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раздел ФИЛОСОФИЯ и СОЦИОЛОГИЯ
DOI: 10.33184/bulletin-bsu-2022.2.39
NOTES ON MUHAMMAD 'ABDUH'S INFLUENCE ON THE VOLGA-URAL JADIDS
© Jake Vasishchev-Perl
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA, 02138, USA.
Tufts University Ballou Hall, 1 the Green, Medford MA, 02155, USA.
Email: jakevictorp@gmail. com
The aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution saw an explosion in publishing activity by the ethnic and religious minorities of the Russian Empire. The diverse range ofpublications from the Muslim community in the Volga-Ural region revealed a deep interconnectedness with the wider Muslim world, especially between the reform-oriented Jadids and Muslim Modernists from around the globe. The author of the article explores the complex influence of the Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh and his writings among the Jadidist circles in the Volga-Ural region. The study shows the profound effect of Abduh's views on Islamic historiography and of his understanding of ijtihad and his reaction to European modernity on the ideology of the Volga-Ural Jadids.
Keywords: Jadidism; Muhammad 'Abduh; Volga-Ural region; ijtihad; modernity.
Introduction
The study of the late 19th and early 20th century modernist Islamic movements of the Volga-Ural region, commonly referred to as Jadidism, has changed significantly in the past decade or two. The most significant features of the now mainstream historiography of the period are that 1) theology occupied a much larger space in the Volga-Ural Muslim reformist (and conservative) discourse than Soviet era and early post-Soviet historiography would suggest, and that 2) Volga-Ural Islamic thought was not intellectually isolated, but closely linked with a global Islamic discourse.
In this article I will examine the role of one particular Islamic modernist, the Egyptian Muhammad cAb-duh, in shaping the increasingly diverse Islamic discourse in the Volga-Ural region over the second half of the long 19th century. I will focus specifically on the Jadidist movement and a handful of notable representatives thereof.
We see in a number of Tatar-language publications the fascination with and inspiration from 'Abduh and a number of his associates (especially Jamaladdin al-Af-ghani and Rashld Rida). The biographies of certain prominent Jadids also reveal close interaction with 'Ab-duh, his work, and his associates.
My study corroborates the latest developments in the historiography of Jadidism. In particular, I find the role of Muslim intellectuals and institutions from outside the Russian Empire to be as pivotal as the encounter with European modernity in shaping the growth of "Modernist Islam" among the Volga-Ural Muslims, and that Muhammad 'Abduh played an especially important
role in informing the Jadidist understandings of theology, Islamic history, and the path forward for Muslims worldwide.
Background
A note on terminology and transliteration
The term "Tatar" is based on an anachronistic delineation of northern Turkic Muslim peoples, based on Imperial Russian and later Soviet nationalities policy. A more accurate term for identifying the subject of this paper is "Volga-Ural Muslims," a term that is gaining popularity in recent scholarship. This includes what today would conventionally be termed "Tatars" and "Bashkirs."1 Volga-Ural Muslim communities during the 19th century existed in significant concentrations across broad swaths of Eurasia including the Volga-Ural region, western Russia, the Kazakh steppe, Transoxiana, central Siberia, the Caucasus, and western China, although they were and are most concentrated in and around cities like Kazan, Ufa, and Orenburg. I will use the term "Volga-Ural Muslim" to denote Turkic-speaking Muslims with a shared set of aesthetic and behavioral vocabulary and who speak any register of the Kip-chak-Bulghar Turkic language continuum (which today includes the standardized Tatar and Bashkir languages). Occasionally I will use the term "Tatar" to refer to the written vernacular of the Volga-Ural Muslims, or to refer to the ethno-linguistic group and their associated language in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.
For names of people, places, and concepts whose origins are in Arabic, or which appear frequently in a standard form in Perso-Arabic script, I will use a conventional transliteration to reflect the original Perso-Ar-abic spelling. In certain cases where the Russian version
1 Mustafa Tuna, Imperial Russia's Muslims: Islam, Empire, and European Modernity, 1788-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 4-5.
of a term has become conventional in academic literature, I will opt for transliteration from the Russian (e.g. Ismail Gasprinskii, not Isma'il bak Ghasprlnski; Kazan not Qazan).
Historical and ideological background
The Turkic inhabitants of the region around present-day Kazan, the Bulghars, converted to Islam following the 8th century Arab campaigns.2 The Kazan Tatars, as they came to be called, were incorporated into the Russian Empire following the 1552 siege of the Kazan Khanate by Ivan IV (the Terrible).3
During Russia's rapid expansion into Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Russian Far East in the 19th century, the Volga-Ural Muslims often proved instrumental as colonial intermediaries due to their linguistic and religious connections to many of the newly conquered peoples.4 Indeed, through the 19th century "the Russian trade with Central Asia and China had long been dominated by Muslims from the Volga basin, people who are today called Tatars."5 The same period saw a disruptive flux in Islamic discourse in the Volga-Ural region, especially as Russian state institutions began to replace shari a as moderators of everyday life for Volga-Ural Muslims.6
Early Volga-Ural Islamic reformers of the 19th century, including Abu Nasr Qursawi and Shihab al-Din Marjani, set the stage for the emergence of Jadidism, broadly understood to be a collection of social, intellectual and cultural reforms spanning Muslim societies in the Russian Empire.7 I subscribe to the definition of Jadidism as the 19th and 20th century "revolution in the intellectual history of Muslims in the Russian Empire that prepared them for the social changes of the New Age."8 Jadidism took many forms, with prominent centers in Central Asia and the Volga-Ural region.9 Here I will only discuss the Volga-Ural case.
We have plentiful evidence to suggest Volga-Ural Muslim participation in a global discourse of Islamic reform based on travel accounts, circulation of texts, and personal encounters. A great number of Volga-Ural Muslim journals published biographical pieces on cAb-duh and referred to the society and journal founded by cAbduh and al-Afghani, al- Urwah al-wuthqa.w
2 Azade-Ay§e Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience (Stanford, 1986), 6.
3 Rorlich, 37.
4 Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1960), 56; Zenkovsky, 84-85.
5 Adeeb Khalid, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 63.
6 Nathan Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 287.
7 Spannaus, 238.
8 Edward J. Lazzerini, "Rethinking the Advent of Jadidism," Kazan Islamic Review 1 (2015): 132.
9 Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley, 1998).
10 Ahmet Kanlidere, Reform within Islam: The Tajdid and Jadid
Ideology
Even a brief review of Jadidist intellectual output would suggest inspiration from the work of Muhammad cAbduh. In particular, Jadidist discourse was characterized by notions of civilizational decline, a need to adopt Western sciences and technologies, educational reform, and a path toward progress that entailed a return to the pure, original essence of Islam.
A note on print and Islamic reform
Nathan Spannaus and Adeeb Khalid have both made the case for the pivotal role print played in accelerating the Jadidist movement, largely by redistributing cultural and social authority from culama' to lay intellectual and the merchant classes and fundamentally restructuring the Muslim public sphere.11 Muhammad Qasim Zaman cautions, however, that "generalizations about the adverse impact of print on the ulama's influence and authority are suspect. Print has not heralded a 'priesthood of all believers' in Muslim societies, as the printing of the Bible in the vernacular is supposed to have done in Protestant Europe."12 Zaman's caveat is fitting here, as Spannaus reaffirms. It is a common but misleading perception that the Jadids had a monopoly on print, and that "manuscripts became the domain of conservative 'ulama'." The rapid expansion of Arabic script print technologies in the Volga-Ural region, beginning in 1800 with the acquisition of the fist Arabic script press at the Kazan Gymnasium, had an equally profound effect on reformers and conservatives.13
Until the turn of the century, the Russian government had censured publications in Muslim languages heavily. Many ethnic and religious minorities, the Volga-Ural Muslims being no exception, leveraged the political unrest of the 1905 Russian Revolution to make demands of the state to ease censorship of publications in non-Russian languages. In response, in 1905 Nicholas II extended a number of new rights to the empire's population, including greater freedoms of assembly and speech, which "[ushered] in a new political environment with unprecedented opportunities for mass politics by, and including, Muslims."14 Between 1904 and 1917, the number of Muslim journals in publication in the Empire expanded from fewer than 10 to 172, with 60 published in Kazan alone.15 To Zaman's point, the sheer diversity
Movement among the Kazan Tatars (1809-1917): Conciliation or Conflict? (Istanbul, 1997), 90-94; "Al-Shaykh Muhammad "Abduh," Al-Din Wa-l-Adab 1, no. 7 (1906): 209-12; "Al-Shaykh Muhammad
I Abduh," Al-Din Wa-l-Adab 1, no. 8 (1906): 248-53; "Al-Shaykh Muhammad "Abduh," Al-Din Wa-l-Adab 1, no. 9 (1906): 281-85.
II Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abü. Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism, 253; Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia, 9.
12 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 2002), 58.
13 Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abü Nasr Qürsawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism, 247; Spannaus, 248; Spannaus, 261.
14 Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abü Nasr Qürsawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism, 257.
15 Spannaus, 258.
of Volga-Ural Muslim publications during this period and their rather sudden appearance after 1905 indicate that the varied ideological spectrum was not so much the result of print, but was revealed and amplified by it.16 Even Jadidist ideology taken on its own was far from homogeneous. We see this reflected in the diversity in outlook of the many Volga-Ural Muslim reformist journals in publication after 1905. Certain journals dealt primarily with religious and educational matters, including al-Din wa-l-adab and Shura; others like Tarjuman (which, though published by Ismail Gasprinskii, a Crimean Tatar, regularly featured articles from Volga-Ural Muslims) sought to advance nationalist, especially pan-Turkist agendas; Añ was a cultural journal with nationalist leanings; Azad khaliq was overtly political and was the official ideological channel of the Ittifaq party, which was the main organ of Jadidist government representation; and finally, there were a number of journals that dealt specifically with women's rights and education.17
As I will explain later, there is substantial evidence of the wide circulation of 'Abduh's work, which was clearly facilitated by the availability of mass printing technology, as well as the consequent increase in literacy among Volga-Ural Muslims in both Turkic and Arabic. The near ubiquitous instruction in Arabic and Turkic (and Russian) in Jadidist new method (usul-i jadid, from which the term "Jadidism" derives) school curricula also meant that reformist circles had access to a wider variety of circulated texts that those educated in traditional mak-tabs and madrasas.18
A Note on Salafism
Volga-Ural Jadidism was characterized by a focus on educational reform and the cultural and spiritual revival of Muslims. Devin DeWeese has examined what he interprets as Salafist elements of Jadid programs based on the call for a return to a fiqh based exclusively on Qur'an and hadith, a revitalization of ijtihad, and the Jadids' idealization of the first generations of Muslims.19 Danielle Ross has criticized DeWeese's analysis as being too heavily based on secondary literature, but acknowledges the need to examine the relationship between the Jadids and early Salafis more closely.20 In accordance with the present analysis, I am sympathetic toward DeWeese's assertion.
Ross writes, "Volga-Ural reformers of the 1880-1910s, in terms of their promotion of ijtihad and calls to reinterpret the Qur'an and hadiths through the application of rational thought, most resemble the views of the 'balanced reformers' or 'enlightened Salafis' of Egypt,
16 Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience, 69.
17 Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism, 258.
18 Rafilia Gimazova, Prosvetitel'skaia Deiatel'nost' Nigmatullinykh-Bubi (Konets XIX- Nachalo XX Vv.) (Kazan, 2004), 170-82.
19 Devin DeWeese, "It Was a Dark and Stagnant Night ('til the Jadids Brought the Light): Clichés, Biases, and False Dichotomies in the Intellectual History of Central Asia," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59 (2016): 37-92.
20 Danielle Ross, Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of
such as Jamaladdin al-Afghani and Muhammad 'Abduh, with whom they proudly associated themselves."21 On the other hand, recent scholarship on the promulgation and popularity of the Syrian reformer Rashld Rida's journal al-Manar in Volga-Ural Jadid circles suggests that the Volga-Ural appetite for the full spectrum of Salafism was stronger than Ross allows. Historians have traditionally viewed Salafism as being "split into two currents: the 'enlightened' or 'modernist' philosophy of the disciples of 'Abduh versus the 'purist' or 'fundamentalist' ideology of the disciples of Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab. Historians have generally placed Rida in both currents, arguing that he drifted from the first to the second one in the late twenties when he became an apologist for Wahhabi Salafism."22
At most, the hostility toward Western modernity of conservative Salafis and Wahhabi circles resonated with Volga-Ural Jadids. At least, the reactionary Wahhabi discourse, toward which Rida was at times sympathetic, found an audience in certain Volga-Ural reformist circles. That is to say, "balanced reformers" like 'Abduh were just one of many voices from the wider Muslim world that shaped Volga-Ural debate over Islamic reform. Just as it is impossible to essentialize the ideologies of Rida or 'Abduh, it is unproductive to attempt to situate Volga-Ural Jadidism in the exclusive intellectual domain of a particular Muslim reformer. Moreover, it is imperative to bear in mind that the Ottoman-Jadid influence was not unidirectional. As Roy Bar Sadeh notes, Jadids in the Volga-Urals had an "active role ... in shaping al-Manar's publications on the Russian Empire" and generally contributed to the dynamic reformist discourses in Cairo, Istanbul, India and elsewhere.23
Shihab al-Dln MarjanI
In the beginning of his chapter on Volga-Ural theological reform, Ahmet Kanlidere cites the Volga-Ural Muslim historian Hadi Atlasuf (Khadi Atlasov), who in 1915 wrote:
"There was a need for a person who would say 'let there be salvation!' and awaken the Muslim world which was deprived of all aspects of political, economic, scientific and civic life. Although religious mujaddids such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim appeared, their ideas fell on deaf ears and their views had no effect. There was an urgent need for a Muslim 'Luther' in order to save the Muslim world, but whatever the reason was, no such person appeared until... the 'Muslim Luther',
Imperial Russia (Bloomington, Indiana, 2020), 173.
21 Ross, 173.
22 Leor Halevi, Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida, 1865-1935 (Columbia University Press, 2019), 244.
23 Roy Bar Sadeh, "Between Cairo and the Volga-Urals: Al-Manar and Islamic Modernism, 1905-17," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21, no. 3 (2020): 530.
mujaddid Marjani, appeared among the northern Muslims, at the end of the thirteenth century [of the Muslim calendar]."24
The fixation on the need for a mujaddid, or reformer, and the comparison of such a mujaddid to Martin Luther and of tajdid with the Protestant Reformation are recurring themes throughout much of the Islamic modernist discourse worldwide, including the works of cAbduh.25 Similarly, Volga-Ural Muslim reformers and some of 'Abduh's closest disciples tended to admire and almost mythologize the medieval jurist and theologian Ibn Taymiyya as a champion of the values of early Muslims and of criticism or outright condemnation of the science of kalam (Islamic scholastic theology).26
Here I must point out that I am not claiming that 'Abduh was the origin of these ideological trends among the Volga-Ural Jadids. Marjani produced the bulk of his work onfiqh and theology more broadly, before 'Abduh had published his magnum opus The Theology of Unity (1897) or founded al- Urwah al-wuthqa (1884).27 If one were to try tracing the genealogy of these views on kalam, ijtihad, and reformation among the Volga-Ural Jadids, it would be easiest to trace it back to Marjanl and, by extension, Abu Nasr Qursawi, his intellectual prede-cessor.28 With this in mind, I will try to use 'Abduh as a prime example of a global Islamic discourse, with individual scholars independently converging on similar doctrines. I hope to demonstrate cases where Abduh was, if not a catalyst for, then at least the conduit through which the Jadids galvanized certain tenets of their ideology.
'Abdullah Bubi
In the strictly theological sense, 'Abdullah Bubi probably mirrors 'Abduh more closely than any other Volga-Ural Jadid. His essay Is the Period of Ijtihad Over or Not? is a representative example of the local Volga-Ural dialectic of taqlid (conformity to precedent) and ijtihad (rational religious interpretation), which reveals striking similarities to that found in The Theology of Unity. In the introduction to his translation of The Theology of Unity, Kenneth Cragg notes that "taqlid, or bondage to the past, ... was 'Abduh's most persistent object of attack"29 Similarly, Bubi criticizes the followers of taqlid harshly. He cites a passage of Qur'an dealing with those who have lost their love for God: "When it is
said to them, 'Follow what God has revealed,' they reply: 'No, we will follow only what our fathers practiced' [Sura 2, Verse 170]." Bubi continues, "This verse tells us that all who favor the path of taqlid are in the wrong, because in seeking the truth they do not look for any proof from those they follow."30
Like Musa Jarullah Bigiev, whom I will discuss later in more detail, Bubi ascribes the historical decadence of the Muslim world to Muslims' divergence from the path of God. However, Bubi makes an explicit link between this decline and the reliance on taqlid:
"The scholars of the people of the book changed the scriptures, and with their various interpretations they moved away from divine rules... Thus, their religion moved away from its bases and became corrupted... Also, we are not aware that we deserve the saying of the Prophet: ' [Unfortunately,] you will obey your predecessors.' We never remember that these verses show the wrongfulness of taqlid, and that the Muslims of the early period of Islam agreed upon this matter."31
Bubi, like 'Abduh, was a critic of division among the madhhabs, associating the division of the four main Sunni legal schools with divergence from the essential, unified, original, and simple form of Islam with divine revelation at its core.32
In the foreword to his 1911 translation of The Theology of Unity into (Tatar) Turkic, Bubi proposes why reformers continued to reject ijtihad in matters of theology. After observing the confusion and doubt that took hold of madrasa students trying to make sense of the myriad and often conflicting opinions in the "old books of doctrine," Bubi proposes the use of The Theology of Unity as a model for a comprehensive, simplified textbook on Islamic doctrine. In the same foreword, Bubi also calls for a simplification of fiqh and again criticizes the divisiveness of the madhhabs.33
Citing Bubi's own writing on 'Abduh in the journal Haqiqat, Danielle Ross notes that "Bubi's views on using human reasoning to reinterpret the Qur'an and striving to bring happiness (sa adat) to Muslim society were heavily influenced by Muhammad 'Abduh. Bubi also cited Ottoman liberal reformer and writer Ahmed Midhat as an important influence. Like 'Abduh, Bubi promoted ijtihad as a tool for adapting Islam to the conditions of the twentieth century and restoring the
24 Kanlidere, Reform within Islam: The Taj did and Jadid Movement among the Kazan Tatars (1809—1917): Conciliation or Conflict?, 57.
25 Muhammad 'Abduh, The Theology of Unity, trans. Ishaq Musa'ad and Kenneth Cragg, 1966, 149-50.
26 Muhammad Rashld Rida, "Renewal, Renewing, and Renewers," in Modernist Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman, trans. Emad Eldin Shahin, 2002, 77; Rizaeddin bin Fakhreddin, "Ibn Taymiyya," in Modernist Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman, trans. Ahmet Kanlidere, 2002, 238; 'Abduh, The Theology of Unity, 30.
27 Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience, 50;
Muhammad 'Abduh, "Laws Should Change in Accordance with the
Conditions of Nations and The Theology of Unity," in Modernist
Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman, trans. Ishaq
Musaad and Kenneth Cragg, 2002, 50.
28 Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience, 51.
29 'Abduh, The Theology of Unity, 10.
30 Abdullah Bubi, "Is the Period of Ijtihad Over or Not?," in Modernist Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman, trans. Ahmet Kanlidere, 2002, 234.
31 Bubi, 234-35.
32 Bubi, 233; Bubi, 236; 1 Abduh, The Theology of Unity, 38-39.
33 Ross, Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia, 186; Muhammad 'Abduh, Tawhid, trans. 'Abdullah Bflb! (Kazan: Elektro tip, "URNEK," 1911), 2-4, https://darul-kutub.com/uploads/books/fi94824b683289871d348849689a830e72f 1dccf.pdf.
strength and unanimity that had characterized the early Muslim community."34
A contemporary of Bubi, Dhakir al-Qadirl, who also studied in Cairo, went as far as claiming that The Theology of Unity "was the only textbook appropriate for teaching Islamic doctrine to early twentieth-century students." Al-Qadin made this claim in the foreword to his own textbook Lessons in the Science of Speculative Theology, which he published in 1910, the year before Bubi's translation of The Theology of Unity, and which he wrote with the intention of it being used as a companion for students reading The Theology of Unity in Ara-bic.35 This suggests that not only was there a demand for access to 'Abduh's work, but also that his work was already widely circulated among the 'ulama' and madrasa students in the early 20th century.
Rida'addln FakhraddIn
One of the few Volga-Ural Muslim reformers who had studied exclusively within the Volga-Ural region (the majority of earlier scholars studied at madrasas in Bukhara or other intellectual centers of Transoxiana, and his contemporaries tended to study in Istanbul, Cairo, and the Hijaz),36 Rida'addin Fakhraddin was co-editor of the newspaper Waqt,37 and published the journal Shura, which remained in print longer than any other Tatar-language journal of the era. An accomplished journalist and theologian, he was also appointed as mufti of European Russia from 1921 until his death in 1936. He wrote a number of biographies of figures in Islamic intellectual history whom he admired, ranging from Ibn Taymiyya to Jamaladdin al-Afghani.38
In the conclusion to his biography of Ibn Taymiyya, Fakhraddin reiterates the narrative of Muslim decline that began in the Middle Ages and the Christian assumption of Muslims' place in history as followers of the true Islam, namely following the Protestant Reformation.39
A number of historians, including Azade-Ay§e Rorlich, argued that Fakhraddin's "thought developed under three equally important influences: Merjani; the newspaper Terjuman, published by the pan-Turkist Crimean intellectual Ismail Gasprali; and Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, whom [Fakhraddin] met in St. Petersburg. Evidence suggests there was yet another influence: the Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abduh."40 Since Rorlich published her history of the Volga Tatars in 1986, 'Abduh's direct impact on Fakhraddin and a number of other reformers has begun appearing in the mainstream intellectual history of the Volga-Ural Muslims.41
In contrast to 'Abduh, Fakhraddin and his contemporaries in the Volga-Ural region had grown up in a society that was largely integrated into European Russia and formed a religious minority in a Western, Christian state. The distinct relationship between Volga-Ural Muslims and Christian Europe meant that their reaction to Western modernity and the shape that Islamic reform movements took were in some ways anomalous among the related processes that occurred in other Muslim societies. To this point, Stéphane Dudoignon points out in his revealing study on the circulation of al-Manar among Volga-Ural Muslims and what Dudoignon finds to be something of an ideological parallel, Shura:
"For the moment, our first reading of the Sura as an echo to al-Manar has suggested to us that, for early twentieth-century Muslim spiritual leaders of European Russia, modernization, and even the transition from umma to nation, did not necessarily go with or through secularization. It could even mean the contrary, a modernization through Islamization (or re-Islamization), to the extent that the laws and regulations of the Russian Empire offered no real satisfactory alternative. Although the role of the colonial powers should not be overestimated in the history of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the case of the Sura and of its understanding of al-Manar shows us in which way and in which measure the long-lasting domination of a Christian state with a policy of confessional discrimination could orient the development strategy of an Islamic minority."42
Mflsa Jarullah Bigiev
Musa Jarullah Bigiev may be the best example of direct ideological influence from 'Abduh, especially in their shared approach to the historiography of Islamic civilization and the path forward. While studying in Egypt, Bigiev became disillusioned with the quality and style of education in Egyptian institutions, and so opted to take private lessons with scholars of fiqh and hadith specialists. It is likely, though not certain, that Bigiev met 'Abduh personally in this context, but without a doubt he was intimately engaged in 'Abduh's intellectual milieu.43
Using a linear model of history not dissimilar from that of Marx, Bigiev asserts a process of progress and stagnation of Muslims on a civilizational scale. He saw the Protestant Reformation as the event that set Christen-
34 Ross, Tatar Empire: Kazan 's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia, 183.
35 Ross, 187.
36 Spannaus, Preserving Islamic Tradition: Abu. Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism, 243.
37 Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience, 54.
38 bin Fakhreddin, "Ibn Taymiyya," 238.
39 bin Fakhreddin, 240.
40 Rorlich, The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience, 54.
41 Kanlidere, Reform within Islam: The Tajdid and Jadid Movement among the Kazan Tatars (1809-1917): Conciliation or Conflict?; Ross, Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia.
42 Stéphane A Dudoignon, "Echoes to Al-Manar among the Muslims of the Russian Empire: A Preliminary Research Note on Riza al-Din b. Fakhr al-Din and the Sum (1908-1918)," in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World, ed. Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao, and Kosugi Yasushi (Routledge, 2006), 106.
43 Ahmet Kanlidere, Kadimle Cedit Arasinda: Musa Cârullah: Hayati - Eserleri - Fikirleri (Istanbul, 2005), 31.
dom on the path toward progress and prepared Christian culture to usher in the modern age.44 Like Bubi, he lamented the fraught divisions among the Sunni madhhabs.45
One interesting point in Bigiev's essay Why Did the Muslim World Decline While the Civilized World Advanced? is the parallel between 'Abduh and Bigiev's inclinations with regard to aesthetic values. Bigiev writes, "What we need today is to restrict our literature to serious works; to adopt with all our strength what we need from the civilized world, such as science, education, and industry; to put aside plays and novels; to educate our children with the spirit of trade, agriculture and activity. In my opinion, this alone is the path to salvation and the road to progress."46 He rejects the artistic and leisure components of European culture, selectively identifying what he sees as the useful elements of Christian European civilization. This contradicts the perception of Islamic modernists' wholesale adoption of European values, articulated in an Islamic framework. 'Abduh offers a similar set of aesthetics and ethics in The Theology of Unity.41 This parallel serves as evidence toward Nathan Spannaus's argument that modern historiography still (problematically) likens "Modernist Islam" to secularism and a Eurocentric understanding of modernity.48
This is not to say that many Muslims did not put European conceptions of progress on a pedestal. The scramble for Muslims to adopt European modes of modernity was well underway when 'Abduh was growing up in Egypt. 'Abduh's unique contribution to this dynamic was imbuing the modernization of Muslims with a pan-Islamist and rational theological flavor.49 We see echoes of this novel approach to "modernizing" Islamic society across the spectrum of Volga-Ural Jadidist discourse.
Conclusion
It is hard to deny that Muhammad 'Abduh had anything short of a fundamental impact on the intellectual output of Volga-Ural Muslim Jadids. This is not to say that 'Abduh had a monopoly on intellectual influence in Volga-Ural reformist circles. Rather, 'Abduh functioned as something of an intellectual lightning rod for reform-minded Muslims across the globe in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the Volga-Ural case in particular, 'Abduh's work informed theological debates on the revival of ijti-had, historiography of the Muslim and Christian world, and the simultaneous bounty and risks that accompanied European modernity.
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DOI: 10.33184/bulletin-bsu-2022.2.39
ЗАМЕТКИ О ВЛИЯНИИ МУХАММАДА АБДУХА НА ВОЛГО-УРАЛЬСКИХ ДЖАДИДОВ
© Д. Васищев-Перл
Дэвисский центр российских и евразийских исследований США, Массачусетс, 02138 г. Кембридж, улица Кембридж, 1730.
Университет Тафтса США, Массачусетс, 02155 г. Медфорд, Грин, 1, Баллу Холл.
Email: jakevictorp@gmail. com
После Революции 1905 года в России резко увеличилась издательская деятельность этнических и религиозных меньшинств Российской империи. Разнообразный спектр публикаций мусульманского сообщества Волго-Уральского региона выявил глубокую взаимосвязь с более широким мусульманским миром. Такие связи были особенно заметны между ориентированными на реформы джадидами и мусульманскими модернистами со всего мира. В этой статье исследуется комплексное влияние египетского реформатора Мухаммада Абдуха и его работ на джадидские круги Волго-Уралья. Это исследование проявляет глубокое влияние взглядов Абдуха на исламскую историографию, его понимания иджтихада и его отклика на европейскую современность на идеологию волго-уральских джадидов.
Ключевые слова: джадидизм, Мухаммад Абдух, Волго-Уралье, иджтихад, современность.
Поступила в редакцию 17.11.2021.
