Musa Bigeev موسى جار الله | |
|---|---|
 Musa Bigeev, 1910s | |
| Born | 1870/1875 Novocherkassk,Russian Empire |
| Died | October 28, 1949 (aged 73–79) Cairo, Egypt |
| Occupation | Philosopher, theologian, publicist |
| Nationality | Tatar |
| Literary movement | Jadidism |
Musa Jarullah Bigiev (sometimes known asLuther of Islam) (bornc. 1870 – c. 1875[1][2] inNovocherkassk,[3]Russian Empire – 28 October 1949 inCairo, Egypt) was aTatarHanafiMaturidi[4][5] scholar, theologian philosopher, publicist and one of the leaders of theJadid movement. After receiving his education inKazan,Bukhara,Istanbul andCairo, he became a political activist for theIttifaq, the political organisation of the Muslims of Russia. He also taught inOrenburg, wrote journalistic texts and translated classic works intoTatar. After emigrating from theSoviet Union, he travelled Europe and the Middle and Far East while writing and publishing.
In modernTatar, Bigievs name is written as Бигиев Муса Җарулла,Bigiev Musa Carulla,[6] or Муса Ярулла улы Бигиев,Musa Jarulla ulı Bigiev.[7] He had various names in Arabic; for example,Musa Jarullah ibn Fatima at-Turkistanial-Qazani at-Tatari ar-Rostofdoni ar-Rusi (موسى جار الله ابن فاطمة التركستاني القازانى التاتارى الروستوفدونى الروسى),[8][9]ibn Fatima at-Turkistani ar-Rostofdoni ar-Rusi (موسى جار الله، ابن فاطمة، التركستاني الروستوفدوني الروسي),[10]ibn Fatima ar-Rusi (ابن فاطمة الروسي),[11]ibn Fatima at-Turkistani al-Qazani ar-Rusi (موسى بن جار الله التركستاني القازاني الروسي),[12]at-Turkistani al-Qazani ar-Rusi (موسى بن جار الله التركستاني القازاني الروسي),[13] orMusa Effendi Jarullah ar-Rusi (موسى أفندي جار الله الروسي).[14]
There is no standardized English transliteration of Bigievs name; versions include Bigi or Bigeev. His pen name his also variously given as Musa Jarullah, which is the name most contemporary Muslims knew him under,[3] or as Musa Carullah, which is the name mostly used in modern Turkish literature.
Both the date and the place of Musa Bigievs birth are disputed. Opinions for the date include 1870,[1] 1875[2] or 1873.[15] The place is either the village of Mishar or the city ofNovocherkassk.[3] He was born into a middle-class family as the younger of two brothers. After his father was appointed asAkhoond, the family moved toRostov-on-Don. After the father's early death in 1881, Bigiev's mother, Fatima Hanim Bigiyeva, provided for the education of him and his elder brotherMuhammad Zahir Bigiev.[16]
Bigiev spent most of his youth studying atmadrasas inKazan,Bukhara,Samarkand,Mecca,Medina,Cairo (where he attended theDar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah and was educated byShayk Muhammad Bakhit al-Muti'i),Damascus,Istanbul andUttar Pradesh in India, where he studiedSanskrit and theMahabharata. While he attended many famous universities, he preferred studying on his own while benefitting from the mentorship of different scholars.[3]
In 1904, he returned toRussia, where he married Asma Aliye Khanim, daughter of a merchant and madrasah teacher fromChistopol. Afterwards, he moved to St. Petersburg and attended lectures at the Law faculty ofSt. Petersburg Imperial University as an auditor, in order to be able to compare Islamic and Western legal systems. He also became good friends withAbdurreshid Ibrahim, the editor of the newspaperÜlfät,[1] in which he published several times.
During theRevolution of 1905, Bigiev became actively involved in the founding of the Muslim political organization, and later party,Ittifaq al-Muslimin, starting with the first Congress of the Muslims of Russia, which was held inNizhny Novgorod in August. He also participated in the second and third congresses of 1905 and 1906, where he was elected as a member of the central committee of the parliamentary group in theDuma. Bigiev was responsible for providing the protocols of the Ittifaq meetings.[16]
After the end of the Revolution, he also worked in publishing (in 1908 editing and publishing his deceased brother's book "A trip to Mesopotamia") and from 1910 onwards as a teacher at the Husayniya madrasah inOrenburg. He also held lectures at the city's philanthropic association (Orenburg Jäm'iyät-i Khayriyäsi) and became secretary of the fourth Muslim congress in 1914. In 1915, he publishedIslahat Asaslare ("The Fundamentals of Reform"), a catalogue of social and political change among the Muslims of Russia between 1904 and 1915.
After his publications inRizaeddin bin Fakhreddins journalShura drew immense criticism from the local Ulama, he left Orenburg.[16]
Bigiev welcomed theFebruary Revolution, claiming that "slavery is gone, and will never come back".[3] Even after the takeover by theSoviets, he saw the new regime as a potential ally against what he perceived to be the primary enemy of the Muslims of the world – theBritish Empire. During the course of theRussian Civil War, Bigiev toured the Volga region together withAbdul Hafiz Mohamed Barakatullah in order to mobilize the Muslim population for military service against the British. He also held close contact with otheranti-British Indian activists and arranged for them to live in the Soviet Union.
In 1920, Bigiev could be found in Ufa, where he presented a program for social reform with the title of "Appeal to the Islamic Nations" to the members of the Muslim religious administration; this included the allegiance of the Russian Muslims to the caliphate above the Soviet State. The program formed the basis for his bookIslam Milletlerine ("To Muslim Nations"; orIslamning Elifbasi, "The Alphabet of Islam", as response toNikolai Bukharins "Alphabet of Communism") of which 5,000 copies were printed in Berlin in 1923. Following this publication, he was arrested in Moscow while on his way from Petrograd to a conference in India. The Soviets had begun to suppress all forms of religious expression, including "Pan-Turkists" and "Pan-Islamists".[3]
His arrest provoked a storm of indignation; for example, theTatars of Finland requested the assistance of the Turkish government, which at that time was on friendly terms with the new Soviet regime. The leading newspapers of Istanbul and Ankara published telegrams with pleas to set Bigiev free again. The campaign finally succeeded; Bigiev was freed on the condition that he was to live in Moscow under state surveillance for two years.
Several years later, in May 1926, Bigiev was included in delegations of Soviet Muslims to the Pan-Islamic Congresses inMecca and Cairo. On the return trip, he attended several sessions of the Turkish parliament and met the Turkish prime ministerİsmet İnönü. After his return, he was also elected by the Leningrad Tatars to become their delegate at a congress of Muslim clergy in Ufa.
He returned to Leningrad again in 1927. The political climate had worsened harshly; Bigiev witnessed theLeague of Militant Atheists and was personally forbidden to leave the country. He was also out of work; he continuously applied to the scholarIgnaty Krachkovsky as a teacher of Arabic, Persian and Turkic languages at Leningrad University, and in 1929 even applied to the government of Afghanistan for a job. His wife and four of his children were temporarily arrested. In 1930, after he, his family and other clergymen where deprived of food coupons, he finally decided to secretly leave the country.
He first crossed the border intoChinese Turkestan, where he tried to settle down inKashgar; however, theChinese government prohibited him from doing so. He then travelled on horseback to Afghanistan, where its rulerNadir Shah provided him with an international passport. This allowed him to go to India, where he met some of his friends he had made in earlier years.
However, he did not stay in India for long, instead starting a period of worldwide travelling. In 1931, he held a speech at theWorld Islamic Congress in Jerusalem, where he praised Finland for its friendly attitude towards Muslim émigrés from Russia. He also visited Ankara, Berlin (where he founded an Islamic publishing house), Finland and Iran and Iraq, where he studiedShia Islam.[3] He resumed his tour in 1937, again visiting India, more specificallyBombay andBenares. He was then invited byAbdurreshid Ibrahim to Japan; the two travelled together to China,Java,Sumatra and Singapore.
After the outbreak ofWorld War II in 1939, Bigiev tried to reach Afghanistan again, but was arrested by British authorities inPeshawar without any charge. The ruler ofBhopal,Hamidullah Khan, petitioned for his release, but Bigiev was kept under house arrest until 1945. In these years, he wrote ten of his major works.[3]
After his release, Bigiev suffered from illness which forced him to undergo several surgeries. In 1948, he travelled to Turkey and from there to Cairo, where he died on 28. October 1949. He was buried at theRoyal Cemetery of the Khedives of Egypt.
While Bigiev left "a deep imprint on the history of the reformedmadrasas and the Muslim press of Russia in the 1910s",[17]his work and even his name are largely forgotten today.[3] This can mostly be attributed to the Soviet Union under Stalin, where his name waspurged from documents and bibliographies and the study of his works forbidden.
He was officially rehabilitated by theHigh Court of the Russian Federation in February 1997. Still, only a small amount of research on his life and work has taken place and the amount of literature available in English is very limited.[3]
However, a movement towards rediscovery seems to be taking place; one of Kazans streets is now named after Bigiev. In 2007, as a part of the projectIjma' – Concord, theKunstkamera (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography) of the Russian Academy of Sciences sponsored the documentaryThe manuscript and the Fate about Bigievs life, with a script written by the OrientalistJefim A. Rezvan.[18] A year later, in 2008, the documentaryAnd the moon has split, directed by B. Baishev, was awarded a special prize "for the contribution to Islamic Enlightenment" at the fourthGolden Minbar International Film Festival.
Bigievs Quran translation was reprinted in 2010 from copies saved by descendants. For the 140th anniversary of his birth, a number of activities were held in thePenza Oblast of Russia; on June 23, a plaque was dedicated in the city of Kikino, one of Bigievs supposed birth places, and a maktab and a garden near the mosque of the town were renamed in Bigievs honor.
Bigievs wife Asma died in Ufa in 1979; of their eight children, two died young.
His son-in-law Abdurahman Tagirovich Tagirdzhanov became a professor ofOrientalism atLeningrad State University,[15] while his cousinAbrashit Museevich Bigiev (1917–2010) became professor forMetallurgy atMagnitogorsk State Technical University.[19]
Today, descendants of Bigiev live in Russia (in Ufa, Moscow and St. Petersburg) and in Ukraine (Dnepropetrovsk).
While he was one of the leading members ofJadidism, Bigievs provocative nature led to opposition not only from theKadimists (nearly all issues of the Qadimist journalDin vä Ma'ishät include one or more articles written directly against him), but also from fellow reformers.
In his 97-page essayRahmet-i Ilahiye Burhanlari ("The storms of God's clemency"), published in Orenburg in 1910, Bigiev argued that God would also include unbelievers in his mercy and forgiveness. This elicited criticism from many Ulama, includingIsmail Gaspirali.[16]
The influence of Bigiev was felt beyond the Russian Empire, for example in Istanbul, where the scholarMustafa Sabri Efendi criticized Bigiev for his "dangerous and heretical" (küfriyati muhtevi) ideas and was responsible for the ban of three of his works in theOttoman Empire.[3] However, Sabri defended Bigievs qualification to discuss theological matters. Sabri coined the epithet "Luther of Islam" for Bigiev.[16]
Bigiev has also been described as one of "the most notoriousSunnite polemicists against Shiism in the 20th century", along with such figures asMuhibb-ud-Deen Al-Khatib andEhsan Elahi Zaheer.[20] This is the result of him penning several well-knownanti-Shia books, includingAl-Washi'ah fi naqd 'aqa'id al-shi'ah. In these works, Bigiev claims that during his travels in Iraq and Iran he had not met even one Shia individual who knew theQuran to a satisfactory level.[21]
Bigiev wrote extensively; for example, he published 64 books[3] and more than 120 essays and articles on theology. Included here are some of his most notable works.
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