The result of the study, which was carried out by a group of geneticists for several years, was confirmation that the Kazan, Crimean and Siberian Tatars do not have common ancestors. This conclusion was made based on a study of the DNA of unrelated men who considered themselves Tatars for several generations.
Crimean Tatars
After the conquest of Crimea, Genghis Khan left unmarried Tatar warriors in his new Crimean ulus, who within one generation assimilated with the local population, forming a new ethnic group - the Crimean Tatars. At the time of the resettlement of Turkic nomads, the population of the peninsula was distinguished by national diversity.
Crimea was inhabited by Polovtsians, Alans and Greeks. With the permission of the Horde khans, trading cities grew on the coast, in which Italian and Armenian merchants, and later the Turks, settled. It is worth noting that the Crimean Tatar culture and language inherited Polovtsian features.
In 1436 (according to Gumilyov’s dating), a descendant of Genghis Khan, Hadji Giray, usurped power and founded the sovereign Crimean Khanate, which emerged from the rule of the Golden Horde. But less than half a century passed before it lost its independence, falling under the long-term influence of powerful Turkey, after the attack of the Turkish fleet in 1475.
Under pressure from Turkey, an agreement was concluded under which the Crimean Khan became a vassal of the Sultan, with the obligation to support the Ottoman Empire with his troops in all its military actions.
At the same time, the Turks compromised, agreeing to the khan’s condition, according to which power could pass only to the descendants of Hadji-Girey, and the first of them was his son Mengli-Girey. This was not the only concession on Turkey's part. Thus, under the influence of the Crimean Khanate were the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region and North Caucasus, and also received income from Moldova into its treasury.
In 1480, through the joint efforts of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III and Mengli-Girey, a victory was won over the Great Horde. After which, the Genghisids headed new khanates.
Kazan Tatars
In 1438, overthrown by his relative Kishi-Makhmet, Khan Ulu-Mukhamed was forced to move to the Bulgar ulus, later transforming it into the Kazan Khanate. He did not have to develop the chosen territory from scratch. Part of it belonged to Volga Bulgaria from ancient times. The Volga Bulgars were a pre-Mongol Turkic and Finno-Ugric population. Thus, the descendants of the Volga Bulgars and Golden Horde became the main inhabitants of the Kazan Khanate.
At the beginning of the 15th century, Ivan III liberated the Bulgar ulus from the Mongols, which later became the Moscow protectorate. The influential Moscow state independently appointed khans - Tatar aristocrats it liked.
In 1518, Moscow placed the Kasimov Khan Shah Ali on the throne. Being baptized, he did not suit the Kazan Bulgars, who overthrew him in 1521, placing a khan from the Crimean Girey on the throne.
It was then that the Crimean Tatars began to call the Bulgars Kazan Tatars, and the Chuvash - mountain Tatars. The strengthening of Turkish influence through the proxies of the Crimean Khanate led to confrontation with the Moscow state. In 1552, Ivan IV managed to return Kazan and the title of his grandfather Ivan III "Prince of Bulgaria".
Until the 19th century, the indigenous people preferred to call themselves “Bulgarly” (Bulgars), “Kazanli” (Kazanians) or “Mosleman” (Muslims). Already in the 20th century, the word “Tatars” was finally assigned to the name of this people.
Siberian Tatars
In the 13th century, the Golden Horde also included the place of residence of the Siberian Tatars. In the 14th century, the Tyumen Khanate was formed with its capital Chimgi-Tura (modern Tyumen).
At the turn of the 15th-16th centuries, having broken away from the Golden Horde, the Siberian Khanate arose on the territory of the Siberian outskirts. Today the ruins of his capital Isker are located near Tobolsk. Despite the fact that its rulers independently governed, they were formally subordinate to the Uzbek khans.
The Siberian Khanate was inhabited by local Turkic tribes related to the Cumans, whom the Russians called Siberian Tatars. At the end of the 16th century, the Siberian state was annexed to the Russian state.
Every nation has its own distinctive features, which make it possible to determine a person’s nationality almost without errors. It is worth noting that Asian peoples are very similar to each other, since they are all descendants of the Mongoloid race. How can you identify a Tatar? How do Tatars look different?
Uniqueness
Without a doubt, every person is unique, regardless of nationality. And yet there are certain common features that unite representatives of a race or nationality. Tatars are usually classified as members of the so-called Altai family. This is a Turkic group. The ancestors of the Tatars were known as farmers. Unlike other representatives of the Mongoloid race, Tatars do not have pronounced appearance features.
The appearance of the Tatars and the changes that are now manifested in them are largely caused by assimilation with the Slavic peoples. Indeed, among the Tatars they sometimes find fair-haired, sometimes even red-haired representatives. This, for example, cannot be said about the Uzbeks, Mongols or Tajiks. Do Tatar eyes have any special characteristics? They do not necessarily have narrow eyes and dark skin. Are there any common features of the appearance of Tatars?
Description of the Tatars: a little history
The Tatars are among the most ancient and populous ethnic groups. In the Middle Ages, mentions of them excited everyone around: in the east from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to Atlantic coast. A variety of scientists included references to this people in their works. The mood of these notes was clearly polar: some wrote with rapture and admiration, while other scientists showed fear. But one thing united everyone - no one remained indifferent. It is quite obvious that it was the Tatars who had a huge influence on the course of development of Eurasia. They managed to create a distinctive civilization that influenced a variety of cultures.
The history of the Tatar people has had both ups and downs. Periods of peace alternated with brutal times of bloodshed. The ancestors of modern Tatars took part in the creation of several strong states at once. Despite all the vicissitudes of fate, they managed to preserve both their people and their identity.
Ethnic groups
Thanks to the works of anthropologists, it became known that the ancestors of the Tatars were not only representatives of the Mongoloid race, but also Europeans. It was this factor that determined the diversity in appearance. Moreover, the Tatars themselves are usually divided into groups: Crimean, Ural, Volga-Siberian, South Kama. The Volga-Siberian Tatars, whose facial features have the greatest characteristics of the Mongoloid race, are distinguished by the following characteristics: dark hair, pronounced cheekbones, brown eyes, a wide nose, a fold above the upper eyelid. Representatives of this type are few in number.
The face of the Volga Tatars is oblong, the cheekbones are not too pronounced. The eyes are large and gray (or brown). Nose with a hump, oriental type. The physique is correct. In general, the men of this group are quite tall and hardy. Their skin is not dark. This is the appearance of the Tatars from the Volga region.
Kazan Tatars: appearance and customs
The appearance of the Kazan Tatars is described as follows: strongly built strong man. The Mongols have a wide oval face and a slightly narrowed eye shape. The neck is short and strong. Men rarely wear a thick beard. Such features are explained by the fusion of Tatar blood with various Finnish nationalities.
The marriage ceremony is not like a religious event. From religiosity - only reading the first chapter of the Koran and a special prayer. After marriage, a young girl does not immediately move into her husband’s house: she will live with her family for another year. It is curious that her newly-made husband comes to her as a guest. Tatar girls are ready to wait for their lover.
Only a few have two wives. And in cases where this happens, there are reasons: for example, when the first one is already old, and the second one, younger, now runs the household.
The most common Tatars are of the European type - owners of light brown hair and light eyes. The nose is narrow, aquiline or hump-shaped. Height is short - women are about 165 cm.
Peculiarities
Some features were noticed in the character of a Tatar man: hard work, cleanliness and hospitality border on stubbornness, pride and indifference. Respect for elders is what especially distinguishes the Tatars. It was noted that representatives of this people tend to be guided by reason, adapt to the situation, and are law-abiding. In general, the synthesis of all these qualities, especially hard work and perseverance, makes a Tatar man very purposeful. Such people are able to achieve success in their careers. They finish their work and have a habit of getting their way.
A purebred Tatar strives to acquire new knowledge, showing enviable perseverance and responsibility. Crimean Tatars have a special indifference and calmness in stressful situations. Tatars are very curious and talkative, but during work they remain stubbornly silent, apparently so as not to lose concentration.
One of characteristic features- self-esteem. It manifests itself in the fact that the Tatar considers himself special. As a result, there is a certain arrogance and even arrogance.
Cleanliness sets Tatars apart. They do not tolerate disorder and dirt in their homes. Moreover, this does not depend on financial capabilities - both rich and poor Tatars zealously monitor cleanliness.
My home is your home
Tatars are very hospitable people. We are ready to host a person, regardless of his status, faith or nationality. Even with modest incomes, they show warm hospitality, ready to share a modest dinner with a guest.
Tatar women are distinguished by their great curiosity. They are attracted by beautiful clothes, they watch with interest people of other nationalities, and follow fashion. Tatar women are very attached to their home and devote themselves to raising children.
Tatar women
What an amazing creature - a Tatar woman! In her heart lies the immeasurable deepest love to your loved ones, to your children. Its purpose is to bring peace to people, to serve as a model of peacefulness and morality. A Tatar woman is distinguished by a sense of harmony and special musicality. She radiates a certain spirituality and nobility of soul. The inner world of a Tatar woman is full of riches!
Tatar girls with youth aimed at a strong, long-lasting marriage. After all, they want to love their husband and raise future children behind solid walls of reliability and trust. No wonder the Tatar proverb says: “A woman without a husband is like a horse without a bridle!” Her husband’s word is law for her. Although witty Tatar women complement - for any law, however, there is an amendment! And yet these are devoted women who sacredly honor traditions and customs. However, don’t expect to see a Tatar woman in a black burqa - this is a stylish lady who has a sense of self-esteem.
The appearance of the Tatars is very well-groomed. Fashionistas have stylized items in their wardrobe that highlight their nationality. For example, there are shoes that imitate chitek - national leather boots worn by Tatar girls. Another example is appliques, where patterns convey the stunning beauty of the earth's flora.
What's on the table?
A Tatar woman is a wonderful hostess, loving and hospitable. By the way, a little about the kitchen. The national cuisine of the Tatars is quite predictable in that the basis of the main dishes is often dough and fat. Even a lot of dough, a lot of fat! Of course, this is far from the healthiest diet, although guests are usually offered exotic dishes: kazylyk (or dried horse meat), gubadia (a layer cake with a wide variety of fillings, from cottage cheese to meat), talkysh-kalev (an incredibly high-calorie dessert from flour, butter and honey). You can wash down all this rich treat with ayran (a mixture of katyk and water) or traditional tea.
Like Tatar men, women are distinguished by their determination and perseverance in achieving their goals. Overcoming difficulties, they show ingenuity and resourcefulness. All this is complemented by great modesty, generosity and kindness. Truly, a Tatar woman is a wonderful gift from above!
Later, after the collapse of the Golden Horde and the emergence of a number of independent khanates in its place, the Kazan Khanate was formed on the Bulgarian lands. As a result of the consolidation of part of the Bulgars with another Kipchak, as well as partly with the Finno-Ugric population of the region, the people of the Kazan Tatars were formed.
Formation
Funeral rite
Many facts about the funeral rites of the Kazan Tatars show complete continuity from the Bulgars; today, most of the rites of the Kazan Tatars are associated with their Muslim religion.
Location. The city necropolises of the Golden Horde were located within the city, as were the burial grounds of the Kazan Khanate period. Cemeteries of Kazan Tatars of the 18th-19th centuries. were located outside the villages, not far from the villages, if possible - across the river.
Grave buildings. From the descriptions of ethnographers it follows that the Kazan Tatars had the custom of planting one or more trees on the grave. The graves were almost always surrounded by a fence, sometimes a stone was placed on the grave, small log houses were made without a roof, in which birch trees were planted and stones were placed, and sometimes monuments were erected in the form of pillars.
Burial method. The Bulgars of all periods are characterized by the ritual of inhumation (deposition of a corpse). The pagan Bulgars were buried with their heads to the west, on their backs, with their arms along the body. A distinctive feature of the burial grounds of the X-XI centuries. is the period of formation of a new ritual in Volga Bulgaria, hence the lack of strict uniformity in individual details of the ritual, in particular, in the position of the body, hands and face of the buried. Along with observing the qibla, in the vast majority of cases there are individual burials facing upward or even to the north. There are burials of the dead on the right side. The position of the hands is especially varied during this period. For necropolises of the XII-XIII centuries. The ritual details are unified: strict adherence to the qibla, the face facing Mecca, a uniform position of the deceased with a slight turn to the right side, with the right hand extended along the body and the left hand slightly bent and placed on the pelvis. On average, 90% of burials provide this stable combination signs versus 40-50% in early burial grounds. During the Golden Horde period, all burials were performed according to the rite of inhumation, the body was stretched out on the back, sometimes with a turn on the right side, head to the west, face to the south. During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the funeral rite did not change. According to the descriptions of ethnographers, the deceased was lowered into the grave, then laid in the side lining, facing Mecca. The hole was filled with bricks or boards. The spread of Islam among the Volga Bulgars already in pre-Mongol times was very clearly manifested in the rite of the Bulgars of the 12th-13th centuries, during the period of the Golden Horde, and later in the funeral rite of the Kazan Tatars.
National clothes
The clothing of men and women consisted of trousers with a wide step and a shirt (for women it was complemented by an embroidered bib), on which a sleeveless camisole was worn. Outerwear was a Cossack coat, and in winter a quilted beshmet or fur coat. The men's headdress is a skullcap, and on top of it is a hemispherical hat with fur or a felt hat; for women - an embroidered velvet cap (kalfak) and a scarf. Traditional shoes were leather ichigi with soft soles; outside the home they wore leather galoshes. Women's costumes were characterized by an abundance of metal decorations.
Anthropological types of Kazan Tatars
The most significant in the field of anthropology of the Kazan Tatars are the studies of T. A. Trofimova, conducted in 1929-1932. In particular, in 1932, together with G.F. Debets, she conducted extensive research in Tatarstan. In the Arsky district, 160 Tatars were examined, in the Elabuga district - 146 Tatars, in the Chistopol district - 109 Tatars. Anthropological studies have revealed the presence of four main anthropological types among the Kazan Tatars: Pontic, light Caucasoid, sublaponoid, Mongoloid.
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These types have the following characteristics:
Pontic type- characterized by mesocephaly, dark or mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, high bridge of the nose, convex bridge of the nose, with a drooping tip and base, significant beard growth. Growth is average with an upward trend.
Light Caucasian type- characterized by subbrachycephaly, light pigmentation of hair and eyes, medium or high bridge of the nose with a straight bridge of the nose, a moderately developed beard, and average height. A number of morphological features - the structure of the nose, the size of the face, pigmentation and a number of others - bring this type closer to the Pontic.
Sublaponoid type(Volga-Kama) - characterized by meso-subbrachycephaly, mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, wide and low nose bridge, weak beard growth and a low, medium-wide face with a tendency to flattening. Quite often there is a fold of the eyelid with weak development of the epicanthus.
Mongoloid type(South Siberian) - characterized by brachycephaly, dark shades of hair and eyes, a wide and flattened face and a low bridge of the nose, frequent epicanthus and poor beard development. Height, on a Caucasian scale, is average.
Theory of ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars
There are several theories of the ethnogenesis of the Tatars. Three of them are described in most detail in the scientific literature:
- Bulgaro-Tatar theory
- Tatar-Mongol theory
- Turkic-Tatar theory.
see also
Notes
Literature
- Akhatov G. Kh. Tatar dialectology. Middle dialect (textbook for students of higher educational institutions). Ufa, 1979.
- Kosach G. G. Tatarstan: religion and nationality in the mass consciousness // Kaariainen K., Furman D. E. (responsible editors). New churches, old believers - old churches, new believers. Religion in post-Soviet Russia. M., Institute of Europe RAS, Institute of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, 2007.
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The history of the ethnonym “Tatars” can be traced back to approximately the 8th century. The ethnonym was first mentioned in a runic inscription on the monument to the Turkic commander Kul Tegin (732). This inscription mentions the tribal unions “Otuz Tatars” and “Tokuz Tatars”.... ... Wikipedia
Funeral rite
Many facts about the funeral rites of the Kazan Tatars show complete continuity from the Bulgars; today, most of the rites of the Kazan Tatars are associated with their Muslim religion.
Location. The city necropolises of the Golden Horde were located within the city, as were the burial grounds of the Kazan Khanate period. Cemeteries of Kazan Tatars of the 18th-19th centuries. were located outside the villages, not far from the villages, if possible - across the river.
Grave buildings. From the descriptions of ethnographers it follows that the Kazan Tatars had the custom of planting one or more trees on the grave. The graves were almost always surrounded by a fence, sometimes a stone was placed on the grave, small log houses were made without a roof, in which birch trees were planted and stones were placed, and sometimes monuments were erected in the form of pillars.
Burial method. The Bulgars of all periods are characterized by the ritual of inhumation (deposition of a corpse). The pagan Bulgars were buried with their heads to the west, on their backs, with their arms along the body. A distinctive feature of the burial grounds of the X-XI centuries. is the period of formation of a new ritual in Volga Bulgaria, hence the lack of strict uniformity in individual details of the ritual, in particular, in the position of the body, hands and face of the buried. Along with observing the qibla, in the vast majority of cases there are individual burials facing upward or even to the north. There are burials of the dead on the right side. The position of the hands is especially varied during this period. For necropolises of the XII-XIII centuries. The ritual details are unified: strict adherence to the qibla, the face facing Mecca, a uniform position of the deceased with a slight turn to the right side, with the right hand extended along the body and the left hand slightly bent and placed on the pelvis. On average, 90% of burials give this stable combination of features versus 40-50% in early burial grounds. During the Golden Horde period, all burials were performed according to the rite of inhumation, the body was stretched out on the back, sometimes with a turn on the right side, head to the west, face to the south. During the period of the Kazan Khanate, the funeral rite did not change. According to the descriptions of ethnographers, the deceased was lowered into the grave, then laid in the side lining, facing Mecca. The hole was filled with bricks or boards. The spread of Islam among the Volga Bulgars already in pre-Mongol times was very clearly manifested in the rite of the Bulgars of the 12th-13th centuries, during the period of the Golden Horde, and later in the funeral rite of the Kazan Tatars.
National clothes
The clothing of men and women consisted of trousers with a wide step and a shirt (for women it was complemented by an embroidered bib), on which a sleeveless camisole was worn. Outerwear was a Cossack coat, and in winter a quilted beshmet or fur coat. The men's headdress is a skullcap, and on top of it is a hemispherical hat with fur or a felt hat; for women - an embroidered velvet cap (kalfak) and a scarf. Traditional shoes were leather ichigi with soft soles; outside the home they wore leather galoshes. Women's costumes were characterized by an abundance of metal decorations.
Anthropological types of Kazan Tatars
The most significant in the field of anthropology of the Kazan Tatars are the studies of T. A. Trofimova, conducted in 1929-1932. In particular, in 1932, together with G.F. Debets, she conducted extensive research in Tatarstan. In the Arsky district, 160 Tatars were examined, in the Elabuga district - 146 Tatars, in the Chistopol district - 109 Tatars. Anthropological studies have revealed the presence of four main anthropological types among the Kazan Tatars: Pontic, light Caucasoid, sublaponoid, Mongoloid.
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These types have the following characteristics:
Pontic type- characterized by mesocephaly, dark or mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, high bridge of the nose, convex bridge of the nose, with a drooping tip and base, significant beard growth. Growth is average with an upward trend.
Light Caucasian type- characterized by subbrachycephaly, light pigmentation of hair and eyes, medium or high bridge of the nose with a straight bridge of the nose, a moderately developed beard, and average height. A number of morphological features - the structure of the nose, the size of the face, pigmentation and a number of others - bring this type closer to the Pontic.
Sublaponoid type(Volga-Kama) - characterized by meso-subbrachycephaly, mixed pigmentation of hair and eyes, wide and low nose bridge, weak beard growth and a low, medium-wide face with a tendency to flattening. Quite often there is a fold of the eyelid with weak development of the epicanthus.
Mongoloid type(South Siberian) - characterized by brachycephaly, dark shades of hair and eyes, a wide and flattened face and a low bridge of the nose, frequent epicanthus and poor beard development. Height, on a Caucasian scale, is average.
Theory of ethnogenesis of the Kazan Tatars
There are several theories of the ethnogenesis of the Tatars. Three of them are described in the most detail in the scientific literature:
- Bulgaro-Tatar theory
- Tatar-Mongol theory
- Turkic-Tatar theory.
see also
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Notes
Literature
- Akhatov G. Kh. Tatar dialectology. Middle dialect (textbook for students of higher educational institutions). - Ufa, 1979.
- Akhmarov G. N. (Tatar.)Russian // Akhmarev G. N. (Tatar.)Russian Tarihi-documentary Khyentyk. - Kazan: “Җyen-TatArt”, “Khater” nashriyats, 2000.
- Drozdova G. I./ abstract of thesis. ... candidate of historical sciences: 07.00.06. - Kazan: Institute of History named after Sh. Mardzhani of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, 2007. - 27 p.
- Znamensky P.V.. - Kazan, 1910.
- Kaariainen K. (Finnish)Russian, Furman D. E. Tatars and Russians - believers and non-believers, old and young // Questions of Philosophy. - 1999. - No. 11. - pp. 68-80.
- Kosach G. G. Tatarstan: religion and nationality in the mass consciousness // New churches, old believers - old churches, new believers. Religion in post-Soviet Russia / K. Kaariainen (Finnish)Russian, D. E. Furman (chief editors). - M.:, 2007.
- Mukhametshin R. M. Tatars and Islam in the 20th century. (Islam in the social and political life of the Tatars and Tatarstan). - Kazan: Fen, 2003. - 303 p. - ISBN 5754402252.
- Tatars / Rep. ed. R. K. Urazmanova, S. V. Cheshko. - M.: Nauka, 2001. - 583 p. - (Peoples and cultures). ()
- Trofimova T. A. Ethnogenesis of the Tatars of the Middle Volga region in the light of anthropological data // Origin of the Kazan Tatars. - Kazan, 1948. - P. 30-34.
- Urazmanova R.K. Family life of the Tatars in the south-eastern regions of Tatarstan // From the history of culture and life of the Tatar people and their ancestors. - Kazan: Kazan branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1976. - 152 p.
- Urazmanova R.K. Modern rituals of the Tatar people: historical and ethnographic studies. - Kazan: Tatar Book Publishing House, 1984. - 145 p.
- Urazmanova R.K. Rituals and holidays of the Tatars of the Volga region and the Urals. Annual cycle. XIX-early XX centuries Historical and ethnographic atlas of the Tatar people. - Kazan: Publishing House PIK "House of Printing", 2001. - 198 p.
- Urazmanova R.K.// Ethnographic review. - 2009. - No. 1. - pp. 13-26.
An excerpt characterizing the Kazan Tatars
“Something very important is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and the joyful and at the same time bitter feeling made him worry and forget about the game.After 6 Roberts, the general stood up, saying that it was impossible to play like that, and Pierre received his freedom. Natasha was talking to Sonya and Boris on one side, Vera was talking about something with a subtle smile to Prince Andrei. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking if what was being said was a secret, sat down next to them. Vera, noticing Prince Andrei's attention to Natasha, found that at an evening, at a real evening, it was necessary that there be subtle hints of feelings, and seizing the time when Prince Andrei was alone, she began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her sister . With such an intelligent guest (as she considered Prince Andrei) she needed to apply her diplomatic skills to the matter.
When Pierre approached them, he noticed that Vera was in a smug rapture of conversation, Prince Andrei (which rarely happened to him) seemed embarrassed.
– What do you think? – Vera said with a subtle smile. “You, prince, are so insightful and so immediately understand the character of people.” What do you think about Natalie, can she be constant in her affections, can she, like other women (Vera meant herself), love a person once and remain faithful to him forever? This is what I consider true love. What do you think, prince?
“I know your sister too little,” answered Prince Andrei with a mocking smile, under which he wanted to hide his embarrassment, “to resolve such a delicate question; and then I noticed that the less I like a woman, the more constant she is,” he added and looked at Pierre, who came up to them at that time.
- Yes, it’s true, prince; in our time,” Vera continued (mentioning our time, as narrow-minded people generally like to mention, believing that they have found and appreciated the features of our time and that the properties of people change over time), in our time a girl has so much freedom that le plaisir d"etre courtisee [the pleasure of having admirers] often drowns out the true feeling in her. Et Nathalie, il faut l"avouer, y est tres sensible. [And Natalya, I must admit, is very sensitive to this.] The return to Natalie again made Prince Andrei frown unpleasantly; he wanted to get up, but Vera continued with an even more refined smile.
“I think no one was courtisee [the object of courtship] like her,” said Vera; - but never, until very recently, did she seriously like anyone. “You know, Count,” she turned to Pierre, “even our dear cousin Boris, who was, entre nous [between us], very, very dans le pays du tendre... [in the land of tenderness...]
Prince Andrei frowned and remained silent.
– You’re friends with Boris, aren’t you? - Vera told him.
- Yes, I know him…
– Did he tell you correctly about his childhood love for Natasha?
– Was there childhood love? - Prince Andrei suddenly asked, blushing unexpectedly.
- Yes. Vous savez entre cousin et cousine cette intimate mene quelquefois a l"amour: le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage, N"est ce pas? [You know, between a cousin and sister, this closeness sometimes leads to love. Such kinship - dangerous neighborhood. Is not it?]
“Oh, without a doubt,” said Prince Andrei, and suddenly, unnaturally animated, he began joking with Pierre about how he should be careful in his treatment of his 50-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the middle of the joking conversation he stood up and, taking under Pierre's arm and took him aside.
- Well? - said Pierre, looking with surprise at the strange animation of his friend and noticing the look that he cast at Natasha as he stood up.
“I need, I need to talk to you,” said Prince Andrei. – You know our women’s gloves (he was talking about those Masonic gloves that were given to a newly elected brother to give to his beloved woman). “I... But no, I’ll talk to you later...” And with a strange sparkle in his eyes and anxiety in his movements, Prince Andrei approached Natasha and sat down next to her. Pierre saw Prince Andrei ask her something, and she flushed and answered him.
But at this time Berg approached Pierre, urgently asking him to take part in the dispute between the general and the colonel about Spanish affairs.
Berg was pleased and happy. The smile of joy did not leave his face. The evening was very good and exactly like other evenings he had seen. Everything was similar. And ladies', delicate conversations, and cards, and a general at cards, raising his voice, and a samovar, and cookies; but one thing was still missing, something that he always saw at the evenings, which he wanted to imitate.
There was a lack of loud conversation between men and an argument about something important and smart. The general started this conversation and Berg attracted Pierre to him.
The next day, Prince Andrei went to the Rostovs for dinner, as Count Ilya Andreich called him, and spent the whole day with them.
Everyone in the house felt for whom Prince Andrei was traveling, and he, without hiding, tried to be with Natasha all day. Not only in Natasha’s frightened, but happy and enthusiastic soul, but in the whole house one could feel the fear of something important that was about to happen. The Countess looked at Prince Andrei with sad and seriously stern eyes when he spoke to Natasha, and timidly and feignedly began some insignificant conversation as soon as he looked back at her. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and was afraid to be a hindrance when she was with them. Natasha turned pale with fear of anticipation when she remained alone with him for minutes. Prince Andrei amazed her with his timidity. She felt that he needed to tell her something, but that he could not bring himself to do so.
When Prince Andrey left in the evening, the Countess came up to Natasha and said in a whisper:
- Well?
“Mom, for God’s sake don’t ask me anything now.” “You can’t say that,” Natasha said.
But despite this, that evening Natasha, sometimes excited, sometimes frightened, with fixed eyes, lay for a long time in her mother’s bed. Either she told her how he praised her, then how he said that he would go abroad, then how he asked where they would live this summer, then how he asked her about Boris.
- But this, this... has never happened to me! - she said. “Only I’m scared in front of him, I’m always scared in front of him, what does that mean?” That means it's real, right? Mom, are you sleeping?
“No, my soul, I’m scared myself,” answered the mother. - Go.
- I won’t sleep anyway. What nonsense is it to sleep? Mom, mom, this has never happened to me! - she said with surprise and fear at the feeling that she recognized in herself. – And could we think!...
It seemed to Natasha that even when she first saw Prince Andrey in Otradnoye, she fell in love with him. She seemed to be frightened by this strange, unexpected happiness, that the one whom she had chosen back then (she was firmly convinced of this), that the same one had now met her again, and, it seemed, was not indifferent to her. “And he had to come to St. Petersburg on purpose now that we are here. And we had to meet at this ball. It's all fate. It is clear that this is fate, that all this was leading to this. Even then, as soon as I saw him, I felt something special.”
- What else did he tell you? What verses are these? Read... - the mother said thoughtfully, asking about the poems that Prince Andrei wrote in Natasha’s album.
“Mom, isn’t it a shame that he’s a widower?”
- That's enough, Natasha. Pray to God. Les Marieiages se font dans les cieux. [Marriages are made in heaven.]
- Darling, mother, how I love you, how good it makes me feel! – Natasha shouted, crying tears of happiness and excitement and hugging her mother.
At the same time, Prince Andrei was sitting with Pierre and telling him about his love for Natasha and his firm intention to marry her.
On this day, Countess Elena Vasilyevna had a reception, there was a French envoy, there was a prince, who had recently become a frequent visitor to the countess’s house, and many brilliant ladies and men. Pierre was downstairs, walked through the halls, and amazed all the guests with his concentrated, absent-minded and gloomy appearance.
Since the time of the ball, Pierre had felt the approaching attacks of hypochondria and with desperate effort tried to fight against them. From the time the prince became close to his wife, Pierre was unexpectedly granted a chamberlain, and from that time on he began to feel heaviness and shame in large society, and more often the old gloomy thoughts about the futility of everything human began to come to him. At the same time, the feeling he noticed between Natasha, whom he protected, and Prince Andrei, the contrast between his position and the position of his friend, further intensified this gloomy mood. He equally tried to avoid thoughts about his wife and about Natasha and Prince Andrei. Again everything seemed insignificant to him in comparison with eternity, again the question presented itself: “why?” And he forced himself to work day and night on Masonic works, hoping to ward off the approach of the evil spirit. Pierre, at 12 o'clock, having left the countess's chambers, was sitting upstairs in a smoky, low room, in a worn dressing gown in front of the table, copying out authentic Scottish acts, when someone entered his room. It was Prince Andrei.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Pierre with an absent-minded and dissatisfied look. “And I’m working,” he said, pointing to a notebook with that look of salvation from the hardships of life with which unhappy people look at their work.
Prince Andrei, with a radiant, enthusiastic face and renewed life, stopped in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad face, smiled at him with the egoism of happiness.
“Well, my soul,” he said, “yesterday I wanted to tell you and today I came to you for this.” I've never experienced anything like it. I'm in love, my friend.
Pierre suddenly sighed heavily and collapsed with his heavy body on the sofa, next to Prince Andrei.
- To Natasha Rostova, right? - he said.
- Yes, yes, who? I would never believe it, but this feeling is stronger than me. Yesterday I suffered, I suffered, but I wouldn’t give up this torment for anything in the world. I haven't lived before. Now only I live, but I can't live without her. But can she love me?... I'm too old for her... What aren't you saying?...
- I? I? “What did I tell you,” Pierre suddenly said, getting up and starting to walk around the room. - I always thought this... This girl is such a treasure, such... This is a rare girl... Dear friend, I ask you, don’t get smart, don’t doubt, get married, get married and get married... And I’m sure that there will be no happier person than you.
- But she!
- She loves you.
“Don’t talk nonsense...” said Prince Andrei, smiling and looking into Pierre’s eyes.
“He loves me, I know,” Pierre shouted angrily.
“No, listen,” said Prince Andrei, stopping him by the hand. – Do you know what situation I’m in? I need to tell everything to someone.
“Well, well, say, I’m very glad,” said Pierre, and indeed his face changed, the wrinkles smoothed out, and he joyfully listened to Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei seemed and was a completely different, new person. Where was his melancholy, his contempt for life, his disappointment? Pierre was the only person to whom he dared to speak; but he expressed to him everything that was in his soul. Either he easily and boldly made plans for a long future, talked about how he could not sacrifice his happiness for the whim of his father, how he would force his father to agree to this marriage and love her or do without his consent, then he was surprised how something strange, alien, independent of him, influenced by the feeling that possessed him.
“I wouldn’t believe anyone who told me that I could love like that,” said Prince Andrei. “This is not at all the feeling that I had before.” The whole world is divided for me into two halves: one - she and there is all the happiness of hope, light; the other half is everything where she is not there, there is all despondency and darkness...
“Darkness and gloom,” Pierre repeated, “yes, yes, I understand that.”
– I can’t help but love the world, it’s not my fault. And I'm very happy. You understand me? I know you're happy for me.
“Yes, yes,” Pierre confirmed, looking at his friend with tender and sad eyes. The brighter the fate of Prince Andrei seemed to him, the darker his own seemed.
To get married, the consent of the father was needed, and for this, the next day, Prince Andrei went to his father.
The father, with outward calm but inner anger, accepted his son’s message. He could not understand that anyone would want to change life, to introduce something new into it, when life was already ending for him. “If only they would let me live the way I want, and then we would do what we wanted,” the old man said to himself. With his son, however, he used the diplomacy that he used on important occasions. Taking a calm tone, he discussed the whole matter.
Firstly, the marriage was not brilliant in terms of kinship, wealth and nobility. Secondly, Prince Andrei was not in his first youth and was in poor health (the old man was especially careful about this), and she was very young. Thirdly, there was a son whom it was a pity to give to the girl. Fourthly, finally,” said the father, looking mockingly at his son, “I ask you, postpone the matter for a year, go abroad, get treatment, find, as you want, a German for Prince Nikolai, and then, if it’s love, passion, stubbornness, whatever you want, so great, then get married.
“And this is my last word, you know, my last...” the prince finished in a tone that showed that nothing would force him to change his decision.
Prince Andrei clearly saw that the old man hoped that the feeling of him or his future bride would not withstand the test of the year, or that he himself, the old prince, would die by this time, and decided to fulfill his father’s will: to propose and postpone the wedding for a year.
Three weeks after his last evening with the Rostovs, Prince Andrei returned to St. Petersburg.
The next day after her explanation with her mother, Natasha waited the whole day for Bolkonsky, but he did not come. The next, third day the same thing happened. Pierre also did not come, and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrei had gone to his father, could not explain his absence.
Three weeks passed like this. Natasha did not want to go anywhere and, like a shadow, idle and sad, she walked from room to room, cried secretly from everyone in the evening and did not appear to her mother in the evenings. She was constantly blushing and irritated. It seemed to her that everyone knew about her disappointment, laughed and felt sorry for her. With all the strength of her inner grief, this vain grief intensified her misfortune.
One day she came to the countess, wanted to tell her something, and suddenly began to cry. Her tears were the tears of an offended child who himself does not know why he is being punished.
The Countess began to calm Natasha down. Natasha, who had been listening at first to her mother’s words, suddenly interrupted her:
- Stop it, mom, I don’t think, and I don’t want to think! So, I drove and stopped, and stopped...
Her voice trembled, she almost cried, but she recovered and calmly continued: “And I don’t want to get married at all.” And I'm afraid of him; I have now completely, completely calmed down...
The next day after this conversation, Natasha put on that old dress, which she was especially famous for the cheerfulness it brought in the morning, and in the morning she began her old way of life, from which she had fallen behind after the ball. After drinking tea, she went to the hall, which she especially loved for its strong resonance, and began to sing her solfeges (singing exercises). Having finished the first lesson, she stopped in the middle of the hall and repeated one musical phrase that she especially liked. She listened joyfully to the (as if unexpected for her) charm with which these shimmering sounds filled the entire emptiness of the hall and slowly froze, and she suddenly felt cheerful. “It’s good to think about it so much,” she said to herself and began to walk back and forth around the hall, not walking with simple steps on the ringing parquet floor, but at every step shifting from heel (she was wearing her new, favorite shoes) to toe, and just as joyfully as I listen to the sounds of my own voice, listening to this measured clatter of a heel and the creaking of a sock. Passing by the mirror, she looked into it. - "Here I am!" as if the expression on her face when she saw herself spoke. - “Well, that’s good. And I don’t need anyone.”
The footman wanted to enter to clean something in the hall, but she did not let him in, again closing the door behind him, and continued her walk. This morning she returned again to her favorite state of self-love and admiration for herself. - “What a charm this Natasha is!” she said again to herself in the words of some third, collective, male person. “She’s good, she has a voice, she’s young, and she doesn’t bother anyone, just leave her alone.” But no matter how much they left her alone, she could no longer be calm and she immediately felt it.
The entrance door opened in the hallway, and someone asked: “Are you at home?” and someone's steps were heard. Natasha looked in the mirror, but she did not see herself. She listened to sounds in the hall. When she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for sure, although she barely heard the sound of his voice from the closed doors.
KAZAN TATARS
The Tatar is either thoroughly good or thoroughly a fraud.(Proverb.)
During the era of the Mongol-Tatar invasion, Bulgar rule in the Volga-Kama region was replaced by Tatar rule. At the end of the 20s and in the 30s of the 13th century, the Tatars took possession of all the Bulgar land and became the dominant people here, but at the same time, as always happens when a more civilized people conquers a less civilized people, they themselves had to believe in the civilization of the one they defeated ancient, rich and well-organized kingdom, borrowed from it the settled way of life, city life, commercial enterprise, Mohammedanism and various features of the national character,
Which contributed a lot to the softening of their former steppe morals. The gradual merging of the victors with the vanquished through mutual marriages over time led here to the formation of even a special and strong Tatar race, significantly different from the Tatar groups in other areas of Russia.
The Kazan Tatar is well-built, well-built, strong and healthy. The features of his Mongolian origin are for the most part barely noticeable in the widening of the personal oval, in the slightly protruding cheekbones, in the slight narrowing of the gap in the eyes, in the long ears somewhat lagging behind the head, in the thickness and shortness of the neck; This can also partly be attributed to the fact that he rarely grows a large and thick beard. This modification of the Mongolian type among the Kazan Tatars can be explained in no other way than by the merger of the Tatar people with the Turkic and various Finnish peoples of the former Bulgar kingdom, because the admixture of another national blood, Russian, with the Tatar blood was long ago eliminated by the mutual religious alienation of the Russians and the Tatars. The Tatars themselves sometimes call themselves Bulgars (bulgarlyk), thus placing themselves in the most direct connection with this vanished nation. The Bashkir and Circassian types that occasionally occur between them are obviously of random origin and are not noticeable among the masses.
In the Kazan province, the Tatars (Muslims and baptized together) constitute the most populous foreign group, extending to 772,700 souls of both sexes, which is more than 31°/0 of the entire population of the province (Russians make up less than 40°/0), and are distributed throughout its entire territory, with the exception of the districts of Yadrinsk and Kozmodemyansk, inhabited by Chuvash and Cheremis. The densest Tatar population is located in the northeast and south of the province, mainly on the left side of the Volga. When they first settled in this area, the Tatars obviously did not climb deep into the forests, on the right side of the Volga and in the north on the left, where foreigners of the Finnish tribe lived, and out of the habit of living in open meadow areas, the main mass settled to the east of the Volga, having it in front of them with a fence from attacks from the west, and then, when the Russian colonization of the Kazan region began, occupying the river banks and the main roads of the area everywhere, they had to give up these places to the Russians and push to the northeast, as well as to the right and left of the Volga banks in the south . The southeastern settlements of the Kazan Tatars inextricably merge with the settlements of the Simbirsk Tatars, who form the same tribe as the Kazan ones.
Tatars are Muslims everywhere, including in Kazan itself, and live separately from the Russians. The Russians themselves pushed them away from themselves from the very beginning after the conquest of the Kazan kingdom from reprobate species. As a result, a unique semi-eastern way of life is still preserved in Tatar villages. The Tatar village has something wild about it. The houses, built mostly without order, are hidden inside the courtyard, and fences and sheds overlook the street; This type of arrangement of dwellings is found even in villages already located according to plan. From under the locked gates and along the street there are many angry dogs, barking frantically when a new person appears in the village, and at night filling the area with wild howls. In the middle of the village, in a small square, there is a wooden mosque, the minaret of which rises above all the philistine buildings. Somewhere to the sides of the village there is a sad cemetery (mazarki), filled with wooden posts, small log houses and stone slabs instead of crosses, under which the faithful dead lie in anticipation of a future life, where the Russians will be their slaves. The Tatar settlements in Kazan itself, in terms of the nature of the buildings and the location of the streets, are now quite similar to the rest of the city. The only differences they have are mosques instead of churches, some oriental originality in the painting of houses, a lot of dogs, constantly locked gates and curtained windows with jars of balsam, a favorite Tatar flower.
In terms of their location, Tatar houses in common areas are similar to Russian ones. Every decent, not poor village house is divided into two parts, the front living area and the back working or back room, between which there is a large vestibule. The residential hut, in addition, is, in turn, divided by a partition into two sections, male and female, with special doors for each. The doors open not to the outside, like in Russian houses, but to the inside of the hut. The women's department is a necessary accessory to the Tatar home; Even in a small shack, which can never be divided in two, there is certainly at least a small corner behind the stove, covered with a curtain, for the owner’s wife, where she is hidden from the eyes of prying men. The stove, like the Russians, is placed at the entrance to the hut; smeared into it. a cauldron for cooking, and for many it also serves for washing clothes. On the stove or behind it there are tin or copper jugs with narrow necks and long noses, used for religious ablutions, one for the husband, the other for the wife, because it is forbidden by law for them to wash from the same vessel. Behind the stove you can always find a large copper basin, also for washing, and two towels, one for the hands, the other for the feet. The front wall of the hut is occupied by wide bunks for sleeping, so that something like a Russian front corner cannot be found in a Tatar house. The table that occupies this honorable corner among us is placed on the side of the Tatars, at the side window of the hut. Scattered on the bunks are soft down jackets, feather beds, which are only replaced by felt among the poor, and pillows - it is clear that the Tatar likes to sleep softly and comfortably, and not on a sheepskin coat rolled into a hard ball, like a Russian. Most of the huts have samovars and brightly painted tea utensils, usually placed in the most visible place. Among the features of Tatar utensils are red or green chests; the wealthy have several of them. upholstered with colorfully painted tin, and carpets, or at least mats, with which the floors are covered.
Due to the reclusiveness of the Tatar woman, the groom does not see his bride before marriage, or at least it is assumed that he does not. Therefore, the engagement is arranged by their parents or through matchmakers; These same representatives of the parties also agree on the amount of dowry. After the engagement, the groom does not go to the bride, but sends her only gifts from items of women’s clothing; at the same time, the cost of the donated things is not taken into their own account, but is deducted from the bride’s next kalym. Seven days before the wedding, wedding feasts begin, for which guests alternately gather in the groom's house, then in the bride's house, and separately - men on one day, women on another, all with different gifts. The last feast, after which the marriage ceremony is performed, occurs with the participation of men in the bride's house. Neither the groom nor the bride are present at it, the first waits for its end outside the door, and the bride hides in the bedroom prepared for the wedding night. After the feast, having eaten honey and melted butter, a ritual dish, with bread, the guests put money on the tablecloth as a gift to the bride, who takes it to her bedroom. After this, the mullah, an indispensable guest of this feast, begins to perform the marriage ceremony.
The marriage ceremony is not at all like a religious ritual. The only religious thing here is the reading of the first chapter of the Koran, the marriage prayer, which has the meaning of an ordinary prayer at the beginning and completion of any business, and the pronouncement of the marriage khutba, a praise to God who established marriage and said: “Take as many wives as you please.” - two, three, four." The essential side of the ritual is the attestation of a purely civil agreement between the parties on the amount of bride price, with the mullah playing the role not of a clergyman, but of a simple notary. Marriage issues are proposed not to the spouses, but to their parents or other representatives of their families; father The mullah asks the bride if he agrees to marry his daughter to NN and for such and such a price, and the groom’s father agrees to marry her to his son. The matchmaker takes him to the bedroom, where the newlyweds are locked away for 3 or 4 days to get used to each other.
After marriage, the young woman does not suddenly move into her husband’s house, but remains for a year or more in her family. The husband goes to her as a guest, and in the meantime arranges for her reception everything that is needed for family life.
Mohammedan polygamy did not take hold among the Tatars, most likely due to economic difficulties in maintaining multiple wives together and due to the family discord inevitable with polygamy.
Only very few have two wives, and then another wife is taken when the first one becomes obsolete; With a young wife, she usually becomes the main mistress of the house.
A woman, as we know, is humiliated even in the religious view of Islam, as a creature of a lower breed. She is almost completely freed from performing religious rituals, she does not go to the mosque, except occasionally in her old age, she does not even know what will happen to her in the next world, because the prophet did not reveal this, while busy describing the bliss of the faithful in paradise with some others women or divas, houris, in whose presence earthly wives are obviously already superfluous. In family life, she is the complete property of her husband, a creature completely without rights before him, which he can drive away from himself at the first whim. All her thoughts therefore focus on retaining his love, on decorating herself with whitewash, rouge, clothes, on satisfying his sensual instincts, etc. The usual way to treat your wife is to be proud, contemptuous and stern; showing her affection in public is considered reprehensible
As in the entire Nahometan world, among the Tatars there is, to a certain extent, seclusion of women. The richer the Tatar, the more he shelters his wife. In the everyday life of poor, working people, both urban and rural, such concealment of a woman is, of course, impossible; but even a poor woman of this class, when meeting a man, is obliged to cover her face or at least turn away from him during a conversation - an exception is allowed only when meeting with Russians, before whom, like infidels, it is perhaps not worth hiding. More liberal urban Tatars now allow their wives to openly visit Russians, to public meetings, walks and to the theater. But not very long ago, special boxes were purposely built for the Tatars in the theater, covered with curtains, behind which the rich Tatar women hid. Traces of this concealment are now sometimes revealed only in the fact that the Tatar women are placed in the depths of the box, and their husbands occupy the front part of it; This, however, can also express the high dominance of the male half of the family; When a Tatar family goes or walks somewhere, the man also always walks ahead, and his wife minces behind him, surrounded by her Tatars, not daring to catch up with him, much less overtake him.
The dominant food of the Tatars is everything floury and oily, especially in wealthy families, where various types of butter and puff pastries, dumplings, fatty noodles, thick cream (kaimak), etc. are consumed in large quantities. Common dishes among common people include: toslan or mash, cooked from flour and water with salt, salma from balls of dough in water, buckwheat flatbreads in quick butter; For taste, salma and tolkan are sometimes whitened with milk. On holidays, the table is served with meat stew and roast lamb or horse meat. Tatars do not eat much meat at all, because it is expensive for them. An animal intended for food must certainly be slaughtered by a Tatar and with a well-known prayer; That is why the Tatars cannot use the supplies of the ordinary meat market and at the ordinary price. An important help for them could be the meat of horses that is allowed for food, but they use it little, because, being usually obtained from old, no longer fit for purpose horses, it is very harsh and tasteless, and stabbing healthy foals and young horses for it is... expensive. The most common and, one might say, national meat among the Tatars is lamb. Pig meat, so common in Russian villages, is positively prohibited by the Koran and is an object of the same disgust for the Tatars as mare meat is for the Russians.
Another prohibition of the Koran regarding wine is not observed as strictly as one might think, especially among the working class in cities and among villagers living adjacent to Russian villages, in which the tavern is, as is known, a necessary accessory. The more conscientious Tatars disguise their opposition to the commandments of the prophet by consuming lesin instead of vodka, some tinctures, balsam and sweet vodka. Tea and beer are considered completely harmless drinks and are consumed by the Tatars in incredible quantities. Urban Tatars love to drink beer, as well as tea, especially in taverns and taverns, which perhaps expresses the well-known passion of eastern residents for coffee houses. In Kazan there are several specially Tatar taverns and taverns, where you can always meet both tea-drinking and tipsy Tatar friends. Some Tatar virtuoso or several of them are playing violins in the corner, imitating some Polish or Cossack girl from the ear and in a completely Tatar manner, and at the tables, over the emptied dishes, sit tipsy pairs of friends and, staring closely at each other with their faces, staring at each other red eyes at each other, trying to outshout each other, sensitively singing some kind of whiny and blissful song. which in character has not the slightest relation to the immediately ear-piercing violin polka. For some reason, the violin managed to become the favorite instrument of the Tatars and even other foreigners of the Kazan province. The national character of the Tatars is more lively and receptive than the Russian. The Tatar is lively, intelligent and enterprising, sociable, talkative, will smother a guest with tea and food, but at the same time he is deceitful, boastful and deceitful, loves to deceive, especially Russians, touchy and hot-tempered, loves to sue, despite all his enterprise and dexterity, he is lazy and unstable. in the matter of labor systematic). The Tatar laborer gets to work at first very ardently and promptly and seems much better and more profitable than the Russian worker, who at the beginning usually spends a long time just swaying and adjusting to the work, but does little work; but then the Tatar begins to quickly weaken both in strength and in zeal, when the Russians have just entered into the full force of their work, and the overall results of the total amount of work done often turn out to be in favor of the latter, not the former. In agricultural work, which requires not so much agility as patience and perseverance, the Tatars are inferior not only to the Russians, but also to other foreigners of the Kazan region, so that they even arouse general ridicule against themselves. The Tatar field is always worse than others; Other aspects of their agriculture have been neglected in the same way. In many villages, the Tatars have even given up farming altogether and are renting out the land to the Russians, Chuvash and Votyaks. By nature, a Tatar loves to make a penny in some easier way: petty trade, profiteering, even simply fraud. Trade seems to be his natural vocation - this is a true descendant of the ancient Bulgars. As a boy, he walked the streets of Kazan, rummaging through heaps of garbage in courtyards, looking for hair and rags to sell in factories, or selling bars of soap, matches, oranges and lemons. For the Kazan region, in terms of trade and farming, the Tatars are almost the same as the Jews for the western region. They are engaged in all kinds of sales and resale, from the sale of robes and old clothes to large-scale trade in tea, from the wandering trade in whitewash, rouge, beads and all sorts of rubbish in Tatar villages to very respectable trade deals with Bukhara, Persia and China. Large merchants conduct their business quite rationally and honestly, but the majority firmly adhere to zealous methods of deception, fooling buyers with an honest appearance, false ambition, oaths and requests for four and five times the real price of the goods. In addition to trade, the Tatars are also engaged in leatherworking, which they also inherited from the Bulgars, soap-making, and the preparation of felt products; production of bast, cart and cooperage crafts. In the Kazan province they own more than 1/3 of all factories and factories. Many hands are busy driving; Among the cab drivers (mostly draymen) and coachmen of the entire Tatar province, they make up a full half. They love and keep their horses well. Tatar horses and coachmen are considered the best in the region. Due to the poor state of agriculture in the Tatar villages, thousands of villagers go annually to various waste trades in the surrounding Volga cities and on the Volga. In Kazan, poor Tatars take on the work of janitors, porters on the piers, guards, day laborers and water carriers; Others simply indulge in poverty, which is extremely developed especially among the female half of the Tatar population, or even in theft and horse stealing.
By religion, the Tatars are all Mohammedans, with the exception of a small number, up to 42,660 people, baptized into Orthodoxy, and are distinguished by their ardent and strong adherence to Islam. The latter lies at the basis of their entire worldview and their entire moral make-up and constitutes the main difference between their very nationality, which both they and the Russians conceive of in no other way than in a religious form. Foreigners who have been converted to Islam at the same time become Tatars. To accept Mohammedanism means to “join the Tatars.” The Mohammedanism professed by them is of the Sunni variety and does not represent any peculiarities against common system This sense is neither in religion nor in rituals: the Tatars have the same dogmas, the same five-time prayers, fasts (Uraza), holidays (Bayram), etc., like all other Sunni Muslims. The Tatars are for the most part very pious, even fanatical, and firmly adhere to the rituals of their faith. Every task begins and ends with a short prayer: “Bismillagi rrahmani rrahim,” in the name of the merciful, merciful God. Namaz is carefully performed by almost all Tatars, with the exception of unskilled workers or some liberal intellectuals, even during travel, for example, on on a steamship on the Volga. To determine the qibla (the side where Mecca lies and where to face in prayer), rich Tatars deliberately carry small compasses with them during the main and long fast of Ramadan, which lasts for a whole month, even laborers do not eat anything every day. They do not drink all day long until the night, despite the fact that they suffer terribly from this abstinence during work, especially from thirst, when this temporary fast occurs in the summer heat. Having caught some sinner in violation of Ramadan, the Tatars smear soot on his face. and sometimes they beat him cruelly. Among pious people, in great respect, the hajj, travel to Mecca, from where pilgrims or hajis return with various shrines, sacred rosaries, amulets, talismans, wonderful stories about the Kaaba, a stone hanging in the air or the coffin of the prophet, etc. . and then throughout their lives they enjoy special respect among their fellow believers.
The most important holidays of the Tatars, common to all adherents of Islam, are Bayram in honor of the giving of the Koran, preceded by the fast of Ramadan, and Kurban Bayram 2 months after the first in honor of the sacrifice of Abraham, both transferable. In places between simple Tatars in villages, various public and private, family Kurmans-sacrifices of pagan origin have been preserved, but very few. The remnants of the old paganism in large numbers and purity survived mainly among the old-baptized Tatars; among the unbaptized, the old folk faith has almost everywhere been completely supplanted by Mohammedanism. Of the ancient folk holidays, only two holidays have survived between them, Saban and Jiin.
Low education (literacy), however, is significantly common among all Tatars, not excluding women. It is obtained in schools at mosques, lower mektebs and higher ones - madrasahs. Each mullah is engaged in teaching the boys of his parish, and his wife usually teaches girls (for which she is called the Ustabika-Madam mistress). In addition, many children are taught by their fathers and mothers. For studying at school, you are entitled to a very small fee (khair), either in money, 2, 3, 5, many 10 kopecks a week, or in meat, milk, flour, oats and other products. The mullah teaches poor children without any khair, for free, because it is considered extremely soul-saving work. Teaching takes place in all schools only in winter, from the beginning of November to the 1st of May, every day, except week-Friday, in the morning, from 6 o'clock or at dawn. The initial course of literacy in mektebs consists of studying the primer with warehouses, with the necessary prayers (niats) and the forty duties of a Muslim (kalimats), which lasts for 2 years or more due to extremely imperfect, most primitive teaching methods, then in chanting selected passages of the Koran or the seventh part The Koran, Gavtiak, as this book is called, and the Koran itself, which lasts from 3 to 7 years, without any understanding of what is being read, because the Koran is read in Arabic. At the same time, some Tatar books of moral and religious content are read or, more precisely, learned by heart: Byaduam (about the duties of the law), Bakyrgan (moral poem), a book about Yusuf (Joseph the Beautiful), etc. This ends the education of all girls and more parts of boys For further education, boys enter madrasahs.
A madrasah is usually built next to a mosque with donations from wealthier Tatars and is maintained using collected funds. Donating to a madrasah is considered one of the most charitable deeds. In terms of its external structure, the madrasah is a more or less extensive hut with a somewhat raised floor; Between the floor and the threshold a pit is left, unlined with boards, in which galoshes are removed, washing is performed, all rubbish is removed from the floor, and all school rubbish and dirt are collected. Along the walls and on the floor there are partitions or screens, forming around something like cabinets in which students are placed with all their property; On the wall of each such compartment hang clothes and shelves with books, and on the floor there are beds, chests, dishes, food supplies, etc. Students (shakirds), except those who come, must always be in the madrasah; They are allowed home only on Fridays from Thursday evening to Saturday morning. That’s why they study here and run their entire household. Since women are not allowed into madrasahs, the boys themselves must take turns cooking for themselves, washing their clothes, sewing up various holes, and mending their shoes, which takes up a lot of time from their studies. All shakirds should serve as an example of careful observance of all prayers, ablutions and fasts, and in general their entire education is based on strictly religious principles. Learning takes place in the morning, from 6 to 10 and 11; At the same time, all the youth sit down with their legs tucked under them on the floor and begin, in a plaintive ritual, to chant their lessons from the Koran and other books or write, holding a paper on their left palm above their raised knee. On Thursday, all the successes for the week are checked and reprisals are given to unsuccessful students, as was done in our old schools on Saturdays; those who fail are punished by imprisonment or flogging. In the summer, students go home; Many of them indulge in petty trading at this time, selling lemons and oranges, for which they even go to Nizhny, and some go to the Kyrgyz villages to read the Koran, which also earns money for themselves.
It is remarkable that all of the current Muslim education in Kazan owes its prosperity to the Russian government and did not rise earlier than the beginning of the 19th century. Until this time, the Tatar population of the region was in the darkest ignorance regarding their faith. Teachers were rare, because they could only be educated by sending young people to the remote regions of the East, to Bukhara or Istanbul; All the necessary books were also obtained from there. In 1802, by the will of Emperor Alexander I, at the request of the Tatars, the first Tatar printing house was finally opened in Kazan at the gymnasium, and in just three years it managed to print 11,000 Tatar alphabets, 7,000 copies. Gavtiak, 3,000 Korans and up to 10,200 other religious books. After this, literacy began to rapidly spread among the Tatars, and printed books began to be sold in enormous quantities. Since 1813, when the activities of the Bible Society opened in Kazan, the Tatar printing house further strengthened its publishing work directly in opposition to the Society. At the end of 1828, she joined the rich university printing house, and the university, in addition to its own knowledge, became some kind of center of religious Muslim civilization for almost the entire Tatar population of the Empire, because Mohammedan books from its printing house through Tatar booksellers, through Nizhny Novgorod and Irbit fairs began to spread to all parts of Russia, wherever there were Mohammedans - to Siberia, Crimea, the Caucasus, Khiva and Bukhara. The number of these publications reaches amazing proportions and far exceeds the number of Russian publications of the same printing house. According to information for 1855-1864, during these 10 years she published up to 1,084,320 copies of Mohammedan books, including 147,600 Gavtiak, 90,000 Koran, etc. To this we must also add the same huge number of Korans, various small books and pamphlets , issued from private Tatar and other printing houses. The number of all publications reaches 2,000,000 copies per year. All these publications are sold at extremely cheap prices.
It is no wonder that, thanks to their numerous schools and the press, the Tatar population is now almost entirely literate and looks with contempt at the Russian peasants who suffer from illiteracy, and by the way, at all Russian education in general. There is a strong belief among the Tatars that there is no end to Muslim books, but there is an end to Russian books, and that when the Russians read to this end, they will turn to Muslim books and themselves will become Muslims. Due to his habit of reading, a Tatar learns Russian literacy quite easily, as was observed in the regiments: Tatar soldiers become literate rather than literate. It is curious that in the university printing house the Tatars were always considered one of the best workers for the local scientific journals of the university and theological academy.
The Tatars are generally the strongest of the nationalities of the eastern foreign region, not susceptible to any influence from the dominant nationality. They treat Russians with extreme suspicion, fearing on their part any attempts to convert the Tatars to Christianity and teach them Russians. For three hundred years they have lived together with the Russians and under Russian rule, and not only have they not become Russified like other foreigners, but they themselves have developed a huge influence on the neighboring foreigners, converting them to Mohammedanism and gradually turning them into Tatars. They live apart from the Russians; many, especially women, do not know the Russian language at all, they are even afraid of it, despite the fact that they cannot help but need to study it at every step. Of course, the Russians themselves are largely to blame for this due to their extremely repulsive attitude towards them, from which even a conversion to Christianity does not save the Tatar. “Tatar shovel, dog” are the most common nicknames for Tatars from the lips of a Russian person, which can be heard constantly. The common people consider them some kind of filthy creatures and would rather give food in their dishes to a dog than to a Tatar. Because of this, Tatars often come to Russians for work with their dishes, knowing in advance that otherwise they will not even have anything to drink water from. Of course, they themselves do not remain in debt to the Russians, for example, they do not consider it a sin to cheat, rob or beat them up on occasion, and the same. in turn, they are called dogs, kafirs (infidels), chukyngans (pigs), etc. However, one should not lose sight of the fact that such attitudes have formed among Russians only towards the Tatars; Russians treat other foreigners rather condescendingly; , allowing only good-natured jokes and jokes about them. Obviously, the Tatar is directly antipathetic to him. The reasons for this antipathy can be found in the history of all their mutual relations; there are many of them even now; main reason lies in the very fortress of the Tatar people. The Tatar is sincerely proud of his origin, his education, his moral qualities, his religion, for which he stands firmly to the point of fanaticism, and everything about himself in general, despising the Russian no less than he despises him.
The Tatar intelligentsia is, of course, not at all more tolerant of Russians. She speaks Russian perfectly and does not hesitate to send her younger generation to study in Russian educational institutions, male and female gymnasiums, and at the university. Some young people even receive education abroad, and not only in Istanbul or Cairo, but also in Paris. Wider education is inevitably accompanied by a weakening of religious fanaticism and even the very religiosity of the prophet’s fans, but this no longer contributes to bringing them closer to the Christian worldview and the Russian people. Their fake discord with the Russian people is abundantly replaced by nationalistic discord. A Tatar invariably remains a Tatar, regardless of education, devoted to his nationality and, to one degree or another, an ardent separatist. In the name of nationalism, these intellectuals stand firmly for their national religion, without which the unity and strength of the nation is unthinkable. They diligently participate in the construction of mosques, in supporting confessional schools within them, in the development of religious Muslim literature, book trade, propaganda of Islam and the Tatarization of neighboring foreigners, Cheremis, Votyaks, Chuvash, in various petitions and resolutions of Muslim congresses in favor of Islam, on its autonomous status in Russia, about the autonomy of Muslim censorship and the press, about the prohibition of the activities of missionaries among the Tatars and the freedom of Muslim propaganda, about the cessation of some kind of religious persecution of Muslims, etc.
In the last 20-30 years, a particularly lively movement has been noticeable in the Tatar world, aimed at the revival of Islam and strongly flavored with the ideas of pan-Islamism. Islam is gathering strength for a stubborn struggle with Christian civilization wherever it exists, and everywhere it has begun to take care of correcting the shortcomings of its ancient established way of life and developing its educational means. This movement spread to the Tatar Volga region. Old Testament mullahs and teachers are gradually being replaced by new progressive and nationalist ones. In fact, this is noticeably penetrating even into the masses. New madrasahs are opening, in which, although the old confessional education remains, it is now supplemented with new secular and scientific elements, the study of physics, mathematics, chemistry, and European languages. New trends are reflected in the old mektebs and madrasahs, their programs are expanded to the size of Russian primary schools and new and better teaching methods are introduced. But it is remarkable that Russian influence on education in all these schools is being carefully eliminated. They are jealously guarded from the supervision of officials of the Ministry of Public Education; the Russian classes do not take root under them and do not enjoy the sympathy of the Tatars; Government schools are spreading extremely slowly among the Mohammedans.
After the publication of the manifesto on October 17, 1905, the described movement among the Russian Tatars intensified in highest degree and during the subsequent state disruption from the war and the so-called liberation movement, it managed to organize itself to such an extent that it had to be taken into account very seriously not only by the Orthodox Church, but also by the state. There can now be no talk of any kind of Russification of the Tatars. The Christian mission among Mohammedans is completely paralyzed. The Orthodox Church has to, at least for a while, abandon any offensive struggle against Islam and confine itself to only a defensive struggle, saving from Muslim propaganda and apostasy from Orthodoxy at least the small number of its children that it managed to acquire during the previous long time, with more favorable circumstances.
Christian enlightenment was very difficult to graft onto the Tatars in the past, much less than to all other foreigners in Russia who professed pagan faiths. The Tatar faith, as we call Mohammedanism, firmly withstood all the pressures of the Christian mission on it, sacrificing the Russian faith only with the smallest number of its confessors. The most important eras of the Christian mission among the Kazan foreigners were: the time of the first Russian rule established between them in the second half of the 16th century. and then in the 18th century. the reign of Empress Elizabeth. The first holy figures of the Christian mission, the famous Kazan miracle workers of the 16th century, Gury, Barsanuphius and Herman, left behind entire villages of the so-called old-baptized foreigners, including quite a few Tatar villages. Islam was not yet so strong among the Tatars, who were still experiencing a period of dual faith, the struggle against the Mohammedanism of old pagan beliefs. Unfortunately, the work of the mission then stopped only at the initial conversion of these old baptized people to Christianity; St. The Kazan miracle workers, with all their efforts, did not manage to impart Christian enlightenment to this mass of converts, and their successors did not support their good beginnings. Already at the beginning of the 18th century. The spiritual and civil governments again paid attention to foreigners, started talking about their baptism and, most importantly, about establishing schools among them with a missionary character. In the 1740s, such schools were indeed established in Sviyazhsk, Elabuga and Tsarevokokshaisk, then in 1753 a large central school arose from them in Kazan itself. But even now it was not the school that had to stand in the foreground in solving a foreign issue, but again only the mission. In 1740, in Sviyazhsk, at the Bogoroditsky Monastery, a new baptism office was established, which paid all its attention to the baptism of foreigners in as many numbers as possible. The Kazan apxiepe, who was considered the enlightener of the Kazan region, Luka Konashevich, who energetically assisted her, was most concerned about the same thing. The pious reign of Empress Elizabeth, more than anything else, contributed to the, one might say, universal baptism of foreigners that began then by missionaries. From 1741 to 1756, up to 430,000 souls of various foreigners were baptized, who have since received the name newly baptized. Tatars were baptized least often. During all this time, only about 8,000 of them were baptized, and even those were ready at the first opportunity to fall away from the church and return to their former Tatar faith. With their stubbornness against all the efforts of missionaries and authorities, the Tatars even brought upon themselves real persecution, about the disasters of which they have embittered traditions even to this day. Bishop Luka forcibly took their children into his schools, destroyed their mosques, built two churches in their settlement in Kazan and established religious processions in these churches, in the village of Uspenskoye he dismantled the remains of Bulgar buildings respected by the Tatars and from their ruins he built a church, monastery cellars, etc. . The government, for its part, while assigning various benefits to the baptized, adopted repressive peace against Islam, prohibited the construction of new mosques, destroyed some old ones, aggravated the stubborn Mohammedans by increasing fees and duties and relocating to other places. The result of all these measures was a terrible embitterment of the rest of the Tatar population, which reached the point that in 1756 the government itself considered it necessary to moderate its zeal for the faith and immediately transfer Bishop Luke to another diocese. The unrest that arose in the foreign world did not subside for a long time after this and even in the 1770s had a bitter response for the Russians in the Pugachev region.
Under Empress Catherine II, the New Baptism office was finally closed (in 1764). At the same time, under the influence of the then fashionable idea of religious tolerance, the collection of taxes from unbaptized foreigners for baptized ones was abolished, the broadest possible permission was given to the Tatars to build mosques, and the clergy was forbidden to interfere in any matters concerning non-Christians and their houses of worship and to send missionary preachers to them. In the last years of her reign, Catherine even arranged for the Mohammedans special centers for their religious administration in the person of two mufis, one in Ufa, the other in the Crimea, and thus gave Mohammedanism a special and legitimate religious organization. In addition, the Koran was printed in St. Petersburg in the amount of 3,000 copies for distribution to the provinces populated by Tatars. The Christian mission among foreigners was completely undermined, and by the end of the 18th century. Newly baptized schools, the only source of education for the newly baptized, also closed. Meanwhile, Mohammedanism revived and developed strong propaganda for its part among the converted Tatars, again attracting them to its side, and, in addition, among other foreigners who professed shamanism, the Kirghiz and Bashkirs. There were rumors that the government itself stood for the Tatar faith, that it would soon build mosques for the Tatars at its own expense, and that a decree had been issued allowing the newly baptized to return to Islam again. The establishment of the Tatar printing house at the beginning of the 19th century finally strengthened the position of Mohammedanism in Rome, strengthening its schools and developing literacy among its confessors. The results of all this were not slow to emerge and were revealed precisely after as much time as was necessary for the younger generation to grow up, educated in the new schools.
In 1802 and 1803 the baptized Tatars began to fall away. Concerned by this, the government began to take measures to educate them Christianly. In 1802, a decree was issued on the translation of short catechisms and more necessary prayers into foreign languages. The Bible Society then began to distribute translations of St. scriptures. The Kazan apxbishop Ambrose Protasov proposed translating liturgical books into these languages, but this idea did not find sympathy at the time. At theological educational institutions in dioceses with a foreign population, they began to open classes for local foreign languages, because there was an extreme need for clergy who knew these languages. But the mission’s work had already been neglected to such an extent that it could not be corrected for a long time. During the reign of Alexander I and Nicholas I, many cases were carried out about the apostasies in Kazan and neighboring eparchies, and more and more about the Tatars. In 1827, the first mass defection of baptized Tatars to Mohammedanism began. Petitions for return to Islam were submitted to the Highest Name from 138 villages; in the petitions of these Tatars they explained that their ancestors had always been Muslims, that they came to Christianity, no one knows how or when, but were not at all trained in the Christian faith and did not know it at all; in support of their requests they referred to the decree of 1764 on the closure of the newly baptized office that baptized them forcibly. This reference is not justified by the meaning of the decree of 1764, but it clearly shows from what time and for what reason Mohammedanism began to raise its head after the blows of the Elizabethan reign. This fall away from the baptized Tatars was followed by a number of others. To weaken these apostasies, the authorities took various measures, corporal punishment, exile, dissolution of marriages between baptized and unbaptized, forced baptism of children in apostate families, etc. In 1830, missionaries were newly established in the Kazan diocese, but without any benefit. In 1847, at the Kazan Academy, by order of the Highest, a Tatar translation of sacred and liturgical books was undertaken, but the language for these translations, as well as for teaching in schools, was adopted, unfortunately, not a living folk language, but a book language, understandable only educated Tatars. The greatest fall of the Tatars occurred in 1866, during the era of the reforms of Alexander II.
With all these apostasies, the same story was repeated everywhere: rumors spread about a certain royal decree, supposedly allowing apostasy, petitions were submitted to the Highest Name for a return to the old faith, and in anticipation of their results, the apostates threw out their images from their houses, threw off their belts, put skull caps on their heads and went to the mosque instead of church. The authorities began to judge them, dragged them to the consistory for admonition, flogged them, resettled them in Russian villages, even exiled them to Siberia; but it did not, and could not, extend beyond these purely external measures. The local clergy turned out to be completely unprepared to enlighten the Tatar flock, because they did not know either their language or their old Mohammedan beliefs. Every time the consistory needed capable people to exhort those who had fallen away, there was not a single priest in the diocese who knew the Tatar language and the Mohammedan doctrine. Theological school, immersed in the study of Latin and in the refutation of ancient heretics Byzantine Empire, did not convey any idea about what was under her nose, about local foreign languages and beliefs.
It is remarkable that apostasies were found mainly among newly baptized Tatars, and not among old baptized ones. The reason is clear: although both of them were joined to the church in the same external way only, three centuries had already passed since the latter joined, which could not but strengthen in them at least the habit of being considered Christians. In fact, they cannot be called completely Christians; This is some kind of special inter-mental, albeit very interesting tribe, representing in its beliefs and habits some kind of mixture of Christianity with Mohammedanism and paganism and worthy of special study by ethnographers and historians. There are very few of them left now. These are the remnants of the Tatars of ancient times, when the Tatar people, having adopted Mohammedanism, did not part with the old pagan beliefs and experienced their period of dual faith. Christianity, into which they were baptized by the Kazan miracle workers, constituted the third faith among them, it must be said, the weakest. They preserved this mixture of three faiths as a curious monument of antiquity, which in some remote places has almost entirely reached us from the 16th century, and as a sad evidence of the weakness of Russian influence on them.
Christianity was grafted onto the old baptized only to a very weak extent. The identity of the Savior is known to them only from Mohammedan sources, as the identity of one of the prophets. The dogmas about His deity, about the Trinity, about the incarnation, under the influence of Mohammedan monotheism, are positively rejected by them and serve as a constant temptation regarding Christianity, as well as Christian icon veneration, which they identify with pagan idolatry. At the same time, they profess with all their might the symbol of Islam: “There is no God but God; Mohammed is His prophet." Only some, closer to Christianity, consider Mohammed simply a saint. The veneration of Tatar saints is developed among them almost to the same extent as among indigenous Muslims. Beliefs regarding the future life and the afterlife also remain purely Mohammedan. Many Koranic legends about the prophets Adam, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, etc. and about Mohammed himself, his moral qualities, prophecies and miracles constitute the same widespread mass of religious knowledge among the old baptized as apocryphal legends created on a biblical basis constitute for the Russian common people, which directly shows that the fundamental source of religious worldview for them was not the Bible, but the Koran. The old baptized is indifferent to the rituals of the church: he does not go to church, and if he ever comes to it, he does not pray at home either, unless in the presence of Russians, but if he sometimes prays, it is in Tatar, raising his hands up and reading Tatar prayers, which they call “making amen”; before starting a task or before eating, instead of “Lord have mercy,” he says “bismillah”; does not observe either Tatar or Russian fasts; confession and communion are accepted only when necessary, before the wedding and before death. The result of this oscillatory state between different faiths must necessarily have been religious indifferentism among the old-baptized; Between them you can constantly hear the well-known argument that God gave both this and this faith, that everyone is saved by his own faith, and that it is not even known which faith is better.
Due to the extreme weakness of Russian influence on the Tatars, Mohammedanism turned out to be much stronger in exterminating the remnants of paganism than Christianity, which is why they now constitute the almost exclusive affiliation of the old-baptized. His influence on the education of the Tatars in general turned out to be stronger than the Christian influence. While Mohammedanism established its schools everywhere, almost all of its confessors learned to read books, through this it gave strong support for the national religion and exterminated old superstitions, baptized Tatars, but at least until the end of the 1860s, before the spread of fraternity schools among them St. Guria, remained in the darkest ignorance, having neither schools nor teachers. If some of them began to study, for example, for better management of trade affairs, then they turned for this directly to Tatar schools, to the mullahs, where they lost the last glimpses of Christianity. The Orthodox clergy, for their part, could not compete with the mullahs, because they were purely folk teachers, and they did not even speak the Tatar language. One could certainly not expect any religious influence from the Russian population; unless sometimes some schismatic zealot decides to talk to a Tatar about two fingers or seven prosphoras at the liturgy, but this, of course, enlightened the old baptized man very little, who had absolutely no interest in Christian worship, which was incomprehensible to him. In addition, the Russians themselves alienated their Tatar co-religionists, treating them with the same national disgust as they treated the unbaptized Tatars. It is remarkable that marriages between Russians and baptized Tatars are still quite rare and are even considered humiliating for Russians, both for boys and girls. It is very natural that the baptized should constantly gravitate not to the Russians, but to their unbaptized fellow tribesmen, to look for moral poverty not in Christianity, but in Islam, which they had not forgotten. It is clear how strongly Mohammedan propaganda must have affected them; it must be said that it was very energetic and had great resources in their native language, in many mullahs, mosques and schools.
After the publication of the manifesto on freedom of conscience on October 17, 1905, a new period of apostasy from the church began among the baptized Tatar population. Tatar propaganda of Islam has intensified to extreme tension, although Tatar newspapers deny this, presenting Mohammedanism as the most peace-loving religion and averse to any proselytism, unlike Orthodoxy, which has always cruelly persecuted the faithful. Demanding through its leaders not to allow Orthodox missionaries into their villages, who themselves do not look there because of serious fears even for their very lives (“sekim head”), Mohammedanism sends crowds of its mullahs, shakirds and simple zealots to baptized and pagan foreign villages - preachers of Islam, who hang around here in native and familiar houses and bazaars, using all sorts of means to persuade the population to Mohammedanism, slandering the Russian faith, deceptive assurances with references to the Tsar’s manifesto that the Tsar ordered all foreigners to be brought to Mohammedanism and will soon convert to Mohammedanism him, that in Russia there will be only two faiths - Russian and Tatar, that whoever does not want to be in the Russian faith would rather convert to Mohammedanism, otherwise they will soon be forcibly baptized, etc. Richer and more influential Mohammedans and apostates will attract the baptized to apostasy. affection, material benefits and help. Having recruited two or three dozen seduced people in the Epiphany village, they rush to quickly establish a mosque and a school in it, even if directly against the law and contrary to the wishes of the local Epiphany population, who make up the majority of the inhabitants. Where the majority and strength are on the side of the apostates, the inhabitants who are firm in Orthodoxy cannot survive from all sorts of insults, ridicule, oppression, nagging, etc., so that, having strengthened themselves as much as they have patience, they involuntarily convert to Islam themselves. Newly baptized Tatars can no longer remain in Tatar or apostate villages at all, out of fear for their very lives, and have to move somewhere else. The propaganda of Islam has recently become too bold and even violent.
Muslim literature is also doing its job of propagation, revived and also extremely emboldened after the 1905 manifesto on freedom of conscience. In seven Kazan Tatar newspapers and in tens of thousands of books and brochures published in Kazan, the religious question, praise of Islam, exaggerated news of its successes and censure of Christianity occupy a very large place. These publications are sold at the cheapest price in all rural bazaars and in Tatar bookstores where foreigners frequent. It is remarkable that religious books and brochures in foreign languages, Russian editions, cannot be found in any such village bazaar. An important drawback of book propaganda of Islam was that Tatar publications were printed exclusively in the Arabic alphabet, which baptized Tatars and other foreigners do not know; The Tatars even considered it a sin to print their books in the more common Russian alphabet. Now they decided to take this sin upon their souls and began to print the books needed for propaganda either together with a Russian translation or in one Russian font. Publications of this kind are published by them obviously for the edification of the baptized, who know only the Russian alphabet. In 1906, a wonderful brochure in the Tatar language with a Russian transcript “Islyam deni” (The Faith of Islam) was published from the Kazan printing house of the Karimov brothers; she is dismantled by the priest. S. Bagin (missionary) in the Orthodox Church. Interlocutor 1909
The title page says that this brochure was printed on the basis of the Supreme Manifesto on Freedom of Faith dated October 17. 1905. The first pages contain a convincing appeal to the baptized Tatars about the return of their fathers and grandfathers to their former native faith. “This book is for our ancient relatives, who in the past were forcibly removed from the teachings of Islam, about whose beloved faith this book speaks. These relatives of ours were not given the opportunity to live in Islam: they were forced into church, icons were placed in their houses by force, they were forced to celebrate Easter, on the holiday of red eggs the priests forcibly entered their houses, etc. It is described what kind of violence they endured, What kind of tortures - lashes, exile to Siberia, to hard labor, they were subjected to because even after converting to Christianity they did not forget the teachings of Islam and remained faithful to it. On the day of the general judgment they will appear with bright faces ahead of all Muslims and the prophets themselves. People will ask: “What kind of Muslims are these with bright faces?” Then the angels will answer: “They suffered great oppression for their faith,” etc. Then, in case the baptized return to their old folk faith, instructions are given on what they should do when building a mosque and school for themselves, on inviting a shakird to teach the faith , mullahs, etc. The content of the brochure consists of a presentation of the doctrine and rituals of Islam, as one would expect, it was widely distributed, although it was kept largely secret in the same printing house and obviously for the same purpose of promoting Islam. The manifesto of October 17, 1905 and the regulations of the Committee of Ministers of April 17, 1905, and completely ready-made forms of petitions addressed to the governor for conversion to Islam, in which the petitioners only have to enter their names, were printed in Russian and Tatar.
Among the Tatar population, the memory of the former greatness of the Tatar kingdom still lingers and faith in its future has been restored. It expects the restoration of this from the assistance of the Sultan, who enjoys great respect from him, as the sole king of the faithful throughout the world. Muslim sympathies pull the Tatars not to St. Petersburg or Moscow, but to Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul, these holy cities of Islam. There are various wonderful legends about them, like among our common people about the holy places. The Turks in the imagination of the Tatar common people believe that the end of the world was connected with the capture of Istanbul by the kyapirs, until they personally met them, when they were taken captives through the Kazan province in the last war of 1877. in the form of angels of gigantic size, as the Koran depicts angels. The captives, despite their ordinary witchcraft image, were nevertheless greeted in the Tatar villages with extraordinary enthusiasm, as befits one’s elder brothers in Islam.
Въ Crimean war the Tatars, as you know, showed very unpleasant coldness towards their fatherland. Their recruits, with the assistance of the rich, fled from military service in such large numbers that, for example, up to 200 fugitives were counted in Mamadysh district alone. In general, the Tatars said then that their conscience forbade them to fight against the Turks of the same faith. The confidence then spread throughout the Kazan region that the Sultan would soon appear and free them from the power of the Russians. After the conclusion of peace, when the Crimean Tatars began to move to Turkey, several families of the Kazan Tatars also expressed a desire to follow their example. After 20 years, the same phenomena were repeated during the war of 1877. Russian peasants and priests in places had to hear very frank boasts and warnings from the Tatars that soon “the Sultan will come, he will kill the Russians.” People who liked them, they They reassured us: “You are a good person, we will quietly kill you.” We also heard about cases of treason by Tatar soldiers in the army. Portraits of the Sultan and his generals could be found everywhere in Tatar houses. In continuation of the protracted negotiations about peace after the war, persistent rumors spread through the Tatar villages that the Sultan demanded that the Tsar give him all Muslim Tatars, and the Tsar, in order to evade this demand, ordered that all the Tatars be baptized as soon as possible: “then I’ll tell the Sultan that this not yours, but our people." These rumors were of no small importance in the subsequent Tatar unrest in different places of the Kazan, Simbirsk and Samara provinces.
As luck would have it, by this time some orders from the local spiritual and civil administration arrived, which, against the will of the authorities themselves, confirmed these rumors in the eyes of the already suspicious and excited Tatars. The Samara diocesan authorities ordered a more correct registration of baptized Tatars by parish; The unbaptized took this innocent order personally, since many of them live together with the baptized, and became agitated, thinking that they wanted to force them into the church. At the same time, the Kazan administration sent out circulars to the rural police authorities with orders to monitor, among other things, cleanliness around churches, to take precautions against fires, to hang alarm bells on tall buildings, etc. These Tatars also interpreted the rules in the sense of their stubborn suspicions, since the Russian villages in the circular were not separated by a special clause from the Tatar Muslim ones; they started talking about how they wanted to force them to hang bells on mosques and take care of churches, in other words, to force them to baptize. The word circular itself was translated in its own way: churches (lar-plural ending), then, without listening to the paper itself, by its name alone they were convinced that it was really about churches. The unrest was stopped by the usual measures and very quickly, but it greatly and permanently damaged the Russian cause in all the troubled areas.
The same unrest throughout the Tatar world was aroused in 1897 by the general census of the empire, which met with strong opposition among the Tatars and gave rise to various absurd suspicions regarding religious violence on the part of the government. There were several more Tatar unrest at different times, in different places and on different occasions (for example, due to the introduction of the Russian language into Tatar schools) of a less general nature.
The general attraction of Muslims towards Istanbul and the Turkish Sultan, which was noticed during our previous wars with Turkey, continued uninterruptedly. In peacetime, it could not be revealed with such frankness as then, but among the Tatar people and among the Tatar foreigners, restless rumors did not cease to circulate about the strength of Turkey and its significance for the faithful. According to Tatar newspapers, the reading of which is widely spread even among the Tatar common people, the Tatars followed and are following with great interest all the events taking place in Turkey and Persia. The news of the concentration of Turkish troops on the Caucasian border in 1907 created a particularly great sensation between them. In Tatar villages and villages of Tatar foreigners, rumors are still circulating that the Turks will soon defeat the Russians and conquer Russia, after which they will force everyone to accept the Mohammedan religion. According to other rumors, the Tatars themselves will soon separate from Russia and will choose a king for themselves.
The recently intensified pilgrimage of young Tatars to Istanbul for science and their close acquaintance with Turkey had an effect on them far from being in favor of Turkey and the Sultan. They saw with their own eyes the obvious signs of the disintegration of the Turkish Empire and the decline in the power of the Sultan and were convinced that he could not become some kind of general pan-Islamic padishah. Added to this was their close acquaintance with the Young Turks, whom they willingly joined in a party way. The science of Istanbul itself turned out to be far lower than the science of Cairo with its European knowledge and secular direction. Recently, young people have begun to head more to Cairo than to Istanbul. Upon returning from there, these young people began to spread the new science at home; educational institutions of a new type in Kazan now attract a lot of students, and it is clear that they appeal to the young Tatar generation. The new movement is not against Islam as a necessary nationalist element of life, but it, of course, should significantly weaken the old narrow religious direction of this life. The old, moribund generation of Tatars, with their fanatical mullahs and old-method madrassas, are noticeably lagging behind and are fading in the face of the new demands of the century. Pan-Islamism itself in its original form, together with its initiator and leader Gasprinsky, lags behind the new trend of life; his ideal of uniting all Muslims near Istanbul and a common padishah begins to be replaced by other, more liberal ideals in the new generation.
The new people are almost entirely of the extreme left wing of their political views. Like the pan-Islamists, they firmly stand for the independence of the Muslim nationality and for the worldwide fraternal unity of all its tribes, but no longer around a single padishah and under a single state power, but through only one religion and a single Muslim culture and in the form of a free federation of these related tribes, as special state units, with each of them retaining complete independence and all kinds of freedoms. How should such a movement respond to the life of the states among which Muslims live as citizens? Will they limit themselves to the desire to acquire only a certain degree of autonomy, or will their ideal federation, gradually developing and strengthening, show a number of active actions towards acquiring complete state independence? for its members, it is impossible to guess in advance. But the prudent policy of England has long been keeping a keen eye on both the old and the new Muslim movements in India.