The Transformation of the <italic>Ulama</italic> and The <italic>Shari&lsquo;a</italic> in the Volga-Ural Muslim Community under Russian Imperial Rule

Abstract

This dissertation examines the religious transformation of the Volga-Ural Muslim community during the long nineteenth century with a special focus on the <italic>ulama</italic> and <italic>shari&lsquo;a</italic>. It argues that these Islamic institutions as well as the Muslim population have experienced important changes after the Russian state established the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly in 1788. Since that time and throughout the nineteenth century, Russian statesmen introduced numerous laws that affected the Volga-Ural Muslim community. Many of these laws were designed to regulate specifically the religious life of Muslims, thus reformulating traditional religious practices through state law. The state created new rules for the appointment of the <italic>ulama</italic>, construction of mosques, functions of religious scholars within the Muslim community, procedures on how to perform marriage or divide inheritance. This allowed the state to intervene deeper into the Muslim community, braking traditional communal relationships and affecting the practice of <italic>shari&lsquo;a</italic> in unprecedented ways. This also prompted state officials to sanction the violation of these laws.

The creation of the Orenburg Assembly as a court of appeal was itself a big novelty for the Volga-Ural Muslims. The possibility to appeal to a higher legal authority led to an increase in the number of appeals by Muslim lay people in the nineteenth century and decrease in the authority of traditional legal experts -- the <italic>akhund</italic>s. Moreover, it distorted traditional organic legal order turning the resolution of <italic>shari&lsquo;a</italic> disputes from a communal matter resolved within the <italic>mahalla</italic> to a practice regulated from above by a state institution, again drawing imperial authorities closer into the Muslim community. The existence of the OA and the legal pluralistic framework also facilitated state intervention into substantive law, thus redefining the practice of Muslim marriage.