BUKHARA AND KAZAN

Abstract

The history entitled Mustafād al-Akhbār fī Ahwāl Qazān wa Bulghār

(Collection of Information on Kazan and Bulghār)1 by Shihāb al-Dīn Merjānī (1818- 89), a renowned theologian and historian of the Volga Tatars, is held in high regard as the first national history of the Volga Tatars who referred to themselves as Bulghār or Muslim.2 But this work is not merely a history of the Tatar Muslims of the Kazan region. It also describes the history of Bukhara and other parts of Mā warā’ al-nahr (the oasis areas beyond the Amu River called by the Arabs who conquered the southern part of Central Asia since the end of the seventh century) and includes a wealth of references to the cultural and historical links between the Kazan region and Bukhara. For example, the biographies of mullas from the Kazan region included in the vol. 2 show that many of the mullas who were active in the Kazan region from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries studied in Bukhara, and they thus give a clear indication of the great influence that the Islamic culture of Bukhara had on this region.

When relating the history of his homeland “the land of the Bulghārs” (bilād-i Bulghār), Merjānī was unable to leave Mā warā’ al-nahr outside his historical field of vision. By the same token, when reconstructing the modern history of Mā warā’ al-nahr, one cannot ignore the role played by the Volga Tatars. An example of this can be seen in the fact that from the late nineteenth century onwards their national reformist movement exerted enormous influence on the national awakening of Muslims in Mā warā’ al-nahr (Turkistan).3 Clarifying these historical connections between the Kazan region and Mā warā’ al-nahr will be an indispensable task for reconstructing the historical space of Central Asia as distinct from the regional notion of “Central Asia” (Средняя Азия / Туркестан) established by Tsarist Russia, that is, by outsiders.

The aim of this paper, written from the above perspective, is to examine one aspect of the history of relations between Bukhara and the Kazan region, namely, the flow of students from the Kazan region to Bukhara in the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries.4 As basic source material, I have used Merjānī’s abovementioned work, a biography of Merjānī (who was himself a student in Bukhara),5 several works by Bukharan historians,6 and contemporary travel accounts,7  but I would like to mention at the outset that some studies by Tatar researchers8 have been especially helpful. Before proceeding to the main topic with which we are here concerned, I wish to touch briefly on the biographies of the mullas of the Kazan region, which constitute a basic source for this article. Merjānī first gives separate sections on each of the fourteen mosques within the city of Kazan and the mosques of thirteen large villages (qarya) scattered throughout the Kazan region, and after having described the history of the villages and mosques, he gives the biographies of

successive imams who served at these mosques. The total number of imams mentioned is 187, fifty of whom studied in Bukhara. Next, Merjānī gives the biographies of eighty-seven mullas who were not affiliated to these mosques, dealing with them roughly in the chronological order of the years in which they died. They include mullas from the Kazan region who were active chiefly in other lands and died in places such as Istanbul, Bukhara and Cairo, as well as mullas who came to the Kazan region from India, Iraq and Mā warā’ al-nahr. Among these mullas too there were more than thirty who studied in Bukhara or held the post of imam or mudarris (teacher at a religious school, madrasa). The people mentioned in these biographies of mullas all died roughly between 1790 and 1880. Therefore, not only do these biographies represent a valuable contemporary source of material on the social history of the Volga Tatars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but they may also be considered to provide an adequate basis for our following inquiry.