Edward J. Lazzerini
The following pages comprise a translation of one of Ismail Bey Gasprinskii’s (1851-1914)2 most significant essays, Mebadi-yi Temeddün-i Islâmiyan-i Rus (First Steps Toward Civilizing the Russian Muslims), published in 1901.3 The reasons for undertaking such a translation are several. First, the essay was written by the man most often acknowledged as the leader and guiding force behind the initial concerted drive to improve the lot of Russian Turkic/Islamic peoples. In this respect, it amounts to an insider’s view of what had been accomplished by those communities between 1880 and 1901 in terms of broad cultural advancement. Secondly, the work provides a convenient and concise source for an understanding of what Gasprinskii and, by extension, later cedidçiler (modernists, often written “jadidists”) believed to be the weaknesses in the Muslim way of life that required remedy, and it reveals the steps taken to overcome those weaknesses. Thirdly, the bibliography that Gasprinskii appended to his essay is of paramount importance in its own right. It is not simply a compilation of Muslim works published in Russia, but a partial listing of jadid books, essays, and treatises. For Gasprinskii, writing and publishing were fundamentally tools with which to propagandize ideas, and these works constituted a body of knowledge that he obviously felt should be imparted to the Muslim people as an aid to achieving progress. The availability of this list will provide scholars with one more source for defining the scope of Gasprinskii’s activities and the jadidist movement.
A movement for the reform and renovation of the Islamic way of life emerged among Russia’s Muslim subjects beginning in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon was initiated by an extremely small segment of the Muslim intelligentsia that had gained an acquaintance with “Western” life, made the almost inevitable comparison between the general progress and power of Western “Christian” nations and the decadent condition of Muslim life in Russia and elsewhere, and concluded that at least some borrowing from, and accommodation with, Western ideas and practices were necessary for the very survival of darül’ islâm (the realm of Islam).4
In Russia, the Muslim voices first raised in the early and mid-nineteenth century in favor of change were isolated ones. Their demands were generally limited to proposals seeking to break the grip of obscurantism on Islamic theology and introduce secular subjects into the rigidly scholastic curriculum of the Muslim schools. Such men as Abdulnasir al-Kursavi,5 Şihabeddin al-Mercani,6 and Hüseyn Faizhanov7 were all prominent during the early struggle for enlightenment, but at no time was there any effort to form ties, on the basis of a broad reform program, among the various groups of Muslims in Russia.8
For the elaboration of a well-defined program of action that sought to treat a wide range of Muslim societal problems on an all-Russia basis, we have to turn to the Crimean Tatar Ismail Bey Gasprinskii.9 Born in a small village in the Crimea in 1851, Gasprinskii carried on an unremitting attack against the ills of Russian Islam from the late I870’s until his death in 1914. At root an educator, he sought to raise the cultural and economic status of his co-religionists through a broad reform not only of the curriculum in the Muslim schools, but also of the method of instruction. His creation of a “new method” of education (usûl-i cedid) became the cornerstone upon which he constructed his own multifaceted program,10 and through his journalistic activities Gasprinskii propagandized his ideas and gave birth to what became known as cedidism.
Ismail Bey’s primary instrument of propaganda was Perevodchik/Tercüman (The Interpreter), a newspaper that he owned, edited, and published between 1883 and 1914.11 A dual language publication,12 Perevodchik/Tercüman (hereafter P/T) was printed both in Russian and in a Turkic language based upon a simplified Ottoman Turkish, but sprinkled with Tatarisms.13 One of the special features of this newspaper was the appearance from time to time of supplements, generally in the form of full-page inserts or small pamphlets.
As a supplement to issue forty (October 31, 1901), Gasprinskii offered his readers Mebadi-yi Temedün-i Islâmiyan-i Rus. The pamphlet comprises an essay of seven and one-half pages outlining the course of Muslim advances in Russia during the previous quarter century, plus a bibliography of selected readings.
The essay itself is straightforward enough not to require a lengthy explanatory introduction on my part. Gasprinskii’s prose style will undoubtedly appear naive to present-day readers, but it should be kept in mind that much of his literary output was purposefully written in this manner. After all, his Muslim audience was not composed of worldly sophisticates, and much about which he wrote was novel and unfamiliar to his readers. Gasprinskii always tried to be instructive, and this led him to strive constantly for simplicity of expression. In my translation I have endeavored to remain faithful to the original text, and wherever possible the style of the Turkic has been preserved. For the sake of clarity and the English language, however, some parts have been freely recast.
As for the bibliography, the original was very poorly done, at least by modern standards. ln most cases Gasprinskii provided the author’s name, the title of the work, and the place and date of publication. Wherever possible, in order to increase the list’s usefulness, I have liberally added information that is missing (e.g., the name of the publisher), corrected all incorrect data (the original is notoriously inaccurate in so far as dates of publication are concerned), rearranged the works by author, provided complete titles where only abbreviated ones were given, supplied data on various editions of each work, and noted the libraries outside of the former Soviet Union in which copies of many of the works have been located. The latter is provided for, at the end of each bibliographic entry, by the following set of abbreviations:14
BrM — British Museum (London)
D — Dar ul-Kutub (Cairo)
EPHE — Bibliothèque du Centre d’études sur l’URSS et l’Europe orientale, EPHE (Paris)
H — Library of the University of Helsinki
IUK — Istanbul Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi
LO — Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Langues Orientales Vivantes (Paris)
NYPL — New York Public Library
TE — Türkiyat Enstitüsü Kütüphanesi
TTK — Türk Tarih Kurumu Kütüphanesi
WL — Widener Library, Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
To both the essay and the bibliography I have provided commentaries and additional information.
Edward J. Lazzerini
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First Steps Toward Civilizing the Russian Muslims
Cedid Books — The Cedid Mekteb — Students — Women — The Theater — Charitable Societies — Publishing Houses — The Titles of Cedid Books
At the present time, despite the fact that the Muslim subjects of Russia lag far behind [other peoples], and that they share in so little of modern life, this great [Turkic/Muslim] community is not all that incognizant [of what is happening around it]; and one cannot deny that within it a revival is taking place. Granted that this revival is not imposing; and so long as you do not pay close attention, you will not even notice it. Yet it is enough for us that with some attention it can be observed, because it undoubtedly represents the beginning of progress and civilization.
Twenty or twenty-five years ago, God be praised, although a considerable number of [Turkic/Muslim] religious works were published in Russia,15 only three items dealing with science and literature were written in our language.16 Of these, one was the Bilik published by the orientalist Radlov,17 the second was Kayyum Efendi Nasiri’s almanac,18 and the third comprised the comedies of Mirza Fath ‘Ali Ahundov.19 Two of these works appeared in Kazan, while the third was published in Tiflis. At that same time, a Turkic-language newspaper entitled Ekinji [The Sower] was founded in Baku by Hasan Bey Melikov.20 Although it had only a brief existence, the newspaper cast a ray of light, like a lightning bolt, upon [long] dormant ideas.
Even though a few works such as the tale of Tahir ve Zühre (Tahir and Zühre) were available [at that time], these cannot be included [in our discussion] because of their lack of literary significance.
[Among Muslims] the state of general knowledge was regrettably pitiful. Unaware of the discoveries of Kepler and Newton, Muslim society viewed the world and cosmos through the eyes of Ptolemy, and was heedless of both contemporary affairs and the lifestyles of other nations. In short, whatever may have been the circumstances of the civilized world four hundred years ago, we Muslims find ourselves today in exactly the same circumstances; that is, we are four hundred years behind!
But now in this same Islamic world characterized by a dearth of knowledge, a lack of information, and torpor, one can discern a slight revival, a degree of awakening and understanding. This revival is not the result of some external influence, but is a marvelous, natural phenomenon born from within.
In 1881 we published an essay in Russian entitled Russkoe musul’manstvo (Russian Islam).21 In this essay we called upon Muslims to write and translate works concerning science, literature, and contemporary progress. Praise God, for we were fortunate that our appeal coincided with the intentions and thoughts of many individuals. As a result, today, some twenty years later, as many as three hundred scientific and literary works have been published in our own language. I realize that for a people numbering in the millions, the publication of three hundred items in twenty years is not a great deal. Nevertheless, compared with the three works that I mentioned above, one hundred times those three is not insignificant.
Generally speaking, the contents of these three hundred national works are such as to encourage people to read and learn.22 Among the books themselves are those that discuss geography, introductory philosophy, astronomy, the preservation of health, and other useful knowledge.23 New-method [usûl-i cedid] primers and reading books, plays, and one or two national novels make up the literary contributions.
The authors of the above are young mullas who have been trained in our national madrasas and who, through self-education, have acquired scientific knowledge. But those youth who have entered the [Russian] gymnasia and universities have not yet performed a service to our national literature. Although the mullas have taken many steps forward, these others have just made a beginning.24
There is a very simple explanation for this regrettable state of affairs. While our enlightened, educated Muslims know Russian and European languages, and while they enter various professions such as medicine, engineering, mining, and law, they are unable to read and write in their own national language! There is no educated Russian who does not read and write his own native tongue, no educated Austrian, Pole, Georgian, or Armenian who is not literate in his own national language. Unfortunately, this is not the case with our people.
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Above all else Islam makes two demands [on its adherents]: one is education, the other is prayer. As a consequence, in every place where Muslims are to be found, a mekteb is built for the former and a mosque for the latter. Depending upon the locality, they are constructed either of stone, wood, or felt cloth. Those of sedentary Muslims are found in fixed places; those of nomads are portable and travel along with them. Everyone knows that the Islamic world’s largest and most important buildings and building complexes consist of mektebs and mosques. In every village, in every quarter, somehow or other one will find a place of instruction. In Russia, at a time when education was hardly considered and there were only two Russian schools to be found in the whole country, every Muslim village had one mekteb apiece. But, if in former days these schools sufficed and were efficient, we must all acknowledge that to meet the demands of today they are in need of reform.
For several years I was in the teaching profession,25 and [during that time] I became intimately acquainted with conditions in the Russian schools and Muslim mekteb. [In the latter] the poor students would rock at their reading desks for six or seven hours everyday for five or six years.26 There were many nights when I was unable to sleep because of my bitterness and regret at seeing them deprived of the ability to write and of a knowledge of the catechism and other matters, and their inability to acquire, in the end, anything other than the talent for repeating an Arabic sentence.27
School time was being wasted. The teaching of skills, techniques, the Russian language, and other matters was [so inadequate] that a fifth-year mekteb student could neither perform his daily prayers properly nor write a simple letter. A remedy had to be found for this state of affairs. It was necessary to complete the teaching of religion well and in a short time, and then to find a way to provide [the students] with the skills, languages, and information needed for today’s world.
It was because of this that we opened a discussion of the new method [usûl-i cedid] in 1884 in Tercüman,28 the newspaper that we had founded in 1883. A graded and phonetic primer was published and a mekteb in Bahçesaray was changed over to this method and system. The visible progress made by the students of this mekteb compelled other schools to adopt the method.29 In six months, after mastering reading and writing in Turkic and the four basic arithmetical processes, the novice students had begun lessons to learn Arabic, and were reading a book that taught the elements of religion. [Their successes] reverberated in far-off provinces, and today the “phonetic method” [usûl-i savtiye] has spread all the way to Chinese Turkistan. [In the intervening period] over five hundred old-[method] mektebs have been reformed. Because the opportunity presented itself, Russian language teachers have been invited to a number of mektebs, and one hears that perfect Russian has been acquired with ease. (For example, in mektebs in Bahçesarai, Şeki, Kulca, Şirvan, Nakçevan, and other places.)
Great success has been achieved in awakening public opinion concerning the mekteb because Muslims are an alert people who, once they are exposed to something, come to know and understand it.
Consequently, I am hopeful that there will be other reforms and that the idea of change will not be reserved only for primary schools. Reform of the Arab medrese as well has been engraved on the heart of the nation. After spending eight or ten years studying grammar, which is the primary introduction to the Arab and Islamic sciences, and after being “imprisoned in the medrese” for fifteen years, the student does not know Arabic. He will have come across the names of Ghazali, Bukhari, and Taftazani, but will have had no acquaintance with the likes of ‘Ali Husayn ibn Sina, Farabi, or Ibn Khaldun.30 Consequently, it dawns on many men that this is not a very sound or reasonable way to terminate their education. Thanks to this [realization], and with the intention of renovating the educational method, they have been rather successful in reforming and reorganizing the following medreses: the Zincirli in Bahçesarai, the Barudi in Kazan, the Osmaniye in Ufa, and the Hüseyniye in Orenburg. In order to facilitate the teaching of Arabic, newly organized grammar books have been published. For example, there are the works of Ahmed Hadi Efendi Maksudi [published] in Kazan.31
The search for knowledge does not take this path alone. Profiting from the state-run primary schools,32 Muslim students are entering the [Russian] gymnasia and universities in order to become acquainted with contemporary progress and learning, and the number who complete [these schools] is increasing.
Twenty years ago, one of our people had received a university education; now such people number more than one hundred. Fifty Muslim young men who have received a [Russian] higher education and who have entered the professions of engineering, medicine, law, etc., can be found in Baku alone. There are also those who have been educated in, and returned home from, French and German universities.
It is noteworthy that there is a greater number of Muslims in the southern provinces who study Russian than there are in the inner provinces. We hope that our coreligionists up and down the Volga will recognize that they are being delinquent in this matter, and that they will endeavor to become acquainted with contemporary progress through a knowledge of the Russian language. There are thousands of scientific and technical works written in Russian, it is necessary to profit from them.33
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In a similar way the national theater is the product of recent years. Besides the comedies of Mirza Fatıh ‘Ali, which have been around for some time, several new comedies have been written and published. Theatrical plays in the national language have appeared in Baku, Karabagh, Gence, and Bahçesarai. In Baku a permanent theatrical company has been formed, and one or two plays have been translated from Russian. Armenian, Georgian, and Jewish girls serve in the roles of women. We are thankful [for all of this], but it cannot be denied that our theater rests on one leg.
One notices traces of awakening and progress among Muslim women, who have remained even further behind in comparison with Muslim men. If you want proof [of progress in this area], I can only give you a little. In the last days of winter, there appears a white flower growing in the snow; surely you know it. If this bloom is not proof that summer has arrived, it is a certain sign that the beginning of summer is near. There are some signs just like this one [with regard to the advancement of our women]. Twenty-five years ago, the respected wife of Hasan Bey (who was one of our journalists),34 was the only Muslim woman who had received an education; now there exist perhaps twenty such women. In St. Petersburg, in a women’s medical [nursing?] school, three Muslim women are studying medical science, and one is practicing medicine.35 It is well known that two Muslim women are writing, and their results are being published.36 Let them be examples and models for emerging authors. This world is one of hope; why should we despair?
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Charity, giving alms, and helping others are fundamental to the Islamic faith. Because of this, God be praised, we can say that there is no one who does not tithe or give alms and [other assistance]. Everyone contributes within his means, and thus every year a great deal of money is dispensed in this way. Nevertheless, while there are those who help themselves to these charities, there are others too ashamed to do so, and, as a result, go hungry. Being aware of the fact that there is a lot for some and nothing for others, the public has begun to rectify the situation. In recent years, to provide order to charitable activities and increase the opportunities for such projects, the idea of the charitable society has emerged. Twenty-five years ago, in all of Russia, there was only one Muslim charitable society, in Vladikavkaz. Today such societies have been established and are carrying on their tasks in each of the following places: Khankerman, Kazan, Troitsk, Semipalatinsk, Ufa, and Haci Terhan.37
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[The extent of] publishing activity and the book trade is the most concrete testimony to the degree of advancement and progress of a nation; it is the most direct proof. Twenty years ago, there were two printing presses in Muslim hands: that of the Abdullin Taş publishing house in Kazan, and of the Insizade press in Tiflis. Now there exist the Tercüman press in Bahçesaray, the press of Ilias Mirza Boragani in St. Petersburg, of the Karimov brothers in Kazan, of Mulla Ibrahim Karimov in Orenburg, and of Doctor Ahundov and Ali Mardan Bey in Baku. In all we have progressed from two such establishments to eight.
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I am leaving it up to each reader to evaluate the degree of progress and advancement that has been made in each of the areas [of Muslim life] about which I have been writing.
Following are the works which we reviewed this evening, and which comprise a part of our new [cedid] literature. This list is by no means complete; if we may, we have postponed its completion until another time.38
[The bibliography of cedid publications that was appended to Gasprinskii's Mebadi-yi Temeddün-i Islâmiyan-i Rus (First Steps Toward Civilizing the Russian Muslims) consists of three parts: Books Pertaining to Instruction, Books Pertaining to Science and Literature, and Suplementary Reading (books and pamphlets published by Gasprinskii's own printing establishme
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