
Decolonization has been a dominant theme in the scholarship of Eastern Europe and Eurasia over the past two years. Numerous articles published in NewsNet have called for the active decolonization of the field, and “decolonization” was the theme of the 2023 ASEEES convention. However, while there is widespread agreement on the need to decolonize, there is less consensus about what this process should entail. One point of agreement, however, is that scholars must broaden and diversify the voices they engage with, making a concerted effort to locate and incorporate more authentic non-Russian perspectives. For historians, this has often meant going beyond official state archives to explore non-state sources and viewpoints.
Non-state perspectives are indeed crucial, and in the case of Central Asian and broader Muslim history, they have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of Muslim communities under tsarist rule, enriching our knowledge of the social and religious histories of tsarist Muslims and demonstrating their intellectual autonomy from the Russian state. My research into the history of Muslim religious institutions on the Kazakh steppe under tsarist rule relies extensively on materials produced by Muslims outside of state mediation. These sources range from newspaper articles and poetry to hagiographies and religious commentaries, providing a rich tapestry of Muslim perspectives.
In this piece, I aim to share my experience seeking out non-state Muslim perspectives, while also reflecting on discovering and utilizing Muslim voices within Russian imperial archives. When discussing the latter type of sources, my goal is to move beyond the assumption that Muslim sources from bureaucratic archives reflect only their interaction with the state and are thus inherently problematic. Instead, I will emphasize the diverse array of Muslim-authored documents available in state archives, explore the various ways these sources can be used, and chart their linguistic characteristics. Since my research focuses on Muslim institutions in historical Kazakhstan, I will primarily concentrate on sources related to the tsarist-era Muslim communities of the Kazakh steppe.
The Language of Muslim Sources: Navigating the Fluid Landscape of Literary Turki
Before delving into tsarist Muslim sources, it is essential to briefly address the language in which they are written. Most of the Muslim sources in former imperial archives are composed in what is commonly referred to as the Turki language. While I use the term Turki somewhat freely here, defining it is a challenging but necessary task. Scholars typically describe Turki as an Arabic-script-based literary Turkic idiom employed by Muslim authors across a vast geographic region, including Central Asia, Eastern Turkestan, the Volga-Urals, Siberia, Crimea, and the North Caucasus, from roughly the fourteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This idiom served as a lingua franca, intelligible to a broad audience while not fully corresponding to the spoken dialect of any particular community. Educated individuals not only read this lingua franca with ease but also predominantly adhered to its archaic conventions, such as using traditional consonants in writing that had undergone phonetic shifts in spoken languages or preserving the original orthography of Persian and Arabic loanwords regardless of their actual pronunciation. Literary Turki, however, was never fully standardized, retaining a degree of flexibility and variability that poses significant challenges for historians attempting to categorize it. These challenges are further compounded by the ideological shifts of the early twentieth century and the nation-building efforts in the Soviet Union, which fueled debates over what this literary language should even be named.
Scholars must broaden and diversify the voices they engage with.
In Central Asia, this written language is often referred to as Central Asian Literary Turki, with its classical literally predecessor commonly known as Chaghatay. Some scholars, however, favor terms such as Old Uzbek or Old Uyghur, retroactively applying later linguistic distinctions to this broader, shared idiom. In the Volga-Urals, the same literary tradition is typically called Volga-Ural Turki, though many scholars also use the designation Old Tatar. For the North Caucasus, the designation North-Caucasian Turki is frequently employed. In contrast, the regional idiom of South Caucasia – referred to as Turkish until the 1920s and developed largely outside the Turki lingua franca zone alongside the Anatolian Turkish of the Ottoman Empire – is now commonly known as Azerbaijani or Azeri Turkish. The Turkic idioms of Crimea illustrate the overlap between the Turki and Ottoman Turkish linguistic spheres: here, rural dialects have come to be identified as Crimean Tatar, while urban idioms are often referred to as Crimean Turkish.
To be sure, such differing modern labels for Turki texts highlight regional variations in grammar and vocabulary. In fact, when analyzing a Turki text of unknown origin, linguistic features can often provide valuable clues about its geographical provenance and, in some cases, the period of its creation. Nevertheless, the boundaries between regional variations of literary Turki remained fluid throughout the nineteenth century. Unlike Ottoman Turkish, which developed standardized language norms through a clearly defined political and literary center, the Muslims of the Russian Empire and Central Asia lacked a unifying authority for the Turki idiom. This absence of centralization encouraged considerable linguistic diversity within their written traditions.
By the late nineteenth century, expanding educational opportunities and the growing body of documents produced by Muslim communities introduced more vernacular elements into the written language, challenging the notion of a unified literary Turki. This period also marked the beginning of languages being branded in ethnic or national terms. For example, the journal Ay-Qap, published in Troitsk (1911–1915), and the newspaper Qazaq, published in Orenburg (1913–1917), both claimed to use written Kazakh. However, these periodicals displayed notable differences in spelling conventions and vocabulary. Such discrepancies underscore the absence of standardized linguistic norms, even within a single ethnic group. Yet, the trend toward national branding was not universal. Vaqit (1906–1918), the most widely read Muslim periodical in the Russian empire, stressed throughout much of its existence that its language was simply Turki. This broader, more inclusive linguistic identity deliberately resisted the rigid ethnic or national categorizations that were beginning to emerge.

The landscape of Turki texts, shifting from overarching standard conventions toward the regional vernaculars, became even more complex in the early twentieth century. This period witnessed the growing circulation of Ottoman-language books and periodicals within the Russian empire, which influenced tsarist Muslim authors to emulate fashionable Ottoman grammatical conventions – often inaccurately – and to incorporate Ottoman vocabulary into their own writings. As the century progressed, the rise of romantic nationalism introduced purist tendencies, aiming to replace Persian and Arabic loanwords with Turkic archaisms and neologisms, a departure from the centuries-old cultural and linguistic heritage of literary Turki.
Muslim Voices in Bureaucratic Archives
State archival collections hold a wealth of documents authored by Muslims, the majority of which are petitions reflecting the interactions between Muslim communities and the tsarist state. While these petitions present certain challenges as historical sources, scholars can utilize them to gain a deeper understanding of the communities that authored the petitions, the impact of historical events on these groups, and the concerns and priorities that shaped their requests. Furthermore, petitions can be viewed as a form of political engagement. While we must not accept their content at face value, we can analyze the strategies that communities employed in their interactions with the state.
State archival collections hold a wealth of documents authored by Muslims.
For example, one common strategy employed by steppe Muslims seeking permits to build new mosques or religious schools was to invoke Russian patriotism, especially during military crises such as the Russo-Japanese War or World War I. These communities often highlighted their inability to pray for the emperor’s health or the victory of the great homeland due to the absence of a mosque, thereby justifying their appeals for the construction of new religious facilities.
Most petitions from the Kazakh steppe between the 1820s and 1860s were written in Turki, or sometimes in both Turki and Russian, with parallel translations. In bilingual documents, it is often unclear whether the Russian translation was done by someone hired by the petitioners or by a tsarist clerk after the document was submitted. Although the original Turki-language petition texts are frequently overlooked by scholars – buried within the vast Russian-language papers of a single delo file – the sheer volume of such documents highlights the significance of the tsarist imperial archives as a major repository of Turki-language sources that capture Muslim voices.

From the 1860s onward, there was a noticeable increase in Muslim petitions written in Russian. This shift reflects, on one hand, the linguistic preferences of the Russian administration and, on the other, the petitioners’ desire to ensure that their requests and demands were clearly understood by tsarist decision-makers. Nevertheless, even into the 1900s, some Muslims continued to use Turki in their communication with tsarist bureaucratic institutions. That said, once a Turki petition was translated into Russian, the translated copy typically became the primary text, relegating the original Turki version to secondary status. The implications of these translation practices are significant, and I will explore them further in the latter half of this piece.
In addition to petitions, Russian imperial archives house other bureaucratic sources that capture Muslim voices. One notable example is the collection of documents of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (Muftiate) preserved at the National Archive of Bashkortostan in Ufa. Established by Catherine II in 1788, the Muftiate was a state-controlled institution tasked with regulating Muslim religious life. Its responsibilities included examining and licensing Muslim clergy, supervising imams and other officials, overseeing mosque construction, and interpreting Sharia law. The National Archive of Bashkortostan contains numerous records from the Orenburg Muftiate, including materials originating from the Kazakh steppe. Among these are metric books, which were used to record births, deaths, marriages, and divorces in the communities under the Muftiate’s jurisdiction. While these records are not exhaustive – many Kazakhs remained nomadic pastoralists beyond the Muftiate’s reach – they provide valuable historical insights, including information on genealogies, disease outbreaks, naming practices, and territories associated with specific kinship groups.

Unfortunately for historians of the Kazakh steppe, the Russian state formally excluded Kazakhs from the Muftiate in 1868, which effectively curtailed the practice of maintaining metric books by local Muslim clergy. However, even after this separation, many mosques in urban areas with substantial Tatar or Bashkir populations continued to affiliate with the Muftiate, and metric books in these localities remained in use. Additionally, the Kazakhs of the Inner Horde—a semi-autonomous Kazakh polity located north of the Caspian Sea, between the Ural and Volga rivers, and later integrated into the Astrakhan governorate—remained under the jurisdiction of the Orenburg Mufti. As a result, the National Archive of Bashkortostan preserves many metric books originating from the Kazakh steppe that persisted well into the post-1860s period.
In addition to metric books, the Muftiate archive also contains a wide array of documents related to mosque and school construction, property disputes, legal matters concerning marriage and divorce, complaints against mullahs, and letters from Muslims seeking Islamic legal advice. Despite their formal exclusion from the Muftiate in 1868, Kazakhs continued to engage with the institution for religious guidance well into the 1910s, highlighting its enduring authority. For instance, Kazakh historians recently uncovered a 1910 letter from the renowned Kazakh wrestler Hajji Muqan Munaitpas-ughli, who sought guidance on how to officiate his marriage to a Catholic woman in accordance with Islamic law. The Muftiate responded by advising that his wife would need to petition the local governor for conversion to Islam before a mullah could perform the official Muslim marriage ceremony.
Beyond Bureaucracy: Non-State Muslim Voices in Imperial Archives
The Muslim-authored documents preserved in imperial archives primarily reflect Muslim communities’ interactions with bureaucratic institutions, including the Orenburg Muftiate. But what about sources that capture Muslim engagement with their co-religionists? To access such non-state mediated sources, one must look beyond state archives. While personal or family collections can yield valuable finds, a more consistent option would be to explore libraries or non-bureaucratic archival institutions. For example, Kazakhstan’s National Library in Almaty holds dozens of Arabic-script Kazakh-language books printed in the 1910s. The Russian National Library, in addition to printed materials, also preserves the private papers of Russian Orientalists, among which one can find manuscripts of poems by the renowned Kazakh Islamic scholar, writer, and poet Mashhur-Jusip Kopey-uli (1858-1931). Furthermore, Muslim manuscripts from the Kazakh steppe are housed in the Orientalists’ Archive of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg.

One of the richest collections of non-state mediated Muslim sources is held in the Scientific Library of Kazan Federal University (KFU). The library’s collection of Muslim manuscripts, predominantly in Turki, but also in Persian and Arabic, is particularly remarkable. With over 13,000 manuscripts and handwritten documents in Arabic script, KFU holds the largest repository of such sources in the Russian Federation. These materials span a wide variety of genres, including sharia discussions, eulogies, poetry, and memoirs. Because Kazan served as a major center of tsarist censorship – especially for Muslim printing – many manuscripts sent for censorship purposes have been preserved in the KFU library. As a result, the collection includes both original manuscripts and their printed versions. For instance, the library holds a manuscript of a Kazakh poem dedicated to the hajj journey of an important religious patron, Oserbay Quanish-ughli, as well as the printed book based on this manuscript. In addition to its rich manuscript collection, KFU boasts an extensive array of printed Muslim books and periodicals, which experienced a boom in late imperial Russia following the 1905 Revolution. Among the most notable publications are the journal Shura (1908-1917) and the daily newspaper Vaqit (1906-1917). These periodicals reflect the vibrant intellectual and religious life of Muslim communities in late imperial Russia.
Since much of the KFU collection remains uncatalogued, it is impossible to know the full range of sources held there. Occasionally, one encounters unexpected documents. Some even originate from state bureaucracies, making their presence in a university library in Kazan all the more surprising. One such document is a 1789 Turki-language letter from Catherine II to the Kazakhs of the Junior Horde. An even more remarkable find is an 1883 letter from a Qing councilor in Tarbaghatai, in northwestern Xinjiang, to a tsarist administrator in the Zaysan region of Semey province (now Zaysan district in East Kazakhstan). The letter requests support from the Russian official for a Qing merchant seeking to procure grain on the tsarist-controlled East Kazakh steppe.

What makes this example of inter-imperial communication particularly fascinating is that it was written in two languages, each using a distinct script. The first language, Turki, included elements of Kazakh vernacular – an unexpected choice that is nonetheless understandable given that both sides of the Qing and Russian borderlands were part of the Kazakh steppe, populated by ethnic Kazakhs who were deeply involved in imperial affairs, trade, and diplomacy. The second, more surprising language was Oirat, written in the Tod script. This choice can be partly explained by the fact that the Qing administrator was writing from a region that had once belonged to the Dzungar Khanate. Following the Qing conquest of the Dzungar Khanate in the mid-eighteenth century, the Qing government often used Oirat in correspondence with Kazakh rulers. However, this letter dates to 1883, more than 130 years after the Qing forces had decimated the Dzungars, which raises questions about the rationale for using Oirat in official communication with the Russians so late in the nineteenth century. The reason for persistence of this language choice in Qing-Russian correspondence remains unclear.
How did Catherine II’s letter to a Kazakh nobleman and a Qing administrator’s correspondence end up in Kazan? One possible explanation is Kazan’s status as a major center for tsarist translation, where documents were often sent for translation to and from Turki. That said, it seems unlikely that a tsarist administrator in the East Kazakh steppe would be unable to find someone proficient in Turki. Regardless of the specifics, the existence of these documents highlights the importance of Turki not only for tsarist diplomatic activities on the Kazakh steppe but also, surprisingly, for communication between the Russian and Qing states, suggesting that Turki functioned as a language of inter-imperial communication.
The presence of such documents in the KFU library raises intriguing possibilities for further discoveries within its collections. In the summer of 2021, KFU launched a digitization program of its Muslim manuscript holdings, which has already yielded promising results with hundreds of files now accessible on the KFU website. Given that many Russian archives remain closed to foreign scholars, KFU’s ongoing digitization efforts are proving to be an invaluable asset for research on the Muslim communities of the Russian empire.
Implications for the Field?
What broader implications, if any, might these insights offer to our understanding of Central Asian history, as well as the study of Muslim societies within the Russian empire and across the post-Soviet space? The most evident takeaway is that archival institutions – encompassing bureaucratic archives, libraries, and various collections – have preserved and hold a vast array of documents produced by Muslim communities. Contrary to any perceived scarcity, there is no shortage of sources reflecting Muslim perspectives, offering scholars ample material to engage with.
Another crucial point, often emphasized but worth reiterating, is the necessity of mastering the language of the community being studied. For scholars in the humanities or social sciences researching Central Asia or other non-Russian regions, relying solely on Russian is insufficient. Proficiency in additional languages, particularly those indigenous to the region, is not just advantageous but essential. Even for scholars focusing on broader Russian imperial or Soviet history, knowledge of local languages is invaluable. Such linguistic competence allows for a deeper engagement with a diversity of perspectives and voices, ensuring that important materials are not overlooked and that historical narratives are accurately represented.
Relying on official translations of Muslim documents might seem like a convenient way to bypass working with the original texts, but in my experience, these translations are usually incomplete and inaccurate. For example, Kazakh requests to “receive a Muslim education” are frequently mistranslated in tsarist files as requests to “learn Tatar.” Such conflation of “Muslim” and “Tatar” was common and reveals much about how tsarist administrators conceptualized Islam and its institutions. While this may appear a minor issue, the implications of such mistranslations can be far-reaching. In the 1860s, anti-Tatar sentiments became a key element of tsarist religious policy on the steppe, culminating in the exclusion of Kazakhs from the Orenburg Muftiate and the imposition of new restrictions on Muslim institutions. These mistranslations likely played a significant role in shaping such policies. Scholars who rely solely on bureaucratic translations without consulting the original texts risk creating distorted narratives based on these partial and erroneous understandings.
Contrary to any perceived scarcity, there is no shortage of sources reflecting Muslim perspectives, offering scholars ample material to engage with.
For historians studying Soviet Central Asia, knowledge of a modern Central Asian language may suffice in many cases, but even this has its limitations. A significant number of individuals in the region continued to use the Arabic script in their personal writings and correspondence well into the 1980s. This practice was not limited to religious figures within the Soviet-era Central Asian Muftiate, but often extended to secular figures as well, revealing the persistence of traditional forms of communication even amidst the dramatic political and ideological shifts of the Soviet period.
For scholars studying tsarist Muslim societies, the challenge is even greater due to the complexity of learning pre-modern, unstandardized Turki, especially for those working with handwritten documents, as these texts often exhibit significant variation in grammar, spelling conventions, vocabulary, and handwriting styles, further complicating their interpretation. Unfortunately, few institutions offer dedicated courses in Literary Turki. A practical starting point for a student of Central Asian history might be learning modern Uzbek, which is closely related to Turki, or, even better, Uyghur, which continues to use the Arabic script. Alternatively, one can begin with Arabic or Persian and then transition to one of the modern Turkic languages.
For scholars of Russia and Eurasia, the benefits of learning Turki other non-Russian languages with rich textual heritage are invaluable. These languages open access to a wealth of materials that unveil a complex tapestry of perspectives on diverse historical events and processes. Engaging with such sources would not merely enrich scholarly analysis; it is essential for a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the history of the wider Eurasian region.

Nurlan Kabdylkhak is a PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His dissertation examines the history of Muslim religious institutions on the Kazakh steppe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under Russian rule. Drawing on a wide range of official tsarist and Muslim sources, his research explores this transformative era—often referred to as an Islamic revival on the Kazakh steppe—to offer a nuanced portrayal of tsarist Muslims and their diverse responses to the challenges and opportunities brought about by Russian imperial expansion into Central Asia.