Islam and “paganism”: multilingualism and multiculturalism in the Kazan Khanate

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In 1438 or 1445, the Kazan Khanate (1438/1445–1552/1556) was formed by the former Golden Horde Khan Ulugh Muhammad and his son Mahmud. Its state structure and culture were based on the heritage of Volga-Kama Bulgaria and the Golden Horde, with significant elements of Central Asian, Middle Eastern, Crimean Tatar, and Nogai influences. Like in Bulgaria and the Horde before, the statehood of the Khanate had a distinctly Muslim character, dominated by the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, actively incorporating local customs and legal practices. This school of thought was also widespread in the Astrakhan, Kasimov, Crimean, and Siberian Tatar Khanates.

In all the mentioned states, it was specifically the Muslim clergy, alongside the Chinggisid khans and Tatars (who constituted the highest social stratum), that determined the socio-political life, as Islamic legal doctrine always regarded the state as an institution endowed simultaneously with both religious and secular authority. For example, the foundation of the judicial-legal system of the Kazan state was Sharia, whose sources are the Quran, the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, the consensus of theologians and jurists. The Quran was the primary book and, together with the Hadiths, the basis of the life of the local Muslim community, as evidenced by the constant narrative in the diplomatic culture of the Kazan Khanate Tatars – the "oath on the Quran," as well as the "Tafsir of the Quran," written in Kazan in 1508 [1, р. 340–341; 6], and the "Collection of Hadiths," compiled in Kazan in 1552 [4, р. 84].

The Muslim clergy held an honorable position in the state system of the Kazan Khanate, and the leader of this clergy – the supreme sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad – often headed the Divan (state council) and Kurultai ("assembly of all the land of Kazan"), actively participating in key processes of domestic and foreign policy of the country. The diplomat of the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund von Herberstein (1486–1566), referred to the leader of the Kazan clergy as the "supreme priest of the Tatars"; by the Russian prince Andrey Kurbsky (1528–1583) he was called the "great bishop" and "great anaryi, or amir"; and by the Tatar historian and Muslim theologian Shigabutdin Mardjani (1818–1889), based on medieval sources unknown to us, as the "chosen from the noble" or the "leader of the great" ("nekäybel-äshraf") [8, р. 9–10].

Historian Mikhail Khudyakov noted the following supreme sayyids of Kazan: Burash (1491–1507), Shah-Hussain (1512–1516), Beyurgan (1546), Mansur (1546), and Kul-Sharif (1552). He further indicated: "The head of the clergy was considered the first person in the state after the khan, and during interregnums, due to his high position, he usually became the head of the temporary government. The listed heads of the clergy, except for the last one – the son of Mansur, formally stood at the head of the state, and Burash and Shah-Hussain, in addition, actively participated in state activities, making trips as ambassadors abroad, to Moscow. The diplomatic missions they carried out required exceptional education, profound intellect, and extensive experience" [11, р. 189–190].

When describing one of the Tatar ceremonial events near Kazan in 1524, Herberstein informs his reader that the sayyid "exercises such power and honor among them that when he approaches, even kings come out to meet him, standing to offer him their hand – while he sits on horseback – and, bowing their heads, they touch (his hand); this is allowed only to kings, while dukes (and chiefs) touch not his hand but his knee, noble people – his foot, and common people (plebeians) – only his clothes or horse" [5, р. 176].

The official residence of the Kazan supreme sayyids was somewhere inside the Kazan Kremlin, near the Khan's palace, the Khan and Cathedral mosques, and their nearest country residence was the settlement of Kuraishovo, located on the left bank of the Bulak channel. In Kuraishovo, there had been functioning since ancient times a stone mosque (named after the bek Kutuch; in Russian "Kutuchev/Otuchev mosque") and a citywide cemetery, houses of the Muslim clergy, and accordingly, many Muslim figures lived there. Historian Nikolai Kalinin, remembering that "Kuraish" is the oldest Meccan clan to which the Prophet Muhammad and all righteous caliphs belonged, wrote that "Kuraish is an aristocratic clan of the clergy, from which the heads of the Kazan clergy trace their descent." However, there is a version that this settlement was given by Khan Ulugh Muhammad to the loyal bek Kuraish, "which is why it became the village of Kuraish" [8, р. 13–14]. Later, Kuraishovo became the Archbishop's settlement.

It is quite likely that the very first mention of a Kazan sayyid from the Kazan Khanate period (if we consider the year of the Khanate's foundation as 1438) – in the information about the events of the first half of October 1445 – is found in the "Russian Chronograph," compiled in the late 17th century. The source mentions someone named Said-Asan [18, р. 10], who accompanied Grand Duke Vasily II, released from Tatar captivity, from Nizhny Novgorod to Moscow in October 1445. It is not certain whether Said-Asan was a sayyid, let alone a Kazan sayyid, much less a supreme one. Thus, according to various sources, we definitively know the following supreme Kazan sayyids: Tevekelya, Kasym, Burash, Beyurgan, Mansur, his sons Kul-Muhammad and Kul-Sharif. The mention of Shah-Hussain by M.G. Khudyakov is also questionable – whether he was indeed a supreme sayyid, we do not yet know. The most recent information about acting sayyids of the lands of the Kazan Khanate dates back to 1553–1554 [16, р. 230, 239], just a couple of years before the final demise of this Tatar state in 1556.

The clergy of the Kazan Khanate had a fairly clear and branched structure. In written, folklore, and archaeological sources, there is information about supreme and lesser sayyids and sayyid-zadeh (sons of sayyids), sheikhs (prominent Muslim figures, theologians, experts in teaching religious disciplines, heads of Sufi brotherhoods) and sheikh-zadeh (sons of sheikhs), hakims (chief judges and provincial governors) and qazis/kadis (people's judges), faqihs (experts in Islamic law), mullahs (experts in the Quran and religious rituals) and mullah-zadeh (sons of mullahs), imams (theologians overseeing the work of mosques), muezzins (mosque servants, who loudly recite the call to prayer from the minaret), abizes (interpreters of the Quran), hafizes (professional Quran memorizers, who memorize it by heart), ustazes (professional teachers), danishmands (teacher-mentors, later called "mudarris"), shakirds (students of schools and madrasas), dervishes (ascetic mendicants, adherents of various Sufi orders and brotherhoods), sufis (followers of Sufi orders), and many others, who performed religious, judicial, administrative, teaching, missionary, diplomatic, and military activities, whose specific "ecclesiastical" and "secular" duties (functions), unfortunately, are not always clearly reflected in the historical materials that have come down to us.

Ownership of the primary means of production – land, evidently constituted the material basis of the Islamic clergy of the Kazan Khanate. Representatives of the clergy acted as administrators of various waqf lands (inalienable immovable property of Islamic institutions, bequeathed to them with charitable purposes and exempt from any taxes and fees in favor of the treasury), which were akin to estates from which incomes were derived. This is clearly evidenced by some toponyms from the Kazan Khanate period – for example, the names of villages from Russian scribe books of the second half of the 1560s (in Russian transcription): Alderbysh/Aldermish, Derbyshki, Kulseytovo and Kulseytovo Men'she, Seitlyar and Seitova (Alatskaya daruga of the Khanate), Molnina/Molly, Khozyashevo and Khozyasheva (Arskaya daruga of the Khanate), Abyzazovo, Akkozino, Aryshkazda, Kibyak-Kozi Bolshie and Menshie, Shikhazda Bolshaya and Malaya (Zyureyskaya daruga of the Khanate), Beksheikhovo, Beysheikhova and another Beysheikhova, Islamova, Seitovo, Khozyashevo Bolshoe and Maloe (Crimean daruga of the Khanate), Sheikh-Zade (Nogai daruga of the Khanate) [3, р. 483–499] (darugas are administrative units of the Tatar state).

By indicating the incomes received by the clergy from the land estates, it is impossible to overlook the list of taxes and duties that existed in the Kazan Khanate. A detailed list of them was compiled by Shamilem Mukhamedyarov in his candidate dissertation "The Socio-Economic and State Structure of the Kazan Khanate (15th – first half of the 16th centuries)." Among the purely Islamic taxes and duties, formed already during the period of the Arab Caliphate in the 7th–9th centuries, but having their own specifics in the Kazan state, we can mention the "kharaj" – a tax for Muslims and non-Muslims for the use of land and other property, paid in favor of the khan or another feudal landowner, as well as "ushr" and "zakat" – a tithe tax for Muslims from agriculture and trade, paid in favor of the Muslim clergy, and mandatory annual alms for needy co-religionists. Possibly, the country also collected jizya, not mentioned in the sources – a poll tax for non-Muslims, for example, local Armenian and Russian merchants, Mordvins, and "Cheremis" (Mari, Udmurts, Chuvash).

The Chinggisid khans, rulers of the Kazan state (as only a descendant of Chinggis Khan and a representative of the Muslim faith could be the ruler of the country), clearly and openly recognized their belonging to the Islamic ummah (community) and the global Muslim civilization, which, in particular, confirmed the legitimacy of their power in the eyes of the local population. This is mentioned in many Tatar oral and written dastans (heroic poems), poetic and prose traditions, and baites-songs, which often refer to the "Muslim khans of Kazan." This is evidenced by the khan's decrees, with the deepest reverence mentioning Allah and the Prophet Muhammad and containing verses from the Quran in the text, as well as the burials of Kazan khans in the territory of the Kazan Kremlin. Many Russian written sources also inform about this. Also, the poem "Mogzhiz-name" ("Book of Miracles") by Muhammad-Amin (Kazan khan or another person?), dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad, serves as one of the indirect confirmations of this. Another evidence is the text of the message from the Khan of Tyumen State, Ibak (Aybak/Ibrahim), to the Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III (1489), in which it is said: "I am the ruler of Besermyen and You are the ruler of Christians." A vivid testimony to this is the appearance of the honorary title "gazi" for the Kazan khans Sahib-Girey (Kazan khan in 1521–1524, Crimean khan in 1532–1551) and Safa-Girey (Kazan khan in 1524–1531, 1535–1546, 1546–1549), indicating "a fighter for faith," "a Muslim participating in the war for faith," "a hero, a conqueror of the infidels."

The upper echelons of the state, as evidenced by numerous written, archaeological, and folkloric sources, were also Muslim, like the rulers of the country. The renowned Kazan poet and diplomat-translator Muhammad-Yar Mahmud-haji Ugly, author of the poems "Tukhvai-Mardan" ("Gift to Warriors", 1539) and "Nur al-Sudur" ("The Light of Hearts", 1542), wrote about the history of the emergence and spread of Islam, the lives of prophets and caliphs, and other popular figures of the Islamic world [12]. The author of "Sharaiq al-Ahkam" ("Determinations of Sharia", 1553/1554) and "Siraj al-Qulub" ("Light of Hearts", 1553/1554) – works imbued with Islamic ideology and philosophy, based on the Quran, hadiths, and Sharia prescriptions – was Adnash-hafiz ibn Muhammad-hafiz, a participant in the negotiations between Kazan and Moscow in the 1550s. Popular books in the Tatar upper society of the Kazan Khanate, as reported to us, in particular, by Shigabutdin Mardjani's "Mustafad al-Akbar fi Akhvali Kazan va Bulgar" ("Treasury of News about the State of Kazan and Bulgar") and Husain Faizkhanov's "Kazan Tarihy" ("History of Kazan"), included "Kissa-i Yusuf" ("Story of Joseph", 1233) by Kul Gali, "Nahj al-Faradis" ("The Pathway to Paradise Gardens", 1357) by Mahmud al-Bulghari, the collection of baites "Shagir Bolgar Gazylare" ("Muslim Warriors from Bulgar", 14th century), the collection of hikayats "Nasihat as-Salihin" ("Advice of the Righteous"), anonymous "Badavam" ("Always Repeat") and "Kisekbash Kitaby" ("Book of the Severed Head"), and so on. Tatars often performed the Hajj – pilgrimage to Mecca, followed by the honorary title "Hajji" ("Azi"). For example, we know about the trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt of "queen" Nur-Sultan (Kazan Khanum in 1466-1486, Crimean Khanum in 1486–1519), her relatives, and entourage (more than 50 people), which she personally reported in a letter to Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow in 1495 [2, р. 10–11]. In the sources, we often come across the names of Tatars of the Kazan Khanate with the addition of the title "azi"¹. In many Tatar historical epics, legends, songs, and tales about the Kazan Khanate (for example, in dastans about Amat, about Chura Narykov, in stories and songs about the history of Kazan and Sviyazhsk, about Kazan khans and Khanum Syuyumbike, about Ivan the Terrible, etc.), "noble Muslims of Kazan", "Muslim army" fighting with the "infidels", "Muslim heroes", "Muslim scholars", etc., are constantly mentioned (see for example: [14; 15, р. 48–68]). It should be specially noted that the affiliation of the Tatars of the Kazan Khanate and their ancestors to the Muslim ummah is clearly and distinctly traced throughout the entire folklore and literature of the Tatars of the feudal period (see for example: [13]).

Medieval Tatar folklore was also deeply imbued with the philosophy of Islam. During the Kazan Khanate period, strictly religious compositions became widely spread in the popular environment, their genre composition being very rich – these are some of the legends and myths mentioned above (for example, mawlid about the "messenger of Allah and the seal of prophets Muhammad", kisas about various well-known biblical-Quranic characters, especially "Kissa-i Yusuf", "Kissas al-anbiya" and "Kissa-i Hobbi Hodja"², hikayats and rivayats about "first righteous caliphs", about Mecca and Kaaba), these are also munajats (for example, "Aminah-Khanym – Muhammad's mother" about the mother of the prophet, as well as numerous odes to the prophet Muhammad, about paradise and hell, about the "sirat kuper" – the bridge over the fiery abyss, about the soul, about death, about truth), these are purely religious tales (for example, with angels Azrael and Gabriel), as well as proverbs and sayings, through which the "common" population of the state (the so-called "kara khalik" or "common folk", i.e., "rabble") absorbed the basic tenets of the Muslim doctrine, including the attitude towards the Almighty Creator (Allah)³ and the prophet Muhammad, towards their own destiny, towards the nature and meaning of "earthly power", etc.

Although there was a large number of so-called "pagans" within the state (Mordva-Moksha and including Mordva-Karatai; ancestors of modern Bashkirs, Mari people, Udmurts, Chuvash, etc.) [10], the majority of the population of the Kazan Khanate, including the feudal nobility of the aforementioned peoples, was also Islamized. In Rus’ written sources of the 15th–16th centuries, the inhabitants of the Kazan state were called "godless", "blasphemous", "unholy", "accursed", "heathen", "barbarians", "agarians" and "Ismailians", "sratsyns" and "besermens"⁴. Numerous Muslim cemeteries and individual burials ("holy places") with gravestones with quotes from the Quran on the former territory of the Kazan Khanate clearly testify to the prevalence of the Islamic faith among the local population. Apparently, of the 400–500 thousand people living in the Kazan state in the mid-16th century, at least half were Muslims.

It is very important to note that in the Khanate, with the dominance of Islam and the growth of its influence in all spheres of state life, there was complete religious tolerance, which was associated with the traditions of the Khazar Khaganate, Volga Bulgaria, the Mongol Empire, and the Golden Horde. In the propaganda of mutual respect, tolerance, and interconfessional tolerance, the role of Sufi sheikhs was particularly noticeable. Near the city of Kazan, there was an Armenian settlement, a church, and a cemetery, and about half of the population of the state freely practiced various forms of paganism. According to many sources, Islam spread non-violently in the interfaith environment – as a result of the intensification of ethnocultural contacts. "Muslims treated non-Muslim pagans with complete tolerance and never attempted to forcibly convert them to Islam. The preaching of Muslim missionaries among pagans was done peacefully: Sufi sheikhs walked through villages and through their preaching converted pagans to Islam. As a sign that the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam in the Kazan Khanate was accomplished peacefully, the mullah during prayer (khutba) in the mosques of the Kazan region stands, leaning on the staff of a traveler, and not on the sword of a warrior, as in Turkestan, where the conversion of the inhabitants to Islam was accomplished by fire and sword," wrote M.G. Khudyakov [11, р. 191]. And the Russian historian Mikhail Karateyev noted: "The subject peoples – Cheremis, Bashkirs, Chuvash, and others – were not oppressed by the Tatars, and therefore there were no rebellions and uprisings against them. On the contrary, all these peoples, apparently, were satisfied with the order established by the Kazan tsars, and supported them in the struggle against external enemies" [7, р. 54]. Therefore, it should be separately emphasized that in the Khanate, as a result of the intensification of the intensity of cultural interaction between various ethnosocial groups of the population, the beginning of the process of creating a unified ethnosocial community is clearly observed, interrupted by the events of the mid-16th century [9].

It is also necessary to mention the quite extensive multilingualism and multiculturalism of the population of the Kazan state. The necessity of multilingualism and multiculturalism in the educational and communicative space "in the post-literacy era", highlighted by many modern scholars and educators, has long been successfully implemented in various countries in the medieval period, for example, in the 15th–16th centuries in the Kazan Khanate. Naturally, this primarily concerned the most affluent and educated part of the population. Various sources provide us with information that the aristocracy of the Kazan state was well versed in many Turkic territorial dialects, as well as Arabic and Persian languages, while the "common people" on the periphery of the country often communicated in a mixed Turkic-Finno-Ugric blend, which automatically led to the multiculturalism of the local population. Examples include the aforementioned "Tafsir of the Quran" (1508), written by a connoisseur of the Arabic-language Quran, in Old Tatar literary language; the Arabic-Tatar dictionary (1581) by Hadjibayram ibn Hadjibulat; numerous lists of works by Central Asian Turkic thinkers such as Suleiman Bakyrghani, Ahmed Yassawi, Rabguzi, and Majlisi, Persian-language authors (for example, poetic spiritual masnavis, poems, and verses by Firdausi, Nizami, Attar, Ganjavi, Saadi, Hafiz Shirazi, and Jami) and the Arabic-Persian-language "Kitab Alf Layla wa-Layla" ("One Thousand and One Nights"), which were widely circulated among the population of the Kazan Khanate⁵; multilingual decrees of the khans (which actively used Turkic-Tatar, Persian, Arabic, and Ottoman words and terms), multilingual texts of the Kul Sharif Mosque, and multilingual inscriptions on gravestones. The presence of Karatay Mordva in the state (who adopted the Tatar language and some elements of Tatar culture but retained their Mokshan identity) and the beginning of the formation of the Udmurts-Besermyans here (part of the southern Udmurt population that experienced significant Turkicization and Islamization, or conversely – part of the Tatars who assimilated into the Finno-Ugric-speaking environment) testify to the fact that the "common people" on the periphery of the country often communicated in a Turkic-Finno-Ugric blend [10, р. 225, 218–219].

The rich tradition of Islamic enlightenment (based on "giylem – the pursuit of knowledge"), the highly developed system of Muslim educational institutions (mektebs and madrasas at all mosques in the country, which invariably had libraries with books in various languages, "sections" of Quran reciters and calligraphers, etc.), a large stratum of educated people (ulemas), and the constant special invitation of scholars, poets, artists, singers, and musicians from different countries by the Kazan khans significantly contributed to the wide multilingualism and multiculturalism of the population of the Khanate. Literally following the well-known hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad ("The pursuit of knowledge is a duty for every Muslim"; "Acquire knowledge from the cradle to the grave"; "Whoever embarks on the path of seeking knowledge, Allah will direct him to the path to Paradise," and others), in the Kazan state, theology, jurisprudence, office work, historiography, literature and literary criticism, philosophy, astronomy, architecture, musical creativity, decorative and applied arts, and so on actively developed [17, р. 31–36, 39–41, 406–439, 488–643 etc.]. The well-developed office work in the Khanate is evidenced by miraculously preserved Tatar documents after the events of 1552–1556 (for example, Khan’s decrees), as well as diplomatic correspondence of the khans (for example, with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Folk legends inform us in detail about the abundance of schools and libraries, scholars, and poets in the Kazan Khanate, and this is clearly evidenced by the literary-historical works of Adnash-hafiz, Garifbek, Kul-Sharif, Muhammadyar, Muhammad-Amin, and other authors. I will note (following the researcher Gamirzan Davletshin) that during that period, artistic literature remained the most effective means of popularizing religious and, in general, any knowledge [4, p. 85]. The medical treatise "Shifa" ("Healing") with comments by Muhammad-Amin al-Bulgari and "Mäjmägıl kavagyd giylme hisab" ("Collection of rules of arithmetic science") by Muhyiddin Muhammad ibn al-Hajj Atmajji show us the high level of development of various exact sciences in the state, which, in particular, is reflected in the high urban planning culture of the Kazan Khanate, known to us from the information of the author of the "Kazan History" and the texts of Prince Andrey Kurbsky, as well as from the research of archaeologists [17, р. 31–36, 39–41, 406–439, 488–643 etc.]. All this together enabled Baron Sigismund von Herberstein to write in his "Notes on Muscovite Affairs" (1549) that "these [Kazan] Tatars are more cultured than others, as they cultivate fields, live in houses, engage in various trade, and rarely go to war" [5, р. 170].

Conclusions. Islam penetrated into all spheres of activity of the rulers, the upper society, and the taxable population of the Kazan Khanate, exerting a tremendous positive influence on the country's development. The Kazan state, like the earlier Volga Bulgaria, became the main center for the dissemination of the mentioned monotheistic Abrahamic religion among the peoples of the Middle Volga region and the Western Urals, the "northernmost outpost" of Islam in the 15th–16th centuries. At the same time, we observe in the Kazan Khanate confessional tolerance, as well as wide multiculturalism of all layers of society and ethnosocial groups in the population...

¹ Besides, the Tatars, and not only those of the Kazan Khanate, also made pilgrimages to the ruins of the cities of Bulgar and Bilyar – former capitals of Volga Bulgaria. There is information about this, in particular, in Tatar baits with various plots about the history and "holy places" of this Muslim state, which existed in the Middle Volga region from the 10th to the first third of the 13th century, as well as as a vassal ulus/vilayat of the Golden Horde in the second half of the 13th to the first third of the 15th century.

² Here I would like to specifically note the fact that during the medieval period, many literary works by authors often became "anonymous," popular.

³ In Tatar folklore and literature (for example, in the poems of Mukhammadyar), the Almighty is often referred to as "Tengre" (Turkic), "Rabbim" (Turkic), or "Khoday" (Persian).

⁴ See, for example, Rus’ chronicles, writings of the Moscow metropolitans and of all Rus’ Simon (died in 1511), Varlaam (died in 1533), Daniil (1492–1547), and Makarii (1482–1563), works of the Orthodox theologian and writer Maximus the Greek (1470–1556).

⁵ See, for example, the collection of ancient manuscripts at the Institute of Language, Literature and Art of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, the fund of Tatar and Eastern manuscripts of the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan, the manuscript collection of the Bulgarian Islamic Academy, Eastern manuscripts of the N.I. Lobachevsky Scientific Library of Kazan Federal University.

About the authors

Bulat L. Khamidullin

Author for correspondence.
Email: bulat.antat@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0585-350X

Cand. Sci. (History), Head of the Center for Tatar Diaspora Studies

References

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