Introduction by the Editor and Translator

Zeki Velidi Togan (1890–1970) published “Islamic Culture in the Khanate of Kazan: A Report Sent from Kazan in 1550 during the Reign of <Süleyman> the Lawgiver” in Ä°slâm Tetkikleri Enstitüsü Dergisi (Review of the Institute of Islamic Studies) in 1966.¹ The main title of the article in its Turkish original is slightly different: Kazan Hanlığında Ä°slâm Türk Kültürü, which would translate as “Turkish-Islamic Culture in the Kazan Khanate.” However, the English summary appended to the article includes the English title that I use here for my translation, and I have taken Togan’s subtitle in the English summary of his article as his indirect wish for the title of an English translation of his article.²

Togan’s article introduces a manuscript titled Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān by SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« on Ivan IV’s unsuccessful siege of the city of Kazan in 1549–1550.³ The article is divided into five sections: 1. an untitled introduction; 2. the edition of SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān in Arabic script; 3. an untitled commentary; 4. a postscript with the title “P.S.”; 5. an English summary of the article. Togan did not provide any transliteration or translation of the Turkic text, and for the sake of non-Turcophone readers as well as interested specialists, I have translated the Turkic text into English as well. The long English summary at the end of the article is not just an overview, but is rather an independent section, as some ideas and concepts mentioned in the English summary cannot be found in the Turkish original of the article. Therefore, even though it may seem redundant, I have decided to include it in this version of the article.

Togan appears to have designed his article with two aims in mind. The first is to make a newly discovered manuscript on the history of Kazan available to scholarly circles, and the second is to provide an analysis of this new source to make an argument about the significance of “frontiers” as well as “holy war” in history. In this introduction, I will first discuss the manuscript in question, the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān, the circumstances of its discovery, and then I will situate Togan’s article in the context of his overall oeuvre and of the history of post-WWII Turkey.

Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān and Its Discovery

A.Zeki Velidi Togan discovered the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān in the Zeytinoğlu Library in Tavşanlı, a small town in western Turkey, which is more famous as a mining settlement with rich lignite deposits than as a town with a rich manuscript collection. Given the curious presence of manuscripts pertaining to the history of Central Asia and the Volga-Ural Region in this library, it is worth considering the origins of this collection. The Zeytinoğlu Library was founded before 1890 by a wealthy local merchant called Zeytûnzâde Hacı Ä°brahim Ağa (1821–1904), who belonged to a family of tax farmers (mültezim) in the region. Later he also founded a madrasa next to the library. When Togan visited Tavşanlı in the early 1960s, the custodian of the library and the collection was Mesut Zeytinoğlu (1903–1978), the founder of the Eskişehir-based Zeytinoğlu Corporation, one of the most successful business conglomerations of Turkey from the 1930s until the late 1990s.⁴

Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān is part of a collection (majmÅ«Ê¿a), which includes the following works:⁵

1. Şerh-i DÄ«bāçe-i Gülistān. A commentary on the introduction of SaÊ¿dī’s Gulistān by LāmiÊ¿Ä« Çelebi (d. 1532). It was composed in January 1505 (ff. 1b–59b).⁶

2. Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s treatise written in Muḥarram 957/20 January 1550–18 February 1550 (ff. 60a–64b).

3. Maṭlab-ı ünvāndan ṣoñra vāḳıʿ olan duʿālarī beyān eder. A short and undated text on various prayers (f. 65a).

4. Kalimāt al-Fārsī. A glossary of various Persian words and expressions. It was copied on 17 Jumāda II 970/11 February 1563 (ff. 65b–68a).

5. Selection of poems from Jāmī’s Fātiḥat al-shabāb (f. 68b).⁷

6. Two muá¹£ammat ghazals by the Ottoman poet Derzizāde Ê¿UlvÄ« (d. 993/ 1585) (ff. 69a–69b).⁸

7. Blank folios (ff. 70a–71a).

8. A short “coursebook” on Persian tenses (ff. 71b–76b).

9. Blank folio (f. 77a).

10. A treatise on Persian grammar in Arabic (ff. 77b–85b).

11. Al-Risālat al-sharīfa fī ʿulūm al-ḥaqāʾiq (ff. 86a–87b).

12. An Arabic poem in the müstezād genre by the famous Ottoman poet Bursalı Aḥmed Paşa (d. 902/1496–97) (f. 88a).⁹

The majmūʿa was copied by at least three hands. Of the items listed above, treatises 1, 4, 8, and 10 were copied by one hand, and treatises 3, 5, and 6 by another. Only the second and the fourth treatises are dated, hence the terminus post quem for the composition of the manuscript is 11 February 1563, the date when the fourth treatise was completed. Togan suggests in his article that the majmūʿa was prepared by someone from the Ottoman Empire, though he does not propose any specific location where it might have been copied. However, the calligraphic style of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān suggests that it may have been copied by someone who was from Central Asia or the Volga-Ural region, as the orthography resembles typical Chaghatay orthography. This may suggest either that a draft, unfinished compendium came to the Ottoman lands from Central Asia and the Ottoman texts were added later, or that someone from Central Asia added one or two treatises to the compendium. Whichever is the truth, the Majmūʿa under discussion seems to be a hybrid text reflecting both Chaghatay Turkic and Ottoman Turkish characteristics.

It is not very easy to determine when Togan came across this manuscript in the Zeytinoğlu Library. The extant archival record suggests that he visited Tavşanlı on several occasions in the 1960s and in the Zeki Velidi Togan Papers, a collection which is kept at the Tek-Esin Foundation in Istanbul, the first reference to the majmÅ«Ê¿a appears in a folder titled “Studies in the Zeytinoğlu Library in the Kütahya Province 25–27 May 1961.”¹⁰ The second reference to the MajmÅ«Ê¿a is from July 1966.¹¹ These references demonstrate that Togan knew about the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān in as early as May 1961, if not earlier. Unfortunately, Togan’s notes on this manuscript are limited to short references and transcriptions. No complete transcription of the text, nor a photographic reproduction could be located among his papers. Whatever Togan brought back from Tavşanlı, either a complete transcription or a photograpic reproduction of the manuscript, it was used and lost during the publication process of his article.

Togan’s discoveries in the Zeytinoğlu collection were not limited to the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. In fact, his other discovery in the same library, a copy of the Manāqib-i AmÄ«r Kulāl, has attracted more scholarly attention since the 1960s. The Manāqib-i AmÄ«r Kulāl is a hagiographical text on AmÄ«r Kulāl (d. 1370), a teacher of Bahā al-DÄ«n Naqshband.¹² Togan himself edited an extract from this manuscript relating to Qazan Khan KhalÄ«l b. Yasa’ur (d. 747/1346), the last effective Chaghatayid ruler of Transoxiana, and published it with commentary.¹³ His discoveries in Tavşanlı must have excited Togan enough to open a separate folder in his collection of library notes, titled “Records on the History of Kazan and Bashkirs in Turkish Libraries.”¹⁴ This folder includes transcriptions, notes, and references to the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān and the Manāqib-i AmÄ«r Kulāl. The same folder includes more specific notes on the Ẓafarnāma, including a short reference to Sayyid Ata and ZangÄ« Ata, notes on various personal names like YÅ«suf MÄ«rzā and Ötemish Girey, and references to the city gates of Kazan, all of which material he used in writing his commentary on the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān.¹⁵ The folder also includes the transcription of the account of Kātib Çelebi on the Ottoman campaign to Astrakhan in 1568.¹⁶

It would be safe to say that the author of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān has attracted more scholarly attention than the text itself. The colophon of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān clearly states that the treatise was written by a certain SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« after the siege of Kazan, which took place in Muḥarram 957/20 January–18 February 1550. This statement does not reveal much about the precise identity of the author, hence the ongoing debate as to his identity with no satisfactory conclusions. Togan discusses the issue briefly in his article, but, judging from his observations on the text’s language, he seems to be more interested in who ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« was not. According to him, what we know about the author of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān is that his name was SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ«, he was from Astrakhan—as the demonym ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« > AstrakhānÄ« would suggest—and lived in Kazan, and he was a poet who wrote poems with the penname “SharÄ«fÄ«.” However, Togan continues, the author cannot be Muḥammad SharÄ«f BukhārÄ«, the author of the famous YasawÄ« treatise Hujjat al-dhākirÄ«n, who lived in Bukhara and died in 1109 AH/1697. Togan also proposes the unlikely argument that Muḥammad SharÄ«f BukhārÄ«, that is the author of the Hujjat al-dhākirÄ«n, was the author of a number of poems written in a “simple” style that are found in the Bāqirghān Kitābï.¹⁷ In these texts BukharÄ« used the pennames SharÄ«f or Qul SharÄ«f. According to Togan, SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s language reflects the characteristics of the Turkic language used in Kazan with Ottoman Turkish influences.¹⁸ Therefore, the author of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān cannot be Muḥammad SharÄ«f BukhārÄ«. Togan’s evidence for the author’s penname as SharÄ«fÄ« must be two poems in the text by a certain SharÄ«fÄ« (see pp. 998–1000 below), but this is clearly a circumstantial piece of evidence. ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« may have been citing another poet with the penname SharÄ«fÄ«. Togan also does not explain why he thinks that the author’s name was “Muḥammad,” as the name mentioned in the colophon does not include this name.

In recent scholarship it has been suggested that SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ« was Qul Muḥammad SharÄ«f, a sayyid from Kazan, who was a son of Sayyid Manṣūr and played a certain role in the negotiations between the Kazan Khanate and the Muscovites and their allies in the 1540s and died during the final siege of Kazan by Ivan IV in 1552. A Sufi treatise titled Qiṣṣa-i Ir ḤubbÄ« is also attributed to the same figure.¹⁹ However, the argument that Qul SharÄ«f authored the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān has recently been challenged. Il’ia Zaitsev argued that the author of the text must be SharÄ«f al-DÄ«n Ḥusayn SharÄ«fÄ«, the son of the famous KubravÄ« shaykh Kamāl al-DÄ«n Ḥusayn b. Shihāb al-DÄ«n KhwārazmÄ« (d. 958/1551), and an author who is better known for his hagiographical treatise on his father titled Jāddat al-ʿāshiqÄ«n (wr. 966/1573).²⁰ This view was later criticized by Ilyas Mustakimov on the grounds that SharÄ«f al-DÄ«n Ḥusayn SharÄ«fÄ« could not have witnessed the siege of Kazan in 1549–1550, because he was travelling to Mecca and Istanbul with his father during the siege.²¹

It is clear that the evidence on the exact identity of the author is very thin, and all suggestions on this topic need to be taken with a grain of salt. We should admit the fact that we know nothing about the author’s identity, except his name mentioned in the colophon of the treatise. However, I would also like to argue that this unfounded obsession with the author’s identity has distracted scholars from developing more fruitful ways of using Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s treatise. For instance, on several occasions Togan highlights the close affinity between the treatise and the epic narratives of the Volga-Ural Region, an idea which, if investigated in further detail, might contribute to a better understanding of the intellectual history of the region. Furthermore, Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī gives a very interesting passage on the development of firearms and the related terminology—a discusson that is arguably unique in any Islamic language in this period, but to the best of my knowledge, this passage has not been utilized by those who work on the history of firearms in the Islamicate context. I will leave these issues to the care of other scholars who will hopefully develop an interest in the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. For the moment I should like to move my attention away from the author of the treatise, that is to say Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī, and turn it to the author of the article, which is translated here, which is to say A.Zeki Velidi Togan.

The Question of Frontiers and Holy War

Togan’s work on Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān goes beyond his specific interest in the history of Volga-Ural region in general and in the history of the city of Kazan in particular—he also makes a broader argument about the significance of frontiers in history. His arguments can be summarized as follows: Although the religion of Islam had been spreading among the Volga Bulghars since the 10th century, the reception of Islamic culture by the local Bulghar population was rather superficial and rudimentary. Islamic high culture penetrated into the region only after the foundation of the Mongol Empire in Eurasia and the formation of the Jöchid ulus in the Dasht-i Qipchaq in the early 13th century. As the various branches of the Chinggisid dynasty gradually converted to Islam, Bulghar as a frontier region began attracting holy warriors. Of particular importance here was the Ilkhanid Ghazan Khan, who himself converted to Islam in 1295, and sent holy warriors to the Bulghar region so that they could spread Islam. Togan implies that the name of the city of Kazan might be a local rendering of the name of Ghazan Khan. He recounts how the newcomers, Islamized Mongol ruling elites, Sufi saints, and holy warriors introduced Islamic high culture to the Volga-Ural region. From the 13th to the 14th century, the region shifted demographically from a Bulghar-dominated Turkic zone to a Tatar-dominated Turco-Mongol zone. While the Bulghars and the Chuvashes, the original Turkic inhabitants of the region, were rather passive in the holy war against the Christian Russians, the Tatars were active zealots and they were keen defenders of their independence.

Togan adds one crucial detail to this overall narrative in the English summary of the article. This detail is mentioned in passing in the Turkish original of the article but it is stressed in the English summary:

The Bulghars and Chuvashes played a passive role in the fights against the Russians. The “Kazan-Tatars” appear on the contrary as a political element, as religious soldiers (ghāzÄ«s), who assumed the Islamic traditions of the combat against the infidels, like the ghāzÄ«s on the Byzantine frontiers (thughÅ«r) of Islam.²²

This statement invites further discussion, as it is not very easy to explain it in the light of Togan’s overall oeuvre. First of all, we are very familiar with the main outlines of this statement, not just through Togan’s article, but before that through Paul Wittek’s work. In a slim but extremely influential book titled The Rise of the Ottoman Empire published in 1938, Wittek argued that the Ottoman Empire was founded by holy warriors, who flocked to Anatolia and the Balkans, the frontiers of the then Islamic world, in order to fight against “infidels” in the name of Islam.²³ Togan certainly knew about Paul Wittek’s theory of the holy war and the frontier in explaining the formation of the Ottoman Empire, but he cites Wittek’s book in his publications only occasionally, and always without any reference to Wittek’s core thesis involving holy war.²⁴ More importantly, he does not cite Wittek in the article under discussion here at all, even though the way that he approaches the subject clearly merits his doing so. This is particularly striking since Togan owned a copy of the 1947 translation of Wittek’s book by Fahriye Arık.²⁵ Furthermore, Wittek was also Togan’s friend, with whom he had corresponded since at least the early 1930s.²⁶ Therefore, given the absence of any clear reference to Wittek’s thesis in Togan’s oeuvre, it is safe to say that he appears to have not been impressed by Wittek’s famous ghazā-thesis. This is of course not surprising, as Togan had his own theory for how the nascent Ottoman polity was formed in the early 14th century. Instead of the holy war idea, he highlighted the importance of Mongol institutional and political influence in his explanation of the formation of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, as opposed to Wittek’s holy warriors, Togan emphasized the lack of religious zeal among the early Ottomans.²⁷

When we discuss Togan’s interest in the idea of the holy war, we need to look somewhere else other than Paul Wittek to establish where Togan was deriving his ideas from. Before presenting my own hypothesis on this issue, however, I should say that Togan is consistent in his point on the decisive role that the Mongol legacy played both in the Ottoman case in the early 14th century and the case of Kazan in the 16th century. In both instances, he considers the Mongols as a factor that transformed the local political institutions and provided an intellectual climate in which the original Turco-Mongol political traditions were revived and merged with Iranian intellectual traditions.

It is my contention that, as the quotation above suggests, the idea of the holy war was not central to Togan’s thinking, but the frontier (thaghr, pl. thughÅ«r)—the locus of the holy war—was.²⁸ Togan was well aware of the distinction between a ḥudÅ«d, that is any borderland, and the thughÅ«r, the frontiers between the abode of peace (Dār al-Islām) and the abode of war (Dār al-ḥarb), and he knew that the term thughÅ«r historically denoted the borderlands between the Islamic Empire and the Roman Empire in Syria and Anatolia, and between the Islamic and Catholic kingdoms in al-Andalus. It is not very easy to determine when exactly he started to consider the concept of the thughÅ«r as an important concept for historical analysis. As a scholar who edited Ibn Faḍlān’s Riḥla, a 10th-century travelogue, which is one of our most important sources on the early history of the Volga Bulghars, Togan was very well aware of the fact that the history of the Turkic peoples and their Islamization had a long history in the Volga-Ural region. But there is no discussion of the concept of the frontier in his work on Ibn Faḍlān’s Riḥla published in 1939.²⁹

Rather than Paul Wittek, the American scholar Owen Lattimore (1900–1989), an important scholar of Inner Asian studies and a proponent of the idea of using the concept of frontier as an analytical category in historical studies, appears to be the main influence on the development of Togan’s ideas on frontiers. Lattimore was influential in developing the frontier thesis, which suggested that new forms of culture and politics emerged in the cultural and political frontier zones. The fluid nature of frontiers allowed experimentation and innovation, and the frontier dwellers were able to mobilize their innovative capacities in these liminal zones.³⁰ Lattimore worked hard to take this concept out of its Eurocentric—or even American-centric—focus and globalized it by applying it to the history of Inner Asia. While trying to distance himself from the racialist and ecological determinisms of the 30s, Lattimore found the idea of frontier useful, as it could be applied to anywhere, including the frontiers of Inner Asia.³¹ What appealed to Togan was Lattimore’s analysis of feudalism. According to Lattimore, and pace Karl Marx, feudalism was not a mode of production, but a method of governance that follows a period of warfare. A realm expands exponentially so fast that the central administration cannot possibly control its frontiers and has to delegate the authority to hereditary feudal lords. When it finally consolidates its authority and tries to impose its will over the frontier lords, then the realm stops expanding, because its authority is restricted by the autonomy of feudal lords.³² Lattimore’s concept of feudalism was also not strictly an affair related to land ownership, but it also integrated into analysis the “four-footed” property, that is livestock and other animals owned by pastoral nomadic tribes.³³ In his general history of the Turkic peoples titled Umumî Türk Tarihine Giriş, first published in 1946, Togan refers to Lattimore’s 1940 book titled Inner Asian Frontiers of China in his discussion on steppe feudalism. In a long note at the very end of the famous section on the redistibutive political economy and the appanage system (ülüş sistemi) among the steppe nomads Togan praises Lattimore’s meticulous scholarship, but also find his analysis limited due to its exclusive focus on just one marginal zone, that is the frontiers of China. In his view, any discussion on steppe feudalism should involve references to other marginal zones of Iran and Eastern Europe as well.³⁴

Four years later, in 1950, Togan devoted a special section to the concept of the thughūr in his book on historical methodology titled Tarihde Usul. Togan’s use of the concept of the thughūr in this book may point at the intellectual, as well as the political, framework in which we can locate his study on Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān.

Like Togan’s other major books, Tarihde Usul is an extremely ambitious work. Not only does he aim at discussing historical philosophy and different approaches to history from positivist historiography to Marxist historiography, he also gives a survey of historical sources available for researchers mainly in Turkic, Persian, and Arabic. The book includes chapters on the historian’s craft, such as critical reading, interpretation, and synthesis as well. Togan dedicated the long introduction of his book to one of the most popular debates of his time, namely about the difference between East and West. After briefly criticizing those scholars who attribute distinctive and essentialist qualities to the West, he gives an almost word-for-word translation of a chapter from Karl Jaspers’ book titled Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, the book that gave us the concept of Achsenzeit (Axial Age). What appealed to Togan in Jaspers’ book is that it divides the world into three cultural zones, China, India, and the West, after the Axial Age (ca. between 800 BCE and 200 BCE), when major philosophical developments took place, and it places the Middle East and Central Asia in the Western zone. In a chapter titled “Das Spezifische des Abendlandes (The Specific Quality of the West),” Jaspers lists nine qualities that distinguish the West from the two other cultural zones, and this was the chapter that Togan translated and included in his book. According to Jaspers, the West 1) is geographically open, 2) knows political liberty, 3) embraces rationality, 4) has a conscious inwardness of personal selfhood that can also be observed in Jewish prophets, Greek philosophers, and Roman statesmen, 5) is free from superstition, and it confronts the world in its reality, 6) has a non-dogmatic notion of universality, 7) has developed the idea of claiming exclusive truth by the various Biblical religions, including Islam, 8) has an internal tension between the ideas of non-dogmatic universality and exclusive claim to truth, and 9) these tensions create autonomous personalities best represented in the Jewish prophets and Greek philosophers as well as the great minds of the 16th to 18th centuries.³⁵ Following this long quotation, Togan goes on to provide evidence from the sources that he knows, such as al-BÄ«rÅ«nÄ«, and turns his introduction into a form of political treatise. Although Turkish culture is part of Western culture, according to Togan, the problem of its backwardness still needs to be resolved. The Turks, he wrote, have come a long way and achieved a lot, including the fact that they have separated the religion from state and maintained their militaristic spirit, and now they are “democratizing and civilizing the state administration.”³⁶ The remaining major tasks for the Turks are the following: rejecting “race theory,” making the task of learning creative methodologies a national obligation, and using scientific progress for healing the nation’s “spiritual illnesses,”³⁷ such as the inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West.

Apparently, Togan’s liberal nationalist proposal was not well received by one of his unnamed friends and readers, and Togan appended a small addendum after the index and corrections at the very end of his book.³⁸ Togan says that his friend asked him to explain especially the fourth and ninth points in his (and Jaspers’) schema. In his explanation of the fourth point, Togan rephrases Jaspers: the Westerners understood their own selfhood so successfully that, especially after the Sophists, they adopted a creative spirit and realized that anthropocentric imagination was bestowed on them.³⁹ In other words, they realized that they could be as creative as God. As for the ninth point, Togan clarifies that, according to Jaspers, the West developed contradictory personalities and therefore no single individual could claim to be “everything” and the “whole,” as a result of which there was scope for autonomous and free individuals. In order to support his argument on this point he quotes Jaspers in German and then translates the quotation into Turkish. Jaspers says:

And then there is the ultimate and pre-eminent factor in the formation of the West: personal love and the power of boundless self-irradiation in never completed movement. Here a measure of openness (Aufgeschlossenheit—EB), of infinite reflection, of inwardness came into being which first caused the full meaning of communication between men, and the horizon of reason proper, to light up.⁴⁰

Togan further elaborates on Jaspers’ ideas and deplores the fact that, as opposed to the free individuals that the West created, the East created two types of individuals, namely masters (âmir) and clients (memur), especially in the frontier zones (thughÅ«r), and due to the inferiority complex that this dichotomy generated, intellectual life has not flourished in those regions.⁴¹ He says that the word “openheartedness” (Togan here translating Jaspers’ Aufgeschlossenheit, or “open mindedness” as açıkkalplilik, or “candor”) means sincerity in being ready for every inquiry and willingness to be ready to accept every viewpoint. He finally ties the issue to the problems of his own time, first implicitly in the introduction and then more explicitly in the addendum to his book. Let me first quote what he says in the introduction:

Until recently, one of our major social problems was that those who occupied higher echelons of scholarly hierarchies could tolerate their inferiors, but showed impatience (feragat) and jealousy towards their peers. Those who do not collaborate with an open heart cannot create a scientific environment and intellectuals (ârifler) cannot emerge around them. This is the worst manifestation of the inferiority complex that scholars might encounter.⁴²

For Togan, the adverb “recently” refers not to an indeterminate time, but rather to a specific moment in recent history. We need to switch back to the addendum of the book in order to understand what he is referring to:

In order to recognize the significance for intellectual life of the May 14th revolution <in 1950—EB>, which freed the Turks from the age of the “military-bureaucratic overseers (vesayet devri) <of the 1930s>,” it is necessary to distinguish the <following> two groups:

The first group consists of free and autonomous individuals who are fully committed to the ideas which elevate them above other groups of people. They keep these ideas alive through journals which are published for generations, through intellectuals whose oeuvres are read for generations, and through scholarly associations which retain their institutional integrity for posterity. The free and independent individuals discuss and criticize the issues that are relevant to their lives, ideas, and religion for hours, days, years, and generations, they would accept the reasonable ideas, and reject the unreasonable ones. The connection between individuals relies on the principles of openheartedness and personal love and sincerity. Their culture always flourishes in their communities through intellectual engagements (fikrî takip).

The second group consists of those who are united under the tutelage of a single master, and since the people in this group are subservient to a higher authority, the ties among the members of the group are weak and superficial. Since they think that every problem is solved by a higher authority, they are content with small talk even on the most important problems of our time and they would read just a few sentences about these problems from the newspapers and then forget them immediately. In previous centuries as well nobody felt heartfelt love and reflective commitment to the systematic ideas related to their lives, and these kinds of ideas were not central to the perpetuity of societies. The deepest love and the most in-depth thinking were restricted to the realm of metaphysics.⁴³

After citing a satire by Ê¿Ubayd-i ZākānÄ« on how Ibn Ê¿ArabÄ«, the great mind of Islamic mystical philosophy, was ungrateful towards his deceased companion and forgot him right after his death, he says that this situation, that is the lack of cohesion among the members of society, is common in the Islamic world and in its frontiers (thughÅ«r) in Eastern Europe. However, according to Togan, historical records demonstrate that the lack of group cohesion and the abundance of social rituals are alien to Central Asia. The reference to Central Asia suggests that, according to Togan, the Turks are very capable of developing strong group cohesion and when the conditions are right, they will also achieve individual and intellectual freedom and subsequently great intellectual developments.⁴⁴

Mention of the revolution of May 14th is a reference to the first free general elections, which took place on 14 May 1950 and ended the single party system in Turkey. In these elections, the Democrat Party of Celal Bayar (1883–1986) unseated the People’s Republican Party of Ä°smet Ä°nönü (1884–1973), thus marking what has long been considered as the true beginning of the multi-party system in Turkey.⁴⁵ It is not surprising to see that Togan shares the euphoria about the victory of the Democrat Party. To many observers of Turkish politics of the time, the 1950 elections were a liberal transformation, if not a revolution, as Togan would like to see it. The elections ended single party rule under the leadership of Ä°nönü and initiated a multi-party system sustained by free elections. However, there was probably a personal dimension for him as well. He appears to have been involved in 1941 and 1942 in the negotiations between the Nazi Germany and certain Turkish nationalists (such as Nuri Killigil [1889–1949], half brother of Enver Pasha) and community leaders of various Turkic groups (such as Müstecip Ülküsal [1899–1996], a prominent Tatar intellectual from Dobruja living in Turkey), who ostensibly acted upon the tacit approval of the Turkish government, in the project of creating Turkic brigades as part of the Wehrmacht. The ultimate aim of these negotiations was to liberate Turkic peoples from the Soviet Union after an eventual German victory at the end of the war.⁴⁶ The project did not yield any results, but two years later, in 1944, Togan, together with many others from a wide spectrum of nationalist and Turanist intellectuals, ex-officers, and bureaucrats, was accused of founding a secret organization to overthrow the government in Turkey.⁴⁷ Therefore, after suffering through the cadı kazanı, or “witch hunt” of the 1940s—a popular term which was used to describe the extensive purges of both left-wing and right-wing intellectuals in Turkey—Togan seems to be suggesting that the autocratic single-party rule of the 1920s to 1940s was the main impediment to intellectual and scientific developments in Turkey, because under an authoritarian ruler, the love between group members cannot flourish and the ties between the members of the group weaken.⁴⁸ From this perspective, the Democrat Party’s promise of liberalism would give hope for the further germination of love between group members and subsequently for intellectual developments.

This is the point where the question of frontiers in Togan’s thinking should be addressed. Unlike many practitioners of frontier studies of the time, Togan did not see frontier zones as liminal spaces where multiple, often competing, religious and political ideas could flourish side by side. He also seems to be far away from endorsing Paul Wittek’s sympathies to Messianic ideas inherent in his ghāzÄ«-thesis.⁴⁹ To him, the fluid religious, social, and political nature of frontier zones was a detriment to unity and coherent political action. His negative view towards frontier life underpins his reading of SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. Before the arrival of the Mongols, the original inhabitants of the frontier zone in the Dasht-i Qipchaq, the Bulghars and Chuvashes, developed neither strong political institutions nor a profound intellectual and literary life. The outsiders, however, be it the Mongols or the Sufis who went to the frontier zone to conduct holy war, brought both political organization and high culture. In brief, Wittek’s frontier warriors could develop political institutions and achieve original cultural accomplishments as long as they were away from the older and more established political and cultural centers, and Togan’s frontier warriors could do the same as long as they remained an extension of the same established political and cultural centers.

There is certainly a methodological affinity between Togan’s Tarihde Usul and his analysis of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. However, the question why Togan developed an interest in the issue of frontiers is one that needs to be answered in the future after further studies on Togan’s oeuvre. To strengthen my argument about the affinity between the two texts, I would like to introduce another piece of evidence from Togan’s magisterial work on the history of early modern Central Asia titled Bugünkü Türkistan ve Yakın Mazisi (“Turkistan Today and its Recent History”), which was first published in Cairo in Arabic script between 1929 and 1939, but which, due to war-time conditions, never entered proper circulation.⁵⁰ In this book, whose publication started more than a decade before Tarihde Usul and about forty years before the publication of the 1966 article on SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s treatise, Togan puts very little emphasis on the military conquest of Kazan by the Russian forces and completely ignores the “differences” between “local” Bulgars and ”outsider” Tatars. In fact, what Togan describes in this book is not a military conquest, but a slow annexation of the Volga-Ural Region, including Kazan, by the Russians. According to the Togan of 1929, the Russian expansion into the Volga-Ural region was a result of the changes in global trade patterns in the early modern period. As the southern naval trade routes around the Cape of Good Hope opened in the late 15th century and the Portuguese established domination over the Indian Ocean, Central Asia lost its primacy as the crossroad of trade routes in Eurasia. According to Togan, this is very well known, but it is just one half of the story. The second half was the encroachment of the Western European, especially London-based, traders into the Kazan Khanate and Siberia. While the western traders had their own trade infrastructure for the Southern trade route, they relied on the Russian trading companies and families to control the northern Eurasian trade. They established contractual relationships with these families, most prominently the Stroganov family, and established trade posts in Siberia and in the northern borders of the Kazan Khanate. By 1517, the Stroganov family, which was connected to London rather than Muscovite authorities, was already in control of the region and had established itself in the Kama basin. They founded the city of Perm in 1556 and Tobolsk in 1586. According to Togan, by the mid-16th century, Kazan was already part of the northern European trade zone through the Stroganov trade network, rather than part of the Central Asian trade zone that passed through Khwārazm. While the military-bureaucratic aristocracy of Kazan was still connected to Crimea, the local merchant classes had no connection to Crimea, nor to Khwārazm, but instead were integrated into a northern trade network that spanned from London to Siberia. These traders were already under the control of the traders in Arkhangelsk and Nizhnii Novgorod. In brief, the conquest of Kazan and the fall of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 was almost a mere formality. The Volga-Ural Region had already been cut from its cultural, military, and political roots in Khwārazm and Transoxiana.⁵¹ What is different in Togan’s earlier analysis as summarized here from his later views on the Russian conquest of Kazan is that he emphasizes the status and class background of those who opposed the Russian conquest and those who did not, rather than emphasizing their ethnic or linguistic backgrounds.

Togan continued to emphasize the importance of trade routes in the history of Central Asia throughout his career, but curiously in the 1960s he appears to have dropped the idea that the formation of the northern trade zone was the main factor behind the expansion of the Muscovite rule to the Volga-Ural region. In his lectures titled “The History of Asia in the Colonial Period since the 16th Century,” which he delivered in the winter semester of the 1965–1966 academic year, he argues that the change in the direction of world trade was the main reason behind the decline of Islamic countries and Central Asia after the 15th century. When the southern sea route opened by the Portuguese in the late 15th century, the trade route between the Mediterranean and Beijing lost its importance as a major trade route. In his analysis here, Togan does not refer to the northern trade route at all. In fact, he specifically refers to the relevant pages in his Bugünkü Türkili Türkistan ve Yakın Tarihi, but he excludes the section where he discusses the northern trade route. Therefore, for the time being until we find further evidence, it is safe to suggest that Togan changed his mind on the question of how Russia conquered the Volga-Ural region and how local populations reacted to the Muscovite expansion.⁵²

The publication of Jaspers’ book in 1949, while Togan was working on the Tarihde Usul, appears to have been purely coincidental. It goes without saying that his experience in the 1930s and 1940s must have had a role to play in the switch in his thinking, but I believe it is difficult to propose anything coherent that encompasses both his scholarly and political activities at this point. In this introduction I have merely pointed to certain parallels, interconnections, and contrasts in his works published in the 1930s and 1960s.⁵³

However, I can propose one definite conclusion regarding the scholarship on Togan’s oeuvre. Togan’s education and scholarly activites in Russia have attracted widespread scholarly attention, but his years in Turkey have often been treated as a mere appendix to his earlier formative years.⁵⁴ Most scholarship on Togan’s oeuvre presents him as a Bashkir intellectual and activist from the late Russian Empire, who was trained in Russia and published in Turkey and in Europe. In these studies, Togan appears as a mature and fully-fledged scholar when he first arrived at Turkey in 1925.⁵⁵ His doctoral study in Vienna between 1933 and 1935 is seen as a mere bureaucratic necessity, which he undertook in order to keep his position at Istanbul University, and his interactions with other Turkish intellectuals and scholars in Turkey are always treated as “controversies,” the clashes of a Bashkir scholar who did not feel comfortable with the latent Ottoman- and Turkey-centrism of his adopted country. His clash with political authorities after the First Turkish Historical Congress in 1932, his well-publicized debate on the Qayi tribe with Fuad Köprülü, and the controversy that he stirred on the ethnicity of Chinggis Khan are among those debates in which he participated.⁵⁶ Togan himself certainly contributed to the cultivation of this somewhat skewed, and one might even say caricatured, view of his own scholarship, because this is how he depicted himself in his memoirs, which give his own perspective on his life until his arrival in Turkey but do not include much on his life there after 1925.⁵⁷ His study of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān demonstrates that he continued to mature as a scholar and develop his ideas after 1925. As a scholar he owes much to the time he spent in Turkey as well.

Notes on the Edition and Translation

After Togan published his article, the text of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān was republished twice in Turkey. In 1972 Akdes Nimet Kurat (1903–1971) published selections from the text in Arabic script as an appendix in his survey on the history of the Turkic peoples north of the Black Sea. Kurat also translated his selections into Turkish.⁵⁸ Melek Özyetgin provided a much more comprehensive study of the text in 1993. She transliterated ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s text into the Latin script and translated it into Turkish. She also added a commentary and an index, both of which were very helpful when I was drawing up my own edition and translation of the text.⁵⁹ In order to make the text available in English, I have compared Togan’s edition with the original manuscript as well as with the editions of Kurat and Özyetgin, and I have prepared a new edition of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān. I have also compared my translation with the translations of Kurat and Özyetgin but have marked only significant divergences in my edition and translation, as highlighting minor differences would render the text and the translation too cumbersome.

Togan refers to the author of the Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qazān as Sharīfī throughout his article. Based on two poems by a certain Sharīfī in the treatise, he assumes that the author Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s penname was Sharīfī. However, as discussed above, the association of the two names is rather conjectural. Therefore, in my notes and commentaries I have referred to the author as “Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī,” but in Togan’s article, I have marked the name as “Sharīfī^<SHT>,” wherever the name refers to Sharīf Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī.

As usual in Persian, Turkic, and Turkish manuscripts, the scribe did not distinguish the Persian-gāf (گ) from the the Arabic-kāf (ک). In my edition of the text, I have used the letter Persian-gāf only for Persian words, and used the Arabic-kāf in Turkic words. In the manuscript the voiced velar nasal sound in final position is always written as a single Arabic-kāf, but Togan replaced them with “n + Arabic-kāf (نك).” I have maintained Togan’s orthography in my edition.

Togan’s papers in the Archives of the Tek-Esin Foundation in Istanbul include two earlier printed drafts of the article. The first and shorter draft includes the article up to page 1025 below (p. 195, the end of the third paragraph, in the original article). The second and complete draft includes the full article.⁶⁰ I have used these drafts, correcting a few stylistic infelicities caused in the final editing stages of the article. Togan referred to his sources both in the main text and in footnotes; I have moved all his references to footnotes. Togan’s footnotes and references in the article are extremely sketchy and inconsistent, and they often include the wrong page numbers. I have tried to repair the footnotes and references as much as I can, but preparing a fully annotated edition of Togan’s comments is a massive task, and one which would entail rewriting the entire article from scratch. If any arguments have remained unreferenced in the article, I ask for the understanding of the readers and future scholars, who will hopefully develop the contents of this article with further studies on ḤājjÄ«-Tarkhānī’s treatise.

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. When a text is available both in edited format and in English translation, I have referred to the original text in the edition and the translation in my translation. For the citations from the Qurʾān I have used The Study Quran in my translation.⁶¹

Except for minor stylistic corrections, I have marked all my additions with angle brackets “< >” in Togan’s article. (I have not used these signs in the translation of Ḥājjī-Tarkhānī’s text, because Togan’s original article does not include a translation.) I also use angle brackets in the bibliography for the sources that were not used by Togan in his article.

Abbreviations

Islamic Culture in the Khanate of Kazan (A Report Sent from Kazan in 1550 at the Time of <Süleyman> the Lawgiver)

Zeki Velidi Togan

Although the Islamic religion began spreading among the Volga Bulghars in the 10th century, it remained exclusive to a limited area in the Bulghar region until Khwārazmian culture strongly spread in the Golden Horde under the rule of the Chinggisids.⁶² Now we understand from the corpus of tombstone inscriptions published by G. Iusupov that the Muslims at that time used the Chuvash dialect, the language of the old Bulghars.⁶³ Abu Ḥāmid al-AndalÅ«sÄ« mentions some scholars who were trained in Khorasan.⁶⁴ Although Arabic and Persian works by a person called Sulaymān b. DāvÅ«d SaqsÄ«nÄ« or SuwārÄ« <fl. 550–1155> have come down to us, an extensive literature that would demonstrate that Islamic culture was firmly established in the Bulghar <region> did not exist.⁶⁵

In the Golden Horde, especially after 1300 CE, a center for the dissemination of Islam emerged in Bulghar and to its north in Kazan, and in this period “literary Chuvash Turkic” continued to be used by the non-Muslim Bulghars, and as can be seen from tombstone inscriptions, Central Asian literary Turkic spread there as well. The “sayyids” who introduced themselves as the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad came to Bulghar, and the khānqāhs, that is the dervish lodges, and imarats <public soup kitchens> that were managed by those sayyids emerged, and schools and madrasas developed. As was the case in the city of Saray, the mosques and madrasas as well as the public bath culture that developed in Bulghar and Kazan were under the influence of Khwārazmian Islamic culture, but there was also the influence of the Ottoman culture via Crimea after the descendants of the Chinggisid Ichkili Ḥasan settled in Crimea and Kazan. But a question, then, always arises: ‘Where did the Islamic propaganda in Kazan come from, which had formerly not existed in Bulghar’? And was it the case that perhaps the groups which worked for Islamic culture comprised only those who took refuge there after the dissolution of the city of Saray due to internal struggles <in their own lands>?

Recently new sources that would partially answer this question have been discovered. The references collected by the Russian scholar S. Shpilevskii in his book titled “Old cities in Kazan province and other Bulghar-Tatar Monuments” suggest that the places where today’s Kazan is located were the places where Russians settled to a large extent in the 13th century, and that in 1298 CE a ruler called Kazan established a city a bit to the north of today’s Kazan in a place known as “Old Kazan” in order to immortalize his name and fame, and that one hundred and four years later, in 1402 CE (804 AH), this city was moved to where today’s Kazan is located.⁶⁶ Although the relevant sources, usually titled Bayān-i Dāstān-i TārÄ«kh, one of which Professor <Karl> Fuks, a German scholar by origin, mentioned in his work published in 1817, have come down to us and I have even studied them, they are yet to be published.⁶⁷ In these works the name of the first khan of Kazan is written as “Sayïn.” The word sayïn is not a name, but a Turkic word used for prominent Chinggisids as an honorific (aziz) after their death. In the Golden Horde, the khan who was called Sayïn was Batu Khan. The places which are later called Kazan were his personal appanage (has yurt) and they are called “the appanage (yurt) of Sayïn Khan.”⁶⁸

The Russian scholar V. Semenov had already written the following in 1836 in his studies on the early history of Kazan: “The city of Kazan is mentioned by Russian chroniclers for the first time in 1370. Initially they called it Sayïn’s yurt (Sayinov Yurt), this was [in reference to] Batu Khan (at that time it was not a city, but a yurt, that is a summer pasture). The name Kazan here is related to the foundation of a city here. It could be a reference to one of the Chaghatayid khans Kazan Khan (1334–1346) mentioned by AbÅ« al-GhāzÄ« BahādÅ«r Khan.”⁶⁹

The name “Kazan” or “Ghazan” is not found among the names of the old Bulghar cities. Although there was a city or town called Kāshān, it was in a completely different direction, on the west of the Volga bend around today’s Tatishchevo. The city is mentioned as “Ghāzānī” in the Timurid period sources. Timur writes in his letter to Yalmān, one of his supporters in Anatolia and the ruler of Çemişgezek, on his second campaign against Toqtamish that Toqtamish escaped to the Russian territories after he chased him until the Volga River and fought with him near the Bulghar city and he, together with his army, moved towards “Ghazni (غزنی)” or “GhazanÄ«.” After abandoning the pursuit of his opponent who had fled to the Russian lands, he went to the Üzi (Dnieper) basin in today’s Ukraine. This information is found in the MajmÅ«Ê¿a-i Munshaʾāt, which is in the private library of the late Mükrimin Halil <Yinanç>, and it is repeated in the Munshaʾāt preserved in the Aşir Efendi Library (3rd section) in the following manner: “We pursued Toqtamish until the borders of Bulghar and captured his tribes <(tamāmÄ«-i ordu va il va aḥshām-i Å« rā ba dast āwarda)>. Then we went to GhazanÄ« and subsequently moved to the direction of the Üzi River.”⁷⁰ There is an excellent copy of Ibn Ê¿Arabshāh’s Ê¿Ajaʾib al-maqdÅ«r in the Haraççıoğlu Library in Bursa. This manuscript was copied by a person called Ê¿AlÄ« b. MÅ«sā al-GhāzānÄ« in 1437 (841 AH).⁷¹ Such beautiful calligraphy could not be executed in the old Bulghar <region>. In the edicts (yarlık) of the Crimean Khan ḤājjÄ« Girey <d. 1466> and the khan of Kazan Ṣāḥib Girey <d. 1551>, the notable sayyids (sādāt-i Ê¿iẓām) are mentioned after the names of the amirs and governors of this region. Abdullah Battal <Taymas>, who studied this edict, has stated that the sayyids are not even mentioned in the same line with the beys in other edicts written in the Golden Horde.⁷² Additionally, the terms used in Azerbaijan and Khorasan were also used in Kazan, such as the word bistè instead of rabaḍ in the meaning of suburb. Other cities in the Volga basin do not have bistès (bestes). This points at the influence of Ilkhanid culture in Kazan. Such influence did indeed exist. In a text in a collected volume in the Hacı Mahmud Efendi Library, there is the following note about the “Astrakhan Campaign” that was planned but not brought to completion in 1568 during the reign of Selim II.

This campaign took place for the following intentions. During the reign of Sulṭān MaḥmÅ«d Ghāzān from the Chinggisid family, a group from the Tatar tribe converted to Islam and waged Holy War and settled in those regions, they were called the Tatar of Kazan (Kazan Tatarı). After the fall of the Ilkhanids <(devlet-i Gazaniye)>, they came under pressure from the infidels of Moscow, and sent letters to the sultan in Istanbul <(lit. dergah-penah)>, requesting the invasion of the region between the Two Rivers (Volga and Don <rivers>).⁷³

<The name> “MaḥmÅ«d” here is probably confused with MaḥmÅ«d or MaḥmÅ«dak Khan <(d. 1466)>, son of Ulugh Muḥammad, of Kazan and written as the Ilkhanid ruler “Sulṭān MaḥmÅ«d Ghāzān” <(d. 1304)>.⁷⁴ But in the Hacı Mahmud Efendi manuscript there are details on “Muslim Tatar holy warriors who came and settled there in order to wage holy war.” Such an account would not be appropriate for the time of MaḥmÅ«dak Khan, son of Ulugh Muḥammad Khan. It is possible that Ghazan Khan, as part of his wider efforts of spreading Islam, also sent the “Tatar ghazis” together with the sayyids, whom he closely supported in his own lands, to the region whither, as Shpilevskii noted, Christian Russians (Rus’) increasingly penetrated the north of the Golden Horde in the 13th century. These Tatar ghazis and sayyids built fortified castles and suburbs (beste) around castles in the style of Ghazan Khan’s own territories. In like fashion the same Ghazan Khan tried to spread Islam after his conversion in Gansu, a region which was part of the domains of the Great Khanate in Khanbaliq (Beijing). This is reported by RashÄ«d al-DÄ«n.⁷⁵ We also understand from the letters of RashÄ«d al-DÄ«n that even the city of Balchemen (Balçman) near today’s Vladikavkaz in northern Caucasus in the territory of the Golden Horde khans was under the Ilkhanid zone of influence. Ibn Baá¹­á¹­Å«á¹­a also mentions a Rufāʿī dervish and his disciples, who came from Ê¿Irāq, in al-Māchar <(“Macar” or Burgomadzhary)> in this region.⁷⁶ We learn from the extant manuscripts of RashÄ«d al-DÄ«n’s theological works in our libraries that the copies written in Tabriz in his own time first went to Saray in the Golden Horde and then came to the capital cities of the Ottoman Empire.⁷⁷ According to the hagiographical works on the life of Shaykh á¹¢afÄ« al-DÄ«n ArdabÄ«lÄ«, holy warriors (gaziler) were sent to the borders of the Golden Horde from Azerbaijan and at some point á¹¢afÄ« al-DÄ«n ArdabÄ«lÄ« himself, who was a contemporary of Ghazan Khan, was also present in the Qipchaq steppes together with these holy warriors.⁷⁸ At the same time, popular trade centers emerged in Kazan and Balchemen at the time of Ghazan Khan.

The study of the extant written sources demonstrates that the practice of the dÄ«wān (defterdarlık) and “hazÄ«ne (qazna)” institutions that developed in places like Kazan and Crimea at the time of the Ilkhanids as well as the art of calligraphy were imports in these places, they did not evolve and emerge among indigenous population. The letter of Ulugh Muḥammad Khan, who later became the ruler of Kazan, to Murād II in 1428 and the Crimean Khan ḤājjÄ« Girey’s <sic> letter to Sultan Meḥmed the Conqueror in 1453 <sic> were written in the dÄ«wānÄ« script, which had reached its zenith in Tabriz and Herat. And their language is elegant Eastern Turkic. Professor Akdes Nimet <Kurat> published these documents, which are preserved in the Topkapı Palace Library, in 1940.⁷⁹ However, the 1522 farmān of Ṣāḥib Girāy Khan, who ruled in Kazan, is written so poorly and the language is so ignorant that the fact that it was written in Kazan where the aforementioned Ulugh Muḥammad Khan ruled demonstrates that the civilization coming from the south (from Tabriz and Herat) came to this city only intermittently. <For instance,> the words مبارك، املاك ،خراجات، عن الآفات، مقیمات، سادات were written as موبارك، الماك، قراجات، عن یلافات، مقمان، سدات.‎⁸⁰‬

It is known that musicians and singers were brought to Kazan from Herat and Muḥammad AmÄ«n Khan, the khan of Kazan, wrote poems in Herat style.⁸¹ An excellent work written in Eastern Turkic by Muḥammad SharÄ«f, a poet from Kazan with the penname SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> who was originally from Astrakhan, titled Ẓafarnāma-i Vilāyat-i Qāzān is to be added to this list now. This ten-page-long work is included in a collected volume (majmÅ«Ê¿a), Ms. 2348, in the library of the Zeytinoğulları in Tavşanlı, near Kütahya.⁸² This work, which narrates the events of how the residents of Kazan fought devotedly against the Russian tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) during his siege of the city in the winter of 1550 and how they forced him to retreat, is dated to Muḥarram 957 AH (that is, it was written in January or February of 1550). This document demonstrates that the literary Chaghatay, especially the style of such an eminent personality as Ê¿AlÄ«-ShÄ«r Nawāʾī, that was widely used in Central Asia, was in use in Kazan and it was written in order to draw the “attention” of an Ottoman grandee addressed as “ṣāḥib-i devletleri (“master of fortune”) to these events <in Kazan>. We can surmise that this ṣāḥib-i devlet was Süleyman the Lawgiver. I transcribe the work in its entirety below.

<Text>

‫/60a/‬ ظفرنامۀ ولایت قزان

ضمایر صافیۀ ارباب اولو الابصار و خواطر زاکیۀ اصحاب ذوی الاعتبارغه آفتاب عالمتاب تیکین⁸³ واضح و روشن ولایح و مُبَرْهَن تورور⁸⁴ کیم ولایت بلغار اقالیم سبعه (دین) ییتنچی اقلیم تورور، قمرغه منسوب ایرور یعنی قمر پرورشیدا تورور علی ما هو المذکور فی الکتب الریاضی. وتقی بو ولایت بلغار، قطب شمالیغه کمال قربیدین اواخر جوزا و اوایل سرطان دا صلوات خمسه نینک بیریسی نینک يعنی صلوة عشا نینک وقتی تبولماس زیرا کیم شفق امامین⁸⁵ قشیدا عبارتدر حمرة دین، آنينک غیبوبتندین⁸⁶ بورون راق. بو اوقات معلومه دا وقت صلوة فجر یعنی صبح صادق ظاهر بولور، اول سبب دین اول قوم غه صلوة عشا واجب بولماس علی ما هو المذکور فی کتب الفتاوی سیّما فی الکنز⁸⁷ و الوافی⁸⁸ والکافی⁸⁹

و تقی بو ولایت بلغارنینک پای تختی بلدۀ طیّبۀ محروسه دار الاسلام قزان حمیت عن حوادث الزمان اسلام ولایت لارندین⁹⁰ یراق توشوب کفّار سر حدیغه متّصل تورور.

مصراع

همسایۀ بد مباد کس را

هیچ طرفدین انکا مدد و معاونت یتشماس مگر عنایت ربّ العالمین قرین و ملایکه لار ناصر و معین بولغای لار اول سبب دین بلدۀ محروسۀ قزان شهرینك پادشاه لاری کفّار برلا زمانه مقتضاسنجه⁹¹ مملکت رفاهیّتی وگشایشی رعیّت فراغتی و اسایشی اوچون مدارا برله آرادا ایلچی بویلا⁹² یوروشوب کیلش بارش قیلور ایردی لار

شعر

ثانیا صاحب السیف و القلم منبع الجود والکرم مرحوم و مغفور ابو الغازی صفا کرای بهادر خان قزان ولایتیغه پادشاه بولدی /60b/ ایرسا کفّار برله دنیادا دینی و آخرتدا ایوی⁹³ باشقالیقیدین إِنَّ الْأَبْرَارَ لَفِي نَعِيمٍ وَإِنَّ الْفُجَّارَ لَفِي جَحِيمٍ يَصْلَوْنَهَا يَوْمَ الدِّينِ⁹⁴ آیة کریمۀ وَقَاتِلُواْ الْمُشْرِكِينَ كَآفَّةً   ⁹⁵ امرینا⁹⁶ مأمور بولوب یُجَاهِدُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ بِأَمْوَالِهِمْ وَأَنفُسِهِمْ⁹⁷ مقتضی سنجه بو حدیث نبوی وفي الغزوة إِحْدَى الْحُسْنَيَيْنِ⁹⁸ اِمّا الظفر و الغنیمة و اِمّا الشهادة والجنة مفهومیدین⁹⁹ فرحناك

بيت

و بو خبر مصطفوی مَن رَمی في سبیل اللّٰه تعالی سهما عُدِل له محرّراً و المُنْبَل به کالرامي¹⁰² مضمونیدین نشأناك بولوب

قطعه

ودخی بو حدیث نبوی¹⁰⁵ کیم رِبَاطُ يَوْمٍ وَلَيْلَةٍ خَيرٌ مِنْ صِيامِ شَهْرٍ وقِيامِهِ، وَإنْ جَرَى عَلَيْهِ عمَلُهُ الَّذي >كَانَ يَعْمَلُهُ<، وَأُجْرِيَ عَلَيْهِ رِزقُهُ وأمِنَ¹⁰⁶ الفَتَّانَ¹⁰⁷ معنی سن ملاحظه¹⁰⁸ قیلوب

قطعه

اللّٰه تعالی حضرتیدین اجر جمیل و ثواب جزیل اومونوب عداوت بناسی نینک اساسنی توزوب آراداغی اِتّحاد و داد رشته سینی اوزوب مخالفت ابوابنی¹¹² مفتوح و مراسلت ایشکنی¹¹³ مسدود قیلیب أنا ظالم إن لم انتقم مِن الظالم تیو غزات و جهاد اطلاریغه اطلانیب¹¹⁴ شمشیر قُتّال و آبدار و کافر کُش نی مبارک بیلینه بغلاب

شعر

جَاهَدُوا¹¹⁷  فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ بِأَمْوَالِکُمْ وَأَنفُسِکُمْ ¹¹⁸ تیزکوننی¹¹⁹ قولونا آلیب آیاغنی سعی و طلب اوزانکوسینا سوقوب فَضَّلَ اللّهُ الْمُجَاهِدِينَ عَلَى الْقَاعِدِينَ¹²⁰ درجه سیدین امیدناک بولوب وَلاَ تَحْسَبَنَّ الَّذِينَ قُتِلُواْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللّهِ أَمْوَاتًا بَلْ أَحْيَاء عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ¹²¹ الآیة مضمون شریفیدین انواع بهجت و سرور و اجناس مکرمت و حضور دست بریب تُؤْتِي الْمُلْكَ مَن تَشَاء وَتَنزِعُ الْمُلْكَ مِمَّن تَشَاء¹²²â€Š میدانیده إِنَّ اللّٰهُ يُؤَيِّدُ بِنَصْرِهِ مَن يَشَاء¹²³ عَلَمینی کوتروب ایة کریمۀ كَم مِّن فِئَةٍ قَلِيلَةٍ غَلَبَتْ فِئَةً كَثِيرَةً بِإِذْنِ اللّٰهِ¹²⁴ تیو جنود مسعود اسلامنی آلیب اول کفّار بدگیش و ضلالة أندیش کیم أُوْلَئِكَ فِي ضَلَالٍ مُبِينٍ¹²⁵ دورلار الار¹²⁶ اوستونا یوروب الارنی قتل ایلیب چاپیپ¹²⁷ سانسیز اسیرلار و صاغش سز¹²⁸ غنیمت لار کیلتورور¹²⁹ ایردی لار

مدت مدید¹³⁰ و عهد بعید بو منوال اوزارنه کچار ایردی. اتفاقا قضا و قدر منادی سی نینک أَيْنَمَا تَكُونُواْ يُدْرِككُّمُ الْمَوْتُ وَلَوْ كُنتُمْ فِي بُرُوجٍ مُّشَيَّدَةٍ دیکان ¹³¹ نداسی حضرت خان نینک مسامع شریف لاریغه یتشیب قُلْ إِنَّ الْمَوْتَ الَّذِي تَفِرُّونَ مِنْهُ فَإِنَّهُ مُلَاقِيكُمْ     ¹³² صداسنی اشتیب خان حضرتلری همان رضا بویننی قضا قولونا سونوب حق تعالی دین رحمت و مغفرت اومونوب إِنَّا لِلهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ¹³³ تیو فَإِذَا جَاء أَجَلُهُمْ لاَ يَسْتَأْخِرُونَ سَاعَةً وَلاَ يَسْتَقْدِمُونَ¹³⁴ مقتضی سینجه تیریک لیک طوردین امید کسب حیات لیق تمنّاسیدین انسا چکیب¹³⁵ كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَآئِقَةُ الْمَوْتِ¹³⁶ شربتینی كُلُّ مَنْ عَلَيْهَا فَانٍ¹³⁷ بزمیدا وَسَقَاهُمْ رَبُّهُمْ¹³⁸ ساقی سی قولوندین ایچیب دار غرور دین سرای سرورغه رحلت قیلدی ایرسا ذَلِكَ تَقْدِيرُ الْعَزِيزِ الْعَلِيمِ¹³⁹

غزل

کفّار بو حادثۀ گردون دین خوش حال بولوب بو واقعۀ دنیای دون دین سویونوب اول کافر بی دین و اول مشرک با کبر و کین و اول مفسد روزگار و مفتّن فلک زرنگار¹⁴⁶ و ثانی اثنین شیاطین و پیشوای لشکر ملاعین ایبان¹⁴⁷ بی ایمان فرعون صفت و نمرود هیئت برله اوزی بشلاب لشکرِ انبوه گران سنگِ بسیار و عسکر مکروه با توب و تفنگ بی شمار تخمیناً سکز یوز مینک¹⁴⁸ لشکر برله الَّذِينَ يَقْطَعُونَ مَا أَمَرَ اللّٰهُ بِهِ أَن يُوصَلَ وَيُفْسِدُونَ فِي الأَرْضِ أُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْخَاسِرُونَ¹⁴⁹ دورلار کیلیب بلدۀ محروسۀ قزان شهری نینک گرداگردینی احاطه ایلاب محاصره قیلب قوندیلر

غزل

بر دروازه ده بو مملکت نینک ستونی بو خلایق نینک ره نمونی مرحوم پولاد بیک نینک اوغلی ممای بیک برله نور علی میرزا زیّد قدرهما مردان جنک آزمایی و مرد افکن وجوانان دارا¹⁶⁰ (و) اسکندر شکن لارنی ییغیب قاشیدا آلیب تورور ایردی

شعر

تقی خان مورچالیداکی¹⁶² دروازه ده¹⁶³ بهادرلیق میدانی نینک صفدری دلاورلیک پیشه سی نینک غضنفری قوزیجاق اوغلان زیّد اقتداره

شعر

اول هم بولسا جوانان هنر پیشه و دلاوران صواب اندیشه لارنی قشیدا آلیب تورور ایردی

تقی بر دروازه ده دلاورلار اهلی نینک سروری بهادرلیق معرکه سی نینک سکندری آق محمد اوغلان زیّد عمره

بیت

شعر

تقی بر دروازه ده نسل سید المرسلین قطب الاقطاب سید اتا نبیره سی مرحوم و مغفور سید نینک اوغلی قول محمد سید دام فضله باشلاب جوانان درویش شعار و صوفیان ریاضت آثارلارنی ییغیب آیة کریمۀ قُلْ إِنَّنِي هَدَانِي رَبِّي إِلَى صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ دِينًا قِيَمًا مِّلَّةَ إِبْرَاهِيمَ حَنِيفًا¹⁶⁹ مفهومیدین فرحناک و آیة شریفه إِنَّ الدِّينَ ‫/62b/‬ عِندَ اللّٰهِ الإِسْلاَمُ¹⁷⁰ معنی سی برله نشأناک بولوب حق سبحانه و تعالی درگاهیغه سغینیب¹⁷¹ حضرت رسالت پناهی روحی باشلیغ جمیع انبیاء (و)¹⁷² رسل ارواح لاریدین استغاثه قیلیب باباسی سید اتا قُدِّس سِرُّه روحی دین هم إذا تحيرتم في الأمور فاستعينوا من أهل القبور¹⁷³ مقتضی سنجه مدد و معاونت استاب غزات آطیغه آطلانیب جنگ اسبابنی مهیا قیلیب کفّار ساری یوزلانیب حاضر و ناظر بولوب تورور ایردی

تقی بر دروازه ده دارا رایت (و)¹⁷⁴ اسکندر درایت رستم مثال و بهرام امتثال بار بولسون اتالیق

شعر

اوز توابع و لواحق لاری برله تورور ایردی

تقی بر دروازه ده شهر بیکی بلغار ولایتی نینک حاکمی قرة عیون السلاطین درة صدف العزّ و التمکین مدبّر¹⁷⁶ امور الممالک السلطانیّه مفتّح ابواب الخزاین الخانیه سلالة الامرا بی بارص بیک زیّد قدره نینک بهادرلیق غیرتی حرکت کا کلیب دلاورلیک یوراکی تبرانیب هر زمان دیر ایردی کیم

قطعه

بعض دلاوران نامدار و بهادران¹⁷⁹ کام کار ناریخی¹⁸⁰ بیک و آی کلدی¹⁸¹ بیک و آق متای بیک و جماعۀ حاجی لر نصرهم اللّٰه هر یرده کفّار تبه کار هجوم قیلسالار الار¹⁸² اول یرکا اوزلارین یتکوروب جان و دل برله مدد و معاونت بیریب کفّار سیه کارلار¹⁸³ برله محاربه و مقاتله قیلیب کافرلرنی ییغیب¹⁸⁴ سونکولارین¹⁸⁵ سندریب غازیلیق ‫/63a/‬ تشریفاتی برله مشرف ایردی لار

القصه ایکی لشکر بری بریکا محاربه و مجادله و مقاتله غه قرشو توردیلر

مثنوی

بو خبر¹⁸⁹ بر سبیل تواتر ثابت و محقق بولوب ایردی کیم کفّارنینک لشکریدا اون بر اوتلوغ توب بار ایردی بر یخشی توبجی هم قاچیب کلیب ایکن ایردی اول توب لارنینک هر بر اوتلوغ جادره سی¹⁹⁰ تخمیناً قزان تاشیغه بتمان¹⁹¹ بار ایردی اولوغ لیغی آط طوبره سی¹⁹² چاقلی ایردی اول یادره ایچیدا انواع طلسمات¹⁹³ و اجناس تصرفات لار قیلیب ایردیلار کیم عقل افلاطون حیران قالیب¹⁹⁴ فهم ارسطو متحیّر و سرگردان بولغای ایردی اول یادره لار تیشیدین¹⁹⁵ تمورلر برله قورشاب یزلار¹⁹⁶ برله توقوب ایچیده نفت سپید قیوب کوکردلار سالیب کیچک توفاکچه لار راست قیلیب ایچیندا تورت بش قورغاشیندین یادره لار سالیب مضبوط و مربوط و محکم و مستحکم قیلیب قرانکغو کیچه لاردا کیم اتار ایردیلار دیکای ایردینکیز کیم كَصَيِّبٍ مِّنَ السَّمَاء فِيهِ ظُلُمَاتٌ وَرَعْدٌ وَبَرْقٌ¹⁹⁷ تیو

تقی اول اوتلوغ یادره لاردین کیچه لار(دا)¹⁹⁸ سالیب چیقغان هواداغی اوچقون لارنی خیال قیلغای ایردینکیز¹⁹⁹ کیم کوک لارداکی کواکب ثابتات و سیارات لارنی بارچاسینی²⁰⁰ یرکا توشتی تیو

اول اوتلوغ یادره لار کیچه لار شهر ایچیدا هر یرکا کیم توشار ایردی هیچ کیم ایرسانینک عُرضه سی²⁰¹ یوق ایردی کیم انینک یاویغینه²⁰² باریب²⁰³ سوندرگای

بیت ‫/63b/‬

امّا بعض جوانان باجرأت²⁰⁶ و دلاوران باهمت المرأ²⁰⁷ یطیر بهمته دکان تیک²⁰⁸ اوزلارین²⁰⁹ اول اوتغه سمندر تیکین²¹⁰ سالیب باستعانت ملک متعال و استشارت عقل فعّال برله اول اوتی انداغ سوندورر²¹¹ ایردی لار کیم آثار و علامت لری قالماس ایردی

شعر

تقی دورت بیش هوایی توب لاری هم بار ایردی هر بر یادره تاشی بر کوه پارۀ ایردی هر وقت کیم اول توب لار آتیلور ایردی اول یادره تاشی قوۀ قسریۀ²¹³ مُحرّکه برله قوش تیکین²¹⁴ اوچون²¹⁵ کالطیر یطیر بجناحه²¹⁶ هواغه کیم چیقار ایردی وَتَرَى الْجِبَالَ تَحْسَبُهَا جَامِدَةً وَهِيَ تَمُرُّ مَرَّ السَّحَابِ²¹⁷ دایرۀ افلاکده بر نقطه تیکین²¹⁸ بولوب هوادا یعنی جوّ السمادا یوروب قوۀ قسریه سی توکان کان سونکرا میل طبیعی سی برله کیم توبان اینار ایردی باد صرصردین تندراق قضا و قدر اوقیدین تیزراق اینیب

شعر

هر ییرکا توشسا وَيُرْسِلُ الصَّوَاعِقَ فَيُصِيبُ بِهَا مَن يَشَاء²¹⁹ منطوقه سنجه²²⁰ اول ییرنی بوزوب ییقیب²²¹ هفت طبقۀ زمین دین اوتار ایردی

شعر

بیت

وسایر ضرب زن لارکا و توفنگ لارکا حساب سان یوق ایردی بو توبلارنینک صاعقۀ آسمانی نینک سهمناک²²⁵ آوازلاریغه خلایق وهمناک بولوب وَتَرَى النَّاسَ سُكَارَى وَمَا هُم بِسُكَارَى وَلَكِنَّ عَذَابَ اللَّهِ شَدِيدٌ²²⁶ ‫/64a/‬ بربرینی تانیماس تیک بولوب ایردی لار لِكُلِّ امْرِئٍ²²⁷ مِّنْهُمْ يَوْمَئِذٍ شَأْنٌ يُغْنِيهِ²²⁸ بیزلار حیران و متحیر بولور ایردک کیم حق سبحانه و تعالی بو کافر بی دین و مشرک با کبر و کین کا بو اساس دبدبه و بو لشکر و عسکر بو حشمت و سلطنت بریب بنده نوازلیق قیلغاننا

شعر

شعر

القصه ایکی لشکر غرقِ آهنین بولوب بربریکا قرشو توروب محاربه و مجادله کا مشغول بولدی لار

بیت

شعر

اون کون انداغ اوروشلار بولدی (کیم)²³⁴ گوییا حشرو نشر ایردی

مصراع

آن²³⁵ تیکین غوغا ایردی²³⁶ گوییا محشر

²³⁷<شعر>

بحمد اللّٰه و المنّة و علی نبیه الصلوة و التحیّة توفیق الهی رفیق²³⁸ و تأیید²³⁹ نامتناهی همطریق و عنایة ربّ العالمین قرین و ملائک ناصر و مُعِین بولوب آیة کریمۀ وهو یعلم اینما کنتم²⁴⁰ صدای²⁴¹ روح افزاسی مسلمان لارنینک مسامع لاریغه یتشیب آیة شریفۀ²⁴² إِن يَنصُرْكُمُ اللّهُ فَلاَ غَالِبَ لَكُمْ²⁴³ مقتضی سینجه²⁴⁴ لَقَدْ²⁴⁵ نَصَرَكُمُ اللّهُ فِي مَوَاطِنَ كَثِيرَةٍ²⁴⁶ معنی سی صورت پذیر²⁴⁷ بولوندی کفّار بد کیش و خطا اندیش لارنی انداغ²⁴⁸ قیردی لار کیم آثار و علامت لری صحیفۀ روزگاردین محکوک و مفکوک بولدی فَقُطِعَ دَابِرُ الْقَوْمِ الَّذِينَ ظَلَمُواْ وَالْحَمْدُ لِلّهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ²⁴⁹ قلعه نینک ایکی یازیسیدا کفّار سیه کار انداغ اولوب²⁵⁰ طعمۀ سگان و لقمۀ گرک و خِرْسان بولوب یاتور ایردیلار کیم /64b/ ایاق²⁵¹ بسارغه بر چولا²⁵² یر تپولماس²⁵³ ایردی فَتَرَى الْقَوْمَ فِيهَا صَرْعَى كَأَنَّهُمْ أَعْجَازُ نَخْلٍ خَاوِيَةٍ فَهَلْ تَرَىٰ لَهُم مِّن بَاقِيَةٍ²⁵⁴

شعر

القصه مونونک²⁵⁵ تیک اوروش لار اون آلتی شبانه روز متّصل لاینقطع بولدی اون یتنجی²⁵⁶ کون لشکر کفّار تبه کار مخذول و معزول و مردود و مقهور بولوب قایتتی الحمد لِلّه الذی نصر عبدَه و اعزّ جنده و هزم الاحزاب²⁵⁷ وحده

بیت

قطعه

رجاءِ کرم²⁶¹ ارباب تحقیق لاردین و امید الطاف اصحاب توفیق لاردین اول تور کیم هر محل بو «ظفرنامه» بو صاحب دولت لارنینک²⁶² منظور نظرلاری بولونسا بو فقیر کیم معترف دور عجز و قصوری متّصف و منصف دور کناه و عصیانی برله آنینک مرادیغه فاتحه با اخلاص دریغ قیلماغای لار رحمه²⁶³ اللّٰه عبداً²⁶⁴ قال آمنّا²⁶⁵

وقعت هذه الواقعة في شهر محرم الحرام سنة سبع و خمسین و تسعمأیة منشی هذا الانشاء الغراء و مُسوِّد هذه الصحیفة البیضاء افقر العباد شریف حاجی ترخانی

Translation

The Book of Victory of the Province of Kazan

It is proved by evidence plainly, clearly, openly, visibly, and demonstrably, like the Sun shining above the Earth, to the pure hearts of the discerning ones and the spotless minds of the respected ones that the province of Bulghar is in the seventh of the Seven Climes. It is connected to the Moon, in other words it is under the Moon’s protection. As it is mentioned in the books of mathematics, due to the close proximity of this province of Bulghar to the North Pole, the time of one of the five prayer times, that is the night prayer, does not exist at the end of Gemini and the beginning of Cancer,²⁶⁶ because, according to the Two Imams (i.e. AbÅ« YÅ«suf and al-ShaybānÄ«) the dawn is just an afterglow and as it is mentioned in the books titled al-Kanz, al-WāfÄ«, and al-KāfÄ«, just before the afterglow’s disappearance the time of the morning prayer, that is the dawn, appears. For this reason, the night prayer is not obligatory for those people <living in the province of Bulghar>.

The capital of this Bulghar province, the beautiful city of Kazan, well protected abode of Islam, may she be protected from the accidents of time, is distant from from the Islamic provinces and adjacent to the border with the <lands of> the infidels.

Hemistich:

May no one be a neighbor to Evil

No aid and help comes to it, except that God’s assistance is nigh and the angels are protective and supportive. For this reason, as is required by <the customs of> the time, the kings of the well protected city of Kazan cautiously established, as required by the circumstances, mutual relationships with the infidels through the exchange of embassies (ilchi boyla) to ensure the prosperity and comfort of their country (mamlakat) and the peace and security of their subjects.

Poem:

Secondly, when the possessor of the sword and pen, the source of munificence and magnanimity, the late and forgiven AbÅ« al-GhāzÄ« á¹¢afā Girey Bahadur Khān became the king of the Kazan province, he took upon himself the task that is prescribed in the Qurʾānic verse “Truly the pious shall be in bliss; and truly the profligate shall be in Hellfire, burning therein on the Day of Judgment”²⁶⁷ and in the command of “And fight the idolaters all together,”²⁶⁸ because of the difference of his religion with the infidels in this world and the difference of his abode in the other. In accordance with the Qurʾānic verse “striving in the way of God with their wealth and their selves,”²⁶⁹ he felt content about the meaning of the Prophetic tradition “In the holy war, one of the two best things are either victory and spoils, or martyrdom and Heaven.”²⁷⁰

Verse:

And having been happy with the meaning of the Prophetic tradition “the one who shoots an arrow in the path of God most exalted will be rewarded equal to freeing a slave, so will be the one who hands the arrow, just like the arrow shooter,”

Distich:

And he considered the meaning of the following Prophetic tradition “Observing a frontier station a day and night is better than fasting and standing for prayer for a whole month, he will be rewarded for the deeds he has performed, he will be given his provision, and he will be safe from the Seducer (al-fattān).”

Distich:

He hoped for the graceful recompense and abundant rewards from God the most exalted, built the foundation of the building of hostility, severed the tie of the unity of friendship, opened the gates of opposition and closed the doors of communication, and by saying “I am an oppressor, if I didn’t take revenge on the oppressor,” he mounted the horse of holy war, and he buckled his well-watered infidel-slaying sword of battle to his blessed belly.

Poem:

Holding the rein of “Strive with your wealth and yourselves in the way of God”²⁷¹ he put his foot in the stirrup of endeavor and desire and became hopeful inasmuch as “God favors those who strive with their goods and their lives a degree above those who stay behind.”²⁷² He took the opportunity of getting various joys and delights, and types of peace and nobility from the illustrious meaning of the verse “And deem not those slain in the way of God to be dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord.”²⁷³ In the field of “Thou givest Sovereignty to whomsoever Thou wilt, and wrestest sovereignty from whomsoever Thou wilt”²⁷⁴ he upheld the banner of “(Surely) God strengthens by His help whomsoever He will,”²⁷⁵ and by saying that “How many a small company have overcome a large company by God’s leave!”²⁷⁶ he marched the glorious armies of Islam to those infidels with bad faith and aberrant thoughts, as “They are in manifest error.”²⁷⁷ He used to attack them, massacre them, smash them, and bring innumerable slaves and uncountable plunder.

A very long time passed in this manner. Incidentally the voice of the proclaimer of fate saying “Wheresoever you may be, death will overtake you, though you should be in towers raised high”²⁷⁸ reached the blessed ears of the Khan, and upon hearing the sound of “Say, ‘Truly the death from which you flee will surely meet you’,” the khan (i.e. Ṣāḥib Girey Khan) immediately presented his neck of acquiescence to the arm of destiny, hoped for mercy and forgiveness from God the most exalted and said “Truly we are God’s, and unto Him we return,”²⁷⁹ and let go of his hope of being alive and gave up his lust for life by saying “When their term comes, they shall not delay it by a single hour, nor shall day advance it.”²⁸⁰ He drank the sherbet of “Every soul shall taste death”²⁸¹ at the banquet of “All that is upon it passes away”²⁸² from the hands of the cupbearer of “Lord shall give them to drink”²⁸³ and emigrated from the abode of pride to the palace of joy “Such is the decree of the Mighty, the Knowing.”²⁸⁴

Ode:

The infidels were happy with this turn of events and joyful because of the incidents of this inferior world. The Pharoah-mannered and the Nimrod-figured Ivan the Faithless, that infidel without religion, that haughty and spiteful polytheist, that malefactor of the time, and that gilded celestial mischief-maker, one of two Satans and the leader of a cursed army, approximately eight hundred thousand in number, came with countless heavy soldiers and an abominable army armed with numerous cannons and muskets, “Those who sever what God has commanded be joined, and work corruption upon the earth, it is they who are losers,”²⁸⁵ and they surrounded the borders of the well-protected province of Kazan and camped around the city and put a siege on it.

Ode:

At one of the gates <of the city> was Mamāy Beg, the son of this country’s pillar and this people’s guide the late Pulād Beg, and Nūr ʿAlī Mīrzā—May God increase the two’s merit—who gathered their battle-hardened, men-throwing, and Darius- and Alexander-defeating soldiers by themselves.

Poem:

And at the gate of the Khan Tower (Khān Mürchäli) was the hero of the field of gallantry and the lion of the craft of bravery Quzïjaq Oghlan—May his authority increase

Poem:

He gathered the talented youth and righteous paladins, when he found them.

And at another gate was the leader of the paladins and the Alexander of the battlefield of bravery, Aq Muḥammad Oghlan—May his life be long

Verse:

Poem:

And at another <citadel> gate was Qul Muḥammad Sayyid, a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad and the descendant of the Pole of Poles Sayyid Ata and the son of the late and forgiven Sayyid—May his virtue be everlasting. He, himself being in the first place, gathered the youth with dervish-like manners and the ascetic Sufis, and being content with the meanings of the illustrious verses “Say, ‘Truly my Lord has guided me unto a straight path, an upright religion, the creed of Abraham, a ḥanÄ«f’”²⁸⁶ and “Truly the religion in sight of God is submission,” they took refuge in the presence of God, and under the leadership of the Prophet Muḥammad they sought the help of the souls of all the apostles and prophets (anbiyāʾ va rusul), and according to “If you are confused about a matter, seek assistance from the people in graves,” he asked for the assistance and help of his father Sayyid Ata—May His Secret be sanctified—he sat upon the horse of holy war, prepared his battle outfit, turned towards the infidels, and waited and watched.

At another gate was the one with Darius’ flag and Alexander’s intelligence, Rustam-like and Behram-resembling, Barbolsïn Atalïk, who stood by his own subjects and followers.

Poem:

At another gate was the beg of the city and the governor (ḥākim) of the Bulghar province “lustre of the eyes of the sultans, pearl of the mother of pearl of the magnificence and dignity of power, master of the affairs of the sultans’ countries, gatekeeper of the treasures of the khans, a descendant of emirs,” Biy Bārṣ Beg—May his power increase—whose zeal for heroism stirred up and his heart for bravery trembled. He always used to say that

Distich:

Some <other> famous paladins and prosperous champions were Narik Beg, Ay Kildi Beg, Aq Matāy Beg, and the Community of Pilgrims (jamāʿat-i ḥājjīlar)—May God help them. They would go to wherever the aggressor infidels attack to help and assist <the defenders> with their lives and souls, and they would fight with and slaughter the wicked infidels. They would defeat them, break their spearheads, and would be honoured by the customs of holy war.

In brief, two armies confronted each other to fight with, struggle with, and to massacre each other.

Mathnawi:

This news is determined and proved through repetitive historical tradition (tawātur) that there were eleven fire cannons (otluÄ¡ tob) in the infidel army. A good cannon maker had also rushed to join them. The fiery cannonball (otluÄ¡ jadrä) of each one of these cannons weighed approximately one batman (32 kg)²⁹⁰ in Kazan stone. They were as big as a horse’s feedbag. They filled these cannonballs with such abstruse things and various other stuff (taá¹£arrufāt) that Plato’s mind would be amazed, and Aristotle’s understanding would be astonished and bewildered. They covered the outside of these cannonballs with iron and pounded them with copper, filled them with kerosene (neft-i sepÄ«d) and sulfur. They prepared small muskets (tufangchä), filled them with four or five lead balls (qurgash yadrä), and set up and installed them firmly. They used to fire them even in dark nights and you would say “(like) a cloudburst from the sky, in which there is darkness, thunder, and lighting.”²⁹¹

You would think that the sparks that come out of these fire cannonballs in the night sky were as if all the stars and planets in the sky fell to the earth.

Wherever these fire cannonballs fell in the city in the night, nobody was able²⁹² to go nearby and extinguish it.

Verse:

But some of the brave youths and spirited warriors, saying that “a person flies by his or her own effort,” threw themselves into that fire like a salamander and extinguished it with the help of the supplication of the exalted king (malik) and the deliberation of the active intellect (ʿaql-i faʿʿāl) in such a way that they would not leave behind any sign or mark.

Poem:

They also had four or five mortars (hawāyÄ« tob), each one of whose bombs (yādrä tashï) was a piece of mountain. Whenever they fired these mortars, their bombs flew like a bird by the force of their own velocity (quvva-i qasriyya-i muḥarrika), and they would rise in the air <as the saying goes> “a bird flies with its wings” and “And thou seest the mountains that thou dost suppose are solid pass away like clouds”²⁹⁴ and would appear like a dot in the sky (dāʾira-i aflāk). They would fly in the air (javv al-samā) and when they exhausted the force of their velocity (quvva-i qasriyya) they would come down with their natural trajectory (mayl-i tabÄ«Ê¿Ä«) stronger than a gale and faster than the arrow of the fate and divine decree.

Poem:

Wherever they fell, as expressed in the statement “He sends forth the thunderbolts and strikes therewith whomsoever He will,”²⁹⁵ they would ruin and destroy, and pass through the seven layers of the earth.

Poem:

Verse:

There were countless other bombards (ẓarb-zan) and muskets (tufang). The people were frightened by the terrifying sound of these cannons’ heavenly thunderbolts, “and you will see mankind drunk, though drunk they will not be. Rather, the Punishment of God is severe,”²⁹⁶ and they did not recognize each other, “for every man that Day his affair shall suffice him.”²⁹⁷ We were amazed and perplexed that God most exalted—glory be to him—would give such pomp, such army and soldiers, magnanimity, and power to these irreligious infidels and haughty and spiteful polytheists, and that he would flatter his slaves.

Poem:

Poem:

In brief, the two armies donned with iron shields and weapons, confronted each other, and started fighting and waging war.

Verse:

Poem:

The battle in this way continued for ten days and it was like the Day of Resurrection.

Hemistich:

It was a battle (ghawghā) like a Day of Resurrection

Poem:³⁰⁰

God be praised and grace be upon his Prophet. The prayer and salutation of divine guidance was the companion, infinite assistance was the partner, the providence of the Lord of the Two Universes was nigh, and the Angels were the assistants and supporters. The soul-invigorating sound of the holy verse “He knows you wheresoever you are”³⁰¹ reached the ears of the Muslims and according to the holy verse “If God helps, none shall overcome you”³⁰² the meaning <of the verse> “God indeed granted you victory on many a field”³⁰³ was found to be achievable. They destroyed those impious and sinful infidels so thoroughly that their signs and marks were scattered and obliterated from the pages of the time. “Thus was cut off the last remnant of the people who did wrong. Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds!”³⁰⁴ In the two plains around the city the wicked infidels died in such a way that they lay to be food for dogs and a morsel for wolves and bears and that there was no space as big as a ladle to step on, “thou might see the people felled as if they were hollowed palm trunks. So dost thou see any remnant of them?”³⁰⁵

Poem:

In a word, the battles continued nonstop in this manner for sixteen days. On the seventeenth day, the wicked infidel army withdrew disappointed, disgraced, repulsed, and vanquished. Praise be to God who alone helps his servant, strengthens his army, and defeats the factions (in the community).

Verse:

Distich:

The hope for generosity held by inquisitive people, and the expectation for favors held by the possessors of divine guidance, is that wherever this possessor of divine fortune’s gaze falls on this Book of Victory, may he not deny a Fatiha together with an Ikhlāṣ for the desire of this poor one, a confessor, whose helplessness and fault are apparent and equitable together with his sins and transgressions. May God praise him as a servant. He said verily we believe!

This event took place in the holy month of Muḥarram in the year nine hundred and fifty seven.³⁰⁶ The scribe of this eloquent composition and the one who blackens these white pages is the poorest of the servants SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ«.

…

Since the event narrated here, that is Ivan IV’s siege of Kazan and his return after his failure <to conquer the city> in 1550, is not a proud moment for the Russians, Russian historians pass over the episode briefly, noting that “the tsar turned back before the snows started to melt, for concern lest the roads be cut off.”³⁰⁷ Hadi Atlasi <1876–1938> and I were not aware of SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> account of the very difficult and heroic defense of the city; therefore, we relied entirely on Russian chroniclers and historians on this issue.³⁰⁸ Ivan IV laid siege to Kazan on 13 February and after fighting for eleven days, he abandoned the city together with his army on 25 February. However, SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> records that Ivan IV lifted the siege on the seventeenth day after surrounding the city for sixteen days. A significant portion of the Russian army had already started the siege at the beginning of the February. SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> merely states that this event took place in Muḥarram 957, that is between 20 January and 18 February in 1550. á¹¢afā Girey Khan died in March 1549, his three-year old son Ötemish Girey succeeded him, and his mother Süyünbike ruled as his vicegerent, but actual power remained in the hands of Quzïjaq Oghlan. The reason for Ivan IV’s desire to invade Kazan was that he thought the death of á¹¢afā Girey had weakened the khanate. This view was expressed by SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> as well as Russian sources.

The number of the gates in the city walls of Kazan is given as six; other sources name these gates as Khan Gate, Atalïq Gate, Tümen Gate, Qabaq Gate, Murali Gate, and Qïrïm Gate. Izboli and Alabuga gates, which may not not be public gates, are also mentioned.

Sharīfī^<SHT> says that the defense of the city was organized in these gates and introduces the commanders of their defense forces.

The first gate mentioned is the one defended by the then deceased Pulād Beg’s son Mamāy Beg and NÅ«r Ê¿AlÄ« MÄ«rzā. The same Pulād Beg is mentioned together with the “sons of Rasov” in Russian sources.³⁰⁹ Among the children of Rasov, that is among the children of a beg called Ras or Rast, Yolbārá¹£ Beg is known.³¹⁰ NÅ«r Ê¿AlÄ« MÄ«rzā must be one of the Noghay mirzas; his name was written as Murali in Russian sources.³¹¹ Murali Gate must be connected to him.

What SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> calls “Khan Mürçeli” must be the Khan Gate of the Russian sources. Quzïjaq Oghlan was the commander of the forces in this gate, where Süyünbike Khan and her son Ötemish Girey were also positioned together. Russian sources call him Koshchaq’-Oglan’.³¹² The word ulan, that is oghlan, refers to those princes who descended from the lineage of <the Chinggisid> khans. Most of these were the princes who had come from Crimea. Although the defense of Kazan was successful, the real victory belonged to the pro-Russian camp (Bulghars and Chuvashes) among the people of Kazan. The princes and mirzas, who had come from Crimea and Noghay, and their followers (Tatars) were fiercely anti-Russian. Consequently, Crimeans and Noghays had to leave Kazan. However, two princes called Quzïjaq Oghlan and Barbolsïn Oghlan were defeated in their battle against the pro-Russian Chuvashes; they were imprisoned and taken to Moscow where they were executed.

These battles were very heroic and Quzïjaq, just like Narik’s son Chora Batïr, became an epic hero. Epic tradition mentions this prince (oghlan) as “Qulunchaq Batïr,” and the famous poems of this epic narrate his ebullient departure from Crimea together with Chora <Batïr> in order to save Kazan, their poetical contests, Qulunchaq’s marriage to Chora’s sister Ay Sulu, how Chora dispatched Qulunchaq back to Crimea while he himself was in Kazan, how Chora’s wife and Ay Sulu contrived a successful trick to bring Qulunchaq briefly back from Crimea, how Qara Duvan, the finance officer (maliyeci defterdar), rejoiced when spoils and wealth entered the khan’s treasury, and how Qulunchaq and Chora Batïr were happy when the enemy came to the city gates, because they thought they would fight until they were covered in gore.³¹³ SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> rates Quzïjaq Oghlan in the same rank as Ê¿AlÄ« b. AbÄ« Ṭālib.

Aq Muḥammad Oghlan, the defender of the third gate, was also mentioned in Russian sources together with Quzïjaq Oghlan and with their children.³¹⁴ When the Kazanians handed over the queen Süyünbike to Moscow, these children were sent with her as hostages.

The defender of the fourth gate, Qul Muḥammad Sayyid, is also mentioned in Russian sources.³¹⁵ His ancestor, Sayyid Ata, was a relative of Aḥmad YasawÄ« and died in Khwārazm in 1310.³¹⁶ SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> presents this sayyid as someone who fought with the zeal of the holy war against infidels as “the leader of a group of young dervishes.” What is important for us is that the YasawÄ« shaykhs and their disciples as holy warriors (gazi) from Khwārazm and Syr Darya basin participated in the defense of Kazan. Defending Kazan as an “Islamic frontier (Islâm thughuru)” must have been a tradition continuing since the time of Ghazan Khan.

Barbolsïn Atalïq, the defender of the fifth gate, appears in Russian sources as Barbolsïn Oghlan.³¹⁷ This person was probably the tutor (dadı) of the young khan Ötemish Girey. SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> depicts him as someone who does not value worldy affairs, fame, and rank, and as a great hero like Darius, Alexander <the Great>, Rustam, and Bahrām GÅ«r.

The defense of the sixth gate was held by an eminent person called Biy Bārá¹£ Beg. He is named as Biy Bārá¹£ Rastov in Russian sources.³¹⁸ His father was probably a beg called “Rast,” and also the old Azov Castle was called “Rostov” by Russians. Russian sources record that Biy Bārá¹£ Beg, together with Qul SharÄ«f Mulla, was sent to Moscow as an ambassador in 1551. We understand from SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> account that this person was Kazan’s city beg (that is “şehir emini”), the governor (vālÄ«) of the Bulghar province, and the treasurer of the khan of Kazan.

SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> also mentions a reserve force that was in charge of the defense of Kazan under the command of Narik Beg, Ay Kildi Beg, and Aq Matāy Beg. They gave their support to holy warriors (ghazis) wherever it was necessary. The Ottoman (Türkiyeli) copyist who copied SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> work into his or her collected volume misread certain names and words. The name ناریخی for ناریخ must be the copyist’s error. In Russian sources Narik appears as “Chura Narykovich’” as the father of the epic hero Chora Batïr.³¹⁹ Chora <Batïr> is not mentioned in these battles. He is mentioned for his escape to the Noghay Horde due to his conflict with á¹¢afā Girey and subsequently for his killing by á¹¢afā Girey.³²⁰ Ay Kildi Beg, whom SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> mentions, must be Ay Kildi Abïz, who is mentioned in Russian sources as a member of the embassy that the Kazanians sent to Moscow in 1551 under the command of Khudāyqul Oghlan.³²¹

Sharīfī^<SHT> thought that the independence of Kazan was secured once and for all after the victory of February 1550. However, the Crimean commanders like Quzïjaq Oghlan and Barbolsïn Oghlan were not deceived by this temporary success and emphasized the necessity of preparing for serious battles. However, the Kazanians did not join the holy war brigade of twenty thousand soldiers that Quzïjaq Oghlan and Barbolsïn Oghlan gathered, and the Chuvashes, which were outside of the city, were openly pro-Russian and fought against the Crimeans and Noghays, hence disrupting their defensive measures. Even after Quzïjaq Oghlan and Barbolsïn Oghlan left Kazan with five thousand men, the Tatars and other holy warriors who came from Crimea, Noghay, and other places remained collectively in charge of the defense of the city. But the city had lost its strength that forced Ivan IV to retreat in shame in 1550. Consequently, Russians were able to invade the city on 2 October 1552 by launching a new campaign with more German cannons and fifty thousand “servile Tatars (hademe Tatar).”

SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> language reflects occasionally Kazan’s Tümen Tatar dialect (birge, tutush, tizgün, ash iche, chaqlï, ni chaqlï, yitkürüb, yüz, yadrä, <uçup>, tüşti, su quyup sündürse,³²² tükengen, töben, öter, qırdı, ayaq basargha bir chola yir tapïlmas). This <demonstrates> that already at the beginning of the 14th century the language of the Tatars must have become the common spoken language among the Bulghar-speaking local Kazanians after the increase in the population of the “Muslim Tatars (Müslüman kavm-i Tatar).”³²³ In other words, today’s “Kazan Tatar language” had already become a sufficiently common language as to make an impact on the literary language of the poets at the time of SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT>. On the other hand, there is also an Ottoman influence, mediated certainly through the Crimeans, on the language of SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT>. For the most part SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> language is the elaborate literary Chaghatay in the style of Ê¿AlÄ«-ShÄ«r Nawāʾī. It is obvious that the simple YasawÄ« style Turkic poems written by poets with the penname Qul SharÄ«f or just SharÄ«f cannot be the poems of SharÄ«fÄ«.^<SHT> There are about thirty-six odes (qaṣīda) in the manuscript and printed copies of the Bāqirghān Kitābï written by poets with these pennames.³²⁴ In fact, we know about the identity of Muḥammad Qul SharÄ«f or SharÄ«f. He introduces himself as “if you ask my origin, I am an Uzbek of the Japhetic line.”³²⁵ He was a YasawÄ« shaykh called Muḥammad al-ḤusaynÄ«, who lived at the time of Ê¿Abd al-Ê¿AzÄ«z Khān, an Ashtarkhanid in Bukhara, and died in 1109 AH/1697. His treatise titled Hujjat al-dhākirÄ«n, a mixed Turkic and Persian work, as well as his Turkic and Persian dÄ«wān titled DÄ«wān-i SharÄ«f³²⁶ is in the Ali Emiri Library, Reşit Efendi 372.³²⁷ However, among simple Sufi poems in Turkic included in Aḥmad Yasawī’s DÄ«wān-i Ḥikmat there is a poem (lit. ḥikmat) of eighteen hemistiches by a poet bearing the pen name SharÄ«fÄ«.³²⁸ As well as being written in a more eloquent language than that of the other Qul SharÄ«f, it also carries the marks of the Kazan Tatar dialect (for example, tuygan, süygen, ütkerdiñ, çürür, tilmirir). This poem may be be a work of our “Muḥammad SharÄ«f ḤājjÄ«-TarkhānÄ«.” SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> could write poems in Persian, he was well informed about the classical Persian poetry, including FirdawsÄ« and had a good command of Arabic, and his Qurʾānic quotations are apposite. He is informed about the theory of physics, as he uses the term ḥarakat-i qasriya (dynamic motion), which is a physics terminology.³²⁹ The text demonstrates that the debate that was rekindled in the 19th century about the time of the dawn prayer and its invalidity in northern countries and longitudes due to the white nights had also been discussed according to the theory of Ḥāfiẓ al-DÄ«n NasafÄ« at the time of SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT>.

When I summarized my research on the Bulghars in my work on Turkish history published in 1912, I mentioned that the Bulghars were far from being warriors, but they were merchants and acted according to the principle that “a sword does not cut a bowed neck.”³³⁰ They fought with the Russians only to defend themselves, not to spread Islam. However, the poet SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> describes the Kazanians as a warrior people (see ff. 60b–61a; pp. 993–996 [text] and pp. 1013–1015 [trans.]), who have been launching razzias against the Russians, bringing spoils and slaves, and enjoying war for the sake of holy war (cihad) since olden times, especially during the reign of á¹¢afā Girey Khan. The Italian <historian> Paolo Giovio <1483–1552> in his account of the year 1526 describes the Kazanians as a very peace-loving people who wanted to be on good terms with Russia, but at around the same time, in the writings of the German ambassador <Sigismund von> Herberstein on the Kazan Khanate it is mentioned that the Chuvashes were called to the Tatar army as archers, and the Tatars were a developed political and military entity, they were warriors, and that they were more civilized and settled in comparison to the other Tatars of the Golden Horde.³³¹ In the Ottoman report <sic> on the Astrakhan Campaign found in a collected volume (MajmÅ«Ê¿a No. 3394) in the Hacı Mahmud Efendi Library, the “Kazan Tatars” were described as very “political and active Muslims,” and they encouraged the Ottomans to pursue a grand strategy against Russia, and for this purpose to connect the Don and Volga rivers in order to put the Gilan and Tabaristan coasts, that is the Caspian Sea, under the Ottoman sphere of influence, and they were able to convince (kandırabildikleri) the Ottomans.³³² These reports, which are seemingly in contradiction, are both true. The “peaceloving” ones were those who were the original residents of the country, and the ones who are described as “belligerent holy wariors” were those “Tatars” who converted to Islam at the time of the Chinggisids and founded the city of Kazan. Now the collected publication of tombstone inscriptions provides written evidence for the dual strata of the Muslim peoples in the Kazan and Bulghar regions. Some of those <tombstones> can be dated to the mid- 14th century or earlier and they were written in simple kufic calligraphy.³³³ Even the tombstones of those “Tatar” or “Turkmen” women who married Bulghar men are similar to this <format>.³³⁴ Other tombstones are in the style of the elegant and exquisite Ilkhanid and Timurid tombstones of Khorasan and Azerbaijan, and they were written in thuluth script in Eastern Turkic or Arabic. These are the works of the “Tatars.” Therefore, the word “Tatar” did not mean “Mongol,” as in the case of early Ottoman Anatolia.³³⁵ It meant Eastern Turks who came from the East with the Qarakhitays and the Chinggisids. Like the <tombstone> inscriptions, SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> poems have brought down to us the terms and words that reflect the originality of this dialect. One of these <tombstone> inscriptions in the “Old Kazan” cemeteries, dated to 900/1494, has come down to us.³³⁶ In my earlier published works I surmised that the Kazanians were called Tatars due to the Russian influence.³³⁷ Like many of my other mistakes, Ottoman sources have allowed me to correct this mistake of mine as well. Since they <i.e. the Tatars> were the most active element in the Kazan’s fight against the Russians, the name “Kazan Tatar” replaced the old name “Bulghar” among the Ottomans even in the mid-16th century.

The collected volume No. 2348 <in the Zeytinoğlu Library> that includes SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> work also includes works like Lāmiʿī’s commentary on the Gulistān <by SaÊ¿dÄ«> and a Persian-Turkish dictionary.³³⁸ In various places of the manuscript, there are references suggesting that the treatise was written in Jumāda I and Jumāda II 970, that is the beginning of 1563.³³⁹ In other words, SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> work was included in this manuscript just thirteen years after its composition at the beginning of 1550. Besides being an important example of the Eastern Turkic literature that developed in the middle-Volga region, the significance of the treatise comes from the fact that it clearly shows that the defense of the city of Kazan was not just a locally organized event, but it involved the holy warriors (gaziler) of Crimea, Astrakhan, Nogay Horde (Nogayistan), and the Syr Darya basin, and that this event was the continuation of collective measures that had been taken against the growing power of the Christians in the Western Golden Horde since the early 14th century. It also caused the spread of Muslim Turkic culture, which had been developed by the Chinggisids and Timurids in Tabriz and Herat, to the Middle Volga region. This ideal of “ghaza” is described in the epic of Chora Batïr as “destroying the monasteries of the advancing infidels, building white mosques (ak mescitler) in their place, and from them reciting call to prayer in the name of God.”³⁴⁰ Therefore, as Herberstein noted, not only the Chuvashes, “the rowers of the Volga,” but also the inhabitants of a wide region from Vyatka to Nizhnii Novgorod, namely the “archer Cheremises <i.e., Maris>,” had completely converted to Islam; hence if the Ottomans wished to rescue Kazan after the Russians invaded the city, they would help the Ottomans (Turkey) with 66,000 soldiers. Kazan Tatars made the proposal of building the Volga-Don Canal project to the Ottomans before the khans of Khiva and Bukhara made a similar proposal <to the Ottomans> because of the invasion of Astrakhan <by the Russians> and the closure of the roads.³⁴¹ The holy warriors of Kazan (Kazan gazileri) reemerged due to <Süleyman> the Lawgiver’s active anti-Russian politics after 1535, but they were either destroyed by the Russians or escaped to Crimea and the Urals after the invasion of the city <by the Russians> in 1552 and the revolt in 1555. After the 1563 Volga-Don enterprise and the failure of the Astrakhan campaign <of the Ottomans>, and after the death of á¹¢afā Girey Khan in 1572, the group of “servile Tatars (sluzhilie Tatary),” whom the Russians conscripted into the Qasim <Khanate>, stood by the Russians actively and this significant change showed its full impact during the Bashqort revolts in the 17th and 18th centuries. The holy war tradition (ghaza ananesi) in Kazan started in 1298 with the foundation of the city and continued in full swing for one and a half centuries <sic> until 1550.

Postscript

The fact that the name of the city and the province of Kazan is written as “Ghāzānī” in Timur’s letters and as “Ghāzāniyya” with the Arabic nisba suffix in Ottoman Turkish demonstrates that the name was derived from someone called Ghazan. Although the fact that Ghazan Khan sent holy warriors (ghazis) to Bulghar is not clearly stated in Hacı Mahmud Efendi 3394 <i.e. the extract from Kātib Çelebi’s Tuḥfet on the Astrakhan campaign>, there is clear mention of the fact that a “group (cemaat)” from the Tatar tribe who converted to Islam during “the reign of MaḥmÅ«d Ghazan Khan” came for the purpose of “holy war (gazā)” to the place that took the name of Kazan at that time, and made it their “homeland (vatan),” and they were known as the “Tatars of Kazan (Kazan Tatarı).” They and other holy warriors (ghazis) who came from abroad brought the Iranian culture and idioms which had already been accepted by the Turkic peoples who lived in Azerbaijan and Khorasan. The idioms and traditions that can be found among the Kazanians, but not among the neighboring Tatars, Noghays, Bashkirs, and Kazakhs would prove this point. In addition to the word “bistè” on urban life, which I discussed above, the words and terms, which are mentioned as the Kazan Tatar words in Russian sources, such as kitchen terminology, for example “bèlesh <pastry>” from the Persian word “bālish” for pillow, social terminology, “molzad’” from the word “mullā,” “sheizgad’” from “shah <sic>,”³⁴² and “seit’” from “sayyid” are noteworthy.³⁴³ The German ambassador Baron Herberstein, who reported some information about Kazan in 1526 <writes as follows> about the great respect people showed towards sayyids: “Khans welcome them (the sayyids), they kiss their hands when they arrive on horse, other begs kiss their horses’ stirrup, the remaining notables kiss their feet, and common people kiss only their skirts or their horses.”³⁴⁴ This is exactly the kind of respect that had started during the reigns of the khans Ghazan and Öljeitü under the influence of ShiÊ¿ism, and then become common in Azerbaijan.

In the 13th century the Bulghars constituted the majority of the population in the Bulghar region, but this situation changed in the 14th century. It seems that the Tatars settled en masse after the northern Bulghar region became Batu (Sayin) Khan’s appanage (öz yurt). For, according to RashÄ«d al-DÄ«n, the senior wife (büyük hatun) of this khan, Buraqchin Khatun, was from the large Alchi Tatar tribe, which had about seventy subdivisions.³⁴⁵ The Tatars who were in the retinue of this khatun and khan provided the actual support <for Batu’s dispensation.>³⁴⁶ It seems that the Muslim Bulghars did not neglect the task of spreading Islam among the grandchildren of Batu. Although Toqtagu Khan, the grandson of Batu, was loyal to Shamanic traditions, he was a Muslim like his mother Öljeytü Khatun, who came from the family of Muslim Qongrat begs.³⁴⁷ His son and successor Ilbasar was a genuine and devout Muslim.³⁴⁸ Toghrilcha, the nephew of Toqtagu and the father of the great Özbek Khan, was also a genuine Muslim.³⁴⁹ The Qongrat begs Salchiday Küregen and Qutlugh Temür Küregen, who were the viziers of first Toqtagu and then Özbek, were also Muslims. They certainly welcomed the ghazis and proselytizers who were sent by Ghazan Khan to help the spread of Islam in their own appanages (yurt) in the northern Bulghar region. The Tatars who came from abroad merged with tribes such as the Alchi Tatar, who had settled earlier in the “appanage of Sayïn Khan (Sayin Khan yurdu),” and the notables of the Muslim Bulghars gradually accepted their language.

The Kazan <Tatar> language and the “Tümen Tatar” language of Western Siberia seem to be similar to each other in the 16th century as well. The village life and agriculture among those Tatars living in northern regions were more or less advanced. Ötemish Ḥājji calls the ones on the side of the Ural <Mountains> as “Manghit villages.”³⁵⁰ It seems that Kazanians were inspired by the Bulghar culture and the Tümen <Tatars> from the Nayman culture.³⁵¹ Ḥāfıẓ-i AbrÅ« calls the Tatars in Anatolia as “Qara Tatar Turkmens.”³⁵² They were definitely Eastern Turkic-speakers, not Mongolian-speakers.³⁵³ There were the “silver-covered (gümüş örtülü) Alaqchin Tatars in the [….] basin.³⁵⁴ While Eastern Turkic literature flourished among the Kazan Tatars, there is also evidence for mutual interactions between the Tümen Tatars and the Timurids in the fields of painting and art.³⁵⁵ The interactions of the Tümen Tatars with Bukhara continued even after the 16th century, and they became a center of Islamic proselytism. There were groups <among the Tümen Tatars> who met every week to read Mawlānā’s MathnawÄ«.³⁵⁶

<Summary:> Islamic Culture in the Khanate of Kazan

In the MajmÅ«Ê¿a of Hacı Mahmud Efend Library (Süleymaniye) is preserved a one-page record about the “Astrakhan Campaign” of Selim II in the year 1568.³⁵⁷ This record informs us that a group of Tatars <who had> converted to Islam at the time of the Ilkhanid Sultan MaḥmÅ«d Ghāzān Khan proceeded to the country (on the Volga) to combat the infidels (ghazā). They were also active after the fall of the “Kingdom of GhāzānÄ« (dawlat-i Ghāzāniyya),” corresponded with the Ottoman rulers and caused them to establish a canal between the Ten (Don) and Atil (Volga). It was said that such an undertaking would <be> very useful for the supply of the (Ottoman) troops in Demir-Kapı (Derbend) and Shirwan and to increase the Ottoman power on the shores of the Sea of Gilan and Tabaristan. The town Kazan was, according to the later reports, <founded> in 1298 (thus during the reign time <sic> of Ghazan Khan) by a khan named Ghazan on the place of “Eski Kazan” and after 104 years (i.e. <in> 1402) was removed (sic) to Kazan, the capital of the khanate. According to Tatar and Russian sources the basin of the Kazan River was the “Summer” residence (yurt) of Batu (Sayin) Khan. The grandsons of Batu, Toqtagu, the son of this Ilbasar, and the brother Toghrulcha were Muslims. Ghazan Khan obviously was interested in the strenghtening of the preaching of Islam in this country as he was in <the> north-western provinces of China in Kansu and Tangut, the prince of the land of Ananda, the Muslim grandson of Khubilai. The main strength of Batu were the Alchi Tatars, the tribe of his grand khatun Buraqchin. The “Muslim Tatars” of Ghazan Khan had perhaps joined with these Alchi Tatars, the court guards of the grandsons of Buraqchin Khatun.

The Majmūʿa No. 2548 in the Zeytinoğlu Library in Tavşanlı (near Kütahya) contains a <10-page-long> report of the Kazanian poet <Sharīfī^<SHT>> (Ḥājjī Muḥammad Sharīf Ḥājjī Tarkhanī) to Ottoman rulers about the successful defense of Kazan in February 1550 against the Tsar Ivan IV. The language of this Ẓafarnāma is an excellent Chaghatay, namely in the style of ʿAlīshīr Navāʾī, but contains dispersed words, idioms, and phrases in the local “Kazan Tatar” dialect, which was like the language of “Tümen Tatars” of western Siberia and the Qara and Aqtatars of Asia Minor of the 14th century eastern Turkish <sic, Turkey>.

Together with the Tatars in the Khanate and in the town of Kazan itself lived the Muslim Bulghar-Chuvashes, in the 13th century, being certainly the majority of the population. <Until the middle of the>³⁵⁸ 14th century the inscriptions of the unpolished “Bulghar tombstones” were in Bulgharian Chuvash language written in Arabic, <and in> kufi <script>. After the year 756 AH/1355 we see the Muslim tombstones written exclusively in Eastern Turkic. These “Tatar tombstones” are well polished in <the> Iraq or Khorasan Muslim tombstone style and carefully written in naskh or thuluth <scripts>, sometimes only in Arabic language. The Bulghar and Chuvash played <a> passive role in the fights against the Russians. The “Kazan-Tatars” appear on the contrary as a political element, as religious soldiers (ghāzÄ«s), who assumed the Islamic traditions of the combat against the infidels, like the ghāzÄ«s on the Byzantine frontiers (thughÅ«r) of Islam. Contrary to other Tatars, the Kazan Tatars had more words borrowed from Persian in the field of urbanism (bista for Arabic rabḍ, “suburb”), culinary art (belish, Persian bālish, biggest rice cake), agriculture and administration. They had more respect for the sayyids, the descendants of the Prophet as described by Baron Herberstein in the year 1526. Such elements of Persian culture were brought to the northern regions of Bulghar certainly by the Muslim ghāzÄ«s and other propagandists of islam. The sayyids mentioned by SharÄ«fÄ«^<SHT> were originally from Khwārazm. SharÄ«fī’s^<SHT> literary language is the most important witness of the cultural influence of Herat in Kazan, the country which was in <the> 13th century, as related by <S.M.> Shpilevskii,³⁵⁹ exposed to the great danger of being occupied by the Russian pioneer colonists.