Imperial Russia's Muslims

Abstract

Imperial Russia's Muslims offers an exploration of social and cultural change among the Muslim communities of Central Eurasia from the late eighteenth century through to the outbreak of the First World War. Drawing from a wealth of Russian and Turkic sources, Mustafa Tuna surveys the roles of Islam, social networks, state interventions, infrastructural changes and the globalization of European modernity in transforming imperial Russia's oldest Muslim community: the Volga-Ural Muslims. Shifting between local, imperial and transregional frameworks, Tuna reveals how the Russian state sought to manage Muslim communities, the ways in which both the state and Muslim society were transformed by European modernity, and the extent to which the long nineteenth century either fused Russia's Muslims and the tsarist state or drew them apart. The book raises questions about imperial governance, diversity, minorities, and Islamic reform, and in doing so proposes a new theoretical model for the study of imperial situations.

Liberalism's distinctive policy for governing Muslim populations: Human rights, religious reform, and counter‐terrorism from the colonial era until the present

“…The empires encompassed almost all regions with large Muslim populations. Thus, the British empire encompassed the Indian subcontinent, along with many parts of the Middle East and Sub‐Saharan Africa (Fisch, 1983; Hussin, 2016; Kugle, 2001; Lelyveld, 1978; Reynolds, 2001); the French empire encompassed North and West Africa (Abi‐Mershed, 2010; Christelow, 1985; Conklin, 1997; Harrison, 1988; Shinar, 2006); the Dutch empire encompassed Indonesia (Ali, 2016; Benda, 1958; Laffan, 2011; Steenbrink, 2006); and the (quasi‐Western) Russian empire encompassed the Caucasus and Central Asia (Crews, 2006; Mostashari, 2006; Morrison, 2008, 2015; Tuna, 2015). In the process of invading and subjugating these lands, the empires inflicted millions of deaths on Muslim populations (Gallois, 2013; Gedacht, 2015; Geraci, 2008; ; Luttikhuis, & Moses, 2014; Peers, 2013, p. 64; Polk, 2018, pp.…”

‘United by blood’: race and transnationalism during the Belle Époque

“…By 1895, he marvelled at the number of formerly illiterate Russian Muslims who read and even contributed to the newspaper. And by the turn of the century its readers could be found as far afield as Egypt, India and Iran (Allworth : 135; Gasprali ; Lazzerini ; Tuna : 116–7; Turan and Evered ; Voll : 124)…”

“…Tuna's analysis of the advertising in Tercüman shows that expanding travel options were becoming available for Muslims in the Russian Empire (Tuna : 119).…”