"A particularly valuable work. In my judgment, it contains the best account of nineteenth-century Muslim societies in Central Asia. It is, I think, indispensable to an understanding of the events that followed."--Ira Lapidus, co-editor of Islam, Politics and Social Movements

The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were multiethnic and multireligious empires, which ruled over a large number of Jews and Muslims. In many ways these two non-Christian minorities presented similar challenges to the imperial order. Which policies did the state pursue toward Jews and Muslims? How did Jews and Muslims attempt to advance their interests in the political sphere? Which role did they play in the imperial army? What did the Jewish and Muslim Enlightenment movements have in common? In which respects were the experiences of Jews and Muslims fundamentally different? This book brings together specialists in Russian-Jewish and Russian-Muslim history and offers perspectives for a comparative approach to the history of Jews and Muslims in Russia.

This book looks at how Islamic law was practiced in Russia from the conquest of the empire's first Muslim territories in the mid-1500s to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when the empire's Muslim population had exceeded 20 million. It focuses on the training of Russian Muslim jurists, the debates over legal authority within Muslim communities and the relationship between Islamic law and 'customary' law. Based upon difficult to access sources written in a variety of languages (Arabic, Chaghatay, Kazakh, Persian, Tatar), it offers scholars of Russian history, Islamic history and colonial history an account of Islamic law in Russia of the same quality and detail as the scholarship currently available on Islam in the British and French colonial empires.

Perspectives on the strategies of imperial rule pursued by rulers, officials, scholars, and subjects of the Russian empire. This book explores the connections between Russia's expansion over vast territories occupied by people of many ethnicities, religions, and political experiences and the evolution of imperial administration and vision.

This set includes all four volumes of the critically acclaimed History of Central Asia series. The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. This set includes The Age of the Steppe Warriors (Volume 1), The Age of the Silk Roads (Volume 2), The Age of Islam and the Mongols (Volume 3) and The Age of Decline and Revival (Volume 4)

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

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History Volume 14 (CMR 14) covering Central and Eastern Europe in the period 1700-1800 is a further volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the 7th century to the early 20th century. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 14, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations. Section Editors: Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabé Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Karoline Cook, Lejla Demiri, Martha Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan Guenther, Vincenzo Lavenia, Emma Gaze Loghin, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Radu Păun, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid, Cornelia Soldat, Karel Steenbrink, Ann Thomson, Carsten Walbiner.

The central argument of this book is that the half-century of Russian rule in Central Asia was shaped by traditions of authoritarian rule, by Russian national interests, and by a civic reform agenda that brought to Turkestan the principles that informed Alexander II's reform policies. This civilizing mission sought to lay the foundations for a rejuvenated, 'modern' empire, unified by imperial citizenship, patriotism, and a shared secular culture. Evidence for Brower's thesis is drawn from major archives in Uzbekistan and Russia. Use of these records permitted him to develop the first interpretation, either in Russian or Western literature, of Russian colonialism in Turkestan that draws on the extensive archival evidence of policy-making, imperial objectives, and relations with subject peoples.

A definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the collapse of the Soviet Union

Modern Russian identity and historical experience has been largely shaped by Russia's imperial past: an empire that was founded in the early modern era and endures in large part today. The Russian Empire 1450-1801 surveys how the areas that made up the empire were conquered and how they were governed. It considers the Russian empire a 'Eurasian empire', characterized by a 'politics of difference': the rulers and their elites at the center defined the state's needs minimally - with control over defense, criminal law, taxation, and mobilization of resources - and otherwise tolerated local religions, languages, cultures, elites, and institutions. The center related to communities and religions vertically, according each a modicum of rights and autonomies, but didn't allow horizontal connections across nobilities, townsmen, or other groups potentially with common interests to coalesce. Thus, the Russian empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious; Nancy Kollmann gives detailed attention to the major ethnic and religious groups, and surveys the government's strategies of governance - centralized bureaucracy, military reform, and a changed judicial system. The volume pays particular attention to the dissemination of a supranational ideology of political legitimacy in a variety of media - written sources and primarily public ritual, painting, and particularly architecture. Beginning with foundational features, such as geography, climate, demography, and geopolitical situation, The Russian Empire 1450-1801 explores the empire's primarily agrarian economy, serfdom, towns and trade, as well as the many religious groups - primarily Orthodoxy, Islam, and Buddhism. It tracks the emergence of an 'Imperial nobility' and a national self-consciousness that was, by the end of the eighteenth century, distinctly imperial, embracing the diversity of the empire's many peoples and cultures.