SHARIA IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE

Studies the formulation, transmission and application of Islamic law under Russian colonial ruleThis book looks at how Islamic law was practised in Russia from the conquest of the empire's first Muslim territories in the mid-1500s to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the empire's Muslim population had exceeded 20 million. It focuses on the training of Russian Muslim jurists, the debates over legal authority within Muslim communities and the relationship between Islamic law and 'customary' law.Drawing on difficult-to-access sources written in a variety of non-Russian languages (Arabic, Chaghatay, Kazakh, Persian, Tatar), the contributors offer scholars of Russian history, Islamic history and colonial history an account of Islamic law in Russia of the same quality and detail as the scholarship currently available on Islam in the British and French colonial empires.Key Features. Presents the theory and application of Islamic law in the Volga-Ural region, the Kazakh Steppe, the north Caucasus and Central Asia from the 1550s to 1917. Draws comparisons between Islamic law in Russia and elsewhere in the colonial world. Based upon important, but largely unstudied print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian and the Turkic languages. Brings together the work of an international collective of scholars of Islam in RussiaPaolo Sartori is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. He is author of Visions of Justice: Sharia and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia (2016).Danielle Ross is an Assistant Professor of Asian and Islamic history at Utah State University. She is author of Tatar Empire: Kazan's Muslims and the Making of Imperial Russia (2020).