CONTACTS OF THE MUSLIMS SEEKING KNOWLEDGE WITH THE TATAR ENLIGHTENER K. NASYRI IN THE 1880s AND 1890s

DOI: 10.47026/2712-9454-2025-6-1-93-106

УДК 929.092

ББК 63.3 (29=…)

Ildus K. ZAGIDULLIN

Key words

Kayum Nasyri, Tatar educational activities, Jadidism, G. Iskhaki, Tatar students, I. Gasprinsky.

Abstract

The relevance of studying the topic is due to an increased interest of humanitarians in the problems of the impact of Tatar educational activities on the renovation processes in the Tatar-Muslim community in the late XIX and early XX centuries.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the forms of contacts between the Muslims seeking knowledge and the Tatar enlightener Kayum Nasyri (1825–1902).

Materials and methods. The methodological basis for studying the subject is made by the principles of historicism and the method of source study synthesis. Based on the results of the analysis of published sources and an archival document being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time, as well as available literature on the stated topic, the article identifies the motivation and forms of contacts between Muslims seeking knowledge and the Tatar enlightener Kayum Nasyri. The source base is memoirs and correspondence of Kayum Nasyri contemporaries, materials from the “Tarjeman” newspaper, historical literature devoted to determining the place and role of Tatar educational activities in Tatar social thought and modernization movement among the Muslim peoples of the country.

The scientific novelty lies in determining the place and the role of the main figure of Tatar enlightenment in the last third of the XIX century in the renovation movement of Muslim Tatars based on the analysis of sources revealing the peculiarities of interpersonal contacts between the Muslims seeking knowledge and Kayum Nasyri.

Results. Based on the texts of contemporaries memoirs and their correspondence with K. Nasyri the study identifies the surnames of nonresident Muslims and representatives of Kazan’s Tatar students who addressed various issues to the educator, the author of annual calendars, Russian–Tatar dictionaries, textbooks and manuals on mathematics, geometry, geography of foreign countries, history of Russia, the Tatar, the Russian, the Arabic languages and other publications; the motivation of their actions and forms of communication are determined. Three levels of communication between the Muslims seeking knowledge and the enlightener are revealed. The first level is cooperation – publication in the newspaper “Tarjeman” by its editor I. Gasprinsky of information about Nasyri’s new works, advertising his activities. The second level is consumer–oriented – the appeal of the Muslims seeking knowledge, with requests to purchase his works, for advice on various issues or to gain new knowledge (studying at his home school). This group also includes visits by people who considered the work of the enlightener and himself to be the ideal of serving their native people, in order to express gratitude and admiration to Nasyri as the author of secular works that were in great demand in modern Muslim community. The third level is friendly communication – meetings of people familiar to the enlightener, aspiring to knowledge, with the flat owner.

Conclusions. The contacts of Kazan Tatar students and nonresident Muslims seeking knowledge with Kayum Nasyri were the result of his many years of efforts to spread secular knowledge, as well as a response to his publications.

In many cases, personal communication of the Muslims, especially young people, did not meet their emotional expectations from meeting the author of numerous works, in whom they wanted to see an ideologist for service for the benefit of the education and culture development of their native people. Numerous books, textbooks and calendars of the great Tatar enlightener successfully fulfilled this task in many ways.

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About the author

Ildus K. Zagidullin – Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Senior Researcher, Center for Islamic Studies, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, Kazan (zagik63@mail.ru; ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0501-2177).

For citations

Zagidullin I.K. Contacts of the Muslims seeking knowledge with the Tatar enlightener K. Nasyri in the 1880s and 1890s. Historical Search, 2025, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 93–106. DOI: 10.47026/2712-9454-2025-6-1-93-106 (in Russian).

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