Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article challenges historiographical interpretations that emphasize tsarist sponsorship of Muslim religious institutions on the nineteenth-century Kazakh steppe. Drawing on both tsarist archival records and local Muslim sources, it highlights the crucial role of Muslim patrons in fostering an Islamic transformation—or revival—marked by the rapid expansion of mosques, madrasas, and networks of Islamic scholars that connected the steppe to other centers of Islamic learning in the region. These patrons included influential political leaders, Muslim tsarist administrators, and merchants such as Qunanbay Oskenbay-ughli, Tinibay Kauken-ughli, and Jolaman Jandarbek-ughli, who financed Islamic institutions while navigating increasingly restrictive tsarist religious policies. Paradoxically, while the tsarist regime imposed legal constraints on Islam, its broader policies inadvertently contributed to the rise of these Muslim benefactors by enabling their accumulation of wealth, status, and political leverage.
Source: Religions
DOI: 10.3390/rel16081030
Author: Nurlan Kabdylkhak
Institution: Stony Brook University
Language: English
Topic: Soviet and Russian History
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,172
OpenAlex ID: W4413208077