This extremely timely book deals with the development of Bulghar regional identity among Tatars and Bashkirs, i.e. Volga-Ural Muslims. Based on locally-produced Islamic manuscrips, the book examines how these Muslims manipulated local legends, conversion narratives, and sacred geography to create a body of sacred historiography that expressed a meaningful regional identity, and one which responds to the changing relationship between these Muslims and the Russian state over the nineteenth century. The book also traces the debate between traditionalist supporters and reformist detractors of this sacred historiography in the nineteenth century, and addresses the fate of Bulghar identity in the twentieth century, including its transformation in Soviet and post-Soviet times into a secularized national identity.

This richly detailed study traces the shared history of Russia and Islam in expanding compass - from the Tatar civilization within the Russian heartland, to the conquered territories of the Caucasus and Central Asia, to the larger geopolitical and security context of contemporary Russia on the civilizational divide. The study's distinctive analytical drive stresses political and geopolitical relationships over time and into the very complicated present. Rich with insight, the book is also an incomparable source of factual information about Russia's Muslim populations, religious institutions, political organizations, and ideological movements.

Islam in Russia is a rare scholarly attempt to understand the tolerant nature of Islam in the modern Russian Federation since the state’s official acceptance of Islam. The book explores the key factors that have contributed, over time, to the establishment of a co-existent form of Islam in modern multi-ethnic and multinational Russia. It also probes discussion of the role that Russian Muslim intellectuals have played in forming contemporary Russian Islam. It concludes that the co-existent form of Islam in Russia can be linked to three key factors: its historical emergence, the intellectual culture, and strong regional identities. This original and engaging examination of the development and identity of Islam in Russia is a useful resource for students and scholars of Global Islam, Islam in Europe, History of Russia, Islamic History, Islamic Thought and Modern Religious History.

In this detailed study, Russia's rural Muslim religious institutions in the Volga-Ural region and the Kazakh steppe, during the imperial period, are examined. It is based on the Turkic manuscript history Tavarikh-i Alti Ata.

Russia's Muslim religious institutions on the steppe frontier, during the imperial period, are examined in detail in this book. This study is based on a Turkic manuscript history entitled the Tavarikh-i Alti Ata, compiled in 1910. It examines the mosques, madrasas, imams, mu'adhdhins, and Sufis of a single district and in adjoining regions of the Kazakh steppe, areas that were inhabited by several Muslim communities, including Tatar peasants and merchants, Bashkir and Kazakh nomads, and Muslim Cossacks. The study compares the information from the manuscript with published sources on Islamic institutions in the Volga-Ural region, using it as a case study to draw conclusions for Russia as a whole. Special emphasis is placed on the social and communal functions of these institutions for the Muslim minorities inhabiting rural Russia.

ANOR is a series of short monographs on the history and culture of Muslim Central Asia. The volumes deal with various topics related to this region such as history, literature, anthropology.

In Bukhara and the Muslims of Russia Allen Frank examines the relationship between Muslims in Russia and the city of Bukhara, examining paradoxes emerging the city’s Sufism-based Islamic prestige, and the emergence of Islamic reformism in Russia.