Niyaz-Muhammad Suleymanov and the Book Culture of Muslims of the Qazaq Steppe in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

In the territory of the Russian Empire in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, printing in Oriental languages became widespread. Several printing houses financed by influential Muslim merchants opened in Troitsk, Orenburg, Ufa, Kazan, St. Petersburg, and Tashkent. The printed books using Arabic script reached the Qazaq Steppe. This was due not only to the efforts of the Qazaqs, who published their works in various printing houses, but also to the activities of the Tatars. The article deals with the activities of Niyaz-Muhammad Suleymanov, a Siberian Tatar who distributed Islamic books printed in Arabic script in the Qazaq Steppe. Suleymanov wrote many works on the reforming of Islamic education, the need to learn Russian, and reading khutbah in Tatar. Besides, he was the publisher of many books in Tatar, Qazaq and Arabic. Suleymanov owned several bookstores in Petropavlovsk and Omsk. The book trade allowed Suleymanov to find means for a variety of activities. He was a participant of All-Russian Muslim congresses, and an imam of the Second Cathedral Mosque of Omsk from 1907 to 1916. Suleymanov closely contacted with Tatar and Qazaq intellectuals of the period, e.g., with a Qazaq writer and public figure Zhanuzak Zhanybekov and a Tatar scholar and the editor of the “Shura” magazine, Rizaetdin Fakhreddinov. Niyaz-Muhammad Suleymanov’s biography and the context of his activity allow us to study the specifics of the formation of the Islamic book culture in the Qazaq Steppe: the types of books that were favored, the areas of their distribution, how the content of these books influenced the social and political movement among Muslims, as well as the development of spiritual culture at large.