Islamic Historiography and "Bulghar" Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia.

• Author: KUGELGEN, ANKE VON
• Position: Review

Islamic Historiography and "Bulghar" Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia. By ALLEN J. FRANK. Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia, vol. 61. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1998. Pp. viii + 232. HF1 127, $75.

In this outstanding study, Allen J. Frank shows that prior to the enforcement of European concepts of nation in the early twentieth century, Muslim peoples of the Volga-Ural region shared a common historical identity. This identity was not defined ethnically, but, on the one hand, by allegiance to Islam, and, on the other, by the line of descent from the medieval empire of the Volga Bulghars. At the heart of this regional identity lies the legend that the city of Bulgh[bar{a}]r on the Volga had already been converted to Islam in the year 9 of the Hijra as a result of a miracle performed by three companions of the Prophet Muhammad, and under his explicit orders. According to the legend, the successors ([t[bar{a}]bi.sup.[subset]][bar{u}]n) of these three sah[bar{a}]ba converted the surrounding tribes and the areas of the Volga-Ural region later on.

This legend is still preserved in the oral tradition of the Tatars and Bashkirs. The manuscript evidence suggests that it was first recorded in writing at the end of the eighteenth century. In the course of the nineteenth century, a whole series of local historiographical texts was produced in Turki, the most famous of which, the Taw[bar{a}]r[bar{i}]kh-i Bulgh[bar{a}]riyya, survives in over sixty copies and four editions. These writings characteristically link the Bulghar narrative to shrine catalogues, i.e., guides to the tombs of the successors of those companions and of famous Sufis of later periods. As Frank convincingly explains, these writings fulfilled several important functions: while the conversion legend testifies to the Islamic identity of the region even under Russian rule, the graves demarcate a geographical "sacred territory" which united the Muslims of the Volga-Ural region above and beyond ethnic boundaries. The link between conversion and territory is clearer still, since many of the Sufis mentioned in the shrine catalogues can be related to existing village names, and therefore appear to be founders of these settlements. The generations of saints thus ensure a temporal continuity, extending through all historical upheavals (the Mongolian wave of assaults, the campaigns of Timur, the Russian conquest in the sixteenth century) up to the time of...