Volume 11, Nº 1 (2024)

The purpose of the study: Study the information of Seyyid Muhammad Riza about the Kazan Khanate.

Research materials: “Seven planets in the news about the Tatar kings”, “Umdet al-akhbar”, Russian chronicles, historical works, diplomatic documents, etc.

Results and scientific novelty. In the essay “Seven Planets in the News of the Tatar Kings” by Seyyd Muhammad Riza, the history of the Crimean Khanate and Crimean-Ottoman relations is presented in great detail. Against the background of the fact that the history of the Kazan Khanate is strongly intertwined with the history of the Crimean Khanate, the lapidary nature in the description of Crimean-Kazan relations and the history of the Kazan Khanate as a whole, looks very symptomatic. Based on a textual analysis of news about the Kazan Khanate and diplomatic documents, we came to conclusion that Seyyid Muhammad Riza deliberately “kept silent” about some important events in the history of the Crimean-Russian, Crimean-Kazan and Ottoman-Russian relations, so as not to raise “inconvenient” questions for Porta. It is important that the origins of this approach are found in the Ottoman policy itself at the end of the 15th and first half of the 16th centuries. The sultans did not show much interest in Kazan affairs and forwarded all requests from Kazan citizens to Crimea. Obviously, the Ottomans’ policy of ignoring the “Kazan problem” was determined by their aspirations in the Central European Theater of military operations. In this vein, Sayyid Muhammad Riza's narrative appears to be an apologetics for Ottoman foreign policy.

The article represents documents in the Crimean Tatar and Turkish languages, preserved among the papers of the Crimean Tatar public activist, deputy of the Second State Duma Abdureshid Mediev (1880–1912). These documents are now kept in the State Museum of Taurida in Simferopol. The archive consists of letters to A. Mediev from numerous correspondents (A.S. Aivazov; Ali A Tarpi; Muhammad Tukayev; Muhammad-bek Khadzhetlashe; Ahmed Saib Kaplan; Hassan Nuri, etc.). Among A. Mediev’s papers there are documents of other persons in Turkish and Crimean Tatar: by A. Aivazov "Reform of Islamism"; the rules for the election of the Mufti and Qadiasker by the Taurida Mohammedan Spiritual Board etc. The originals of several legal documents from the era of the Crimean Khanate are of great interest.

During a business trip to the Crimea in 1886, V.D. Smirnov studied the composition of the Simferopol archives. The trip of the orientalist was initiated by the St. Petersburg Archaeological Institute. In connection with the request of local scientists about the opening of the provincial scientific archival commission on the peninsula, the director of the Archaeological Institute I.E. Andreevsky appealed to the famous orientalist in the capital V.D. Smirnov with a request to conduct an expert assessment of the available documents in Taurida. The purpose of the study was to conclude on the expediency of opening a local academic archival commission. Extensive excerpts from V.D. Smirnov’s manuscript are provided, compiled based on the results of the trip. The document provides an overview of the composition of the Crimean archives and the value of the deposited archival papers.

After 29 October 1923, when the status of the nation as a republic was declared and its official name was proclaimed to be Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ("the Republic of Turkey"), the officials followed a defensive policy and the Turkish status became part of defensive alliances. In this sense, treaties with the USSR were signed, Turkey was part of the Balkan Agreement and had agreements with Great Britain, France, etc. An increased attention was paid to the Balkan space where the legacy of the Ottoman Empire was visible. Ankara’s diplomats appealed to the Turkish-Tatar communities that lived in the geographical area of Balkans to move to the new Turkish state. The Treaty of Lausanne and then the Treaty of Montreux were vital – in the first – for the security of the new Turkish state, but also for the states bordering the Black Sea. From political point of view, the main priority of the foreign turkish policy was to pursue an alliances policy, seeking to maintain and consacrate by treaties its territorial integrity stability in its own influence areas.

After the death of I. Gasprinsky in 1914, the newspaper “Terdzhiman” was headed by the famous Crimean Tatar writer and publicist A.S. Aivazov. Under his leadership, a broad discussion was launched in the newspaper related to reforms in the field of national education in the primary grades of Crimea. The article makes an attempt to study the processes of reforms in education in the native language, showing a number of textbooks and teaching aids recommended by the general meeting of muallims (teachers) for use in the educational process in primary schools. Attention is drawn to the fact that it was these discussions that later acquired a national scale and led to the creation of the Mengli Giray Institute in Bakhchisaray in 1917, the first graduates of which, having received diplomas in 1920, joined the national teaching staff of Crimea.

The article examines the collection of photographic negatives from the funds of the Bakhchisarai Museum-Reserve, which is the most valuable material for a wide range of researchers. It contains architectural monuments (Khan's Palace, mosques, fountains, mausoleums, residential buildings, etc.), museum staff, cultural and educational figures, residents of Bakhchisarai, villages of Crimea, museum objects that have not survived to the present day. Special attention is paid to the images of the museum's exhibitions in the 1920s and 1930s.

As Islam spread, ties with non-Muslim communities expanded. Among those who converted to Islam were also scholars who know the Torah and the Gospel. Converting to Islam, they shared with Muslims biblical descriptions of events mentioned in the Qur`an and Sunnah. One of the biblical stories, mentioned in Quran and in commentaries to it, is well-known story about “people in cave” – seven sleeping lads. The legend is expounded in sura Al-Kahf. Worship of sleeping lads, that took place in the whole Christian world over time found reflection in Islamic tradition. This story acquired with popularity in the most remote parts of muslim territory. This process did not bypass the Muslims of the Crimea, expressed, for example, in the practice of turning to the legend about the inhabitants of the cave.

The review provides a brief overview of the publication of “The History of Khan Sahib Giray”, carried out in 2023 by I.V. Zaitsev and R.R. Abduzhemilev, which serves the urgent task of studying and publishing sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate and the history of Islam in Crimea. This work, according to I.V. Zaitsev, is the earliest historical work on the Crimean Khanate that has come down to our time (it was written after the assassination of the khan in 1551 and completed in the summer of 1553) and has the character of an absolute panegyric to the ruling khan. The chronicle of Remmal Khoja covers the actual period of the reign of Khan Sahib Giray I, ending with a description of his death, funeral and a request from his daughter Nur Sultan to write an essay. The publication is accompanied by two articles – by I.V. Zaitsev ("The History of Khan Sahib Giray") and R.R. Abduzhemilev ("A literary view of the work of Remmal-khoja"), contains two texts of the translation of "The History of Khan Sahib Giray" and a facsimile of the chronicle list stored in the collection of the Library of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. The publication is provided with an indeces of names and geographical and ethnic names. This book contains not only translations of Remmal-Khoja’s work, made in two editions, but is the first publication of fragments of V.D. Smirnov’s work – in other words, this edition reflects a certain stage in the development of Russian Turkology.