Islamic Institutions and Education in Imperial Russia

Abstract

The study of Islamic culture in Russia, and especially in imperial Russia, is a newly emerging field in the area of Islamic studies, yet one which promises considerable dividends for illuminating both the field of Inner Asian Islam and for Islamic studies as a whole. When speaking of Islam in Russia, we have in mind a specific region of imperial Russia, namely the Volga-Ural region and western Siberia, where substantial sedentary and nomadic Turkic Muslim communities came under Russian rule at a relatively early stage, in the middle of the 16th century. In the context of Russian colonial expansion in the 19th century we can consider this region 'metropolitan Russia'.