Russia and the CIS (bbabo.net) - In the village of Yurty Konstantinovy in the Kemerovo region, where the Kalmaks (a small group of Siberian Tatars) live, local residents decided to restore an old pre-revolutionary mosque. The collected funds were enough for fencing the building, glazing windows, it is also necessary to purchase bricks for a new stove, new doors, and repair the porch.
“53 people live in our village, mostly pensioners,” Nafisa Sadikova, head of the local Tatar cultural center, told bbabo.net. - Previously, the village consisted of two parts, Kalmatian and Russian, but then everything got mixed up, many families became related. The dream of my life is to revive the mosque, to have our own mullah. Today, we invite imams from the Tomsk region, which is only five kilometers away, and from Kemerovo to conduct funeral rites. Two years ago, a Tajik team of builders came to us from Kemerovo. The guys dismantled the minbar, but then, unfortunately, they were deported. We pensioners alone cannot cope with the renovation of the mosque. We really hope for the help of fellow Muslims.”
In the Yurts of Konstantinovs, an old two-story building of a pre-revolutionary madrasah has also been preserved. 91-year-old Kyzylbanat Sadikova lives in one half of the building. The older generation is worried about the preservation of Islam, because there is a threat of assimilation. According to the observations of ethnographers, part of the Kalmaks of the villages of Shalay and Ust-Iskitim lost their language, national identity, adopted Orthodoxy and assimilated.
The Kalmaks link their origin with the Teleuts, a small Turkic-speaking population in the south of Kuzbass. In the 17th century, part of the Teleuts moved north closer to Tomsk, where, under the influence of the Tatars and Bukharians, they converted to Islam. Teleut Muslims did not return to the south, they remained in their new homeland, after which the term began to be applied to them, which became the ethnonym "Kalmak", i.e. remaining. Later, the Kalmaks joined the Siberian Tatars, which was facilitated by religion and the Turkic language.
bbabo.Net