«A Letter Is a Half of the Meeting»: the Mechanism of Correspondence and Book Exchange between the Russian Orientalists and Muslim Intellectuals in the Beginning of the 20th Century
https://doi.org/10.22394/2073-7203-2022-40-1-260-292
Abstract
This article deals with the correspondence between the Russian orientalists and their informants, Muslim intellectuals of the Russian Empire. It reveals the impact of the practice of correspondence on the process of knowledge formation about the Muslim regions of the Empire. This task requires the concentration on the conditions of such practice. Subsequently, it is important to study different methodologies of the explication of the meanings the main actors use in their texts. The senior generation of Muslim intellectuals were interested in Orientalists’ abilities to preserve the local knowledge and provide the inter‑generational transition. The younger generation of intellectuals were seeking new communicative methodologies to ensure further progress of their communities. These factors were the basis of interaction between different groups of experts. This interaction led to the reconfiguration of the knowledge about the Muslim communities in the modern era.
Keywords
Oriental studies,
Orientalism,
correspondence,
methodology,
Central Asia,
Volga region,
gift,
modernism
About the Author
A. Ikhsanov
Higher School of Economics University
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Anton Ikhsanov — Research Fellow, Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities
Moscow
References
1. Anan’ev, V., Bukharin, M. (2020) “Imena, kotorye nikogda ne budut zabyty…”: Rossiiskoe vostokovedenie v perepiske V. V. Bartol’da, N. Ia. Marra i S. F. Ol’denburga [“Names that will never be forgotten...”: Russian Orientalism in the correspondence of V. V. Barthold, N.Ya. Marr and S. F. Oldenburg]. M.: Varfolomeev A. D.
2. Annamuhammedow, M. (1994) “Halk göreşleriniň çeper ýazgysy” [The artistic writings of the people’s fight], in Abdysetdar Kazy. Žeňnama. Tekeleriň uruş kyssa kitaby. Aşgabat.
3. Asvaturov, A. (2005) “Knigi iz biblioteki akademika A. N. Samoilovicha v fonde ONL” [The books from the library of academician A. Samoilovich in the collection of the Department of national literatures], in 12 Mezhdunarodnaia konferentsiia “Krym 2005”: biblioteki i informatsionnie resursy v sovremennom mire nauki, kul’tury, obrazovaniia i biznesa. [http://gpntb.ru/win/inter-events/crimea2005/disk/144.pdf, accessed on 06.07.2021].
4. Baskhanov, M. (2005) Russkie voennye vostokovedy do 1917 g. [Russian military orientalists before 1917]. M.: Vostochnaia literatura.
5. Batunskij, M. (2012) Rossiia i islam. Tom 3 [Russia and Islam. Vol. 3]. M.: Progress-Traditsiia.
6. Bessmertnaia, O. (2019) “Ponimanie istorii i identichnost’ avtora v vozrazheniiakh Ataully Baiazitova Ernestu Renanu” [The vision of history and the author’s identity in Ataulla Baiazitov’s “objection” to Ernest Renan], in Islamology 9(1–2): 54–82.
7. Bessmertnaia O. (2017) “Tol’ko li marginalii? Tri epizoda s “musul’manskim russkim iazykom” v Pozdnei Rossiiskoi imperii” [Mere marginalia? Three cases of ‘Muslim Russian’ in the late Russian Empire (the 1890s — 1910s)], Islamology 7(1): 140–179.
8. Blagova, G. (2008) Samoilovich A.: nauchnaia perepiska, biografiia [Samoilovich: academic correspondence, biography]. M.: Vost. lit.
9. Blagova, G. (2012) Istoriia tiurkologii vtoroi poloviny XIX — nachala XX vv. v Rossii [The history of Turkology of the second half of the XIX — the beginning of the XX centuries]. M.: Vostochnaia literatura.
10. Bustanov, A. (2019) “On Emotional Grounds: Private Communication of Muslims in Late Imperial Russia”, Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 73(4): 655–682.
11. Çelik, Z. (2021) Europe Knows Nothing About the Orient: A Critical Discourse From The East (1872–1932). Koç University Press.
12. Daston, L., Galison, P. (2018) Ob’’ektivnost’ [Objectivity]. M.: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie.
13. Erdman, M. (2020) “Turkic Typologies: Ideology and Indigenous Linguistic Knowledge in the Work of Bekir Çobanzade”, International Journal of Asian Studies 17:127–144.
14. Feichtinger, J., Bhatti, A., Hülmbauer, C. (2020) How to Write the Global History of Knowledge-Making: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Difference. Springer.
15. Herman, P. (2019) Scholarly Personae in the History of Orientalism, 1870–1930. Leiden-Boston: Brill.
16. Heschel, S., Ryad, U. (2019) The Muslim Reception of European Orientalism: Reversing the Gaze. London and New York: Routledge.
17. Jiménez, A. (2005) “After trust”, in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 25 (2): 64–78.
18. Kemper, M. (2017) “From 1917 to 1937: The Muftī, the Turkologist, and Stalin’s Terror”, Die Welt des Islams 57: 162–191.
19. Khalid, A. (2015) Making Uzbekistan: nation, empire, and revolution in the early USSR: monograph. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
20. Kuzuoglu, U. (2020) “Telegraphy, Typography, and the Alphabet: The Origins of Alphabet Revolutions in the Russo-Ottoman Space”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 52(3): 1–19.
21. Miyazaki, H. (2004) The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
22. Morrison, A. (2009) “‘Applied Orientalism’ in British India and Tsarist Turkestan”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(3): 619–647.
23. Morrison, A. (2013) “The Pahlen Commission and the Re-Establishment of Rectitude in Transcaspia, 1908–1909”, Monde(s) 4: 45–64.
24. Piette, Albert (2019) Theoretical Anthropology or How to Observe a Human Being. Vol. 1. Wiley.
25. Reynolds, D. F. (2008) Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
26. Roque, R., Wagner, K. (2011) Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History. Palgrave Macmillan.
27. Samoilovich, A. (1907) “Turkmenskii poet-bosiak Kor-molla i ego pesnia o russkikh (etnograficheskii nabrosok)” [Turkmen poet-tramp Gor-molla and his song on Russians (ethnographic sketch)], Zhivaia starina 4: 221–225.
28. Samoilovich, A. (1908) Kratkii otchet o poezdke v Tashkent i Bukharu i Khivinskoe khanstvo komandirovannogo SPb Universitetom i Russkim komitetom privat-docenta A. N. Samoilovicha v 1908 g. [The brief report about the journey to Tashkent, Bukhara and the Khivinian khanate written by Alexander Samoilovich, the privatdotzent who was sent to this journey by the Russian committee], IRKSA (9): 15–29.
29. Samoilovich A. Po povodu izdaniIa N. P. Ostroumova “Svetoch Islama”; Dopolneniia i popravki [On the publication of “The ight of Islam” by N. P. Ostroumov; Additions and edits], Zapiski Vostochnogo Otdeleniia Imperatorskogo Russkogo Arheologicheskogo Obshchestva, Tom vosemnadcatyj. 1907–1908, SPb.: Tipografiya Imperatorskoj Akademii Nauk: 158–166.
30. Samoilovich, A. (1929) “Makhtumkuli i Khakim-Ata” [Makhtumkuli and Hakim Ata], Turkmenovedenie (12): 28–29.
31. Samoilovich, A. (2005) Tiurkskoe iazykoznanie. Filologiia. Runika [Turkic linguistics, philology, runes studies]. M.: Vost. lit.
32. Sartori, P. (2018) “On Strangers and Commensurability in Eurasia: A View from ‘the North’”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 55(1): 133–145.
33. Schaffer, S., Roberts, L., Raj, K., Delbourgo, J. (2009) The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820. Watson Publishing International LLC.
34. Shin, B. (2017) “Inventing a National Writer: the Soviet Celebration of the 1948 Alisher Navoi Jubilee and the Writing of Uzbek History”, International Journal of Asian Studies 14(2): 117–42.
35. Şen, C. (2006) Stalin Dönemi Türk-Sovyet İlişkileri (1923–1953) [The relations between Turkey and the Soviet Union in the Stalin’s period]. Isparta: Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü.
36. Tolz, V. (2013) “Sobstvennii Vostok Rossii”: politika identichnosti i vostokovedenie v pozdneimperskii i rannesovetskii period [Russia’s Own Orient: The Politics of Identity and Oriental Studies in the Late Imperial and Early Soviet Periods]. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
37. Towsey, M. (2019) Reading History in Britain and America, c.1750–c.1840. Cambridge University Press.
38. Trüper, H. (2020) Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
39. Validov, A. (1913) “Divan-i Mahtumkuli” [The collection of poetry by Magtymguly], Šuro 13.
40. Vert, P., Kabytov, P., Miller, A. (2005) Rossiiskaia imperiia v zarubezhnoi istoriografii. Raboty poslednikh let: Antologiia. [The Russian empire in foreign historiography. Recent works: anthology]. M.: Novoe izdatelʹstvo.
41. Volkov, D. (2018) Russia’s Turn to Persia: Orientalism in Diplomacy and Intelligence. Cambridge University Press.
42. Young, R. (2001) Postcolonialism: a Historical Introduction. Blackwell Publishing.
43. Iusupova, T. (2020) “Nauchnye komandirovki rossiiskikh vostokovedov v Turtsiiu, 1920– 1930-e gody: tseli i rezul’taty” [Academic journeys of the Russian Orientalists to Turkey in the 1920-1930s: aims and results], Mongolica 2: 49–53.
44. Zajcev, I., Kotiukova, T. (2020) “’Sheikh’ i ‘mugallim-ustad’: pis’ma Ismaila Gasprinskogo Aleksandru Samoilovichu” [“Sheykh” and “mugallym-usatd”: the letters by Ismail Gasprinskiy to Alexander Samoilovich], Minbar. Islamic Studies 13(3): 513–537.
Review
For citations:
Ikhsanov A. «A Letter Is a Half of the Meeting»: the Mechanism of Correspondence and Book Exchange between the Russian Orientalists and Muslim Intellectuals in the Beginning of the 20th Century. State, Religion and Church in Russia and Worldwide. 2022;40(1):260-292. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22394/2073-7203-2022-40-1-260-292
Views:
45
Email this article 