Center for Northeast Asian Studies Tohoku University Faculty

Isogai Masumi
Assistant Professor

Historical studies, Oriental studies
Modern history of Central Eurasia, history of Russia and the Soviet Union

Historical Study of Turkic Muslim Communities in European Russia

European Russia, or the European part of Russia, is the area located to the west of the Ural Mountains and north of the border with Kazakhstan. Russia’s Volga-Ural region—that is, the middle and lower Volga River and the southern Ural Mountains—historically have had Turkic Muslim residents. Nowadays most such people identify themselves as Tatars or Bashkirs (Bashkorts). I am studying various aspects of their historical communities, which they maintained as Muslims. In Russia, some of these areas have a particularly multiethnic and multireligious (multiconfessional) character, and the Volga-Ural region is one of them. I am aiming to shed light on “ordinary” Muslim families and social life in those surroundings. I think that such an approach to these interests and themes is highly significant now, because more and more emphasis is being put on the “multiethnicity and multiconfessionality” of Russia in Russia per se.

A report made by one of the Volga-Ural ulama in the late nineteenth century.

The First Sobornaia (Congregational, or Central) Mosque in the city of Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia.

Principal areas of interest
● Ulama as specialists on Islamic law under Muslim administration in the Russian Empire.
● Legal and social history of application of norms derived from Islamic law in Muslim communities.
● Islamic reformist thoughts and debates among ulama in the Russian Muslim press at the beginning of the twentieth century.
● Islamic law, Islamic education and human networks among ulama in Central Eurasia (especially in the Volga-Ural region and Central Asia).
● Ulama in the early Soviet period.

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