For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia

by Robert D. Crews

In stark contrast to the popular "clash of civilizations" theory that sees Islam inevitably in conflict with the West, Robert D. Crews reveals the remarkable ways in which Russia constructed an empire with broad Muslim support. For Prophet and Tsar unearths the fascinating relationship between an empire and its subjects. As America and Western Europe debate how best to secure the allegiances of their Muslim populations, Crews offers a unique and critical historical vantage point.

Genres: History, Russia, Islam, Russian History, Nonfiction, Russian Empire, Grad School

480 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 30, 2006

Reviews

[Bubba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crews shows how the tsarist government, from the time of Catherine the Great, sought to incorporate Islamic power structures into the ruling apparatus of the state. With Catherine, the idea that Islam should be "tolerated", i.e. no forcible conversions to Russian Orthodoxy, was a result of her Enlightenment era thinking. This toleration was coupled with a desire to use what she saw as the positive aspects of Islam (its respect for authority/the social order/the family, etc.) to bolster the authority of the tsar/tsarina among his/her Muslim subjects, and spread the gospel of enlightened Russian rule to her Muslim neighbors on the empire's southern borders. Hence she created the Muftiate for the Muslims of the Volga.

Interestingly, This cooptation of Muslim authority was modeled on the relationship between the tsarist government and the Russian Orthodox Church. However, as Islam does not really possess a centralized hierarchy or leader, like an Orthodox Patriarch or Catholic Pope, this required the construction of an Islamic "church," with a hierarchy of "clergy," a notion that is also problematic in Islam.

With some hiccups, this Muftiate worked well in the Volga-Urals region. But, by the time that the Russians began conquering the Kazakh steppe in earnest, as well as Turkestan, there were plenty of official Russian voices that declared that the state should not be subsidizing Islam. As nationalism became a prominent plank in tsarist authority around the mid-19th century (Russian language, culture and religion as the heart of the empire) it became harder for the tsarist government to promote Islam.

In the Kazakh steppe, the Russian's played down Islam and enjoyed the Kazakhs to use their own customary law (adat). In Turkestan, the area's first governor-general, Von Kaufmann, tried to ignore Islam, i.e. not make it so central to ruling the region, in hopes that its importance would evaporate. Of course, the whole idea of state controlled Islam was strengthened during Soviet times and survives today in Central Asia.

The main point of Crews' book is not that the Russians acted in such a manner, but that the Muslims of their empire constantly involved the state in religious matters. That is, both "clergy" and laymen south to leverage the regional Russian authorities to achieve their own ends. The Clergy called on tsarist police to quash "unofficial" Islamic gatherings (Sufi gatherings), claiming that they were a detriment to the integrity of the Russian state, though they were actually more concerned with such movements diminishing their own power. Laypeople often tried to appeal to the tsarist authorities/Ufa Muftiate over the heads of their local clergy, because they didn’t agree with their rulings.

The real impact of Crews’ work is in showing tsarist Russia’s Muslim subjects as shrewd manipulaters of the system, rather than its passive victims.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've marked this as "read, grad student," which means it was one of dozens of books I consumed in very little time while in graduate school. Generally, I tried to read the introduction and conclusion, the beginning and end of each chapter, and then used the index to find sections of especial interest. Judging by the highlighting in this volume, and my lack of memory of it five years later, I only managed step one (intro and conclusion) with this book.

This is unfortunate, because it’s a fairly well-written and interesting book, one that I hope I can return to at some point. Essentially, the argument is that, in spite of the predominance of Orthodox Christianity in the Russian Empire, the imperial family learned to cooperate with Muslim subjects and administrated them by means of collaboration with prominent Muslim clerics. As a result, Islam thrived side-by-side with Orthodoxy, and did not become a site of resistance to the regime. Crews’s study covers a wide area and several different cultures and languages, but he seems to have managed the challenges well. It is restricted to primarily the nineteenth century, although some discussion of the preceding and following centuries is included as well. One minor criticism I had was that he uses the term “well ordered police state,” often in scare-quotes, without explaining its origin. A reader unfamiliar with Russian historiography might think that this was a term contemporary to the subject matter, while as a person who did Russia as a minor field I recognize it as an analytical term introduced by a Russianist, Marc Raeff, but couldn’t tell you the full implications of Crews’s use of the term.

Overall, however, this book is full of fascinating insights and anecdotes, and is probably a worthwhile study for those concerned with the best ways an empire can co-exist with a religion like Islam.]

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that would be interesting to five people in the world. I am one of them.

Much English language reading material is available about the Russian Empire's expansion into the Causcasus and its imperial adventures in Europe and against Turkey, and there is even a bit about the conquest of Siberia, but there is precious little about Central Asia, and I have often wondered about the histories of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan as part of the Russian Empire. The ancient silk road cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent have a long history, yet they seem to have been absorbed invisibly into tsarist Russia. This book helped to fill this gap in my knowledge, telling the history of this area and the Muslim areas around Kazan and Orenburg from the perspecitve of the interaction of Islam with the tsarist government.

Going back to Catherine, there was an official policy of toleration of Islam. This was in part an expression of Enlightenment thinking but was more an expression of the modalities of power. The tsarist bureaucracy needed help from the locals to govern the vast regions of Central Asia, so they allowed the people they had conquered a great deal of autonomy in part because they had to and in part to strengthen their rule. They created a hierarchy of and regularity of Islam from without, mirroring the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, and it largely worked. It was a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship in which the locals also used the tsarist bureaucracy for their own ends to resolve internal disputes and to pursue the agendas of one Islamic faction against the other. It was an interesting dynamic, and it has been meticulously researched by Mr. Crews. As I read the book, I couldn't help picturing him spending years poring over ancient tsarist court records in cold, dank basements of rotting buildings. That took some dedication and a deep abiding interest in an obscure area of history that few people would have the patience or background to pursue.

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 4 out of 5]

История взаимоотношений исламских священнослужителей и верующих мусульман с бюрократией Российской империи, из которой новые вещи узнаются об обеих сторонах. Богатые источники, благо документов разного рода тяжб в архивах отложилось великое множество.

[Les · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crews offers a fascinating look at the interpenetration of the Tsarist state and Islam from Catherine the Great's edict on toleration to the end of the Tsarist empire in this deeply researched study. Drawing from a wealth of source material, Crews explores how the state viewed Islam as an instrument for reinforcing social discipline and imperial loyalty. Generations of Russian officials imposed and then supported a hierarchy of officially appointed muftis who then vetted and appointed religious authorities down to the village level. At the same time, local Islamic elites and members of the Islamic communities both turned to state authorities to enforce their views of orthodox behavior as well as to sort out a multitude of community disputes. In the epilogue, Crews outlines how the complex interrelationship between the state and believers continues to the present time in post-Soviet states.

[York · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book at exploring how imperial Russia attempted to integrate indigenous legal practices during their colonization of the traditionally Muslim lands to the east. It suffers, however, with a lack of organization- Crews like to stop to focus on random legal cases, jumps between educational, civil, and criminal law, and, in my opinion, does not focus enough on ethnic differences between various groups.