Volga Bulgaria and the end of Islamic rule, Islam could not take deep root within some of them. As the Muslim missionaries, failing to confront their paganism and stubbornness, disappeared from among them, they slowly returned to their primeval state of heathen worship. Despite the fact that in the 14th century Islam in the Ulus of Dzuchi was widely spread, the majority of them could not maintain an Islamic way of life, as did the Arabs and the Bulgars.

The Ummah of Volga Bulgaria was developing together with the development of the state itself. As the Khazar Empire weakened, the Volga Bulgaria gained in strength, encompassing the regions and the peoples which for several centuries were tributaries of the Khazars. Islam was becoming a dominant faith in the region also because many of these peoples had already had a notion of Islam, such as the Burtas. As we have seen, the main ethnic components of the population of the region in 8±9th centuries were the Turkic and the Finno-Ugric tribes. Their pre-Islamic coexistence produced not only a very peculiar material culture, but also a speci®c system of beliefs, some of which survived well into the Islamic centuries and 72

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can be found in the region as well as in lands such as Hungary even today. If in the countries with ®rmly rooted monotheistic creeds those pagan beliefs may be singled out in the folk legends, fairy tales and certain folk traditions among those nations of the region who accepted Christianity very late such as the Marys and, to some extent, the Chuvashs. The Finno-Ugric religious tradition relays a whole pantheon of pagan gods and spirits who governed the daily life of the pre-Islamic peoples of the region. Natural phenomena were explained by the existence of a certain god who produced the effects like ®re, rain, thunder, and so on. Woods and highlands of the region were inhabited, in the vivid imagination of the indigenous peoples, by gods of thickets and forest lakes and by a whole range of animal gods. The latter were often worshipped as totems of different tribes who traced their descendence from various birds and beasts. This ancient Uralian and, further, Siberian totemism still has its re¯ections in legends of the various nations. The exploration as to the origins of the totems of the various Uralian nations is an extremely interesting subject in itself. Such a study can reveal not only the predominant religious ideas and concepts of the age of paganism in the region, but also aids the research of ethnic connections of the geographically distanced nations. For example, if we would venture into the Hungarian myths and legends related to the ancient chiefs who conquered the lands of Hungary for their descendants, we discover that Queen Emesu had a dream. In her dream she saw a goshawk approach and fertilise her. Then from her breast ¯owed a broad river of ®re. Then she gave birth to a boy, who was given the name of Almus, which means `Born of the Dream'. Almus was a chief, the ancestor of the Arpad the conqueror and all his line.

Here we see a particular connection between the name of the legendary Hungarian Almus and the name of the Bulgar King Almush who of®cially accepted Islam in 922. It would very tempting to draw a conclusion about the connections of kinship between the line of this King Almus, later Emir Abdullah, and the line of the Arpadians of Hungary. The only conclusion to be drawn out of such striking similarity, is that the proto-Hungarian ethnic element indeed 73

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played a role in formation of the Ummah of Volga Bulgaria. It would be super®cial to dismiss the idea that the Turkic and Ugric ethnicities were at the time so distinct that they did not mix and blend with each other in terms of their culture and spirituality. The Larousse World Mythology, in connection with the Hungarian legend of Almus further states that However characteristic this account, it is by no means certain that it re¯ects Uralian tradition. There are grounds for wondering whether in fact it was not more probably inspired by Turkish tradition, since we know that this legend may go back to the time when the Hungarians were living in contact with the Turks. They were probably part of a federation of tribes, with Turkish tribes holding a dominant position, and it is probable that they attempted to account for the divine supernatural nature of their chiefs by shaping a legend analogous to that which later appeared in the Secret History of the Mongols on the subject of Genghis Khan. Similar legends have been piously transmitted by popular tradition in more than one Turkish or Mongol tribe.

Thus, the Hungarian legend of the Csodaszarvas, or Wondrous Hind, which gives ground to suggest that `the Hungarians seem to have descended from the female deer' may have the same spiritual roots as the totemic beliefs depicted by Ibn Fadlan in respect of the Bashkirs, when he writes that once one of them had told me that he has twelve deities: the god of winter, the god of summer, the god of rain, the god of wind, the god of trees, the god of humans, the god of horses, the god of water, the god of night, the god of day, the god of death, the god of earth, and the greatest god of all is in heaven. The latter, however, lives in harmony with all other gods, and each one of them approves of what the other is doing. From myself I can add that our Allah is far exalted above anything, which is said by those in®dels; Great is Allah in His Supreme Greatness.

The persistent connection between the ancient Bashkir and Hungarian cultures is further evident from the remarks of Mardzani 74

The Birth of the Ummah

about the Bashkirs, or Badzgurd, settled in Hungary in the 11±12th centuries. This Kazan Tatar scholar relates the following account of the famous Arab historian and geographer Yakut al-Hamawi: In the city of Haleb I saw many people who were also called the Bashkirs. Well-built, red-faced, these people were studying religious subjects according to the teaching of Imam Agzam Abu-Hanifa. From one of them, a man of wisdom, I inquired about their land and culture. He told me the following story: `We live behind Konstantinia [Byzantium], in the European land of the nation called the Hungarians. We are Muslims and obey their King. In one part of their country we have about thirty villages of our own, each of them comparable to a small town. Anyway, their King does not permit to build walls around our settlements, out of fear of disobedience on our part. So we live in the midst of Christian towns. To the north from us lies the land of Slavs, to the south, there resides the Pope of Rome. To the west, there is the land of Al-Andalus, to the east, the land of the Romans. Our clothes and our language are similar to those of the Europeans. We, along with them, ful®l military service. We also go to war together with them, since they wage war not with everyone, but only with those nations which oppose Islam.' Then, Yakut al-Hamawi continues, I asked them how they happen to be Muslims in the lands of the in®dels. My interlocutor replied in this way: `Our forefathers narrated that, in time of yore, seven Muslim people from the land of the Bulgars came and settled in our land. They, seeing that we wander on the wrong ways, taught us Islam, which is the only true path. With their help Allah guided us along the straight path, opened our hearts for the faith, and, all praise belongs to Allah, we all became Muslims. Now, when we ®nish our education here, our people will receive us with respect and entrust us with religious duties.'

Apparently, the Bashkirs encountered by Yakut al-Hamawi were from the Muslims of Hungary who left in the eastern part of the country town names like HaidubeszermeÂny. Later they blended with the Christian population or emigrated to Romania, contributing to the ethnogenesis of the so-called Romanian Tatars. This example nevertheless shows the ethnic and spiritual links, which where 75

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present between the Bashkirs of the Volga-Urals region and Hungary in these times. Apart from the totemistic beliefs and spiritual explanations of natural phenomena, there were many other beliefs related to the daily social and economic life of the indigenous inhabitants of the region. A house itself was in a way a temple of the household gods, especially the god of the hearth from whom usually proceeded all the warmth and abundance of the house. The picture of the universe, with heaven and earth inhabited by supernatural beings, was completed by the grand religious idea of the holy Tree of Life, which somehow connected the world above with the world below. The evolutionary metamorphosis of this idea is apparently linked to the cult of worshipping the sacred groves, or Keremet, found in the Chuvash, Udmurt, Mary and Mordvin heathen practices. The allusion to this ancestral belief is also present in the ancient Hungarian popular legend of EletfaÁja, or Tree of Life. As far as the Volga Bulgars are concerned, in the Kazan Tatar scholarly anthology Quests, Meditations, Findings, G. Davletshin writes: In the cosmogenic outlook of the [Volga] Bulgars the motifs of the `World Tree', `Tree of Heaven', `Tree of Life' occupied rather suf®cient space. This `World Tree', in itself, combined many diverse but very closely connected ideas. For instance, it depicted the source of life, and, at the same time, the symbol of abundance, the refuge of the unborn or diseased human soul, or the soul of the whole tribal clan. Simultaneously, it presented the model of the universe, connecting earth and heaven, being a pillar, upon which the heaven rested. In the artwork of the Bulgars, the motif of the `Tree of Life' was one of the most popular. The world outlook connected to the `Tree of Life' was present in the history of the Bulgars from the most distant times. The big trees, according to the beliefs of the Huns and Suwars, presented the link between the Tengri Khan residing in heaven and humans. `The Mother of a Big Tree' was worshipped at one level with Tengri himself. All the heathen rites and all sacri®ces to Tengri were performed beneath the same big oak-tree. Worshipping of big trees is also peculiar to the Finno-Ugric peoples neighbouring the Bulgars. Al-Gharnati writes, how the ancient Mordvins prostrated themselves beneath the large tree.

76

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Yet again, however various and different the pagan beliefs of the Finns and Turks might have been before they came to live together in the region, one cannot fail to notice the many similarities which apparently existed from the dawn of history in the creeds of these once ethnically and geographically distanced peoples. We can only guess from which parts of northern Europe and Siberia the Finnish tribes came to occupy their present lands in the region, but about the Turks it is more or less clear. Despite the distance between Lake Baykal and the forests of northern Eurasia being enormous even in terms of the present forms of communication, the religious beliefs and practices as well as the very idea of the creation of the universe are sometimes strikingly similar among the peoples of far distanced geographical localities. For instance, the myth of a duck creating the Earth by diving into the depths of the primordial ocean existed and was re¯ected in the material culture of the tribes living from the Kamchatka Peninsula across the Urals to the banks of the Volga. This motif of Creation is found on the amulets and jewellery of the Volga Bulgars as well. It seems that various forms of Shamanism also belonged to the common religious past of the Turks and Finns alike. The Larousse World Mythology, for instance, says: The Uralians must have had some knowledge of Shamanism. Evidence taken from Samoyeds, Lapps, ancient Finns, Voguls, Ostyaks and even the ancient Hungarians all points quite positively to this fact. All these peoples believed in the power of sorcerers, who followed certain procedures and performed certain rites in order to enter into communication with spirits from both heaven and hell.

While in Kazan Tatar and Bashkir mythology the ancient ancestral beliefs have taken the shape of the fabulous and fantastic fairy tale creatures like Su Anasi (The Mother of Water), Abzar Iyasi (The Master of Barn), Oy Iyasi (The Master of House) and so forth, the original beliefs and rites can even today be found being practised among the super®cially Christianized or Buddicized Turks of the Altay Mountains, Tuva and Khakassia in southern Siberia. These Turks who through the centuries barely survived double `educatory' pressure from the Chinese and the Russians, stand most close to the ancient Celestial Turks in their outer appearance, beliefs and material culture. Dwelling in the most remote mountains, they 77

The Birth of the Ummah

retained many of the features of their forefathers all but lost by the Turks of Central Asia, Volga-Urals and Anatolia. Some ®fteen years ago I myself was witness to an act of hearth worship which occurred in the remote mountainous village of Yabogan in the Altay mountains, but could well have been observed in any forest village within a hundred kilometres from Kazan. My host, an elderly Altay Turk, habitually splashed a tiny portion of what he was drinking towards the ®reside, and the same was done with morsels of food. All of this was accompanied by the relevant words. The man was a renowned Shaman, despite his Orthodox Christian name, and was known to possess healing powers and the gift of prevision. It was said that he is able to leave his earthly ¯esh and wander in his spiritual body for hundreds of kilometres or to the neighbouring villages. For him, the surrounding world was full of talking spirits who were also very instrumental in reminding him the lines of some forty to sixty enormously huge folk epics which he used to recite for the local people. There were two major gods: the God of Heaven, who the Altay Turks call Kudai, and the God of Evil by the name of Erlik. The ®rst name apparently originated from the Persian Huda, and this is the only allusion of Islam to be found among the Altay Turks. The name Erlik is more natural and comes from Er, Earth in any Turkic dialect. Among the sky deities, one of the most powerful was the goddess Umai, ®rst mentioned by name in the ancient Orkhon inscriptions and still present in the traditional quasi-religious thinking of the south Siberian Turks. Strangely enough, I failed to ®nd in the common Altay creed of the present, which is a peculiar mixture of ancient pagan and Buddhist ideas, any immediate mention of the god who ruled supreme in the spirituality of the ancestors of all the Turks for so many centuries. This is Tengri, the All-Encompassing God of Heaven, whose name is commemorated in the names of so many geographical objects from the east to the west, beginning with the high mountain of Khan Tengri and ending with the Hungarian word for sea, tenger. This belief in Tengri, now extinct and submerged, affected the whole of the religious history of the Turks and Mongols from ancient times until the 13±14th centuries, when the last nomad Tengrians of the Golden Horde accepted Islam. It seems, however, that the rule of Tengri was much more welcomed and acknowledged by the nomad Turks of the steppes and 78

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other open space habitats, than by their fellows residing in the lower mountains and taiga forests of the Far East and southern Siberia. Indeed, it concerns the whole idea of a god as a Helper, a Provider and a Refuge. In a situation when there is no other shelter except the Tent of the Sky, the idea of the all-powerful Sky God in¯uences the thinking of a wandering nomad much more powerfully then the environment of a forest thicket, where every tree can become a retreat, a provider of food, and, eventually, a saviour. The nomad tent itself presents the idea of mortal futility and transitory existence under the eternity of heaven. Interestingly, the dwellings of the Altay Turks, in which I had the honour to stay as a guest, though designed in the six-angled shape of a nomad tent, are in fact built of solid cedar wood and manifest in themselves a human de®ance of the omnipotence of the skies above. This may be one of the explanations as to why the Altay Turks did not give up their heathen doctrines for the sake of Islam, living in close proximity to the Islamic peoples of Kazakhstan and Kyrghizia. A further interesting observation concerning the cult of Tengri, contained in the article by Jean-Paul Roux in the Encyclopaedia of Religion, is that The active sky god is an imperial creation that concerns only imperial religion: the people devoted attention to him only in times when imperial power was suf®cient to command widespread obedience to the deity.

If this is true, then the position of the sky god Tengri in the Turkic and, subsequently, the Bulgar pantheon, was much more ®rm and elevated during the periods of power and glory such as, for instance, the period of Kubrat's Greater Bulgaria. After its fall, Khan Asparuch's Bulgars continued the worship of Tengri on the banks of the Danube and that served them well for two centuries before the subsequent forceful conversion to Christianity. Likewise, the cult of Tengri re-emerged once more during the formation of the Volga Bulgaria as a separate state with a single superior ruler. Nevertheless, the idea of Tengri was very much a part of the Turkic perception of the universe. The speci®c rites of Tengri worship may have been over-shadowed by the acts of worship and sacri®ces to much less abstract deities, but the name and the presence of the Superior Sky God was always remembered and felt in the 79

The Birth of the Ummah

background of the Turkic and turkicized Bashkir spirituality. This is further illustrated by the words of Ibn Fadlan who, about the Oguz Turks kindred to the Bulgars, says: If some trouble befalls any of them or there happens any unlucky incident, they look out into the sky and summon: `Ber Tengre!'. In the Turkish language, that means, `by the One and Only God!'

The fact of the matter is that Tengre stands for God in the Kazan Tatar and Bashkir languages even today, being a frequent synonym for other names of the Creator: Allah (Arabic) and Huda (Persian). This alone shows how naturally the cult of Tengri served as a base for easy acceptance of Islam in the region among those tribes and ethnicities which worshipped Tengri as their supreme deity. Indeed, the cult of the Supreme God of the pagan pantheon becomes much more distinctive in the society built upon a de®nite hierarchy of power. The more autocratic is the power, the more the need for its re¯ection in the spiritual world of the people. In this way, certain tribes of the Volga Bulgaria were much more prepared to recognise the God of Islam then others, which due to the less evolved hierarchy in their tribal societies did not have a clear idea of the Supreme God in their pantheons. This implies that Islam in Volga Bulgaria was taking root differently among the various tribes. Those of them who, like their ancestors, worshipped the supreme Tengri, such as the Turkic Bulgars, Khazars and other representatives of the Turkic element of the Ummah-to-be, were much more likely to accept ideas and concepts of the Islamic Unity of God, then the Finno-Ugric Uralian forest dwellers who had heathen but complete beliefs of the universe as an equilibrium equally sustained by various gods of Earth and Heaven. This equilibrium was of course shaken by the arrival of Islam, but rather super®cially, especially among the Finnish forest dwellers far removed from the urban activities of the other, more powerful tribes of Volga Bulgaria. Considering how super®cial even the impact of Orthodox Christianity is today among the Marys and Udmurts of the forest villages, it is not surprising that their reluctant acceptance of Islam under the cultural pressure of the dominant Turkic Bulgar tribes could, circumstances permitting, very quickly degrade to ancestral pagan beliefs. 80

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Apparently, this is precisely what happened with the Bulgar forefathers of the Chuvash people. As opposed to the nomad Bashkirs, whose primordial Uralian-Finnish spirituality in the wake of their wide wanderings gave way to the ideas of Tengrianism and subsequently Islam, the spirituality of the ancestors of the Chuvashs, who probably were settled dwellers of comparatively remote provinces of the Volga Bulgaria albeit gravitating towards the dominant urban Islam still revolved around the pagan ideas of their forefathers. Those of them who, by embracing Islam joined the economic and cultural mainstream of the Volga Bulgar civilisation, became an integral part of the Ummah and their descendants are now to be found within the Kazan Tatar or Bashkir nations. It is this Chuvash element of the Volga Bulgar Ummah, the reminiscences of whom appear on the surviving Bulgar gravestones of 13±14th centuries. Evidently, this line of Chuvash Muslims in time blended with the Turkic Muslims through Islamic intermarriage. And so we can say that the Volga Bulgar Ummah, which further evolved into the present day Ummah of the region, consisted in the beginning of various ethnic components among whom the most distinctive were the dominant Turkic and supportive Finno-Ugric elements. Any research as to the racial purity of this or that nation of the area is therefore a waste of time as all nations now inhabiting the region, that is, the Kazan Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvashs, Udmurts, Marys, Mordvins and even Slav Russians are inter-related and can ®nd common ancestors on certain stages of their ethnogenesis. Moreover, such common ancestry and conspicuous blood ties can be revealed between the Muslims of the region and the Christian Hungarians who long for ethnic relatives in the world. If not for the religious contrasts, which differently shaped the history of these peoples, the Hungarians could immediately recognise a whole multitude of their Turkic kin in the east. Alas, their attempts to ®nd kindred nations, for the most part, do not venture deeper than the studies of the de®nitely Finnish and, furthermore, Christian Marys, Udmurts and Mordvins. Again, this remark does not concern Hungarian scholars whose scholarly interests always rested with the explorations of the Muslim kin of the erstwhile USSR. Among them, I, with reverence and remembrance, name my untimely deceased friend Istvan Mandoki Kongur, an outstanding turcologist and linguist, who rests in peace in the Kazakh city of Alma Ata, where he himself willed to be put to rest. Born, as all his ancestors, in eastern 81

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Hungary, he never had any doubts as to where he should look for his kin and roots. So, if the present author can indeed proudly count himself among the most typical representatives of the Ummah of the region, he can say that, in the ethnic sense, he is a product of several intermingled lineages, where along with the Turkic Volga Bulgar and Finnish Bashkir, the ancient Hungarian line may also be present. Perhaps this accounts for my being able to acquire ¯uency in Hungarian in only three months. Neither I nor others could explain the miracle of such speedy mastering of a foreign language except for a somewhat unscholarly proposition that this is indeed a phenomenon of awakening of ancestral memory.

82

That Time of Bloom Volga Bulgaria develops as an independent Islamic state

3

The site of Bilyar and its archeological ®ndings has provided scholars with the most far-reaching insight into the ancient history of Volga Bulgaria. The city itself was probably founded in the beginning of the 10th century along with two other big cities of the region: Suwar and Oshel. Its foundations were laid on a ¯at plateau at the ancient place of heathen worship, the Dzavysher Hill with its holy spring, mounting by the bank of the Lesser Cheremshan river. This was the same place which the Bulgar King Almush summoned his subjects for the popular conversion to Islam in the summer of 922 and where the Islamic history of Volga Bulgaria and its Islamic civilisation started in earnest. These excavations showed that the city was originally planned as a rectangle with its corners aiming to the four cardinal points and, like the similar ancient capital cities of the Danube Bulgars, Pliska and Preslava, was comprised of the central citadel, the inner city, the outer city and the suburbs. The citadel itself occupied the territory of about 500,000 square metres; its wooden walls, with entrance arches from each side, were up to ten metres wide with huge square corner towers, also looking to the four cardinal points. This was the fortress, of which the Bulgar sovereign wrote to Caliph al-Muqtadir and which was erected by the Volga Bulgars without any help from outside. The archeological data shows that the city of Bilyar, or the `Great City' of the Russian chronicles, from its very foundation in the 930s had a spacious kingly compound with the main mosque built of wood, but in the middle of the 10th century was already boasting a house of worship constructed of white stone with 24 stone pillars holding its ceiling. Later, a new 83

That Time of Bloom

two-storey building constructed of bricks had been adjoined to this impressive royal mosque where resided spiritual head, the imam of this Volga-Kama kingdom. Both men's and women's halls of the mosque together occupied the area of 2,500 square metres; to the north by the mosque, there stood a tall minaret beside which were public water wells and barns, and in the remnants of which the excavations unearthed more than twenty kinds of seeds of different cereals. Thus, in a mere eight years since the Caliph's delegation left Volga Bulgaria, the was a formidable fortress and a mosque, from which the King could address his subjects on behalf of the Caliph. But although, at a ®rst glance, the acceptance of Islam in his domain proceeded under the would-be logo `the ruler determines the religion' his grip upon ultimate power was still not absolute as it is shown by the simultaneous emergence and development of the competitor cities of Suwar, Oshel and Burtas. Nevertheless, the archeological exploration revealed in Suwar a wooden fortress with a ruler's palace built of bricks with central heating underneath the ground ¯oor. The entrance to the palace was decorated by a massive portal; on the narrow side of the building there stood a square tower peculiar to the early forms of Muslim architecture. The same two-fold structure of a princely quarters surrounded by lay dwellings distinguished the city of Burtas, which, according to Yakut al-Khamawi, had a large mosque. Its dwellers spoke a Turkic dialect, somewhat different from those of the Bulgars and the Suwars. The city of Oshel structurally varied from other Bulgar cities, having its citadel located in the south-western corner of the city, from which its was separated by a deep trench and other forti®cations. All of these cities were established already in the 10th century, but their historical destinies turned out to be rather different. Bilyar and Suwar were the main contestants in grandeur and prosperity up to the end of the 10th century, which is proved by the fact that until 976 both cities minted their own silver coins. Still, the process of consolidation of the Volga Bulgar state under one ruler resulted in dominance of Bilyar, which soon turned into the main city of the region. But this was only a modest beginning of what was to come. The creation of the Ummah seemed to be very intensive, and the tribal and dialectal differences were soon overcome by the common religious af®liation and common economic concerns. Such ethnic 84

That Time of Bloom

developments in the area only supplemented the observation of Steven Runciman who states: Nationalism in the east had been for many centuries based not on race, except in the case of Jews, whose religious exclusiveness had kept their blood comparatively pure, but on cultural tradition and geographical position and economic interest. Now loyalty to religion became a substitute for national loyalties.

However, we cannot say that the uni®cation of the Bulgar tribes in the name of Islam occurred without any problems. Ibn Fadlan narrated the story of the Suwar who split along religious lines at the very beginning of the process of Islamisation of the region. One section of the Suwar under the command of the self-proclaimed Prince Vyryg crossed the Volga and settled on the right bank of the river. Those of the Suwars who adopted Islam founded the prosperous city of Suwar which rivalled the capital city of Bulgar the Great until 976, when the process of centralisation of Volga Bulgaria became almost complete, and Suwar lost its relative sovereignty. As a result of this, a considerable part of the Suwar nobility, along with their clans, emigrated to Hungary. Whatever the feudal disagreements in the area may have been, both cultural traditions and the geopolitics of the region for the most part facilitated the rise of the Volga Bulgars as one nation bound together by the new drive for economic supremacy along the Volga and Kama rivers. The most important role in the process of establishing this economic dominance belonged to the ancient trade centre long situated in the intersection of the Volga and Kama, which was called Aga-Bazaar. It was in this place where Ibn Fadlan observed the Varangian Russians coming to trade with many other peoples of the area and where the King of the Bulgars was able to ride without any escort or guard. Later at some distance from the trade centre, a new city came into being. Indeed, already in the 10th century this small town became a genuine centre of commerce for the whole region, to which merchants from both north and south ¯ocked, highly attracted by the convenience of its location and precious variety of its riches. However, it was several times robbed and looted by various adventurers from the north, and in 1164 it was completely destroyed by the Russian troops of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. 85

That Time of Bloom

Apart from large cities and commercial centres, the area had plenty of smaller peasant settlements and feudal fortresses, some of these dating to the age of rivalry between the Bulgars and the Hungarians. Yet Islam as a religion originated in towns and not surprisingly its culture is better seen in the urban history of the Muslim world. This region was no exception to this rapid rise of an urban civilisation, the likes of which were still to come to eastern Europe. Indeed, at its hey-day several decades later, Bilyar occupied an area of 530 hectares with a population exceeding 100,000. In comparison, Kiev then covered 150, Vladimir 160 and Paris 430 hectares. Later, on the lower reaches of the Volga, another big trade centre, Saksin, took root and prospered on the commercial and pilgrimage routes to the Muslim south. The former Khazar capital city of Itil in the mouth of the Volga in the course of the centuries developed into another important stopping point for merchants and pilgrims alike. Because of its importance as a staging post for the Muslim pilgrims of the north, it assumed the name of Hajitarkhan: the present day Astrakhan. As to the developments of crafts and the level of artistic expertise, it will suf®ce to say that the Volga Bulgars were the ®rst in Europe to begin to smelt high-quality cast iron; the Bulgar towns and cities, except for the construction of the mosques, schools, palaces, caravan-sarays and civic buildings with central heating and plumbing systems, were noted for ferrous metallurgy, pottery, gold and silver working, and the production of leather goods. Indeed, in Central Asia and Iran the best leather and leather footwear is called Bulgar since these times. The main occupations of the Bulgar peasantry were farming and cattle-breeding. Signi®cantly, in the central as well as in the provincial districts of the region, in the lands of the bulgarised Burtas, the agricultural activities went along similar lines; they cultivated mainly wheat, barley and millet, using the same agricultural tools. The uni®cation of the Bulgar population in terms of economics and culture was further facilitated by the home trade activities undertaken by the local merchants who already in the 10th century created a wide commercial infrastructure. Beside barter deals, the silver coins of the Volga Bulgarian mints were widely used to pay for goods and services. These coins have since been found as far away as in northern Russian and the Baltics lands. 86

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As for the expansion of Islamic practices, archeological explorations show that in the second half of the 10th century the pagan burial grounds begin to be replaced by Muslim graveyards. In those days the burial rite was performed in strict accordance with the Hana® law which does not approve of placing particular gravestones upon the graves. In later centuries, the Bulgar graves of the wealthier people were marked by carved stones with Arabic inscriptions, the most ancient of which dates to 1271. After the beginning of the 13th century, the Bulgar and, further, Kazan Tatar grave-stones were already decorated with certain recurring motifs and calligraphic inscriptions, which can be found in Tatar cemeteries even today. One of these inscriptions, which usually run along the side edge of the stone, says: `I see the world essentially as a wreck, it will not enjoy lasting peace.' In any case, in the 10th century all Muslim graves were uniformly unmarked and distinguished by only a small elevation of the ground. D. Mukhametshin has noted: In the Bulgar graveyards of the 9th±12th centuries, a typical `orthodox' Islamic burial rite is observed. Here, a considerable uni®cation of all details is noted: the strict observance of Qiblah, the body is typically placed with a slight turning to the right, the right arm is stretched along the body, the left arm bended under the pelvis. There is no any relic items whatsoever, and, on the graves, there is still no trace of the grave-stones.

Further, during the archeological excavations it was revealed that in no case was one grave interfered with by the site of another. This means that the graves were somehow marked to be distinguished from each other. These marks might have been a legacy of the early Bulgar burial rites when a burial ground was marked by a stone, an obelisk or even a stone image. Islam teaches reverence to other creeds and rites and so the digging at the sites of the Bulgar cities exposed many pagan obelisks of earlier times, which were left untouched and not used for construction work, although the white stone Bulgar cities demanded a large supply of building material. Such respect for the past comes into striking contrast with later centuries when during the 18th century construction of the Orthodox Novo-Uspensky Church at the site of Outer Bolgar, the old grave-stones were laid into the foundation of the church: they can be seen and examined even today. 87

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Nevertheless, in one excavation near the remnants of the city of Outer Bolgar, a stone head of the Turkic idol has been unearthed and that was built into the foundation of a building. Islamic contempt for idolatry was steadily taking root in the society of the Volga Bulgars. What kind of society was this? Certainly, it was a feudal society with an authoritative liege at the top and a number of vassal rulers under his authority. History has preserved for us the names of the Volga Bulgar emirs for several centuries. We already know Emir Jaffar bin Abdullah who was reigning until at least 943 when he undertook a military expedition towards Constantinople by the route already well known to his heathen grandfather Zubeir Khan. Seemingly, that expedition was a part of a wider campaign to overcome the rule of the Khazars in the region. By the latter part of the 10th century the Volga Bulgars were already holding the lands of their rival Khazars who suffered blow after blow from the Russian Varangians and Petcheneg mercenaries of Byzantium. The tribute of Emir Jaffar towards the establishment of the Volga Bulgar state cannot be over-emphasized: he was the one who turned the evolutionary current of civilisation of the area towards the heights later achieved by his successors. His son, Emir Ahmad, is known to have visited Baghdad on his way to pilgrimage during the reign of Caliph al-Muktadir who died in 932. He apparently then was just a crown prince and ascended to the Bulgar throne already as a Haji, knowing much more about Islam than his father ever did. His rule, however, was a shorter one, and in 949 the Bulgar silver coins bear the name of Emir Talib. The name of the next ruler of Volga Bulgaria appears in the coins minted in 977. It was Emir Mu'min, during the reign of which Volga Bulgaria started to suffer onslaughts from Russians, mainly Varangs from Novgorod. These occasional attacks continued until 985, a remarkable year in the history of both the Volga Bulgars and Kievan Russians. S. Mardzani does not state who was the ruler of Volga Bulgaria at the time, he only lists a number of successive emirs, the ®rst of which, Emir Shamgun, is said to descend from the Danube Bulgars, with whom the Volga Bulgars still held close ties of kinship. Different sources, however, state that Emir Shamgun reigned between 976±997 and during his reign undertook joint military expeditions towards Byzantium together with the Danube Bulgars. After Shamgun, there followed Emir Khaidar (997±1017), his son Emir Mukhammad (1017±1032), Emir Sa'id (1032±1048) and Emir Baradz (1048±1111). 88

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However, the ®rst really serious military encounter between the Muslim Volga Bulgars and the heathen Russians took place in 985, when the Russian Kievan Prince Vladimir with his uncle Dobrynya and Novgorod warriors. This was a more substantial military venture than any previous attacks by the Novgorod northerners who had a habit of plundering the banks of Volga. N. Karamzin, referring to the earlier narrative by the medieval monk Nestor, describes this expedition in the following words: On the banks of the Volga and Kama from very ancient times there lived the Bulgars who moved there because they did not want to obey the Khan of Khazaria. With the passage of time, they became a civic and commercial nation; by the navigable rivers, they maintained links with the north of Russia, and via the Caspian Sea, with Persia and other rich Asian countries. Vladimir, willing to take over Kama Bulgaria, went down the Volga in several vessels with the Novgorod warriors and the famous Dobrynya; along the banks they were followed by the mounted Torks, allies or mercenaries of the Russians . . . The Great Prince defeated the Bulgars, but the wise Dobrynya, according to the annalist, upon examining the captives and seeing them wearing leather boots, said to Vladimir: `They would not like to be our tributaries; let us better look for some people in bast shoes!' Dobrynya thought that the well-off people have more reasons and means to defend themselves. Vladimir complied with his opinion and concluded peace with the Bulgars who solemnly promised to live in friendship with the Russians, af®rming their oath with the following simple words: `Not even when a stone ¯oats and hops sink in water will we break this treaty of ours'. If not with a tribute, the Great Prince returned to his capital with much esteem and rich gifts.

Although the Volga Bulgar oath was not sealed by the name of Allah and was, rather, worded in a heathen tradition, the early Muslims of the area stood by their promise, which, unfortunately, cannot be said about the Russian pledge to this treaty. Many Russian Princes, constantly squabbling and feuding with each other, broke this treaty laying waste to the cities, towns and villages of the Volga Bulgars. But this happened after almost a century of uninterrupted peace, namely, after Russia split into a number of rival principalities feuding 89

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with each other. In 1115 Prince George of Suzdal went down the Volga into the land of the Kazan Bulgars and returned with a great booty. In 1164, Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky also went to the land of Bulgars and defeated them in alliance with the Prince of Murom Yuri. In 1171, Prince Andrei yet again undertook a winter onslaught against the Volga Bulgars along with Ryazan and Murom Princes. N. Karamzin states, that this time the Russians before retreating plundered six Bulgar villages and one town. 6,000 Bulgar troops followed them to the border, which was then situated about twenty miles from the mouth of the Oka river, but never crossed the frontier. In 1182, the same scenario was again repeated by the Russians, but with more success. Karamzin again: Looking, like Andrei, with envy towards Volga Bulgaria blossoming with arts and commerce, Vsevolod wanted to take possession of it and asked other princes for help. The war with in®dels seemed in those times to be fair in any case.

This particular warfare shows that not only were the Russians eager to partake of the Bulgar riches. On this occasion, Turkic nomads, who ®gure in the Russian annals under the joint name of Polovtsy (Kypchaks), joined forces with the Russian army. This allied force unsuccessfully besieged the fortress of Bilyar, but also looted three other Bulgar towns. In 1220 another war took place, resulting in the capture by the Russians of the city of Oshel, of which N. Karamzin has left us a most informative account: Apparently, the Kama Bulgars from very ancient times traded with the people of Chud abiding on the Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions: watching with discontent the newly established dominance of the Russians in those peaceful parts, they also wanted to become conquerors and ± more through cunning, than by force ± took Ustyug founded in known time by the unknown people . . . In order to establish themselves in the town, they simultaneously tried to gain control over the banks of the Undza river, but were defeated and soon saw the Russian army in their own country.

Karamzin notes that the town of Ustyug, as well as the district around, was then inhabited by people who paid tribute to the Great 90

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Russian Prince George and, at the same time, to the Principality of Rostov. This belonged to the Russian domain, albeit only nominally, as the natives of it were not Russian but rather Finnish people conquered and subdued by the Russians. For their rare military venture, the Bulgars were punished beyond all limits. Karamzin continues: George's brother, Svyatoslav, together with the sons of the Murom princes and strong army of irregulars, came ashore below the mouth of Kama and, leaving behind the guard to secure his vessels, went towards the city of Oshel forti®ed by a tall oak citadel with two walls, between which there was a rampart. The frontrunners were people with ®re and axes; the shooters and the lancers followed. The ®rst cut off the pillars of the citadel, the others set ®re on the walls, but as a strong wind blew right into their faces, they, encouraged by the words of Svyatoslav, went round and set the town ablaze from the opposite side. The sight was horrendous: whole streets were burning; ®re, in the stormy gale, was ¯owing like a rapid river; desperate dwellers, shouting, were trying to escape from the city, but could not avoid Russian swords; only the Bulgar Prince and some of his horsemen were lucky to escape. Other Bulgars, not begging for mercy, killed their wives, children and themselves or perished in the ®re along with many Russians looting the city. Eventually, Svyatoslav, seeing in the city just heaps of ashes, went away, followed by crowds of captives, mainly women and children.

Other Russian detachments went up the Kama river, destroying the lesser Bulgar towns and settlements. For the Russians, the expedition proved so successful, that when in the winter the Bulgar delegation came to demand peace, the Great Prince refused, as he was preparing for a new assault. The Bulgars, nevertheless, persisted in their requests for peace and, ®nally, persuaded the Great Prince with the help of rich gifts. The Russian delegation went to Volga Bulgaria, where a new peace treaty was concluded, and the Bulgars, this time, secured their words `by Muslim Law'. Let us return, however, to 985, when the ®rst and the most lasting peace treaty between the Volga Bulgars and the Kievan Russians had been concluded. This treaty brought about nearly 130 years of peace, 91

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which proved equally bene®cial to both sides. The Kievan Rus, being now safeguarded from the east by the kingdom of Volga Bulgaria, which broke free from its dependance from the Khazars in 969, gradually settled as a civic state pursuing not only its military goals, but also expanding its natural diplomatic links with the countries of the west and south. Towards the end of the 10th century ferocious Russian Viking rides into Byzantium slowly died out, and through the marriage of the Kievan Prince Vladimir to Anne, sister of the Emperor Basil II, in 988, the royal Bizantine-Kievan links ®rst come into existence. In 986 the Kievan Rus, this cradle of Russian civilisation, was standing at the most important juncture of its history. For the ®rst time, it was free and independent as its earlier masters the Khazars were defeated and driven into Crimea, to occupy only a small fraction of their once huge domain, where the remnants of the Jewish Khazar people lived up to the middle of the 12th century. At the same time, the Turkic Petchenegs who seized the southern provinces of the Khazar empire and became loyal mercenaries of Byzantium, though often venturing north towards Kiev, were not formidable and unstoppable enemies. In fact, the Kievan Russians and the Pechenegs, both disputing the steppes south from the present-day city of Ukrainian Kharkov, and, even more importantly, the middle and lower reaches of the commercial artery of the Dnieper, saw between themselves times of war and peace and their relations worsened only after the Kievan Rus accepted Christianity. Before that, the Russians tried to appease the Pechenegs with the help of Byzantium, which had its own vested interest in promoting trade with the north along the Dnieper. The Kievan rulers, being of the same blood as other Vikings of Europe, were naturally inclined to ally with the emerging Western states. But their religious af®liation or, rather, non-existence of any, became a major obstacle in, ®rstly, the process of consolidation of their own state and then in becoming an integral part of Europe as we perceive it today. Orthodox Christianity started to take root in the Kievan Rus since Princess Helga accepted it at the end of the 9th century, but the pagan practices were still widespread in all circles of Russian society. Legend has it that Prince Vladimir of Kiev had eventually chosen the Byzantine Orthodoxy for the rich beauty and visual grandeur of its worship. The result of such an acceptance had, nevertheless, a global 92

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impact on world history. The Kievan Rus and, subsequently, Russia, had thus separated itself from the rest of Europe, a gap which only widened through the centuries of the so-called Tatar-Mongol yoke, when Russia effectively became a province or ulus of the Golden Horde. In 988, at about the same time as Christianity became accepted in Hungary (under Stephan the Saint, 997), Sweden (under Olaf Skotkonung, 994), Norway (under Olaf Tryggvesson, 993), the Kievan Rus started to count itself among the Christian states. However cruel the history of converting the heathen Slavs to Christianity might have been, the Volga Bulgar Muslims did not become enemies of the newly accepted Russian faith overnight: in 1006, a large delegation from the region visited Kiev signing a commercial treaty, according to which the Muslim merchants received the right to trade all over Russia without any impediment or restriction. Thus, the eastern frontiers of Russia became safe for decades to come. In the south, towards the end of the now Christian Prince Vladimir's reign. In the subsequent history of Russia the warring Princes all too often used the assistance of different Turkic nomads against their own kin. Indeed, so many inner and outer troubles were in fact in¯icted by the Russian Princes upon themselves that such a state of affairs was more of a rule than an exception. Still, by the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century, the internal jealousies of Russian principalities was only a dark shadow of a real trouble to come, and their southern frontiers were comparatively peaceful. From 1019, a new monarch ascended the Kievan throne and tried to bring together the brawling Russian principalities. Great Prince Jaroslav, or Jaroslav the Wise, was probably the ®rst Russian ruler to establish a semblance of a civic calm on the territories under his control; he became renowned not so much for his conquests within medieval Russia and abroad but for his love for knowledge and his Codex of Laws known as `The Russian Truth'. In bringing under his hand the rival principalities, especially Novgorod, Jaroslav was assisted by the Varangians; his Northman descendance also helped him in establishing royal links with the most prominent rulers of Europe. His ®rst daughter, Elisabeth, married the Norwegian king-to-be, Harald; another daughter, Anastasia, was given in marriage to Andre I, King of Hungary. Yet another of Jaroslav's daughters, Anne, 93

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became the wife of Henri I King of France, in 1048. Her son Philip, being a king of France, had such great respect for his mother that until 1075 Anne was signing all the stately papers along with her son. Interestingly, her other son from Henri I, Hugh, Count of Vermandois, became the ®rst Western knight to embark upon the First Crusade in 1096. About him, Steven Runciman remarks: He was proud of his lineage, but ineffectual in action. We cannot tell what his motives were in joining the Crusade. No doubt he inherited the restlessness of his Scandinavian ancestors. Perhaps he felt that in the East he could acquire the power and riches that be®tted his high birth . . . Before his departure he sent a special messenger ahead of him to Constantinople, requesting the Emperor to arrange for his reception with the honours due to a prince of royal blood.

According to Norwegian chronicles, one of the Jaroslav's six sons, Vladimir, was married to the daughter of Harald, the unfortunate king of England, defeated by William the Conqueror. Other sons were married to the daughters of Kazimir King of Poland and certain German nobles; it is also said that Vsevolod, fourth son of Jaroslav, had a Byzantine wife. Thus during the reign of Jaroslav, the Kievan Rus became allied with many royal courts of Europe establishing the long-lasting diplomatic liaisons further developed by consecutive intermarriages of Russian and European royals. Volga Bulgaria also had its good share of the treaties of 985 and 1006. Muslims of the region were able to further develop their trades and handicrafts; widen their numerous cities and towns; construct houses, schools, palaces and civic buildings. The agriculture prospered. Commercial liaisons with the Muslim world burgeoned along the caravan routes and the Volga river; at the same time, more and more people from the area went to perform Hajj and returned to their homeland with the knowledge of the outer world. Situated so far in the north, the region did not suffer from the turbulences which befell the Caliphate at the end of the 10th century. From the ascension of the Buyid dynasty in 945 until the advent of Seldjuks in 1055 the Caliphate was in the state of persistent turmoil, instigated by inner rivalry and internal divisions: The Seldjuks, this mighty posterity of the heathen Turkic Oguz tribes mentioned by Ibn Fadlan in his account, were to play a most 94

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prominent role in the affairs of the Caliphate for centuries to come. Being essentially Turks, the Volga Bulgars only bene®ted from the rise of their ethnic brethren in Central Asia and Iran. Somehow, the popular Western view describes the shift of power in Islam from Arab to Turks as the end of the glorious and sublime Arab civilisation. The perpetration of such an assessment can or, rather, may be partly justi®ed, in political terms, by the threat seen in the West from the much later Ottoman Empire, but that would be in any case, an ideological justi®cation. Accidentally or not, H. G. Wells in his Outline of History, ®rst written in 1920, when Ibn Saud with the clandestine help of the British still waged wars in Arabia in order to separate the Middle East from Turkey, is of the opinion that: Until the Turk fell upon it, the intellectual life of Islam continued . . . The intellectual man has been loth to come to grips with the forcible man. The controversial Western attitude towards Turkey of the beginning of the 20th century, however, cannot cast any shadow on the Islamic civilisation of the Turkic peoples in much earlier centuries.

In the same book, H. G. Wells mentions the great Avicenna, or Ibn Sina, the Prince of Physicians, who lived and worked in 980±1037 in Bukhara, and was, at least, a half-Turk by his mother's lineage. It seems that H. G. Wells and other authors tend to confuse the military and stately resolve of the Turkic and, later, Turkish Muslim dynasties as opposed to the decadent rulers of the late Abbasid Empire, with the character of civilisation they built and were ruling upon. `The forcible man' during the Seldjukid period of Islamic history was indeed frequently found among the ruling classes, but it would be unfair to imply that the tide of the pre-Turk Muslim civilisation was in any way slowed down or reverted under the Seldjuk rule. The Seldjuks were indeed `Muslems of the primitive type, men whom Abu Bekr would have welcomed to Islam. They caused a great revival of vigour in Islam', asserts H. G. Wells and further proceeds to say that `they turned the minds of the Muslim world once more in the direction of a religious war against Christendom'. This statement not only itself forms a political clicheÂ, but also re¯ects the popular Western perception of Islamic history as that of the curious and, indeed, inexplicable combination of forcefulness of politics and sublime intelligence of arts and culture. 95

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If this is the case, then the Seldjukid period of Islamic civilisation is no more `crude', than any other period, for at any time we may choose to highlight resolute actions changing the layout of the world map or less visible developments changing the whole outlook of mankind in the ®elds of culture, science and philosophy. As for the notorious insistence on the `religious wars', whatever the judgement on the pre-Seldjuk age of Islam may appear, the Seldjuks ®rst came into collision with the Western form of civilisation only in 1097, when the Crusaders attacked Nicaea, forcing their way to Jerusalem. It is conceivable that Volga Bulgar culture evolved very much in conjunction with the cultural achievements of the Central Asian states. The Muslim merchants, those harbingers of Islam, were not only travelling far and wide but were also settling in the big prosperous cities, where the need for education was becoming increasingly necessary. The Muslim communities thus grew alongside communities of different faiths, among which the Russian communities and their welfare played an increasingly important role. As we have already seen, the well-being of the Volga Bulgars depended on the existence of the trade network which connected the Russian north, rich in fur and other commodities with the Muslim south, abundant in luxury goods and silver dirkhem coins, in which Novgorod was especially interested. In the north, the main rival and, at the same time, the main commercial partner was represented by Novgorod, a freedom-loving city-state, the independence of which was always undermined authoritative powers emerging in medieval Russia. Relishing the traditions of Northmen, which encouraged its volunteers to go into plundering rides and widening its own economic grip on the northern territories, Novgorod thus lived in uneasy subordination to the Kievan princes, trying to safeguard its peculiar commercial freedoms from the greedy embrace of ever brawling Russian feudal monarchs. Still, between Novgorod and Volga Bulgaria in the course of 10th and 11th centuries there existed a status quo of mutual trade relations authorised by the commercial treaties with the Kievan Rus. Towards the beginning of the 12th century, however, the existing status quo started to suffer serious setbacks. Neither Volga Bulgaria nor Novgorod were to blame for this but rather the fratricidal tendencies of the Russian principalities, which split Russia into a number of ever quarrelling and ever ®ghting ®efs, thus cutting off the 96

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long-established trade routes. Such internal division resulted in the gradual shift of power from Kiev to the eastern principalities of medieval Russia, among which the Vladimir-Suzdal principality soon became a new centre of gravitation for Russian statehood. This new centre was already very close to Volga Bulgaria, competing with the latter for the once neutral zone of Murom-Ryazan region between the two states. It was Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky who continued this drive east, making the town of Vladimir his capital in preference to Kiev and showering it with wealth, and building the most beautiful Orthodox temples of medieval Russia, whose construction work the Bulgar stone masons also participated in. Even the limestone of which the grand buildings of Andrei's princely palace and the Cathedral of Dormition were constructed was imported from Volga Bulgaria. One of the architectural pearls of medieval Russia, the exquisite Church of Intercession, was also constructed from the same limestone, and erected in memoriam of Andrei's son, Mstislav, who was killed in the 1171 military campaign against the Volga Bulgars. Yet where are then the stone mosques, civic buildings and public baths of Volga Bulgaria of the 12th century? Where are the architectural monuments of the city which, according to the account of the famous Granadian traveller and preacher Abu Khamid al-Gharnati, was `huge and full of learned people', so much so, that al-Gharnati in 1150 wrote: A learned man is therein called balar, that is why the whole country is called Balar, meaning `a scholar'. This name had been arabicised and became the name of `Bulgar'. I read this out in the `History of Bulgar', which was re-copied by the Bulgar Qadi who was of the students of Abu-l-Masali Dzuveini, mercy of Allah be upon him.

Al-Gharnati in 1135 spent half a year in Volga Bulgaria and was an eyewitness to the magni®cence of the country then. His deductions on the etymology of the word `Bulgar' are subject to doubt: he clearly mixes up the words `Bulgar' and `Byliar', but this is understandable, because he wrote his book after spending long years travelling from Al-Andalus to the Caucasus, then to the city of Saksin-on-the-Volga, then to Bulgar and Kiev, and on to Hungary, from where he went on pilgrimage to Mecca, later to settle in 97

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Baghdad. But many observations of al-Gharnati aid our comparatively scarce knowledge of the daily life of the Volga Bulgars. He, for instance, writes that in the city of Ibrahim there were several public baths, one of which `was very high with wide doors', capable of accommodating even the ten-feet-tall giant of the royal guard, whom al-Gharnati claims to have seen with his own eyes. However, the wonderful architectural remains which can be seen today date from the 14th century and give us only a possibility to guess what the palaces, mosques and public buildings of Volga Bulgaria would have looked like. There is evidence, for example, that in the reign of Khan Ibrahim, Volga Bulgar masons participated in the building of not only the Russian churches, but also in construction of the Jami Mosques in the cities of Sebsevar and Khosrodzerd of the Iranian province of Nishapur. As for the Volga Bulgar professional tribute to the Russian architecture, the Russian historian Tatitshev in his History of Russia mentions that Prince Sviatoslav Gavriil Vsevolodich, having knocked down the decayed church built in Yuriev by his grandfather erected another one, most wonderful in its different stone ornaments. The mason was a Volga Bulgar.

Volga Bulgaria was famed not only for its masons and scholars, but other trades too. The Bulgar professionals were so proud of their work that they often left their own trademarks on the manufactured items. One of the iron locks found in the archeological diggings, for instance, bears such an inscription: This is an accomplishment of Abu Bekr son of Ahmad. Continuous glory and peaceful success, and all-embracing happiness, and grandeur, and prosperity be with the owner! In the summer of 541 [1146±1147].

This lock was produced just before the peaceful co-existence of Volga Bulgaria and Rus came to a violent end, about the times of Thomas Becket and Peter Abelard (1079±1142) in the West, where in 1141±1143, commissioned by the Abbot of Cluny, the ®rst Latin translation of the Holy Quran comes into being. These were also the times of the Second Crusade and the military successes of Nurutdin Sultan of Syria in the south. 98

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The overall picture of Volga Bulgaria at its prime was depicted by the Russian Professor A. Smolin in his Archeological Account of the Tatar Republic, in the following words: `Bulgaria occupied a territory, which, as regards economic conditions, was to a large extent favourable. The fertile soul allowed farming to develop. The ®ne water-meadows gave good pasturage for livestock. The rich forests not only provided varied building material, but also concealed a multitude of wildlife and yielded a large amount of furs, for which Bulgaria was famous. In addition, the forest was good for bee-keeping. The big, deep rivers were not only abundant in ®sh, but also served as good routes of communication, both within the country and beyond its borders. The presence of copper ore, and also the wealth of building stone, completed the conditions, which were undoubtedly conducive to the economic development of Bulgaria. The riches of Bulgaria were so well known and so convenient for exploitation (thanks to communications on the Volga) that this country became almost a world market, on the scale of those times. Not only the East, but the South and the West extended their commercial feelers into Bulgaria. The trade route from Bulgar and Suwar into Central Asia, through the Russian lands to the Baltic Sea and from the Caspian Sea, and also along the Volga to the Don, and down this artery to the Black Sea, Byzantium and Africa, can be traced by the many tenth-century Bulgar and Suwar coins that are found among the hoards of eastern gains of that epoch.'

However, in the middle of the 12th century the Volga Bulgar wheel of fortune was turned in the opposite direction. We have already seen, how the strengthening of the Vladimir-Suzdal Rus led to distortion of the established commercial traf®c and to the increased Russian efforts to take over the command of the trade routes along the Volga river. Whatever could be said about the underlying causes of the increased Russian hostility to their all-time neighbours, the main reason for the Russian advance to the East was of mercantile origin. The Vladimir-Suzdal Rus battled to become the main economic centre of Eastern Europe, viewing Volga Bulgaria and Novgorod as the chief competitors blocking its way respectively to Northern Europe and Muslim-Christian South, the shape of which 99

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was already dramatically changed by the Crusades. After the ®rst major advances by Andrei Bogolubsky hailed in Russian history for converting a lot of Volga Bulgars and Jews to Christianity (which, of course, is another word for forcing then into the faith by his lucky sword), this trend lasted for the rest of the century. Andrei's successor Vsevolod continued his brothers policy. In 1183, Suzdalian armies, joined by their neighbours from Murom and Ryazan, mounted a campaign that drove deeply into Bulgar territory. Vsevolod conducted subsequent campaigns in 1185 and 1205. As a result of these efforts, Suzdalian control was extended down the Volga river to its juncture with the Oka. Suzdal's princes then turned their attention to acquiring political dominance over the Burtas (Mordva) that dwelled in the region and fortifying their territorial position. In 1221, Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich constructed Nizhny Novgorod at the mouth of the Oka river. This town was, in fact, taken over from the Bulgars and not constructed at the time.) The Suzdalian princes also aggressively evicted Bulgars from territories to their north. After Konstantin Vsevolodovich, then prince of Rostov, founded the town of Ustyug Velikii at the mouth of the Uyg river, Bulgars, attacked and brie¯y regained control of that outpost (1218). (N. Karamzin, Medieval Russia 980±1584, p. 128, states that the founders of this town are not known, but it lay in the area under the Muslim control.) Konstantin's brother Yuri, who had that year replaced him as prince of Vladimir, regained possession of it and in 1220 once again invaded Bulgar territory. The net result of all these campaigns was to push back Bolgar's western frontier. Suzdalia, by taking possession of Ustyug and Nizhny Novgorod, expanded its own territory to the north and the east. In the process it enhanced its own economic base and political authority by incorporating the trade routes upon which Bolgar depended for its northern supplies and its contact with Novgorod. So, even the Russian chronicles tend to acknowledge that the ensuing Bulgar struggle with their increasingly hostile Russian neighbours was anything but provoked. If the Volga Bulgars are at all to be blamed for their behaviour in 11±12 centuries, it is, in fact, for their complacency and self-contentedness, which prevented them from any military expansionism, then, of course, the order of the day. The conventional wisdom of Qui desiradet pacem, praeparet bellum, `Let him who desires peace prepare for war', seems to have 100

That Time of Bloom

avoided the philosophy of the Volga Bulgar statehood, which at the end of the 12th century was already doomed to loose its full independence enjoyed for more than 250 years. The conquest, however, was to come from most unlikely quarters: the Mongolian hordes of Genghis Khan. There is always a temptation for a historical writer to ®nd comparisons, and this author would believe that in some aspects of stately behaviour Volga Bulgaria could be only compared to Muslim Spain. Engaged in economic and intellectual pursuits far from the turmoils and ordeals of the day, Volga Bulgaria was quite satis®ed with what she had, nor wishing for anything more in terms of enlarging its territory at the expense of less civilised peoples to the East, neither apprehending the change in the Russian fortunes. The status quo she had achieved appeared to her to remain ever-lasting. The area largely remained under control of the Volga Bulgars: the trade routes down the Volga seemed safe and would have suf®ced even in case of total blockade from the North. This total blockade never occurred, also because the VladimirSuzdal Rus still required not only the quality goods from the South, but rather frequently was in need of much simpler commodities like the Bulgar grain. The time has not yet come to incorporate the Muslim area in the growing Russian territory, not yet. But one can see from above that only the Mongol onslaught, which once again linked the fates of Volga Bulgaria and Rus, had prevented more wars and larger annexation of the already shrinking Bulgar territory.

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Summer 1229±1400s

PART

2

Farther, across Etilia, the Kuman principality borders upon, ®rst of all, Great Bulgaria, of which those Bulgars living between Constantinople, Hungary and Slavonia, are descendants. Well then, the one situated in Europe, is Minor Bulgaria, where they speak the language of Great Bulgaria, which has its location in Asia. And those Bulgars of Great Bulgaria are sworn Saracenes, which is surprising, if we consider that their land . . . lies in the North; therefore, it is surprising that the teaching of Mukhammad reached the places so far distanced from the Saracenes. Roger Bacon Opus Majus, 1260

I cognise that this library is our only luminary; it is the best which the Christian world can set off against thirty six libraries of Baghdad, ten thousand volumes of Wezir Ibn al-Alkami; I am aware that the number of your Bibles is comparable with two thousand four hundred Qurans of Cairo and that the existence of your reserves is an illustrious actuality shaming the insolent prevarication of the pagans who since long had boasted (being so close to the Prince of falsehood) that their library in Tripoli is ®lled with six million volumes, and is inhabited by eighty thousand commentators and two hundred scribes. Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose

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Enter the Su®s Peculiarities of the development of Islamic thought

4

It is only a historian who is keen to divide the lifespan of men and the duration of civilisations into certain periods, attempting to ®nd links and resemblances between distant events and personalities. For people living in their own historical environment, the vital changes are not evident, as the certain perpetuity of their daily life and apparent eternity of their traditions ensure continuity in their thinking, even in times of troubles. In this sense, the old Roman saying of Ver non semper viret ± spring is not always in bloom ± is a most natural historical observation of common people and philosophers alike. But for a national historian, especially if the history of his nation has been belied and obliterated for certain reasons far removed from unbiased scholarly purposes, it is very inviting to present its evolution as a staircase of events gradually ascending towards the heights of civic achievements and moral perfection, which, in its own turn, might be presented as a result of religious understanding equally spread throughout the whole of society. Such a vision would make national rulers the most enlightened and tolerant monarchs, the national merchants saintly harbingers of truth and benefactors of all and sundry, and the national peasants, holy sowers of daily bread and everyday spirituality, whereas the national writers and philosophers would be presented as the cream of humanity for all centuries to come. However grotesque such a vision would seem to appear, similar fairy-tales of national history all too often are presented, albeit in more effective discourses. For an Islamic society like that of Volga Bulgaria, any illusion of communal happiness fades away with the mere presence on the 107

Enter the Su®s

social scene of certain ®gures who, already by their existence and far more by their lives and works, symbolise religious and civil dissent in such a society. The shadow of al-Halladj will always be present in the most developed and powerful Islamic states of medieval times. In Volga Bulgaria, as in all Muslim lands of the day, the dissenting personalities were the Su®s. Ranging from a destitute wandering dervish to a famous poet welcome at the kingly palace, these men voicing Godly Justice played a pivotal role in shaping the appearance of Islamic civilisation of their respective historical ages. Not incidentally, they are also more warmly remembered than even the most great and powerful rulers of national history, and their works and opinions more often survive in the grateful and rather selective national memory. This is particularly so if the of®cial annals are being consistently and intentionally destroyed throughout the ages by various invaders and colonisers, as is the case with Russian Muslim history. Volga Bulgaria was suf®ciently famous to leave its historical traces in the chronicles of the outside world. It is to these, mainly Arab, chronicles that we owe at least some ideas of what the region was like in the early centuries of its existence. Through the tireless labours of such Tatar and Bashkir writers as Shigabetdin Mardzani, Hadi Atlasi and Riza Fahretdin, the distorted history of the area was partly restored, but, as their work was carried out under the unrelenting pressure and unwinking eye of the Russian Orthodox authorities, they could not be as outspoken and balanced in their judgements and assessments as would be required by a scholarly approach of our preference. Still, their work has an immense and immutable value of relating to us precious moments of history along with the names of kings, warriors and Su® intellectuals of the time. In recreating the social, cultural and religious environment of Volga Bulgaria of the 11th±12th centuries, we keep in mind that the context was greatly in¯uenced by two main factors, both of which, through their inter-play and progress, contributed towards the peculiarity of Volga Bulgar civilisation. The ®rst of these factors was the traditional culture of the Volga Bulgars, which from the time of their appearance on the stage of history somehow distinguished them from other Turkic groups. This particular culture, re®ned and, inasmuch as it was not going against Islamic injunctions, sancti®ed by the resilient Muslim understanding of things, represented the very basis of Volga Bulgar, and further, Kazan Tatar civilisation. The 108

Enter the Su®s

second factor, the impact of which on the life of Volga Bulgar nobility, merchants and intellectuals cannot be over-estimated, was the in¯uence of Central Asian, especially Khawarismian, and East Iranian cultural settings. Volga Bulgar merchants who, along with the country's farmers, were most instrumental in creating the famous wealth of the country, were also the main medium for transferring the cultural traditions and achievements of Central Asia into the region. Even the arrival of Islam itself, as we have seen, had been precipitated by the urgent requirements of the merchant community of Volga Bulgaria, which as time went by turned into an increasingly powerful lobby within its society. Apparently, the needs of this merchant community were one of the main driving forces of the country's development, whereas the sovereign Emir, while enjoying the full authority, was simultaneously bound to safeguard and, if need be, protect the far-reaching interests of the tradesmen. It is not known for certain whether this community of tradesmen had its of®cial say in the management of the country's affairs, but the very evolution of Volga Bulgaria as a commercial centre on the Volga suggests that their voice was heard at least as clearly as it was heard while deciding on the Hana® mazhab for the Volga Bulgars in 922±923 AD. If the merchants themselves were not represented in the high council of the country, their needs and necessities were conveyed to the sovereign by their patrons from among the Emir's courtiers. However, the Volga Bulgar Emirs ruled supreme and their personal preferences and inclinations were predominant in the whole setting of the country's internal affairs. The following story of three successive Emirs of Volga Bulgaria shows how volatile the character of the society could sometimes be, depending on the character of its supreme ruler. From 997 to 1017, the Volga Bulgar throne was occupied by Emir Khaidar who combined in his character a keen interest for religion and love for music and dancing. He would often sit long hours with the Muslim scholars discussing the tenets of Islam but would also spend his time watching the dancers and listening to musicians who would come to his court from as far as Bukhara. His palace was at times full of poets and singers, but with his demise this age of joyfulness also came to an end. His son and heir Emir Mukhammad was in no way like his father. His interest for religion evolved into a deep and often grim dedication. No singers or dancers approached the kingly quarters during his reign of 109

Enter the Su®s

1017±1032. Instead of musicians, skilled masons and builders were supplied to his court from Central Asia. To his people's amazement, Emir Mukhammad started to build mosques of stone and made it obligatory for many towns of his domain. He developed a strong taste for religious education, ordaining that children of seven must go to school: this was also made obligatory for the country's noblemen. At the same time, Emir Mukhammad was not noted for his religious tolerance, so necessary for a country attempting to attract merchants from all over the world. He proceeded to oppress the Greek and Armenian Christian minority, imposing upon them high taxation and preventing them from building and renovating their churches. He even tried to drive away the Christian clergymen, thus further weakening the country's position as a secure and tolerant commercial centre. Through his efforts, Volga Bulgaria lost considerable share of its pro®ts, as the Christian tradesmen started to avoid such an inhospitable land and explored the markets of the Kievan Rus and Novgorod instead. This unfortunate trend, however, was changed by Emir Mukhammad's successor, Emir Saghid who restored the country's reputation for religious tolerance during his reign of 1032±1048. He had a much broader religious outlook than his zealous father and the kingly quarters once again became not only a place for Islamic debates and discussions, but a centre of arts as well. This combination of worldly and religious attitudes was characteristic for the next reign as well, which happened to be the longest in the Volga Bulgar history. Emir Baraj ruled the country from 1048±1111 and, having no sons, at the age of 90 abdicated the throne to his foster-son Ibrahim, who reigned until 1164. We also remember that in 1164 the long standing status quo between Volga Bulgaria and the Vladimir-Suzdal Rus suffered a great blow by the onslaught of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. We know that both Emir Ibrahim and Andrei Bogolyubsky had in their veins the blood of the Kypchak nobility. As far as Volga Bulgaria is concerned, it is during the lengthy reign of Emir Baraj that the Kypchaks started to settle and mix with the indigenous population of Volga Bulgaria. Thus, the strong cultural and kinship links between Volga Bulgaria and Kypchak steppes were once again developed and strengthened. During this development the merchant classes of Volga Bulgaria proceeded to maintain steady foreign relationships of their own. It is 110

Enter the Su®s

known that in the course of the 11th and 12th centuries, Volga Bulgar merchants had established foreign trade colonies in the Central Asian and Iranian cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Balkh, Sebzevar, and Nishapur. Several friendly treaties enabled them to sustain business relationships with the northern neighbours whom the crops of the fertile soil of Volga Bulgaria often saved from famine. During the two-years-long famine of 1228±1229 all over Rus, particularly in Novgorod and Belozersk, the Volga Bulgars consistently shipped to the starving Russian princedoms large quantities of cereals, and the last independent Volga Bulgar Emir Ilham, later to be killed in a battle with the Mongols, himself sent to the Prince of Novgorod twenty boats of grain. However signi®cant in terms of the region's history the lives and deaths of Volga Bulgar Emirs and Russian Princes may seem to appear, in 1166, in a small town of Yassa in the Kypchak steppes, in present-day Turkestan, there died another man whose legacy in the cultural evolution of the area cannot be over-emphasised. His name was Ahmad Yasavi and he was a great poet and the ®rst renowned Su® of Turkic origin, creating the Su® movement of Yasaviya, the Tarikah (Spiritual Path) of Wanderers. Though this tarikah did not attain much fame in its own right, the much more famous tarikah of the Nakshbandiya is believed to have sprung from the teachings of Ahmad Yasavi. Of his life less is known than of his poetical works; he became a legend in his own lifetime, yet his actual deeds have become shrouded in mystery, remaining unresolved up to the present time, and still a source of inspiration for poets and religious thinkers. It is known, however, that he was brought up by a Su® Sheik, Arslan Baba, after the untimely death of his father. Having received his further religious education in Bukhara in the circle of Yusuf al-Khamadani, he later replaced his teacher and became the fourth khalifa of this Su® community. For reasons unknown, having already attained a reputation as a famous mystical poet, he then returned to his home town Yasa, where he also taught Su® philosophy to a group of followers. Here starts the legend. It is said, that at the age of 63, the age of the Prophet's demise, Ahmad Yasavi forsook his normal occupations and retired from the face of the earth into an earthen pit or, perhaps, a dried well symbolising his own grave. In there, he lived the rest of his life, surviving on food brought to him by his disciples and pronouncing his opinions on religious matters. In this self-made grave he died in 111

Enter the Su®s

1166 and was interred there. The place of his burial soon became one of the holiest places of Islam in Central Asia along with other famous graves, or mazars, most notably that of his ®rst teacher Arslan Baba. I remember visiting both of these mazars in the late-seventies. They are now situated in the steppes of southern Kazakhstan, where they have become part of national heritage and are well looked after. But if the mazar of Arslan Baba is a smaller construction comprising a shrine and a museum displaying, among other objects, several religious books published and printed in 19th century Kazan, the mausoleum of Ahmad Yasavi is a phenomenal architectural complex, large and beautiful enough to stand on par with any other great Islamic constructions of Central Asia. This mausoleum was erected in the 14th century by Timur Tamerlain and since then has been further decorated and beauti®ed by successive Central Asian rulers. As is the case with many other great Su® personalities, the legacy of Ahmad Yasavi became somewhat controversial in terms of strict Islamic teachings on the Unity of God. People in southern Kazakhstan kept telling me that a triple pilgrimage to Ahmad Yasavi's mausoleum equals one genuine Hajj to the Holy Places of Islam, and one would try in vain to reassure anybody as to the incorrectness of such a postulate. As in and around many Muslim shrines of India, notably Delhi, people in southern Kazakhstan keep praying upon the graves of the saints, thus committing, in the eyes of strict and knowledgeable observers of Islamic injunctions, a grave transgression of Shirk, or associating someone with God. Interestingly, the legacy of Yasaviya did not have these implications. The impact of Yasavi's and of other Su®'s teachings was and is felt much more in the medieval literature of the Middle Volga region then in any Islamic practices of the kind described above. The only visible trace of the Su® past is found today only in the practice of Imams holding a wanderer's staff during the Friday sermons, which symbolises the way Islam came into and was spread in the region: through the peaceful missionary activities of wandering Su® preachers. But the spiritual in¯uence of the medieval mystics, Ahmad Yasavi and his disciple Sulaiman Baqirghani played a colossal role in establishing the religious outlook of the area from the early 12th century to the beginning of the 20th. We have already quoted that famous Granadian traveller and missionary al-Gharnati who, in the city of Great Bolgar, read the historical treatise of the former Qadi of the Great Bolgar, Yakub bin 112

Enter the Su®s

Noghman al-Bulgari (1028±1086). Al-Gharnati relates that this scholar was a disciple of Abu-l Masali Djuveini of Nishapur, the khalifa of a reputable madrasah, the Nizamiya, which was established for him by the Seldjuk wesir Nizam al Mulk. As with any signi®cant Su® school of the time, the scholarly effect of this Nizamiya as well as the one in Baghdad was felt far and wide, and not only within the boundaries of the then Muslim world, but in Europe as well. It is enough to say that from 1105±1111, the madrasah was run by the greatest Islamic scholar and theologian, alGhazali, whose works so much inspired the writings of the Christian Fathers, most notably Thomas Aquinas. Al-Ghazali's life and way of thinking re¯ected the major ideas of the age, which in their turn were characteristic of other daring thinkers. Like al-Halladj, whose stance on religious matters and sainthood al-Ghazali fully endorsed, he himself waged spiritual war against the growing narrow-mindedness of Islamic society of the day. In a move directed against the sectarian intolerance and what D. B. Macdonald named `the inhuman dogmatism of the theological system which he felt compelled to accept', al-Ghazali argued that `all who agreed in the broad principles of Islam, were believers', which, arguably, could be named as his greatest claim to be the Mujaddid, or Religious Reformer of his century. We should never forget the background against which al-Ghazali tried to purify the understanding of religious unity among Muslims, for it was precisely the age of the First Crusade made so successful for the West because of the fragmentation of the Islamic world in terms of the earthly arrogance of its many rulers and bigotry of its medieval mullahs. It is a pity that the span and context of this book does not allow for deeper and more speci®c research into the in¯uence of al-Ghazali on the development of the religious thinking of the region. In any case, it is right to suggest that this in¯uence was substantial inasmuch as the newest religious ideas in those times always came to the area from the parts where al-Ghazali and other great Su®s lived and worked, especially Nishapur which had a large community of Volga Bulgar merchants and students of religion. Indeed, if we start to look into the few biographical details of the known Volga Bulgar scholars, we cannot fail to notice that great majority of them studied, lived and worked in Central Asia and Iran residing within the merchant communities of their fellow countrymen. Thus, the Volga Bulgar Qadi Yakub bin Noghman, after 113

Enter the Su®s

completing his education under the tutorship of al-Djuveini, returned to the city of Great Bolgar, where he wrote his treatise on Volga Bulgar history extensively cited by al-Gharnati. We must remark though, that Mardzani, while not casting any doubt as to the existence of this scholar, complains of the lack of surviving copies of the work of `Tarih-i Bulgar' quoted only by al-Gharnati. There were, however, other scholars of Volga Bulgaria, who prove the existence of deeply rooted intellectual and scholarly links between the region and the world of the Islamic Renaissance, which laid ®rm foundations for the emergence of the European Renaissance some three centuries later. Apart from the already mentioned works of Bulgar history by Yakub bin Noghman, `Zahrat-er-Ryaz' by Sulaiman Saksini and `At-Tiryak al-Kabir' by Tadzetdin Bulgari, the treatise of `Al-Dzamig' by the Islamic scholar, fakih Ahmad Bulgari also points to a high level of intellectual culture in the region just before the Mongol onslaught of the 13th century. In any case, there exists a substantial work which would prove the intellectual traditions of the area even if all other works not have survived the ¯ames of history. For all its didactic value, which made the reading of it a necessity for subsequent generations of Muslims of the area, its main idea is nothing short of the re-instatement of al-Ghazali's ecstatic claim: the love of God and the perfect submission to His will surpasses any earthly might of the powerful and any intellectual attempts of the philosophers. The Su® context of the book also upholds the religious thinking and poetic methods of Ahmad Yasavi and Sulaiman Bakirghani, yet again proving the existence of a permanent intellectual bridge between the Su®sm of Central Asia and the Kypchak steppes and the prevalent Islamic outlook of the region. This book, which essentially forms the basis of the Kazan Tatar written literature, has miraculously survived the ordeals which befell the area since the time of its writing at the beginning of the 13th century. Moreover, its medieval language remains so close to the Kazan Tatar tongue and is so easily understood by the Kazan Tatars that it powerfully supports claims as to their direct Volga Bulgar descendancy still disputed by some scholars. Indeed, throughout later history there rarely was a Kazan Tatar household which would not have at least several copied pages. The verses were not only memorised and sung to folk tunes, they were repeatedly turned to by people of different walks of life and used as well-known quotations. 114

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Young girls used this book to forecast their future; when given in marriage, they would have a copy carefully wrapped in a clean towel on the bottom of their bridal chests. The work in question is called Qyissa-i Yusuf, or The Legend of The Fair Joseph, and the name of its author has survived to our times as Ali, or Kol Ali, meaning Ali the Slave of God. The book itself is an epic poem based on the Quranic story of Yusuf, long a favourite storyline for Islamic poets. Of the most famous poetical interpretations of this Quranic theme, we may name Yusuf and Suleiha by the great Firdousi (934±1020), but Kol Ali's work was the ®rst of its kind composed in the Turkic language of the region. Ali himself was extremely humble in providing any biographical details in the poem. Even the date of completion of his grand work is not known for certain as in the existing manuscripts, which are preserved in the archives of Kazan, Ufa, St. Petersberg, Berlin and Dresden, two dates are given: 9th December 1212 and 13th April 1233. However, before the worldwide celebration of the 800th anniversary of the poet's birth under auspices of UNESCO, a consensus was found as to the year of his birth: 1183. Legend has it that Ali hailed from an aristocratic Volga Bulgar family of the grandson of Emir Abdullah Mirhadj, who was one of the four Great Begs of the Volga Bulgar nobility. He is said to have received his further education in Khawarism, where he afterwards taught in a religious school, but upon the Mongol onslaught on Khawarism in April 1221 he ¯ed from the catastrophe to his home estate in the Zai province of Volga Bulgaria. Here, the wave of aggression from the East is said to have reached him in the capital Bilyar, where he was, among many others, killed by the invaders who at the same time put an end to the independent standing of the whole country in 1236. There is an on-going dispute as to where the poem was actually written. However, scholars who have spent long years researching its historical, linguistic and religious background tend to think that the work of Ali was accomplished within the boundaries of the region and not during his years in Central Asia. For instance, the Kazan Tatar scholar F. Faseev has written: Upon many details we can draw the conclusion that `Qyissa-i Yusuf' could not have been written in the region of domination of the Shiite mazhab, but rather has been produced within the area of prevalence of the orthodox Abu Hanifa mazhab; besides,

115

Enter the Su®s all other signs like the language of the poem, its appreciation of the region and the territorial spread of its manuscripts indicate that the area of its origin is limited only to the boundaries of the Middle Volga region.

Indeed, Ali's poem is highly valued only by the Muslim descendants of the Middle Volga region, most notably by the Kazan Tatars and their descendants in Siberia and elsewhere. Thus, these precious manuscripts were taken among the few belongings of the emigrating families to China and Japan, USA and Australia, Turkey and the Middle East. The wide diffusion of these manuscripts are further evidenced by historical documents. For instance, in the list of the property con®scated on 14th June 1774 (during the Pugachev Uprising) from one Saed Jaghfar and sent to the Pugachev Colonel Bahtiyar Kankaev, we ®nd a copy of the `Book of Yusuf'. Furthermore, in 1838 one of the registered trade deals show that a precious gold-bound copy of this book was sold for a considerable amount by the Imam of the Tagalbai district of the Kazan province to one Ahmadjan who, after scholarly investigation, appeared to be the son of the famous Su® poet Abdrahim Utyz Imyani al-Bulgari (1754±1834). Apart from its countless poetical virtues, the book stands out as a virtual text book of Islamic morality which served Muslim understanding in the area for so many generations. Written in simple language, this book substituted for the many Islamic treatises and scholarly commentaries in Arabic and Farsi tongues accessible only to a minority of highly educated people. This role played by the text has been commonly over-looked by researchers who considered it as purely a precious piece of national literature and as a proof that the Kazan Tatar literary tradition has stayed unbroken since the Volga Bulgar times of the nation's history. The conditions of state censorship under which many such scholars worked did not really allow them to elaborate upon the religious role of the book and its contents, as well as the religious outlook of its immortal author. Unfortunately, such things prevented the appearance of any signi®cant works on the religious structure of Volga Bulgar society. We cannot rely on the several books upon Volga Bulgar history composed in the 19th century by the Kazan Tatar Ulama. These compilations, in the main, are full of wishful thinking and inaccuracies, as was noted by Mardzani who even wrote an article 116

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on one of these pseudo-historical books, named `On the Open Mistakes, Harmful Lies and Confusion of Events in the book called `The History of Volga Bulgaria'. In discussing the contribution of one particular scholar, Hizametdin al-Muslimi, Mardzani states: It is clear that the author tried to suggest to the common people, students and some nobles good thoughts about Muslims in general, trying to make his compilation an acceptable reading for everyone. However, any good intention has not only a positive but also a negative side as well: `Inna baghzez-zanni ismen (Among the thoughts there are also some evil and sinful ones)'.

Despite the fact that much information is dubious as to the source from which it emanates, the general insight it provides us with ®ts into the overall picture of Volga Bulgar religious life in the days of Kol Ali. Indeed, the religious authorities of Volga Bulgaria, being so intensely connected with Central Asia and Iran, could not have avoided the faults and de®ciencies of the Muslim religious classes elsewhere during this period. Su® thought and behaviour was from its very beginning a spiritual response of the individual to the growing pressure of Islamic Orthodoxy and the aggressive sectarianism of established Muslim sects. It was an attempt to resolve the main problem of Islamic leadership after the democratic institution of the Khilafat of the Prophet became a hereditary privilege of the rich and powerful. The problem was (and, for that matter, remains) why someone has the right to lead the community of Muslims, however small, solely on the ground of his allegiance to certain religious dogmas (Taklid) and certain rulers of the time, whereas, in Islam, the only rightful way of attaining leadership is the renowned piety and godliness of the person? Not every believer would pose this dangerous question, but al-Halladj and al-Ghazali did. The latter refused to accept any religious authoritarianism from the very beginning of his spiritual and scholarly path, a refusal which ®rst brought him into nearatheism, yet then made him a key `Reformer of the Age'. Throughout the history of Islam we see a bitter antagonism between daring thinkers and the orthodox religious establishment, a discord all the more paradoxical and sad in that Islam as a living evolutionary faith in fact rejects any dogmatic orthodoxy whatsoever. 117

Enter the Su®s

The con¯ict in this tragedy of Islam develops not between the different ways of thinking, but rather between the thinking and the lack of it! It is an uneven struggle at all times, because a love-driven and sel¯ess religious aspiration comes into battle with the dogmatic establishment ®ghting for its rights to govern and enjoy the earthly privileges of its elevated position. This position, safeguarded by the ®xed order of things, is threatened by every fresh approach to the dogmas of everyday religious life coming from any gifted man who can challenge the religious authorities of his parish, country or the Muslim world at large. I believe this is also the story of Kol Ali, which shows that the refreshing voice of the Su® was not only heard, but also dominated the religious culture of the region. The of®cial Volga Bulgar mullahs of every rank were, as a rule, educated in Bukhara and other cities of the then Muslim world, a tradition which was still intact until the early 19th century. In Kol Ali's time the dogmatic fanaticism of the religious classes of the age was mirrored in the Islamic structure of Volga Bulgaria. It is not an accident then that his book with its Su® protest against the forceful rule of orthodoxy served as a healthy folk alternative to the preachings of those whose of®cially approved words were far too often not supported by their deeds. He thus stood against the injustice of the establishment, opposing the right to govern by force and compulsion, whether in spiritual or worldly spheres of life. Furthermore, when the of®cial religious establishment ceased to exist in 1552, this book, along with the commentaries of the Holy Quran and Hadith, greatly helped the semi-clandestine religious education in the region, giving the oppressed and outcast Russian Muslims everyday lessons in morality and ever necessary steadfastness. The Su®sm imprinted in this grand work of world literature many times resurfaced in other literary jewels of the area, most prominently in the poems of the later Golden Horde Su® poet Sai® Sarai (1321±1396) and the Kazan Tatar poet Mukhammadyar who is believed to have died during the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552. There is a peculiar similarity in the way the two great poets died: both of them fell victim to the aggressors, and the years of their demise indicate the loss of independence for their respective states. The year 1552 is still too distant in terms of our narration to speak of now, but of the year 1236 the Russian annalist wrote with great sadness: 118

Enter the Su®s In the autumn of 6744 (1236), there came from the countries of the East into the Bulgar lands the godless Tatars and sacked the good city of Bolgar and killed everyone from the old to the young and the tiniest suckling, and looted a lot of goods, and set the city on ®re, and captured the whole of their land.

It was probably the ®rst time that the name Tatars was mentioned in connection with the region, where the majority of the Muslim descendants of the Volga Bulgars are nowadays called the Tatars. But, surrendering their three-centuries-long state independence, the Volga Bulgars were still far from losing their name and the fruits of their civilisation, if only because their captors also converted to Islam after less than a century in the area. Here the separate story of Volga Bulgaria ends, but another Islamic story, namely, that of the Golden Horde, begins in earnest.

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The `Tartars' versus Islam The Mongol Onslaught

5

For Volga Bulgaria, the 12th century wars with the Russians were probably a much more sudden and unexpected calamity than the Mongol onslaught from the south which had been beaten off by the Volga Bulgars in 1223. Indeed, however headlong the Mongol offensive might have appeared to the Muslims of the Caliphate and, through them, to the inhabitants of our region, the Mongols at least were not bound by any long-lasting treaties with their historical neighbours. The nomadic aggressors from the east always knew what they wanted and never made secret of their ultimate goal ± the dominance of the known world. Nobody at this time hoped to be and remain their equals through diplomacy. Certain states, or rather certain monarchs, indeed entertained hopes to somehow remain on par with them through warfare, but any worthwhile resistance proved to be impossible, despite the heroic efforts of such Muslim generals as the insurgent Khawarismshah Jalat-ut-Din who fought against the Mongols until his death in 1231 in the mountains of Kurdistan. From a 20th century viewpoint, the invasion of the Mongols through the Muslim world into Europe was a turning point in the whole of human history. The Muslim world of yore, with all its legendary achievements, perished in this westbound aggression from the east; and only the western Al-Andalus was spared due to its remoteness and was able to further follow the set course of its radiant Islamic civilisation. Baghdad was sacked and destroyed as well as much of Central Asia and Iran. Only the Turkish Mamluks of Egypt, were able to rebuke the Mongol hordes and in 1260 at Ayn Jalut stopped the Mongol advance in their direction. Other Muslim 121

The `Tartars' versus Islam

states, divided in their pride and arrogance, were crushed by the sheer simplicity of the Mongol philosophy uncorrupted by scholastic musings, for the victorious heathen nomads plainly maintained that there exists only what one sees and what one sees one can take, if one is strong enough. The Mongols had nothing but the sense of direction lost by the Muslim world; they were sure that the rule over the whole world is their destiny, and it is the command of their destiny which they ful®lled so meticulously. No doubt they could have reached France and Britain if they could have preserved their political unity. But again, inner diversions and disagreements stopped their drive west: their sense of direction was lost and the Mongols became content with what they already had and what now needed protection from outside enemies and developing fratricidal feuds. The West as a whole gained from the Muslim disaster much more than it ever hoped to achieve through the Crusades. The greatest Muslim cities were ¯attened and their population massacred without any sign of mercy. Such ferocity towards Muslims is partly explained by the slaughter of the ®rst Mongol envoys by the Khawarismshah Mukhammad, which, in the eyes of the Mongols, was the cruellest act possible. But the retribution exceeded all imaginable levels. Having sacked Merv in 1221, the Mongols slaughtered between 70,000±130,000 of its inhabitants and burned down the city. A similar fate had befallen the great city of Nishapur and its estimated population of about 1,750,000: all of them were slain except 400 artisans deported to Mongolia. Even the site on which Nishapur once stood and prospered was sown with barley for the Mongol horses out of contempt for the very idea of crowded cities for which the Mongols saw no use. In 1258, Baghdad fell to the Mongols: among 800,000 people massacred were Caliph al-Mustasim and his two sons. The Mongol hatred and contempt towards Islam could be illustrated by many more instances, but the Christians of the Caliphate were treated differently. The heathen Mongol khans, beginning with the mercy shown by Hulagu to the Baghdadi Christians spared from the massacre, gave them general preference over the Muslim population. On the part of the Mongols, such an inclination towards Christianity at the expense of Islam may possibly be explained by several factors, among which is the effects of the preaching by Nestorian preachers who reached China and the Far East in early medieval times. The Mongols, forthright in their 122

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religious thinking as they were, were also impressed by the historical victories of the Crusades. They always measured the potency of the religious message by its worldly achievements and, while the Christianity in their eyes continued to remain a victorious religion, the Mongol rulers preferred it to the seemingly decadent world of Islam. There was another factor to the Mongol preferences: the Mongol khans were quite experienced in dealing with their newlyconquered lands and always tried to reverse the political status quo once present in them. Thus, the Christians of the Caliphate were transformed from duty-paying subordinates into an important religious group. Magrizi, the Muslim historian, writes that the Christians soon made others realise their new position: From being a subject class they became the most favoured religion, and it was the Muslims who became subject to restriction. Hulagu gave a palace of the former Caliphs as a residence for the Nestorian patriarch, and allowed a new church to be built. Unfortunately, the Christians did not use their newly won favour wisely. They produced a diploma of Hulagu guaranteeing them express protection and the free exercise of their religion. They drank wine freely in the month of Ramadhan, and spilt it in the open streets, on the clothes of the Muslims, and the doors of the mosques. When they traversed the streets bearing the cross they compelled the merchants to rise, and ill-treated those who refused. Nor is the evidence only from the Muslim side. The Armenian king Haithon, a Christian, says of Dokuz Khatun, Hulagu's wife, that `this devoted Christian lady at once sought permission to destroy the Saracens temples, and to prohibit the performance of solemnities in the name of Mukhammad, and caused the temples of the Saracens to be utterly destroyed, and put the Saracens into such slavery that they dared not show themselves any more.'

For the whole of the 13h century, the great Mongol khans of Persia were either Christians themselves or favoured Christianity, except Ahmad (1280±1284) who converted to Islam from Christendom, and was deposed largely because of this conversion. Why the Mongols did then not become ®rm adherents to Christianity in their entirety is an intriguing question yet beyond the scope of present study. However, a clue to this riddle is provided by the answer given 123

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the Great Khan Kublai to Marco Polo, when the latter asked why the Great Khan, for all his predilection towards Christianity, had not himself become a Christian: Wherefore, should I become a Christian? You yourselves must perceive that the Christians of these countries are ignorant, inef®cient persons, who do not possess the faculty of performing anything miraculous; whereas you see that the idolaters can do whatever they will . . . Should I become a convert to the faith of Christ, and profess myself a Christian, the nobles of my court and other persons who do not incline to that religion will ask me what suf®cient motives have caused me to receive baptism, and to embrace Christianity . . . But return you to your pontiff, and request of him, in my name, to send hither a hundred persons well skilled in your law, who being confronted with the idolaters shall have power to coerce them, and showing that they themselves are endowed with similar art, but which they refrain from exercising, because it is derived from the agency of evil spirits, shall compel them to desist from practices of such a nature in their presence. When I am witness of this, I shall place them and their religion under an interdict, and shall allow myself to be baptised.

Marco Polo in his memoirs lamented the failure of the papacy to avail from this proposition of the Great Khan. Indeed, that baptism never happened, whether because of fear in Rome that the Great Khan would most probably be christened by the excommunicated Nestorian patriarch or because of a lack of fervour on the part of Catholic preachers who were afraid of venturing into the lands of the Mongols and other little known peoples. Whatever Marco Polo himself recounted of these territories was treated with great suspicion, thus the realities of eastern life for the most part remained a mystery for the learned men of the West who, like Matthew of Paris, mostly referred to the reports of the Muslim scholars and other eye-witnesses of the Mongol invasion. In 1238, in his Great Chronicle, he wrote about the `Tartars' of the East: The Tartars eat ¯esh of dogs, horses and other generally despised animals; also, though seldom, they eat human ¯esh, but not raw: rather, they cook it.

124

The `Tartars' versus Islam

For all stories of this kind, the Western fear of the Mongols, or the `Tartars' as they came to be known, was more like a sacred awe. In the 13th century, the possibility of converting the frightful invaders into Christendom was lost and never presented itself for the second time, for the tide of time had changed. The victories of the Crusades became a thing of the past in 1291 with the Mamluks of Egypt conquering Acre and driving the last Crusader knights to Cyprus. Aubrey R. Vine in his book on the Nestorian Churches sums up the lost Christian opportunities in these words: As the adherence of the Mongols to Christianity was based, at least to some extent, on its worldly ef®cacy, it is hardly surprising to ®nd a change of attitude when their prosperity in warfare began to wane. Indeed, the change over of the Mongols from favour towards Christianity to fanatical Muhammadanism seems only accountable on the assumption that Christianity was not a religion ensuring worldly success, and that Islam was therefore preferable. Conviction of this kind grows cumulatively; and the ®rst indication that Islam was not synonymous with defeat was received in 1260, when the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt completely defeated the Mongols at the battle of Ain Jalut, between Nablus and Baissan.

It is remarkable, how easily some Christian authors apply terms like `fanatical' to the whole of an alien religion! In fact, with the conversion to Islam, the Mongol rulers became increasingly tolerant in their dealings with other religions under their sway. If religious fanaticism is to be noted at all during these times, it is in Spain, or rather Castille, under Alfonso X the Wise, where the Catholic Inquisition in 1252 infamously began to use instruments of torture in its persecution of religious minorities. In only the ®rst eight years of their activities, the Inquisition had convicted 15,000 people to be burnt at the stake and con®scated the possessions of other 90,000. The Mongols introduced Unitarian law for all the vast territories under their control. Anyone complying with this law was comparatively safe, especially if he had a special warrant which were of several degrees. Thus, in terms of travelling through the lands, the age of the Mongol Conquest was more secure than previous ages when the travelling merchants were usually at the mercy of various smaller sovereigns and rulers. The instance of Marco Polo and, 125

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earlier, of his father Nicolo and uncle Maffeo, proves at least this much in that there were great possibilities of commerce between the East and the West in the 13th century. The travels of various Christian envoys like those of Rubruquis and the Hungarian monk Brother Julian also point to the fact that there existed safe trade and diplomatic routes which did not cease to exist in later centuries, when the previously pagan rulers ®rmly embraced Islam. The strong links which existed in the 12th and 13th centuries between Volga Bulgaria and the Kypchak Steppe have already been noted. The Bulgar Emir Ibrahim himself boasted the noble Kypchak descendancy, and during his reign, which lasted until 1164, Kypchak Turk tribes were welcomed in Bulgar territories. These territories were at the time already bordering the Kypchak tribal grounds along the Yaiyk river, and the famous crossing point of Ibn Fadlan's caravan and other trade caravans was also under Bulgar control and supervision. Here, in 1229, the Bulgar vanguard met the 30,000 strong troops of Batu Khan who before then in¯icted a devastating defeat on the Kypchaks. In regard of this, A. Khalikov writes: The result of this Mongol expedition on the Kypchak lands and the city of Saksin was that considerable part of Kypchaks and the dwellers of Saksin found refuge in the lands of the Bulgars, thus increasing the Kypchak element of the Bulgar ethnicity.

The Kypchak Steppe, meanwhile, was the major source of military slaves for the Mamluk sultanate in the ®rst part of its existence. The famous Sultan Baybars, victor over the Crusaders and the Mongols, reportedly hailed from these lands as well as many other Mamluk warriors whose military resolve at Ayn Jalut so much impressed the previously undefeated Mongol hordes. Yet for decades before that, there were times of bitter struggle, during which Volga Bulgaria, like many other states, lost its three-centuries-long independence to the `Tartars' from the east. However, we must note that in no way can the war between the Mongol-`Tartars' and the Muslims of the area be de®ned as a religious war. As we have seen, the invaders can be apparently condemned for many transgressions against the established civilisations of the time, yet they never coerced anyone to accept their own beliefs at the expense of one's own religious convictions. The Russian historian M. Karateev, for instance, writes: 126

The `Tartars' versus Islam The Tatar khans ruled by an iron hand and many a time showed cruelty, but, for petty exceptions, they were noted for their fairness, and if they indeed executed some of the Russian princes, it was for the most part done, more often than not, upon the slander of rival Russian nobles. In a moral and spiritual sense, their yoke was not burdensome: they did not encroach upon historical traditions and ways of life; religiously, they were absolutely tolerant; they were invariably respectful towards the Orthodox Church and patronised the Church in various ways, to which effect there exists an eloquent testimony of a number of preserved edicts given by the khans. To substantiate this claim, I will cite a quotation from the edict of the great khan Mengu-Timur, given in 1269 to the head of the Orthodox Church metropolitan Kirill: `All the church lands ± woods and waters and vegetable gardens and vineyards and orchards, winter and summer dwellings ± are not to be touched neither by our baskaks [governors], nor the nobles, or the service class, and anything which has been misappropriated by them is to be returned without any delay and charge. All the church lay-men: craftsmen, falconers, ploughmen, and anyone of serfs, servants and maids are not to be used neither for work, nor in guard. The clergymen and blackfriars are not to be levied neither tribute, nor plough tax, nor custom duties, and all those who will take from them ± our governors, scribes of the princes, or anyone else, shall be punished by death. Everything in their possession ± icons, books or anything else ± shall not be taken, damaged or destroyed. Anyone who will insult their faith, shall be tried and executed.' All the successive khans not only endorsed this edict, but broadened rights and privileges of the Orthodox Church.

Apart from other historical consequences, European and worldwide, the direct result of the Mongol conquest was political uni®cation of the vast expanses of the pagan Great Steppe, which before that had mainly engaged in fraternal feuds and petty quarrels among its many rulers. For the region, the ®rst collision with the invaders was a devastating blow, but as time went by and the Mongol element dissolved in the sea of Turkic nations, a new period of prosperity began. This was, however, not so much an outcome of the new 127

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political system, as a by-product of the ethnic enrichment and overall growth of the Muslim Ummah of the area, which in its turn also expanded to encompass new territories, especially those of western Siberia. Volga Bulgaria, however, perished as a state, paving the way for the rise of a new state formation on its territory, namely, that of the Kazan Khanate. Before that though, there were almost two centuries of subordination to the new rulers of the region, the ®rst part of which was spent in continuous, and not always unsuccessful, warfare. The very ®rst encounter between the Volga Bulgars and the troops of Genghis Khan occurred in late autumn of 1223. These troops, having already devastated the Kypchak and Russian lands up to Kiev and Chernigov, travelled up the Volga river towards the abundant lands of Volga Bulgaria where they hoped to spend the winter. But the Volga Bulgars were already aware of these movements and spent much effort building ingenious forti®cations and ambushes along their borders. The battle of 1223 was fortunate: the Mongol troops, with their heavy booty, were trapped and attacked somewhere near the present day city of Samara. Nearly 3,000±4,000 Mongols escaped the slaughter and, having reached Genghis Khan's headquarters, told him of their failure. This successful Bulgar military operation, as well as the subsequent operation of 1229, had been apparently masterminded by the then Emir of Volga Bulgaria, Ilham, who at the same time tried to ensure peaceful relations with Rus: according to the Tatishev Chronicle, in 1228 the Volga Bulgars `transported grain up the Volga and, selling it to all the Russian towns, offered great assistance to them. The Bulgar Prince himself sent to Great Prince Yuri twenty boats with grain, which the Great Prince accepted with gratitude, in his own turn sending him cloth, brocade embroidered with gold and silver, ®sh bones and other ®ne things.' The Volga Bulgars, being aware of events in the south, knew all too well that a new Mongol onslaught was imminent. They hastily built several lines of forti®cations, this time not just along their frontiers, but around their big cities as well. Thus, the city of Great Bolgar, or Bilyar, was surrounded by a third line of earthen ramparts with wooden walls, which stretched up to ten kilometres and were, at places, up to six metres wide. These preparations helped the Volga Bulgars fend off the Mongols one more time in 1232, but their fate was already predetermined, as they faced the mighty and united enemy, being themselves alone and having no allies to rely on. In 1232 128

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the Volga Bulgars tried to build up a military coalition with the Vladimir-Suzdal Rus, but the Russian principalities, namely Yaroslavl, Ryazan and Murom, instead used the opportunity to weaken their Muslim neighbours and sent their own troops towards the western borders of Volga Bulgaria, in¯icting great damage upon its Mordvin and Burtas subjects. The Russian principalities, disunited and feuding as they were, failed to realise the on-coming danger despite their own ®asco of 1223 and, in order to achieve their short-term goals, were merely watching the uneven struggle of their Bulgar rivals against the eastern invasion. J. Martin, in her study of medieval Russia, states: Even after 1236, when the Mongol armies launched an offensive that destroyed the main cities of Bulgaria, bringing that state as well as its subordinate populations on the mid-Volga into their domain . . . the princes failed to take any extraordinary defensive measures even within Vladimir-Suzdal, much less coordinate a defence for all the Rus lands.

In respect of the events of the 13th century Mongol invasion, the Russian sources even today take comfort in saying that the great role played by Rus in view of this major affair consisted in preventing the Mongol drive further west, that Rus in fact sacri®ced itself for Europe. Not a word is said about the struggle of Volga Bulgaria, which alone withstood the sustained Mongol military from 1223 until 1237, thus giving Rus plenty of time to prepare for the upcoming calamity. Here we cannot deal with the military resistance shown by the Volga Bulgars in their wars with the Mongols in detail, but we also cannot fail to mention that their early successes point to the high level of military organisation of their civilisation. The Mongols realised that Volga Bulgaria cannot be taken easily: during the all-Mongol kurultai in Karakorum, Volga Bulgaria was given special attention and ®gured as the ®rst state to be subdued in the process of a major assault on Europe. All the Mongol generals famed for their combats against China and the lands of the Caliphate participated in this great expedition. They led an army which, at the time of its assault on Volga Bulgaria, reportedly numbered up to 300,000 warriors and about a million non-combatant escorts. In 1236, the city of Great Bolgar was taken and nearly destroyed, as well as other major cities and numerous towns and villages of the once prosperous state. 129

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In view of our study it is interesting to ask whether the resistance offered by the Muslims of the region was in any way religiously inspired. The Mongols, angered by the durability of the Volga Bulgar defences, were determined to put an end to their resistance once and for all. As was the case with any city or town which did not surrender immediately the Volga Bulgar cities suffered great damage, with many mosques, libraries and religious schools destroyed and burnt down. But this demolition did not possess a speci®c character of religious intolerance: for the Mongols, any building was regarded as a possible bastion of resistance, and during their attacks, they did not distinguish between civic or religious facilities. It is easy to suggest that from some Muslim quarters of Volga Bulgaria, there was heard a call for Jihad against the heathen invaders, but it is hardly possible that the country as a whole regarded this several-decades-long warfare as a genuine Jihad, unlike some modern so-called Islamic states or fundamentalist groupings which are ever ready to proclaim Jihad against, most often, their fellow Muslims who do not share their particular religious beliefs. Apparently, the contemporary Muslims of the area were more understanding in the true meaning of Jihad, which can be proclaimed only by the Caliph of the time and no one else. But religious or not, resistance of the Volga Bulgars continued throughout the ®rst half of the 13th century. Even after the fall of their capital, which never recovered from the devastation caused by the Mongols there were cases of uprisings against the invaders led by the Volga Bulgar nobles, most notably Alim-bek and Altyn-bek who in 1238 turned against the army of Tangut. This was the only Mongol army remaining in Volga Bulgaria at the time, as all other armies already were summoned by the Batu Khan to the conquest of Rus and Eastern Europe. The continuing insurrection of the Volga Bulgars compelled Batu Khan in 1239 to send the army of his best general, Subedey-Bagatur, back to Volga Bulgaria, before commanding him to join the main Mongol force at the siege of Kiev in 1240. But the Volga Bulgar factor proved to be so dominant in the military calculations of Batu-Khan that in 1242, after rapid conquests made in Central Europe (by then the Mongols had already overrun Hungary, Poland and stood on the Adriatic coast of Horvatia), he returned to Volga Bulgaria and settled there, making the city of Ibragim on the intercession of the Volga and the Kama his capital. From here, this most famous of the grandchildren of Genghis Khan 130

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ruled over his vast domain incorporating all the lands from Rus to the southern frontiers of the Great Steppe. Here, until 1246, Batu Khan issued edicts appointing suzerain monarchs for Rus, Armenia and other vassal states. All these wars did not leave a stone unturned in Volga Bulgaria and for some time the whole country laid in ruins. It was also the time when a lot of Volga Bulgar refugees ¯ed from the fertile lands of their origin further north, up the right bank of the Volga, towards the northern reaches of the Kama and Vyatka rivers, and to the Russian lands as far as Novgorod, under the rule of the independent prince Alexander Nevsky. The Hungarian monk Julian narrates that in 1237 he himself saw in Suzdal a number of refugees from Volga Bulgaria. Some of these and other refugees retained their ancestral faith and remained Muslims. Many eÂmigre Volga Bulgar nobles, however, had chosen to embrace Christianity, thus launching a centuries-long process of creation of the genealogical roots for numerous Russian aristocratic families, which most often played decisive roles in subsequent Russian history. To name only a few, this period saw the beginning of the families of the Dolgovo-Saburovs, Golenischev-Kutuzovs, Sheremetyevs, Ogarevs and Zubovs. The Volga Bulgar efforts to re-gain state independence eventually failed in 1277±1278, the years of the last great uprising against the rule of the then Mongol khan Mengu-Timur who cruelly suppressed this last drive for freedom with the help of his Russian satellite, Prince of Smolensk and Yaroslavl Fedor Chermnyi. The latter was duly rewarded for his services, receiving in marriage the khan's daughter and, as a dowry, the cities of Bolgar, Karsyn, Balymat, Kazan, Tura. The Volga Bulgar struggle for state independence thus lasted over 50 years, which attests to the relative durability of the economic, cultural, military and socio-political structure of their civilisation. Such a civilisation could not and would not disappear under the new circumstances, as its foundations were too deep and too ®rmly enrooted in the lands along the Volga and Kama rivers. No wonder that the next century saw the resurrection of this civilisation in full bloom and glory, but this did not happen before the invaders themselves accepted Islam and started to share the values of the indigenous population of the region, the centre of which moved to the capital of the Golden Horde, the city of Sarai, which was specially constructed for the new rulers by the captive Central Asian, Volga Bulgar and Russian builders. 131

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Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde The acceptance of Islam after the conquests of Genghis Khan

6

After the Mongol invasion, the once blooming urban Muslim civilisation of the region suffered a period of decline. Large cities were ¯attened, the smaller wooden towns burnt down, the prosperous villages turned into half-abandoned hamlets. The capital, Bilyar, with its spectacular mosques, palaces and civic buildings, was destroyed completely, as well as other Bulgar forts: the Hungarian monk Julian says about `sixty strongly forti®ed castles' were destroyed by the Mongols in Volga Bulgaria. Much of the population of the troubled region ¯ed north, yet most remained under the rule of the invaders. However, the urban civilisation of the area did not perish under the Mongols and, in fact, largely recovered in a remarkably short time. The nomad Mongols primarily viewed the cities and towns as opportunities to consolidate their control. They thus usually destroyed all the forti®cations within and outside the cities taken by sword, and did not allow their vassals to build any defenses on the territory ruled by Yasa, or the Steppe Law of Genghis Khan. Thus, the Volga Bulgar cities during the age of the Golden Horde turned into trade centres rather than possible forts and bastions. But these urban centres surprisingly multiplied already in the second half of the troubled 13th century, and the Volga region could soon boast a whole network of towns and cities connected by actively utilised land routes and waterways. Beside the well-known cities of Bolgar-on-the-Volga (the former city of Ibrahim), Suvar, Bilyar, Ashly and lesser Bulgar towns of Chally-Kala, Juketau, Kashan, Kazan, the area to the south of Bolgar-on-the-Volga saw the rise of such historical cities as Sinbir (present day Ulyanovsk), Arabuga, Muksha, Ukek, Samar (present 133

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde

day Samara, formerly Kuibyshev), Burjan, Sarysin (present day Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad). Further south, in the lower reaches of the Volga, the newly built Sarai-al-Makhrus'a rivalled the ancient Khazar city of Hajitarkhan (Astrakhan). There were also smaller cities built on the old caravan routes from Khawarism to Volga Bulgaria, such as Saraychik on the Yaiyk. In any case, each old trade road had a regular system of caravan-sarays which on the route from Khawarism to the Middle Volga were reportedly placed at a distance of only 25±30 kilometres from each other. The Mongols themselves did not build cities and towns and preferred to lead a semi-nomadic life even in the conquered territories with established urban civilisation. In his Volga capital Sarai-al-Makhrus'a, Batu Khan still preferred to reside in a kingly tent rather than in a stone or wooden house. Anyhow, there was such a striking difference between the style and idea of a city before and after the Mongol onslaught that even at the time of the independent Kazan Khanate, which evolved on the territory of the erstwhile Volga Bulgaria in the early 15th century, all cities and towns except for the strongly forti®ed capital city of Kazan were practically defenseless. The Russian historian M. Khudyakov, challenging the predominant Russian scholarly view that the Kazan Khanate was devoid of towns and presented a kind of a nomad state, writes: This note rests on a certain misunderstanding. As is known, in the Russian sources `a town' always means `a fort, a forti®ed settlement', and the lack of towns in this sense in the Kazan Khanate should not be understood as the lack therein of towns in the modern sense of the word ± as populated trade and administrative centres. The local culture created a different type of urban architecture, than in Russia, ± not a military, but a peaceful trade settlement, which in the Kazan Khanate were, of course, a-plenty . . . We know that in the Kazan Khanate there were many large settlements, which could easily be called towns and cities in the modern understanding of the term, as their population engaged not just in agricultural activities, but also crafts and commerce. The cities along the waterways . . . were, without any doubt, of this kind.

The urban as well as the rural culture of Volga Bulgaria survived total devastation not just because it was very deeply rooted, but 134

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also because the Mongol rulers, beginning with Batu Khan, used this fertile and industrial region as their economic base. Economic considerations of the monarchs of the Golden Horde soon made them realise that the peaceful development of crafts and agriculture of their vast domain, stretching from Khawarism and the Caucasus in the south up to the present day Ukraine in the north, and from the Siberian river of Irtysh in the east to the Danube in the west, was in their best interest. Contrary to much received thinking, the Golden Horde was not a loose conglomerate of lands ruled by the whims of wild nomad conquerors, but a state formation with a single codex of laws for every resident and a very sophisticated administrative and ®scal system. It also put a stop, if not a complete end, to the fratricidal wars between the Turkish tribes of the Great Steppe and the petty feuds between the Russian principalities. The Golden Horde was essentially a state where different ethnic groups of Turkic origin mixed with one another and with Muslim Finns like the Burtas. Thus, the Golden Horde quickly became a Turkish state enjoying a high degree of geographic and cultural autonomy, though highly revering the Mongol heritage of its founders. Nevertheless, this did not completely eradicate the ancient rivalry among the Turkic tribes which later, in the wake of collapse of this powerful state formation, was to result in the formation of separate Turkic nations like Kazan, or Volga Tatars, Bashkirs, Noghais, Kazakhs, Uzbeks and so forth. However, in its heyday the Golden Horde had a diverse but ini®ed culture and one state language, Chagatay or Tyurki, very close to the present day Kazan Tatar language. This language became a diplomatic and trade medium for all the nations within the Golden Horde, and the tradition of knowing and using it as such persisted far into the 16th and 17th centuries, even at the court of the Russian Orthodox monarchs who all too often had so-called Tatar blood in their royal veins. Summarising the impact of the Mongol conquest, the Kazan Tatar scholar A. Mukhammadiev says: The positive aspect of the formation of the Golden Horde was not that the khans were building cities, but that all Western Turks became united within one state, which facilitated peaceful conditions for constructive development.

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Of course, some internal con¯icts within the vassal states of the Golden Horde were deliberately precipitated by the khans, but, these con¯icts were seldom instigated up by them. Much more frequently, the suzerains of the Golden Horde, most notoriously the princes of Rus, called upon the supreme rulers for help against their rivals and the khans answered the call where they saw it ®t. All activities of the Mongol khans were, in fact, dictated by their national logic, re®ned and cultured by ancient Chinese rationalism. Thus, they did not preclude and impede the mainstream development of any civilisation as far as it did not threaten their dominant position as rulers. According to such logic, the universally dreaded Batu Khan who so easily swept with his armies from the banks of the Volga across eastern and central Europe to the Adriatic was, in his lifetime and long afterwards, called `Sain', which means good or wise. Further to the national wisdom of this great conqueror, his sons were brought up in different religions of the subjugated lands. Thus, his favourite son Sartak whom Batu Khan saw as his successor, was a Nestorian Christian. It is doubtful though that Sartak and other high-born Mongol princes were well-read or knowledgeable in the matters of faith they claimed to profess. At least about Sartak it is reported that his understanding of Christianity remained rather super®cial. The Franciscan monk Rubruquis, who in 1253 met Sartak, was rather disappointed with his attitude toward Christianity, and later in his report wrote: Of Sartak I know not whether he believes in Christ or not. This I do know, that he will not be called a Christian, and it even seemed to me that he mocked the Christians . . . For he is on the road of Christians . . . so he shows himself more attentive to them. Should, however, Saracens come along carrying more presents than they, they are sent along more expeditiously.

Being a Christian for Sartak was thus more of a political act, rather than a religious preference. In the city of Sarai, which rose on the banks of the Akhtuba river in the Lower Volga region, however, all contemporary religious confessions were present and enjoyed considerable freedoms and was described by several medieval travellers including Ibn-Battuta, who in his 14th century travelogue excitedly wrote:

136

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde The city of Sarai is one of the most gorgeous cities, which reached extraordinary dimensions and is constructed on even land; it is full of people and has beautiful markets and wide streets. One day we went astride with one of its elders in order to round it up and learn its proportions. We lived in one end of it and rode out from there in the morning, but reached it's other end only in the afternoon . . . . All of it presents dense rows of houses, where one cannot ®nd neither empty spaces, nor gardens.

Interestingly, the mother country of the immeasureable colonial domain of the Mongols, Central Mongolia, leaving aside its capital Karakorum, remained a simple nomad country, where neither urban construction, nor the minting of coins, nor indeed the concept of money had been introduced. But the ancient urban civilisation under their control was quickly revived by the needs of a new state formation of the Golden Horde. Already in the 1250's the city of Bolgar, former city of Ibraghim, resumed minting its own coins in the name of the ruling kaghan of the Mongol Empire. In 1282 the ®rst coins were minted in the new capital of Sarai. The former capital, Bilyar, however, never returned to its former glory due to the Mongol prohibition of rebuilding the conquered capitals, and so remained a sacred place for the Volga Bulgar population. A new big settlement soon grew between the former city limits and the river of Cheremshan, whereas near the former heathen sanctuary where in 922 Islam was accepted as a state religion, there appeared a large cemetery for the noble and rich people who often were brought here for their burial from far around. Large mausoleums and a mosque of white stone were erected here, the remnants of which were found during the archeological excavations of the region by 20th century Kazan Tatar scholars. But, for the lack of a capital city, Volga Bulgaria became decentralised, and this period saw the rise of new cities, formerly small forts and towships on the borders of the once independent state. In the second part of the 13th century, the cities of Kerman and Mukhsha were minting their own silver and copper coins. At about this time yet another town on the northern boundary of Volga Bulgaria, the town of Kazan, or as it was called then Bolgar-al-Jadid (the New Bolgar), started to feature more prominently in the economic and political life of the area. Free economic development 137

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within one state, unobstructed by wars and inner strifes, soon made the regions of the Middle and Lower Volga a territory full of thriving urban life. Mukhammadiev writes: The banks of the Volga from the city of Bolgar down to the Caspian Sea presented one of the regions most densely covered with cities and urban settlements . . . The active development of the urban life was helped by the lack of forti®cations around towns and cities, which sometimes reached colossal proportions because of the quarters inhabited by craftsmen. Free access to cities and out of them and the lack of feudal castles stimulated development of the commodity and money markets, invigorating the inter-city trade links.

In 1279 the minting of coins resumed in Khawarism. The old commercial links between the region and Central Asia were restored in full, and this added up to the bullish resurrection of the economy of the whole region. The political centre during the age of the Golden Horde had shifted from the Middle to the Lower Volga, and it was there where the global trade and commercial roads intersected. All goods moving from east to west along the Great Silk Road and all commodities transported from the northern Russian to Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus enriched the economy and multinational culture of the area. Under the strict rule of the Mongol khans the commercial routes became free and secure and this, in turn, facilitated the free passage of travellers and various envoys hurrying from the West to the seat of the new rulers of Asia and Eastern Europe. Most often these envoys were Christian monks with special messages from the Holy See still hoping to achieve conversion of the Mongol khans to Christianity. As mentioned earlier, it seemed still possible in the ®rst half of the 13th century, but towards the end of that century the balance of preferences was already changing in favour of Islam, especially in the Golden Horde which represented the northern and north-western part of the huge Mongol domain. The Mongol rulers being able politicians recognised that Islamic Shariah basically did not contradict the Law of Genghis Khan, whereas the native religious heads, the Seyids of the cities, enjoyed signi®cant and deeply-rooted authority among the Muslim populace. Besides the Mongol superstitious reverence for clergymen of all 138

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confessions, this fact was skilfully used in the management of conquered Muslim lands of the region as well. Moreover, there is a further hypothesis put forward by the theologian and historian R. Fahretdinov who states that Genghis Khan used the teachings of Shariah in the compilation of his Law of Yasa. According to one legend, the only `improvements' to Shariah, which Genghis Khan demanded from the Muslim scholars, was an injunction that a man could have as many wives as he wishes and a postulate that war is always a boon, whether it is aggressive or defensive. Whatever the Central Asian Ulama answer to such demands is not known but the fact is that Islam in the Golden Horde and Iran, far from being eradicated, in practice developed as it had done before the conquest, and started to progress much more rapidly with the development of the Golden Horde as a state paci®ed by its economic considerations. The same Franciscan monk Guillaume de Rubruquis who visited the area on his way through Palestine and Constantinople to Karakorum in 1253, left an interesting observation which was almost literally echoed in 1260 in the Opus Majus of Sir Roger Bacon. I wonder what devil carried this religion of Mahomet thither. From the Iron Gate, which is the door out of Persia, there are more than thirty days through the desert, going up along the Etilia, to this Bulgaria, along which route there is no city, only some villages near where Etilia falls into the sea; and these Bulgarians are the worst kind of Saracens, keeping the law of Mahomet as no others.

Remembering that Rubruquis came to the area from Palestine, this notion of his says volumes about the state of Islam in the region under the rule of Batu Khan. Batu Khan himself never favoured Islam at the expense of other religions. Moreover, his desire to see his son Sartak, a Nestorian Christian married to a Christian wife, as his successor on the throne of the Golden Horde changed the life of the Muslims in the area for the worse. But Sartak never actually ascended the throne. While he was visiting the seat of the Great Mongol Khaghan Mongke in Karakorum in 1256 his father died, and the local Turk nobles succeeded in enthroning Batu's brother Berka who reportedly accepted Islam at an early age. Rubruquis says: 139

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde And there is another one called Berka . . . who has his pasture lands towards the Iron Gate, where passes the road followed by all Saracens coming from Persia and Turkia, and going to Batu, and who when passing through bring him presents; and he has made himself a Saracen, and he does not allow pork to be eaten in his ordu.

In spite of the preferential position, in the eyes of Karakorum Khaghan at least, of the unlikely Christian Sartak as successor to Batu, in the ensuing turbulent struggle for power which resulted in several political murders, the Muslim Berka Khan prevailed, and the virtual secession of the Golden Horde from the rest of the Mongol domain further became a consummation of his political achievements. He refused to recognise the authority not only of the Great Khaghan Mongke, but of the next Great Khaghan Khubilai as well. While severing the paternal links with Karakorum, this independent monarch of the Golden Horde established friendly liaisons with Sultan Baybars of Egypt, even helping the latter in his ®ght with the Mongols. This relationship was apparently dictated not only by predominant political motives, but also by ethnic and religious considerations, as Baybars was, in the eyes of the local nobility, a Turk representative of the region. As historical and archeological data shows, the local culture of the area prevailed in the complex cultural mixture of the Golden Horde, whereas the dominant factor of this local culture was Islam of both the old and emerging cities of the region. The Great Steppe, with its variety of nomad Turkic tribes, was not yet as fully islamicised as it would be during the rule of Uzbek Khan. But, as Rubruquis and other eye-witnesses rightly observed, the people of Volga Bulgaria, urban and rural population alike, were loyal followers of the Muslim faith. For them, it was a blessing that Berka of®cially revived the old ties with the Holy Land of Islam, in the mosques of which the prayers for his health started to be heard. But despite these links with Holy Mecca and Egypt, where Sultan Baybars tried to restore, if not the authority, then the ®gure of the Caliph, the islamisation of the Golden Horde continued with the help of local Su® missionaries and other religious personalities. So, as A. Khalikov writes Volga Bulgaria was beginning to be extensively used by the Mongols in the making of the economy and culture of the

140

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde Golden Horde, and, therefore, it is probable that the conversion to Islam in the Golden Horde happened not without participation of the Volga Bulgars. It is further con®rmed by the fact, that the lately researched remnants of the mosques in Sarai and, especially, Burjan, in their planning are very similar to the mosques of Great City of the Volga Bulgars of the pre-Mongol period, and to the early mosque of the site of the ancient Bolgar settlement, the construction of which dates from the 1270s.

The diplomatic links established by Berka with the Holy Land of Islam further facilitated the in¯ux of Arab culture of early Islamic Renaissance into the region. More about these mutually bene®cial cultural relationships with Egypt will be said in the next chapter, but we should not forget that in the second half of the 13th century the great book of Kol Ali was still a very fresh literary work. In spite of the changed commercial map of the area, with the centre shifted from the capital of Volga Bulgaria to the city of Sarai on its former southern border, the ancient cities of the region, culturally as well as economically, bene®ted from the new possibilities opened by the formation of the Golden Horde. Berka Khan had achieved supremacy in his effectively independent domain mainly because he had chosen to rely upon the assistance of the local Turk military aristocracy and the Muslim merchant classes. These Muslim businessman, literate and educated as they were, were already used by Batu Khan as junior administrators and tax collectors. The Kazan Tatar scholar M. Safargaliev writes: At the same time he found support of the Muslim clergy of Khawarism and Bulgar who preferred to see on the throne not a pagan, but an advocate of the Mahometan faith. Upon the ascension of Berka Khan onto the throne the Muslim tradesmen indeed achieved access to all state institutions, whereas before the Muslim clergy there opened a broad ®eld for missionary activities.

Apparently, these missionary activities never ceased altogether, whatever the prevailing circumstances of the time, because there was nothing special about embarking upon such an activity. Islam had long since spread along the merchant routes, and no calamity could ever completely stop a merchant from engagement in his useful 141

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde

business. Thus, not only big cities and lesser towns, but small trading stations in the steppes, forests and mountains of Bashkiria and the Urals represented missionary centres. For instance, near one such trading station, which further evolved into a small settlement, archeologists have found the graves of the Muslim missionaries Khussain Bek and Turakhan. Such graves are further found in the modern Republic of Udmurtia, Mary-El and the Perm oblast of Russia. Through such tireless efforts, and under the generally favourable conditions of the Golden Horde, mainly heathen Bashkirs in the north-east and Noghais in the south started to embrace Islam en masse from the middle of the 14th century. But the message of Islam was put across not only by the word of mouth. Spectacular achievements of Islamic culture in the resurrected cities of the region spoke for themselves. Bolgar-on-the-Volga, the city which Batu Khan had chosen as his ®rst seat of power, was rivalling in richness and architectural splendour not only other big cities like Sinber, Myuryan, Arabuga or Kyakresh, which occupied the territory of about million square metres and was a key point on the southern, south-eastern and south-western trade routes leading from Bolgar, but also the capital of the Golden Horde, the city of Sarai itself. The prosperity of Bolgar was aided by its advantageous location near the in¯ux of the Kama into the Volga, where a big trade fair called the Aga-Bazaar had been taking place, and by the fact that not only the founder of the Golden Horde, but also his successors Berka Khan and Mengu Khan used the neighbourhood of Bolgar for their summer camps. Bolgar, as all other cities of the region, was full of Central Asian, Arab, Persian and European merchants, envoys and dignitaries seeking benevolence of the great khans. With them, the cultural trends and achievements of the world were pouring into the area, creating an atmosphere of cultural unity and cosmopolitanism. Therefore, in the architecture as well as other arts, the foreign in¯uences were strong and persistent. The cultural in¯uences become so intermixed and interwoven that some three centuries after recognising Islam for the ®rst time, the city became an integral part of the Islamic oecumena, maintaining strong ties with the whole of the Islamic world, including the countries of the Maghreb and Muslim Spain. Christian culture was represented by the dwellers of special Christian quarters of the cities, among which the most prominent were the Russian and the Armenian quarters. In the 142

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde

Crimea, the Christian world was represented by Genoese merchants who, from their colony of Kaffa, supplied the Golden Horde with cloth from Flanders, ceramics and jewellery, but, in principal, failed to convey the messages of the Holy See. All the Central Asian, Kypchak, Iranian and other ethnic in¯uences through inter-marriage went a long way in contributing to the creation of the nation today called the Kazan Tatars. The comparatively small proportion of heathen Mongols played a rather modest role in this process, although being absorbed into the population of the area they also added their Far Eastern blood to the blood of the Turkic Kazan Tatar as well as the Slav Russian nations. The social structure of the region under the Golden Horde remained almost the same as before the Mongol onslaught. Except for those nobles who were driven north and accepted Christianity, the aristocracy found its social niche under the auspices of the Golden Horde as well. The Muslim epitaphs of the age tell us about the existence of many social classes, among them beks (nobles) and emirs (princes), yuvari (members of military aristocracy), tamgachi (tax collectors), merchants and, of course, seyids and religious scholars. As mentioned earlier, even at the dawn of the glory of the Golden Horde the cities of the area resumed minting their own silver coins on behalf of the Mongol kaghans. The successor of Berka Khan, Mongke Timur, though himself a Shamanist, did not obstruct the progress of Islam, as the whole economy of the vast region was dependant on the sustained efforts of the Muslim population. The same can be said about the next ruler, Tokta who had to follow in the steps of his father to subdue the feudal revolts which threatened the unity of the Golden Horde especially from the side of the dissident Prince Noghai until the death of the latter in 1299. But the political map of the Western Mongol domains at that time was already decisively changing towards the predominance of Islam. The Khans of Persia, arresting their a century-long advances towards Christianity, became Muslims; their hostile attitude towards the Muslim world, especially Egypt, gradually ceased and the centre of the Egyptian economic attention shifted from the Golden Horde to Persia. This, for once, was a disappointing interval in the life of the Muslims of the Golden Horde who saw their markets decline, but better future was already at hand. The Encyclopaedia of Islam states: 143

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde The collapse of the Ilkhanid Empire in 1335 brought the Golden Horde, under Uzbek Khan (1313±1341), once more into a position of great importance. A Muslim himself, he de®nitely strengthened the position of Islam on the Volga, and thenceforth all the Khans adhered to that religion. The greater part of the Volga Tatars was now also more and more drawn into SunniIslamic culture of a particular type found in Asia Minor.

The 14th century could well be named a Silver Age, since during this period the area was enjoying the same cultural and economic revival as other integral parts of the then Muslim world which had by that time freed itself from the Crusaders in the Middle East and established itself in the north of India. This was the peak of the new Muslim Renaissance in Egypt and the Maghrib, India, Iran, Asia Minor and Central Asia, the fruits of which were already shared by the Western Christian world. With the end of the Crusades, cultural exchange between the Muslim and Christian worlds intensi®ed in all spheres, including science and geography, philosophy and history, medicine, architecture, and, of course, in the sphere of trade and industry. The area as a whole, the geographical shape of which at this stage fully concurred with the central (Volga) and eastern (Siberian) parts of the Golden Horde, also largely bene®ted from the new geopolitical, cultural and economic conditions established in the world. According to J. Martin: By the reign of Uzbek, the Golden Horde had become a strong, wealthy state, dominating the Kypchak steppe and drawing upon the resources of its northern tributaries. Its growing society, while still clinging to traditional nomadic occupations, adopted Islam under Uzbek's guidance, and absorbed sedentary agrarian cultures and urban activities. Sarai by this time was a cosmopolitan metropolis, enriched by the religious ties to the world of Islam, by political and dynastic interests in the reminder of the Mongol Empire, and by diplomatic and commercial intercourse with the Byzantine Empire, Egypt, the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Italian Black Sea colonies, Europe, and the lands of Rus as well.

In all the achievements of the region, which brought about an array of renaissance cities boasting systems of central heating and water 144

Islam at the Dawn of the Golden Horde

supplies, which were all the more dazzling in the dry areas like the Lower Volga region and Crimea, we may see the driving in¯uence of the long-standing and peaceful Islamic civilisation of this region. But there is something more to say about the very perception of Islam, which in the wake of the Mongol invasion into the Islamic world underwent a drastic change, so crucial if almost unnoticed, that even the present woes and turbulences of the so-called world of Islam are for the most part generated by it. True, the idea of worldly power long since played a role in the affairs of the Caliphate, especially at the time of its decline and decadence helped by the inner turmoil and rivalries in the different parts of the Islamic world. But there is a difference between, for example, a rise to power and the rule of the Turkish element in Iran and Asia Minor of which we have spoken, and the government of the Muslim heirs of the Mongol conquerors in the lands of Islam. In the ®rst instance, Islam, its culture and philosophy, was the basis for action, even if it had to be interpreted post factum to justify the action itself. Islam was en masse adhered to not because it entailed gaining earthly privileges and worldly power, but simply because there was nothing else but Islam as a hereditary religion, as philosophy and way of life and as the very ground of civilisation. Even the early Mamluks of Egypt or the ®rst Turkish masters of India who apparently enjoyed and valued earthly power much more than religious humility, were brought up in an uninterrupted tradition of Islamic thought, which precluded earthly pride at the expense of the total submission to the will of God. With the arrival of the Mongol rulers on the Islamic scene, the very idea of adherence to Islam had gradually changed and been transformed, if not at the grass-roots then in the new high circles of power. This mutation of the idea did not happen overnight but the process was launched which, with the passage of time, in¯uenced the thinking not only of the higher but also the lower classes as well. The trend was not a new one for the world of Islam as the Su® phenomenon through the ages and aimed against the politization of Islam clearly indicates. But every trend has a decisive point when it becomes not only a pre-disposition but a ®rm ground for future developments. The Mongol monarchs and the aristocracy had eventually preferred Islam to all other religions apparently not because they were attracted by its tenets and philosophy, but because in their eyes 145

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it brought much higher worldly success than any other religion of the time. Thus, the traditional philosophy of the acceptance of any monotheistic faith, the very evolution of a religious belief when one wilfully accepts a new faith against all worldly opposition for the sake of God, was turned upside down. Earthly power thus became a driving force in turning of the heathen rulers to Islam. The Mongol idea of Islam as a winning faith was the principal idea which in¯uenced the successive development of the Islamic world, its new rise to political dominance and eventual decline and fall as a political power. This view can be illustrated by the historical developments of Moghul India or Ottoman Turkey, but the progress of the region from the 14th century onwards also offers a few lesser known yet valuable lessons in this regard. In all the magni®cence and grandeur of the Silver Age it may be dif®cult to appreciate to what extent the long-established Islamic outlook of the indigenous Muslim population was becoming in¯uenced by the super®cial Islamic standpoint of the new ruling classes. But the in¯uence and impact of the changed priorities was already playing its role, dividing the perception of Islam into at least two separate religious visions: that of the new ruling classes obsessed by pride and power and that of the grass-roots engaged in various socio-economic and cultural activities. History is full of paradoxes. The fact that the rulers of the Golden Horde accepted Islam, which at ®rst played a rather positive and inspiring role in the progress of Islamic civilisation of the area, some two centuries later brought about the fall of that very civilisation. This happened because by the beginning of the 16th century, peaceful economic development and the thirst for knowledge, which for so long made up the driving force of Islam in the region, ®nally gave way to political considerations and power games of the autocratic rulers blind to everything that did not concern their aspirations for earthly superiority.

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The Silver Age Uzbek Khan and the triumph of Islam

7

The political beast of inner feuds, which made its ®rst attempt to tear apart the vast expanses of the Golden Horde at the end of the 13th century, was, at least for a time, being tamed by Tokta Khan by the time of his death in 1312. Before this, Prince Noghai, having achieved military glory in Poland and the Caucasus, attempted to usurp power in the Golden Horde yet was defeated in the battle in 1299 and perished, leaving his name to the people of his own lesser horde, the progeny of which nowadays comprise the Muslim ethnicity of Noghais in the northern Caucasus. The self-destructive tendency, resultant of the gigantic size of the Golden Horde, lay dormant during the glorious reign of Uzbek Khan, although his ascendancy to the throne was accompanied by a bitter struggle between the two main parties of the Golden Horde aristocracy: the steppe Shamanists who wanted to see Tokta's son Ilbasar on the top of the hierarchy and the urban Muslims who eventually succeeded in enthroning Uzbek, the grandson of Mongke. This Emperor of the Golden Horde remains in history as a strong and just ruler, whose fairness and virtue was not disputed even by the Russian historians, despite their otherwise critical attitude to the phenomenon of the Golden Horde. N. Karamzin writes: Khan Tokta died; his son, the adolescent Uzbek, ascended the throne, being celebrated in the chronicles of the East for his fairdoings and love for the Mukhammedan faith, which he restored in the whole of the Mongol domain, as his father, Tokta, apparently was a pagan and did not follow the teaching of Quran.

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The religious diversity of the Golden Horde before the ascendancy of Uzbek Khan still presented a rather motley picture. As the Kazan Tatar historian G. Gubaidullin describes: In the cities left by the Khazars and in the Bulgar cities there were many Judaists. Among the Finnish peoples who lived under the Turks the majority still professed Shamanism. The nomadic Turks were still clinging to their ancestral religion and also remained Shamanists. Anyhow, in their contiguity with the Muslim peoples, some of them became Muslims . . . whereas among the sedentary Turks one could encounter Christians as well. Despite the fact that the majority of the Mongols and Central Asian Turks from the Chinese border were Shamanists, among them there were also Buddhists . . . Buddhism, coming from India, had spread among the Turks due to their contacts with the Chinese, whencefore, some of the invading Turks were adherents of this faith as well.

The task in front of Uzbek Khan was, however, not a purely religious one. His main duty as a supreme ruler was to fully concentrate state power in his own hands thwarting any more attempts to divide the Golden Horde into an array of the constantly warring ethnic and religious enclaves. To ful®l this obligation, Uzbek Khan withdrew from the provinces under his control any resemblance of autonomous government, and during his reign Volga Bulgaria, among other provinces, lost the last remains of its long-lasting self-rule. In fact, the in¯uence of Volga Bulgaria within the Golden Horde was substantially reduced by his predecessor, in that it was Tokta Khan who, in his attempted standardisation of the monetary and weight systems of the state, removed from the city of Bolgar the independent mint and the rest of the local administrative apparatus in 1311. The new government of Uzbek Khan consisted of four provincial emirs responsible for running of the internal affairs. These represented the four main tribes of the ruling Mongols, namely, Qiyat, Manghyt, Sicivut and Qongrat. There was also a wesir who managed the state in the absence of the Khan. The Arab writer al-Omari narrates of this hierarchy in the following words: The governors of the Sultan are four emirs, the superior of which is called bekleribek, or the senior emir . . . Every affair of

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The Silver Age importance is being attended to exclusively by these four emirs. Every affair is ®nally resolved through a wezir who has the power to resolve issues without consulting the emirs . . . This wezir manages the monetary affairs, appointments and dismisses on his own even in the most important cases, in the same way as the bekleribek on his own manages the affairs of the army.

Such an administrative structure, with its inner hierarchy and distribution of responsibilities, did not, however, diminish the supreme executive power of the Khan himself, but was, in a way, deputising for him in the time of his absence from the capital city. Khan Uzbek, in line with the tradition of his ancestors, more often than not lived in his nomadic headquarters, roaming in the south of his domain somewhere in the steppes of the northern Caucasus, near the Iron Gates of Derbent or further between the Caspian and the Azov Seas, and deciding on all state issues in his kingly tent. Ibn Battuta who visited Uzbek's station in 1333 left a very impressive description of this government-on-the-move: There came the headquarters, which they call urdu . . . and we saw a big town moving along with its dwellers: there were mosques and bazaars, and the smoke from the kitchens ¯ew in the air; they cook in the very process of movement, on the carts driven by horses. When they reach a place for camping, they take their tents from the carts and pitch them on the ground, as these are very light in weight. In the same manner they make mosques and retail stores.

Karamzin, on the other hand, several centuries later visioned Uzbek's procession as something grand and lavish: Uzbek was heading towards the banks of the Terek river for hunting, accompanied by all of his army, many famous tributaries and ambassadors of different nations. This favourite sport of the Khan usually lasted for a month or two and represented the grandeur of the Horde in a most striking manner: hundreds of thousands of people were on the move; each warrior put on the best of his clothing and mounted the best of his horses; merchants, on innumerous carts, carried the goods of India and Greece; lavishness and merriment ruled over

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The Silver Age the noisy, boundless steppes, and those wild steppes seemed the streets of densely populated cities.

Despite constantly changing his whereabouts, Uzbek Khan was always aware of what was going on in his immense domain and ruled it as easily as from the top of the world. The Mongol rulers were apparently not only the ®rst to maintain the existing network of roads all over the uni®ed region, but closely attended to the construction of new ones, at the same time broadening the system of smaller stations with spare horses, which were used by the Khan's couriers and heralds. With these stations and roads in existence, the communications network of the area improved greatly helping the Khan and his emirs to run the state effectively. At the same time, Uzbek Khan himself did not go into state affairs too carefully, habitually leaving all meticulous details to his emirs and to the local heads of uluses, Russian Princes among them, who were, for example, entitled to collect taxes on behalf of the Khan. Al-Omari writes: Out of the affairs of his state, he pays attention only to the essence of the issue, not bothering to investigate the circumstances, and he is contented with what is being reported to him without going into any particulars in respect of taxation and expenditure.

Such trust for his nominees did not back®re during the great statesmanship of Uzbek Khan himself, but during the reign of his successors eventually brought about the collapse and division of the Golden Horde. The reforms of Uzbek Khan did not interfere in the economic organisation of the uluses, and proved bene®cial not only for Volga Bulgaria but for the whole of the region in terms of its economic and cultural development. The uni®cation of the state and standardization of the monetary system resulted in a healthy blossoming of the urban culture and an energetic development of the monetary production economy. Trade was given a further boost by the introduction of cheaper copper coins called pools, the minting of which occurred in Bolgar, Mukhsha and other cities of the Golden Horde. During the regime of Uzbek Khan, the city of Bolgar reached its heyday, as well as other cities like Mukhsha (near the town of 150

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Narovchat in the modern Pensa oblast of the Russian Federation), where a Jami mosque built of white stone as well as public baths and mausoleums built of bricks were constructed. Even well-off residential houses of Mukhsha, Bolgar, Shunghat, Arabuga and other cities were at the time built of bricks and had central heating systems along the house walls. The number of the cities in those days was about a hundred, at least twenty of which were large administrative and production centres with mint-houses. The city of Sarai on the Ahtuba river, the capital of the state, was also a city of renaissance appearance, during the archeological excavation of which not only the house water systems, but also water-pipes of large diameter comprising the waterways of the whole great city, were discovered. Through these waterways the drinking water was supplied from the big pond in the city centre to the hilly quarters of the city. In the Sarai of Uzbek Khan's times there lived 75,000 citizens and the city occupied the territory of 48 square kilometres. While protecting the interests of the Muslim merchant classes within the Golden Horde, Uzbek Khan tried to broaden the foreign contacts of his state. His embassies reached many countries and the ensuing diplomatic relationships were further strengthened through dynastic intermarriages. Among the wives of Uzbek Khan, there was a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Andronik Paleologus, whereas his son was married to an Iraqi princess. One of his sisters became a wife of the Great Prince of Moscow, and his daughter was given in marriage to the Governor of Khawarism. The Khan surrounded himself with renowned Muslim scholars who became his advisors in many aspects of the government. One of these scholars well read in logic and medical science, Ala al-Din an-Nughman al-Khawarismi ibn Devletshah, was his closest counsel and was entrusted with many delegations to the courts of major diplomatic importance. Muslim writers of the time were appreciative of Uzbek's qualities as a Muslim monarch and a champion of Islam in the north of the Islamic world. Al-Birzali, wrote that the Khan `professed Islam, was of high intelligence, of good looks and a well-built ®gure.' AlZakhabi, engaging into somewhat ¯attering praise, describes Uzbek Khan as `a brave hero, good-looker by his appearance, a Muslim who destroyed a lot of emirs and sorcerers'. This last remark relates to what the Russian scholar Gumilyev unequivocally calls `foisting of the faith of Islam on the nomad 151

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subjects of Uzbek's Empire'. In fact, Uzbek's hostility towards the steppe Shamans was not of a purely religious origin. All mutinous trends and tendencies led by the nobility of the Golden Horde had their full backing; the Shamans were habitually instigating the members of nomad hordes against the supreme ruler of a different faith, whose subversive activities a statesman like Uzbek was not prepared to tolerate. It resulted in the persecution of most operative Shamans as well as Shamanist aristocrats who, in the footsteps of Prince Noghai, sought to establish their local rule above the rule of the state. The struggle of Uzbek with Shamanism, therefore, was just another aspect of his successful attempts at centralisation of the state and could hardly be viewed as an expression of religious intolerance, all the more so as all other religions in the Golden Horde enjoyed full freedom of conscience. Uzbek Khan not only con®rmed all religious edicts of his grandfather Mongke Khan, but even extended the religious freedoms granted to his Christian subjects. The Orthodox clergy and the monks of numerous Russian monasteries, as well as all property and real estates of the Church, were protected from any harm by the Khan's iarlyk, or decree, which envisaged capital punishment for anyone, Muslim and Shamanist alike, who dared to insult the Church and its affairs. Here is the text of Uzbek's dictum quoted by Karamzin: By the Will and Power, Mercy and Grace of the Almighty God, here is the word of Uzbek to all the princes great, secondary and lower, governors of the provinces, scholars, baskaks, scribes, bypassing envoys, falconers and ounce-keepers in all our uluses and countries, where, by the Grace of Immortal God, our power rules and our word dictates. By this, no one dares to insult, in Rus', the Synodal Church, Peter the Metropolitan and his men, Archimandrites, Farther Superiors, priests and so forth. Their towns, districts, villages, lands, hunting grounds, apiaries, meadows, woods, vineyards, orchards, mills and farmsteads are free from any tribute and custom duty, as all of this belongs to God; as all these men, by their Prayers, guard us and strengthen our warriors. Let them be answerable to one Metropolitan according to their ancient law and edicts of the former Tsars of the Horde. Let the Metropolitan live in peace and piety, let him in true heart and without any sorrow pray to

152

The Silver Age God for us and the children of ours. He who shall take anything from the clergy, shall pay for it threefold; he who shall vile the Russian faith, harm a church, a monastery, a chapel, shall die.

Such full protection enabled the Church to amass great wealth and virtually saved the Christian culture of Russia from the destruction of the frequent fratricidal wars. The Khans sometimes even had to rebuke their Russian vassals for trying to partake of the Church's riches, whilst ascribing an additional levy of their own to the central authority of the Golden Horde. The historical heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church, all the ancient icons, books and manuscripts, the precious church utensils, which nowadays are proudly presented to the visitors of the Moscow Kremlin and other state museums and Orthodox temples of Russia, were saved and safeguarded by the utmost religious tolerance of the Muslim Golden Horde, which remained unrivalled in the future centuries of Russian history. Russia, which took over the legacy of the Golden Horde in many aspects of the state management, including the idea of popular census, the administrative, postal and ®scal system, the army structure and so forth, failed to learn this simple lesson of religious behaviour presented by the rulers of the Golden Horde. Karamzin again: Although Khans Berka and Tuda-Mengu personally became Muslims and Uzbek oversaw the conversion of the entire Horde to Islam, they never pressured the Russian population to follow their example. On the contrary, the Russian Church enjoyed special privileges. They were speci®ed in a iarlyk, which was issued by Khan Mengu-Timur in 1267, and which exempted priests, monks and layman associated with the Church from Tatar taxation and military conscription. Those exemptions may also have been extended to the general population dwelling on Church and monastery lands. In exchange for its privileges the Church regularly prayed for the Khan.

Obviously the Muslim dignitaries outperformed the Orthodox Christian bishops in their prayers for the welfare of the Khan, as well as in other diplomatic and civic services rendered to the Golden Horde. Yet the Orthodox writers, acknowledging that the Orthodox Church never lived in the Golden Horde in inner and outer isolation, 153

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maintaining ancient ties with the eastern centres in Byzantium and the Middle East, themselves called the 14th century `the golden age of ¯ourishment' for the Russian spiritual and monastic tradition. Summarising the Islamic rule of the Golden Horde in its Silver Age, Karamzin states: Our Fartherland complained in humiliation . . . but the farmers could peacefully till their ®elds, the merchants could travel to and from the cities with their goods, the nobles could enjoy their surplus wealth . . . The ®rst values of a state are its peace and security; honour is precious for the prosperous nations, whereas the people under yoke wish only for some relief and thank God for it.

As far as Uzbek's efforts in converting the steppe nomad population into Islam are concerned, these painstaking endeavours did not touch the region to such an extent as the Great Steppe itself. Basically, this particular process of Islamisation pertains to the appearance of the Muslim ummah of present day Kazakhstan to the east of the Caspian Sea and the valleys of northern Caucasus. Of course, due to the nomadic nature of the ethnicities in question, we could rightfully say that Uzbek completed the Islamization of the steppe regions. However, among those Bashkir and Kypchak tribes which gravitated towards the Volga Bulgar civilisation, this process was already developing in a more natural way through the peaceful preaching of religious missionaries and through the many intermarriages of the Volga Bulgar Muslim nobility with the hierarchy of the steppe nomads still roaming the south of these lands. This Volga Bulgar and, later, Volga Tatar historical tradition of preaching and maintaining Islamic awareness among the nomads could be traced through the following centuries as well. Even in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the overwhelming majority of mullahs, teachers and Muslim scholars among the Bashkirs and Kazakhs were of Volga Tatar origin and it was they who upheld the tradition of their ancestors long after the fall of the Kazan Khanate. Among the tribes and nomadic clans of Kazakhstan, Islam forever remained a much more super®cial phenomenon than in the sedentary regions of the region. Partly this religious shallowness could have resulted from the somewhat coercive demands of Uzbek Khan, and 154

The Silver Age

partly from the very nature of the nomadic way of life, which leaves few options for in-depth learning, unless the clan leaders are rich and powerful enough to carry books and teachers with them in their moving towns and far-sighted enough to send their sons to the centres of education nearer to the ruling courts of the time. Indeed, the magni®cent cities of the region beaconed welcome not only to the ambitious career-seekers, but for the students of all kinds as well. The atmosphere of learning was present everywhere, and Islamic scholars as well as poets ¯ocked to the area in large numbers from as far as Middle East and the Maghreb. Gubaidullin states: Islam spread most strongly during the reign of Uzbek Khan In his time, scholars from the Islamic countries came very often . . . Theologian-fakihs and other scholars multiplied in big numbers. In the entourage of the khan, there were Seyids out of the progeny of the Holy Prophet; students of many madrasahs existent by many mosques of the Golden Horde enjoyed respect and deference of the state authority. The khans, even their wives, daughters and sisters, were in the habit of conversing with the scholars, theologians and students of religion. As since the time of Berka Khan primary schools and madrassahs were being opened like in other parts of the Islamic world, scholars and professionals were also being invited to the Golden Horde; and there were major scholars among those invited. Out of the famous Islamic scholars, in the times of Uzbek and Janibek Khans in the city of Sarai there lived such personalities as Kotbet-din Al-Razy, Sheik Sa'detdin Tautazi, Said Jelal-at-din, Ha®zat-din Bazazi, and, due to their presence and efforts, the royal capital of the Golden Horde became a real educational and scholarly centre.

Sarai was favoured by the following description of Ibn Battuta who had but seen various cities in his life-time as a famous traveller: It is one of the most beautiful cities . . . full of people, with the beautiful bazaars and wide streets . . . It has 13 Jami mosques . . . and there are plenty of lesser mosques as well.

Al-Omari adds to this report of Ibn Battuta, saying that 155

The Silver Age Sarai is a grand city accommodating markets, baths and religious institutions, and storages for many goods and commodities . . . In the middle of it, there is a pond, the water for which comes from the Volga . . . Uzbek Khan has built here a madrassah for religious studies, as he is very devoted to knowledge and scholars.

Among many artefacts found during the archeological excavation of this region, an astrolabe was found. In discussing this ®nd Mukhammadiev mentions the name of Sai® Sarai, a famous medieval poet of the area and further suggests, that Sai® Sarai's poetical line about `the Earth circling around the Sun' written some 140 years before Copernicus, may not be an incidental metaphor, but is in fact a direct result of the astronomical knowledge of this age of Muslim Renaissance. The personality of Sai® Sarai is interesting also because his life story points out that not all Islamic scholars of distinction came to the area from abroad. Indeed, out of a signi®cant number of poets and scholars of the Golden Horde known to posterity, there are several personalities about whom it may be suggested that they hail directly from the region. In the course of more, than a century after the fall of Bolgar the Great the Su® poetical tradition of these lands were upheld by unknown folk authors, only to reappear in the middle and the second half of the 14th century in written works enriched by new experience and new energy. This resurrection of this written literature was largely facilitated by the fact that the literary language of the area, Tyurki, became by that time the of®cial language of the Golden Horde. The existence of a common language and common culture, the roots of which can be traced simultaneously to the great cities of the region as well as to Central Asia, Iran, Middle East and the Maghreb, created a very special atmosphere through the daily educational exchange in all spheres of life in which the nationality or, indeed, ethnicity of a cultural personality played a rather small role. Islam in itself did not encourage ethnic divisions; these naturally existed in various provinces of the Golden Horde. But the cultural exchange transgressed borders, adding colours and ideas to the ancient Islamic civilisation of the area. In this way, all of the classical poets of this age can be rightfully related to the national literatures evolved through the centuries on the territory of the erstwhile 156

The Silver Age

Golden Horde. The poets themselves did not bother to leave behind any over-speci®ed autobiographical data. Sometimes, in perfect accordance with Su® tradition, they did not leave to posterity even their names and remained anonymous. Others, as if making up for the humility of their collegues, left us not only their own names, but the names of their predecessors and contemporaries. Such was the case of Sai® Sarai, from whose works we have the names of such poets of Tugly Hoja, Gabdelmajid, Maula Qazi Muhsin, Maulana Gyimad Maulawi, Ahmad Hoja Sarai, and Hasan Ugly. Saif Sarai is reported to have been born about 1321 in Kamyshli, which some scholars recognise as the present-day town of Kamyshin on the right bank of the Volga not far from the city of Volgograd. In the tradition of an ambitious provincial poet of every epoch, upon receiving his primary education in his own province, he moved to the capital city, Sarai, where he resided for many years. In the 1380s, when the peaceful prosperity of the Golden Horde once again gave way to internal strife and power struggles, Sai® Sarai unwillingly left the Golden Horde for Egypt, where he eventually died in 1396, leaving behind such marvels of poetry as Suhail wa Geldersen and Gyulstan bit-Tyurki, the latter work being a free interpretation of Gyulstan of the great Saadi. His life and work are very indicative of the cultural processes in the region in the 14th century. Despite little biographical detail, it in fact speaks volumes about the state of culture and cultural exchange in the Golden Horde as well as about the dominant ideas of this renaissance age of Islam. Those thirsty for knowledge who came to the centre of the Golden Horde cities from the smaller towns and villages, plunged into an atmosphere of cosmopolitan unity and, at the same time, variety of scholarly views and inspirations originated on the spot and brought in by intellectuals from Iran and Azerbajan, Middle East and Egypt, India, China and Central Asia. The Syrian scholar and poet Ahmad ibn Arab Shah, who spent long years in the cities of Sarai, Bolgar and Hajitarkhan, wrote about the capital of the Golden Horde in such words: Sarai turned into a place full of wealth and academic pursuits, in a short time, a good deal of theologians, philologians, scholars and professionals, other outstanding personalities gathered therein. Even in the most populated regions and villages of Egypt one could not ®nd comparison to such a state of things.

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The libraries of the world have safeguarded the precious manuscripts of such authors of this Silver Age as Kotb, Khawarismi, Mahmud bin Ali and others, in whose works the dominant Su® ideas of Heavenly Justice and the lack thereof in the world were powerfully expressed and represented. For instance, in his great poem of Nahdzel-Faradis, Mahmud bin Ali (d.1360) recounted the legendary story of Abu Hanifa and his torments in the hands of the Caliph of the time. Over and above the elaboration of the concept of kingly justice, the author in most artistic style manifests the love and esteem of the people for the founder of the main school of Islamic thought in the region. Indeed, Hani®te Islam seems to have so deeply rooted itself at that time that other interpretations of Islam may have been sometimes considered as heretical. There is no evidence of intolerance towards other sects and isolated incidents may point as much to the existence of dogmatism as to the personal prejudices of religious people in power. The instance of a certain Hasan Bulgari, or, by his full name, Sheik-Ul-Imam Haji Hasan bine Omar, may also be interpreted in different ways. He came to Bolgar from the city of Gyandza in Azerbaijan and lived there for thirty years, being engaged in religious studies and creative writing. As many other scholars from abroad, he became naturalised and took for himself the appellation `Bulgari', but his religious views and ensuing disputes with other Islamic dignitaries made him ¯ee his new homeland, as he was sentenced to be thrown from the top of the minaret for his heresies, whatever those might have been. Hasan Bulgari escaped to Bukhara and later died in Tabriz in 1299. This story appears to indicate that religious authorities indeed had the power to make one's life a misery, and it is hardly incidental that the most prominent authors of the time usually dedicated their works to the ruling Khans of the Golden Horde, thus seeking their protection against possible misinterpretation of their ideas by the religious establishment. Kotb, for example, dedicated his free rendition of Nizami Gyandzevi's poem Khusrau and Shirin to Uzbek Khan's son Tenibek and his Iranian wife Anushirvan. In any case, Saif Sarai, who worked in Sarai at the same time, by all means felt the same atmosphere of creative freedom on the one hand and of religious and worldly limitations on the other. Even so, the religious restrictions were not of the strictest kind, as they did not obstruct the free ¯ow of information and restrain artistic capacities of the many scholars, poets and other professionals of the Silver Age. 158

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We do not know for certain what circumstances caused the emigration of Saif Sarai to Egypt. Different sources suggest various causes, the most frequent explanation being the growing political instability of the Golden Horde in the second part of the 14th century. Indeed, after the rule of Uzbek Khan and his two successors, Janubek and Berdibek, the Golden Horde plunged into an array of power struggles, which eventually brought about its political collapse and geographical division into a set of separate Khanates. But there may be more than one explanation of this phenomenon of sudden instability. An interesting and rather convincing hypothesis is put forward by the American scholar Uli Shamiloglu who argues that one of the main, if not the major, reasons for a sudden regression of the Golden Horde civilisation might be the Black Death. Indeed, having arrived from China through Central Asia, the Black Death ®rst struck the region in 1346, and then devastated it wave by wave in 1364, 1374 and 1396. Remembering what havoc the Black Death wrecked in Europe and the Middle East, and what economic revolution of Western civilisation it caused by decreasing the serf population and thus compelling the feudal landlords to gradually introduce paid labour, one can suggest that the impact of the Black Death on this ¯ourishing civilisation could not be of any lesser magnitude. Shamiloglu writes: The usual interpretation of the turmoil in the Golden Horde beginning at the end of 1350s has involved only Berdibek's murder of his father in 1357, the subsequent murder of Berdibek by his own son Qulpa in 1359, then the murder of Qulpa, and so on. Although this may be the stuff of which Greek tragedies are made, it is not fully convincing as the major mechanism for the complete disintegration of centralized authority in the Golden Horde. This was not the ®rst time that the rulership of the Golden Horde changed hands under violent circumstances; Noghai's long career of manipulating khans is the outstanding example of this.

Further elaborating upon the possible results of bubonic plague in regard to the Golden Horde, Shamiloglu discusses the large-scale depopulation, resultant instability of political structures, cultural and technological regression and population pressure, that furthered the political instability of the time: 159

The Silver Age Usually, the political unity of the Golden Horde was preserved by the confederation of four major `ruling tribes' within the state. Following Berdibek's death, each of the four major tribal leaders supported a different individual for the position of khan without any long-term internal resolution of this con¯ict, and with these events the political integrity of the Golden Horde was lost forever.

It seems that in the course of the disturbances of this continuous power struggle the tribes migrating from the uluses less touched by the Black Death eventually achieved ethnic dominance, thus changing the ethnic map and, by mixing with the indigenous community, created the ethnic as well as political ground for the separate khanates of Crimea, Kazan, Astrakhan and, later, Kasimov. Thus, the impact of the Black Death can be seen in ethnic and linguistic changes where, for instance, at about the same time Volga Bulgarian ceases to be a written language and completely gives way to Tyurki, the antecedent of the Kazan Tatar language among others. Mukhammadiev however, in his study of the Golden Horde, argues that the Black Death played only a supportive role in the fall of that mighty state and sees the principle reason of the collapse in the nomadic structure of the Horde and the struggle of ambitions within this structure. Further to this are the economic reasons for decline. In the second half of the 14th century the region lost its grip on the main trade routes, a grip established and maintained by Uzbek Khan and his immediate successors. The commercial dominance over the Silk Route and other eastern markets shifted to Central Asia and was sealed by the victory of Timur Tamerlain over Tokhtamish, Khan of the Blue Horde, at the end of the 14th century. Yet in the process of severing the commercial ties of the Golden Horde to the west and to the east, the Black Death did indeed play a signi®cant role by devastating the main international trade centres of Astrakhan and Crimea. The ensuing struggle for power was apparently not the cause, but a natural consequence of the imminent economic degradation. The Golden Horde fell and could not be revived even by such mighty and cunning rulers as Tokhtamish because as a state it lost its geopolitical raison d'etre, which no personal ambition could have restored. Tamerlain also did not create but rather used and developed 160

The Silver Age

the reappearing economic advantages of Central Asia once laid almost barren by Mongol rage, and his decisive victory over the Golden Horde was just a ®nal point in the economic history of the latter. The Golden Horde was thus fated to disintegrate into the parts which were able to sustain themselves economically albeit on a much smaller scale. The following abstract from Martin attaches very important details to the overall picture of the region's economy before its eventual downfall: The Golden Horde controlled the northwestern segment of the Mongol's Great Silk Route. But at virtually the same time that the Golden Horde was suffering the effects of the plague, both ends of the Silk Road were being disrupted. In the West the Genoese and Venetians were engaged in a con¯ict involving Tana (1350±1355). Meanwhile the Ottoman Turks captured Gallipoli, established themselves in the Balkans, and were threatening sea traf®c through the straits (1350s). In the east after over a decade of fending off rebellions, the Yuan dynasty, as the Mongols of China were known, was overthrown (1368). The new Ming rulers occupied Beijing and expelled the Mongols to their native lands. The collapse of the Yuan dynasty in China undermined the economic strength of the reminder of the empire, including the Golden Horde. The new Ming dynasty reduced commercial contacts with the outside world.

Whatever their respective priorities might have been, all the principle causes of the end of the Silver Age resulted in massive migration of the population in all directions. In the light of our study, we are to follow this popular exodus to the parts not previously embraced by Islam. It is easy to suggest that all the named trials and predicaments, including the Black Death and various military troubles, were explained by the Muslim theocracy and freely wandering Su®s as the Wrath of God upon the pride and injustices of the time. But apparently these troubles affected the rich and famous in almost the same degree as the common people. The emirs and beks were forced to move to the north of the Islamic region, sometimes occupying the lesser seats of their ancestors, other times establishing new settlements along the northern trade routes known since 10th century and leading to the Hyperborean riches of the Polar Circle. 161

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The endangered population of Volga Bulgaria ¯ed north beyond the Kama and Vyatka rivers and towards the lower reaches of the rivers Svyaga, Myesha and Kazanka. Khalikov says: The Bulgar population at the time apparently penetrated the former habitats of their ancestors, on the banks of the rivers Vyatka and Cheptsa, where later the ethnicity of Nokhrat, or Chepets Tatars had evolved, and to the middle reaches of the Kama and lower reaches of the Belaya river, which later became the habitat of Gain, or Bartym Tatars.

Later in his study, Khalikov further elaborates upon this aspect of the Muslim migrations, stating that The Bulgar tombstone from the village of Gordino on the Cheptsa river is dated from 1323. The here existent Bulgar settlement and a number of smaller sites give evidence as to the development, in this region, of a stable Bulgar-Turk colony. Colonisation, by the Bulgars, of the eastern regions, namely, the basin of the Kama and the lower current of the Belaya, continued. Practically, it was a process of Bulgarisation and Islamisation of Turkic and Ugric tribes of this region. It is further proved by the existence of a cemetery with tombstones and mausoleums dated from the 14th century in the valley of the river Chishma in Bashkiria, a number of settlements with Bulgar ceramics in the valley of the Ik river (Menselinsk, Bikbulovo) and the Belaya river (Turachinsk, Canyab and so forth); the process of Islamisation is traced with the help of such burial places as those of Taktalacjuk and Kushelevo situated in the lower reaches of the Belaya river.

Thus during the reign of the Golden Horde Khans, the domain of Islam expanded from the coast of the Black and Caspian Seas to the northern Urals and beyond this mountain range, into Western Siberia. But if Islam, as a faith, consolidated its impact on the expanding region, the same cannot be said about the state of the Golden Horde itself. Different political and, most importantly, ethnic trends unleashed by the Black Death and ambitious rivalries, further incited by the changing economic geography, ®nally brought about the downfall of the centralised state which on the threshold of the 162

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15th century already consisted of separate khanates and lesser feudal formations constantly squabbling with each other. The historical destiny of Volga Bulgaria and other regions was fatefully connected with the rise and fall of the Golden Horde. The collapse of the latter signi®ed also the end of Volga Bulgar civilisation which bequeathed its ancient Islamic traditions and ethnic mixture to the khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan, Kasimov and, to a lesser extent, to the khanate of Siberia. There developed along with these, smaller formations paying tribute to them, for instance, the Muslim Karin, or Kokrat principality, which existed from 1361 until 1489 on the territory of the present-day Vyatka District. Its population mainly consisted of Volga Bulgar refugees and local Finnish residents, the blend of which formed the ethnicity of the Karin Tatars who played a decisive role in the later event of the fall of the Kazan and Siberian Khanates to the hands of Moscovy. In terms of the overall in¯uence on world history, whatever the prominence of these Muslim state formations, it was only a re¯ection of the Silver Age of the region. But the Silver Age was over and never again would Islam attain such cultural heights in this region. But Muslim history within the area continued, albeit becoming more fractured by political and national rivalry and increasingly sidelined in terms of the history of Islam. The glory was nearing its end and, indeed, the stories of the Astrakhan, Kazan and Kasimov khanates, however educative and surprising, may well be called the stories of an Indian Summer of Islam in the region.

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8

The Golden Horde, as it were, was the ®rst mighty Empire to try and unite under one rule of law and one ideology all the vast expanses under its sway, of which the area, with its long-established urban civilisation and reliable agriculture was a central and one of the most pro®table parts. The previous Empire including the area, that of the Khazars, was also based on the rule of force and, to a lesser extent, held together by the ethnic kinship of various Turkic peoples inhabiting its domain, but, due to the lack of a common religious ideology, it fell victim to the growing pressure of Islam, which, apart from its spiritual qualities, was the ideology of predominant economic trends developing in the area and was thus connecting it with the world markets of the day. Anyhow, neither Khazaria, nor the Golden Horde could overcome the ethnic divisions within its Turkic subjects, both Muslim and pagan. Even after Islam had been established in the area as the superior faith, its kingly harbingers could not unite different Turkic tribes of the Great Steppe and the Volga into one solid body of Muslims sharing the common objectives and common interests of the Ummah. This raises the question of why it did not happen? Why the Muslim population of the Golden Horde, at least its sedentary population, was unable to unite as one larger ethnic group despite all the processes facilitating such conversion of various natural ethnic mixtures into one nation? The answer to this question is not an easy and one, although the ®rst response to the issue would be and, indeed, is that with the destruction, depopulation and eventual disappearance of the Golden Horde cities in the wake of the Black Death and constant wars, the main foundation of the forthcoming 165

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national unity of the Ummah was removed and never fully restored. Only in those parts of the area, where the old urban culture was allowed to survive, did the process of uni®cation continue, but those cities, most notable of which were Kazan and Astrakhan, were a considerable distance apart, and, between them, there stretched a vast territory marked by ethnic discord and nomadic preferences for pastures instead of towns. As we have already seen in previous chapters that the inter-ethnic exchange involving local Turkic (Bulgar, Khazar, Bashkir), Hungarian, Finnish (Burtas) and Central Asian (Kypchak) elements, in their gravitation towards the urban commercial centres of the time, played a very powerful role in creating the Ummah of Volga Bulgaria. Looking at this process of urbanisation through the earlier centuries, one might, somewhat speculatively, suggest that had this process been allowed to continue unobstructed during the age of the Golden Horde, it would have possibly brought about a greater consolidated nation speaking one language (Chagatay Tyurki), adhering to one religion (Islam) and inhabiting not only the territory of the erstwhile Volga Bulgaria, but also the Urals and the lowest reaches of the Don and Volga. To some extent it did actually happen, as all the contemporary ethnic groups calling themselves Tatars (that is, Kazan, Siberian, Astrakhan, Central Asian Tatars and Mishar Tatars), can indeed be viewed and are viewed as one nation vis-aÁ-vis the Greater Russian nation in the present day Russian Federation. All these Tatar groups, big and little, evolved as distinct ethnicities (with minor differences of ethnic components, of which we shall speak further) on the basis of the ancient indigenous Turkic population of the area, with only a small addition of the later Mongol element, which is to be found almost in the same proportion in Russian ethnicity. However, this ethnic and national evolution of the area, supported by the common faith and common Chagatay language, but disrupted, ®rst, by de-urbanisation and then by tribalism, did not expand, as had taken place in the North, where the populace of the Russian principalities formed one greater nation despite all the bitter rivalries and minor ethnic and linguistic differences. If we go further with this comparison, we see that the creation of the greater Russian nation was facilitated by the Golden Horde Khans themselves, who supported the rise of the Moscow principality above all other Russian princedoms and ancient semi-republics 166

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like that of Novgorod. Under the rule of the Prince Ivan Kalita (The Purse), Moscow enjoyed the special con®dence of the Horde: tax collection was taken out of the hands of the Horde appointees, Muslim and Armenian alike, and entirely entrusted to him. Harold Lamb, in his book The March of Muscovy, writes: Oblivious of mockery or hatred, the Muscovites continued to serve as treasurers of the khans, to gather land and to avoid war under the protection of the Tatars. They had no traditions of past glory. Old Slavic law might hold elsewhere but the Muscovites, in acting as the agents of the Tatars, carried out the laws of Sarai. Among the palaces of Kremlin there was one of wood reserved for the envoys of the Tatar khans. When an envoy from Sarai appeared on the outer road, the prince of Moscow went out on foot to take the rein of the envoy's horse, and to feed it. While Tatars dwelt in Kremlin, the ceremony at banquets and audiences was that of Sarai. More than that, Moscow was beginning to take on the semblance of Tatar Sarai. Muscovite princes were to hold monopolies of making liquor and weapons as the Tatar khans had done; they were to rule through departments, prikazi, like their conquerors; they were to take over the Tatar census rolls and horse-post transport; they were to claim all Muscovite land as their own, to make new laws replacing the old Russkaya Pravda . . . Moscow more than any other city came under Tatar in¯uence.

This preferential attitude of the Golden Horde worked wonders for the Moscovite dominance over other Russian lands, and it was a fact, this peaceful diplomatic development, and not the Kulikovo battle, which was a distinct turning point in later Russian history. Moscow became a new centre of gravitation for the entire Rus', eclipsing and subduing all other principalities, including Vladimir-Suzdal, which played such a dominant role prior to the Mongol invasion. Thus, the process of centralising the Russian state and, as a consequence, forming the greater Russian nation was thus initiated by the Golden Horde itself. In the Golden Horde domain, however, no single ethnic group was allowed to play a consolidating role by eclipsing all the others in the process of local ethnogenesis. The key role belonged to the nomadic element of the Golden Horde, for whom tribal ®delity was of much 167

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greater importance, than their somewhat super®cial religious allegiance. Thus, the process of formation of one Ummah of what had become of the Muslim area under the Golden Horde was largely hindered by the tribal preferences of the ruling nomad element and constant migration of the population in thirteenth and fourteenth centuries caused by nomadic warfare and the Black Death as well as climatic changes in Eurasia: abundant rain and snowfalls in the upper reaches of Volga, caused the level of the Caspian Sea to rise and, at the same time, became the principal cause of protracted drought in the lands adjoining its lower reaches. This migration of the ethnic groups, especially during and after the Black Death, always brought about the dominance of new nomadic ethnicities at the expense of the local sedentary population. Time and again, new ethnicities were coming from the expanses of the Great Steppe only to seize power and then disappear from the scene after enjoying it for a comparatively short while. The ideas of Islam, of which they knew and understood very little, played a secondary role in their ambitions, if, indeed, they played any role at all. Rather, the ethnic differences, however small and insigni®cant, were the basis for their pride and the grounds for their short-lived superiority upon other peoples of the area. Apparently, this nomadic preference for tribal nationalism was the trend which eventually prevented the formation of a much larger Ummah of Russian Islam, as we now know it. The warring nomadic clans and stable associations of such clans had no religious disputes with their enemies, which, in turn, for the most part happened to be Muslims of the same Sunni Hana® mazhab carried all over the Great Steppe by the Nakshbandiya preachers of Turkestan and Transoxiania. By the very nature of the nomadic way of life, dependence on abundant pastures and water made them ®ght each other in the lack of any permanent central authority. No leader was able to consolidate them into a speci®c state system, thus restoring the organisation of the Golden Horde: the best even the most politically and militarily talented leaders could achieve was further secession from the remnants of the Empire and foundation of the Horde or, if lucky, a state of their own. Only within this particular Horde or Khanate, it is possible to speak about the evolution of the ethnic and national awareness, but then, Islam played a much more consolidating role in such evolution, than in the nomadic parts of the area as a whole: 168

Collapse and Disintegration Islam was a common value regulating the mutual relationships and requiring, from them, a common system of obligations and prescriptions. Islam was the force, which eased the co-existence of different tribes, strengthened their inner relations and provided for the inner ties among them, softened and abated psychic distinctions between the tribes, ethnic coalitions, thus creating an illusion of th spiritual unity . . . Islam helped in forming ideas of ethnic unity of different tribes and clans entered into certain ethnicity and in their consolidation. It was further af®rmed by the circumstance that, on the one hand, the idea of belonging of one's ethos to Islam, the belief that being a Muslim is a in-born characteristic, and, on the other hand, an evolving idea of the common origin with another clans and tribes, and, later, ethnicities, became the characteristic feature of the ethnic self-awareness . . . In this way, certain groups of the Kyrgyz traced their genealogical kinship to the Volga-Kama Bulgars, to the Noghai Horde; they are thought to be related to Kazakhs, Sarts, Kypchaks, Uzbeks and Karakalpaks.

This above quotation from T. S. Saidbaev's book Islam and Society, further points to a lost chance of ethnic development in the area and, indeed, on the whole of the territory of the Ulus Juchi. This lost opportunity, in fact, forms the basis for the rather obscure and idealistic concept of Pan-Turkism, the realisation of which proved impossible due to the same inherited, although now mostly latent, feeling of tribal ± read, national, ± superiority, inherited from the past, but still present in the mentality of various Turkic peoples. The history is what it is, but, seemingly, if the natural (as opposed to politically chaotic) process of Islamisation through preaching and inter-marriage on the basis of urban culture would be allowed to peacefully follow its centuries-long course, all of the territory east and south from Moscow would have eventually become a home for one nation, no less strong and numerous, than the Slav Russians themselves. Indeed, the existence of the common Tyurki-Chagatay language, common economic interests of the urban population and the intensity of the urban culture before the fall of the Golden Horde incorporating more and more of the rough nomad elements, apparently provides ®rm foundation for such a hypothesis, however naõÈve and wishful may it appear at the ®rst glance. This was not 169

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destined to happen and, indeed, the greater Russian nation was the ®rst to bene®t from the ethnic sources, which otherwise would have fed the Unknown Ummah for centuries to come, making it one of the most populous nations on Earth. A list of the Russian aristocratic clans shows how many of them have their origins in the Golden Horde of the time of its disintegration, and this process of the then voluntary in¯ux of the nobler Muslim elements into the Russian nation continued over further centuries at least as consistently, as did the ¯ow from Polish, Lithuanian and German ethnic sources. The mutinous history of the later decades of the fourteenth century saw the bitter political struggle for dominance between various steppe khans, which resulted in inextricable turmoil in the once stable and prosperous state of the Golden Horde. It is useful to remember that, geographically and, to an extent, politically and ethnically, the Western Mongolian Empire (Ulus Juchi) consisted of three main regions: the Blue Horde comprising territories of the present day Kazakhstan and Southern Siberia, the Noghai Horde including lands of the Northern Caucasus, and the White, or Golden Horde, which occupied the central position and, in the period between the deaths of Noghai and Janibek, politically dominated the other two. After the assassination of Janibek, which was a result of inter-ethnic intrigues accompanying the struggle for power in the state struck by the Black Death and economic collapse, the Golden Horde experienced two decades of disturbances, which weakened its once mighty sway and eventually brought about its complete disintegration. In 1361±67, a separate principality was formed on the territory of central Volga Bulgaria by Khan Bulat-Temur; in the same year another adventurer named Sekiz-Bey occupied the upper reaches of the river Pyana in the present day Penza district, but was soon driven from there by Prince Tagai who formed his own principality around the city of Mukhsha (Narovchat). In 1359 one of the emirs of Berdibek Khan, Haji-Cherkes, after murdering his sovereign took the city of Astrakhan and established around it the Astrakhan princedom, which lasted until 1379±80 before being seized by Timur Tamerlain. By the 1370s almost all parts of the former Ulus Juchi were engaged in mutual warfare, in which the infamous Timur Tamerlain, 170

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along with his one time protegeÂe Khan Tokhtamysh and his bitter adversary Emir Mamai played leading roles. Timur, having established himself in Maverranakhr, was looking to free the whole of Central Asia from the rule of the Golden Horde, which, in the constant turbulence caused by the local wars, had already lost its sense of direction and effectively split into two major parts, Eastern (the White and Blue Horde) and Western (the Golden Horde proper). The Western part, in a series of political intrigues, fell into the hands of the non-Genghisid Emir Mamai who effectively ruled it on behalf of several lesser khans and vainly tried to consolidate the state vis-aÁvis the rising Muscovy, which was only too keen to escape from the rule of the Golden Horde weakened by incessant nomadic warfare. The Eastern part, under Khans Urus Mukhammad and later Tokhtamysh, was itself eager to dominate the entire Golden Horde Empire. In 1380, the joint nomad, Lithuanian, Russian and Genoese forces of the ambitious Emir Mamai were defeated by the troops of Great Prince Dmitry Donskoy on the Kulikovo battle®eld. This defeat, acclaimed by Russian history as a turning point in relations between the Golden Horde and Rus', was, in reality, not a signi®cant failure for the Golden Horde, but rather a personal disaster for Emir Mamai who, having escaped to his seat in Crimea, later tried to re-establish himself as a ruler. He was ®nally beaten by the troops of Tokhtamysh Khan and assassinated in the Genoese port of Kaffa, on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea. Reading the Russian sources, one may get the impression that the Kulikovo battle was the greatest battle of the second half of the fourteenth century in terms of its magnitude and historical signi®cance. But this combat was soon to be eclipsed by the far more spectacular encounters between the troops of the allies-turnedenemies Timur Tamerlain and Tokhtamysh Khan. By the end of the fourteenth century they were both vying for geopolitical dominance over the well-known commercial routes of the lower Volga and Khawarism, and for ultimate supremacy in the Ulus Juchi, which was resolutely won over by Timur. As a result, the Golden Horde effectively ceased to exist as a state and was turned into a conglomerate of separate self-ruling khanates and principalities, of which the most prominent were the Astrakhan Khanate under Timur-Kutlug son of Urus Mukhammad, the Manghyt Yurt or the Noghai Horde under yet another powerful political ®gure of the 171

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time, Edyghei, and Crimean and, later Siberian, Khanates founded as such by the defeated refugee, Tokhtamysh Khan. Even the lands of Volga Bulgaria, so far to the north of the main theatre of war, were totally devastated by the clashes of Timur Tamerlain and Tokhtamysh and the war-time administration of the latter. As the major power struggle was taking place in the southern regions of the area, the residents of its northern regions were suffering both economically and politically. More and more people were compelled to leave the war zone in and around the intercession of the Volga and Kama, and settle further north, where the city of Kazan was becoming increasingly important. But it was not until much later, in 1438±41, that Kazan became the centre of a powerful Khanate comprising half the lands of the former Volga Bulgaria. One can easily get lost in the kaleidoscope of events and political ®gures of this turbulent time of constant wars, intrigues and mutual betrayals. It is also easy to be distracted from the main theme of this study, while trying to visualise the ever-changing map of the Russian Islam of this tragic period. However, while singling out the most prominent personalities who shaped the history of Central Asia visaÁ-vis the Golden Horde in the late fourteenth century, we cannot fail to mention one man who never lifted a weapon, but whose impact on the spiritual history of the whole region and, indeed, on a considerable part of the wider Muslim world, proved to be even longer-lasting, than the conquests of his spiritual brother Timur Tamerlain called the Sword of Allah. This man who died in 1389 at Bukhara was the famous Mukhammad bin Mukhammad Bahaatdin Nakshbandi, Su® master and religious teacher, so prominent and in¯uential a personality that the ancient Su® tradition springing from Al-Khamadani (d.1140) was named after him and remains so today. So powerful was his spiritual message that, towards the end of his life, he commanded over 300,000 followers in 18 countries of Asia, Africa and Europe. It is reported that, although, during his lifetime, in Bukhara alone there were more than 300 mosques, the most frequented mosque in the Bukhara region was that in his native village, Kasr-i-Arifan. But this was a time, when, in the words of J. Spencer Trimingham, `the shrine, not the mosque, became the symbol of Islam'. Su® sheiks and wandering dervishes reportedly endowed with supernatural powers were attaining prominence throughout the centuries of the Genghisid rule mainly because, for the newly converted nomad Mongols and 172

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steppe Turks, they bore more similarity to the traditional shamans of the pagan cults of the latter. For the Muslims experiencing innumerable hardships under the rule of the Far Eastern invaders, the Su® ideas of escaping from the ordeals of the world through peaceful meditation were attractive, as these ideas offered at least some explanation for the chaos and uncertainty of the day. The cult of saints, however far removed from the purest monotheism of the Islam of the Prophet, was the greatest force of popular Islam, in¯uencing not only the enslaved and desperate masses, but also the great rulers like Timur Tamerlain and earlier monarchs of Central Asia who often paid homage to the local saints by erecting spectacular tombs and mausoleums in their honour. This preferential relationship between the Su®s and Genghisid monarchs started from the very beginning of the Mongol recognition of Islam as a superior faith. The ®rst Mongol sovereigns who embraced Islam, namely, Berke Khan of the Golden Horde and Gazan of Tebriz, preferred to be converted by the Su® teachers rather than the Sunni 'alims. In case of Berke Khan, it was the Sheik of the Kubraviya Tarikah Saifaddin Ca'id al-Bakharzi of Bukhara, to whom Berke Khan travelled from his seat in the Lower Volga region to embrace Islam. The advantageous position occupied by the Su® sheiks and teachers in comparison with the orthodox Sunni Ulama was retained by subsequent generations of Su® masters. This, in turn, in¯uenced the popular perception of Islam all over the area, where cult of saints and pilgrimage to the saintly tombs also became the order of the day. Whatever the Su® in¯uences might have been as far as different Su® tarikahs are concerned, the impact of the Nakshbandiya Su®sm in the area also became the best-established and longest-lasting one, as J. Spencer Trimingham states, it played a highly signi®cant role in af®rming the Sunni understanding of Islam among the sedentary and nomadic Turks alike. The Nakshbandiya thought, which enhanced and deepened the erstwhile Yassawiya teaching, penetrated the area in question along the same routes as did Islam, the only difference being that this area was at the time laid waste, with almost no means of support for its people, following the endless wars. Remarkably, it was the devout and highly educated Timur, and not some illiterate nomadic adventurer, who ®nally destroyed the once thriving urban civilisation of the area, so much so, that even an idea of the Golden Horde being a land of densely populated and economically and culturally sound 173

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cities became buried in the annals of history. E. Berezikov in his book The Great Timur writes: Tamerlain proved to be immensely cruel in regard to urban centres. In the Volga region, from Astrakhan to Bolgar, all cities were ¯attened, and their inhabitants massacred. For the cities and the urban culture of the Volga region, the pogroms of Tamerlain had more tragic consequences than the Mongol invasion. If, after the Mongols almost all of the Volga region cities were restored, after the onslaught of Tamerlain they were turned into ruins and became the arena for the struggle of the nomadic warlords. Tamerlain, in the course of the whole year (1395) plundered and destroyed the cities with cruelty characteristic of him and without any mercy, which is particularly true in regard of the cities of the central regions of the Golden Horde, i.e. the Volga region. In some (Volga) Tatar sources, the destruction of the, for instance, Bulgar cities by Tamerlain is perceived as the punishment for being oblivious of God. Apparently, the merciless, fanatical massacre of their inhabitants by Timur's warriors can be explained as reprisal for religious tolerance. Indeed, in the (Volga) Tatar cities, there stood, beside the mosques, also Orthodox Christian and Catholic temples. Tamerlain's son Miranshah, for example, upon capturing the Tatar city of Azak, put to death the entire Muslim population of that city.

The terror and misery, which the conquests of Tamerlain in¯icted upon the population of the area, can be further assessed by a description of an eye-witness, albeit this report depicts Timur's capture of Isphahan, and not any of the cities of the Golden Horde. This eye-witness was the unlikely traveller and writer Johann Schiltberger of Frisingen near Munich, a German soldier from the last wave of Crusades taken captive during the battle between King Zigmund of Hungary and Sultan Bayazet of the Turks. It happened at Nicopolis on 28 September 1396, and this date marks the beginning of his 32-year-long captivity, during which he apparently visited places as far away as the Southern Urals and steppe approaches to Siberia. He reached Siberia, ®rst mentioned by him in Western annals, while participating in the military expedition of Edighei against Tokhtamysh who, after repeated defeats by Timur 174

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and his allies, took refuge in Siberia and attempted to form a state of his own in the regions around the present-day city of Tyumen. In 1406, Tokhtamysh was captured and killed by the troops of Edighei who, in turn, was assassinated by one of Tokhtamysh's emirs in 1420. The story of Edighei, the legendary version of which formed the basis for many attitudes of the area, was, in reality, a story of a powerful usurper who for more than 20 years ruled the remains of the Golden Horde with iron hand, appointing and dismissing its khans at will, but, despite all efforts, failed to preserve its collapsing territorial integrity. As for Johann Schiltberger, he ®nally returned home in 1427 and added his narrative to the numerous stories told in the West by those travelling in the East. His, less literate and, in geographical sense, rather equivocal, travelogue is not as valuable a source of information as the reports of Marco Polo or similar knowledgeable travellers, but then, his account may be said to ®ll a gap in the written history of the area left by the turmoils of the late fourteenth century, as those troubles prevented the more educated writers and travellers from reaching that part of the world. With reference to Tamerlain's dealing with the rebellious city, Johann Schiltberger remembers: He assembled all the citizens, and ordered all those over fourteen years to be beheaded, the boys under fourteen years he ordered to be spared, and with the heads a tower was constructed in the centre of the city; then he ordered the women and children to be taken to a plain outside the city, and ordered the children under seven years of age to be placed apart, and ordered his people to ride over these children. When his counsellors and the mothers of the children saw this, they fell at his feet, and begged that he would not kill them. He got angry, and rode himself amongst them and said: `Now I should like to see who will not ride after me?' Then they were all obliged to ride over the children, and they were all trampled upon. They were seven thousand.

No wonder that even the name of Tamerlain invoked awe in the hearts of the dwellers of the area, Muslims, Christians and remaining pagans alike. The only person in history to cause them similar misery one and a half centuries later, was Ivan the Terrible, but the latter, at 175

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least, was crusading against the in®dels, and not against fellow Muslims. As a result of the protracted war between Timur Tamerlain and Tokhtamysh, the cities of the Lower Volga simply ceased to exist. The Kazan Khan Mukhammad Amin, in one of his surviving poems, lamented the loss in¯icted upon the once united Muslim lands of the Volga region in the most uncompromising terms: In the year 750 after Hijra, A major earthquake shook the earth. The lame man with the mind of an idiot, Brought troubles and adversities to every house. Many scholars and sheiks became martyrs In the radiant light of Islam. The world of Islam fell into pieces, And tears were shed in abundance. What will he answer in front of Allah, If the question will be strongly put to him? O my Allah, may Thou present that slave of Thou With pain and torture in the hereafter!

The only remaining monument to the splendour of the renaissance cities of the Golden Horde was to be found in the city of Bolgar, where the spectacular ruins of the grand mosque and several civic buildings withstood all trials of time. Despite the Timurid offensive, the plunders of the Novgorod's ushkuiniks, and the ®nal onslaught by the Russian Prince Fedor Pestry in 1431, the city apparently showed signs of life even at the beginning of the ®fteenth century. Otherwise, this magni®cent civilisation completely disappeared, giving way to a much more isolated development of its former integral parts. It is tragic to consider the collapse of these great cities while the Central Asian cities, most remarkably Samarkand and Bukhara, were reaching their architectural heights with the help of enslaved builders and masons of the Golden Horde. The Great Mosque of Bolgar, with its white dome and spectacular pillars, was being brought down at the same time as Brunelleschi was erecting the famous cupola of the Florence Cathedral (1420±36), which marked the replacement of the medieval gothic style by the sublime grandeur of the Renaissance architecture. Indeed, if not the religious, then the cultural in¯uence of the Italian Quattrocento was reaching the surviving urban communities 176

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of the Golden Horde, the ancient trade routes leading from the Italian colonies of Crimea. However, another route, passing Hungary and Muscovy and reaching the north of the area, was already in the making. It was the route, by which later the famous Bolognese architect, Aristotle Fioravanti, came to build the Kremlin of Moscow. At the time described, he was still a baby, born sometime between 1415 and 1418, a baby of the same generation as the future Grand Inquisitor of Spain Jacomo Torquemada born in 1420. The deeds of both were still to come, and, indeed, the area, at least its northern part, was still to experience the cultural upsurge of its great urban civilisation. What remained of it around the time of Brunelleschi and Bramante, however, was a pitiful picture of destruction and misery of an ancient urban civilisation reduced to the semi-nomadic way of life by warlords of, all too often, rather dubious statesmanship.. After the death of Edighei in 1420, his Manghyt urt east and south from the Volga considerably weakened, although his son, Nuratdin who assumed power in 1426 tried, not without success, to tighten the loose formation created by Edighei. But this was already a time of further ethnic and political fragmentation of the remnants of the Golden Horde. After 1420, the Golden Horde effectively split into the Eastern part comprising the Noghai Horde and Siberian Khanate, and Western part consisting of the Astrakhan and Crimean khanates, as well as the Great Horde, which, being situated upon the ruins of Sarai, from the end of 1430s tried to assume the leading role among the Western fragments of the Ulus Juchi. When, in 1421, a new Khan, Ulug Mukhammad, a descendant of Juchi and a relative of Tokhtamysh, ascended the shaky throne of the weakened Golden Horde, his efforts to re-establish the central authority became con®ned to the more economically and politically important Western part and the northern lands of the former Volga Bulgaria, whereas the Siberian Khanate was left to suffer the political pressure of the Noghai Horde as well as to endure the squabbling of its own local khans and nobles. The Noghai Horde itself was to experience further disintegration along not so much geographical, as tribal and ethnic lines. The ®fteenth century saw the creation of new ethnic groups which were later to become known as the Uzbek and Kazakh nations. The ®rst chief of the nomad clans, which in 1422 seceded from what was left of the central authority of the Golden Horde and started to call 177

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themselves Uzbeks, Khan Barak, was murdered in 1428 after successfully establishing his rule in the lower reaches of the Volga between Sarai and Astrakhan. In 1431, is successor, the famous Abul Khayr descending, as many other leaders of the Noghai Horde from the house of the Batu Khan's brother Sheibani, left the Volga banks and established his authority ®rst over the former Pecheneg steppe between the Yayik (Ural) river and the Aral Sea and later, in 1446, proceeded further south towards the Syr-Darya controlling the well-known trade and migration routes leading from Central Asia to the north. Abul Khayr was a nomadic leader entirely dedicated to the nomadic way of life, but, in 1446, political and trade considerations led him to form and consolidate ties with the sedentary parts of the Central Asia, especially the cities of Transoxiania, which after the death of Timur were effectively ruled by the Naksbandiya dervish clericalists under the leadership of Khoja Ahrar. This political liaison brought the Sheibanid house of Abul Khayr into the midst of the Central Asian politics for centuries to come, but the same liaison became the principal cause of the rift within the Abul Khayr's nomadic community itself. In 1456, the internal revolt of several clans brought about their secession under the name of Kazakhs. In the course of time, these Kazakh clans evolved into three more distinctive clanic groups known as Great, Middle and Lesser Dzhuz. Again, a sense of belonging to one of these Dzhuzes and tribal allegiance to one's own Dzhuz was as strong as to be felt even now, a phenomenon which effectively prevented the building of a consolidated Kazakh nation, despite such shared national features as common Islamic faith, common language and, at present, actual sovereignty of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This ethnographic example very clearly reveals the preference for tribal loyalty within the nomad ethnicities of the former Golden Horde as opposed to any common national feeling based on membership of the Islamic Ummah. Moreover, despite centuries of Islamisation, especially the period under Uzbek Khan, the nomad tribes of the Golden Horde and later, of its fragments, were Muslims mostly by name, but not by nature, as opposed to the much more religiously literate urban population of the area and Central Asia. Such super®ciality of beliefs and practices, which only slightly re®ned the previous religious ideas of Tengrianism and tribal Shamanism, persisted among the tribes of the Great Steppe and Ural tribes (most notably southern Bashkirs) under their in¯uence for the next several centuries after the collapse 178

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of the Golden Horde. Even in the late eighteenth century, most of the Kazakh, Noghai and Bashkir nomads had only a very super®cial understanding of Islam. However, the separation of the Uzbek and Kazakh ethnicities in middle of the ®fteenth century can be viewed as the watershed which divided and set apart the further history of the area and Central Asia as we know it now. The once consolidated Ulus Juchi in the ®fteenth century became fragmented into domains of the nomad and sedentary Sheibanids south of the Yayik and the lower reaches of the Irtysh rivers, the remnants of the Noghai Horde ruling the Ural steppe north from the Yayik and extending its nomadic in¯uence over the present-day Orenburg district and Bashkiria and the polity of the Great Horde, which represented the central part of the once all-powerful Golden Horde, de-urbanised and culturally degraded in the wake of the onslaught by Timur Tamerlain and ensuing feuds among the local nomad warlords. The only state formations to sustain the Islamic urban tradition of the Silver Age of the area discussed here were those of the Astrakhan and Kazan Khanates. The middle reaches of the Volga and the Urals became home for ever wandering nomadic hordes proud of their Genghisid ancestry long since drowned in the sea of the Turkic tribes, sometimes very powerful, but unable to produce any longterm concept of statehood, despising towns and always squabbling and ®ghting among themselves for water and pastures. These were the nomadic peoples whom the Russians would for centuries call Tatars, and the sedentary Central Asians ± Nughais, for Nughai, or Noghai even nowadays stands for a Tatar in the Central Asian republics of Kazakhastan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. This denomination, if anything, re¯ects a mutual suspicion between the followers of autarkic nomad and sedentarist traditions in Central Asian history, the tendency meticulously expounded by S. A. M. Adshead in his book Central Asia in World History. The same tendency, as, indeed, many other trends of the Central Asian history closely connected with the history of Russian Islam, can also be traced in the development of the inter-ethnic attitudes of the intimately related nations of the Kazan Tatars and Bashkirs, the former being heirs mostly to the urban, and the latter ± the nomadic tradition. The above-said is not meant to prejudice the nomadic way of life as such. Its economical self-suf®ciency as well as ethical purity and 179

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ecological perfection deserves all praise in its own environment, but, unfortunately, in collision with the urban societies it, more often than not, plays a destructive role and, vice versa, suffers an ultimate corruption of its attitudes. In a way, the indisposition of the nomad to the cities is dictated by this inner feeling of imminent corruption of their traditional values. In the times depicted, even Islam did not succeed in penetrating the inner core of the nomadic tradition, which still revolved around the timeless merits of nomadic independence. The understanding of Islam among the nomads was restricted to the concept of One Supreme God which, in their thinking, so easily replaced the concept of Tengri the God-Heaven. Otherwise, the popular religious practices of honouring the hearth ®re and other relicts of ancestral shamanism still persisted in the nomadic picture of the universe. Thus, the nomads of the area, being nominally Muslims, had only the vaguest idea of Islam and de®nitely not enough to sustain the heritage of the scholarly civilisation they destroyed. This nomadic tradition, which, in the wake of Timur's aggression, prevailed on the vast expanses save the northern part of former Volga Bulgaria and the lowest reaches of the Volga, was so conservative as to remain virtually unchanged even 100 years later, in 1558, when the Englishman, Anthony Jenkinson, voyaged down the Volga river. He noted that there were no signi®cant urban settlements between Kazan and Astrakhan. Interestingly, A. Jenkinson was a traveller who virtually repeated the route of Ibn Fadlan, but in the opposite direction and more than 600 years later. If the travels of Ibn Fadlan symbolised the arrival of Islam on the banks of the Volga and Kama, Jenkinson's sojourn was that of an observer of the end of the ¯ourishing Islamic era. Towards his time and after the fall of the Kazan and Astrakhan Khanates, even the remnants of the once thriving cities along the banks of the lower Volga were reduced to mere trading posts, were the local nomads bartered their cattle for goods manufactured in the more civilised parts of the then Muslim world and Russia. Given the conservatism of nomadic life as such, Jenkinson's description of the nomadic parts of the area in the sixteenth century can be easily taken for a picture of the remains of the Golden Horde in 1450s, although the cultural degradation and de-urbanisation of these parts was not all that obvious in the latter times. Depicting the land down the Volga river past the in¯ux of the Kama, Anthony Jenkinson calls it 180

Collapse and Disintegration the countrey of Mangat or Nagay, whose inhabitants are of the law of Mahomet, and were all destroyed in the yeere 1558, at my being at Astracan, through civill warres among them, accompanyed with famine, pestilence and such plagues, in such sort, that in the sayd yeere there was consumed of the people, in one sort and another, above one hundred thousand: the like plague was never seene in those parts, so that the said countrey of Nagay being a countrey of great pasture, remaineth now unreplenished to the great contentation of the Russes, who have had cruel warres a long time together. The Nagayans, when they ¯orished, lived in this manner: they were divided into divers companies called Hordes, and every Hord had a ruler, whom they obeyed as their king, and was called a Murse. Towne or house they had none, but lived in the open ®eldes, every Murse or King having his Hords or people about him, with their wives, children and cattell, who having consumed the pasture in one place, removed unto another: and when they remoove they have houses like tentes set upon wagons or carts, which are drawen from place to place with camels, and therin theyr wives, children, and all theyr riches, which is very little, is caried about, and every man hath at least foure or ®ve wives besides concubines. Use of money they have none, but doe barter theyr cattell for apparell and other nesessaries. They delight in no arte nor science, except the warres, wherein they are experts.

However, it is rather dif®cult to establish, which of these Nagayans, as A. Jenkinson calls them, remained a part of the Unknown Ummah in the centuries after the Russian conquests in the area of the sixteenth century. Naturally, some nomad groups, whose pastures laid on the territory of the much later Orenburg district and Bashkiria, formed an ethnic component of the present day Bashkir nation, others, driven to Siberia, contributed to the formation of the different groups of Siberian Tatars. All the rest of the nomad clans loyal to their respective leaders, by joining or seceding the many rulers of Dasht-i Kipchak, left their ethnic traces as far apart as in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and, at the same time, Lithuania and Poland. Such migration re¯ected the political and economical uncertainty resulting from the collapse of the Golden Horde, which for many years to come turned the south of the area into a battle®eld for vying khans and murzas of different tribal 181

Collapse and Disintegration

allegiance. The main party to bene®t from this turmoil was the increasingly uni®ed Russia, although in the middle of the ®fteenth century this fact was not at all obvious neither to the steppe rulers, nor to the Russians themselves. It was yet to come that the steppe khans would kill their own blood and kin to please the Tsar of Muscovy, as did Khan Ismael whom A. Jenkinson met in 1558 on the lower reaches of the Volga: having the wilderness on both sides, we saw a great heard (sic) of Nagayans, pasturing, as is abovesayd, by estimation above a thousand cammels drawing of carts with houses upon them like tentes, of a strange fashion, seeming to be a farre off a towne: that Hord was belonging to a great Murse called Smille, the greates prince in all Nagay, who hath slaine and driven away all the rest, not sparing his owne brethren and children, and having peace with this Emperor of Russia he hath what he needeth and ruleth alone, so that now the Russes live in peace with the Nagayans, who were woont to have mortall warres together.

Such decline of the great Renaissance civilisation reduced to a nomadic way of life is, however, striking and poses a question: who, if anybody, was heir to the earlier achievements of the Islamic civilisation of the Golden Horde? The urban and rustic people, all those scholars, merchants, craftsmen and farmers, could not just disappear without a trace in a matter of several decades, despite all the destructive efforts of Timur Tamerlain and nomadic warlords. Indeed, due to all political developments of the late fourteenth and early ®fteenth centuries, compounded by climatic disasters, which made cultivation and farming in the lower reaches of the Volga almost impossible, the process of urban and rural development in the area became mainly con®ned to its northern part, the polity of the Kazan Khanate incorporating the lands of Volga Bulgaria and some territories up the Volga and Vyatka rivers, upon which Volga Bulgaria exercised political and commercial in¯uence at that time. This Islamic state became the foremost northern post of Islam in the area during the ®fteenth century, as the Siberian Khanate with its semi-nomadic capitals of Tyumen and, later, Iskir, can only nominally be called an Islamic polity, for its Islamic history in that century was relatively intermittent and super®cial. 182

Collapse and Disintegration

The Kazan Khanate was already far removed from the world of the civilised and settled Islam of Central Asia, although with the Astrakhan Khanate controlling the mouth of the Volga and the Crimean Khanate extending its in¯uence along the lower current of this great river, the Khazan Khanate was still able to maintain commercial, religious and political ties with the rest of the Islamic world. Yet again, as in the earlier centuries of Islamic development, the extremist trends of Islam of Central Asia reached the Volga area already moderated by the vast distances and climatic, as well as economic, differences, which, up the Volga river from Astrakhan, effectively precluded the well-being of numerous dervish communities. In and around Astrakhan, there were mausoleums and graves of the saints serving as holy sites of pilgrimage providing for existence of the dervish Khanakahs, which apparently were also counted under the auspices of Khoja Ahrar's Nakshbandiyya order. Further to the north, however, the Nakshbandiyya concept was transferred as a purely religious message, having little impact on the political developments of the troubled area, which lacked any lasting central authority. The dervish communities existed as far to the north as around Kazan, a fact witnessed by the present geographical names such as Derbyshki, but their role in the political processes of the Kazan Khanate was limited to preaching among the non-Muslim subjects of the Khanate as well as to further development, on the grounds of the inherited Yassawiya, of Nakshbandiya thinking, which became prevalent in the Islamic history of the Kazan Tatars to such an extent that even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the most prominent religious thinkers such as 'Abdelnasr Kursawi and Shigabetdin Mardzhani were its devoted followers. To conclude this chapter, we have to mention that the human disasters of the late fourteenth and early ®fteenth centuries for obvious reasons caused a signi®cant hiatus in the literary and scholarly development of the area. At least, there are no literary works, which can de®nitely be attributed to the area's authors at that time. But the tradition dating back to the early thirteenth century did not die out, as it is seen later in the creative development of the Kazan Khanate, which soon became a rightful heir to the magni®cent cultural heritage of Volga Bulgaria. It was also helped by the fact that Kazan, even before its ascendance as the capital of the mighty Khanate, became a refuge for many urban dwellers driven from their devastated towns and cities along the Volga and Kama rivers. While 183

Collapse and Disintegration

the Golden Horde was irretrievably falling apart, causing constant feuds among the pretenders to its unstable throne, Kazan and its region were comparatively quiet, being distanced from the scenes of tragic degradation of the Golden Horde and from Russian advances, which was again being torn apart by the internal feuds and general instability of the struggle for succession between the grandsons of Dmytry Donskoy. Thus, a considerable part of the urban population of the Golden Horde, including, among others, the hereditary Seyids (the progeny of the Prophet); the Mirs (the progeny of the ®rst three righteous Caliphs Abu Bakr, Omar and Osman); and the Hojas (the offspring of the ®rst Arab conquerors of Central Asia who lived in Sarai and other southern cities), as well as Ishans of the dervish communities came to live in Kazan at the beginning of the ®fteenth century. Kazan and its suburbs also became home for the dwellers of the crushed Bolgar the Great, which in about the 1430s ceased to exist as a separate entity and bequeathed its torch of Islamic enlightenment to Kazan and Kazan Tatars, which were destined to keep it alight, against all odds, during the most tragic and dramatic times for Islam in the area under the Russian sway.

184

Who were the `Tartars' of history? The enigma and paradox of the name misapplied

9

Before proceeding any further, we have to note one more phenomenon, which came to be in the area of our research during the Genghisid era. This linguistic, ethnic and political phenomenon concerns the very name of the peoples inhabiting the vast region which lay to the south and south-east of what was then the land of Rus'. Indeed, in our research, we have already used and will often further have to use the term Tatars, if only because, in medieval times, almost the whole of present-day Russia bore, in the West, the name of Tartaria. In the opinion of Western and Oriental authors of the time, this was the part of the world, from where the Tatars, since time immemorial, had come to wage war against the rest of humanity. Nobody, save the nations of the Kazan and Crimean Tatars, which had the bad luck to have this appellation stuck to them, is too worried by the need to explain, who and what these Tatars are and where their name comes from. The main dif®culty with this name is that in the course of history it became, as it were, self-explanatory. However, this is, again, one of those obvious conclusions, which, because they are treated as if they were evident to everyone, vex and mar the general comprehension of the world and its uneasy history. The historical or, rather, legendary Tatars have no or very few supporters in either the Western or the Eastern worlds, because they in¯icted huge damage on both civilisations. The fact, that almost in any major language of the world the term Tatar is used in derogatory sense, only adds to the complicity of its comprehension. Another trick played with this historical cognomen is that it sounds too close to the Latin `Tartar', so much so, that, in 185

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

medieval Europe, the two mythical names became not just linked, but synonymous. As the English monk Gervasius of Canterbury wrote in 1240 AD: The innumerable multitude of barbarians, invading from the East and paying no heed to religion or way of life, had carelessly destroyed all those realms, including Hungary and Russia. They are called Tartars.

In short, the best thing appreciated about the Tatars is the famous Tatar steak of raw meat, the origins of which, as a matter of fact, is as ®ctitious as anything concerning the Tatars, who were viewed, by the West, as the Wrath of God. For instance, Matthew of Paris, in his Grand Chronicle of 1238 left us, with reference to Arab Muslim writers, the following verbal portrait of the Tatars: And their heads are exceedingly big and utterly disproportionate to their bodies, They live on raw meat; they are also man-eaters. They are very strong, sturdy, godless and ruthless. Their tongue is strange to any people hitherto known to us.

If we try to put aside all myths of this kind, we are left with the impression, that, in using the name Tatars, the Western and Eastern chronicles are referring to those hordes of pagan tribesmen who, in the wake of the Hun onslaught, came to Central Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe from the Far Eastern steppes and mountains of Mongolia and Manchuria. Fair as this may be, there still remains the question: whether these tribes indeed called themselves Tatars, and, if not, where this appellation comes from? For our study, this question is no secondary concern. Many a time we come upon quotations, where the name Tatars is frequently substituted by the name of Mongols, as in the historical works of N. Karamzin. The Eastern Mongol-led armies, after the assault of Genghis Khan on the Kievan Rus' in 1224 AD became, in the Slav Russian popular imagination, the worst nightmare of the people, who viewed the nomads of the East as, a mere, godless and predatory bandits thriving on plundering and pillage. Nobody, except later historians, ever noted, that Genghis Khan, obsessed by a vision of a Mongol Empire as simple in management as his highly disciplined troops, brought to the defeated Slav lands not only the idea of ®xed 186

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

taxes and popular censure, but also a rule of egalitarian law and, previously unheard of, freedom of conscience. The Mongol law, or Yasa, which was based on the idea of nomadic austerity and fairness of common survival reinforced by philosophy and the of®cial practicality of the Chinese bureaucratic system, survived for almost ®ve centuries, which, if nothing else, points to its viability. The heritage of Genghis Khan's vision of state management was, as a matter of fact, one of the solidest foundations of the Moscovite and, later, all-Russian state system, never mind their military structure and strategies, which have remained in the organisation of the Cossack troops. But all of this was of no importance to the common people who were also ruthlessly plundered by local Slav Russian landlords who often robbed them, as if on behalf of the Mongols, but, in fact, only greatly increased their own wealth. Any misery in¯icted upon and endured by the Slav peasantry between 1224 and 1552, when the Kazan Khanate fell, was always credited to the Tatar±Mongol yoke. The word Mongol, however, soon disappeared from the vocabulary of day-to-day life. It remained only in the annals and genealogical descriptions, but, in the common language of the time, it was soon replaced by the prevalent appellation `Tatars'. The Tatars stood for everything: unbearable double and triple taxation; occasional war expeditions; lack of civilisation; anything non-Russian, in fact. This equation, enforced by the popular bias towards `the in®del' inherent in Russian Orthodox history, resulted in a striking ignorance of the average Slav Russian on the subject of the origins of the Kazan, or Volga, Tatars, who had been his closest neighbours since the seventh century AD, long before any Mongol ever appeared between the Volga and Urals. In his booklet The Tatars: Ethnos and Ethnonim aimed at redressing and misapprehensions about his nation, the Kazan Tatar scholar A. Karimullin cites another historian, O. Belozerskaya, who says: Ask from your acquaintances about the origins of the Volga Tatars. Nine out of ten of them will recall the Tatar±Mongol yoke.

Indeed, in the Russian sources, the name Tatar far too often applied to any Muslim nation or ethnic group of the Russian Empire. All of the ethnically diverse peoples of Caucasus, Azerbajan, Kazakhstan 187

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

and Central Asia were, at one time or another, called Tatars, but the name eventually stuck only to the nations of the Kazan and Crimean Tatars and several groups ethnically and culturally related to them. A. Bennigsen divides the Tatars into the following main groups: Kazan (or Volga) Tatars, Crimean Tatars, Siberian Tatars, Astrakhan Tatars, Kasimov Tatars Lithuanian (Polish) Tatars.

Even within the Kazan Tatar nation itself there are differences of opinion and, sometimes, bitter arguments about the actual connection of the nation to the Tatars of the Golden Horde. The defenders of Bulgar descent argue that the nation was already formed, when the Mongol-led Turkic tribes of Genghis Khan entered the land of the Volga Bulgars. The apologists of the Golden Horde legacy plead that the more than 300 years after the fall of the Great Bolgar Tsardom to the Mongols in 1236, until the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 to the Great Muscovite Principality, played the major role in ethnic formation of the Kazan Tatars. The well-known Kazan Tatar scholar Professor M. Usmanov, for example, writes in his concluding remarks to the publication of the epos Edighei banned as nationalistic by Stalin's decree in 1944 (the same year the Balkar, Ingush, Chechen, Kalmyk, Crimean Tatar and other peoples of the USSR were en masse exiled from their historical places of residence): On Stalin's agenda, there was as well the question of the Kazan Tatars, towards whom he entertained a speci®c attitude. As the poet Simon Lipkin recalls, . . . Stalin's anti-Tatar sentiments had a long history . . . The peculiarity and purposefulness of Stalin's approach to the `Tatar question' were brightly re¯ected in his consistent ®ght against the so-named `Sultangaleivism' and further constraint of the sovereignty of the Tatars in the tight frames of a ®ctitious autonomy. There are all reasons to believe that, in 1944, `The Father of Nations' might well have had a desire to ®nd a new `place of residence' for the Kazan Tatars as well. But how could he manage to bring together ®ve million

188

Who were the `Tartars' of history? people scattered all over the (Soviet) Union? Therefore, he had to con®ne himself to a mere decree aimed at spiritual massacre of the Kazan Tatar nation. Precisely from this time, in almost all of the Soviet historical literature, school books and most popular publication on literary studies inclusive, there starts a new wave of tatarophobic denunciations, which, in its one-sidedness, excelled even hurray-patriotic direction in the pre-revolutionary Russian historiography. From this period onwards, there begins a fussy and endless review of the different stages of the Tatar history. Instead of authentic civic, social-economic and objective culturologic history, huge material and intellectual resources are being wasted on those in®nite ethnogenetic researches. Everything is done to prove, that `Tatars are not Tatars', but `just Bulgars', and, on top of it, these `have no connection whatsoever' to the . . . Crimean Tatars! As if only ethnic af®liation of the nation, . . . just `blood' determines its features and its right to exist . . . The ethnogenesis of the Tatar people, like that of any large nation possessing rich and complex history, cannot be, quite naturally, decided upon unambiguously. It is because the Middle Volga region, where in the course of 10 to 12 centuries the `national image' of the Tatar people was being formed, was a genuine `caldron of nations', in which many ethnic components mixed and `boiled up'. The Bulgar society, in the depths of which accumulated the origins of material being and economic life of the contemporary Tatar nation, was, in its turn, also multiethnic. Yet, the Volga Bulgars subdued in 1236 by the Mongol khans, for two hundred years lived within the frames of the Golden Horde. In the latter, the prevalent ethnic component was that of the Kypchak-speaking Turkic tribes, which, being dominant in political and, to an extent, in cultural sense, language-wise `swallowed' the Bulgars and separate parts of the Finno-Ugric populace of the region. Thus the ethnic origin of the modern Kazan Tatars had been constituted. Because of this, there is not enough ground to resolve problems of its ethnogenesis upon a `either ± or' principle, rather a principle of `and-and' is applicable here.

The opposite arguments are also very convincing. Doctor A. Karimullin, for instance, refutes the very idea of the Kazan Tatars being Tatars in the archaic sense of the term. He says: 189

Who were the `Tartars' of history? In Central Asia, India, Persia, where the Mongols stayed in permanent contact with the local peoples, and where sometimes resided for hundreds of years in much more close touch with the locals, than in the Middle Volga region, those locals, despite the fact, that there were attempts to design them as such and, indeed, they were frequently labelled `Tatars', did not actually turn into `Tatars', but remained Persians, Tajiks, Kyrghyzs, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, etc. Let us recall one more matter. Many nations living in the heartland of the Mongol Empire, where blood-related, ethnic, language-wise and cultural association with the Mongols was incomparably tighter, (than on the Volga banks), did not become Mongols, and, in that boiling caldron, continued to be Shors, Tuvans, Khakassians, Altayans and others, in whose ethnos, anthropology, language and traditions there is a lot of Mongolian impact. In spite of all of this, a strange exception is made by historians only in respect of the Bulgars!

A. Karimullin, in his booklet, also brings to our attention the strangest fact of all, namely, that in the folklore of the Kazan Tatar people, the name `Tatar' far too often bears a negative connotation. Indeed, what other self-respecting people would put into its proverbs such self-humiliating characteristics, as Tatar atasin satar ± The Tatar would sell his own father; Tatar belen kaberen yanasha ± Do not let even your grave to be in the vicinity of that of the Tatar bulmasin

and so forth. Its attitude, in the opinion of A. Karimullin, would indicate that the Kazan Tatars were always inclined to dissociate themselves from the `Tartars' of the ancient annals. But who are they, these mythical `Tartars' of the chronicles? There are many explanations as to the origin of this historical designation, but none of them is suf®ciently comprehensive. Moreover, none of the clari®cations of the issue answers the basic question: why is it, that `a real ``Tartar''' became an insult in so many languages of the West and of the East alike? However barbaric a people would or appear to be, why there is practically no nation on earth who would be eager to connect itself with the `Tartars' of history? 190

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

The Huns, in Western and Eastern eyes, were no less savage and uncivilised. Hungary is proud to have the legacy of the Huns preserved in the names of towns, villages and whole regions of its east, and in its culture and history. The Huns are feared, but not despised. Not so with the Tatars. The very name `Tatar' is, in the opinion of many researchers, of Chinese origin. They say, in the ®fth century AD, somewhere in north-eastern Mongolia and Manchuria, there lived a proto-Mongol or proto-Turk tribe, whose name in Chinese sounded like `Ta-ta', `Da-da' or `Ta-tan'. Dr. R. Fahretdinov, in his recent article entitled `Are Tatars indeed Tatars or Not?', having traced the origin of the Tatar tribes to the period of formation, in the Far East, of the glorious Turk Kaghanate of 552 AD, states: The Tatars who continued to live in those lands after the disintegration of the Kaghanate, were, some hundred years later, mentioned by the Chinese sources, wherein they are called `Da-da' and `Ta-tan'. For instance, in 842 AD, these tribes are referred to in the letter of one Chinaman called Lee Deyui to the Uigur by the name of Urmuz, whereas in 981, in the account prepared by the Ambassador of the Chinese Emperor Vang Ieng Tin, it is said that there were eight of those tribes. In the 13th- century Chinese chronicle of `Men-da Bey-lu' (`The complete description of the Mongol-Tatars'), the Tatars are again given a generous share of attention. This manuscript, in his turn, is well supported, supplemented and enriched by other important sources of medieval history, namely, the 13thcentury Mongol annals of `Mongol Un-niucha Tobchagan' (`The Secret History of Mongols' or, in Chinese, `Yuan-chao-bishi'); the universal work of `Dzamig At-Tawarih' (`Collection of Chronicles') by the great 14th-century Persian historian Rashid Ad Din; and by the 18th-century Mongol chronicle of `Altan Tobchi' (`The Golden Chronicle') . . . In the same `Men-da bey-lu' the Tatars who came over to the Hansyu and Shansyu provinces of Western China are called `white Tatars' (`Bai da-da'), whereas some other Chinese sources name them as `Onghuts'.

For the Chinese, any tribe from the north represented a constant threat, so, in Chinese history and poetry, the Turkic tribes of southern 191

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

Siberia were called `Northern Barbarians', against whom the world famous Chinese Wall was build. But, interestingly, the Tatar tribes, namely, the White Tatars (Onghuts or Chagan Tatars), Alchi Tatars, Dudaut Tatars and Alukay Tatars and others became infamous even among their own people in Mongolia, especially in the process of the centralisation of the Mongolian domain undertaken by Genghis Khan. The great conqueror is known to have physically exterminated some Mongolian tribes unwilling to co-operate with him. One of these tribes was the tribe of Tatar-Merkits, after whose extermination Genghis Khan obtained unlimited powers in Mongolia. Incidentally, he himself is said to have had a Tatar-Merkit mother by the name of Oelun. Maybe, this was the reason why the Merkits felt themselves to be special and tried to dictate their own rules, only to fail and soon become extinct as a separate tribe. The same fate befell the legendary Mongolian tribe of the Ta-ta. In the Mongolian `Golden Chronicle', the following words are ascribed to Genghis Khan: Since long ago, the Tatar people slaughtered our fathers and grandfathers. For our fathers and grandfathers, we shall avenge.

Genghis Khan seldom pronounced such words in vain. The Tatars of Mongolia and Manchuria, detested by their Mongolian compatriots, were destroyed. Russian scholar in Mongolian Studies, E. Kychanov, writes: So perished the tribe of the Tatars, which, before the rise of Mongols, gave its name to all Tatar-Mongol tribes. When, twenty-thirty years after this massacre, in the remote villages and hamlets in the West the cry `Tatars!' was heard, among the imminent conquerors there were few genuine Tatars, only the name was left, whereas the Tatars themselves lay buried in the soil of their native land.

Some authors, amongst whom we can cite famous Western travellers Julian the Monk and Rubruquis, maintain that the surviving Tatars were usually placed in the avant-garde of Genghis Khans troops and came ®rst, wherever those troops went with their assaults. They further say, that, because of this, the name of the Tatars preceded the 192

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

victorious and unstoppable hordes, thus coming to refer to all of them. The name stuck, and the conquered Slavs of the Kievan Rus' soon started to call their masters `the Tatars'. In the medieval Western travelogues, most notably in the travel accounts of Plano Carpini, the Mongols are usually called the Tatars. Remarkably, the Mongols themselves did not like to be called this, owing to their feelings of contempt and animosity towards the subdued and humiliated Tatars of Mongolia. On this subject, Rubruquis, writing about the respective attitude of the Mengu Kaghan of the Mongol Empire and the founder of the Golden Horde Batu Khan the grandson of Genghis Khan, observes: They have risen do much in their pride, that though they may believe somewhat in the Christ, yet will they not be called Christians, wishing to exalt their own name of Moals above all others, nor will they be called Tartars. The Tartars were another people . . . Now this Genghis used to despatch the Tartars in every direction, and so their name spread abroad, for everywhere was heard the cry: `The Tartars are coming!' But through the many wars they have been all nearly killed off, and now these Moal would like to extinguish even the name and raise their own in its stead.

From the time of Genghis Khan, the name passed down to the era of the Golden Horde ruled by his direct progeny. As it is known, the Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberian and Crimean Khanates appeared on the scene of history after, and as a direct result of, the collapse of the Golden Horde as a single state. Hence a possible explanation for why the population of the Kazan Khanate became the Tatars instead of their own name of the Bulgars or Kazanians. Russian historian and ethnographer N. Vorobyov, in his book The Kazan Tatars (Ethnographic Research of the Material Culture of the Pre-October Period), states: The name `Tatar' (the of®cial Russian term for the population of the Golden Horde), is being used by the Russians in respect of the inhabitants of the Volga-Kama region only from that moment, when after the foundation of the Kazan Khanate and glorious victories of this Khanate over the Russians, the Kazan Tatars replaced, in the Russian eyes, the genuine Tatars of the

193

Who were the `Tartars' of history? Golden Horde and the attitude taken by the Russians towards the Golden Horde had been applied to the Kazan Khanate and its population. The Finn tribes who live there, call them not `the Tatars', but `the Bulgars', as they always used to call them . . . The Kazan Tatars themselves never used this name to apply to themselves, they rather considered it to be a derogatory nickname.

It would be unfair not to say that this view in more recent times of liberated nationalism provoked various objections. R. Fahretdinov, for example, is completely dissatis®ed with it. In his already quoted article, in which he expounds, in our opinion, somewhat controversial and less substantiated views on the origins of the present-day Kazan Tatars, he argues: The name `Tatar', being a self-name and ethnonym, originates from the 7th±8th century AD and has ever since been the selfdenomination of the ancient Turkic-speaking tribes. It is in no sense a `nick-name' forced on us by certain alien peoples, the Russians among them.

Indeed, as we have seen above, there are some strange proverbs and sayings about `ghastly Tatars' in the mother tongue of the presentday bearers of that notorious name. Moreover, in 1923, in the course of the ®rst Soviet census, it is said that the elder inhabitants of Kazan and, especially, the Tatar villages, just wept imploring the Commissars not to list them under the name `Tatar'! `We are Bulgars' ± they were saying, or ± `We are the people of Kazan (Kazan halki), or, at least, name us just Muslims, but not Tatars ± they are evil, they destroyed our forefathers and their city of Great Bolgar .' It would also appear that this antagonism towards the Tatars was present in the midst of the population of the Kazan Khanate much earlier than the beginning of the twentieth century. As a matter of fact, there is much proof that the people who were later given the name of `Tatar', never ever called one another by that name except in anger. The self-denomination preserved in the Slav Russian annals, indeed, de®nes this nation as `the people of Kazan', `Bulgars' or `Muslims'. The well-known Kazan Tatar archaeologist and historian, Alfred Khalikov, in his book The Tatar Nation and its Ancestors, says: 194

Who were the `Tartars' of history? In the `Story of Kazan' [the Slav Russian work of the ®rst half of the 16th century. R.B.], the term `Kazanians' ± as a de®nition of ethnicity ± is mentioned 650 times, and just sometimes, in the case of expressed animosity, is substituted for the nick-name `Tatar' or `Kazan Tatar'. The name `Tatar' was quite unpopular among the people. S. Herberstein, the eyewitness of the life of Kazanians in 1520s, wrote: `If they (the Kazanians) are called Turks (Tatars), they feel most unhappy and take it as abuse. The name Muslims, to the contrary, pleases them'. The character of a typical Tatar depicted by the Kazan Tatar poet Mukhammedyar, proves, to what extent the name appeared alien (to the people at the beginning of the 16th century): Oh thou, hapless and stupid Tatar, you resemble a dog which bites its owner, thou art in®del, diseased, a bastard and inhuman art thou, your looks are gruesome, your eyes evil, lice-ridden inside and outside, full of gossip art thou. Characteristically, at the time among the Kazanians, the legends and stories praising Ghenghis Khan, Batu Khan, the Tatars of the Golden Horde, Timur (Tamerlain) and others were not at all wide-spread. In the works of Mukhammedyar and further poets they are not mentioned, neither they are referred to in the baits (Kazan Tatar folk ballads) or ethos of the time.'

Genghis Khan, Timur Tamerlain and their legacy are, anyhow, very much present in the most famous ethos of the Kazan Tatars, the Edighei of the fourteenth century. In the ethos, there is a narration of the dialogue between the legendary father of Edighei, Kutlukiya and Tokhtamish Khan of the Golden Horde, very proud of his direct descent from Genghis Khan. Yet, when Tokhatmish swears in anger at Kutlukiya calling him names, he says: Hey, the Tatar art thou, hey, the Tatar art thou! Fathered by a Manghyt, ®lthy bastard Tatar art thou!

One hypothesis, which, to the author's knowledge, has not previously been suggested by other researchers, is that it seems useless to ascribe the ethnonym Tatar as a name applied to any 195

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

nation since the massacre at the end of the twelfth century of the genuine Mongol of Tatars, if they ever existed. The name `Tatar' might have been just another derogatory name for the tribe of Merkits (Manghyts?) hated by Genghis Khan and, for that matter, for any tribe or person who later came to be despised by the Mongols. `Tatar' might always, from the very origin of its wide usage, have been a derogatory nickname. Its widespread derogatory use in medieval times points to the existence of a Mongol-originated slang, which became common for any nation incorporated into the Golden Horde. The Kievan, and further, Moscovite Rus' were both of®cial tribute-paying parts of the Empire of the Golden Horde and the Slav Russian troops served under the banner of the Golden Horde as far away as China. Among other words borrowed from the Golden Horde ± and, in the modern day Russian Dictionary with De®nitions, they are many indeed ± the Slav Russians acquired, as a kind of insult, the nickname `Tatar' in its Mongol meaning as well. The meaning, then, was: alien, stubborn, unwilling to co-operate, stupid, foe. The etymology of the word being so dif®cult and going into such antiquity, we shall not venture into this thicket of comparative linguistics on the crossroads of the archaic Turkic, Finno-Ugric and Mongol dialects. Dr. M. Z. Zakiev states: The ethnonym of the Tatars originated according to the model of other Turk ethnonyms: tat-ar, the second part ar-ir bearing the meaning `people', the ®rst part tat-dat ± meaning foreign, `not ours'; tatar means `foreign people'.

Again, the above statement is as debatable as almost anything concerning the origins of the Tatars. As easily as the Turks of the Golden Horde denounced one another as Tatars, the Kievan and Moscovite Russians started to apply `Tatar' for `bad' and `foe' ®rst in respect of their Golden Horde masters and, naturally, themselves (`Thou art a real Tatar!'), and then, after the fall of Kazan, in respect of the indigenous population of the Kazan Khanate. It appears that the Russians did not indeed coin the term as a nickname especially for the Kazan Tatars, but merely took it from the vocabulary of the Golden Horde. The Westerners did precisely the same, with the only excuse that they genuinely thought it to be the ethnonym of a certain barbaric people. 196

Who were the `Tartars' of history?

If this hypothesis is right, there are no, and never were, the ethnic ```Tartars'' of the Chronicles'. This name may have appeared in history in just the same way as surnames derived from nicknames in any language of the world. Once the surname `Foreigner', or, `Alien' has been in usage for several generations, it becomes part of the language. The Kazan and other groups of present-day Tatars had and still have to endure this, through no fault of their own. They had nothing to do with onslaughts from the East, massacres, demolition of architectural grandeur and beauty or anything else ascribed to the Tatars. About the Kazan Tatars, the Western authority on the issue, A. Bennigsen, writes in Muslims of the Soviet Empire: Before the Revolution they called themselves `Turks' and in some cases even Bulgars. They are descendants of the Volga Bulgars, of turkicised Eastern Finns and of the Golden Horde Turkic tribes. The ethnic type of the Volga Tatar varies from the purely Finnic (blond with blue eyes) to the mongoloid type close to Kazakh. They speak a unique language with no secondary dialects. The Volga Tatars are an old sedentary nation of peasants and merchants and have completely lost their tribal and clanic structure.

The author realises that some people of his own nation may ®nd his hypothesis controversial. But it appears suf®ciently probable, as to seem at least as feasible as any other possible explanation. Whatever the reader may have derived from the above, the author entertains a hope that the name of Kazan, Siberian, Crimean and other Tatars will not be immediately associated with the nightmares of medieval monks. Whatever the true origin of the name of his native people, this author believes that his forefathers suffered because of it so long and so much that he can only be proud of it.

197

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Autumn 1400s±1583

PART

3

Kazan, in its quietness and loyalty could still prolong its existence as a particular Muslim kingdom, but Fate drew it towards its fall. N. Karamzin History of the Russian State

As in the loss of Alhambra, the loss of Kazan marked the end of a nomad supremacy. The Tatar defenders had been wraithlike guardians of an empire that no longer existed, of a religion that was slowly forsaking the sword for the merchant's rug and book of philosophy. Harold Lamb The March of Moscovy

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Astrakhan and Noghais Events in the south

10

In 1421, in the wake of the bitter struggle for power in the collapsing Golden Horde, one of the descendants of Juchi and a relative of Khan Tokhtamish by the name of Ulug Mukhammad ascended the shaky throne of the once mighty Empire. It was the time when the Golden Horde effectively split into several autonomous khanates and uluses. To the east of the territories around Sarai, the Noghai Horde under the rule of Nuratdin son of Edighei was establishing its control over the Manghyt Yurt of his famous father, whereas the Siberian khanate further north-east also tried to regain its Taibughid identity after two main dramatis personae of the beginning of the century, namely, Timur Tamerlain and Tokhtamish, in 1405 and 1406 respectively, left the scene to less known and successful, but nonetheless very ambitious political characters. To the south-west of Sarai, the Crimean khanate founded by Tokhtamish was entering the ®rst phase of its almost four-centurieslong geopolitical orbit, from which it was destined to command the events in the region until its eventual fall in 1790's. In the north, the lands of Volga Bulgaria turned into a battle®eld for the smaller murzas of the Golden Horde vying for power, whereas the destitute urban population of the ruined Volga cities were seeking refuge in Kazan, slowly, but steadily turning a tiny fortress into a big commercial and trading city. Finally, in the lower reaches of the Volga, the Astrakhan khanate also tried to ®nd its identity as a state formation commanding the ancient commercial roads ± the northern land route from Crimea into Central Asia and China and the sea routes across the Caspian Sea. All of these semi-autonomous khanates and princedoms were 203

Astrakhan and Noghais

still cherishing the ideology of their long-gone unity within the Golden Horde, but the times had already irreversibly changed, and even the most powerful and gifted players of the political game of the 15th century, like Ulug Mukhammad, were unable to bring together the parts of the loose mosaic of the area. The wonderful and promising urban and agricultural civilisation which once ¯ourished along the banks of the Volga and the Kama under the protection of the mighty authoritarian regime bound together with the iron nomad discipline, was no more. The cities and towns of the lower Volga were reduced to rubble; the totalitarian unity of the nomad clans evaporated leaving various hordes to ®ght each other for control over the ruins of the Golden Horde statehood and, no less importantly, for the pastures and scarce water supplies of the dry steppes. Added to this, this period marked a time of regular natural disasters such as great droughts, devastating steppe and forest ®res, invasions of locust and other pests and vermin, many years of famine and disastrous earthquakes. The nature of the climatic phenomena affecting much of the expanses of Eurasia suggests that the political calamities affecting the Golden Horde and its heir states were very often dictated by the prevailing natural conditions having a most ruinous effect on the ancient Muslim civilisation of the area. The prosperous agriculture of the middle and lower reaches of the Volga thus ceased to exist, and the cities, devoid of supplies and destroyed by constant warfare, lost their skilled population and with it their signi®cance as commercial, trade, educational and religious centres. In the 15th century, such urban centres as Sarai were reduced to a mere trading points and even such ancient urban settlements as the Khazar Astrakhan, fought for its own existence against odds of both political uncertainty and antagonistic natural phenomena. Khan Ulug Mukhammad was one of the last political leaders of the area who tried to consolidate the fragmenting empire of the Golden Horde. In 1426 he took hold of Astrakhan in the south and, in 1427, captured the city of Bolgar in the north, events which were accordingly commemorated by the minting of coins bearing his name. By 1429, Ulug Mukhammad succeeded in regaining Golden Horde control over many Russian principalities, and in 1431 he granted the right to govern the Moscow princedom to the grandson of Dmitry Donskoy, Prince Vasily the Second who thus became indebted to Ulug Mukhammad. But the sovereign rule of the latter 204

Astrakhan and Noghais

over the Golden Horde did not last for long. In 1433±34, the Crimean throne had been won by Khan Seid Akhmad, a bitter enemy of Ulug Mukhammad, who was driven from the Crimea, heading north towards the Russian lands in the hope of receiving the hospitality of his former protegee, Prince Vasily. Remaining in the south of the region, Kichi Mukhammad Khan became ruler of the remnants of the Golden Horde in 1437. Due to the climatic circumstances, his authority could not be sustained without the rich Crimean pastures, especially useful in winter months. Therefore, he engaged in warfare with Seid Akhmad, the usurper who earlier unseated the rightful khan of the Crimea Haji Girey. Anyhow, in 1443 Haji Girey with the help of Lithuanian Grand Duke Kazimir returned to the Crimea and was welcomed by the local aristocracy keen to secede from the weakened authority of the Golden Horde. From 1443, overpowering the in¯uential Genoese community of the peninsula through the alliance with the Sultan of Turkey obtained in 1454, the Crimean khanate began its independent existence which, effectively under the Turkish protectorate, lasted until 1783. After the secession of the Crimea, Kichi Mukhammad was left with only the central part of the former Golden Horde. After his death in 1459 his throne was fought over by two of his sons, the eldest of whom, Mahmud, ®nally lost his seat to his brother Ahmad and ¯ed to Astrakhan. Here, in the same year, he founded a separate Astrakhan khanate. To the east, however, the powerful Noghai Horde was already in existence. It was proclaimed an independent polity by Wakkas son of Nuratdin son of Edighei and stretched from the delta of the Yaiyk all the way to the borders of the Siberian khanate. Thus, the abundant pastures of the east were effectively closed for the remaining nomads which, along with the civic and agricultural degradation of the lower Volga, heavily contributed to the weakening of this residue of the Golden Horde. The Noghai Horde extended its political in¯uence from the northern parts of the Kypchak steppe to the lands of Bashkiria and Sibir, controlling all trade along the Ural river, in the delta of which its capital Saraichik was situated. Although the city of Astrakhan rivalled Saraichik as a commercial centre of the Volga delta, the Astrakhan khanate was always heavily in¯uenced by the neighbourhood of the Noghais. In spite of being located on a site which for centuries served as a centre commanding the commercial routes of 205

Astrakhan and Noghais

East-West trade, the Astrakhan khanate, due to the political and natural conditions of its independent existence, was one of the weakest Tatar khanates. Effectively, it was not even independent. It was enfeebled by frequent nomad raids, and very often, in Astrakhan ruled those who were appointed by the victors. These were all too often the Noghai murzas who, in cherishing the ideological heritage of Edighei's times, considered themselves the masters of the Caspian shores. Although the Noghai Horde was, in effect, a tribal alliance consisting of various clans, each of whom controlled their own territories along the Yaiyk river and between the Volga and the Kama, it had a sort of a central authority in the town of Saraichik, where, at least during the winter months, the seat of the Noghai leader was situated. Saraichik itself was a small trade city housing not only the local aristocracy, but also the merchants, custom duty of®cials and Muslim dignitaries who often played consultative roles in the affairs of the Horde. But despite the existence of certain settlements and trading posts on the vast territory controlled by different clans of the Noghai Horde, and despite their part-time engagement, especially in and around Saraichik, in farming and gardening, it was a genuine nomad polity dependant and frequently torn apart by the ambitions and self-interest of its various clanic components. Although the Astrakhan khanate was founded around the ancient city as its centre of gravitation, its ruling classes were also more inclined to the nomadic way of life than to urban culture. The semiindependence of the khanate did not bring about any special urban splendour to the city ruined by the titanic wars of Timur Tamerlain and Tokhtamish. However, the city had a number of mosques and saintly tombs, some of which have survived into the present-day. In 1476, the Venetian envoy A. Contarini described Astrakhan as `badly forti®ed, with low constructions made of clay, although with the ruins of the big buildings of those times, when Astrakhan used to be a signi®cant trade centre'. Indeed, there were times when Astrakhan supplied Russia and the West via the Adriatic with spices of India, silk from China and Persia, and sheepskins and woven cloths from Transoxiania. For Russia, maybe the most important commodity of Astrakhan was salt, procured from the lakes near the Caspian sea and, of course, valuable ®sh like sturgeon, for which Astrakhan was famous throughout the centuries. Because of the 206

Astrakhan and Noghais

weakness of the khanate, the statehood of which was for a century just a toy of competing Noghai and Crimean parties, the commercial importance of Astrakhan steadily declined, so much so that English traveller A. Jenkinson, remarked in 1558: There is a certain trade of merchandise there used, but as yet so small and beggarly, that it is not worth making mention of, and yet there come merchants thither from diverse places.

Indeed, the state of affairs in the Astrakhan khanate two years after its fall were so miserable, that according to Jenkinson, he could have bought thousand Tatar children from their parents for a loaf of bread. His horrible descriptions of corpses lying unburied in the streets is the most powerful testimony of the state of Islamic affairs in the Astrakhan khanate immediately after the Russian conquest. However, another Western observer, S. Herberstein, was of different opinion about the importance of Astrakhan about 1520s, stating that, `Astrakhan is a wealthy city, and the great emporium of the `Tartars', which give its name to all surrounding country'. Indeed, despite all the troubles of political life, the sedentary population of the Astrakhan khanate, being heirs to the merchants, craftsmen, ®shermen and farmers of yore, tried to maintain a kind of civic existence, although the dry infertile lands of the Khanate did not provide a healthy environment for agriculture. Many necessary products, therefore, had to be imported to the city from elsewhere. The religious life of Astrakhan was in¯uenced by its comparative proximity to the Central Asian and Iranian states. It was also similar to the religious environment of the Noghai Horde, where, according to G. Gubaidullin, `the mullahs were counted among friends and advisers of the Begs'. He also notes that the Islamic customs of the Noghais were also in¯uenced by the Islamic traditions of Turkey, as the Noghais, for the most part, went for religious knowledge to the Crimea; as the Crimea was under the hand of Turkey, there were many madrassahs; especially, the city of Bakhchisaray was renowned as a famous educational centre of the Crimean khanate.

207

Astrakhan and Noghais

Despite its traditional allegiance to the nomad heritage of its founders, the Crimean khanate was indeed a polity of high and exquisite Islamic culture. The construction of its ®rst big mosque in the city of was ®nanced by Mamluk Sultan Baybars in 1287. During the glorious reign of Uzbek Khan, another Jami mosque was erected there in 1314, and the latter stands even today. In the favourable circumstances of its steady economic and cultural existence, the independence of the Crimean khanate supported by Lithuania and Turkey and, therefore, not threatened by any major outside power, produced magni®cent results: the dry and waterless peninsula was transformed into an oasis of ®elds and orchards, towns and sea ports, and an oasis of education so deeply rooted within the Crimean Tatar nation that later, at the end of the 19th century, it is from its old madrassahs that the Islamic Reformist and Revivalist Movement known as the Movement of Jadids emanated and gradually transformed not only the whole world of Islam in the region, but largely contributed to the resurrection of Islam in the Ottoman Empire as well. It is known that in the middle of the 17th century, one of the most in¯uential cities of the Crimea, Karasubazar, had 28 mosques, ®ve madrassahs and eight Quranic schools. Such educational vigour was supported by the stable and economically privileged existence of the Crimean khanate as well as a drive for Islamic educationalism peculiar to its supreme rulers and leaders of powerful clans, for instance, the clan of Shirin in Karasubazar, upon whose support the Crimean absolute authority usually rested. The successive Crimean Khans to various extents, followed in the footsteps of Uzbek Khan. Mardzani, for instance, praises the efforts of the Crimean Khan Sahib Girey who Besides building a Jami Mosque by the Khan's Palace in Bakhchisaray, erected bigger and smaller mosques as well as madrassahs in 170 more towns and villages of the Crimea.

Mardzani further remarks that among the praiseworthy deeds of Sahib Girey was inviting the Noghai dwellers in the vicinity of the Ishim, Yayik and Kuban rivers to the Crimea and, consequently, contributing to their Islamic re®nement. The Noghais who remained on their traditional nomad routes, at least the more wealthy of them, could also avail themselves of the Crimean civilisation prospering under the auspices of the glorious Ottoman Empire, which itself was 208

Astrakhan and Noghais

a grateful recipient of the Islamic culture of Central Asia and Iran. Due to this Ottoman in¯uence, the burial places of the noble Noghais were similar to those of Anatolia, having Turbans laid over their graves. Thus, the impact of the exquisite courtly Islam of the Ottoman Empire, as well as steady in¯uence of the Nakshbandiya and, to a much lesser extent, Mavlaviya and other trends of Su®sm, was felt as far as on the approaches to the Siberian khanate. The khanate of Astrakhan, on the other hand, was under the double in¯uence of Central Asia of the Sheibanids and Crimea, that is, Ottoman Turkey. As the legal system of the Crimean khanate combined components of the old nomadic Yasa of Genghis Khan and the Kanun Law of Turkey based on Shari'ah, the role of the Islamic scholars in the region was traditionally not only educational, but a judicial one. Gubaidullin in this respect discusses the considerable af¯uence of the `Mullahs, Hojjas, Sheiks and Sheiksades' as playing an important role in the affairs of the state: They took part in political life and, along with the Ulama, had their say in the matters of state management. They even overthrew the khans and invited others in their place.

As such, the Islamic life of the former Golden Horde was following the once traditional pattern, and the religious connections between various khanates were not cut off, although the Ulama of different khanates all too frequently supported their own sovereigns at the expense of Islamic unity of the area populated by kindred peoples speaking, for the multitude of regional dialects, one Chagatay Turkic language and sharing one ideology or, rather, a nostalgia for the lost grandeur and comparative stability of the Golden Horde. Although the political and religious structures of the Astrakhan, Crimean and Kazan khanates were in many ways identical, and the Khans would often change the throne of Astrakhan or the Crimea, or even Siberia for the throne of Kazan, and vice versa, the on-going squabbling among various parties loyal to different clans of the former Golden Horde prevented them from forming some sort of federation between the independent fragments of the Golden Horde. The relations between Kazan, Crimean and, to a lesser degree, Astrakhan khanates were thus dictated by immediate interests and dependant on the origins of the ruling dynasty: a Crimean Khan in Kazan, or a Noghai khan in Astrakhan would push forward the interests of their 209

Astrakhan and Noghais

own party at any cost to the local population before being overthrown or deposed by a cunning competitor of opposite orientation. The religious classes, being engaged in the same power play, could bring about neither unity of the Ummah, nor considerably improve the morals of the day, of which Gubaidullin was not of a high opinion: In those days, religious feelings were almost non-existent. As closer to the 16th century the Tatars became even more culturally backward, and to maintain the religious feeling one needs at least a scarce education, only the Islamic scholars would safeguard, among themselves, the spirit of religion. For instance, if their word would come against the political goals of Begs and Murzas, the latter would not hesitate to murder them. It was yet another reason, why the Tatar Hordes could not form a federation of any kind.

The already cited Kazan Tatar historians, including Mardzani, Fahretdinov, Atlasi and Gubaidullin each systematically pay attention to the spiritual and moral factors precipitating the sad decline of the illustrious urban civilisation into a semi-literate and superstitious nomad abode fragmented along clan lines. Their woes can probably be understood in the light of the later reduced standing of the Muslims of the region vis-aÁ-vis the Russian state, inasmuch as they had to explain to themselves and others why, being rightful heirs of a great civilisation, they have retained hardly anything material of it to their credit except perhaps the ruins of Bolgar the Great, several scattered ancient mosques, and some precious samples of literature, folk art and calligraphy. Therefore, the only real evidence of and testimony to the heights of culture would be their ethereal Islamic heritage, the same memories of past glory and high morals bequeathed from father to son in a form of spiritual legacy in a long chain of generations. Here, the Tatar historians tried to explain, where, how and why this chain was broken, the result of which is the loss, along with the moral standards, of all the gains of the unique Islamic civilisation and independent statehoods of the region. Modern historians are much less tempted to venture out into the moral maze of history, regarding the term `morality' as somewhat similar to the obscure and irregular terms like `progressive' and `regressive', which they principally avoid in a bid to remain objective 210

Astrakhan and Noghais

and impartial to the many tendencies and many trends of the past. But here we may come to a dead end. We anyhow keep in mind that moral factors indeed played a signi®cant role in bringing together the uni®cation of the Russian state. Ivan the Third could rely almost solely on the troops of the Tatar Khan Kasym son of Ulug Mukhammad who had not only sworn allegiance to him on the Quran and his sabre, but had indeed kept his pledge under all circumstances ± unlike the Russian princes easily breaking their oaths after kissing the cross and pledging loyalty on the Bible. Indeed, all later conquests of Russia were made on the basis of a higher Orthodox Christian virtue as against the presumed wickedness of its Muslim neighbours, which allowed Ivan the Terrible to break any agreement with the Tatar khanates on the ground of his higher moral standing. In any case, due to inner ills and outer political disputes, the Astrakhan khanate could not stand for long after the fall of Kazan in 1552. It easily fell into the hands of the Russians ®rst in 1554 and ®nally in 1556, being abandoned by both the Crimean khanate and its suzerain, the mighty Turkey. Its Muslim population was left to survive on its own and, interestingly, both in 1554 and 1556 the Russians found the city abandoned by its inhabitants and the territory of the khanate depopulated. Its small and mostly nomad population ¯ed towards Azov and only a few returned. After the Russian conquest, the old city was forlorn and a new town was built a little further down the Volga. The ethnic structure of the population which before the conquest was formed of Noghai and other Turkic components with the addition of Armenian, Iranian, even Indian elements within the scarce urban community, started to change, and soon the local Muslims were engulfed by Russian settlers from all sides except, perhaps, the Noghai Horde, which had its own troubles and therefore supplied the local populace with increasing number of Noghai refugees. Thus, the group of the Astrakhan Tatars, which presently is, in linguistic and cultural terms, almost identical with the Kazan Tatars, has in fact very different ethnic roots. In listing the ethnic components which contributed to the formation of this speci®c Tatar group, we can also note that all these elements have brought with them particular Islamic customs and beliefs. In the group of the Astrakhan Tatars, ethnographers tends to distinguish the following sub-groups: merchant descendants 211

Astrakhan and Noghais

of Uzbeks who previously came from Bukhara; merchant descendants of the Persians of Gilyan married to Tatar women; Agryidzhan or Indian Tatars, offspring of the marriages with the merchants from Moghul India; Yurt, or local Tatars, or Noghais; Kucherganov Tatars, newcomers from the Kasimov khanate; and the Kundrov Tatars. Furthermore, throughout Astrakhan history, there were dwellers of Khivan and Turkmen origin. The diversity of this ethnic mixture allows us to suggest, that the Islamic beliefs and rites of the Astrakhan khanate were also diverse and various, arriving from as far as Delhi and Haiderabad and comprising Sunni as well as Shi'i visions of Islam. However, the Islam of the Astrakhan khanate was never a phenomenon of high culture, and after the Russian conquest owed its survival as faith and culture not as much to the traditional conservatism of its nomad population, as to the proximity of Iran and Central Asia and the continuing missionary efforts of the Kazan Tatars, to whom the south of the region and most of the northern Kypchak steppes are indebted for preserving their Islamic heritage under the Russian rule. But then the core history of Islam in the area is effectively the history of the faith in Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan khanate. If not for these two and their educational legacy, the whole story of Islam in Russia would have long ended in the same obscurity as that of the Astrakhan khanate.

212

Kazan and Kasimov Ulug Muhammad and the Moscow Principality

11

The beginnings of the strong and successful polity known of the Kazan Khanate are historically associated with its legendary founder, Khan Ulug Mukhammad, of whom the Russian historian M. Khudyakov says: Ulug Mukhammad's personality, for all the scarcity of preserved data, appeared rather outstanding. His reign in Sarai was brilliant, and his rule over Russia was ®rm and steady. Forced to leave Sarai, he went to the Crimea and founded, over there, an independent state, the sovereignty of which was formally acknowledged by the government in Sarai. Compelled to leave the throne for the second time, Ulug Mukhammad did not give in to despair, and entered the territory of Russia. Having won over the Russians at Belev, he decided, by the way he did with the Crimea, to annex from Sarai the whole of the Middle Volga region, and to found there a sovereign polity. This grand concept had been ful®lled by him with great mastery: he succeeded in organising a mighty state and provide for its existence by the creation of a large military force . . . The plan of creation of the Kazan Khanate could be named a work of genius, for Khan Mukhammad correctly estimated the peculiarity of the ancient and cultured local Muslim population and, in restoring the Islamic polity on the Middle Volga, rightly calculated its chances for stable existence.

The Russian ethnographer N. Vorobyev further writes:

213

Kazan and Kasimov The founder of the khanate Ulug Mukhammad had obviously given the region only a new political and military framework, having availed of the already existent social structures, as we see that the newly organised Khanate soon turns powerful and assumes a ®rm position in Eastern Europe . . . This, naturally, could not have happened, should Ulug Mukhammad have relied solely on his 3000 strong army, which came along with him from the Crimea and not have had at his disposal the population already well organised in economical and social terms, but in need of the political organisation, which was subsequently given by Ulug Mukhammad.

In the Russian chronicles and later historical researches Kazan and the Kazan Khanate were almost always presented as antagonistic to Moscow and, as such, earned the nickname of the `robber's nest on the Volga'. The Kazan Khanate was exposed as an aggressive state ever ready to launch an offensive on the humble population of Russia, and, at the end, the conquest of Kazan, which ®nally opened for Muscovy the way to the south and east of present-day Russia, was justi®ed as the well-earned retribution to the savage Tatar plunderers. But here is not the place to expound the many sides of the Russians versus Tatars relationship. Even the fuller dynastic history of the Kazan Khanate is beyond its scope, for such a story would occupy the space at least equal to the entire volume of the book. Indeed, the history of the Kazan Khanate as a polity started with the defeat in¯icted upon the much larger Russian army by Ulug Mukhammad's 3,000 troops at Belev, after which the Khan moved eastwards and made Kazan his permanent seat. However, at Belev, the fault lay not with Ulug Mukhammad, but with Grand Duke Vasily, who owed Ulug Mukhammad his right to govern Muscovy, and betrayed him by ®rst granting his request to spend winter in Belev and then launching an offensive against him at the command from the Big Horde of Sarai. Karamzin writes: The numerous army of the Grand Duke disappeared like smoke. Such brilliant success did not dazzle Ulug Mukhammad: this prudent khan anticipated that he, being cut from his uluses, could not hold his ground in Russia and ®ght Vasily: he went out of Belev and, across the lands of Mordva, came to (Volga) Bulgaria, to the place, where the ancient Sainov Yurt, or, Kazan

214

Kazan and Kasimov devastated in 1399 by the Russians, was situated. Mahmet (Mukhammad), having chosen a new and better place, had built by the old fortress a new wooden one and offered it as a refuge for the Bulgars, Cheremises and Moghuls who lived there in constant apprehension, dreading the frequent forays by the Russians. In a matter of several months, Kazan became full of people. From the Golden Horde, Astrakhan, Azov and Tavrida (the Crimea) dwellers ¯ocked to Kazan, acknowledging Ulug Mukhammad as their Tsar and protector. In such a way, this Kypchak exile became the restorer, or the genuine founder of the Kazan Tsardom situated upon the ruins of the ancient Bulgaria, the polity renowned for its commerce and edi®cation. In it, the Moghuls blended with the Bulgars and formed the people, the remnants of which are now called the Tatars of Kazan, whose very name for one hundred years made the neighbouring Russian districts tremble. (N. Karamzin, BOOK, pp. 109±110)

The last remark by N. Karamzin is very characteristic of the Russian attitude towards Kazan. He acknowledges that the Russians, at the time, could not serve as perfect exemplars of God-fearing and mankind-loving people, which `from Moscow to Belev did not leave a single village unharmed: everywhere they plundered, robbed peopled of cattle and loaded their carriages with spoils'. On the other hand, whatever the Russians did, their omnipresent drive south is thought by Karamzin and other Russian historians to be morally justi®ed, as if terms like `aggression, breach of trust, pillage and so on' cannot be, by de®nition, applied to the Russians, but only to their southern and eastern neighbours. To avoid further elaboration on this sensitive issue, we can only apply some simple arithmetic in the ®eld of the mutual historical relationship between Russia and the future Russian Muslims. According to the Russian and Western Chronicles, which N. Karamzin, S. Solovyov, V. Klyuchevsky and other leading Russian historians have referred to in their works, the Russian principalities launched towards Volga Bulgaria and later Kazan, in all, over major 30 offensives, whereas, according to the same data, Volga Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate respectively answered with less than 10 military expeditions. As to the notorious aggressiveness of the Kazan Khanate, historian M. Khudyakov states that 215

Kazan and Kasimov Out of 13 wars between Kazan and Moscow, in 7 cases the military initiative proceeded from the Russians (1467, 1478, 1530, 1545, 1549, 1550) and, in 6 cases, from the Kazanians (1439, 1445, 1505, 1521, 1523, 1536). Therefore, one cannot blame the Kazan Khanate for having any plans of conquest visa-vis Russia. Russia was to the same extent, as Kazan, to be blamed for wars originating on the Middle Volga.

A. Khalikov further states that, according to the available data, the military constituted no more than 10 per cent of the entire population of the Kazan Khanate. The wars, which Ulug Mukhammad fought with the Muscovy, were the wars to af®rm the restored statehood of the Middle Volga region. Anyhow, the wars between Moscow and Kazan can be viewed only as episodes in their mutual history. The 125 years of the independent existence of the Kazan Khanate were mainly the years of the commercial peace established the mutual treaties, and these wars, except for the last one in 1551±52, were never meant for the sake of territorial conquests. The Kazan government trice intruded the inner lands of the Russian state ± in 1439, 1445 and 1521, but all these expeditions never intended to annex the Russian territory to the Kazan Khanate. The Russian government undertook big and protracted expeditions to Kazan ®ve times ± in 1469, 1487, 1506, 1524 and 1530 (we do not count here the lesser expeditions of 1478, 1523, 1545, the unrealised expedition of 1537 and very brief excursions of Ivan (the Terrible) in 1549 and 1550), and nor were these expeditions meant to attach the Kazan Khanate to the state of Russia.

As a result of Ulug Mukhammad's farsighted and prudent statesmanship, a political and economical balance between the Kazan Khanate and Muscovy was created, and this balance, in many ways, re¯ected the equilibrium that once existed between the state of Volga Bulgaria and the Vladimir-Suzdal principality with, however, one major difference. If the Kazan Khanate was historically con®ned to its borders, Muscovy was consolidating its authoritarian in¯uence on all other Russian principalities, trying to subdue the freedom of Tver, Novgorod and others. As Muscovy was growing, the Kazan Khanate 216

Kazan and Kasimov

somehow remained complacent in relying on its traditional strength and only trying to contain the Russian advance. Such policies against the background of constant squabbling between the pro-Russian and pro-Crimean parties at the top of the political establishment were doomed to fail, and so they did in the middle of the sixteenth century. The Kazan Khanate was to repeat the tragic story of Muslim Spain, and its grand civilisation was doomed to disappear. Before that, however, it was destined to revive the spirit of the independent and prosperous statehood of Volga Bulgaria to such an extent, that even 400 years later it would still be present in the veins of the Kazan Tatar people, and the phenomenon of the Republic of Tatarstan, which not only remains a¯oat in the political and economical chaos of the present day Russian Federation, but even manages to ensure political and inter-ethnic stability as well as modest economic growth, is a strong testimony to the survival of its centuries long feeling of state responsibility for its own land. When we speak about the political genius of Ulug Mukhammad, we cannot fail to mention that he not only succeeded in securing the solid existence of the Kazan Khanate vis-aÁ-vis Russia within the borders of former Volga Bulgaria, but also managed to ensure the Muslim hold of the territory, which for centuries was rivalled by Volga Bulgaria and Russian principalities. This territory was the land along the Oka river, the district of Meschera of the Murom principality, which Ulug Mukhammad's son Kasym was allotted according to the peace treaty between Grand Duke Vasily and Ulug Mukhammad. On the middle reaches of the Oka river no later than in 14th century a new region inhabited by the Turkic-speaking population, which later became known as the Kasymov Tatars, was formed. The centre of those lands was presented by the town by the name of Kirman, Khankirman, in the Tatar language, and Meschersky Gorodok, Gorodets Meschersky, or Kasymov, in the Russian language. (A. Khalikov, The Tatar Nation and its Ancestors, p. 169)

Here, the Kasimov Khanate was established, and although it always followed the political line of Moscow, its impact on the spread and strengthening of Islam in Russia cannot be overemphasized. In a way, its Islamic culture owed its continuous 217

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development to the closeness and practical interchange with the Kazan Khanate, since from the very beginning, as well as in 1487, 1546 and 1551 large groups of the Kazanian population came to settle in these part. The Kasimov Khanate, while apparently owing its origin to the peace treaty of 1445, ®nally formed as a separate entity only round 1467, when its Muslim population was enforced by the migrants from Kazan and other khanates of the area. But the foresight of Ulug Mukhammad in securing this land for his progeny, speaks volumes about his geopolitical vision at large. The land was inhabited by Muslims long before any mention of the Kasimov or, for that matter, Kazan khanates on the pages of history. The local Finnish tribes were being Islamicised by the missionary activities of Volga Bulgaria for several centuries, and it is dif®cult to see just a coincidence in attempts of Ulug Mukhammad to somehow secure this land under the rule of his son Kasym. In earlier chapters of this book we saw that the region in question stretching to the present-day district of Penza and Nizhny Novgorod was under the cultural impact of Volga Islam for quite a considerable time. The very name of the Kasimov khanate's location, Meschera, in which some linguists see the connection with the Magyar-Finnish tribes who once inhabited these parts, has later created a denomination for the Muslim Mishar Tatars today populating many places in the Penza, Arzamas and Nizhny Novgorod districts of the Russian Federation. Ethnically, the Mishar Tatars have very little to do with the Turkic-Kypchak or TurkicBulgar element of the area's ancient population, although the TurkKypchak in¯uence on them was as powerful ethnically, in a purely religious sense. Although being nominally an independent state, the Kasimov Khanate repeated all the trends of development of the distinctive Kazan Tatar culture. Even in an architectural respect, the present-day Kasimov retains the mosques and buildings of the 15th and 16th century Tatar Muslim architecture, which is all the more helpful for a researcher that all medieval mosques and palaces of Kazan, with one exception of which we shall speak later, had been immediately destroyed after the capture of Kazan by the Russians and thus disappeared without a trace. Regarding events surrounding the establishment of the Kasimov Khanate most scholars are of the opinion that Kasym ®rst received the territory of the future Kasimov khanate according to the terms 218

Kazan and Kasimov

of the peace treaty which released the Grand Duke Vasily from Tatar captivity. It seems that in the process of establishing the Kazan khanate, Ulug Mukhammad and his successor Mahmud who already played a leading role at Belev as well as at the MuromSuzdal military events, tried to restore the old Volga Bulgar claims on the territories once disputed between the Suzdal-Vladimir Russians and the Volga Bulgars. Besides the Murom land, these included the northern territories of the Vyatka region and Ustyug, upon which the next offensive of Khan Mahmud was directed in 1446. There may well have been disagreement and even mutual distrust between Mahmud and Kasym, as both proved to be rather able leaders which, under the circumstances, could indeed provoke competition and rivalry between them. But, apparently, this rivalry was foreseen by Ulug Mukhammad and to avoid that the ancient Muslim land on the Oka river was negotiated for Kasym in the treaty of 1445. Otherwise it is dif®cult to imagine why Kasym, for all his services, should have been granted for good the land populated by Muslims, whereas in Russian history the Tatar princes and nobles were usually given such pro®table and most honourable estates such as the towns of Zvenigorod, Kashira and Serpukhov, which were not only close to Moscow, but were also populated by Russians, and the Tatar in¯uence therein was not felt other than in the collection of the dues. In attempting to create a buffer state between Kazan and Muscovy, the endowing of the Muslim ruler with the Muslim population of the land of Meschera would probably be seen through Orthodox Christian eyes as a time bomb waiting to explode. It never did but then the Kazan khanate, after the initial attempts at the time of its organisation, never tried to change its geographical status quo in the face of Muscovy by creating intrigues or provoking revolts in the khanate of Kasimov. Considering the evergrowing Orthodox Christian awareness which took global proportions with the fall of Costantinople, it is more conceivable that Grand Duke Vasily only reinstated Kasym in his rights to the later Kasimov khanate, to which he was entitled according to the terms of the 1445 treaty. In line with this treaty, Kasym became instrumental in restoring the Grand Duke's right to govern Muscovy against the plottings by the usurper Shemyaka who, at one point, blinded the Grand Duke for his alleged sympathies towards the Kazan Tatars. The same loyalty to the once given oath 219

Kazan and Kasimov

was demonstrated by Kasym in services offered to the great successor of Vasily the Blind, Ivan the Third who, in his successful efforts to unite the Russian principalities and the Republic of Novgorod under the Moscovite banner could rely almost exclusively on the ®delity of Kasym and his heirs. So, if Kasym indeed was `a servitor' of the Moscow Princes, he did it not out of necessity to survive but, rather, according to the will of his father and his own perception of what honour and dignity as well as faithfulness to the pledge should constitute. In Russian history then, it happened to be a Muslim who never forsook his sworn statement, when so many Orthodox Christian pledges were easily broken. Ironically, Muscovy owed its rise and dominion over all other Russian principalities to their loyalty to the Horde and to the uncompromising faithfulness of the Muslim Kasimov Khans starting with Kasym himself. Little did he know what will happen to his khanate and all other Muslim states of the area once the reign of Muscovy reached such proportions as to annex them, thus transgressing against all the signed treaties and unwritten understandings of the existent status quo in the region. But when Kasym started to serve the Grand Duke with his sword and ®delity, Constantinople was yet the seat of Eastern Orthodoxy and had not yet passed this title to Moscow. It happened very soon, however, and the fall of the Second Rome, along with the fall of Muslim Spain and opening of America, had such a tremendous impact as to totally change the thousand-year-old geopolitical picture of the area in a matter of a few decades. The disappearance of the peculiar civilisation of the Kazan khanate might be a riddle for historians who tend to think that the border between Russia and the Muslim world was a border between two totally different civilisations. The most nationalistically-minded representatives of contemporary Russian politics try to maintain precisely that, as if indeed the peaceful neighbourhood of the Muslim area and Russia did not exist at all, and these two entities never in¯uenced and enriched each other culturally or economically. Such ®gures present the relationship between Islam and Orthodox Christianity as a constant state of war and mutual apprehension. Due to the constant economic and political relations between the two states, both Kazan Tatar and Russian culture were heavily in¯uenced by such an interactive phenomenon. The Chagatay Tatar language since the times of the Golden Horde was a diplomatic 220

Kazan and Kasimov

language of the Muslim domains and Russia alike, the mastery of which was a necessity for the Russian Princes who all too often had Tatar blood in their veins, and the Tatar aristocracy at the Russian court was always considered to be of the highest standing possible. In the Moscow Kremlin, a special palace was hosting the representatives of the Horde and several Russian provinces of major importance, like that of Kashira, Serpukhov and Zvenigorod were under the governorship of the possible heirs to the throne of Kazan. But the cultural interchange carried on not only on the princely level. It seems, however, that the distaste towards Islam in medieval Russia came to be the main popular attitude only after the Russian conquest of Kazan and is a result of sustained propaganda rather than any pre-disposition of Russians towards the Islamic faith and culture. Indeed, the ideological onslaught on Islam which followed the Russian conquest is comparable to that of the reconquered Spain, but even so it was undertaken with much stronger vigour. In Spain, the people of which know little about the 800 years of Muslim history in their country, at least the architectural heritage of the Moors remained intact. In Kazan, every conceivable reminder of Islamic civilisation was systematically destroyed almost immediately after the fall of the city. Throughout the 43-year-long reign of Ivan the Third, despite all the intrigues and mutual wars when Muscovy always bene®ted from discord among and within the Muslim khanates, the overall relationship between Kazan and Moscow was that of a political balance increasingly shifting towards Moscow. Although the attempt to enthrone Kasym had failed, instead of the rightful heir Khan Ibraghim son of Mahmud son of Ulug Mukhammad, Ivan the Third had succeeded in ending the Kazan domination over Muscovy in 1487 by enthroning Mukhammad Amin son of Khan Ibraghim and Queen Nur Sultan, a remarkable female personality of Kazan history who commanded high esteem from all quarters of the region's politics, including the Crimea and Russia itself. As M. Khudyakov writes: Ivan the Third, who ascended to the throne in 1462, soon started to reveal aggressiveness in respect of the Kazan khanate, and the support offered to Khan Kasym, presented the ®rst step of this policy . . . From this time onwards, there begins a new phase in the Moscow-Kazan relationship: at the time of Khan Mukhammad, the Kazanians led the offensive against the Russians, at the

221

Kazan and Kasimov time of Khan Mahmud both neighbour polities remained in a state of mutual balance, with a scention of Ibraghim the offensive against Kazan had started and was completed 35 years later with the demolition of the Kazan Khanate. The character of this offensive constantly changed and always intensi®ed.

But whatever were the geopolitical tendencies of the region at the time of the Kazan khanate, whatever wars and upheavals were suffered by its population, the Islamic civilisation based on the ancient traditions of Volga Bulgaria and new trends of Islamic culture being brought to Kazan from the south, ¯ourished and prospered as much as circumstances allowed. Trade especially was booming, as Kazan occupied a most favourable position on the Volga river, and the famous fair of Kazan attracted merchants from north and south alike. With the introduction of this fair, Kazan tradesmen revived the centuries-long trade along the Volga, which, in turn, proved most bene®cial for the development of the whole of the Volga-Urals region. M. Khudyakov rightly states that the history of the Kazan khanate presents just one episode in the long history of the Muslim population of the Volga-Urals region. This Islamic people had had in the past long periods of high prosperity based on the urban culture under Muslim rulers, but also had to endure anti-Islamic pressure of the early Mongol dominance and almost total devastation, which came from allegedly the most Islamic of all Muslim sovereigns, Timur Tamerlain, of whom Marzhani, with the reference to Abu Said Samarkandi, wrote that he caused twice as much harm to Islamic civilisation, than the pagan rulers like Genghis Khan, Chagatay and Hulagu. With the formation of the Kazan khanate, the indigenous population of the Volga-Kama region obtained the long awaited spell of stability and, at long last, freely engaged in the economic and cultural activities, for which it was long-renowned. According to the importance to the prosperity of the region, the foremost of these activities was agriculture, the second, a highly developed foreign trade, which, as Khudyakov states, was con®ned to the hands of the major wholesalers. After farming, the most important role in the economical life of the country was played by inner, import, export and transit trade. Most lucky geographical conditions ± the existence of the

222

Kazan and Kasimov big waterways connecting the Moscovite-Novgorod Rus' and the Kama region abundant in furs with the Caspian East, presented the outstanding characteristic of the Kazan Khanate. . . . Centuries changed, as did the nations, but the very character of trade in the Volga region remained the same. The Volga trade created ®rm relationship of Volga Bulgaria with Persia and the Arabs and initiated the spread herein of the Arab-Persian culture and Islam. The commercial might of Volga Bulgaria transferred later to the Kazan Khanate? was based on the fact that the main juncture of the trade was set up on the northern end of the Middle Volga reaches, where the way of trade bifurcated, leading along the upper Volga to the north-west towards the Baltic Sea and, along the Kama, to the north-east, into the Urals region. In this manner, Bulgaria and the Kazan Khanate held in their hands all threads of the Volga trade, receiving goods from the west, north-east and south, and the local capitalists regulated sales and exchange of all articles, owned the market and were the masters of the trade, buying raw materials from the inorodtsy and selling them abroad.

Interesting though a list of the goods imported and exported from Kazan would be, one particular article of trade is of particular importance in terms of our study. In addition to salt, which the Kazan khanate imported from Russia more cheaply than from the salt lakes of the Astrakhan khanate, Kazan and, through it, the whole of the region also was importing from Russia such daily commodities as writing paper. The practice of importing paper not from the Central Asia, but from Western Europe through Russia connected the Kazan civilisation to the major European markets as well. Thus Kazan culture experienced nearly as much in¯uence of the Renaissance in Europe as of the Muslim Renaissance in Central Asia and Moghul India. The great tradition of written literature not only survived the collapse of the Golden Horde but reached new heights in the age of the Kazan khanate. The intellectual forces of the region gathered in the new capital and the old traditions of culture were given a new lease of life. Of what has remained of the material culture of the Kazan Tatars after the fall of Kazan and the ensuing waves of religious persecution, the splendid examples of ®ne Kazan calligraphy provide most eloquent evidence as to the magni®cence of the 223

Kazan and Kasimov

perished civilisation, as well as intricate ornaments, open-work plaiting of jewellery, and the shapely tent-like roofs of the minarets. Many of these artefacts are to be found today in the museums of Russia but one loss suffered by Kazan Tatar culture after the Russian is the Khan's library containing much historiographical data along with precious books from all over the world dating from the 16th century. Most probably the books, state documents and manuscripts from Kazan once formed a part of the legendary library of Ivan the Terrible, which itself has not been recovered. In the autumn of 1552, Kazan was plundered and set ablaze, and those of its Muslim citizens who somehow survived systematic massacre, were driven out of the city. Therefore, the only treasures of Kazan Muslim culture which resisted the peril were those safeguarded by the ordinary people as they had protected the manuscripts of the Silver Age. As Khudyakov writes: The destitute dwellers who managed to survive the pogrom slowly started to restore their destroyed economy, but many decades had passed before the region recovered from the demolition. Almost all cultural treasures accumulated by the previous generations had perished, and the refugees, who ¯ed from the once densely populated capital had to spend the rest of their lives in remote forest hamlets, thinking not of new cultural accomplishments, but only of the grim struggle for survival. In the wars for independence thousands of people had died, the Kazan people lost the best of its sons, not mentioning the material losses, and many years had passed before this people, forced to change the urban life for that of the peasantry, had accustomed itself to the new conditions of existence.

However, the zest for cultural life helped to save at least some of the notable examples of Kazan Tatar Su® literature for the coming generations. The poetic tradition of Ahmad Yassavi reinforced by Nakshbandiyya teachings and brought to the region from Central Asia and later from Turkey through the Crimea produced in Kazan real marvels of poetry, the most eminent of which are Tehfayi Mardan ( Gift to the Young Men, 1539) and Nuri Sodur (The Light of Souls, 1542). Both these works were written by Mukhammadyar, a great Kazan Tatar poet who was apparently still alive during the fall of Kazan. Both deal with eternal ethical issues as against the social morals of the day and are divided into several chapters, each 224

Kazan and Kasimov

dealing with a particular virtue such as justice, patience, generosity and so forth. The personality of Mukhammadyar, of what if known about him, appears rather outstanding. He apparently preferred the existence of a Su® to the access to the court enjoyed by many of his contemporary collegues. Of himself, in the poem Nuri Sodur dedicated to the Kazan Khan Safa Girey, he says: In the year nine hundred forty eight, on the eighteenth day of the blessed month of Mukharram, at the gate of the Bulgar city of Kazan, through which lots of people come and go, by the grave of Mukhammad Amin I, poor man, live as a guardian of that grave.

The notable thing here is that the long-established Su® tradition of living near the tombs was obviously present in Kazan as well. We cannot speak much of the Kazan Tatar poetry here, only mentioning that the head of the Muslim establishment of the Kazan Khanate, Kol Sharif, also was a renowned poet, whose works have survived until our times. If we remember that the territory of the Khan's palace in Kazan, on which the kingly tombs as well as the Jami Kol Sharif Mosque once stood, was not very commodious, we can suggest that the attitude of so-called orthodox Muslim clergy of Kazan to the Su® free-thinkers was that of considerable tolerance. Kol Sharif, along with other hereditary Seiyds of Kazan, commanded from the ordinary people of Kazan greatest reverence, which is depicted by S. Herberstein in the following abstract of his Commentaries: The chief priest in that district was one Seiyd, who was held in such great authority and veneration amongst them, that even kings in meeting him would stand, and bowing their head, take his hand as he sat on horseback, an honour otherwise granted only to kings. Dukes did not salute even his hand, but his knees, simple nobles merely saluted his feet, while plebeians were content if they could only touch his garments or his horse with their hand.

The head of the Kazan religious establishment always hailed from the progeny of the Prophet and occupied the top of the Islamic 225

Kazan and Kasimov

hierarchy, participating in internal affairs of state and carrying out the most important diplomatic activities. In this situation, when Khans were enthroned in the main mosque of the khanate and the whole life eventually revolved around the mosque, the religious heads of Kazan as well as Kasimov enjoyed substantial power and authority, and, as Khudyakov remarks, the head of the clergy was considered, after the Khan, the ®rst personality of the khanate, and, in the periods of interregnum, usually took the position of the head of the interim government.

Of the other spiritual personalities of the khanate, the Sheiks, Mullahs and Imams of the mosques, Ha®zes, Hajjis and Danishmends (religious teachers) also had the right to participate in the meeting of Kurultai, thus adding their opinion to the decisions on the most vital issues of the state. Their moral authority was often increased by the fact that many of these spiritual personalities were, in turn, big landlords who had at their disposal not only the Wakuf lands, but also considerable estates of their own. Besides, the class of clerics had certain privileges in respect of many taxes: a trend well known also in the times of the Golden Horde. Such protective attitudes towards spiritual personalities further intensi®ed in the Crimean and Kazan khanates, where the clerics were freed of dozens of duties otherwise levied upon the rest of the population. To this effect, the 1453 edict of the Crimean Khan Mengli Girey is a convincing testimony, which lists Sheiks, Mudarrises, Kadis and Muhtasibs as persons exempt from various forms of taxation. Another surviving Crimean edict, this time of Khan Sahib Girey who also one time occupied the Kazan throne, grants to Sheik Ahmad son of Mukhammad and all his progeny all rights of the feudal landlords. Besides the main madrassah of Kazan, other mosques of Kazan also had religious schools of their own, in which the Arabic language and laws of Shari'ah were taught. The larger towns and villages of the Kazan khanate were, in their turn, centres of learning, as the booming Kazan economy required large numbers of educated men. The orthodox madrassahs provided basic education, the main features of which was felt in Muslim education even in the late 19th century, and it is against that old system that Jadids fought their spiritual battles for Islamic revival. However, the system was 226

Kazan and Kasimov

adequate to the needs of the day and was probably based on scholastic works of the 12th and 14th centuries. Further evidence of the wide-spread educational network in the Kazan khanate is the educational traditions of the Kazan Tatars who managed to maintain comparatively high levels of literacy in the most hostile spiritual and economic environment after the fall of the Kazan khanate. It is known, for instance, that the number of Tatar primary schools in the Kazan province before the 1917 revolution was four times larger than the number of Russian schools and the level of basic literacy among the Tatars was close to a hundred per cent. Indeed, every mosque in the Kazan khanate served as an educational institution; even in the villages, the local Imam would have the responsibility of teaching the boys, whereas his wife or wives would teach the girls the tenets of the faith, which at least implies the ability to read and write the Arabic script. We do not know the total number of mosques of medieval Kazan and its suburbs. What is known, however, it is that in 1742, during the worst wave of persecution and forceful christianisation of the Kazan Tatars, out of 546 mosques in the Kazan district, 418 were demolished. Due to the lack of documents dating from the times of the Kazan khanate, its architectural history is also an enigma, which we shall discuss in greater detail in the next chapter. Here, we can only quote Khudyakov who says: The conquerors dealt with the defeated with such cruelty, that it could only be compared with the ruthlessness of the ancient Assyrians . . . committing massacres of the entire adult male population of the conquered Kazan; exiling all dwellers of Kazan out of the city, across Bulak; and ordering all mosques in Kazan to be demolished. The city was subjected to utter pillage, and its new masters, with terrifying vandalism, performed so meticulous a devastation of the historical monuments, that nowadays it is possible to ®nd only a unsubstantial traces and signs of them.

It is also with sadness that this author has to quote such passages. For all excuses of the personal dimension, it is really rather dif®cult to expound the Islamic history of the region without any allusions of this sort. In the next chapter, we will focus on a particular aspect of the dissolution of Kazan culture. 227

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The Suyumbika Tower Islam beheaded

12

As previously mentioned, any traces of the Islamic magni®cence and splendour of medieval Kazan were wiped out by the victorious Russian troops almost immediately after the fall of Kazan. Some idea, however, of how the architectural pearls of Kazan might have looked could be derived from the two surviving monuments of Kasimov, namely, the Khan's Mosque and the tomb of Shah Ali who, as a tool of Moscow, played so powerful a role in undermining the Kazan khanate's independence. Some historians argue that the Khan's Mosque of Kasimov had been built as early as in the time of Khan Kasym himself, around 1467, but most others, and M. Khudyakov among them, believe that the Mosque was actually erected sometime between 1536 and 1567, or during the reign of Shah Ali. For all the importance of these two surviving architectural gems, they are meaningful only as far as their shape and building techniques prove the existence of a direct link between the civilisation of Volga Bulgaria and later cultures of the Kazan and Kasymov khanates. The Kasymov monuments, as opposed to those of Kazan, survived for two main reasons. First of all, the Kasymov khanate, albeit nominally, outlived the Kazan khanate for more than a century and was eventually annexed to the Moscow crown only after 1681. The Kasymov Khans played a signi®cant role in the affairs and internal political intrigues of Russia; so much so that one of them, named after Baptism Simeon Bekbulatovich, `ruled' Russia on behalf of Ivan the Terrible for two years from 1574±1576. The last Kasymov sovereign, Sayyid Burhan, the remote descendant of the Siberian Khan Kuchum, nominally reigned in Kasymov from 1627±1678. Although this last 229

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Kasymov `tsar' was also baptised under the name of Vassily, his mother Fatima Sultan remained a Muslim and it is she who after his death ®gured as the last `princess' of Kasymov until 1681. The second of the reasons is that Kazan was, in Russian eyes, much more than just a city. Kazan was an obvious symbol of the glorious Islamic past of the region and the gate to Russia's imperial future, as Russia after the Hundred Chapters Convention of 1551 ®nally and of®cially assumed the role of the guardian and bearer of the `only true Orthodox Christian faith', and thus received, for its geopolitical purposes, an all-powerful and all-penetrating ideological justi®cation. The Moscovire Rus, however, realised that such a justi®cation may not be enough before the international community of the time, especially in the view of the strength of the Ottoman Empire. That is why it put forward a whole range of supposed proofs as to the defense of Russian territorial claims to the lands of the Kazan khanate and even Volga Bulgaria. In these assertions, most systematically researched and expounded in the work of Jaroslaw Pelenski's Russia and Kazan, the Russians maintained that `the Kazan patrimony hath belonged to our Sovereigns from antiquity', as it had, for instance, stated in the 1550 letter of Ivan the Fourth to the Lithuanian monarch Sygmunt August. All previous war expeditions and temporary conquests as old as Andrey Bogolyubsky's warfare against Volga Bulgaria and as new as Ivan the Third's 1487 seizure of Kazan on behalf of Mukhammad Amin, the heir to the Kazan throne, were used by Moscow as justi®cation of its patrimonial right to the territory of the Kazan khanate. As to the ideology of religious supremacy underlying Russian foreign policies in the 16th century, Russia already had its own political writers like Filofei, the monk and the author of the maxim pertaining to the `idea of the Third Rome', which in 1523 he expressed in a letter to a certain Moscovite of®cial in Pskov and, allegedly, in two other letters to Ivan the Third and Vasily the Third respectively: Take into account all Christ-loving and God-loving men, how all Christian realms have come to an end and have been reduced to the single realm of our Sovereign, according to the Books of prophecy, that is to the realm of Russia: for two Romes have fallen, the Third stands and there shall be no Fourth.

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The aspect of this `Third Rome theory' regarding the outward expansion of Russia was furthered by a further epistle by `the warrior' of evolving Russian ideological and political writing Ivan Peresvetov who in 1549 in his Greater Petition composed as an imaginary dialogue between himself and the Prince of Moldavia, gave Ivan the Fourth the following instructive advice: If one wisheth to take the Kazan Tsardom with God's help, one should not spare oneself at all, but send an army against Kazan, having encouraged the hearts of the soldiers with one's imperial salary and rewards and good words; one should send other able soldiers against Kazanian settlements, and order then to set ®re to these places and to kill or to take into captivity the inhabitants, and may God be merciful and give His holy support. And they should be conquered and baptized by force. I have heard much about this land, the Kazan Tsardom, from many soldiers who happened to have been in this Tsardom, and who, in speaking of it, compare it to Paradise because of its great prosperity. And therefore we are very astonished that this land, not large, but very prosperous, remaineth in hostility in the closest vicinity of such a strong Tsar, and that he hath tolerated it for such a long time, suffering great insults from it; even if such a country were friendly, one could not tolerate it because of its prosperity.

This Orthodox Christian ideology began to form after the fall of Constantinople, and the inter-dynastic marriage of Ivan the Third to the Byzantine princess Sofya Paleologus, which was meant to strengthen the idea of Moscow being a direct heir to the Orthodox heritage of Byzantium. In the 15th century however, the idea of Moscow becoming a Third Rome was only maturing, along with the idea of Moscow's right to govern all Russian lands. The uni®cation of Russia was a priority, and it was pursued with immense zeal and immense cruelty by Ivan the Third. The Tatar Queen at the time was the well-respected Nur Sultan, otherwise known as Su®a, one of the two female royal personalities who, together with Suyumbika the last queen of Kazan, had left such ¯air about the history of the Kazan khanate and the region as a whole. A daughter of the Noghai Murza Halil Timur, she was ®rst given in marriage to Kazan Khan Halil son of Mahmud and 231

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grandson of Ulug Mukhammad. After the untimely death of Halil, Nur Sultan married the next Kazan sovereign, Halil's brother Ibraghim who ascended the Kazan throne under the circumstances of a bitter rivalry between himself and his uncle Kasym backed by Moscow, which provoked war between Kazan and Moscow. Yet again, after the demise of Ibraghim in 1478, she married Mengli Girey the Khan of the Crimea, being already a mother of two principal heirs to the throne of Kazan: Mukhammad Amin and Abdul Latif, both of whom, in their turn, ascended the throne of the khanate. While their step-brother Ilham, the elder son of Ibraghim from his ®rst wife Fatima reigned in Kazan, both brothers lived out of the Kazan khanate, cherishing their claims on the royal seat of their fore-fathers. Abdel Latif was brought up in the Crimea, whereas Mukhammad Amin in Russia, where he was received by Ivan the Third as a son and given, as a patronage, a town of Kashira. Nur Sultan, whose remarkable personality re¯ects in her correspondence with her children and the Grand Duke of Muscovy, enjoyed a great authority all over the region, and was received with equal honours in the Crimea, Kazan and Moscow alike. In 1494±1495 Nur Sultan undertook a journey to the East, visiting Egypt and performing Hajj. Upon returning from the Holy Land, Nur Sultan presented Ivan the Third her ambler, on whose back she made her journey to Mecca and Medina, which is considered to be a gesture of special friendship; in 1510±1511 the old queen undertook another big journey, visiting Moscow and Kazan in a traditional bid to maintain friendly relations between the Kazan and Crimean Khanates on one side, and Moscow on the other. In Kazan, her son Mukhammad Amin was again a king, holding to the position, which he occupied trice during his lifetime. Moscow-Kazan relations, during his reigns, were, over all, very friendly, except for a short period in 1504±05, when Mukhammad Amin revolted against the ever increasing economical and political pressure from Moscow. N. Karamzin writes: In 1510 the wife of Mengli Girey, Nur Sultan, came to Moscow with the prince Sahb and three envoys who assured Vasily in the true friendship of the khan. The objective of this sojourn was the queen's desire to see her sons Latif and Mukhammad Amin. The Grand Duke entertained her as his famous friend and, after a

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The Suyumbika Tower month, saw her off to Kazan, where she lived for about a year trying to pursuade her son to be truly amicable to us (the Russians), so that Mukhammad Amin by the means of new treaties obliged himself to remain absolutely loyal to Russia . . . The queen Nur Sultan, on her return from Kazan once more lived in Moscow for about six months, being cherished and honoured at the Moscow court.

Both sons of Nur Sultan from Ibraghim, Mukhammad Amin and Abdul Latif, were remarkable and complex personalities worthy of their kingly and well-educated mother. Especially the ®rst one, Mukhammad Amin, who played such an outstanding role in the affairs of the region versus Moscow, that his age is named as a whole new chapter in the cultural ascendance and political standing of the Kazan Khanate. Having been brought up in the Great Moscow Principality, at the beginning as well in the course of his career he served Ivan the Third with the same vigour and ®delity as his paternal uncle Kasym, also contributing to establishing the Moscow's sway upon the other Russian principalities and the neighbouring countries. But the main turning point at the time of Mukhammad Amin took place in 1487, when he, for the second time, ascended the Kazan throne with the decisive help of the Moscovite troops. The treaty concluded thereupon between Kazan and Moscow effectively put an end to Moscow's traditional subordinance to Kazan, thus ending the three centuries old `Tatar yoke' on Russia. The civil peace which ensued from the treaty allowed Moscow to turn its eyes to other problems of its inner and foreign politics, whereas for the Kazan khanate the following seventeen years were those of economic prosperity and cultural renaissance. An initial question is: what did Kazan look like at the moment of its capture by the Russian and allied Kasymov Tatar troops led by Ivan the Fourth who in 1552 had not yet earned the title of the Terrible? Luckily, in the person of the commander Andrey Kurbsky we have a genuine eye-witness account, although his depiction of the city is rather meagre and follows more from his description of the battle than from detached admiration: From the side of the Kazan river the hill is so high that it is bearly possible to encompass it with your sight. Upon the hill,

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The Suyumbika Tower there are the fortress and the Tsar's palace, and the tall stone mosques, where their deseased kings are buried.

This is much less than the same author said about the riches of the Kazan khanate as a whole, when he excitedly describes the conquered territory as something falling just short of paradise on earth: There are vast ®elds in that land, overwhelmigly abundant and bountiful in every produce, and there are courts of their princes and nobles, which are indeed most beautiful and wonderful. Villages are encountered frequently, and there is such a plenty of crops, that is indeed unspeakable and is to be compared rather to the multitude of heavenly stars! Innumerable also is the bounty of ¯ocks of various cattle and valuable prey, ®rst of all of various beasts abiding there: well then, there live precious martens and squirrels, and other animals suitable for use in respect of cloth and food. And a little farther ± plenty of sables and honey, and I know not, where, on earth, could there be more of all that.

We have already mentioned the existence in the Kazan Kremlin of a large Kol Sharif Mosque as well as the tomb of Mukhammad Amin, of which the great poet Mukhammedyar was a guardian. At ®rst glance, all of these had been destroyed by the Russian conquerors almost immediately after the capture of Kazan: even the walls of the old city were brought down and rebuilt in stone, whereas at the site of the Kol Sharif Mosque the Orthodox Christian Temple of the Ascension was hastily built by Novgorodian architects. Another eyewitness who visited Kazan in June 1558, was the Englishman Antony Jenkinson. He says: Kazan is a fair town, after the Rus or Tartar fashion, with a strong castle, situated upon a high hill, and walled round about with timber and earth, but now the Emperor of Russia hath given order to pluck down the old walls and to build them again of free stone. It hath been a city of great wealth and riches, and being in the hands of the Tartars, it did more vex the Rus's in their wars then any other nation: but nine years past, this Emperor of Russia conquered it and took the king captive, who

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The Suyumbika Tower being but young is now baptised and brought up in his court with two other princes, which were all kings of the said Kazan.

The king of whom Jenkinson mentions here, is the ten year old boyking Utyamish, the son of the last Queen and regent of Kazan, Suyumbika, who was taken captive to Moscow before the fall of Kazan and later became sancti®ed by Kazan popular legends. Queen Suyumbika played a very important role in the dynastic affairs of the doomed khanate, and this role, if anything, certi®es the high position of blue-blooded women in the Kazan Tatar Muslim society. `The fair Suyumbika', as Karamzin calls her, was a daughter of the Noghai Murza Yusuf bin Musa of the town of Saraichik on the Ural river. She was ®rst given in marriage to the Kazan Khan Dzhan Ali who, in a bid to strengthen the ties of the Kazan khanate with the Noghai Horde, asked for special permission from the Grand Duke of Muscovy for the purpose of his marriage. A noble lady noted for her beauty, manners and education, Suyumbika did not approve of the subservient attitude of Dzhan Ali towards Moscow and, as R. Fahretdinov says, `became involved in the political affairs of Kazan on her own' with great skill, bringing together the ever jealous Noghai and Crimean parties within the Kazan establishment. Thus she managed to build a political coalition hostile to Moscow, where, at the time, the young Ivan the Fourth succeeded his deceased father Vasily. Dzhan Ali, for his young age or natural constitution, seemed to always be under the sway of women, ®rstly princess Gauharshad who was the regent of the Kazan khanate before his marriage to Suyumbika and then the Queen herself. He miscalculated the general mood of the nobility and hasted to conclude a treaty with Moscow on Russian conditions. The result was his assassination and the second enthroning of the Crimean Khan Safa Girey at Kazan. The intermittent reign of Safa Girey Khan was generally hostile to Moscow, inasmuch as, under his rule, Kazan tried to throw off Russian patronage, using the political uncertainty in Muscovy. But, as R. Fahretdinov says, after the murder of Dzhan Ali Khan, `any inner stability in the Kazan khanate forever ceased to exist'. Safa Girey Khan had to cope not only with the ever increasing political and military pressure from Moscow, but also with intrigues resulting from the diversity of economic interests of the pro-Russian Noghai and anti-Russian Crimean parties within the Kazan establishment. On the instigation of these two antagonistic forces, several wars 235

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erupted between Moscow and Kazan, and, in 1546, Safa Girey Khan had to ¯ee Kazan once more. Along with Suyumbika and other wives, he took refuge ®rst in Astrakhan and then in the Noghai Horde, but, after a year, with the unlikely military help of Suyumbika's father and brothers, again returned to Kazan for his third and last reign. Historically, this period in the life of the Kazan khanate was marked not only by con¯ict of interests among various sides and parties, but also by remarkable short-sightedness of these parties who always pursued their immediate interests, not paying much attention to the long term consequences of their actions. To this effect, the letter written in 1551 to Ivan the Fourth by Suyumbika's brothers Yunus and Ali is, in itself, suf®cient testimony depicting the animosity and jealousy of the two towards Safa Girey khan, whom they actually helped ascend the Kazan throne for the third time. The letter, extensive and rich in details as it is, shows the hesitation of the Noghai princes who throughout their cooperation with Safa Girey Khan could not decide whether to help or kill him. Even Suyumbika herself, who after the untimely demise of her husband had to assume the powers of regency in Kazan, had to withstand not only the political pressures from Moscow, but to refute the unjust demands of her Noghai princely relatives claiming their share in the affairs of the Kazan khanate. H. Atlasi who, along with other Kazan historians, is very bitter about the state of morals of the time resulting in ever growing discord and short-sighted greediness of the regions nobility, says: Although the Noghai Murzas called themselves `Muslims' in the letters to Ivan none of them had, in their souls, even a trace of the true Islam. They, who for the sake of small gifts offered by Ivan undertook assaults against the Crimea, never abstained, in the same way, of launching war against Kazan and sheding blood of their own kin.

Anyhow, the Noghai resentment towards the Crimean-born Khan Safa Girey was still constrained by the ties of kinship and the very fact that, despite all hostile attitudes to Safa Girey from the side of her father and brothers, Suyumbika herself came to like him very much. As opposed to her previous husband Dzhan Ali, Safa Girey was a brilliant statesman and warrior who pursued the goal of Kazan independence from Moscow with vigour and consistency. He 236

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suddenly died in 1549, leaving of himself a long-lasting memory not only to his grieving widow, but to the inconstant people of Kazan so easily instigated and provoked by their power-hungry nobility. M. Khudyakov cites the words of the 17th century Crimean historian Mustafa al-Dzennabi who says that Safa Girey Khan was one of the most great and powerful sovereigns. He ruled for 27 years; in his time, his state enjoyed wealth and prosperity, and, protected by his arms, his realm ¯ourished.

After his death, despite all the efforts of the regent Queen Suyumbika, the days of the independent Kazan khanate were already numbered. In the wake of the new war launched by Moscow with the view to enthrone, in Kazan, the pro-Moscovite Kasymov Khan Shah Ali, the anti-Russian Crimean party within the Kazan establishment suffered defeat, and the Kazan nobles along with the head of the clergy decided, after giving up to Moscow the main supporters of the anti-Russian course, to give up Queen Suyumbika herself. That was done in 1551, and Suyumbika with the boy-king Utyamish son of Safa Girey were extradited to Muscovy, where Utyamish Girey was baptised and died in his childhood, whereas Suyumbika, given apparently against her will in marriage to Shah Ali, did not outlive her son for long and also died in 1557. This act of miscalculated betrayal did not, however, save the Kazan khanate from its fall in the next year. What it did was to sanctify the Queen in popular memory. She became a popular symbol of the glorious independent past of the Kazan khanate for centuries to come, and her name became forever linked with the beautiful tower in the Kazan Kremlin. It is hard to imagine that the Russian Orthodox authorities would have gone to any length in order to contribute to the Islamic culture of Kazan, as the Suyumbike Tower in all its architectural novelty resembles a mosque, or minaret. Not incidentally, among the Kazan Tatars it was always known as the Khan's Mosque. Looking at the Suyumbika Tower now, we could only guess what would be the cost of such sophisticated and expensive construction in the 17th century, yet it is dif®cult to imagine that a construction completed by the `enemies of the faith' could have attracted such all-encompassing devotion from the Kazan Muslims. 237

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Indeed, in terms of popular memory the end of the 17th century is so recent that the fact of its construction `by the in®dels' would have been passed over from generation to generation. Considering how staunch the Kazan Muslims were in the beginning of the 18th century, when they withstood the most radical wave of religious persecution there existed in their history, one is convinced that they could not offer any special adoration to the building erected by the persecutors. This, again, casts doubt on the credentials of the Russian origin of the Suyumbika Tower. In the Kazan Guide published in 1895 and edited by the Kazan journalist and historian Prof. N. Zagoskin it is said: This tower attracts great reverence from the Kazan Muslims and rather often one can see them kneeling in prayer in its foot. Would such attitude be possible in respect of the building of the Russian descent? The hypothesis of the descent of the tower in the epoch of the Tsar Alexey Mikhailovitch is based on only one notion that during the reconstruction of the now existing palace church, the coins of the Tsars Mikhail Fedorovitch and Alexey Mikhailovich were found, ± which is a very shaky proof, as the coins could have got there absolutely by incident, whereas about the palace church it seems to have became clear that the building is of the Tatar origin.

The shape of the tower, for which there is no comparison not only in Russian, but in world architecture, offers one more proof of its nonRussian descent. Its exquisite pro®le has no prototypes and no par in Russian art of construction, except for the Borovitskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, the pinnacle of which was, indeed in the 17th century, deliberately shaped in the forms of the Suyumbika Tower. There was a genuine reason for this, as the Borovitskaya tower was built in the most ancient `Tatar corner' of the Moscow Kremlin: in its vicinity within the Kremlin walls, the palace for Tatar khan's and nobles once stood. It was the same palace, the removal of which was demanded from Ivan the Third by his Greek royal wife Sofya Paleologus who subsequently and successfully asked for the favour of its possession from Queen Nur Sultan. The entrance to the Kremlin near the Borovitskaya Tower was used by the ambassadors of the Golden Horde; here was the end of the ancient road from the Golden Horde to Moscow. It is therefore indicative that the top of this tower 238

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was crowned by the pro®le of the Suyumbika Tower, the symbol of the fallen Kazan. For all the skills and expertise accumulated by the Muslim architects of the area from the 10th century onwards, the shape and architectural style of the Tower has no paradigm in the region's Islamic architecture as well. Many conjectures about it were prompted by its connection to the name of Queen Suyumbika. It is still maintained, for example, that the tower was built by the Queen in 1549 as a tomb to her husband Safa Girey. The location of Safa Gurey's tomb in the vicinity of the Tower is endorsed by such historians as Riza Fahretdin, but the construction of the Tower in that particular period is, however, subject to doubt due to the political turmoil and constant apprehension of imminent war which reigned in the Kazan khanate and presented the leadership with much more urgent tasks than even commemorising the late Khan. M. Khudyakov, a very careful historian despite his occasional over-reliance on the doubtful sources, never de®nitely attributed the Suyumbika Tower to the Kazan khanate. Circumstantial evidence and the logic of historical and religious observations made him believe that the Tower could well have been constructed before the fall of Kazan. Attempting to depict the appearance of Kazan in the epoch of khans, he writes: Near the Khan's palace there stood a mosque buit of stone. The Russians transformed it, like the palace itself, into an arsenal: in the Book of Scribes the storage of kernels and iron tools `in the mosque by the old Tsar's yard' is mentioned, as well as the storehouse of gun-powder `in the mosque opposite the church of the Annunciation'. The pieces of moulded ornaments found in 1861 during the reconstruction of the Cathedral's threshold permit us to suggest that the mosque nearest to the Khan's Palace indeed stood not far from the Cathedral's location. There is data, which allows to maintain that this mosque was situated between the present Cathedral and the Suyumbika Tower, as both buildings are connected with the mosque through archeological ®nds and legends. According to one legend, the Suyumbika Tower is built on the spot where a Muslim saint is buried; from here, there sprung a water source running out to Kazanka river near the modern Tainitsky Gates. Another legend says that the Suyumbika Tower was built upon the grave of Safa

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The Suyumbika Tower Girey Khan. The Tatars come to pray to this spot holy for them just like they come to visit the ruins of tombs and saint's graves near the Small Minaret in Bolgar. Let us remember that, in Kazan, indeed the Su® sheiks Kasim bin Ibraghim and Faizullaheffendi of Bukhara were buried. It gives us a ground for suggestion that the saint, to whose grave the Tatars come to pray, was one of these Sheiks. All aforesaid point out that near the Suyumbika Tower in the Tatar Kazan there was a tomb or simply a graveyard, where a righteous person was buried, and that the mosque was located in the vicinity of that place.

There is one more possible explanation as to the origin of the Tower. Let us remember that, in the late 1480s, in Moscow there resided a young heir to the Kazan throne, Mukhammad Amin khan son of Khan Ibraghim and Queen Nur Sultan. According to the Russian, Crimean and Kazan documents and state correspondence he was a person remarkable not only for his stately vision and skilled governorship, but also for his love for arts and literature: he himself was known as a poet of exceptional talent. Some of his many aptitudes he may have inherited from his mother; his dynastic links with Crimea and other parts of the Muslim world enabled him to keep in touch with many achievements of contemporary Islamic civilisation. It is known, for example, that during his reign in Kazan he maintained correspondence with the Moghuls of India, namely, Babur, from whom he requested experienced builders and artists to be despatched to Kazan. While waiting for his royal engagement, which, as was the case with several khans of Kazan, was predestined for him twice, Mukhammad Amin enjoyed in Moscow a position of great honour. He was a governor of the town of Kashira and was a frequent visitor to the royal court of Moscow. Since the age of ten, he lived in this Russian environment, although was and remained a Muslim by birth and faith. Although his career depended on the good will of Ivan the Third, we should not forget that, at least nominally, he was still a heir to the throne of the khanate, of which Ivan the Third was still a vassal. Ambitious though as he was, Mukhammad Amin might have become rather impressed by the great architectural novelties of Moscow. As architecture in those times was a symbol of might and majesty, the young khan was probably jealous of the grandeur of Christian Moscow and envied it. He, by all means, remembered that 240

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Kazan khans were historical sovereigns to the Moscovite princes, and it was not easy for him, a proud and educated Muslim knowledgeable of the architectural glory of the Muslim world, to see, how the growing in¯uence of Muscovy was being transformed into the stone splendour of the Kremlin temples and walls. Did he not think that Kazan has to surpass it? In 1484, the 16-year-old Mukhammad Amin brie¯y ascended the Kazan throne, but was overthrown in 1485. In 1487 he ultimately succeeded in his aim to become the Kazan sovereign for 21 years mostly peaceful and enlightened reign. Yet his grip on power could have been impossible without the military support and stately help of Ivan the Third. On the 9th of July 1487 Russian troops entered the gates of Kazan after a siege for the ®rst time. Mukhammad Amin became the sole ruler forever grateful to Ivan the Third to whom he stayed loyal throughout his life. Khudyakov, in denouncing the second reign of Mukhammad Amin as the epoch of the Russian protectorate, acknowledges that his was also a reign characterised by civic peace: Mukhammad Amin was a very bright, cunning and far-sighted politician. Brought up at the court of Ivan the Third in the time, when there worked Greeks and Italians, grew the Kremlin walls and construction of temples and palaces was underway, he learnt a lot out of examples surrounding him; his intelligence and receptiveness give ground to think, that the Russian in¯uence during his reign was most fruitful, and that the wide organisational activity of Ivan the Third could not but leave traces on the character of legal system, as well as on the building and other activities of the reign of Mukhammad Amin.

As for Muscovy, the ascension of Mukhammad Amin to the Kazan throne also meant a beginning of the whole new epoch, one which of®cially ended the three hundred year long Tatar yoke L. J. Pelenski, in the broad context of relations between the Kazan Khanate and Muscovy, de®nes the events of 1487 as `Ivan the Third's political victory' but delimits these events as a mere `realignment of relations between the two'. In fact, the whole affair of re-instating Mukhammad Amin on the Kazan throne in 1487 meant much more than a, however signi®cant, episode in the history of the region. It was in fact a watershed which forever changed the whole spectrum 241

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of former mutual attitudes between the two major players on the geopolitical scene of the vast region in question. Less publicised than the Kulikovo battle it effectively achieved much more: namely, it of®cially stopped the vassal relations of the Russians to the Kazan Tatars, and thus effectively ended the period on the centuries long `Tatar yoke' once and for all. Indeed, although Moscow paid tribute to the Crimean khans even in the 17th century, it was in a completely different historical and political setting, with major Asian and European powers like Turkey and Poland being actively involved in the relationship between Moscow and the Crimea. Neither the Noghai Horde pressurised by the arrival of the Buddhist Kalmyks to the region, nor the Crimean Tatars as the principal tools of this powerplay, could unequivocally claim to be sovereigns of Moscow: the latter could already present the world with a very solid ideological foundation of its independence of any force in the area. In short, it was an event calling for great celebration. Karamzin says, that Ivan the Third ordered special church services and the church bells were rung all over Muscovy. Many a Russian envoy went to the European courts and to the Pope in order to announce the great news and declare the new position of Moscow in the world. Such an event had to be commemorated and solemnised as the greatest event in the mutual history of two neighbouring polities: it was indeed worth impressing in stone, whatever the cost. It is therefore easy to suggest that Mukhammad Amin, who had had suf®cient time to contemplate the works of Italian architects in the Moscow Kremlin, could have, in a brotherly fashion, requested Ivan the Third to put at his disposal one of the these available in Moscow. The Muscovite sovereign could certainly have granted such a request, not only to demonstrate his good faith, but also to have in Kazan a monument of his great achievement. This seems to be the political foundations of the project of the tower of glory, which later became known as the Suyumbika Tower. Indeed, it is possible to recognise its connection with Italian architecture. Its ®ne brickwork, its renaissance proportions and the fact that it is a lone-standing tower unknown as an architectural form either in Russia or elsewhere in the region bear witness to that. This is not as strange as it may seem. The ®rst thought which led the author to further research came suddenly, when, whilst in Moscow, he happened to visit the Pushkin antiquarian bookshop in 242

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Stoleshnikov Street. In a small album about the Moscow Kremlin he saw a picture of the Borovitskaya Tower, and for the ®rst time in his life learnt when and by whom it was built. It was built in 1490 and its architect was Pietro Antonio Solari. He was one of those Italian architects and urban engineers invited by the Great Duke of Muscovy, Ivan the Third, to participate in the reconstruction of the Moscow Kremlin. This reconstruction was a grand project undertaken by the Great Duke in order to furnish Moscow, the Third Rome, with grandeur and majesty. The need to invite foreign builders to execute such a project was a vital one. All previous attempts by Russian architects to erect large constructions of stone in the Kremlin had ended in disaster. Even the most famous Russian builders, like V. Ermolin and I. Golova, had not been able to imitate the work of the old masters who had built the gems of Russian architecture in Vladimir and Suzdal in the 12th century. Interestingly, those masters were also of `German' or `Italian' origin. Among those who made a lasting contribution to the present magni®cence of the Moscow Kremlin was a Bolognese urban engineer and cannon master Aristotle Fioravanti (born between 1415±1418, time and place of death unknown). Although his life before his arrival in Moscow is well documented in the Italian annals, his last years in Moscow and his death are shrouded in mystery. For the purpose of our research let it suf®ce that he was so famous an architect in his times in Italy that, in 1474, he supposedly received an invitation from the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud the Second to come to Istanbul in order to construct a large ensemble of palaces. Fioravanti apparently rejected this lavish offer, being afraid of the much-publicised cruelty of the Sultan. Instead, he accepted the invitation of Ivan the Third. It is said that Fioravanti arrived in Moscow in 1475 with his brother Andrea and one youth Petrushka, who is believed to be the above-mentioned Pietro Antonio Solari. A disciple of Fioravanti, in 1476 he returned to his native Lombardy, but in the 1480s again made his way to Moscow to become a famous architect in his own right. In 1475, Aristotle Fioravanti undertook to rebuild the now famous Church of the Assumption, which had earlier crumbled because of the ¯awed Russian building technique. The Bolognese ful®lled his promise to Ivan the Third: he caused the church to stand for centuries to come, and educated his Russian apprentices not only 243

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in the skills and methods of Renaissance architecture, but also in the new art of brickwork. The Church of the Assumption became, through his genius, a precious pearl of the Moscow Kremlin's architectural ensemble. But after Fioravanti had accomplished his work, he realised that Ivan the Third was not willing to discharge him and permit him to return to Italy. Rather, the Russian sovereign (who was still paying tribute to Kazan) presented the architect with the new task of fabricating cannons, in his ambitious designs of bringing the then completely disunited Russia under his sway. Aristotle Fioravanti unwillingly remained in Moscow. He proceeded with his work of urban engineer and cannon master, participating in almost all of the military expeditions of Ivan. It is narrated in the Russian Chronicles that he took part in one of the military campaigns against Kazan, although he went with the troops only as far as to Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga. The last reference to him is in 1485, when he participated in the war against the principality of Tver and in the siege of that rebellious town. This does not mean that he died about the same time. Until 1485 he had been in disgrace for almost a decade, because of his insubordinate insistence on his right to return home. His continuous supplications only annoyed the Great Duke, who never granted his Catholic servant his wish. Thus Fioravanti effectively lived the rest of his life under a ban. Banished and disgraced people were, of course, not worth mentioning in the state annals, particularly if they were `in®dels' like the unfortunate Fioravanti. Russian historians of architecture like Zabelin and Snegirev are of the opinion that during his Moscow captivity Fioravanti was engaged not only in nostalgia and cannon-making, but in fact elaborated the designs of Moscow's Kremlin ensemble. These designs were later ful®lled by a number of European architects like Solari, Albert of LuÈbeck, Charles of Milan and others. Snegirev says: We have specially to note Pietro Antonio Solari, as Zabelin suggests that the latter might have been the same `youth Petrushka', who came to Moscow along with Fioravanti in 1475 and who later, after the construction of the church, returned home. If Zabelin is right, then in the person of Solari we have the disciple of Aristotle Fioravanti, an architect-engineer, who had realised in the construction of the Kremlin walls and tower the designs of his great maestro.

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But now the question of who might have been the architect of the Suyumbika Tower remains to be answered. There are reasons to believe that it was none other than Aristotle Fioravanti himself. We have already seen that his name appears in the Russian annals in 1485. The news of his death, or, rather, disappearance, did not reach Italy earlier than 1487. Italian research reports: After the death of Aristotle, about which we do not yet know precisely where and when it occurred, on 24 August 1487 (Senator) Nicoloso Poeti helped the brothers Fioravanti, Andrea and Nicolo, to reach agreement concerning the division of their father's inheritance and the dowry of their respective mothers, as is shown by the document signed by Sighinol®. This is seen from the transaction certi®ed by the notary Giorgio Ruggeri and dated 29 July 1488, according to which the brothers Andrea and Nicolo, sons of `quondam Magni®ci Equitis domini Aristotelis de Feravantj', come to an agreement concerning all rows and quarrels between them and decide that the dowry of their younger sister Elena will consist of 66 lire and 13 soldi.*

Whether the banished architect did indeed participate in the construction of the Suyumbika Tower is uncertain. But the suggestion that he was the author of the whole project is plausible. Ideas concerning the stylistics of Muslim architecture might have been present in his mind as early as in 1474, when he was contemplating whether to accept the invitation of Mahmud the Second and go to Turkey. Perhaps the project of the Suyumbika Tower was ®rst planned for Istanbul? Perhaps old Fioravanti was sent all the way to Kazan and died there in the process, or shortly after the construction of the Tower? The hypothesis of the Suyumbika Tower being the `swan song' of Aristotle Fioravanti naturally took this author to Fioravanti's native city of Bologna. There he was mainly seeking prototypes of the Tower, and indeed the bell-towers of Fioravanti's native Lombardy can give an idea on its late gothic cupola: sometimes, though rarely, they are as sharp and cone-shaped as the pinnacle of the Suyumbika Tower. However it is open to question whether the Kazan Tower's cupola was present in the 15th century: it gives the whole construction such a *Giuseppe Mondani Bortolan, `La famiglia degli Architetti Fioravanti della societa bolognese del secolo quindicesimo', Arte Lombarda, Rivista di Storia dell'Arte, Milan, 1976.

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de®nite ®nish that no observer, including Kurbsky, Herberstein and Jenkinson, could surely have ignored it. Yet only Kurbsky remembers the existence of any towers in Kazan, calling them all `mosques'. This seems to imply that the shape of the Tower in the 15th century might have been somewhat different from its present shape or that the then existing tall minarets of the Kol Sharif Mosque might have overshadowed the height of the Suyumbika Tower. But what recollections of the past might have given Fioravanti the idea of the Tower? This author tried to imagine the way of thinking of the architect towards the end of his life. He would have been remembering his home city of Bologna. It would be only natural if, in this supposed design of the Suyumbika Tower, there were some hints of his Bolognese architectural heritage. Memorable in Bologna is its Piazza Maggiore with the grand Basilica di San Petronio and the towers on the roofs of surrounding buildings. In his youth Fioravanti helped his father in the making of the facade of the Basilica, and these recollections would have stayed with him throughout his life, as well as a reverence for the patron saint of Bologna, San Petronio. Roaming the streets of Bologna, this author was looking for further interesting architectural features of the city. At the end of a narrow street, which bore the name of Jerusalem Street, he suddenly saw the pillars of a church that were similar to the brick pillars of the Suyumbika Tower. This 12th century church of San Stefano, or The Holy Jerusalem of Bologna, all of a sudden gave a new and most striking aspect to the author's hypothesis. The architectural complex consists of four separate churches of a very obscure, not to say mysterious, architectural tradition. The author was surprised to see that the most sacred of the four churches of this complex, namely the Calvary of San Petronio, has the octagonal shape of the fourth storey of the Suyumbika Tower. The con®guration of the Calvary, moreover, is repeated in one of the famed roof towers around the Piazza Maggiore, well known to Fioravanti since his adolescence. Bearing in mind that the other storeys of the Suyumbika Tower are of a cubic shape reminiscent of the Holy Ka'aba in Mecca, the idea of inserting a storey in the shape of a Christian church ± the one most sacred to the Bolognese architect ± not only hints at the intimate feelings of Fioravanti, but also makes perfect ideological sense. Among other novelties introduced by Fioravanti into the Russian architecture was the con®guration of bricks, which became longer than the Muscovite ones, and were so strong that, if they needed to 246

The Suyumbika Tower

be broken, had ®rst to be soaked in water. The most sensible thing to do, it seemed to this author, was therefore to measure the bricks of the Suyumbika Tower and compare the measurements with the Russian standards of the 17th century. Fioravanti's brick measured 6.562.561.5 old Russian vershocks, a vershock being 1.75 inches, whereas the Russian standard accepted in the time of Tsar Boris Godunov as of®cial measured 76362 vershocks, which makes a visible difference. When this author measured the bricks of the ®rst ®ve storeys of the Tower, he discovered that the proportions were Italian. This alone proves that the Tower could not have been constructed at the end of the 17th century, because such a costly building would have been constructed according to the rules and regulations of the of®cial standards in force from the end of the previous century. Scholars in Kazan claim that the chemical properties of the Suyumbika Tower bricks are similar to the bricks manufactured as long ago as in the times of Bolgar the Great. This poses no threat to the core of this hypothesis, as the author maintains only that the design and logistics of the Tower came from an Italian architect, probably Aristotle Fioravanti. The local masons and builders would have participated in the construction process, adding their skills, traditions and experience. The hypothesis, in itself, does not suggest that the Kazan architects could not build of stone; the once existent Kol Sharif Mosque alone is an eloquent answer to such a suggestion. It says, however, that between 1487 and 1497, in Kazan, two, Islamic and Christian, waves of the Renaissance came to embrace each other. Such a climax to the centuries-long culture of Kazan and the area at large would shed a completely different light on the heights and essence of this otherwise vanished Islamic civilisation. The Suyumbika Tower can therefore be viewed and recognised as a ripe fruit of the area's Autumn, the pinnacle of this civilisation, which perished in the wake of the religious intolerance and fanaticism of its victors.* *This hypothesis was presented in the form of a lecture, supported by pictures of the Suyumbika Tower, to many scholars in Italy. Overall, it has won their approval, and a number of scholars (amongst whom, for their help and advice, the author wishes cordially to thank Prof. Dr. Antonio Foscari of the Venetian Institute of Architecture, Prof. Dr. Paolo Morachiello of the University of Rome `La Sapienza', Ing. Paolo Berdini of the Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica in Rome, and Dr. K. Cordagelli) agreed with me that the Suyumbika Tower indeed has an Italian Renaissance origin. My special gratitude goes to the Secretary General of the European Society of Culture Dr. Michel Compagnolo-Bouvier, without whose support my travels to Italy would have been impossible.

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Hence, the origins of the Tower are to be looked for in the period between 1487 and 1497, the year, when Mukhammad Amin was temporarily deposed and the throne of Kazan was passed to his brother Abdul Latif. The ensuing period before the reinvestiture of Mukhammad Amin in 1502 was one of political and military instability and the weak ruler of Kazan could hardly think of building a Tower, for which he had neither spare resources, nor any solemn justi®cation. But the mysterious story of the Suyumbika Tower is not over yet. Whence the name of the tower? The possible answer to this question came in the author's conversation with Professor Antonio Foscari in a little Venetian cafe near the Chiesa Dei Frari. He told me that, according to his own research into the Italian towers of the Quattrocento, they were built as residential quarters, and thus the storeys of the Suyumbika Tower might have served as the Queen's residence, for which purpose they offer ample room. Before leaving for Moscow as captive, the legendary Queen might have appealed to the people of Kazan in words which later became legendary in their own right and were even narrated in the Russian chronicles. Her mythological suicide by throwing herself from the top of the Tower might have had its roots precisely in the fact that she bade farewell to her people from the upper storey of her residential quarters and this fact stuck into the popular imaginative memory. Yet what of the Tower being built upon the grave of Safa Girey or another saint? Among others, the person most worthy of being interred beneath the Tower could have been none other than its royal inspirer Mukhammad Amin Khan. If it was so then the popular notion might have only mixed up the names of Mukhammad Amin and later khan Safa Girey, because the Tower became so connected with the name of Queen Suyumbika, the wife of the latter. Returning to the question of who might ®nally have accomplished the construction of the Tower, the name of Antonio Solari again springs to mind. He for the second time in his life arrived in Moscow to build the Borovitskaya Tower in 1493 and might well have supervised the ®nal stages of the building of the Suyumbika Tower as well. Was it his own idea to place the cone on the top of the Borovitskaya Tower, which was ®nally done almost two centuries thereafter? Maybe not, as the practice of placing the buildings in the shape of the most famous architectural beauties of the conquered nations started apparently with the fall of Kazan in 1552, when the 248

The Suyumbika Tower

now famous Church of Vasily Blazhenny was erected at the Red Square in honour of the Russian victory over Kazan. It was built in a matter of four years by the same architects Postnik and Barma who, at the same time between 1552±1556, where busy constructing, in the Kazan kremlin, the temple of Annunciation on the spot, where the Kol Sharif Mosque once stood, before it was blown up by the Russian conquerors. M. Khudyakov maintains, that the Asiatic style of this church with its eight cupolas reminiscent of Muslim turbans, comes from a Kazanian paradigm: The eight towers of Saint Basil's ®nd, for themselves, a striking conformity in the eight minarets of the Kol Sharif Mosque. The absence of the main facade, which is a characteristic feature of Tatar architecture, is also a feature of Saint Basil's Cathedral . . . It is not incidental, that the church built in honour of the capture of Kazan possesses the character of Muslim architecture. The Russian government clearly expressed the idea of the subordinant position of the Tatar state to Moscow by moving the architecture of the main mosque of Kazan to Moscow in the same way, as it always collected all major sanctities and relics of annexed appanages.

It seems that the grandeur of the present day Moscow owes much more to the cultural in¯uence of Kazan, than it is otherwise thought. Any research into the mutual impacts of the Russian, Italian and Muslim civilisations can therefore reveal only a universal idea of cultural unity between them. Even the fact, that the major architectural gem of the Kazan kremlin might have come from Italy, expresses not a theory of more or less in¯uence of the Christian civilisation on the Islamic one and vice versa, but the basic axiom of universal circulation of various cultures in time and space. We shall not forget, that the ideas of the Italian Renaissance were born not by themselves, but out of open-minded approach of the Italian merchants and tradesmen to the cultural achievements of the Islamic Orient at the height of the Muslim Renaissance. Without the Muslim Renaissance, there would be no Renaissance in Europe, and all, which is treated as cultural impact, is, in fact, the return of debts. Among other pieces of evidence supporting such universal (and, in essence, also Islamic) view, is, for instance, the existence of the pseudo-Arabic inscriptions on the cast-iron doors of the Basilica of 249

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Saint Peter in Rome, which were made by the Milanese Filarete in the very beginning of Quattrocento. `The close centuries long association of Italy with the Orient enriched it not only in narrow monetary sense. It should not be forgotten that in that epoch the Orient generally far exceeded the West in technical knowledge and arts', says V. Snegirev in his book on Aristotle Fioravanti. `The epoch of the Crusades, having more meticulously acquainted the West with the Muslim Orient with its cultural and other values, materially and technically strengthened the West thanks to many borrowings from the Muslims', ± echoes R. Landa in the recent book Islam in the History of Russia. Hence, any mutual setting off of the Muslim civilisation of the region against the Russian Orthodox culture has no roots in the Muslim history of the area. Quite the opposite seems to be true: the two civilisations in their neighbourly coherence tended to enrich each other's culture in all ways possible, even in a linguistic sense. This, however, did not come to last forever. With the fall of Kazan the material civilisation of the region's Islam was doomed: the cruel icy winds of intolerant Winter started to blow across the vast expanses of the area, and this Winter is not ®nished yet. The political struggle of Russia against the region represented by Kazan turned to the religious struggle, where all means became permissible. It remains to ask, therefore, how at all Islam survived the continuous onslaught of Russian Orthodoxy equipped with all devices of the Russian autocratic rule for more than four centuries? No `Tatar yoke', which at least limited itself to demands of material tribute, at the same time caring for the spiritual needs of the conquered nations, would have destroyed so much as did the Russian state in its religious intolerance of any other kind of spirituality. One is inclined to think that Communist intolerance was not at all an ideological or spiritual novelty for the 20th century Russia: it has its roots deep in Russian history.

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Terra Incognita Islam in Siberia

13

It is often presumed that the less notable, less civilised and most scarcely populated khanate of the region was that of Siberia. Indeed, although at the time of its fall in 1583 the Siberian khanate could be described as an Islamic polity, the process of its conversion to Islam was an erratic one dictated by prevailing political circumstances. This somewhat obscure state formation never attained much cultural prominence, being situated beyond the Urals in the basin of the mighty Ob river with its no less spectacular tributaries of the Irtysh, Tobol and Ishim, in the region almost unknown to the outside world. This unsteady state, being so far removed from the central scene of the political struggle of the area, was ruled throughout the centuries after the Mongol invasion much more by the whims of the local chieftains and other adventurers than by any central authority of the Golden Horde. As mentioned earlier, the ®rst real attempt to consolidate this loose formation into a separate state was undertaken by Tokhtamish between 1398±1406. This attempt failed with the assassination of Tokhtamish, and later, in the ensuing de facto rule of Edighei the Siberian ulus had very little political importance. Due to its isolated position and the abundance of natural riches, more than suf®cient for the needs of its ruling nomadic nation, the Siberian khanate never became a sedentary state in the real sense of the term until its eventual fall in 1583 to the Russians. Its population incorporated the nomadic Turks from the south, among which there were ancestors of the Bashkir, Kazakh and Kyrghyz nations of today, as well as the indigenous local Finnish tribes, Ostyaks and Voguls, which were partly driven further north and east into Siberia, otherwise becoming assimilated with the Turks. Besides this, there 251

Terra Incognita

were the omnipresent Muslim merchants from as far as Central Asia and Persia who, along with their counterparts from Volga Bulgaria and Sarai also contributed to the ethnic mixture of the khanate as well as to its eventual, albeit rather super®cial conversion to the Islamic faith. In fact, despite the brief periods of administration by the Muslim rulers from the Kypchak lands, like Tokhtamish and Edighei and later the rule of Khan Ibak who reportedly hailed from the Murzas of the Kazan khanate, Islam became more or less ®rmly established in Siberia only during the government of Sheibanid Khan Kuchum, overthrown by the Russian expansion in the late 16th century. The Taibughid dynasty, which traditionally ruled Siberia and for the most part remained pagan, descended from the legendary Kyrghyz Turk, Khan Taibugha son of Mamyk who, after the disposition shown to him by the Great Kaghan ruled his Siberian ulus along the Irtysh, Ishim and Tobol rivers from 1220, the year, in which Genghis Khan took Bukhara. The Tatar historian Hadi Atlasi, in referring to the works by the Russian historians G. Miller and I. Fisher, says that it was Taibugha who founded the settlement of Tyumen under the name of Chinkidin in honour of Genghis Khan. Later, this embryo of the present day city of Tyumen was known under the name of Chinki Tora, from the Turkic tura, meaning settlement. In this way, the 13th century saw the appearance of several more townships which served as trading or, rather, barter points as well as residential quarters. Among them were Yauly Tura, fortress of Tarhan, Kyzyl Tura, Kullara, Balym, Cuzga Tura, Bisik Tura, Mukhammad Kol, Atnikin, Kasim Tura, Karachin. Writing about the Siberian Horde, G. Gubaidullin says: The places, where merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen chose to settle, became towns. Albeit the settlements were established long before the Tatars came into Siberia, the latter, upon learning to build fortresses, gave the towns a de®nite shape and multiplied their number. As in the language of the Tatars town is called `tura', the urban people were called `turaly'.

It is worth mentioning that here Gubaidullin speaks of the Siberian Tatars who, according to him, evolved as a distinct ethnicity from various ethnic sources, the most notable of these being the Turkic tribes of Southern Siberia, the Kyrghyz and Noghai Turks. These 252

Terra Incognita

Turks, as time passed by, overpowered and partly assimilated the local Finnish tribes, thus formed the nucleus of Siberian Tatar ethnicity out of which later separate groups of Tyumen-Tobol Tatars, the Tara Tatars, Baraba Tatars, Tomsk Tatars and Bukharlyk Tatars evolved. Although all the ethnic sources of the Siberian Tatar nation were originally nomadic, the permanent settlers of Siberia had to accommodate their traditional life-style to prevailing climatic and natural conditions and, as such, their way of life might well called semi-sedentary. Indeed, the climate north from the Kypchak steppes became increasingly dif®cult for simple nomad camping even in most warm tents of felt. The resident dwellers had to adjust to the circumstances and establish for themselves wooden housing, of which the hexagonal yurts of the Altay Turks with the hearth situated in the centre might probably serve as a most obvious example. Townships build in this manner never became towns in any real sense, although along the routes from Central Asia via the Southern Urals, such settlements were offering shelter for those fur merchants who would undertake the most demanding and dif®cult journeys in order to exploit the sable, ermine and squirrel furs in that Terra Incognita of the Islamic and Christian worlds alike. Indeed, it took much time before Siberia became known to European peoples as a main natural treasury on Earth, containing large reserves of timber, fresh water, mineral resources, gold, diamonds and, the major commodities of the much later centuries, oil and gas. However, despite all the fragmentation of the former Ulus Juchi and all the turmoils in Central Asia, Iran and Anatolia, the cultural and religious import to the north from the Nakshbandiya and other Su® sources of the south continued uninterrupted, although the only remaining geographic indication of the cultural interchange between Siberia and the Su® world is the name of the present day city of Chelyabinsk. Its predecessor, the Noghai-Bashkir settlement of Chelyaba on the border of the Siberian Khanate apparently derives its name from the Turkish title of chelebi, the linguistic origin of which is still in debate. One could wonder, how this term applied to men of the upper classes in Turkey between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 18th century, as a title primarily given to poets and men of letters, but also to princes was imported as far as to beyond the Urals, but then, is it not striking that Toktamish khan, during his stormy stately carrier, was able to found khanates as far 253

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geographically apart as in Crimea and Tyumen. Only in this period, let alone more peaceful ones, the amplitude of the military movements in the area provided for all kinds of people, and Islamic men of letters among them, ample opportunity to penetrate Siberia. But religious and educational zeal of the Su® preachers, strong as it might have been, was still secondary to the commercial enthusiasm of the merchant people, though very often, as was the case throughout the history of Islam, the trade of a Muslim merchant combined economic interest with the most eager proselytism. In this sense, the most interesting group of the Siberian Tatars may be the ethnographical group of the Bukharlyk. According to the excellent scholarly work of A. Bennigsen and S. E. Wimbush Muslims of the Soviet Empire, the Bukharlyk descend from the families of Central Asian fur merchants sustaining the continuity of trade with Siberia. In the course of time, they mixed with the indigenous population of the Siberian khanate, although presented a separately listed Tatar group of 11,659 individuals even in the 1926 Soviet census. These scholars talk of the Bukharlyk thus: A small ethnic group, Muslim (Sunni of the Hana® school) made up of the descendants of merchants and caravaneers originating from Turkestan . . . The Bukharlyk live in contact with the Tatars of Siberia, to whose Islamisation they have contributed, and with whom they are gradually mingling. They live principally near Tobolsk, Tyumen and Tara, and as isolated group of Bukharlyk are found close to Tomsk. The Bukharlyk speak the local Tatar dialects, but with the difference that they preserve in their own speech a large number of Persian terms.

As for the Kazan khahate comprising the lands once inhabited by the Volga and Kama Bulgars, its own trade in furs mostly followed the Volga river, although the same trade was, at least temporarily, severely obstructed by the political turmoil of the early 15th century. Again, the territory of Volga Bulgaria was so rich in resources including fur and honey, that the drive of its nobles towards Siberia was only of a political and not economic nature. Indeed, one century later, the ®rst European scholarly researcher of Russia, Sigismund Baron of Herberstein, writing about the Russian trade in furs, observes:

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Terra Incognita Fox skins, and especially black ones, which they usually make into caps, are valued very highly, for sometimes ten of them are sold for ®fteen gold pieces. Squirrel skins also are brought from different parts, but the greater number from the provinces of Siberia; but those of ®nest quality from Schvwaii not far from Kazan.

Even today, Kazan is a world famous centre of the fur industry, its tradition taking root in Volga Bulgar civilisation. The concentration of this industry in the hands of the Tatar merchants in the Urals and Siberia continued with the cultural uni®cation of the Tatar nation in later centuries, with the mighty in¯ux of the Volga Tatar people to those remote regions in the early 18th century. In the beginning of the 15th century though, any ties between the Volga-Urals region and Siberia were those of the different parts of the once mighty Ulus Juchi and no less powerful Golden Horde, with the sense of belonging to similar systems of government, but to somewhat different ethnicities sharing their roots only within the Kypchak mixture of Turkic peoples. Emphasis on the tribal allegiance was still very strong, especially in the Siberian khanate, which throughout the 15th century remained a heathen polity with only a slight touch of Islamic culture. Throughout its entire history, the southern part of the Siberian khanate presented a battle®eld of continuous struggle between the local Taibughid rulers and the Sheibanid khans who ruled the south of the area and the Central Kazakh Steppe from 1428 well into the 16th century. It did not mean, however, that the Kazan khanate did not try to establish their authority over the Siberian lands. One such warlord named Ibak, whose horde roamed the lands between the Volga and Yaiyk rivers, succeeded in capturing the stronghold of Tyumen from the Taibughids, but was in turn overthrown and killed by khan Mukhammad of the Taibughid dynasty who, although having been brought up in the Kazan khanate, re-established the ancestral authority over the khanate of Sibir. It was he who moved the capital of the Siberian khanate from the fortress of Tyumen to a new place on the Irtysh river in order to secure his seat from possible attacks of the Kazan khanate. This new township located about 16 miles from the later city of Tobolsk, was called Iskir, or Sibir, and housed a number of Siberian Taibughid khans for the next century, until Sheibanid Khan Kuchum captured it from Taibughids, thus 255

Terra Incognita

putting an end to the two hundred year old dynasty. The reign of Khan Kuchum is a most interesting one as he began the Islamisation of Siberia with all the vigour of an enthusiastic neophyte. Further, his claim to the Siberian throne was strongly supported by his royal lineage descending from Genghis Khan and Sheibani, the heir to all lands north from Transoxiania. The historian Y. Semyonov recounts: No less weighty was the fact that Kuchum's authority rested on a religious and cultural tradition. Kuchum was a Mohammedan, and it is to him that Islam is mainly indebted for the conversion of Siberian Tatars. He represented a religious mission, while his opponent, the Siberian sultan Ediger was no more than an empty-headed pagan. Even before Kuchum appeared on the Ob and Irtysh, the way had been prepared for him by Muslim propaganda

The Muslim name of Khan Mukhammad who restored the rule of the Taibughid dynasty over the Siberian khanate will not imply his faithfulness to Islam. Apparently, the need to secure the foundation for his rule among the mostly heathen population of the khanate was for him far greater, than any obligation to spread or, indeed, impose the Islamic culture upon a population still adhering to ancestral superstitions and shamanist rites. Although his son Kasym was brought up with some concept of Islam, his grandson Yadiger was already a staunch adherent of Shamanism. Even after Khan Kuchum had for several decades tried to convert the whole of the Siberian khanate into Islam, many Siberian Tatars of the time remained pagan until much later. Their superstitious attitudes are clearly seen from the following abstract depicting the reverence to the famous Cossack leader Ermak after his death: To the Tatars who had killed him, Irmak appeared to be more, than human; he had become a force against which struggle was unavailing. The Cossacks say that while the Tatars sent the ornamented breastplate to Sibir as evidence that Irmak, the unconquerable, had been slain, they buried the body by the river and hid the spot ± which became marked by night lights visible only to Tatar eyes ± so they might come back to it and take earth from it, to act as a charm against their enemies. So, as the Tatars

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Terra Incognita prayed to the spirit of a bear they had killed, they prayed to the spirit of Ermak to aid them, instead of harming them.

In the later History of Siberia its author, Semyon Remezov (1642± 1720), being loyal to the legendary tale of the Russian conquest of the Siberian khanate, also recounts the same story of the `dei®cation' of Ermak by the pagan Tatars, saying: They dei®ed him and buried him according to their rites on the Baishev cemetery under a curly pine-tree . . . And from Ermak's body and cloth proceeded miraculous powers offering remedy to the sick and protection against the evil to mothers and their babies, granting luck in warfare and hunting. Abyzes and Murzas, seeing that their religious law is broken and the miracle is happening, forbade all from the elderly to the tiny to pronounce the name of Ermak, so that he be forgotten and his grave be left in oblivion.

Remezov also writes that part of Ermak's armour was made an offering to a local idol by the Finnish Ostyaks, whereas the Muslim Abyzes, upon burying Ermak's body, sacri®ced on the spot thirty oxes and ten rams: the ceremony pointing to ancient Turkic burial rites. Although the History of Siberia many times mentions the existence in the Siberian khanate of the Abyzes and Akhuns, it also contains many references to shamans and idol-worshipping prevalent in Siberia at the time. Anyhow, the knowledge of Islam by Remezov was so embryonic that in describing Khan Kuchum he states: Kuchum was of Muslim faith, inasmuch as he worshipped idols and offered them sacri®ces in heathen way, and lived out of law, having a hundred wives and young maidens, as it is permissible to all Muslims to have as many wives as they wish.

The whole of Remezov's writing being an apology for the Orthodox Christian conquest of the `in®del lands', his attitude towards Islam as a version of the local pagan practices is perfectly understandable. It was further helped by the fact that the Siberian interpretation of Islam at the time was, indeed, rather super®cial and superstitious. Says Hadi Atlasi: 257

Terra Incognita Although Khan Kuchum put great efforts into spread of Islam, he did not succeed in making Muslims all the peoples subjugated to him. As the Muslim scholars and preachers could not reach the peoples living far away from Iskir, all of those remained pagans. Even some of the Tatar tribes living on the banks of the Irtysh did not embrace Islam because of their remoteness from the centre of the khanate. Thus, the Ayaly Tatars inhabiting the mouth of the Tura river remained heathen until much later times . . . The Nitsa Tatars were still pagan even in 1639. Some of the Tatars dwelling between Tobolsk and Demyan as well as the majority of the Tatars of the Tura remained pagan before becoming christened along with the local Ostyak tribes. The Baraba Tatars also worshipped idols for a very long time.

From this it is clear that the Islamisation of the former population of the Siberian khanate did not come to an end before the Siberian Tatars adopted the Kazan Tatar language and culture thus becoming one of the ethnic components of the larger Volga-Siberia Tatar nation. In the 16th century, therefore, we could speak only of smaller groups of Muslims residing mostly in the townships and caravan posts, whereas the majority of the population followed the Shamanist creed of their forefathers. The apparent dei®cation of Ermak by the Siberian Turks and Finns also point to this conclusion. There is however a popular observation which divides the attitude towards this unlikely hero by the semi-pagan and, much later, Muslim population of Siberia. It was noted that along the Irtysh river all dogs in the Tatar villages were nicknamed Ermak, whereas the dogs of the Russian settlements were, in turn, called Kuchum. This no doubt began in the 18th century, with the mighty in¯ux into Siberia of the persecuted Muslim population of the west of the region. The Islamisation of Siberia, or rather the Siberian Tatars, therefore did not ®nish until the late 19th century, and the only reason it happened at all was that the Volga-Urals Muslims played a most notable role in the colonisation of Siberia, comparable in its economic and cultural signi®cance to the role of the Russians themselves. There are two main explanations why Islam did not spread in Siberia as widely as in other parts of the region. Firstly, the Muslim 258

Terra Incognita

preachers coming from Central Asia and Kazan were small in number and did not venture far from the townships, so they could not reach any tribe living at a considerable distance from the capital. They also did not have the language to converse with the Finnish tribes of Ostyaks and Voguls, which created further dif®culties in converting the latter to Islam. There was, however, a second reason as to why the local Tatar tribes were not too happy to embrace a new faith, and that was compulsory circumcision foisted upon them by Khan Kuchum, a man of strong will and most heroic personal character, whose physical blindness, however, matched his blindness in the matters of faith. As we have seen, the Islamisation of Siberia became one of the main political tasks of Khan Kuchum. This task, however, proved to be much more dif®cult than any straightforward conquest of the Siberian khanate. The local people, subjugated yet reluctant to change their ways of worship, declined to embrace the new faith upon the Khan's decree, and in his eagerness to see his khanate worthy of the rest of Sheibanid domains, Khan Kuchum had to resort to compulsory measures. He also sought help from Central Asia, namely, from his father Mortaza who, according to Hadi Atlasi, `in order to speed up the conversion of Siberian peoples to Islam, sent in support of Kuchum's efforts a big army under the leadership of his elder son Akhmed Girey and, also, one Akhun (teacher of religion) and several Mullahs and Abyzes'. There is also a difference in scholarly opinion as to who in fact was the person from whom Kuchum sought help in the process of Islamisation of Siberia. The Tatar-Bashkir religious scholar and historian Riza Fahretdinov, in his work Asar, made use of a certain legend which is contained in one of the surviving Siberian Shadzharas, or family trees. This legend apparently originated from the narrative of a certain Sheik Shirbati of Urgenj in Khawarism and tells a story of how Kuchum appealed for help in the conversion of Siberia directly to Sheibanid Khan Abdullah of Bukhara and, through the of®ces of the latter, two well-read teachers of religion, namely, Yarym Saed and Shirbati, were sent to Isker, Kuchum's headquarters in Siberia. The legend goes on to say that after two years Yarym Saed died, whereas Sheik Shirbati returned to Khawarism. On the repeated appeal of Kuchum, the same Sheik Shirbati and Yarym Saed's brother Sheik Din'ali were again asked to go from Urgenj to Siberia. The two reluctantly agreed, but ®rst went 259

Terra Incognita

to Bukhara, where they complained to Khan Abdullah about the dangers of the way which laid ahead and petitioned the Khan to give them a military escort. Such an escort was given and it is here where the name of Kuchum's brother Ahmed Girey starts to feature in the obscure history of Islamisation of Siberia. Shirbati's legend, however, tells us not of a big army under the command of Ahmed Girey, but of only a hundred troops who served as military convoy to these ambassadors of religion. In writing the history of the Siberian khanate historians have to avail themselves of the Russian sources. Hadi Atlasi did not present an exception from this rule and, albeit very carefully, used the historical data presented in the works by S. Solovyov, I. Fisher and G. Miller. Another famous Russian historian, W. Barthold, argues that the above legend is not genuine as, `Khawarism was at this date an independent kingdom and not under the rule of the Khan of Bukhara'. Without going into undue detail about the actual authenticity of the document or, indeed, its contents, we can only suggest that the story it tells at least shows that, ®rstly, the religious teachers were indeed coming to Siberia from the Central Asia, and secondly, that those were hesitant and disinclined teachers scared by the dif®culties of the journey as well as of the cold climate and assumed barbarism of Siberia. The times of Islamic proselytism had indeed changed. Kuchum's religious resolve declined during the second half of the 16th century and is, to an extent, characteristic of that period of Islamic history when the religious zeal of missionaries was already shadowed by the force of power and pride of the Islamic rulers who thought that Islam can be more quickly introduced by monarch's decrees than by the gradual efforts of voluntary missionaries. In the region, this attitude became all the more obvious with quasi-religious superstitions which took the place of scholarly Islam in the minds of common people due to all the trials of its history. To that date, Kazan and even the Astrakhan khanate had already fallen into the hands of the Russians, and their fall was precipitated by the pride and ignorance of their rulers. On the state of morals in the area, Hadi Atlasi bitterly writes: In those days, because of the lack among the Tatars of such praiseworthy qualities as friendship, love and sense of kinship, they turned into predators thirsty for blood and soul of each

260

Terra Incognita other. Doomed to disappear, as ice is doomed to melt under the hot sun of summer days, they did not abstain from committing any crimes against humanity and Islam.

Religious fanaticism, which swept Central Asia after the death of Ulug Beg, was already turning the once enlightened vision of Islam into a dogmatic and outward profession of the faith, and the spiritual decline of the Muslim world was already becoming apparent, despite all the worldly achievements of the still mighty Sheibanid, Moghul and Ottoman Empires. As mentioned earlier, the rise and development of Su® thought was indicative of the overall moral decline and general public knowledge of Islam, when deeper insights into the faith had become a privilege of a restricted number of people. In such circumstances, as is clearly seen in today's Islamic world, outward appearances rather than inner awareness were becoming the only necessity of a Muslim to distinguish him or herself from the world of the in®del. Thus, Kuchum's attempts to introduce the faith to Siberian peoples, Turkic and Finnish alike, resulted in near failure because of his stubborn insistence on the rite of khitan, or circumcision, which, being of course a part of the faith, does not in itself constitute any substantial part of it. The Holy Quran does not refer to circumcision at all, and in the Hadith of the Prophet, for example in the Sahih Bukhari, only a small chapter is dedicated to the question of circumcision. This insistence on circumcision by Khan Kuchum is a strange occurrence which, as far as we know, hitherto played no distinctive role in the processes of conversion in the area. Presumably, in this process, the rite was performed on boys and teenagers of the converted families; also, a person willing to be circumcised in older age had the possibility to do so. But the act of forcible circumcision of a group, tribe or a nation as an essential part of conversion was not known before Kuchum's attempt to quickly Islamicise Siberia during his own reign. Indeed, despite the existence of many painful rites of initiation in shamanist societies, the idea of circumcision as such could have frightened away a great majority of the possible converts. Even in the very beginning of Islam in these lands, it is dif®cult to conceive that Bulgar Khan Almush could have ordered en masse circumcision of the male ± and female, as Sha®'i understanding of the law demanded ± population of Volga Bulgaria immediately after accepting Islam on 261

Terra Incognita

behalf of his nation: Ibn Fadlan, so meticulously recording all the problems linked with matters of faith, would have at least mentioned this. Besides, there is one more consideration in regard of the actual performance of the rite. Who could have been executing the circumcision if not the appointed teachers of faith or representatives of the Central Asian merchant communities trading with Volga Bulgaria? This group were unlikely to put their trade in jeopardy by presenting themselves as people in¯icting pain on others. In the course of time, the rite became obligatory, but again for the young boys and those coming of age and not for mature people, which is the prevalent understanding of the custom in the region even today. Hana® Islam, at least theologically, does not put much emphasis on circumcision as a pre-requisite for becoming a Muslim. Indeed, in the later centuries, with popular Islam fully establishing itself in the area, the attitude to circumcision had changed and became more strict, but more in regard to hereditary Muslims rather than recent converts to the faith. As S. Hurgronje rightfully observes: To the uneducated mass of Muslims as well as to the great mass of non-Muslims, both of whom pay the greatest attention to formalities, abstention from pork together with circumcision, have even become to a certain extent the criterium of Islam. The exaggerated estimation of the two principles ®nds no support in the law, for here they are on the same level with numerous other precepts, to which the mass attaches less importance.

In time, however, Islam established itself in Siberia not through the concentrated efforts of the appointed missionaries and the ruler of the time but rather through decades of peaceful persuasion by Central Asian traders and Kazan-Volga Muslims who came into Siberia in larger numbers after the fall of the semi-heathen, semiIslamic Siberian khanate. Hadi Atlasi, who so bitterly described the state of morals in the 16th century, further refers to the failure of Kuchum in converting the population of Siberian khanate in the following words: According to the Russian historical sources, Khan Kuchum forced and compelled Siberian pagans to undergo circumcision. Those who refused to be circumcised were put to death, by the Khan's

262

Terra Incognita decree. If, at ®rst, it seems a dif®cult truth to accept, but it is more than possible that, in the light of their ignorance of the Islamic wisdom and philosophy and in attaching too much importance to the outward appearances and rites, the scholars of the later times paid excessive attention to circumcision and could have thus prompted the said decrees of Kuchum. The extreme insistence, by the Islamic scholars, on the rite of circumcision was bringing damage to the Muslim world not only then, but even much earlier. In 986 AD, the Bulgar scholars visited Prince Vladimir (of Kiev) with the view to convert him to Islam, as, in those days, the Russians were still heathen. Upon being asked by Vladimir about the basic tenets of their faith, the scholars replied: `We believe in one God. Mukhammad had ordered us to be circumcised and prohibited us from eating pork and drinking wine'. Vladimir, who till then was very excited by the visions of virgins of Paradise, disliked Islam upon hearing of circumcision. The Bulgar scholars, by failing politically and by falling short of conveying the true meaning of Islamic philosophy, thus deprived one of the greatest nations on earth of the light of Islam. Had they present Islam in more easy terms and converted Vladimir, the whole of Russia would have de®nitely had accepted Islam.

Whatever the reason of forcible circumcision of the Siberian shamanists, it resulted in failure. For Kuchum, it was both a religious and political failure, because his possible allies vis-a-vis the coming Russians turned against him, thus leaving this Tsar of Siberia to rely only upon his own troops and the hesitant Noghai clans of the north of the Kypchak steppe. Only his personal uncompromising character and his military wisdom allowed him to hold on for so long against the Russian invasion. However, the Siberian khanate at the time of its fall could only have been named an Islamic polity with many reservations and, indeed, the importance of the adherence of the local peoples to Islam was later exaggerated by the Russian popular legends about the conquest of Siberia by the Russian Orthodox warriors. Russian Orthodoxy vis-a-vis Islam became, in the 16th century, a major ideological weapon for the rapidly expanding Russia and served as a justi®cation for all conquests, otherwise undertaken for economic and geopolitical reasons. For instance, S. Remezov narrates the vision of the Christian City of God accompanied by the church bells ringing, 263

Terra Incognita

which started to reveal itself in the skies above the present-day city of Tobolsk annually from 1552 until the ®rst conquests of Siberia by Ermak and his Cossacks. 1552 is, by coincidence, the year of the fall of the Kazan khanate, which marked the beginning of the unstoppable expansion of Orthodox Russia into the region. The conquest of Siberia was only started by the daring expeditions of Ermak and ®nanced by the merchant family of Stroganovs who were, from their factories on the western side of the Urals slopes, for quite some time looking at Siberian riches with envious eyes. Furthermore, during the conquest of Siberia a number of christened Tatars from the upper reaches of the Kama river were also instrumental in taking over the Siberian khanate for the Russians. Whatever the legend says about Orthodox Christianity being the driving force behind the military achievements of Ermak, the main reason for his successes was the use of ®re-arms unknown to the Tatar and Finnish dwellers of Siberia. N. Karamzin naming Ermak `the Russian Pisarro no less terrible for the savages than the Spanish one', further says: The conquest of Siberia in many ways is similar to the conquest of Mexico and Peru: in the same fashion, a handful of men, shooting ®re, won over thousands armed with arrows and spears, for the northern Mongols and Tatars could not make use of the invention of gun-powder and, at the end of the 16th century, struggled solely with weapons of the time of Genghis Khan.

Khan Kuchum nevertheless successfully fought against the Russians until the very end of the 16th century and never surrendered. His death is clouded in mystery: it is assumed that he was killed by the revengeful Noghai Tatars of the Ishim steppe in the winter of 1558. Semyonlov writes: Nevertheless, the magic of Kuchim's name lived for a long time in Siberia. In the course of the seventeenth century several rebellions made it their rallying cry. Even as a dead man, Kuchum robbed Moscow of its sleep for a whole century.

The Russians used the Muslims of Volga and Urals in order to prepare the ®nal assault on the lands of Khan Kuchum. For this 264

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purpose, the Muslims of the already conquered and mainly subjugated regions were brought to Siberia and housed in a newly established township which was located between Tobolsk and the head-quarters of Kuchum along the Irtysh river. These Muslims, of infantry and cavalry alike, were summoned from Ufa, Kazan, Zainsk, Laishev, Tetyushi and other regions. Hadi Atlasi writes that, with the exception of Christians, among whom were captive Poles and Lithuanians, the number of people sent to Siberia for the purpose of building the fortress of Tara there was 1,541, of which 1,030 men were of Kazan Tatar and Bashkir origin. Upon completing the essential construction work, many of these Muslims were sent back from where they were summoned, but a number of them remained in Siberia. In the course of the next century the route across the Urals from the Volga region to Siberia became common for traders, craftsmen and displaced farmers alike, and this migration was an essential part of the formation of the Siberian Tatar nation which, despite its closeness to the Volga Tatars in language and faith, maintained its distinctive features as well as its tribal and clan structure well into the 20th century. In fact, the Siberian Tatars ®nally became an integral part of the one Tatar nation in the 20th century after a new wave of migration of the Kazan and Orenburg Muslims to Siberia during the Russian Civil War of 1918±1920. The Siberian Muslims, although not very numerous in number, were instrumental in sustaining the old trade routes between Siberia, Central Asia and China. As such, they proved to be irreplaceable for the Russians whose efforts in maintaining this trade were much less successful. It is because of the unity of faith and similarities in culture with their commercial counterparts that Siberian Muslims succeeded in holding most of the trade with the Islamic world in the south and, with this trade, the in-¯ow of Islamic traditions not only did not stop with the Russian conquest, but became even more systematic and consistent. Today there is no big city in Siberia which does not have a mosque and Muslims are found everywhere from the Urals to the Kamchatka peninsula. In the author's travels, he met Tatars and Bashkirs in the most remote ®shing villages of the Ob delta and in the reindeer tundra of Chukotka. Of Islamic teachings however, they knew very little. If the Astrakhan Khanate and even the Noghai Horde could at least avail of the educational capacity of the Crimean Khanate, the Siberian polity was too far removed from even this remote 265

Terra Incognita

possibility. Strictly speaking, Islam had eventually come to Siberia as a culture only in the 19th century. Of course, Islam then built on already established grounds, but, again, mostly in the urban areas. It was only then that local Muslims eventually realised that continual and consistent schooling is no less, and sometimes much more, important, than building mosques and offering prayers.

266

Winter 1583±1800s

PART

4

`This side of the truth, You may not see, my son.' Dylan Thomas, `This Side of the Truth'

The Momentum Lost

14

Strange as it may seem, the Kazan Khanate has fallen due to, simultaneously, lack of real totalitarianism and disproportionate and inadequate representation of its nascent democracy. Structurally the political pyramid of the Kazan Khanate consisted of the Khan on the top, then Divan, or the state council of Emirs and Karachis (lit. supervisors), and Kurultai, or occasional gathering of social classes, which, in the Russian sources, was referred to as `the entire land of Kazan'. The Kurultai was a party to some most fateful decisions. Those included deposition of khans (1530, 1535, 1541, 1551), elevation to the throne (1496, 1516, 1518, 1519, 1531, 1535, 1546, 1551) and conclusion of treaties with the foreign states, especially when these treaties concerned the dynastic questions of the Khanate (1516, 1519, 1524, 1530, 1531, 1546, 1551). For instance, in July 1551 among the higher-class representatives of the Kurultai, ordinary soldiers, tax collectors and even foreign residents of Kazan were also listed. Anyhow, except for several such cases, when the political moment demanded the expression of the will of wider classes of the Khanate, the Kurultai traditionally gathered only three categories of the population, namely, the Muslim clergy, the army and the landlords. Says M. Khudyakov: The Kurultai . . . was not a representative gathering, but such where all three major groups were present in their totality. The other social groups were not represented at the Kurultai, therefore, naming it a popular gathering would not be corresponding to reality.

269

The Momentum Lost

The enquiring reader will know that the traditional prosperity of Volga Bulgaria was based on three major branches of its economy ± agriculture, crafts and commercial trade, with the country's merchants playing a highly in¯uential role in the affairs of state. Even Islam itself was brought onto the banks of the Volga and the Kama mainly because of the needs and through the efforts of the merchant classes. In spite of the fact that the well-being of the Kazan Khanate was also largely dependant on the foreign trade along the Volga river, the merchant classes had no say in state affairs. This sad reality represented a remnant of the Golden Horde arrogant attitude to government, where the khan and military nobility were so powerful as to rule solely according to their own vision of things. They of course provided for and did not restrict trading activities, but, as a rule, did not turn to merchant classes for any support or, indeed, counsel in taking state decisions. The conservative governmental structure of the Kazan Khanate long outlived its purpose, because its rulers never realised that times had changed, and the traditional rule of the Golden Horde did not correspond to the new economical and geo-political realities of the time. The Kazan khans lacked foresight, and constant disagreement between the three Khanates of the area made it impossible to create any sort of military and political union with a view to the threat from the north. For any Kazan Tatar author, it is too easy to give in to lamentations about the irrecoverable loss of a great civilization, when one only thinks of the fate of the Kazan Khanate after its fall to the hands of Moscow. Indeed, in the wake of this conquest the country had lost not only its independence and culture, but also about 40 per cent of its entire population. Many uprisings of Muslims and other indigenous peoples of the area could not attain its liberation under any slogan, be it political, ethnic or religious. It is especially stupefying that, on the part of the Muslims, there was a clear case of Jihad, because the declared goal of Moscow comprised not just territorial expansion, but also Christianisation of the entire Kazan Khanate. Seemingly, Islam on the banks of the Volga and the Kama was strong and established enough to defend itself from any Crusade. For the Russians, the quest for the Muslim lands was indeed a Crusade of sorts uniting the interests of the Russian State, Russian Church and common people who were looking forward to a more prosperous life on the fertile lands freed from `the in®del'. 270

The Momentum Lost

But why then did the Muslim Jihad never materialize in response as a strong, united and sustained effort? The present-day Kazan Tatar nationalism, especially its relatively small radical wing, always built its political platform on the claim that it was `the evil of the Russian imperialist expansion' that destroyed sovereign statehood and, along with it, the sublime Islamic civilization of the Kazan Khanate. Yet, as a rule, the strongest proponents of this idea are never keen to study the weaknesses of this civilization itself. Indeed, in laying all the blame on the Russian side of a centuries-long economic and political rivalry it is all too easy to overlook the main reasons as to why Islam, in what in the sixteenth century had already become Russia, could not withstand the Orthodox Christian expansion? Why has it suffered a crushing defeat despite all its strengths and all its bitter experience? To answer this question, we have to look not only at the roots of a particular state failure, but also try to understand the main religious and, consequently, ideologies which were prevalent at the time in the world of Christianity and the world of Islam alike. The fall of Kazan, which signi®ed a turning point in the whole of the history of Eurasia and pushed open the gate for Russia's further expansion to the east and south of Moscow, cannot, in all fairness, be viewed as purely a consequence of the growth of the Russian might. Even less can it be ascribed to particular historical ®gures of the sixteenth century, such as the scheming Russian sovereign, Ivan the Terrible, who died in 1584, or the treacherous Tatar, Khan Shah Ali, who helped the latter to conquer Kazan. For all their weight, they were still no more than the puppets of history. The forces which were already at work on the historical scenes of Europe and Asia alike were much bigger than any historical personality, and were both economic and ideological, i.e. religious in nature. Kazan was indeed a major link in the economic and political chain that, somewhat loosely, connected all Muslim countries east of Europe. Its importance in the overall picture of Muslim geo-politics and economies was so large that, for decades after the Russian conquest, its return into the fold of Islam ®gured as a major demand on the part of the greatest and mightiest Muslim adversaries of Russia, Turkey and Crimea. Wars erupted, and continued, intermittently, for over 40 years. In 1572, in his wartime correspondence with the Russian Czar, the ruler of the Crimean Khanate and vassal of Ottoman Turkey, Khan Devlet Girey, clearly stated that he 271

The Momentum Lost

`burned and laid waste Russia only because of Kazan and Astrakhan'. The 1572 war, despite the fact that Moscow itself was all but burnt down by the Crimean troops of Devlet Girey, resulted in peace negotiations after the defeat of the Crimean troops on the Lopasnya river some 50 miles from Moscow. Devlet Girey, himself tired of incessant warfare, even tried to explain his stance in a letter to Ivan the Terrible saying: For how long shall we wage war because of Kazan and Astrakhan? Give them back, and we will remain friends for good. By doing so, you will save us from sin, as, according to our scriptures, we cannot leave Muslim states in the hands of the in®dels.

Still, not only were these demands not met, but, despite everything, Moscow proceeded to take over more and more of the lands which the world of Islam had always regarded as its own. In spite of nonstop inter-state warfare and all the local rebellions of the second half of the sixteenth century, Kazan remained a part of Russia and, as such, a major factor in the on-going argument between Islam and Christianity in the area of our study. One may wonder why what was the then mightiest state in the Muslim world, Turkey, which was still relishing the conquest of Constantinople, could not lead a Jihad and succeed in freeing the Kazan Khanate from the hands of the in®dels? One argument is that the so-called Muslim world did nothing in rescuing Al-Andalus (Spain) at approximately the same time. But then, Arab Spain was far away, whereas in the case of Kazan the Muslims of the area could be still viewed as ethnic cousins of Ottoman Turks. The question of ethnic unity, however, proved at the time to be even less relevant, than that of Islamic unity. In modern times, bitter proponents of the Kazan Tatar nationalist course would argue that, on the part of Turkey, any venture to free Muslim lands from the Russian occupation needed only persistent resolve. Turkey at the time was vastly stronger than Moscow engaged in continuous Lithuanian wars in the West. Kazan, as a major Muslim outpost in the north, could well have served the geo-political interests of Turkey up to today, if only the Ottoman Sultans, like many lesser Muslims rulers, had had more foresight and less of the arrogant pride which blinded them and eventually served in their own destruction. But again, there was much more to the story, than the arrogance of the Muslim rulers of the day. 272

The Momentum Lost

One thinks of two major reasons for the ®nal destruction of the Kazan Khanate, and the principal reason seems to be the ultimate fragmentation of the world of Islam, which took place in the sixteenth century. In that century, with the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Empire, it lost all semblance of the once profound spiritual unity, which was, however feebly, still present with the notion of continuity of the of®ce of Caliphate in Islam. It is true that the days of glory of this institution were long gone, and that are the tenth century the Baghdadi Caliphs never played such an all-encompassing role as they had in the times of the early Muslim Renaissance. The major split occurred with establishment of the rival Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt in 909 and Umayyad Caliphate in Spain in 929. By 1171, when Saladin abolished the of®ce of Shiite Caliph of Egypt, up to the times of the Mongol onslaught the Muslim world remained with two Caliphs, one in Baghdad and one in Granada. The Mongol onslaught on Baghdad brought about the death of the last Caliph al-Mustasim who left no heir, whereas two remaining members of the Abbasid family ¯ed to Mamluk Egypt, where, after that, there existed at least a theoretical of®ce of the Caliph of the day. But, in 1517, the last remaining Abbasid Caliph, Mutawakkil, was transported to Constantinople by victorious Ottoman troops, after which the Ottoman Sultan ®nally, if rather controversially, assumed the title of Caliph for himself and his heirs. Turkish history has it that Mutawwakil had made a formal transfer of his of®ce to Sultan Selim, but this is not prove by any contemporary documents. Moreover, after his return to Egypt Mutawwakil continued to hold the of®ce of Caliph until his demise in 1543. After the sixteenth century, the spiritual of®ce of Caliph became a welcome addition to the worldly power of the Ottoman and Moghul rulers, but, at the same time, irrevocably lost it universal appeal. The sacred and thus revered unity of the Muslim world was no more, and, for all the lip service paid by the Muslim brotherhood, relations between various Muslim states became based on national interest and the sel®sh aspirations of their respective rulers. In such situation, the fate of the Kazan Khanate was doomed, as there was no unifying ideology to sustain any real quest for its liberation. Today, the slogan of Jihad is routinely used by various militant groups in Islam to justify of almost any armed struggle with purely political objectives. It is all but forgotten that Jihad as an armed defence of religious values is valid only if proclaimed by the Imam of 273

The Momentum Lost

the day. Strictly speaking, in the absence of the universally acknowledged Caliphate, the idea of Jihad also could not be sustained. There is a vital bond between the Caliphate and Jihad in Islam, which cannot be replaced by anything else. For all this worldly renown which the title of Caliph brought to the Ottoman Sultan, he did not see the conquest of Kazan as a religious, as well as a political, matter. Moreover, the religious establishment of the Kazan Khanate historically gravitated to Central Asia much more, than to the Near and Middle East. As we shall see further, in the lack of universal unity, no religious leader in the Kazan Khanate proved able to gather Muslims in the cause of Jihad either. One may say that the world of Christianity, despite the success of the Reconquista, also suffered ideological turmoil. It ®rst surfaced with any seriousness at the 1439 Council of Florence, which ®nally divided Eastern and Western Christianity and, consequently, laid grounds for the claims of the superiority of the Russian Orthodoxy over its Greek predecessor and eventually brought about the famous Russian Split (raskol) in the seventeenth century. Isidor, the ethnically Greek Patriarch of Moscow, after signing to the Union of Florence immediately lost his of®ce to the ethnically Russian Patriarch. The Russian Orthodoxy thus laid its continuing claim to the ultimate purity of the Orthodox Christian faith, which claim, in the eyes of its proponents, was only substantiated by the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Turks in 1453. The Western Church was also facing a major split. In 1517, the year, in which the title of Caliph controversially passed over to the Ottoman Sultan, Martin Luther produced his Ninety-Five Theses, with which he entered into open argument with the Roman Catholic Church and thus started the Protestant Movement in Western Christendom. In 1536, John Calvin published the ®rst edition of his epochal Institutes of the Christian Religion, which made him the head ®gure of Protestantism. Thus, the sixteenth century saw a real upheaval in the world of Christianity. But if the events in the world of Islam only made this great religion lose momentum, the Reformist movement in the West only strengthened Christian ideology. If we ask why, we may come to the second and no less profound reason for the unfortunate fall of one of the greatest Muslim civilizations on the territory of the Russian Federation. For all what was happening, the major difference between the world of Islam and that of Christianity in the sixteenth century can 274

The Momentum Lost

be apparently seen in the role of common people and their in¯uence on the state affairs. In the West, the Reformation was, in its essence, an ideological quest of the nascent middle classes for recognition of their civil rights by the Church and feudal aristocracy. This quest eventually resulted in changes in the state system itself in the world of Christianity. At the same time in the world of Islam, to which the Kazan Khanate once belonged, the state structure was becoming increasingly outdated. Despite all great military successes and outward brilliance of the Ottoman and Moghul Empires, their state structure remained essentially unchanged over the centuries of their existence. The rulers of those Empires, as well as many lesser rulers of Muslim states of the day, upon their many conquests always inherited Islamic urban societies engaged in agriculture, trade and manufacturing, but, in essence, never understood the inner workings and thus the strengths of those societies. These rulers were powerful warriors and the state structure they created was that of a hierarchy of military nobility. They looked upon their subjects as a mere source of taxes, never totally understanding that the might of economic wealth is in no way inferior to the might of a victorious army. The most they could do was to ensure peace in their domains while not interfering in the economic affairs of the common people. This happened at the height of the Golden Horde civilisation when, despite all their dislike of the urban life, the khans never interfered in the workings of the urban societies, which resulted in an blossoming of manufacturing and trading towns along the Volga river. As we have seen earlier, by the beginning of the sixteenth century this urban civilisation had already been destroyed by the incessant feuding of various nomad rulers who came to power on the ruins of the Golden Horde. These nomad rulers very seldom understood the importance of urban society and assured their might mostly by maintaining their armies. An army was a great burden on the common people if it only stayed home and did not provide for itself in war time. Thus, the common people always came last in the eyes of the ruling classes, and any war outside their own territory was, in fact, a relief for the general population, which then did not have to feed an idle army. Depending on the geographical location and ethnic makeup of various Muslim states in the area, many feuds were inevitable, and when they did, they destroyed what was left of urban societies along the Volga River. Only Kazan Khanate was able to maintain its urban nature, but at a price. 275

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In 1518 the rule of Mukhammad Amin ended without leaving a male heir, thus ending the dynasty of the urban Kazan Khans. The throne of the Kazan Khanate fell prey to the competition of various semi-nomadic rulers who did not have any historical links to the general population and did not share any of its lasting economic and cultural interests. In vying for the Kazan throne, the Crimean, Noghai and Kasimov dynasties relied upon their military might and their respective allegiance to Russia and Turkey. The common people of the Khanate, whether merchants, traders, manufacturers of goods or hard-working peasants never had any say in the political affairs of the country. The inherent idea, however limited, of an Islamic democracy, which brought about the greatest achievements of the ancient Volga Bulgaria civilization, had all but died away on the banks of the Volga and Kama Rivers by the beginning of the ®fteenth century. But then, in the military drive by the Turks West and South of the Caspian Sea the democratic lessons of the earlier Islamic civilizations were soon forgotten. More, than four centuries had passed since the great scholarly ®gure, Imam Ghazali, said: A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by a man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences, seeing that there is nothing in these sciences opposed to the truth of religion.

However, in the ®fteenth century, more than 100 years had already passed since another great Islamic scholar, Ibn Haldun, ®nally refuted natural sciences as being redundant for a Muslim. Paradoxically, it was the authority of such titans of Islamic thought as Ibn Haldun and Ibn Taimiyya that became instrumental in closing the door of critical research in Islam on the very threshold of the European Renaissance. As the Muslim scientist and the winner of the Nobel Prize in theoretical physics Professor Abdus Salam bitterly remarked, the decline of the world of Islam took root with active discouragement of any innovation (taklid): The temper of the age had turned away from creative science, either to Su®sm with its other worldliness or to a rigid orthodoxy with a lack of tolerance (taklid) for innovation (ijtihad), in all ®elds of learning ± including the sciences.

276

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Stagnation of creative thought thus ruled almost supreme in the countries of old and settled Islamic civilisations. Likewise, any seminomad Islamic state created in the area of our research in the ®fteenth century was living to sustain itself in a status quo once achieved by its ruler ± ever ready to engage in further military conquests, but caring little for the economic development of the country. This state of events was especially noticeable when territories like that of the former Volga Bulgaria came under the sway of the nomad warrior kings. Such a discrepancy between the needs of an established urban society and requirements of a military nobility allied with the clergy caused, over the centuries, not only cultural, but also an economic recession of the producer classes in the world of Islam. This recession, in turn, had a profound effect on the Islamic ideology of the day. This also became inert and idle, serving for the most part the interests of the clergy and ruling classes alone. The momentum, which could have been provided by the joint interest of Muslim producers, never materialised, and Muslim proselytism, which always went hand-in-hand with economic expansion, also suffered crucial setbacks. If we now return to the question of the fall of Kazan, we will be surprised to see that Islam in the area gained many more followers not before, but directly after this fall; and, as we will try to show, it happened only because the inner forces of Islam became free of the state dictate and the dictate of the of®cial clergy. It is already known that the spread of Islam in Russia throughout its 1,000-years history owes much to the religious, missionary, cultural and educational activities of the Kazan Tatars and their ancestors, the Volga Bulgars. Much less, however, might be said in this respect of the of®cial Muslim Ulama who, like their worldly counterparts in the state structure, also tried to preserve the status quo in matters of religion. Representatives of the religious establishment of the Kazan Khanate included, as we know, Seyids (the progeny of the Holy Prophet), Sheiks, Mullahs, Imams of the mosques, Dervishes, Hajis, Kha®zes and Danishmends (religious teachers). All of them had the right to participate in the sittings of Kurultai, but could it be said that the Ulama indeed served as deputies of the common trading people? The entrepreneur classes ± Kazan traders and manufacturers were not represented in the high circles of power, and, as M. Khudyakov states, `The outdated system of government did not agree with the character of population, 277

The Momentum Lost

prevented public development and impeded the use of all the forces of the country for the bene®t of state.' All diplomatic efforts by the Kazan Ulama always served the interests of the pro-Russian or pro-Crimean party in power, and popular welfare of the country apparently came second in their vision as well. The supreme heads of the of®cial religious leadership, however, played a vital role in the affairs of the state. In his book, the Russian historian M. Khudyakov writes: In the Russian sources, several names of the heads of the clergy are recorded: Burash (1491±1507), Shah-Hussein (1512±1516), Beyurgan (1546), Mansur (1546) and his son Kol Sharif (1552). The Head of the Clergy was deemed the second person in the Khanate after the Khan himself and, during the times of troubles he, due to his high standing, would act as a head of the provisional government. The above-listed heads of the clergy, except for the last one ± the son of Mansur, formally bore the of®ce of the Heads of State, and Burash and Shah-Hussein, besides, took active part in the stately activities, in the capacity of ambassadors undertaking trips abroad, to Moscow. These diplomatic missions demanded from them outstanding education, deep intelligence and vast experience.

With the lack of religious writings, which perished in ¯ames along with other original documents of Kazan Tatar historiography, it is dif®cult to say anything about the way of Islamic thinking prevalent in the Kazan Khanate near its fall. We know precious little about its leading religious personalities. The ®gure of Kol Sharif who gave his name to the medieval Dzhami Mosque of Kazan, is known more thanks to his position as diplomatic negotiator re¯ected in the Russian chronicles. His father, Seyid Mansur, was also a prominent religious ®gure who in 1546 stood up against the unjust rule of the Moscow proteÂge Shah Ali. Seyids, counted among the progeny of the Holy Prophet Mukhammad and always occupied leading positions in the religious and worldly hierarchy of the Kazan Khanate. Thus, after his father's death, Kol Sharif became the head of the local Muslims in his stead. He was quite a knowledgeable and diplomatically skilled person, although all his efforts to avert the fall of Kazan proved futile at the end. Kol Sharif himself is said to have perished during the battle for Kazan, when the Moscow troops 278

The Momentum Lost

entered the city and a handful of defenders resisted them on the territory of the Kol Sharif Mosque. The resistance of the defenders of the Kazan Kremlin, heroic though it was, resulted in near total demolition of all they stood for. Whatever little was saved, was preserved by the private Kazan Tatar people in the form of Kol Sharif's poetic legacy. If his religious writings are gone for good, several poems of his survived and were published only recently, in 1997, in Kazan. The small booklet contains eight ghazals and one qyissa ± all that remains of his literary works. This poetic legacy may not be especially great or artful; it is, rather, a peculiar surviving document of the time. Considering all available data, we may well be led to believe that underlying philosophy of his work still re¯ects the spirituality and moral quest of his fellow contemporaries. Moreover, it re¯ects the inner core of his Islamic thinking: its tragic fatalism. Oh my soul, do not give up to the world, of this world you saw enough; This world compels people to drink the wine of death. Fancy not, that you will remain in this world for good, When there is a ®re, this world only kindles it ever more. This is the world, which separates a son from his father, a daughter from her mother; On every threshold it forces us to weep and complain of our destiny. None of us knows his beginning; none will know his end, There is no beginning and no end; this world gives only secured loans. Kol Sharif, your father and mother were so much older, than you are; This world will take all from you, if you are to befriend it.

Fatalism may appear beautiful in poetry, but taken as a state ideology it can only lead to a disaster. This fatalism, enforced by stagnant religious philosophy, was apparently rife in the thinking of other members of the of®cial religious establishment in the Kazan Khanate. Literal understanding of takdir, or predestiny, could not create any drive for development, but was very useful in preserving the established order of things, which already presented a huge burden on the working population terri®ed by inner feuds and the 279

The Momentum Lost

imminent onslaught of the enemy of different faith. Anyhow, the very same fatalism made the Ulama of Kazan staunch warriors when required. In his anti-Islamic book, Z. Ishmukhametov, trying to prove that `the Muslim clergy sought to kindle the animosity towards the adherents of different creed ± the Russians', interpreted the ®nal bravery of the clergymen of Kazan in the light of prevailing atheist ideology the Soviet times, `Even during the capture of Kazan, as the historian of Kazan M. Rybushkin states, the Tatar mullahs and the head of the clergy, Kol Sharif, defended the Khan's palace with weapons in their hands and all were killed.' (Z. Ishmukhametov, NAME, p. 29) There is, however, another interpretation of the events, and, this time, from an eyewitness and participant of the capture of Kazan, Prince Andrei Kurbsky. This courageous warrior, proli®c writer and the father of all Russian political dissidents left us with invaluable authentic information of the events of the autumn 1552. Writing about the courage of the defenders of Kazan, he also says: And when we have driven them towards the mosques, which stand by the Tsar's court, from there, came onto us their Abyzes and Seyids, and Mullahs with their chief bishop ± who in their language is called Great Ansar or Emir ± by the name of Kol Sharif Mullah, and they fought with us so unyieldingly as to perish all to the last man.

There is no ground to question personal dedication or patriotic heroism on the part of the of®cial Kazan Tatar clergy, even if its role in developing the fatalistic state ideology of the country is somewhat questionable. However, at the same time the religious life of the Kazan Khanate was deeply in¯uenced by the teachings of Su®sm, especially those originating in the legacy of Hoja Ahmed Yassavi and his successors who developed the Nakshbandiya philosophy. It was Su® Nakshbandiya thought which, for all its fatalism, served as a driving force in the progress of society and its literature. Later, this parallel Islam (as put by A. Bennigsen) became the mainstream of the Islamic development of the area already under Russian Orthodox sway. The poetic legacy of one of the greatest poets of the Muslim world, Mukhammedyar of Kazan, is characterised by those Su® 280

The Momentum Lost

in¯uences. In his great poems we see him complaining about the present state of affairs in his native country. It is easy to imagine that this sad state of affairs was also very much dependent on the hereditary nature of the high and medium religious of®ces, when righteousness and education were not predominant in the process of choosing religious leaders. Not only remote offspring of the Prophet, but also sons of sheiks and mullahs played a role in the state establishment and participated in the sittings of Kurultai, whereas much greater personalities like Mukhammedyar were reduced to some lowly positions. Considering this, and further developments in Russian Islamic history, it is not surprising that the common attitude towards mullahs as bearers of religious of®ce was not one of immediate approval of their deeds and opinions. As a matter of fact, after the fall of Kazan and subsequent persecution of Muslims in the area, the of®cial Ulama disappeared without leaving any lasting spiritual legacy behind them. Whether they were all killed in the battle for Kazan, or succeeded in emigrating, in the seventeenth century and subsequently we hear nothing of the hereditary clergy of the Kazan Khanate times. None of them led the Jihad against those who deliberately destroyed all Islamic heritage of the area. Among the leaders of popular uprisings, we never see any religious ®gure uniting popular insurgency in the name of Islam. Any struggle for the national liberation of the Kazan Khanate was thus as fragmented and fatalistic as Islam itself. On the Russian side of this tragedy, however, things were different. For all the cruelty and moral decline of the age of Ivan the Terrible, Russian Orthodox religious thought and ensuing state ideology were far from stagnant or fatalistic. The Russian Orthodox Church, bearing the torch of True Orthodoxy was, in fact, creating the very idea of a Russian statehood. The genesis of this ideology, however, was very controversial and remained as such until the ®nal split of the Russian Orthodox Church in the second half of the seventeenth century. Interestingly, theological arguments within Russian Orthodoxy itself never in¯uenced the ardent task that church and state set for themselves in the conquered Islamic lands: complete Christianisation of the subdued Muslim population. Russian Orthodoxy as a state religion was developing in the sixteenth century in constant argument with any innovation of the ancient Byzantine creed. On the other hand, it had to ®ght off new 281

The Momentum Lost

tendencies coming from the West, to which Russia was subjected after the time of Ivan the Third. It was he who, by marrying So®a of the Paleologus dynasty, opened Russia to many Greek eÂmigreÂs coming from Italy in the escort of the royal bride and carrying with them not only old Byzantine knowledge, but also the atmosphere of the Italian Renaissance. For the Russian traditionalists of the time, their impact on the Russian life seemed highly disturbing. By denying the East±West union of the Florentine Council, the Russian Church sought to secure its unique position in the world of Orthodoxy as the only remaining guardian of the `true Greek faith'. At the same time it resisted any alteration to its established traditions, even if these alterations came from the Greeks themselves. In the heated theological arguments between the Byzantine newcomer Maxim the Greek and his Russian counterparts at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Russians accused Maxim along with other Greeks, of disturbing the order of things in the country. Such disturbance, in their view, was re¯ected in all aspects of home and foreign state policies, including the growing tendency of the Russian sovereigns to rely more on the lower echelons of the Russian aristocracy. One of the Russian church writers, Bersen', disputed with Maxim the Greek saying, `Only when the Greeks came here, did the turmoil in our land start; before that, the Russian land enjoyed peace and tranquillity.' Over the previous centuries, many mistakes and misconceptions crept into the Russian understanding of the Byzantine ritual and the Russian translation of the holy books. The true signi®cance of this recurring problem had surfaced only after Ivan Fedorov had printed the ®rst Russian book `Apostle' in 1563. This ®rst Russian printer later had to leave Russia, as he was accused of numerous heresies, among them, an attempt to edit and reconcile the most obvious discrepancies in the books he printed. Eventually, the translation of the holy Orthodox writings and the church ritual was of®cially corrected a century later under Patriarch Nikon, in 1656, but even then it brought about a real division not only within the church, but also within Russian society itself. In the struggle of defending itself against all outside in¯uences, the Russian Orthodox Church was becoming stronger all the more because its leaders played an important role in the state affairs. The growing impact of the church reached its height in 1547, when Metropolitan Makary, a very able and well-educated politician 282

The Momentum Lost

became de-facto the head of the Russian state. The contribution of his government to the change Russia was undergoing as a state was enormous and, in many worldly aspects, bene®cial. But, at the same time, he was a religious fanatic who in 1536 compulsorily baptised Tatar women in Novgorod and Pskov jails. The call for a Crusade against Kazan, long preached by the church authorities and secular Russian ideologists like Ivan Peresvetov, ®nally materialised under his rule. The drive of the Russian Church for establishing itself as a world church could be well sustained by the conquest of Kazan. At the same time, such a conquest was seen as bene®cial not only by the church, still directing the decisions of the Russian sovereign, but also by the lower classes of the Russian society. For them, the appropriation of the Muslim lands was the way to more freedom away from the injustices of the Russia proper and, of course, a source of more wealth proceeding from the `very rich, Paradise-like land' of the Kazan Khanate, as I. Peresvetov put it in his writings. So, the Russian Crusade against Islam took its momentum from the combined interests of the church, the state and Russian society, especially its lower, producer levels. How could Su® fatalism of the Kazan Khanate, where the interests of the ruling semi-nomad Crimean and Nogay aristocracy widely con¯icted with the interests of merchants and richer peasantry, respond to such ideological drive under the banner of Russian Orthodoxy? The inertia of Islamic thought re¯ected itself in the policies of the Kazan government. The religious leadership of the Kazan Khanate offered their diplomatic services in the process of constant appeasement of the ever- growing Russian demands supported by direct military actions and crucial innovations in the military engineering. Even under the circumstances, the plight of the Kazan Khanate could have been different, if a little bit of creative thought had been applied to the military strategy of the country. In the times of Volga Bulgaria, the importance of towns and fortresses for defending the state was well understood. The dislike for towns and urban life peculiar to the semi-nomadic dynasties springing from the remnants of the Golden Horde also played a devastating role in the affairs of the Kazan Khanate. The trading townships which existed on the territory of the Khanate were not forti®ed, even under the imminent threat, even though they could have provided the necessary forti®cations during the war. Even in this state, these townships proved very useful for the Kazan Tatar insurgents during the war of 283

The Momentum Lost

liberation in the wake of the fall of Kazan. However, the fact that in 1511, the Kazan authorities allowed the Russians to build the fortress of Sviazhsk on the Volga island in the vicinity of Kazan points to total lack of military foresight and complete unawareness of the military traditions of earlier Muslim civilisations. Yet again, the ruling classes of Kazan never sought any support, let alone advice from the indigenous population of the country, which preserved its older, Bulgar-time cultural traditions. They, somewhat arrogantly, relied on their diplomatic skills and the strength of the army, but lost one negotiating position after another. Later, in March 1552, they had conceded the entire right, so-called `mountainous' side of the Volga River, depriving the population of the Khanate of their summer pastures, and accepted the nomination of a Russian governor-general for Kazan. The failure of their policies was complete. It was only then that the lower classes of the Kazan society brie¯y took hold of the national politics by denying the Russian governor entry to their city. Ultimately, this act of national patriotism did not save Kazan, but it remained as historical testimony to the inner strength of the Muslim society of the Kazan Khanate all but betrayed by the inept government of the foreign military nobility. In the battle for Kazan, and subsequent wars of liberation, the Kazan Tatars lost not only their statehood and most of their cultural heritage, but also any leadership capable of uniting the liberation efforts. The Russian armies were able to suppress all Muslim uprising precisely because they made full use of military townships, some newly built and some forti®ed at locations of older Muslim towns along the banks of the Volga, Vyatka and Kama Rivers. The Muslim inhabitants were driven away from country's towns and thus were deprived of any base of sustained insurrection. The loss of towns meant also the loss of an established urban way of life. The fate of the Muslims, tragic as it is, was greatly aggravated by the policies of the Russian Orthodox Church, for which the defeat of the Muslim Kazan proved a great victory for its ideology of state expansion. At the same time, the very same ideology proved futile in its main objective of spiritually uprooting Islam in the conquered lands and, in its failure, had to resort to the most ruthless policies of coercion, bringing endless suffering upon the additional Muslim subjects of the new, ever-expanding Russia.

284

The Survival Test A new religious leadership emerges

15

The disappearance of the peculiar civilisation of the Kazan Khanate might be a riddle for historians who tend to think that the border between Russia and the lands of the Russian Muslims was a frontier between two totally different civilisations. The most nationalistminded representatives of contemporary Russian politics try to maintain precisely that, as if indeed the peaceful neighbourhood of the Muslims Khanates and Russia did not exist at all, and these entities never in¯uenced and enriched each other either culturally or economically. Such politicians present the relationship between Islam and Orthodox Christianity as a constant state of war and mutual apprehension. Moreover, speaking about the Kazan Tatars, they never talk about their culture, but rather about the lack thereof. This kind of attitude sometimes takes such proportions as to result in statements like `Ivan the Terrible conceived the idea of establishing the drinking houses copying the customs of Kazan and thus the Holy Rus' became given to drinking'. Also, it is sometimes maintained that the world-famous Russian foul language was brought to Russia by the Tatars. Leaving aside the origins of Russian foul language, which has no roots in any of the Turkic tongues, the question of the drinking houses presents an enigma. The Kazan Chronicler indeed writes of the presence of the `Tsar's taverns', while describing the famous Kazan fairs, during which All citizens, men along with their wives stroll and drink in the Tsar's taverns, buy goods, having great fun. A lot of people come over there, the Cheremises arrive for these festivals with their

285

The Survival Test merchandise from the remote Uluses and bargain with urban people, buy, sell and exchange goods.

Another mention of the Kazan taverns is contained in the `Kingly Book' (Petrograd, 1769), where it is written that in the course of a military expedition the Russians `have burnt down the Tsar's taverns'. Keeping in mind the prohibition of drinking in the Shari'a and the reverent attitude of the Kazan people to their religion, it is dif®cult to imagine the Muslim citizens of Kazan drinking openly with their wives in the public places especially allotted for transgression against the law of the country. Still, the puzzle remains and requires clari®cation. The only plausible explanation would probably be that the Kazan fairs were so popular as to attract a lot of people not bound to obey the Muslim prohibitions, and to impose these prohibitions on them would have meant to drive them away and thus lose business. It seems that, under the circumstances, the Kazan government chose rather to regulate the drinking habits of the business guests and impose an excise duty on the alcohol they consumed at the fairs. Both references to the existence of taverns appear in connection with the fairs, which took place outside the walls of the city and, in fact, at a distance of ®ve or six miles from the capital. Kazan also had the Russian and Armenian settlements in its suburbs, and their dwellers lived according to their own religious and worldly traditions, in which the government did not interfere. The presence of the taverns was, of course, not in strict accordance with Islam, but it was pro®table and, indeed, kept the `in®del' drinking under government control. Thus, Ivan the Terrible did not introduce the idea of drinking as such, which the Russians had had for a long time, but rather the idea of a state duty on alcohol, and he did it in the same way as the Russians made use of other ®scal systems also introduced to Russia by the Tatars. Due to the existing economic and political relations between the two states, the Kazan Tatar and Russian culture of the time was an interactive phenomenon. Since the times of the Golden Horde the Chagatay Tatar language was a diplomatic language on the Great Steppe and in Russia alike, the mastery of which was a must for the Russian Princes who all too often had Tatar blood in their veins. The Tatar aristocracy at the Russian court was always considered to be of the highest standing possible. In the Moscow Kremlin, there was a special palace for entertaining the representatives of the Horde, and 286

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several Russian provinces of major importance, like those of Kashira, Serpukhov and Zvenigorod were governed by potential heirs to the throne of Kazan. But the cultural interchange went on not only on the princely level. N. Karamzin states that: The merchants of the Horde used to live in Moscow, Tver, Rostov; they delivered us goods from industrial Asia and horses, and took in exchange (beyond the precious furs, our own and Permian) a lot of hunting birds, falcons and gerfalcons supplied to the Great Moscovite principality from the Dvina region . . . Kazan has taken the place of the ancient Bulgar Tsardom: our merchants traded in there with the East . . . The Khans, for their own bene®t, patronized our trade and commerce . . . the tribute paid to the Horde partially returned to us through commercial activities . . .

N. Karamzin also underlines the fact that `the Tatars never interfered in our legal civil proceedings' and, basically, refutes the popular nationalistic notion that all `Asiatic customs' as they are called in modern Russia, were introduced by the Tatars, for whom read, Muslims. It was not the Tatars who taught our ancestors to restrict the freedom of women and men, keeping them in a state of serfdom, trade slaves or take legal bribes in courts (which some people call `the Asiatic tradition'); all of it we have witnessed much earlier among the Slaves.

The famous Russian historian also cites the Nikonian Annals, in which the unknown chronicler highly praises the judicial system of the conquerors of Constantinople. Knowing the overall biased attitude of the Russian chroniclers towards `the in®dels', this evaluation sounds all the more remarkable: `The Lord had punished the unworthy rulers, giving wisdom to Mukhammad, whose warriors play with death in the battles, and the judges dare not betray their conscience.' Indeed, for all popular legends about the Tatar yoke, the Russian population could not fail to note that their oppressors never took from them more than the legal requirement in respect of taxes. The Khans frequently admonished the Russian Princes for robbing their subjects in the name of the Tatars. Islam as a religion also presented 287

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itself in quite a peaceful and disciplined way against the background of the growing intolerance and fanaticism of Orthodox Christianity. One of the most favourable consequences of the Tatar dominion over Russia was the elevation of our clergy, the multiplication of monks and the church estates. The policy of Khans, pressurising the people and princes, favoured the Church and its servants, showing a special bene®cence towards them, cherished the Metropolitans and Bishops, thoughtfully listened to their humble supplications and often, out of respect for the pastor, changed their anger to mercy in regard to his ¯ock . . . Very few of the existing monasteries were built before, or after the Tatars; all others remain as monuments to that age.

One wonders whether the Russian Orthodox population was really so blind as not to notice such high and long-lasting examples of religious tolerance? The Muslims of the Horde and, later, Kazan and Kasimov, lived among the Russians and, proud as they were of their religion and ancestry, they never mocked or ridiculed Christianity as a faith. In this way, at least some of the Russians of the ®fteenth to sixteenth centuries could bear witnesses to the fact that Islamic worship entails cleanliness and respect for other religions. M. Khudyakov puts forward the speech of the Russian ambassador to Turkey, who lists the main places of Islamic worship in sixteenthcentury Russia in the following words: My sovereign is not an enemy of the Muslim faith. His servant, Tsar Sain-Bulat rules in Kasimov, Prince Khaibullah in Yuryev, Ibak in Surozhik, the Noghai princes in Romanov: all of them solemnly and freely praise Mukhammad in their mosques . . . In Kadom, in Meschera, many of my sovereign's civil servants are of the Muslim law . . . And in all those towns, the people of Islamic faith keep their mosques and their customs, and my sovereign in no way forces them to change their religion and does not destroy their places of worship.

This particular statement, of course, was of a cunning nature, as it was intended to appease the Sultan of Turkey in his demand to vacate Kazan, which was already captured and nearly demolished by the Russian troops. But the list of the places of worship is a genuine 288

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one, although even the Russian ambassador fails to realise that a mosque is a place where all praise belong to Allah and not the Prophet, for all the esteem and highest reverence he commands in the hearts of the Muslims. This failure partly reveals the ignorance which prevailed in the Russian minds in respect of Islam, even though the Muslims were living and praying in their very midst. It seems, however, that the utter repulsion towards Islam in medieval Russia came to be the popular attitude only after the Russian conquest of Kazan, and was a result of sustained propaganda rather than any historical indisposition of the Russian towards the Islamic faith and culture. Indeed, the ideological onslaught on Islam which followed the Russian conquest is comparable to that of the re-conquered Spain, but even then it was undertaken with much stronger vigour. In Spain, where the people remember next to nothing about their 800 years of magni®cent Muslim history, at least the architectural heritage of the Moors remains intact. In Kazan, every conceivable reminder of the Islamic civilisation was destroyed almost immediately after the fall of the city. So, to paint a comprehensive picture of Islamic society of the Kazan Khanate is a very dif®cult task. It would be even more dif®cult, if it were not for the Russian state museums, especially the Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin, where the ®nest examples of the Muslim crafts are displayed under the title `Russian armour of the ®fteenth to sixteenth centuries.' One look at exquisite pieces of armour, including helmets and hauberks, reveals their Islamic origin, as they are skilfully engraved with the verses of the Quran. The personal armour of Ivan the Third bears the same Islamic engravings, which, if anything, supports the theory that the attitude towards Islam was not all that apprehensive in the ®fteenth century, and the Moscovite rulers saw it quite ®tting to ®ght for the Orthodox Christian cause in the protective covering made by the Muslim craftsmen in Turkey or Kazan. But precious armour was not by any means the only example of Kazan arts and crafts. Splendid patterns of the folk visual artistry were preserved in separate pieces of jewellery, which are kept nowadays in the Armoury in Moscow ± massive golden clasps made in the technique of ¯at ®ligree and incrusted with precious stones; bronze and silver jugs and cups with engraved and stamped ornaments; the famous `Kazan' cap of Ivan the Terrible, made

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The Moscow Kremlin Armoury also displays the richly decorated royal garments and weaponry made in the Kasimov Khanate by the local craftsmen. The cultural exchange between the Kazan Khanate and Moscow was as mutually bene®cial as their economic exchange. But, on the level of state ideology, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a major change in Russian Orthodox attitudes, aggravated by the many calamities known in Russian history as the `Time of Troubles'. During this period the Russian government collapsed and Russia fell prey to many internal betrayals and foreign onslaughts from the West ideologically inspired by Roman Catholicism. In ®ghting for the sovereignty and independence of its country, the Russian Orthodox Church, however, further developed its uncompromising and intolerant practices. In the lands of the subdued Kazan Khanate, these practices proved especially dramatic. There are many historical records as to how Muslims of the fallen Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia were subjected to religious persecution by the Russian Orthodoxy in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Immediately after the conquest, the Russian authorities started the process of Christianisation of the area, a process which brought about terrible suffering for of the Muslims, who refused to trade their faith for certain economical and political privileges offered by the Russian side. Huge taxes were introduced for those who refused to convert to Christianity. They were physically tortured, kept in ice-cold cellars, deprived of their homes in the city and banished to remote villages, while the Muslim villagers themselves had their fertile plots taken away and redistributed among the Russian newcomers. Profession of Islam was effectively banned in the emerging Greater Russia for almost two centuries. The demolition of mosques, which started after the fall of Kazan, continued in waves throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To be fair, we must note that, to begin with, the process of Christianisation involved little or no coercion. The ®rst Russian archbishop of Kazan, Gury, was speci®cally instructed by Ivan the Terrible in 1555 to bring Muslims into the Christian faith by 290

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attracting them to Russian kindness and hospitality: `The Archbishop should as much as possible accustom the Tatars to himself and bring them to baptism by means of love, and not by means of fear.' The means of love at the Archbishop's disposal were frequent feasts with alcoholic drinks, which the Muslims were especially invited to taste. Among other methods were saving of those accused or sentenced by Muslim fellows for various crimes; allowing the newly baptised to further use their lands and estates; relieving them from some forms of taxation obligatory for Muslims. Such policies met with some success, but as this form of conversion was based on material, rather than spiritual gains, the newly baptised Kazan Tatars were all too quick to return to their ancestral faith once the attention on them diminished. The idea behind the almost failed Christianisation of the Russian Muslims remained essentially the same even 400 years later and was most distinctively highlighted by the Russian Orthodox missionary V. Grigoryev at the end of the nineteenth century. `The ®rst means for Russi®cation of the inorodsy (ethnically non-Russians) is our religion. After that, the second most powerful device for Russi®cation is an instillation into the non-Russian mind of the concept of the moral superiority of the Russian nation.' For the non-Russian subjects of the Russian Empire, this idea of Russian Orthodox moral superiority was highly questionable in the sixteenth, as well in the nineteenth centuries. Such a notion should have been supported by examples, and examples often pointed to the contrary. Many Russian dignitaries opposing the cruel reforms of Ivan the Terrible, wrote about the poor state of morals in sixteenth century Russia. Metropolitan Philip in his political quest against the infamous Oprichnina (special administrative elite comprised of foreigners and petty aristocracy) accused Ivan the Terrible of crimes `never present either under his forefathers, or in any foreign lands'. The German oprichniks I. Taube and E. Kruze, after their ¯ight to Lithuania in 1571, went even further, saying: `Tatars (Muslims), and pagans, and all the world can claim to have law and uphold rights for the citizens, and only Russia is deprived of them.' The sad state of the Russian morals was also underlined by the Russian historian V. Solovyev in his research on the events leading to the Russian Time of Troubles. He says: There established itself an evil habit of not respecting either life, or honour and property of one's fellow being. Violation of the

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Whatever the proclaimed policy of Christianisation of the Muslims of the Kazan Khanate, the reality was different. The rule of the appointed Russian governors, as elsewhere in Russia, was based on corruption, bribery, embezzlement and blatant violation of the rights of others. The Muslim lands were appropriated in a most arbitrary way, and even baptism could only temporarily save the Kazan Tatar landlords. In such a situation, it comes as no surprise that Muslims did not accept Orthodox Christianity en masse. Even the Russian prisoners of war living in Muslim households, the liberation of whom provided the main pretext for the annexation of the Kazan Khanate, would accept Islam and the Islamic way of life as much more just and ful®lling. In 1593, the new Archbishop Hermogen of Kazan and Astrakhan, a religious fanatic who went on to become the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, wrote a famous complaint to the then Russian Tsar Feodor Ioannovitch. He stated that the newly baptised Muslims still live together with their fellow Tatars, eat and drink in a Muslim way and do not visit churches. They do not carry crosses and do not keep icons and crosses in their homes; and do not allow Christian priests to enter therein . . . Moreover, many Russian prisoners and free men live with the Tatars, marry there . . . and have turned among them into the Tatar faith.

In consequence, the policy of gently attracting Muslims to Christianity gave way to more resolute means. Tsar Feodor Ioannovitch, angered by the stubborn resurgence of Islam in the subdued territories, and especially by the appearance of the new 292

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mosques and schools, ordered them to be immediately destroyed. The Kazan Tatars were prohibited from privately erecting new ones and from preaching Islam in any way to their Russian labourers. Later, in the seventeenth century, the preaching of Islam and converting Christians to Islam became punishable for Muslims by burning at the stake. The level of religious persecution became so cruel that the Kazan Tatars were several times forced to take up arms, and participated in many revolts before and during the Russian Time of Troubles. Still, such persecution continued through the seventeenth century, and the response was mass participation by the Russian Muslims in the Stepan Razin mutiny of 1670±71. However, life goes on and the Muslims of the conquered Kazan Khanate tried to accommodate themselves to the new realities. Tragically, the great ®res of 1672 and 1694 all but destroyed the city of Kazan. In the ¯ames perished not only the remainder of the Tatar architecture, but also many documents from the state archives and private libraries. This was the last blow suffered by the civilisation of the Kazan Khanate. From then on, the peculiar culture of the Kazan Tatars had to develop within the framework of the Russian Empire, since, with the abolishment of even the name of the territory, the county lost its last semblance of cultural independence. Islamic culture became truly con®ned to the villages, where it could not be often reached by the harbingers of Russian Orthodox ideology. Yet, the legacy of urban life was still maintained and developed upon the history of the people. With the reign of Peter the Great though, new trials and tribulations befell the Tatar culture, which had, to date, almost adapted to its orphan status in its own motherland. The name `Kazan Khanate', designating the conquered region, was still in use up to the beginning of the reign of Peter the Great (1672±1725); but the structure of the population changed dramatically. The Kazan Tatar aristocracy in part perished in the wars of liberation and in part succumbed to the pressure, accepted Christianity and thus joined the ranks of the Russian aristocracy. The remaining Muslim Tatars became divided into two social groups. One of these groups, consisting of petty landlords and soldiers at the service of the Russian Czar, were called Service, or Cossack, Tatars. Others became so-called Yasak Tatars, as yasak was a traditional name for taxes in the Kazan Khanate now paid to the Russian authorities. The majority of the Muslim population was 293

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forced into village life, and even then they were not allowed to have their villages near the capital city or on the major waterways. Several decades after the fall of Kazan, when international trade in Kazan had declined in the hands of Russian merchants, more Kazan Tatars were allowed to reside on the outskirts of their former illustrious capital. These so-called Old and New Tatar Settlements, which originated in the sixteenth century, now form a part of the modern city of Kazan. For all the efforts of the Kazan Tatar Muslims to get accustomed to their new way of life, continuing suppression of their culture and religion resulted in the fact that out of some 6 million Tatars only a quarter now remain in the territory of their historical homeland. The rest were forced to leave for places where they were free to profess their faith. With the rapid expansion of the Russian Empire, fewer and fewer such places remained available for them on the Volga or in the Urals. Thus colonies of Tatars are now to be found as far away as China and Japan. The fate of the last poet of the Kazan Khanate, Maula Koly, is in many ways typical of what was happening to Muslim culture and literature throughout the seventeenth century. His real name was Bairamgali Koliev and because of his mystic poetry he was popularly called Bimka Su®. He was born in a village called Chity, to a family of Cossack Tatars, which served the Russian administration of the region but was otherwise allowed to remain faithful to its national culture. Maula Koly was educated in Kazan in the school of a certain Mamai, on the outskirts of the city. According to contemporary Russian archives, it was he who led the Tatars of various districts in 1678, when they were given permission to settle near the ruins of the ancient Bulgar city of Bilyar. In 1699, however, this Tatar settlement was replaced by an Orthodox Russian settlement and its inhabitants were ordered to re-settle in the village of Old Ishtiryak on the banks of the Sheshma River. The descendants of Maula Koly have lived in that region ever since. According to Maula Koly, his master, Mamai, was also a poet, but in terms of this research it is much more signi®cant that he was a mullah, i.e. religious teacher. From the fall of Kazan until the late eighteenth century, the Kazan Tatars and other Muslim peoples of Russia had no of®cial clergy. Then, the title mullah simply meant `a learned person' and did not entail any hierarchical position. These mullahs were members of the public who, in the bigger and smaller villages and settlements, taught not only basic tenets of religion but 294

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also subjects such as arithmetic and calligraphy. The maintenance and development of Islam was largely in the hands of laymen like Mamai, Maula Koly and many other unknown people who preserved Islam and its cultural heritage against all the odds. The many wanderings of Maula Koly and other Su®s and Abyzes in search of a permanent settlement however demonstrate that even with the permission of the Russian authorities the Muslims could not hope to live undisturbed. We do not know what happened to the well-established educational system of the Kazan Khanate under the conditions of religious intolerance. It is well known that beside the main madrassah of Kazan, other mosques of Kazan also had religious schools of their own, where the Arabic language and laws of Sharia' were taught. The larger towns and villages of the Kazan Khanate were, in their turn, centres of learning, as the booming Kazan economy required large numbers of educated men. The orthodox madrassahs provided basic education, the main framework of which continued to be an in¯uence in the Muslim education of the VolgaUrals region even in the late nineteenth century. It is against that old conservative system that the future Jadids of this region would ®ght their spiritual battle for Islamic revival. But in medieval times the system was, apparently, quite adequate. It was probably based on scholarly works of the twelfth century (for instance, 'Akaid Nasa® by the Arab scholar Nadzmutdin Annasa® who died in 1142) and fourteenth century (for example, Interpretation of Aristotelian and Platonian Logic by Hasan Al Qati who died in 1358). These works and other contemporary books were, in the ®fteenth and sixteenth centuries, obviously much more recent, than they were in the nineteenth century, and the education given and received through them was much more relevant. This relevance, however, was directed among the students towards the scholarly defence of the purity of the Orthodox Sunni faith against the Su®s who engaged in free-thinking philosophy at those times, when it became generally established that `the time of personal interpretation of the Holy Quran and Ahadith was over'. By that time, the dogmatism of Central Asia besieged by the Shi'a and Su® thinking, may have already also found its way into the scholarly activities of the of®cial clerical circles of Kazan. Given the conservatism of the Tatar madrassah curriculum, which was only reinforced by the subsequent centuries of a virtually underground 295

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existence, we may suggest that, for instance, the commentaries on the 'Akaid Nasa® by the outstanding Islamic scholar Sagd-ut-din Taftazani were available for education of the of®cial Kazan clergy as well. Both Nasa® and Taftazani try to expound the picture of the universe on the basis of recognising the attributes of God, as opposed to the three categories of the Su®s, which are respectively, `things of this world are only ghosts and do not exist at all', `things exist as far as we believe in their existence and, therefore, have relative qualities', and `there is no way of knowing things and of understanding their essence'. Of all three categories, Taftazani makes a de®nite conclusion in the following words: `It is not worthy of a man to compete with them, especially with the last category who recognise nothing, and it would be better to throw them into ®re so they perish or repent.' For all resoluteness of the above conclusion, it presents much more a ®gure of speech, than any real basis for a sort of Islamic Inquisition. Firstly, in Islam, any punishment by ®re is strictly forbidden, of which the medieval scholars would have had much more ®rm knowledge, than some of the present-day `®ghters for Islamic cause'; and, secondly, despite this opposition of the Sunnis to the Su®s, the latter apparently not only thrived in the Kazan Khanate, but, for all necessary gestures of political correctness in respect of the of®cial hereditary clerical establishment, had schools and disciples of their own. Such neighbourly existence of the of®cial Ulama and Su®s did not mean that the of®cial clerics were, as it were, reconciled to the Su® in¯uence within the Ummah. As J. S. Trimingham states in this respect: Attacks from the `ulama' body and secular authority have been persistent, if intermittent, throughout the whole history of Su®sm, though in practice a parallelism of religious authority was admitted; but in the past these attacks had never done more than lead to the condemnation of individual Su®s and the suppression of particular orders. They never affected their position in the life of Muslim communities, since they ministered to a religious need and ®lled a gap in the expression of deeper meaning of Islam.

Such tolerance towards the Su®s as an intellectual class of their own was all the more understandable in that it is to them that Islam 296

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primarily owed its spread. The role of Su® and Dervish preachers cannot be over-estimated even at the time of the Kazan Khanate, for their efforts in converting the non-Muslim population to Islam were as persistent and continuous. Not only the wandering Dervish would contribute to the growth of the Unknown Ummah. The Su® institution, whether it was a circle of followers of a particular Sheik around the saintly tombs, or a village school run by a certain Su® master, was also the centre of missionary activities, active both in `commending Islam to non-Muslims and in helping newly-converted to take it to their hearts' (J. S. Trimingham). It seems that such Su® centres were particularly dynamic in the regions where the of®cial religious authority was less notable, that is to say in the Vyatka-Urals region and the districts located between the Kazan and Kasimov Khanates. The spread and strengthening of Islamic beliefs among the Mishar and Karinsk Tatars, especially the former, offers suf®cient evidence to support this theory, as the Mishars often inhabited the areas outside the direct control of either the Kazan, or the Kasimov Khanates. The Su® schools were therefore tolerated, if not actively permitted, as educational and missionary centres, although, as J. S. Trimingham says, `of®cial religious authority never reconciled itself, whatever compromises were made, to the existence of centres of religious authority outside their control'. Anyhow, the particular Su® Tarikah, that is, Nakshbandiya, with its historical links to the traditional Yassaviya and a hint of patronage, about it, of the supreme religious authority of the Ottoman Caliphate, was always renowned for its political correctness and humble restraint vis-aÁ-vis the of®cial Ulama, so much so, that the members of this of®cial Ulama were frequently sympathisers, if not followers, of Nakshbandiya thought. As elsewhere in the Islamic world at the time, certain Su® practices slowly came to be recognised as part of traditional Islam: this is true, for instance, with regard to the religious festival of Mawlud-ad-nabi, which originated in its present form no earlier than the 1420s and still came to be an essential part of popular Muslim beliefs and practices later on. In this respect, it is interesting that, as J. S. Trimingham states, `the ®rst real mawlid . . . was composed in Turkish' and its author was `the ®rst strictly Ottoman poet . . . known as Sulaiman Chelebi (d.825/1421)'. The Ottoman in¯uence, in culture as well as in religious trends, was establishing itself in the Kazan and Kasimov Khanates through their popular and dynastic links with the Crimea, and was slowly 297

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attempting to replace the more traditional links with Central Asia. All the more so in that, in addition to its worldly power, the Ottoman Empire also became the recognised centre of the Caliphate, to which the clergy of both remote Khanates owed their spiritual obedience. The of®cial religious establishment became, over the course of time, very similar to that of the Ottoman Caliphate, and it is not surprising that the tombs of the khans and saints were called Tekke. The only surviving tomb, that of Khan Shah Ali in the modern Kasimov is known by this distinctive Turkish term. For all the potential argument between the of®cial Ulama and the Nakshbandiya (Yassaviya) Su®s, the existence of the Su® schools and missionary centres proved crucial for the very existence of Islamic culture after the Russian conquest of the Kazan Khanate. It is to this tradition that the Islamic education owes its survival during the `Winter of Islam', i.e., in the course of the Orthodox Christian expansion into the area. M. Khudyakov, for instance, writes: In the Kazan Khanate the Su®sm ± a mystical teaching with a Buddhist ¯air imported therein from Turkestan ± was spread far and wide. The Kazan Su®s were the followers of the well-known Turkestani teacher Ahmad Seyuvi (Yassavi). In the book of Hisamutdin, there are listed the names of the Su® leaders who were the heads of the Su®s in the borders of the Kazan Khanate and, in succession, handed over to each other this high title granted to them by Ahmad Yassavi: 1) Beirash son of Ibrash, the immediate student of Ahmad Yassavi; 2) Ish-Mukhammad son of Tugk-Mukhammad, the student of Beirash; 3) Idris son of Zul-Mukhammad, 4) Qasim son of Ibraghim; 5) Faizullah effendi from Bukhara; 6) Ahund Sham son of Ishtiryak. Out of these personalities, Qasim and Faizullah ®nished their life and were buried in Kazan proper, Beirash and Ish-Mukhammad near Ishmenev-Maskary in the Malmyzh district, and Idris and Sham ± in the village of Tiberdini of the Laishev district. The Su®s caused a signi®cant impact on the spread of Islam among the heathen peoples and on the development of the public education in the whole region.

The authenticity of this succession of the Su® Sheiks in the Kazan Khanate is, however, subject to doubt, as it was taken from the book entitled Risala Tavarikh Bulgariya by Hisametdin son of Sharafetdin. 298

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If any information in this book is to be believed at all, he started his work in 1550 and completed it in 1584. S. Marzhani remarked that there are several books of this kind concocted by the Tatar and Bashkir mullahs and circulated among the Muslims of the Volga and Urals. Marzhani came down on this compilation with an annihilating criticism in his special essay entitled `On the obvious mistakes, sinister lies and mix-up of events in the book ``Tavarikh-i Bulgariya'''. Indeed, the author of the criticised publication starts to confuse events and historical personalities from the very start, stating that he is a direct student of the great scholar Taftazani who died in 1386, full century earlier, than the claimed date of Hisametdin's compilation. Unfortunately, some of the mistakes made by Hisametdin, whoever he was, were repeated by M. Khudyakov who took the data for granted, which is strange, for M. Khudyakov was well acquainted with Marzhani's historical works. For instance, of the one of those schools allegedly run by Sheik Ish-Mukhammad son of Tugk-Mukhammad, M. Khudyakov says: Words of a Tatar chronicler of that time are full of sadness: `IshMukhammad son of Tugk-Mukhammad was a righteous man. In the village of Adai, he, over the course of 36 years, managed a school, which, at his time, prospered and attracted many scholars . . . Meanwhile, after 20 years none of the followers of that Tarikah and his disciples remain alive.

In fact, as S. Marzhani states, Sheik Ish-Mukhammad, nick-named `Sheik Baba' was alive as late as 1785. Beirash had nothing to do with being `a Su®, or Ishan, or Seyid, or Sheik' and was just a rich man and Ish-Mukhammad's contemporary whose grave, in Marzhani's time, was to be found in the village of Adai. Thus, Khudyakov's `Tatar chronicler' turns out to be an ignorant compiler from a much later period, who managed to mix up personalities of his own age with the well-known personalities of the past. According to Marzhani, `none of his sentences is devoid of overt lies, fabrications and concoctions of events'. This does not, of course, preclude the existence, in the Kazan Khanate, of the Su® schools, which were set up and further developed in the area after the conquest. The only problem is that it is impossible, at least today, to de®nitely establish the names and 299

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other personal details pertaining to the history of public education in the Kazan Khanate, in as much as all such information was destroyed along with the of®cial historiography of the Kazan Tatars. Here and there, it might just be possible to ®nd some names in the personal Shadzharas of the Kazan Tatars, especially of those clerical dynasties hereditarily connected with the spread and propagation of Islam. Yet again, precious and meticulous data on these mullah families is preserved in the works of S. Marzhani, especially in an essay entitled `Personalities and Memorable Events', where a number of allusions and references to the Su® past of the Kazan clergy is made. Interestingly, S. Marzhani refers to the conditions of being an Imam, when a person to be elected is asked which clan he comes from, the required answer being, `I am from the clan of Hoja Ahmad Yassavi'. As a responsible researcher, S. Marzhani rarely refers to events or personalities dating to earlier than the beginning of the eighteenth century. Even then, narrating the history of the village of Ashit, which, as S. Marzhani argues, was in existence in the age of the Kazan Khanate (in the times of the Islamic authorities, he says), S. Marzhani mentions the tomb of a Muslim saint as a public attraction in the village cemetery, as well as the name of a villager called Ak Su® (White Su®). References to Su® ancestors and predecessors occur throughout Marzhani's biographies of the Kazan clergy, which, against the background of the unof®cial status of Islam in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, implies the continuity of Su® thought of the Kazan Khanate well into the nineteenth century. As we know, under Peter the Great the territory was turned into the Kazan province, and this destruction of even the name of the country initiated a powerful revolt, which was cruelly put down by the Russian troops in 1708. Following the revolt, religious persecution reappeared with a new intensity. The royal decree of 1713 stated that: The Great Czar orders the in®dels of Muslim faith in the provinces of Kazan and Azov, who have estates and lands and house serfs, and employees of Christian faith, that they, in compliance with this decree, should accept baptism within six months. By accepting baptism they will be able to own their estates and lands as before, but if they do not get baptised within six months then those estates and lands, with their people and peasants, will be taken away and con®scated by the Great Czar.

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Again, there were few who wanted to be baptised , but the remaining Muslim aristocracy, the Murzes, was forced, by this decree, to either comply with becoming a part of the Russian gentry, or be left almost destitute and be deprived of all privileges. Consequently, Kazan Tatar and Noghai family names are often encountered in Russian noble genealogies. Still, the Christianisation of Muslim lands progressed with such dif®culty and was so unsuccessful that in 1715 a new decree to the same effect took place. Moreover, in addition to earlier burdens of double and triple taxation, soldiering for life in the stead of the newly baptised and overall deprivation, under Peter the Great Muslims were brought under a new unbearable burden ± they were assigned to the shipbuilding project in the Kazan province, which was known and `Lashman works' and consisted of cutting and transporting mast timber. It was onerous low-paid work worsened by the corruption and abuse of the authorities. Religious compulsion was intensifying, before reaching a climax during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth the First, with the establishment of the `Of®ce for Newly Baptised' in Kazan. The activities of this infamous institution and its head, Bishop Lukas Konashevich, are still fresh in the memory of Russian Muslims. In 1742 alone, out of 546 mosques of the Kazan district 418 mosques were demolished. N. Vorobyov, in his book Material culture of Kazan Tatars, (published in 1932) states: The Of®ce for the Newly Baptised, which had armed regiments at its disposal, committed numerous crimes against the rights of Muslims, such as banishing them from the villages, where at least several people would accept Christianity (in order to safeguard the newly baptised from the in¯uence of Muslims or pagans); placing the taxes of the newly christened on the shoulders of those who refused baptism; taking away Muslim children in order to bring them up in the spirit of Orthodoxy and so forth.

Little wonder then, that so many Muslims participated in a number of revolts and uprisings, culminating in the second half of the eighteenth century in the Pugachev rebellion. This massive uprising spread from the steppes of Orenburg and swept across huge areas of Urals and Middle Volga, taking Ufa and Kazan under its sway. It is estimated that about 90,000 Muslims took part in this rebellion. But even before the greatest Russian mutiny of the eighteenth century, between 301

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1735 and 1740, at least 40,000 Tatars and Bashkirs gave their lives in the Kazan province in the struggle against religious oppression. However, Konashevich's policies failed almost completely. In 1755, when the much-dreaded archbishop was transferred, the work of erecting new mosques in the villages began afresh, although only in those where there were at least 200 male dwellers. The policies of Russi®cation of the Tatars were no less stringent. The well-known ideologist Ivan Pososhkov later summed up the already gained experience of the kind. He advised that the Tatar children should be taken from their parents and given to the Russian landlords as servants, whereas the grown-up should be proscribed from speaking their mother tongue, so that the non-Russian tongues would be `eradicated' as such. Only then, argued I. Pososhkov, could the Tatars turn into `true Christians'. But what was happening during all these years with the Muslim religious leadership? The famous Tatar writer and politician, Gayaz Iskhaki, describing the unbearable sufferings of the Volga-Urals Muslim peoples in his booklet Idel-Ural, several times mentions the term `Muslim clergy': `The Muslim clergy was subjected to severe punishments (p. 25). The Muslim clergy became deprived of all rights in the country.' (p. 28) Yet, due to the conditions imposed on the Muslim population in the second half of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century there was no Muslim clergy in the true sense of Islam, which theoretically has no institution of priesthood. The terms mullah and ahun often encountered in the historical records of the time, should thus be understood in their true meaning of `learned men', and not `an appointed clergymen'. But even without of®cial clergy and probably because of its absence, Islam in Russia not only outlived its previous fatalistic approach to life, it resurrected its old roots as well as taking new ones. This happened because it was already not an Islam of the ruling class, but that of the common people traditionally inclined towards learning and entrepreneurship. In 1783, in his account of a sojourn to India and Middle East, Ismagil Aga, of the Seit Settlement near Orenburg, writes referring to the year 1751: According to the will of Allah written in our fate (taqdir), Mullah Nadir and Mullah Yakub, and Ismagil, and Gabderahman, and one of the servants of Nadir mullah, all ®ve of us were sent by Seit the Elder to the city of Bukhara for trade purposes.

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Here, the word `Elder' is very signi®cant in the light of our investigation. Seit the Elder is a historical character who, on permission of the high authorities, along with some other Tatars fed up with religious and economical restrictions, in 1745 came to Orenburg from the Kazan district and founded a settlement, from which he then expanded his trade to Bukhara, Khiva, Kashgar and other Asian lands. As we have seen in the example of Mevla Koly, among the Muslim population of the lands conquered by Russia, a new type of leadership emerged to replace the failed leaders of the Kazan Khanate. They led their fellow countrymen in the search for a quieter traditional life and economic prosperity, which were becoming increasingly dif®cult in the conditions imposed by the Russian authorities in their native land. In those days, the Kazan province comprised huge territories spreading from Urals to the Volga, and all the way south to the freshly built Russian fortress of Orenburg on the edge of the nomad Kazakh steppes. These leaders were called elders or abyz, and exercised not only administrative, but also religious authority over their fellow Muslims. In the south of the Kazan province, they maintained trade with the Muslim countries of Central Asia and the entire world of Islam, developing rich economic traditions of their forefathers. In this way, the Seit Settlement, known also as Kargala, became with the passage of time the most enlightened centre of Islam in the area. This popular institute of abyzes was a peculiar form of religious leadership evolved in the conditions of constant restraints, limitations and outright persecution of Islam in the area under the Russian Orthodox control. The Tatar abyzes were the real leaders of their respective communities, on the one hand ful®lling the duties of the supreme religious authority, and on the other undertaking a representative role while dealing with the Russian governmental structures. The authority of such leaders was based on several factors, the most important being their faithfulness to Islamic traditions and their religious knowledge. Wealth earned through the worldly enterprise and personal charisma of these born leaders also played an important role in the process of their rise to a prominent position within their respective communities. Moreover, such people undertook not only the immense task of preserving and safeguarding Islam against all odds, but also, and even more signi®cantly, the duty of further spreading and propagating Islam in Russia. In his article `The Akay-Kilmek Uprising', a Kazan Tatar scholar, Vahit Imamov, quotes from the report by the Russian military 303

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commanders Kirillov and Rumyantsev, who were given the task of suppressing Muslim revolts in the area between the Volga and Ural mountains. In this report, they write: In all of those villages, the Tatars who moved from the Kazan district live in the capacity of mullahs and abyzes. All of them are learned and intelligent men. Their word is accepted by the population as the words of a prophet. For this reason, Tatar mullahs and abyzes should be expelled from the Ufa district, their religious schools (madrassas) should be closed, their students should be used as interpreters, etc.

The report also advises the limitation of the term of elders to one year only, to place Russian Orthodox settlements alongside with the Muslim villages and (sic!) to impede procreation among Muslims. Indeed, the activities of mullahs as religious teachers and abyzes as religious leaders brought about results which are highly unwelcome for the Russian authorities. If, in the period before 1719 the overall number of christened Tatars in the Kazan province amounted to 13,322, in the twelve years thereafter this number fell to 2,995. The truly Islamic missionary drive behind this phenomenon of a natural religious leadership laid grounds for further development of the Russian Islam in the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. The charismatic Muslim leaders, such as Seit of Kargala, established communal settlements with prayer houses and religious schools, which in the years to come prospered and developed into the world famous madrassas of `Hussainiya' in Orenburg; `Mukhammadiya' in Kazan; `Galiya' in Ufa; as well as madrassas in Izh Bobi, Troitsk, Kargala and many others. At the beginning of the twentieth century, and up to the October Revolution in Russia, these centres of education were among the most, if not the most, prominent, innovative and far-sighted centres of Islamic studies in the whole of the Muslim world. Interestingly, the same pattern of communal behaviour has been shown by the Tatar refugees after the October Revolution and during the Civil War of 1918±20 in Russia. Along their way out of the Bolshevist chaos and oppression, they established their mosques and schools in southern Siberia, the Russian Far East, China, Japan and other places all over the world, including Australia, the USA, Germany, and so on. The establishment of a Tatar community in Finland at the end of nineteenth century followed the same pattern. 304

The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears In every winter, there is spring in the making

16

This ®nal chapter, which looks at some of the developments in the nineteenth century falls, strictly speaking, beyond the somewhat arbitrary periodisation of our historical narrative. It can, however, be viewed as a necessary bridge between the ancient and the more recent history of Islam in Russia, the latter ®nding its roots in the Muslim Reformist movements in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Those Reformist movements, the impact of which are felt even today, call for another treatise on Russian Islam dealing with the events and developments of the twentieth century. But such a comprehensive book is a matter for the future, whereas the intended discourse on the more ancient history of Islam in Russia is already nearing its end. The sixteenth and seventeenth-century Russian Orthodox policies, along with the appalling impoverishment and deprivation of the wider Muslim population, resulted in a number of revolts and mutinies. Among the most widespread of these was the so-called Aldar-Kusyum uprising of 1704±08, which started on the Bashkir territory close to the Urals. The main reasons were the same: arbitrary taxes and continuing appropriation of land by the Russian governors and entrepreneurs. After an unsuccessful attempt to appeal to Peter the Great about the many injustices in¯icted by the local Russian administration, the Bashkir and later Kazan Tatar Muslims took to arms. The mutiny spread from the Urals towards Astrakhan and Kazan. In 1708, the vice-governor of the Kazan Province, N. Kudryavtsev, wrote to Peter the Great saying: The Bashkir revolt continues, and many Tatars of the Kazan district have joined in. They have already taken under their sway

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The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears many lesser towns beyond the Kama River, as well as laying siege around the royal village of Elabuga. They have burnt down the township of Zainsk 200 miles from Kazan, and slaughtered or taken prisoner all its defenders. The rebels persuade other Tatar and Chuvash dwellers of the district in that the Russian troops are being sent against them on the orders of the Russian entrepreneurs themselves, without your royal endorsement. They call others to destroy all Russian people as they are the fellow believers of those entrepreneurs, and amass great men force in order to march on Kazan.

The mutiny was ®nally suppressed, but nothing relating to their wellbeing and freedom of conscience was resolved for the Muslims of the area. There was a continuing ¯ight of Kazan Tatars to the steppe and mountain lands of the Bashkirs away from the Russian Orthodox persecution. In 1735±41 another large revolt took place, this one called the Akai-Kusyum uprising, following the suppression of which the area soon (in 1755) became engulfed in mutiny under the leadership of Batyrsha. This revolt is interesting, because, from the outset, it took on the appearance of a religious, rather than an economic war. This Batyrsha was a mullah of great learning. In his proclamations, he clearly stated that his uprising was, in fact, a Jihad against the Russian Orthodox authorities, a Jihad, which he hoped to expand to encompass the entire Muslim world of his time. In 1775, Batyrsha appealed to his fellow believers in these words: Some of those who call themselves Muslims have become one with the in®del Russians and allowed the troops of those in®del's to stay in their houses. Other Muslims who want to live in the tradition of their fathers and grandfathers, do not want to live under in®del Russian command any more . . . My faithful friends! Let us start to ®ght those in®del Russians, let us drive them out of our land, so that we can once again build in our own townships mosques and schools in order to reinforce and empower our true faith.

This and other precious historical documents are contained in a rare and valuable book entitled The History of Tataria in Documents and Materials published in 1937 in Moscow. Considering that 1937 was the year when the Stalin purges and mass persecutions were at their 306

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height, the fact that many documents contravening the of®cial communist version of the Russian history were compiled in one book, present yet another enigma of the troubled Russian history. This book alone contains ample evidence of numerous injustices of a religious, political or economic nature committed by the Russian authorities in the lands of the Russian Muslims. How, after that, the Russian nation was supposed to be the greater benign brother of all other nations of the USSR, another paradox of the inconsistent Soviet ideology. The book, as many others, was later removed from circulation. It is believed that the uprisings of the local population against the anti-Muslim tyranny during the ®rst half of the eighteenth century cost up to 40,000 Muslim lives. Yet any troubles which these uprisings might have brought to the Russian authorities proved to be relatively minor in comparison with the massive participation of the Kazan Tatars, Bashkirs and other ethnicities in the famous Pugachev uprising. In that peasant war, however, the Muslims participated hand-in-hand with the Russian population from the south of the Russian Empire. This revolt was so widespread and so cruel that it shook the very pillars of the Russian state. In 1774, Kazan was captured by the rebels and taken back by the governmental forces only at a great cost for both sides. It was clear that the policies should be changed and Russian Empress Catherine the Great did indeed, change the most unpopular of them starting from 1775. She granted to some Muslim murzes and abyzes the rights enjoyed by the Russian Orthodox nobility. To Muslim merchants, she made concessions in their trade with Central Asia, Persia, India and China. For Muslim industrialists many obstacles to fair competition with the Russian entrepreneurs were removed. But the main difference from previous royal rule lay in a relative, but still genuine, religious freedom granted to Muslims under the 1783 royal edict. Effectively, this edict declared freedom of conscience and abolished the practice of compulsory christening. Muslims were allowed to build not only mosques, but also religious schools at these mosques. The Empress herself visited Kazan and ordered the construction of the ®rst mosque to replace all those demolished during the notorious days of the Of®ce for Newly Baptised. She denounced the much earlier ordinance forbidding the Tatars to settle within the thirty-mile radius of Kazan, although the lands around Kazan had been inhabited by Russian settlers since 1552, and her decree was a mere 307

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consolation. Even today, there are no ethnically Tatar villages anywhere close to Kazan. Nevertheless, the 1783 and 1788 royal edicts allowed the Russian Muslims to openly profess their faith. Restrictions placed on Muslim trade and entrepreneurship were partly lifted, and Muslim cultural life also received a boost from the proceeds of international trade and manufacturing. In 1787, the ®rst Quran was published, on royal orders, in its Arabic original, an outstanding achievement in the history of Quran publications in Russia. Prior to this, Russian references to the Quran were made only as a means of anti-Muslim propaganda in the on-going struggle between Russian Orthodox and Islamic ideologies. Maxim the Greek (1475±1555), at the beginning of the sixteenth century, produced two pamphlets directed against Islam called respectively The Christian Responses to Muslims Belittling Our Russian Orthodox Faith and The Word Denouncing the Islamic Temptation. Early translations of the Quran into Slavonic, Belorussian and Polish were undertaken throughout the ®fteenth to seventeenth centuries. The ®rst was done in Lithuania by the local Tatars and the second in Ukraine, where in 1683 in Chernigov a treatise entitled Al Quran of the Mahomet, destroyed and reduced to nothing was produced by I. Galyatovsky, the Rector of the KievMogilev Orthodox Christian Academy. This treatise was dedicated to the heirs to the Russian throne, Ivan and Peter, and it is under Peter the Great that the ®rst Russian translation of the Quran from the existing French translation was undertaken. This Russian Al Quran about Mahomet, Or the Law of Turks was published in 1716 in Saint Petersburg, containing the many mistakes and misinterpretations of the French copy. The ®rst translations of the Quran were meant to satisfy the growing interest of the Russian Empire towards the Orient and in no sense presented a religious reading. In 1787, however, the original Arabic text of the Quran was published in Saint Petersburg to be freely distributed among the recently rebellious Muslims of the region. As Catherine the Great herself admitted, this publication was undertaken `nor for the introduction of Islam, but as a bait'. However, the Quran was printed in specially prepared Arabic typographic script cast after the hand-writing of one of the best calligraphers. From 1789±98 ®ve editions of this Quran were published in Saint Petersburg. This relative freedom of faith also led to a resurrection of the local educational activities. Throughout the eighteenth century the Tatar 308

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scholars had to receive their education mostly in Central Asia. Now schools started ¯ourishing again on the territory of the former Volga Bulgaria and beyond, where the Kazan Tatars came to be settled during the age of persecution. The madrassas of re-appeared in Kazan, Ish-Bobinsk, Ufa, Troitsk, and the Tatar settlement of Kargala near Orenburg. Along with scholarly life, traditional arts and poetry once again ¯ourished. One of the scholars and teachers from the Kargala settlement, Gabdessalam Urai Ugly (1700±62), was also a renowned poet. His life is interesting also because of his alleged participation in the peasant uprising of Batyrshah Aliev who used to be a student of the poet. During the 1757±63 Russian±Prussian war, G. Urai Ugly was recruited to the Russian army in the capacity of a mullah, and later described his experience in his poems. He became a founder not only of a religious, but also a poetic dynasty, as his son Abelmanich Kargaly became a very famous poet in his own right. Out of such Tatar spiritual leaders-turned-poets of the eighteenth century we can also name Sagdetdin Gabdelmajid Ugly, Gabdelmannan Muslim Ugly, Nigmatulla Bashir Ugly and others. All can be considered as heralds of a New Age of a Kazan Tatar Islam characterised by renewal and recti®cation. Literature in their time was slowly shedding the archaic words, images and attitudes of the medieval poetry of the Kazan Khanate. The language of poetry became much closer to everyday speech and the everyday observations of the common people, although it still has a long way to go to the modern Tatar literary tongue. The greatest poet and scholar of this kind in the eighteenth century was Gabderrahim Utyz Imyani, whose life can also shed some light on the Islamic developments in the Kazan Province and beyond. He was born in 1754 in the village of Yanga Qadi, former Yanga Utyz Imyan (New Thirty Oaks). He received his basic education from a mullah of his native village, but then broadened his knowledge by attending half-clandestine madrassas in neighbouring villages. After that he moved to the settlement of Kargala in the Orenburg district, which was already a well-known seat of knowledge. However, his quest for knowledge did not stop there. Already a family man, he travelled to Central Asia along with his wife and children. In Bukhara he soon became a teacher himself, but then his urge for knowledge took him to other ancient cities of Central Asia such as Samarkand, whence he proceeded to the cities of Herat and 309

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Kabul in Afghanistan. Utyz Imyani returned to Bukhara in 1798. Despite longing, after all his journeys, to return to his native of Yanga Qadi, he was refused a plot of village land under the pretext that his late father, who died even before his birth, was an inhabitant of another village. So, on returning from Central Asia, Utyz Imyani had to move with his large family from one Tatar village to another until his death in 1834. The life and poetic legacy of Utyz Imyani is an ample illustration to the contemporary history of his people. He embarked upon his path during the darkest period of this history and died when the Tatar culture was again in ascendance. The well-known historian of Kazan, Professor Karl Fuks, who spent long years researching the Tatar ethnography, wrote in 1844: No doubt, every visitor to Kazan will be surprised to ®nd among the Kazan Tatars some persons much more educated than even Europeans . . . A Tatar, who does not know how to read and write is held in contempt by his fellows and is not respected as a citizen . . . This nation, which has been subjugated for two hundred years and is nowadays scattered among the Russians, has been able to preserve its customs, morals and pride so amazingly, as though it had lived separately.

In 1800, all restrictions on the publication of Islamic literature in Russia were lifted. In 1801±02 the Arabic typographic script was passed from St Petersburg to Kazan, where the ®rst Muslim printing press was opened, thus establishing the illustrious tradition of Kazan Tatar book-publishing. In 1804, the now famous Kazan University opened. For all the notable achievements of this great scholarly institution, which has contributed enormously to the cultural and scienti®c heritage of present-day Russia, the tribute of its press to Islamic culture deserves a special mention. It is known that its press (opened in 1809) was able to function as a pro®t-making enterprise solely thanks to the orders of the Kazan Tatars commissioning books of a religious and educational nature. This book publishing boosted the development of Islam in Russia to new heights, especially in light of the fact that the great majority of Islamic books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries found in Central Asia were printed in Kazan or Uralsk. The latter, as we know, is located at the point 310

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where Ibn Fadlan crossed the frontier of the area of our interest in the beginning of our story. Overall, Tatar book publishing has an old, remarkable and instructive history. The Russian Emperor Pavel the First allowed the printing of Kazan Tatar books of a secular nature on the threshold of the nineteenth century, but bringing his royal permission into practice required enormous effort on the part of Tatar scholars and laymen of urban and village origin. The ®rst Tatar printing press was opened in Kazan in 1800 by G. Burashev, and this press continued publishing Muslim books until 1829, when it merged with the competing printers of Kazan University. However, Muslim book publishing had to undergo many trials, before ®nally becoming established in the second half of the nineteenth century. The main worry was that the Russian authorities, helped by the Orthodox missionaries, always tried to remove book publishing from Muslim control. From 1829±40 Tatar publishing became the prerogative of the University, although in 1845 the publishing of Tatar books in all Kazan typographies was forbidden by royal ordinance. The ordinance was later revoked, because, without Tatar orders, Kazan publishers found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy. In the second half of the nineteenth century, in Kazan, 3,300 Tatar books were published in an overall print run of 26,864,000. There were years when the overall print run of the Tatar books was 2,000,000 copies. (In the statistics for 1913, the number of books printed in the Tatar language were 267 in a print run of 1,052,100 copies, and, in book publishing, the Kazan Tatars were behind only the Poles, Latvians, Germans, Jews and Estonians of the Russian Empire.) The Kazan Tatar media, as the forerunner of the Muslim media in Russia, went through great trials. Suf®ce it to say that throughout the nineteenth century the Kazan Tatars appealed to the authorities for permission to publish their own newspapers and magazines, yet this was granted only in 1905. Before that, only an annual calendar published from 1871±97 by the Kazan Tatar modernist reformer Qayum Nasyri ®lled the gap between the creative efforts of the Kazan Tatar literature and the lack of regular media in the Kazan Tatar language. Qayum Nasyri was a man of encyclopaedic mind, and it is to him that Tatar literature owes the creation of the modern Tatar literary language, based on the spoken dialect of Kazan. It was also he who in 1885, ®rst opened a regular school for Tatar children to learn the Russian language and secular subjects such as history, 311

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geography and arithmetic. He greatly suffered for his sustained effort from his less-educated fellow countrymen who considered it pure heresy. The teaching of the rules and grammar of the Russian language helped Qayum Nasyri in his theoretical works on Tatar linguistics as well. In his important book on Tatar grammar he wrote: `In particular in the process of teaching the Russian language I sharply felt the necessity for a book, which would expound the rules of the Tatar tongue.' This urge of the great scholar resulted not only in creation of the book of Tatar grammar, but also the ®rst Explanatory Dictionary of his mother tongue in two volumes Lezhai Tatari. It was also he who produced the rules of Kazan Tatar orthography Qavagyide Kitabet. These books played a vital role in the removal from the Tatar vocabulary of many archaic and foreign words, especially those of Ottoman Turkish and Arabic origin. The purity of the Tatar poetic language of the following decades is in many ways a gratifying result of Qayum Nasyri's hard intellectual labour. Indeed, second half of the nineteenth century was already seeing the creation of a Tatar literary language, which was being purged of the many traces of the now archaic Turkic±Kypchak Chagatay tongue of the Golden Horde. The poems of Utyz Imyani, as well as those of his contemporaries Tadzhetdin Yalchigol (1786±1838) and Abelmanich Kargaly (1782±after 1833) still possessed the ¯avour of this medieval tongue common for all Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire. But the poems of Yakov Emelyanov and Gabdeljabbar Kandaly were already written in a new poetic language much closer to the everyday spoken language of the day. Interestingly, the clarity and purity of the poetic language of both poets was due to very different reasons. Yakov Emelyanov, being a Tatar himself, was a newly baptised Christian and even a clergyman in the Orthodox Church. But his life is a good example of what was happening to those Tatars who accepted baptism and stayed in their new faith. The idea of their simultaneous Russi®cation proved very wrong. Being Christians, they were cut off of the mainstream of the Tatar Muslim culture. At the same time, the Orthodox Russian population did not accept them as fellows, as they were still Tatars. As a result, the closed existence of the Tatar Orthodox communities produced a very peculiar culture, in which the most ancient folk arts and customs of the Tatars became preserved, as they were before their bearers became baptised. 312

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In this respect, the language of the Christened Tatars is one of the purest Tatar dialects there is. Strange as it may seem, except for religious matters, it is less effected by everyday Russian vocabulary, than the Tatar tongue of present-day Tatar Muslims. The Tatar poems of the modern Orthodox Christian poet Grigory Vasilyev are a good illustration of this phenomenon. As for Gabdeljabbar Kandaly, he was born to a family of mullahs in 1797 in the village of Old Kandal in the Samara province, where his grandparents came to be settled after leaving the gloomy atmosphere of religious persecution in the former Kazan Khanate. He, as was customary, received his initial education from his father, after which his path of a student took him to many Tatar madrassas of the region between the Volga River and Urals. G. Kandaly was a man of great wit and a somewhat impulsive character, a born rebel against everything which he considered to have outlived its usefulness. In this way, he engaged in arguments with his teachers and fellow students, so that he could not stay for long in any school of his ever-changing choice. He wrote a lot of satirical poems against Tatar Ulama and was famous for his improvisations. Upon returning to his native village in 1824, he took over from his father the duties of a local mullah, for which purpose he ®rst had to sit exams in the newly established Muslim Spiritual Board in Ufa. His life as a mullah was also complicated by his continuous disagreements with the rich locals, and his freethinking and expressive behaviour earned him fame as a troublemaker. The most annoying gossip and rumours always surrounded him. His activities became a focus of many investigations by the spiritual and stately authorities. But he had friends as well. One of them, having built a second mosque in the village, offered Kandaly the position of imam over there. Besides, from time to time the poet had to take positions in other villages as well. Moreover, he had to spend to years in jail, although the reason for his imprisonment is not known. G. Kandaly, this ®rst enfant terrible of Tatar poetry, became known not only for his bitter satire, but also, principally, for the most beautiful and expressive love poems ever written in the Tatar language. He died in 1860, broke and broken-hearted, ridiculed by the ignorant. But his legacy of the ®rst veritably popular poet earned him a very high position in the history of Tatar Islamic poetry. The life and deeds of Kandaly should be viewed against the background of a major spiritual change already underway among the 313

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Tatars in his own lifetime. The freedom of conscience granted by the Tsarist authorities brought about much-needed educational reform based upon the reformist movements of religious revival of Islam. Such religious thinkers as Gabdennasyr Kursavi (1783±1830) who was sentenced to death by the Emir of Bukhara for his freethinking, was only one of those who dedicated their lives to the spiritual revival of their nation along with other Muslim nations of the Russian Empire. Having escaped death for alleged heresy, Kursavi returned to the Kazan province and became a teacher in the village of Kursa. In a very short time his fame as a religious philosopher earned him many supporters and even more enemies who wrote against him to the Spiritual Board of Muslims in Ufa. Kursavi, with his strong and passionate character, was in his spiritual struggle akin to Kandaly. Kursavi's life would most probably have ended in jail or exile, but he died in Constantinople on his way to the Holy Places of Islam, aged only thirty-seven. His works were not in vain. Qayum Nasyri and another Islamic philosopher of the age, Shigabutdin Mardzhani, proceeded to develop his thoughts, trying to introduce into the Tatar school totally new ideas, which might have been presented as secular, were it not for the conviction of their originators that these ideas had always been inherent in Islam itself. However, it is with sadness that we must mention that all the achievements of the Islamic revival were frequently hindered by the of®cial Ulama, which often served as a tool in the hands of the Russian authorities. This Ulama reappeared on the scene of Russian Islam after the establishment in 1789 of the Muslim Spiritual Board in the city of Orenburg. It was this Ulama who helped the Russian authorities which would have preferred to keep Muslims entrenched in medieval dogmatism and ignorance, not allowing them to follow the path of Islamic enlightenment. With the Imperial decree on Muslim freedom of conscience of 1788, the `Winter of Islam' essentially ended and a new era dawned for Russian Islam. This era characterised, by the so-called Renewal, or Jadid Movement, which started in the nineteenth century, had its own heroes and villains, and may be a subject for another book. However, writing about the father of the Jadid Movement, the Crimean entrepreneur Ismail Gasprinskyi, Jacob M. Landau states in his book Pan-Turkism: `He fought simultaneously against two powerful adversaries: the Russian government and the Muslim mullahs.' 314

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In their book Essays on Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism in Russia, A. Arsharuni and H. Gabidullin also wrote: Reactionary mullahs, leading this movement (that of Qadimism as opposed to Jadidism. R.B.), exposed the supporters of `Jadidism' as transgressors against the pillars of Islam, the enemies of faith and rebels undermining not just religion, but the Government as well . . . The most faithful supporter of the government was, by all means, the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Board and thousands of its imams by decree scattered in the cities and numerous Tatar villages. Mufti ± the head of the Spiritual Board ± was appointed by the decree of the Tsar out of the persons well known to the government, persons politically correct and faithful to the political regime. The Mufti was subordinate to the Minister of Interior and ful®lled his commands. Institutes of Muftiyyats and imams by decree served as convenient tools for in¯uencing the Tatar population in the way most desirable by the Russian Tsarism.

Indeed, the archives of the tsarist Third Department of the Ministry of Interior and Jandarmerie abound with both open and secret reports by the mullahs trying to stop any sign of any development in the ®eld of Islam undesirable to them. This mainly applies to any attempts to broaden the horizons of Islamic education relative to those of Russian and, moreover, European standards of the day. Such reports the author of this article often encountered while working in the archives of the Jandarmerie Board of Orenburg. The servile style and characteristic illiteracy of these reports expose their writers as sel®sh and extremely ignorant people. Returning to the question of the Muslim Spiritual Board, or Supreme Muftiyyat of Russia, one cannot fail to notice its discrepancy with the natural system of the Russian Islamic leadership which evolved through the centuries of oppression. Basically, it was designed by the Russian government precisely with the aim of countering this natural leadership. The very system of Muftiyyat was copied from the Ottoman Empire. As S. Marzhani wrote: In the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), there are learned people at the level of military Qadi of Greece, military Qadi of Anatolia and military Qadi of Iran and, above them, there is one Sheik-ul Islam

315

The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears and Mufti. Similar to this, in this country, three Qadis out of the members of the Islamic Board were appointed and, above them, the chairman in the person of a Mufti was placed.

If, at ®rst, the qadis were appointed on the recommendation of the mufti, after the Crimean War even they were elected with participation of the local Russian authorities, including the chief of police. Mardzhani notes, that the Spiritual Board from the very beginning was placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Interior. Rather soon this body was moved from Orenburg to Ufa, which, in Marzhani's opinion, was at the time a `dark (obscure) corner' of the Earth. Marzhani, usually so mild and constrained in his writings on the politically dangerous subjects, is very strict and out-spoken, when he presents short biographies of the successive Orenburg muftis. Especially the ®rst of them, Mukhammedzhan, son of Al-Hussein, son of Mansur, son of Gabderrahim, son of Anas Al Jabali Al-Borunduki falls under his criticism. The unof®cial past of this person was apparently very similar to that of many other religious Tatar scholars. His father, Mansur, was the ®rst of the Volga Muslims to be educated in Bukhara, Mardzhani claims, and the mufti-to-be was schooled in his native village of Borunduki and then moved to the village of Kargala, whence he was later expelled by the Russian authorities. Further education, Mukhammetdzhan obtained from a well-known Caucasian mullah Mukhammad son of Ali Ad-Dagectani called `Qadi Aka Akhun' and then worked among Kazakhs, Bashkirs and other tribes still unwilling to accept unconditional Russian rule. Mardzhani states: Mullah Mukhammadzhan, the Mufti, on his return to this country, succeeds in convincing the Russian authorities in his loyalty and scholarly knowledge. He takes part in subduing of Kazakhs, Bashkirs and others who would decline to live among the Russians or under the Russian rule by the means of exciting their curiosity or threats and, on this path, gets some impressive results. Finally, having returned to his homeland at the end of 1191 AH (1777 AD), he attains prominent positions and gets stately decorations. His achievements for the course of Russia are recognised as good, he receives a sword; there are even rumours, that he becomes a Russian general. After that, on his advice, or because the Russian State found it necessary, or for

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The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears some other reason, the Spiritual Board is set up and he is put in charge of this body as a Mufti of all Muslims.

Remarkable as it is, Mardzhani never mentions here any need of such a body for Muslims themselves. He says that the standing of the mufti among the religious Ulama of Russia rapidly diminishes, because: `Using his position of mufti, betraying his title of a `mullah', he amassed great wealth. People say, that, possessing some 50,000 Roubles fortune at the hour of his death, he actually passed away with this money under his death bed.' Mardzhani is also highly critical in respect of the ®rst mufti's religious erudition. He states that his knowledge was even poorer than that of the second pan-Russian mufti, of whom he otherwise ®nds very little to say. Such was the beginning of the of®cial religious establishment in Russia. Its evolution proceeded very much along the same lines of serving the purpose of supervising the activities of the Russian Muslims and blocking any sign of their natural development. Any free-thinking person being a threat not only to the established Russian order of things, but to the institution of the Muftiyyat and mullahs appointed by governmental decree, was subjected to suspicion, investigation and was restrained in his efforts as much as possible. Such was the fate of the greatest representatives of the Russian Islam: Gabdennasr Kursavi, Qayum Nasiri, Galimdzhan Barudi, Gataullah Bayazidov, Abdullah Bobi, Ziautdin Kemali, Riza Fahretdinov, Musa Bigiev, even S. Mardzhani himself, despite all his discretion and prudence in the face of the Russian authorities and of®cial clergy to whom he actually belonged. The fact, that almost all of these people at some stage held religious of®ce would indicate lucky exceptions, rather than the rule. The institution of the Muftiyyat was conceived and put into action by the Russian state in order to safeguard its interests within the Islamic communities of the country, which was being done by the of®cial clergy with the vigour of safeguarding their own position and earnings. From the very beginning, the progress and evolution of Islamic thought in Russia had very little, or nothing, to do with the activities of the of®cial Muftiyyat. The small picture of the leading characters of the Russian Islam of the nineteenth century presented in this chapter will be even more incomprehensive, of we do not include in it one personality of a very 317

The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears

different nature. In the hope that a time will come for a whole book on the developments of Russian Islam of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we cannot but brie¯y mention here the founder of a peculiar Su® sect, Bahavetdin Vayisov (1819±93). He somehow falls outside the mainstream of Islamic development of the Russian Muslim leadership, either authorised or unof®cial, if only because he tried to pursue his spiritual goals through open rebellion and ensuing violence. He started to broaden his ®eld of preaching by creating, in 1862, the peculiar `God's regiments' consisting of 99 commanders, 999 scholars and 9,999 privates. He himself appropriated the title Sardar, or Supreme Commander. His main idea was to restructure the entire Muslim community along the lines of these `God's regiments', because, he argued, the Ummah as it stood, was corrupted by the authorised mullahs and muftis. Islam, in his view, required puri®cation, which could be achieved only by returning to the primeval purity of the faith. As such, this concept was nothing new ± this ideology was spreading already through the entire world of Islam from its most rigid Wahhabi wing to the emerging Ahmadiyya teaching. But the means by which Vayisov tried to achieve his goal were much closer to the means and methods of the present-day militant groups of Islam. He forbade his followers to obey the local administration acknowledging as the authority only the Russian Tsar himself. Therefore his followers were prohibited from paying taxes, soldiering, giving alms and Zakaat to the of®cial Ulama. He went to the lengths of banning, among his supporters, any participation in trade and manufacturing activities, stating that any such entrepreneurship `corrupts the morality' of Muslims. A Kazan Tatar by origin, he also proclaimed his direct descent from the Bulgar kings of old, and therefore started to struggle against the very name `Tatars' for his nation. He thus initiated the `Bulgar' movement for re-naming the nation as Volga Bulgars, which is found in Kazan Tatar politics even today. His policies and teachings, however, very soon put him into disrepute among Kazan Tatar Muslims as well as, understandably, the Russian authorities. At the height of his activity, only about 500 people joined his `God's Regiment'. For disobeying the authorities, `subversive' publishing activities and refusal to pay taxes Vayisov was later arrested. His headquarters were stormed, his followers arrested, tried and exiled to Siberia. 318

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Vayisov himself was declared insane and in 1882 died in a madhouse. So much for the end of a would-be reformer who tried to achieve his objectives through militant means more peculiar to Caucasian Muslims and so alien to mainstream Islam in Russia. The banner of Vayisov's movement and the call for the re-establishment of the name of Volga Bulgars among Kazan Tatars was further carried into the twentieth century by his son Gainan Vayisov who later fought alongside the Russian and Tatar Bolsheviks, but this is a different story. As for Vayisov, his activities and revolutionary mood could be more understandable against the general background of the Russian Islam on the eve of the twentieth century, as he lived and acted during the last major wave of religious persecution by the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian authorities of the Kazan Province. Yet again, Russian Orthodoxy was compulsorily foisted onto the Muslim population, and again the Russian troops came, along with Christian missionaries, into the Muslim villages. Revolts and larger uprisings in 1879±79 became the order of the day. Some modern villages in Central Turkey up to now have their original Kazan Tatar names, because their entire population was forced to emigrate due to the Russian Orthodox pressure during the second half of the nineteenth century. Some inhabitants of this Turkish villagers would tell how, for instance, the Russian soldiers would come to the village and demand the portrait of the Russian Tsar to be hung up in the village mosque's prayer hall. The refusal entailed arrests and violence. In short, the Russian Muslims once again found themselves caught between the hardcore of®cial Ulama and the Russian Orthodox missionaries as between the rock and a hard place, and the winds of the `Winter of Russian Islam' were still blowing at the end of the nineteenth century. These sufferings, however, amounted to very little in comparison to what the Russian Islam had to endure in the twentieth century under Communist rule. Here, again, it needed all its survival spirit. However, looking at the Russian Ummah today, we could sadly state that the Communist atheism of the past eighty years has done it more harm than, maybe, all previous trials of history put together. Unfortunately, the of®cial Ulama of Soviet times also had a role to play in bringing the Russian Ummah to where it stands today. Still, the author does not want to ®nish his work on such a sad note. Islam is a living faith and it is not to the of®cial Ulama that it owes any of its great past achievements nor will it owe anything in 319

The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears

the future. When, from time to time, I return to my native city of Kazan, I always go to the oldest Mosque of the city. It is named after the great Tatar religious reformer and historian Shigabetdin Mardzhani, who served as imam there from 1867±81. Alongside the mosque Marzhani's house and his madrassa still stand. It was in this madrassa that he taught a new religious consciousness to his students. It is his zealous work and the works of other Tatar educators that brought about the dif®cult confession of the Russian Orthodox missionary N. Ilminsky, who said that the educated Kazan Tatars not only did not do away with their religion, but, on the contrary, became ®rmer in their faith. The Mardzhani Mosque is built in the style of Russian provincial barocco, but the Tatar master craftsmen managed to harmoniously combine it with the old Bulgar motifs in the decoration of the mihrab and the capitals. Among his other historical works, Mardzhani also left behind his notes on the history of the Kazan mosques. About the so-called Yunusov, or `old great stone mosque', Mardzhani wrote: `When in 1766 the Empress Catherine was in Kazan, the Muslims turned to her with a request to build a mosque. The Tsarina ful®lled their request. After this they began the gathering necessary materials and the construction has started . . . The construction of this mosque was sponsored not by one person, but of 62 people who, among themselves, collected 5,000 Roubles for this venture. These are the people, who began the construction and put a lot of effort into it: Mullah Gabdrashit son of Yusuf from Kargala, Mulla Abubakir son of Ibrahim, Murtaza son of Yusuf son of Kanysh, Ibrahim son of Yadkar son of Niyaz and others. Mullah Gabdrashit went as far as Astrakhan in the search of funds for the building of the mosque. Although the ®rst mosque was sponsored by many people, as time went by separate individuals voluntarily gave funds for necessary repairs and further building. At the beginning the roof of the mosque was covered in laths, but in 1795 Gabid son of Gabdelbaki, with one other person, got the roof covered with sawn planks. After the ®re of 1797 they re-covered the mosque again. In 1833 Gubaidulla son of Mukhammedrahim covered the roof with tin. In 1860 his son Ibrahim surrounded the mosque with a stone wall in place of the

320

The Of®cial Ulama Re-appears former wooden railed fence. In 1863 when the mihrab was moved a little to the east, the mosque was enlarged and a window was put in . . . In 1885 by the efforts of Haji Zainulla son of Usman a minaret was adjoined to it and one another building was built. In 1887 Haji Valiulla son of Gyzzatulla son of Tukhvatulla, who had come from the village of Atau, and Miftakhutdin son of Valishah, a native of the village of Kushlavych, having collected 250 roubles, surrounded the landing for the announcing of the Azan on the minaret with an iron balcony.

In the above, Mardzhani enumerated the names of those who gave funds to the mosque so meticulously, as though giving a lesson in generosity and sel¯essness to his posterity. This author may only wish that his work could remain a humble tribute to all people who not only saved and salvaged the outstanding civilisation of Islam in Russia, but also paved the way for the future greatness of this all but forgotten civilisation.

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Glossary

Abbasid

The name of a dynasty of Caliphs descended from a paternal uncle of the Prophet Mukhammad Al-`Abbas. This dynasty reigned over the Muslim Caliphate from 749±50 until 1258 AD.

Abyz

In Tatar, [`elder']. The title of a religious and administrative leader of a Tatar community in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries.

Altay

A mountainous region of the southern Siberia bordering China.

Bashkirs

Ethnic group of Turkic origin living predominantly in the Republic of Bashkortostan in the foot of the Ural Mountains.

Beg

Here, a title of the nomad aristocracy of the Golden Horde and the noblemen of Ottoman Empire.

Bulgars

Indigenous Turkic population of the VolgaKama region in between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries, the ancestors of today's Kazan Tatars.

323

Glossary

Burtas

Ethnic group of apparently Finnish stock inhabiting the Lower Volga reaches in early medieval times. Presumed ancestors of the present day Mordvins of Russia.

Chirmesh, Cheremis

The older name for the Finnish Mari people of Russia, whose republic, Mari-El, borders in the north the Republic of Tatarstan.

Caliph

`Commander of Faithful', the title of the Supreme Spiritual Head in Islam.

Chuvash

Ethnicity of Turkic stock historically related to Volga Bulgars and now inhabiting the Chuvash Republic on the Volga.

Fakih

Scholar of jurisprudence in Islam

Finno-Ugric

Family of peoples and languages descending from ancient inhabitants of Siberia, to which, among others, the present day Finns and Hungarians belong.

Gulam

In Persian, `slave'. Also a title of servant at Islamic royal courts.

Hadith

A saying of or about the Holy Prophet of Islam. Plural, Ahadith.

Hana®

A follower of one of the four predominant schools of Islamic law founded by AbuHanifa.

Jadid

In Arabic, `new'. Also, a representative of the Movement for Islamic Revival in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century.

Jami

Here, a central mosque of an Islamic city.

Kazan

The capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan on the junction of the Volga and the Kazanka rivers about 500 miles south-east

324

Glossary

of Moscow. Founded circa 1005 AD, it later served as the capital of the Kazan Khanate. Khanate

A polity ruled by a dynasty of khans.

Khazar

Ancient Turkic ethnic group and the name of the empire stretching north from the Caspian Sea before in fall in the late tenth century.

Khubilai

The name of one of the great Mongol rulers of the Genghisid empire with his seat in the city of Karakorum in Inner Mongolia.

Kurgan

Ancient nomad tomb housing fallen warriors.

Mari

Ethnic group of Finno-Ugric origin; see Chirmesh, Cheremis.

Madrassah

Religious school in Islam

Mordvins

Ethnic group inhabiting lower right banks of the Volga and Oka rivers. See Burtas.

Mu'allim

Teacher and scholar of religion in Islam.

Murza

Hereditary title of Islamic nomad and later sedentary aristocracy.

Noghais

Turkic ethnic group now living mostly in the Karachaevo-Cherkess Republic of Northern Caucasus. Historically, the native people of Prince Noghai of the Golden Horde.

Northmen

Another name for Vikings, or Varangians

Oguz

Ancient Turkic nomad tribes roaming the expanses of present-day Central Asia.

Pecheneg

Ancient nomad tribe of apparently Turkic origin disappeared in the eleventh century. 325

Glossary

Permyaks

People of Finno-Ugric stock inhabiting the Northern Urals.

Qadi

Islamic judge.

Rus'

Ancient name of Russia.

Samanid

Central Asian dynasty of Persian origin

Seljuk

Turkic ethnic group, the ancestors of the Ottoman Turks.

Sheibanid

Genghisid dynasty of Central Asia originating with Genghis Khan's son, Sheibani.

Sunni

One of the two main sects of Islam. Another is called Shi'a.

Taibughid

A Siberian dynasty originating from Taibugha Khan, himself a Sheibanid.

Turkyuts

One of the ancient tribes of the Altay Turks.

Udmurt

Ethnic group of Finno-Ugric origin living in the Russian Republic of Udmurtia.

Ulama

Body of Islamic religious scholars and, later, of®cial clergymen. Singular. ulem.

Ulus

Administrative district in the times of the Golden Horde.

Uzbek

Central Asian nation owing its name to Uzbek Khan of the Golden Horde.

Varang, or Varangian

Russia-bound Viking in Russian Chronicles.

326

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Select Bibliography Quests, Meditations, Findings, Essays, Kazan, 1989 Radlov, W., Obraztsy narodnoi literatury tyurkskikh plemen, St. Petersberg, 1872 Radlov, W., Iz Sibiri (Aus Sibirien), Moscow, 1989 Russia and the Golden Horde: the Mongol Impact on Medieval Russian History, Indiana, 1985 Russian Colonial Expansion up to 1917, London and New York, 1988 Rorlich, A., Volga Tatars. A Pro®le in National Resilience. Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, 1987 Rudenko, S., Bashkiry, Istorico-etnogra®cheskie ocherki, Moscow and Leningrad, 1955 Runciman, S., A History of the Crusades, England, 1951±1971 Rybakov, A., Yazychestvo drevnikh slavyan, Moscow, 1981 Rybushkin, M., Kratkaya istoriya goroda Kazani, Kazan, 1843 Rywkin, M., Moscow's Muslim Challenge. Soviet Central Asia, London, 1982 Sabirzyanov, G., Narody srednei Volgi i Yuzhnogo Urala v panorame vekov, Magarif, Kazan, 1995 Safargaliev, M., Raspad Zolotoy Ordy, Saransk, 1960 Said, E. W. Covering Islam. How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, London and Henley, 1981 Said, E. W., Culture and Imperialism, London, 1993 Said, E. W., Orientalism, London, 1995 Semyonov, Y., Siberia, Its Conquest and Development, London, 1963 Shamiloglu, U., Disease in the History of the Golden Horde, Central Asian Survey, London, 12, No. 4, 1993 Sheman, A., The Historical Way of Orthodoxy, Paris, 1989 Skrynnikov, R., Gosudarstvi i tserkov' na Rusi XIV±XVI vv., Novosibirsk, 1991 Smirnov, A., Volzhskie Bulgary, Moscow, 1951 Snegirev, V., Aristotel Fioravanti i rekonstruktsiya moskovskogo kremlya, Moscow, 1935 Solovyov, V., Istoriya Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, Moscow, 1989 Suleimanov, O., Az i Ya, Alma-Ata, 1975 Svirin, A., Moskovsky kreml', Isskustvo, Moscow, 1956 Takhirdzhanov, G., Tarikhtan Edebiyetke, Kazan, 1979 Tatar Edebiety Tarikhi, I, Kazan, 1984 Tatar Edebiety Tarikhi, II, Kazan, 1985 Tatar Edebiety Tarikhi, III, Kazan, 1986 Tatar mi¯ary, v. I, Kazan, 1996 Tatary Srednego Povolzh'ya i Priuralya, Moscow, 1967 The Times Guide to the Peoples of Europe, London, 1994 Tatishev, V. N., Rossiiskaya Istoriya, Moscow, 1966 The Times Atlas of European History, London, 1994

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Select Bibliography Tizenhausen, W., Materialy po izucheniyu istorii Zolotoi Ordy, St. Petersberg, 1887 Tomilov, N., Ocherki etnogra®i tyurkskogo naseleniya Tomskogo Priob'ya, Tomsk, 1983 The Travels of Anthony Jenkinson, Early Voyages and Travels in Russia and Persia, London, M. DCCCLXXXLI The Travels of Ibn Battuta. AD 1325±1354, Oxford, 1971 The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian, London & Toronto and New York, 1927 Triningham, S, Su® Orders, Oxford, 1971 Tukay, G., Complete Works in 5 Volumes, Kazan, 1985 Tumasheva, D., Ahmetova F., Etnicheskie gruppy sibirskikh tatar po yazykovym i fol'klornym dannym, `Etnogenez i etnicheskaya istoriya tyurkskikh narodov Sibiri i sopredel'nikh territorii', Omsk, 1983 Urmancheev, F., Geroicheskii epos tatarskogo naroda, Kazan, 1984 Urmancheev, F., Epicheskie skazaniya tatarskogo naroda, Kazan, 1980 Usmanov, M., Tatarskie istoricheskie istochniki XVII±XVIII vv., Kazan, 1972 Usmanov, M. Utkennen ± Kilechekke, Kazan, 1990 Valeev, F., Zapadnosibirskie tatary, Kazan, 1980 Valeev, F., Sibirskie tatary, Kazan, 1993 Valeev, F., Drevnee i srednevekovoe iskusstvo Srednego Povolzh'ya, Yoshkar-Ola, 1975 Valeev, F., Valeeva-Suleimanova, G., Drevnee iskusstvo Tatarii, Kazan, 1987 Validov, J., Ocherki obrazovannosti i kulturi tatar do revolutsii 1917 goda, Moscow and Petrograd, 1923 Velyaminov-Zernov V., Issledovanie o Kasimovskikh tsaryakh I tsarevichakh, St. Petersberg, 1863±1887 Vine, A. R., The Nestorian Churches, London, 1937 Wells, H. G., The Outline of History, London, Toronto, Sydney and Wellington, Revised Edition, 1951 Yusupov, G., Vvedenie v bulgarsko-tatarskuyu epigra®ku, Moscow and Leningrad, 1960 Zabelin, I., Istoriya goroda Moskvy, Moscow, 1990 Zakiev, M. Z., Kuzmin-Yamanadi, Y. F., Volzhskie Bulgary i ikh Potomki, Kazan, 1993 Zakirov, S., Diplomaticheskie otnosheniya Zolotoi Ordy s Egyptom, Moscow, 1966 Zernov, N., Three Russian Prophets. Khomyakov, Doctoevsky, Solovyov, London, 1944 Zhirinovsky, V., Poslednyi brosok na yug, Moscow, 1993 Zhpilevskii, S., Drevnie goroda i drugie bolgaro-tatarskie pamyatniki v Kazanskoi gubernii, Kazan, 1877 Znamenitie Lyudi o Kazanskom Krae, Kazan, 1990

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