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What Postcards Can Tell About Islam

Books, monuments, madrasahs, stories, works of theologians - according to what written, oral and architectural sources they just do not study Islam. But how often have you heard that the history and geography of the Islamic dogma, the culture of the Islamic peoples of the Russian Empire was recognized by a simple object, an object that is in the house of each of us? Have you ever thought that a postcard sent to you by a friend or loved one can tell you something more than just the date, brand and country of departure? This simple, small-sized piece of paper can open unknown, alluring pages of history, allowing you to go back a few years, see what the Muslims of the Russian Empire looked like at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, what ancient mosques were like, what worried the Tatars a hundred years ago and what they wrote about each other.

A postcard is a unique material, the circulation and democracy of which has always given a variety of subjects. Thanks to the collector Nizami Ibraimov, visitors to the Museum of Islamic Culture of the Kazan Kremlin Museum-Reserve can now also touch this amazing source, feel the life of Muslims of the last century. It is noteworthy that the museum for the first time refers to such material for a story about Islam in Russia. 222 postcards presented at the exhibition "Islam on postcards" introduce the Muslim culture of Russia in one of the most interesting periods in the history of the country. The exhibition project is dedicated to the 1100th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by the peoples of the Volga Bulgaria.

Postcards show mosques and madrasahs, places of worship, representatives of the intelligentsia, folk types, events in such territories of the former Russian Empire with Tatar and Muslim populations as the Volga region, the Urals, St. Petersburg and Moscow, Siberia and the Far East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. In addition to the fact that the postcards reported on family, domestic events, the sender's movements, they served as a memorable item. Such postcards were brought from trips and travels, pilgrimages - Hajj. Postcards told a lot about the views of the sender. So, among the exhibits at the exhibition you can find postcards with photo portraits of Tatar intellectuals and educators: Ismail Gasprinsky, Fatih Karimi, Yusuf Akchura, Sadri Maksudi, Abdurashid Ibragimov and others.

According to the collector himself, the postcard is an amazing creation. “Pay attention, only words of love are written on postcards, they talk about good things, they show friendliness and kindness. Postcards are a vessel of love and kindness. Here is a message to loved ones about health and success, here are congratulations and an expression of respect. And it is this worthy that I want to see the culture of Russian Muslims, not only in the past, but also in the present,” said Nizami Ibraimov.

In turn, Ilfar Khasanov, the first deputy mufti of Tatarstan, singled out the dominant feature among the subjects and postcards - the images of Tatar mosques built on the territory of the Russian Empire. According to Ilnur Rakhimov, director of the Kazan Kremlin Museum-Reserve, each postcard reflects Islam in an interesting, curious period of the existence of the Russian Empire.

It is worth recalling that the opened exposition is a continuation of Nizami Ibraimov's cooperation with cultural institutions of Tatarstan. Most recently, the exhibition "Tatars of Russia" with the participation of Nizami Bey was held in the main art museum of the Republic.

Director of the Institute of the Tatar Encyclopedia of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan Iskander Gilyazov shared his own experience in studying postcards. So, when he studied the German archives, he came across postcards depicting mosques for Muslim prisoners of war during the First World War, ethnographic sketches, including prisoners of war in national clothes.

“What is interesting about the exhibition? It is diverse, since a postcard is a kind of historical source, which includes both an image and a text. The image itself is amazing, because here we see mosques, personalities, important events (for example, the Hajj) and key things related to Islam in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. And the texts that complement the postcards allow us to learn about the daily life of Muslims of that time.

According to Doctor of Arts Guzel Valeeva-Suleimanova, the Tatar Islamic world has a 1100-year history, deep roots and great potential, which allow the Tatars to be proud of their past. At the same time, which is typical, the Muslim temples depicted on the presented postcards demonstrate the appearance, architecture and artistic design of the mosques that are characteristic of the Tatars.

What Postcards Can Tell About Islam