Efim Rezvan,
Doctor of Historical Sciences,
Deputy Director of Anthropology and Ethnography Museum (Cabinets of curiosities) RAS
Editor-in-chief of academic periodical “Manuscripta Orientalia”,
Saint Petersburg
A special period of time both in history of Russian Islam and history of the Koran in Russia as well as a number of wise actions are concerned with the name of Catherine II, who truly could think continentally, was able to protect the interests of the state and the ruling dynasty with audacity and severity.
Victories in wars with Turkey, final accession of the Crimea (1783) and other regions with Moslem population required to make urgent arrangements with regards to organising administration and appeasing the inhabitants. Acknowledgement of deplorable results for the government’s interests due to the actions of the newly-baptised bureau that was founded by a personal decree of Anna Ioanovna Kasanskaya and its odious head Luca Konashevich has led to the appearance of a number of regulations that ensured and governed Moslems’ rights on the empire’s territory in manifesto of March 17, 1775 “On heavenly granted mercy to different classes on the occasion of making peace with the Sublime Porte” and especially in the deed on religious tolerance of 1785[1].
Muftiyat was established in 1782 at the Russian fortress Ufa. Here was founded Orenburg’s Mohammedan spiritual assembly six years later and the Islam clergy received for the first time an official status of spiritual class (by analogy with the Orthodox church). The mosques were being built, including Moscow (1782), Moslem religious schools were established. Hence, in 1771 Apanaevskaya and Akhundovskaya madrasah were opened in Kazan and later in 1780 Amirkhanovskaya madrasah. The Tatar murzas and Bashkir leaders were provided with the rights of nobility (1784) and the Moslem merchants obtained benefits in trading with Turkestan, Iran, India and China.
As a result of Catherine’s decisions and actions political and cultural setting of an Orthodox country has began to change so quickly that it became possible to publish two Russian translations of the Koran, which played an important role in the cultural life of Russia. The author of published in 1790 translation (from French translation by Andre du Ryer) was a well-known Russian writer M.I. Verevkin (1732-1795), the first director of Kazan’s gymnasium where due to his efforts teaching of the Oriental languages was introduced[2]. Verevkin could perfectly speak several languages. In 1763 he obtained the position of a translator under the personal Cabinet of Catherine II.
Two years later a translation of Koran made by poet A. Kolmakov (died 1804)[3] has appeared in Saint Petersburg. It was done on the basis of an English translation by George Sale[4] and reflected a new level of European oriental studies.
However, the translation of M.I. Verevkin was destined to play an important role in the history of the Russian literature. M.I. Verevkin, being talented and copious scientist, comedy dramatist and translator, member of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, was able to give his translation rather high literary qualities. The Church Slavonic element that Verevkin introduced into his translation of the Koran has added to the brilliance of the style, which is exactly what the reader of the Mohammedan Scriptures expects. This exact translation has inspired A.S. Pushkin to create poetic versification of fragments of thirty three surah, well-known “Imitations of the Koran”)[5].
Nonetheless, for the purposes of our article the main interest lies in the action of Catherine II on publishing the Arabic text of the Koran. In 1787, by the empress’s order, a full version of the Koran in Arabic text was published in a private “Asian print shop” for a free distribution among “Kirghiztsy” (Kirghiz people)[6]. At the same time, an order was made to begin construction of the mosques at the government’s expense. According to Catherine both of these events were carried out “not to introduce the Mohammedanism, but for snare”[7]. The book was published at public expense. Its emergence was also an answer to the Tatars’ complaint regarding the high cost of the books that they had to buy abroad. The Koran was published with especially casted for this purpose alphabet based on the drawings of mullah Usman Ismail. The pattern of Arabic print differed from the rest of the Arabic prints that were used in Russia before and surpassed all the other Arabic prints that existed in Europe at that time[8]. This issue is distinguished from the European, primarily, by the fact that it had a Moslem character: the text was prepared and supported by comments in Arabic before the print (on the margins) by the same mullah Usman Ismail. Five editions of the Koran were published in Saint Petersburg during 1789-1798 (according to different sources the edition amounted to 1200 or 3600 copies). Henceforth, the exchequer earned very well selling the copies of the Koran[9].
Catherine II used the fact of publishing the Koran in foreign policy affairs, specifically, during the war with Turkey, which gave her an opportunity to present herself as a protectress of Islam[10].
Catherine’s initiatives were met with opposition on the part of missionary groups who still perceived the Koran primarily as a “harmful false doctrine” that contradicts Christianity. Catherine was accused of strengthening Islam among the Tatars by means of publishing the Koran. Particularly she was blamed for her decision to found the Orenburg’s Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly in Ufa. In spite of all this, the empress continued to follow the prior course, which consolidated the authority of the central power at the Moslem remote areas of the empire incredibly. Russian Moslem merchants became the intermediary between Russia and its Moslem neighbours, thus helping it to advance further into Asia. Moslems were beginning to be widely recruited to serve in the Russian army and navy where special positions of mullah, akhund and muezzin were created for their spiritual feed.
Restrictions on publication of Islam religious literature in Russia were removed by a decree of December 15, 1800. Arabic alphabet of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences was passed over to Kazan in 1801-1802 where at the instance of the Kazan’s Tatars “the Asian Print Shop” was founded under the Kazan’s gymnasium[11]. Here was published the edition of the Koran marked under 1801 and it resembled in appearance the Koran published in Saint Petersburg. The copies of this edition published with “the support of Yunusov” and later with “the support of Amir-Khanov”[12] as well as his subsequent reprints gained the name of “The Korans of Kazan”. In 1829 this print shop was incorporated into the university print shop and publishing of the Moslem religious literature constituted its exclusive right until almost 1840.
This text received high appreciation among European orientalists and has endured a great number of editions in Kazan during 1802-1859 (almost 150000 copies of full text were printed) and, in essence, has replaced previous publications of the Koran in Europe. So-called “The Korans of Kazan” that were perceived as the first Moslem edition received broad circulation and were reprinted in the East repeatedly (there are records of hand-written imitations)[13]. According to R. Blachere, perhaps, they have played the decisive role in the centuries-old process of consolidating the uniformity of the Koran’s text[14]. Publication of 1857 edition along with the main text of the Koraniñ versions (al-kira’at) edited by Hafs that reproduced the tradition of “the seven readings” was one of the publishers’ achievements. This was a unique attempt to approximate the level of critical edition that was repeated by a number of reprints afterwards.
The most important task for the Moslem world was to unify the Koran’s text that was being resolved gradually during the course of many centuries. Nevertheless, this problem could have been solved only if the first printed Moslem edition of the Koran has appeared as its authority was generally recognized in the Islamic world. It is exactly that historic role happened to have played “The Korans of Kazan”, story of which is inseparably concerned with a city on the River Neva.
Just as before, the work of Moslem scientists at the Koran’s text was not perceived as an occurrence isolated from processes and changes that took place in the Islamic world. This period of time has witnessed boom in the activity of Moslem reformers who aimed to renew Islam by means of restoring to life “great Islamic traditions”. Thereupon, establishment of canonical text of the Koran seemed to be an exceptionally urgent and important matter for the creation of the unity in Islamic world in the first place. As during that time when sultanate was being liquidated in Turkey (1922) the caliphate was separated from temporality and then abolished (1924), which was perceived by the majority of the Moslems as a catastrophe.
The project of Catherine the Great to publish and distribute the Koran was planned as a truly colonial and it was realized to such an extent only due to the concourse of historic circumstances. By the mid XIX century not only Kazan, which is the centre of Russian Islam, but also Bakhchisarai, Orenburg, Baku, Ufa and Troitsk turned into important Islam cultural centres that were highly competitive in some ways with Istanbul, Cairo and Beirut. Industrial growth, high level of education of the native population, ideas of religious and political revival that took in the vast masses and, not the least, the influence of the Russian culture all have contributed to that.
Russia’s expansion into the Central Asia was accompanied by an active intrusion of the Tatar merchants and trade capital to the place. The output of Kazan’s print shops was one of the main goods at the book markets of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent. The Koran copies that were printed in Kazan could have been found in Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Russian pilgrims brought them along to Hejaz, used them in hospices that were built in Mecca for the Russian Moslems and with Russian finance.
However, there was a moment when the fate of “The Korans of Kazan” was hanging by a thread and the decisions were made once again in Saint Petersburg at the highest level. In 1849 the prosecutor of the Holy Synod appealed to Nicholas I with a request to prohibit the publishing of the Koran in Kazan due to the fact that it led to falling apart from the Orthodoxy of the christened Tatars. The report was marked with the tsar’s resolution: “Publishing of the Koran and other Moslem spiritual books can be prohibited”.
The case was referred to the Ministers’ Committee[15]. The military governor of Kazan reported that, in fact, during 1841-1846 about 26,000 copies of the full text Koran and its parts were printed in two private print shops. Furthermore, it was acknowledged that the Koran as well as the other religious books were printed in languages that the absolute majority of the Tatars do not know. In addition, the largest part of the printed copies was sent outside the Volga region and it constituted for the main item in the Russia’s trade with the states in Central Asia where high quality Russian editions gained the market, thus, driving out competitors. According to the Ministers’ Committee, discontinuance of publishing of the Moslem books in Kazan could have resulted in transition of the book trading into the hands of the Englishmen and smuggling within Russian boundaries and that would have added more importance to the Koran in the eyes of the Moslem population and hardened them against the Christianity. It was established that there was no link between the growth of the Islamic publishing and the falling apart of the christened Tatars from the Orthodoxy. The existed practice in this connection was saved.
As we can see Russia and, first of all Saint Petersburg and Kazan, have played significant role in solving a problem which undoubtedly was one of the most valuable for the whole Islamic world. The names of our cities are now associated endlessly with the Koran’s history, the monument, which is considered holy by every fifth inhabitant of the Earth.
[1] See the edict of 17th June 1773 (synodic) “On tolerance of all religions and on prohibition for bishops to intervene in any affair that is concerned with unorthodox religions and building of prayer houses according to their laws, but submitting all of these to the temporality”.// The Koran in Russia. Based on materials of “the round table” “The Holy Koran in Russia: Spiritual Heritage and Historic Fortunes”, M. 1997, pp.141-143.
[2] The book Alcoran by Arabian Mohammed who presented this book in the sixth century as being sent to him from the Heaven and himself as the greatest God’s prophet. Translation from Arabic into French of Andre de Ruer du la Tarou Malaiser, who was one of French King’s landed gentry and served his country very well and during a long period of time under the Sublime Porte has conciliated to sultan Amurat the Third and as a result was used as a messenger to Louis III with the most important commitments, was published in Amsterdam and Leipzig in 1770, and in village Nikolaevo of the Slinskaya district in 1790 (M.I. Verevkin), P. 1-2 (Saint Petersburg, 1790).
[3] A. Kolmakov was a professional translator from English, worked at the Admiralty Commission and translated mainly technical texts. In his leisure time he translated English prose and wrote poems and in 1791 he published his own collection.
[4] Mohammed’s Alcoran that was translated from Arabic into English with addition of explanatory historic notes to every chapter and every obscure passage taken by George Sale from the texts of the most reliable historians and Arabic expositors of the Alcoran and thorough and detailed description of the false prophet Mohammed’s life made up by the renowned doctor Prido. Alexey Kolmakov translated it from English into Russian (P. 1-2, Saint-Petersburg, 1792) at the expense of Vassily Solikov under the Imperial Academy of Sciences. The enclosure has a separate cover page that contains a subtitle with the words: “Translated into Russian by Petr Andreev”.
[5] Pushkin’s work has contributed to the rise of interest in the Koran among different masses of Russian readers. Famous Russian writers and philosophers such as P.Ya. Chaadaev, L.N. Tolstoy, and V.S. Soloviev are interested in the Koran. M.L. Mikhailov (1829-1865), an excellent translator of Oriental poetry, has published fragments of the Koran in verse translation.
[6] The size of the edition printed in Saint Petersburg was four hundred pages plus one (the list of corrections). All in all there were thirteen corrections that were not literal errors but diacritical. The information about those corrections is in Tatar language. Also see: RSHA Document 239/ page 38, Year 1786. Apparently, at the same time an edition ten thousands of copies of “the devotion from a part in Alcuran”. See: RSHA. Document 296. Page 3-4 (1st July 1797).
[7] Catherine’s secretary Alexander Khrapovitskiy wrote in his diary on 17 December, 1786 Catherine’s words that she said to the general attorney duke Alexander Vyazemskiy: “During a conversation with G.A. (general attorney – E.R.) about mosques built on the border for the Kirgiz population and the order to print Alcoran it was that it was done not for introducing Islam but to catch on hook”. This was kindly pointed by A. Crooming.
[8] “Your majesty will be pleased to know that the Arabian book printing of the Saint Petersburg artists in its essence is recognized as the best of the published in Europe and even in England.” See: Philosophic and political correspondence of Catherine II with doctor Zimmerman from 1785 till 1792, Saint Petersburg, 1803. P.137 (Zimmerman’s letter of 29th November 1788 with a reference to the professor Geine’s article published in G?ttinger University, #120of 1788). Also see: Krachkovskiy I.Yu., The first edition of Arabic poems in Russia//Bibliography of the East. VIII—IX (1935—1936). P. 69.
[9] According to one document at the cost of production of edition 9292 rubles 25 kopecks the profit gained at its sale was equal to 12000 rubles given that the price of one copy was 6 rubles 5 kopecks. See: RSHA Document 296. Page 5. Two factors have provided for a commercial success of the future editions of “The Korans of Kazan”: the Moslem character and high printing quality.
[10] For example, see Philosophic and political correspondence, pp. 124-125 (letter of Catherine II #20 of 6th may 1788).
[11] The details of the partial transfer of equipment of the Saint-Petersburg’s print shop Shnora to Kazan in order “to print necessary quantity of the Alcoran, prayer books and other similar books” see: RSHA Document 296. Page 12 (10 May 1800); Document 830. Ë. 7; Document 831 (1861) “On recognition of the necessity to provide Asian print shop under the Kazan’s University with an exclusive right to publish the Koran with the information about the history of the print shop”. In 1861 the minister for national education has acknowledged the usefulness for the Moslems of the Koran printing solely at the university’s print shop. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs did not support such an opinion and reoffered to the Policy of the Ministers’ Committee of 25 October 1849 according to which the Koran could be printed in private print shops as well.
[12] RSHA. Document 830. Page 7 (16 February 1859).
[13] Until present days many families have kept these copies of the Koran as precious family relics. One of such copies was presented in a recent coverage on Russian television about a family of Adygei, who returned to Russia from Kosovo on the eve of the known events. Their ancestors who left the country in the mid XIX have kept the book cautiously.
[14] R. Â1àñherå, Introduction au Coran. Ðàris, 1947, ð. 133.
15 RSHA. Document 2033 (11 October 1849). Page 12-19.
16.Ibid. Page 18
