TY - CHAP

T1 - Arabic in the Early Soviet Caucasus:

T2 - Nadhir al-Durgili’s The Delight of Minds in the Biographies of Dagestani Scholars (1920s–1930s)

AU - Бобровников, Владимир Олегович

N1 - Bobrovnikov, V. Arabic in the Early Soviet Caucasus: Nadhir al-Durgili’s The Delight of Minds in the Biographies of Dagestani Scholars (1920s–1930s) // Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History / Ed. by Eileen Kane, Masha Kirasirova, and Margaret Litvin. – New York: Oxford University Press, 2023. – P. 161–175. – ISBN 978–0–19–760576–9 – doi: 10.1093/oso/9780197605769.003.0017

PY - 2023/9/21

Y1 - 2023/9/21

N2 - Biographical dictionaries, an old genre of Islamic literature, became popular among Muslim intellectuals in the Eastern Caucasus since the beginning of the eighteenth century and especially in the nineteenth century, when interest in the history of Islamization of their fatherland grew. In the late imperial and early Soviet Russia a wider Muslim public enjoyed reading of historical accounts about Islamization in the Caucasus. The scholar Nadhir (1891–1935) from the Kumyk village of Durgeli in Daghestan compiled a biographical dictionary with the traditional rhymed title “The Delight of Minds in the Biographies of Daghestani Scholars (Nuzhat al-adhhan fi tarajim ‘ulama’ Daghistan). He included in it about 230 biographies of Muslim scholars who studied and taught in the Caucasus and the Arab lands from the end of the ninth century to the early 1930s. He relied in part on medieval Arabic historical and geographical literature from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. But his principal sources were local chronicles, historical notes (tawarikh), and the works of Muslim scholars from modern Daghestan whose biographies he also included in the dictionary. This chapter of the Reader “Russian-Arab Worlds” presents extracts of this Arabic treatise that were translated into English and commented by the editor. This piece of reformist Muslim scholarship, which remains poorly known outside Russia’s Caucasus, sheds light on the late period of pre-modern cultural contacts between the Arab Middle East and the borderlands of the Muslim world in East Caucasus under the Russian rule.

AB - Biographical dictionaries, an old genre of Islamic literature, became popular among Muslim intellectuals in the Eastern Caucasus since the beginning of the eighteenth century and especially in the nineteenth century, when interest in the history of Islamization of their fatherland grew. In the late imperial and early Soviet Russia a wider Muslim public enjoyed reading of historical accounts about Islamization in the Caucasus. The scholar Nadhir (1891–1935) from the Kumyk village of Durgeli in Daghestan compiled a biographical dictionary with the traditional rhymed title “The Delight of Minds in the Biographies of Daghestani Scholars (Nuzhat al-adhhan fi tarajim ‘ulama’ Daghistan). He included in it about 230 biographies of Muslim scholars who studied and taught in the Caucasus and the Arab lands from the end of the ninth century to the early 1930s. He relied in part on medieval Arabic historical and geographical literature from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. But his principal sources were local chronicles, historical notes (tawarikh), and the works of Muslim scholars from modern Daghestan whose biographies he also included in the dictionary. This chapter of the Reader “Russian-Arab Worlds” presents extracts of this Arabic treatise that were translated into English and commented by the editor. This piece of reformist Muslim scholarship, which remains poorly known outside Russia’s Caucasus, sheds light on the late period of pre-modern cultural contacts between the Arab Middle East and the borderlands of the Muslim world in East Caucasus under the Russian rule.

KW - ислам

KW - арабский язык

KW - исламская мысль

KW - Дагестан

KW - Ближний Восток

KW - Global history

KW - Islam and Modernity

KW - Arabic

KW - network analysis

KW - Dagestan

KW - Middle East

UR - https://global.oup.com/academic/product/russian-arab-worlds-9780197605769?cc=ru&lang=en&

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/49aadc8d-9072-34eb-b51e-fff656995a96/

U2 - 10.1093/oso/9780197605769.003.0017

DO - 10.1093/oso/9780197605769.003.0017

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9780197605769

SP - 161

EP - 175

BT - Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History

A2 - Kane, Eileen

A2 - Kirasirova, Masha

A2 - Litvin, Margaret

PB - Oxford University Press

CY - New York; Oxford

ER -