Critical Method of History Writing for the Russia’s Muslim Turkic Peoples in Talfiq al-akhbar by Murad Ramzi

Abstract

In the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries pre-modern Islamic past and imperial present of the Turkic Muslim peoples in the Ural-Volga region became the object of meticulous study for Muslim historians-reformers, who belonged themselves to these peoples, like Shihab al-Din Marjani, Rida’ al-Din Fakhreddinov, Murad Ramzi, Munir Hadi, Hasan-Ata Gabashi, Hadi Atlasi. This article presents to readers the first results of a comparative investigation of their historical works with the focus made on the works by Murad Ramzi. The author argues that the historical works under study, though they were composed in the traditional ta’rikh (in Pl. tawarikh) genre typical for the Islamic bookish tradition, form a transitional type from the Muslim chronicle to the national positivist historiography based on the scientific method of historical sources criticism. They share typical settings of traditional Muslim historiography, yet experience a strong influence of the positivist scholarship in Western Europe and Russia dating the second half of the 19th century. These works are brought together by a sharp criticism of the content of Muslim chronicles, which were still popular among the reading Muslim public at the turn of the 20th century. Their authors attempted to rewrite critically the history of their own peoples, without departing from Islamic foundations, but taking into account benefits of modern positivist scholarship. They all including Ramzi aimed at seeking for objective truth, freed from errors and superstitions of folk legends.