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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MYSTERY: THE CURIOUS CASE OF MUSA JARULLAH BIGIYEV (1875-1949)'S TATAR TRANSLATION OF THE QUR'AN
Selcuk Altuntas
University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI, USA altuntasselcuk@gmail com
Abstract. This paper deals with MusaJarullahBigiyev's Tatar translation of the Qur'an within the context of internal Muslim affairs in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Bigiyev's Tatar translation of the Qur'an, which was completed in 1912, remains one of the mysteries of the academic study of the Qur'an in the Turkic world. Having been barred from publication by the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (the Sobraniye), its whereabouts has been puzzling researchers for the last hundred years. In 2010, a so-called facsimile of it came out in Kazan by Elmira Tagirdjanova and Gareyeva. However, seven years later, in 2017, the enthusiasm turned to disappointment as it turned out to be the exact copy of SuleymanTevfik'sTercume-i§erife: Turk^eKur'an-iKerim (1926), which is one of the first full Turkish translations of the Qur'an in the republican era. Having evaluated Bigiyev's translation within the context of internal Muslim affairs in Russia, this paper deals with the story of Bigiyev's failed publication attempt in 1912 and the false promise of the Kazan Edition in 2010.
Keywords: Musa Jarullah Bigiyev, Ziyaeddin Kamali, Suleyman Tevfik, Uthman Qur'an, mushaf, National Library of Turkey, Yusuf Uralgiray, Abdullah Battal Taymas.
Who is Bigiyev?
Musa Jarullah Bigiyev was a Tatar Muslim scholar from Russia. His scholarly focus was the Qur'an. In his 45-year writing career, from 1905 to 1949, he penned numerous works, both in Tatar and Arabic, mostly in the Qur'anic sciences, i.e., fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), qira'at (recitation), tafsir (exegesis), etc. His educational background consisted of a combination of classical Islamic education and Russian schooling. Having completed his primary education in various madrasas across the Islamic world for about ten years (Turkestan, Egypt, Syria, the Hijaz, Istanbul, India), he came back to Russia on the eve of the First Russian Revolution in 1904 as a young, promising scholar. Later on, he audited classes in law at St. Petersburg University. He published his first book, Tarikh
al-Qur'an wa'l-Masahif (History of the Qur'an and its Written Collections) in Arabic in 1905 in which he discussed the problems of madrasa education in general and the history of the first written Qur'ans in particular. Since then, he wrote extensively in the Qur'anic sciences. He also actively took part in the political activities of the Muslims of Russia and published the records of the Russian Muslims' congresses, which were held between 1905 and 1917. His works gained him fame at home and abroad as he conducted ijtihad, independent legal reasoning. His relentless attack of the great scholars of the past and even his Western style outfit made him an ad hominem target for the religious establishment and the Sobraniye.
After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, unlike many other political and intellectual figures of the time, he decided to stay in the Soviets, since he saw the newly established regime as an opportunity for Muslims of Russia in gaining more political rights. In this regard, he got in contact with top leaders of the communist regime, Lenin and Stalin, and helped a delegation of Indian Muslims meet with them for their political causes. However, his hopes for the regime ended up with disappointment as he was put under more and more political pressure because of his "pan-Islamic" political activities or rather ambitions. Thus, he left the Soviets in 1930 with no intention to return. His life in self-imposed exile was full of travels covering an area from Berlin to Japan. In this period, he continued publishing books, mostly in Arabic. His refutation of the Shi'a, al-Washi'ah fiNaqd 'Aqa'id al-Shi'a (1936), is one of the best known of his works from this period because of which he was banned from entering Iran and Iraq. On his way back from Japan in 1939, he was imprisoned by the British on the Indian-Afghan border for a couple of years. From his release up until 1947 in India, he continued to write works on the Islamic sciences. Finally, because of poor health and advanced age, he moved to Egypt where he died in 1949 at the age of 74, far from his homeland.
Bigiyev as a Scholar of the Qur'an
As mentioned above, Bigiyev was a scholar of the Qur'an. For him, the physical aspects of the Qur'an, such as its printing, the variant readings, the number of verses, its translation, etc., were as crucial as its meaning. In his words, his overall vision of the Qur'an as a book consisted of "the beauty in its publication, trust in its recording (rasm), and orderliness in its number (of the verses)." In this regard, his zeal for the Qur'an led him to declare in 1909 that the Qur'ans that had been printed in Russia had a good number of errors in them as they were not identical with the codification of Uthman ibn Affan. For him, since Uthman's Qur'an was the first and the greatest ijma (consensus) of the Companions, it was a religious obligation to adhere to it in the printing of the Qur'an. In this regard, he held Shihab al-Din Maijani (1818-1889), the first official proofreader of the Qur'an in Russia appointed by the Sobraniye-responsible for those errors, which Bigiyev partially attributed to Marjani's zeal for
the Hanafi School of Law [8, 9, 10]. Additionally, he disagreed with those who were of the idea that the Qur'an should be written with the advanced Arabic alphabet. Bigiyev advocated that the Arabic alphabet at the time of the Prophet Muhammed and in its codification during the reign of the Caliph Uthman was already an advanced one.
In terms of the variant readings of the Qur'an, Bigiyev accepted the authenticity of the relevant hadith which stated that the Qur'an was revealed on seven letters, which was understood by many as seven dialects of Arabic [13, P. 39-48].1 It is commonly accepted by Muslims that the Qur'an had been written down on various materials, such as leather, palm leaf, stones, etc., during the time of the Prophet Muhammed. But it took the shape of a bound book during the time of the second caliph Abu Bakr. Later in the reign of the third caliph Uthman, this single copy of Abu Bakr became the basis for an additional 7 or 8 copies which were distributed to the major centers of the Islamic Empire.
At this point one would ask, if there were seven equally authentic readings of the Qur'an, then upon which reading was the codification of Uthman based? There are different opinions on this among the commentators. Abd Allah pointed out that some were of the idea that Uthman was not in a position to abandon any of them, so he maintained all of them. And some others thought that since other dialects came closer to the Quraysh dialect, Uthman ordered it to be based on the Quraysh dialect. Still, some others opted for a more conciliatory approach and said that Uthman preserved as many as he could from all other dialects. This would explain that the first copies missed the diacritical marks and vowels to accommodate all possible readings [1, P. 103-06]. In this regard, Bigiyev did not accept that the mushaf of Uthman was compiled based on the Quraysh dialect only. In his view, each one of those seven readings had been recorded during the time of the Prophet Muhammed and Abu Bakr [13, p. 80]. When he listed the conditions of an ideal translation of the Qur'an, he noted that he would translate all extant readings of a particular verse, if any [13, p. 89]. If his translation had come out, we would have had the chance to see some sort of a critical-textual edition of the Qur'an, albeit in translation.
How did he understand these variant readings? Bigiyev explained that the differences in the recitation of the Qur'an occurred most of the time in regard to grammar (nahw) and morphology (sarf) and sometimes in lexicology (lugat) as could be seen in all advance languages like Arabic and Turkish. For example, there was a slight difference between the Kazan and Ottoman dialects in saying "gitti, geldi" [7, p. 80]. Perhaps, in his insistence on the orthography of Uthman lied that fact that he saw it as a way to preserve variant readings of the Qur'an because,
1 In his translation of Hafiz, he also mentioned seven other readings of the Qur'an, which makes up 14 in total [7, p. 80].
again, for him the differences in recitation were not in the lexemes but in pronunciation [22, P. 77-78].2
Similarly, Bigiyev was also concerned with the numbering of the Qur'anic verses. Having heard of the Sobraniye's decision to put numbers at the end of each verse in 1910, Bigiyev commented that consistency in determining the number of the verses and the pauses was also equally important. In this regard, he published an annotated edition of Muhammad al-Qasim ibn Firruh al-Shatibi (1144-1194)'s Nazimat al-Zuhr in 1910 which, for him, was the best book ever written on the subject. He basically stated that among the six legitimate methods of determining the number of the Qur'anic verses (Makki, Madani awwal, Madani akhir, Kufi, Shami, Basri), Madani akhir was the best one. He suggested that the best way to approach it was to decide on one of the six legitimate methods and apply it throughout the entire Qur'an with verse numbers in a moonlike circle. Likewise, he continued, the signs of pausing should be abandoned altogether as they caused more disorder rather than orderliness [12, P. 46-49].
One other aspect of the Qur'an that concerned Bigiyev most was its translation into the Tatar language. For Bigiyev, the translation of the Qur'an into Tatar was a religious and literary necessity in the modern age and the day of its debut would be a day of celebration for not only the Tatar world, but the entire Turkic world [12, P. 46-49]. Despite all disadvantages, like the incapability of the Tatar language, -as Bigiyev put it, -vis-a-vis Arabic, and the unsuitable religious environment, he translated the Qur'an into Tatar and got it ready for publication in 1912.
The Qur'an and Its Translation as Politics in Russia
The translation of the Qur'an in Tatar is a byproduct of internal Muslim affairs in Russia. The problem-space of the translation, a term that is coined by anthropologist David Scott [20], involved several issues in this time period many of which were religious, literary, and linguistic, such as the possibility and permissibility of the translation of the Qur'an, distortion of the scripture, emulating non-Muslims, the literary capability of the target language, i.e. Tatar, etc. One key point was the person who conducted the translation. This is where internal Russian Muslim politics made itself more clearly felt than any other place.
The Qur'anic text, like its recitation, had been taken seriously by Muslims since early on. Indeed, one of the first major disputes among the early generation Muslims had to do with the Qur'an. During the caliphate of Uthman, it came to a point that the reciters of the Qur'an accused each others of apostasy on account of different readings of the Qur'an. This was the reason why Uthman took the
2 I consulted with Gormez' Turkish translation of Kitab al- Sunna, [11, pp. 109-10].
initiative and standardized the text of the Qur'an in a bounded book which was called mushaf.3
In the colonial period, Muslims realized that they lost parity, if not superiority, with the West which had colonized much of the Islamic world except for a few states, such as the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Afghanistan. In this period, as Goddard pointed out, while much of the political, military, and technological power resided with the West, spirituality and religious convictions remained strong in the Muslim world [19, p. 2]. In other words, as Wild noted, for Muslims, Islam itself has become the perfect weapon in the struggle against the West [47, P. 27677]. Thus, as the ultimate source of Islam, along with the Sunna, Muslims have fiercely defended and protected the Qur'an from both internal and external threats. One of those internal threats has been the translation of the Qur'an, which in the eyes of many Muslims, was the distortion of the scripture.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were already a good number of Tatar Qur'an translations (translations alongside commentary) in the Volga-Ural region. Some of them were Muhammed Zarif Emirhan (1852-1921)'s Kalam-i §erif Tefsiri: Tefsir-i Fevaid I-II (1899-1900), §eyhulislam bin Esedullah el-Hamidi's Kur'an Tefsiri Kazan Dilinde: Al- Itqan fi Tarjumat al-Qur'an (19071911), Muhammed Sadik imankuli's Tashil al-Bayan fi Tafsir al-Qur'an (1911), Kamil Mutigi Tukhfatullin's Kur'an Tefsiri (1914-1917), etc. Among the list, two are important for our discussion of Bigiyev's translation, al- Itqan and Tashil, as Bigiyev described them inaccurate and more importantly, hinted at them as being promoted by the Sobraniye [15].
From the same period, we have two notorious Qur'an translations that are not on the list provided above. We can rather refer to them as "translation attempts" since they never came out. Yet they are important because of the impact that they left on the overall discussion of the Tatar Qur'an translations in this period and afterwards. These are the translations of Ziyaeddin Kamali and Musa Jarullah Bigiyev. Both men had different translation projects around the same time period (1911s) that suffered the same mishap, as the religious establishment blocked the way for their publication.
Putting aside the details of Kamali's translation project4, in this piece, I will discuss Bigiyev's translation in detail. The question that should be raised is that why the same Sobraniye allowed and even supported, as Bigiyev put it, or remained neutral to some of the translations, while it stopped some others. As the
3 Bigiyev, in his Kitab al- Sunna, mentioned six Qur'ans: 1. In the eternal knowledge of God, 2. At the al-Lawh al- Mahfuz (the Preserved Tablet), 3. At the heart and tongue of Gabriel, 4. At the heart and tongue of the Prophet Muhammed, 5. At the memory of the people of knowledge (the Oral Qur'an), 6. At pages, tablets, and the mushafs [22, p. 73; 11, pp. 105-06].
4 I discussed Kemali's translation attempt and its ramifications in the Tatar press of the time in a conference presentation [4].
discussion for Kamali's project unfolded in the Tatar press of the time, one issue became prominent. For a good number of imams and the laity as well, even though translation in itself was permissible according to the Islamic jurisprudence, translation by such individuals like Kamali and Bigiyev was not permissible.
From Bigiyev's perspective, there was a need for a new translation of the Qur'an because the extant ones were problematic in many ways, but he did not elaborate on it. So, what was it that was missing in other translations but was present in his translation? Bigiyev, in his Halk Nazarina Bir Nige Mesele (1912), listed all the qualifications that an ideal Qur'an translation should possess, but unfortunately, he did not provide a sample translation for any of the listed items, except for a few certain phrases and words [13, P. 88-93]. Still, we have partial translations of some of the verses of the Qur'an scattered across his writings mostly belonged to the same time period, but by looking at those excerpts, it is hard to judge if he followed his own principles in translation or not.
At the outset, both men, Kamali and Bigiyev, possessed enough qualities that made them fit for the job. Both were educated in the Middle East and were fluent in Arabic as their native language. Kamali was a teacher in a prestigious medrese, Medrese-i Huseyniye, and publishing books on Islamic philosophy. Likewise, Bigiyev was a productive author of religious books both in Tatar and Arabic and acquired fame as a young scholar and philosopher. Bigiyev, himself stated that all the religious books that he published up until that time, such as el- Luzumiyat §erhi (1907), Kavaid-i Fikhiyye (1910), Kitab 'Aqilat (1908), Nazimat al-Zuhr (1910), Uzun Gunlerde Ruze (1911), Tayyibat al-Nashr fi'l- Ashr (1912), served as preparation for the translation of the Qur'an and also showed his competence for the job. He claimed all the effort that he put into those works demonstrated that he had the necessary qualities for such a deed [15].
However, for the Sobraniye, it was not a matter of outer qualifications, but religiosity or piety. In the eyes of the religious establishment, Bigiyev was not credible for such a deed because his piety was suspicious in the eyes of the folks. For the religious establishment, this was the main argument against him, as they thought that his translations would serve for his evil agenda of spreading heresy among the people. But was it really a matter of piety? By the time his translation was ready to be published in 1912, Bigiyev had already established himself as someone who challenged the entire tradition of Islamic scholarship, i.e., fiqh, tafsir, kalam, and Sufism. In his previous publications, he emerged as an iconoclast, as he disgraced the great scholars of the past, conducted ijtihad, challenged the schools of law, slammed the Sufi teachings, and so on for the sake of reviving the ossified tradition of critical thinking and individual judgment in the Islamic world in general, and in Russia in particular. Obviously, it disturbed the religious establishment for the most part, and thus, the Sobraniye, which was backed and supported by the same establishment, took a position against Bigiyev.
After all, Bigiyev was hopeful that the Russian state and the Russian laws would stand along with him and against the Sobraniye. But apparently, it did not go as he wished. Although the Qur'an itself had been important for the Russian state as a symbol of power, its translation into Tatar or any other Turkic language in Russia and Turkestan did not interest the Russian state that much, so it did not interfere into the discussions about translation amongst its Muslim subjects.
The Qur'an and the Russian State
As Efim Rezvan of the Oriental Studies of Russia pointed out, the Qur'an had an enormous political significance in the Russian state which perceived it as a sign of power [40, P. 41-56]. The prime example of it was Catherine II who, as part of a political and military struggle against Turkey, portrayed herself as a patron of Islam by incorporating Islam as a religion into the state apparatus. In this regard, the Russian state established the office of Muslim Spiritual Assembly in Ufa (later on the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly), funded mosques (one in Moscow), and printed the Qur'an in 1787 [40, P. 44-45]. Shortly after, in 1790, Catherine II also commissioned a Russian translation of the Quran by Mikhail Ivanovich Veryovkin (1732-1795).
In this regard, as Rezvan continued, Russia also became one of the first places where the Qur'an was printed rather than handwritten as was the case, for example, in Turkey. Since then, first St. Petersburg and then Kazan became a hub for the Qur'an printing and other Islamic literature, next to other centers of Islamic printing like Cairo and Istanbul. As for the Russian state, it was not only a sign of good-will gesture towards its Muslim subjects, but also a source of revenue as Kazan became the center of Islamic printing in Russia and the main supplier of the Qur'an and other Islamic publications for Central Asia. Even though it annoyed the Russian Orthodox Church, which persuaded the Tsar to stop or at least reduce the number of Islamic printings for a brief period of time, the Russian state realized that it would cause backlash in the Great game against the British in Central Asia. Thus, the big centers like Petersburg, Kazan, and Bakhchisaray continued to be the centers of Qur'an printing in Russia till the establishment of the Soviet State [40, P. 44-45].
In an effort to win the hearts of the Muslims and spread the Bolshevik ideology to the Muslim lands of the East, the fledgling Soviet state, similar to the previous Tsarist regime, followed a policy of compromise in regard to the Muslims [46, p. 1]. Part of the policy had to with the Uthman Qur'an, which was believed to be the personal Qur'an of the third caliph Uthman. One of the demands of the Muslims of Russia in the general congress of Moscow in 1917 from the new Bolshevik government was the transfer of Uthman Qur'an back to Muslims from St. Petersburg Public Library (today the National Library of Russia). Believed to be the Qur'an of Uthman, the manuscript had been preserved at the Hoja Ahrar Mosque in Samarkand till the Russian take over. The Turkestan Governor-General
K. P. von Kaufmann handed it over to the Petersburg Public Library in 1869 [24, P. 175-78]. Upon the persistent requests of the Muslims of Russia, Lenin ordered the transfer of it from St. Petersburg to the Sobraniye in Ufa in 1918. In 1923, the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia (Diniye Nezareti) discussed the status of it in the general Muslim congress in Ufa and finally handed in to the people of Turkestan in 1924.
While it was the Russian state who was interested in the Qur'an itself, the translation of it in the Russia language occupied the Russian Orthodox Church most. The Russian translation of the Qur'an served as a tool for the Russian Orthodox Church in its polemic against Muslims. This can be seen well in the first Qur'an translation from Arabic to Russian, which was done by Gordii Semenovich Sablukov (d. 1880), the prominent Russian orientalist. Sablukov's main motivation in translation was to show that the sacred scripture of Muslims was of no divine origin [5, p. 71]. In this sense, it stemmed from the same Christian tradition of discrediting Islam through its scripture as was the case with the first Latin translation of the Qur'an in the 12th century, which was manufactured to demonstrate the "weakness and evilness of Mohammedanism" [35, p. 40].
The Story of Bigiyev's Qur'an Translation: The Acts of the Mullahs
In order to better understand the historical background of Bigiyev's Tatar translation of the Qur'an, we need to look briefly at another similar project proposed by Ziyaeddin Kamali, who was the founder of the Aliye Medrese in Ufa and Bigiyev's classmate back in the Hijaz. Towards the end of the year 1911, Ziyaeddin Kamali made a public announcement in two influential Tatar newspapers of the time, Vakit of Orenburg and Yulduz of Kazan, that he was working on a Tatar translation of the Qur'an. In this regard, he asked his fellow countrymen's advice on how to publish it in terms of format, such as a pure translation, translation along with Arabic, translation with commentary, etc. [27, 28]. In line with his request, Kamali got only a few suggestions, the majority of whom advised him to publish it along with Arabic and annotations when necessary. Instead, it turned out to be a public discussion on whether the Qur'an should be translated into Tatar or not. In the end, Kamali's translation did not make its way to publication, but the proposal of the project itself occupied the Tatar press for about six months till the middle of 1912.
Meanwhile, Bigiyev was following the discussions in the newspapers. Instead of contributing to it with an article, he decided to put his own translation into publication in order to clarify his position on the issue. At this point, one would wonder how long he would have waited to publish his translation if Kamali had not announced his own project, because even in 1910, he already had a rough draft of his translation ready to be published with minor revisions [10]. Because of the timing, and the unconventional religious viewpoints of the two men, those who
participated in the discussion often time juxtaposed Kamali and Bigiyev as if they were working together on the same project, but it was not the case.
Having resolved to publish his own translation, in late January of 1912, finally Bigiyev went to Kazan and negotiated with the administrators of the newly opened Umid Printing House5, and both parties signed an "unofficial" contract as Bigiyev put it. According to the contract, in April the publisher would print the first set of the translation, which would consist of 30 facsimiles of 16 pages each and 5000 copies in total. This means that each copy would be 480 pages in total. Having his trust in Umid, Bigiyev left Kazan without even talking to other publishers. But as a precaution, he did not leave the manuscript there. Afterwards, he mentioned the plan to a couple of notables of Kazan and poet Derdmend, i.e., Zakir Ramiyev in St. Petersburg [15].
It is not known in what form the news took shape among the general public, but on January 28th, Vakit of Orenburg published a news piece which stated that Bigiyev's translation of the Qur'an was being published at "Sabah" printing house in Kazan [30].6 Vaqit's story was also resonated in the Turkic press of Crimea and Baku [32, 36]. Having heard of Vakit's story, the owner of the Umid Printing house, Abdulveli Ahmedullin, in a letter to Yulduz of Kazan, refuted the news that they had started the publication of Bigiyev's translation. In his letter, he also mentioned that they received notices from the Sobraniye and Safiyullah Hazret, the official proofreader of the Qur'an in Kazan appointed by the Sobraniye, regarding the issue [33].
Later in the discussion, Yulduz published, without any comment, the official notice that was sent to the Umid Printhouse by the Sobraniye. It was signed by the members of the Sobraniye Muhammedov and the chief clerk Mamaliyev and dated as March 1st, 1912. It stated:
On February 25 [1912], The Sobraniye received a telegram signed by 14 Kazanites. In it, it was mentioned that Bigiyev's translation of the Qur'an had been put into print in Umid printing house and requested the Sobraniye to stop its publication. Based on the relevant laws, it is only the Sobraniye who is allowed to issue a permit to print anything related to the sacred book of Muslims, the Qur'an, and its parts such as Haft-Yaks. Thus, without the permission of the Sobraniye, the Umid Printing house is not entitled to publish the Tatar translation of the Qur'an. Therefore, the Sobraniye urges the Umid print house to stop the publication by its own will [31].7
5 The owner Abdulveli Ahmedullin, in an ad piece in Yulduz, stated that after his 30 years of experience at the Kazan University's printing house, he resolved to open his own printing house under the name of Umid which started to operate in June 1911 [2].
6 This is a mistake by Vakit as the correct name of the printing house should be Umid, not Sabah.
7 Among the signatories was Muhammed Sadik imankuli, the author of the Tashil al-Bayan (1910) [29].
It seems that the people of Kazan got the sense that the printing of the translation started immediately even though it was scheduled for April in the initial contract that was signed between Bigiyev and the Umid publishing house. That printing had begun cannot be the case because Bigiyev had stated that he did not leave the manuscript at the publishing house. However, because of the complaints of the people of Kazan to the Sobraniye, the Umid publishing house gave up the publication of Bigiyev's translation of the Qur'an in February 1912.
After all these, Bigiyev penned an article, "Scandal in the Tatar World," in Vakit in which he expressed his regrets to the Umid publishing house, which gave up the publication, and his resentments to the Sobraniye, who stopped it by a "magnificent edict (ferman-i §ahane)". According to Bigiyev, the Sobraniye did not have the authority to do such thing and surely, the Russian laws would not allow it to do so. He wondered how on earth the Sobraniye, which, in the past, encouraged and even sponsored tafsirs, like, Itqan, and Tashil, that were full of mistakes now dared to stop proper translations like his own.8 Again, he asked why the Sobraniye considered the petition of 14 people and yet did not take into consideration all the articles that appeared in the Tatar press of the time in his defense [15].
The translation discussion on the Tatar press faded away towards the middle of 1912. One year later, in 1913, Bigiyev opened a printing house, Emanet, in Petersburg. Some asserted that the whole purpose of establishing a brand-new print house was to publish his own translation of the Qur'an [37]. Apparently, it did not work out, however, and the translation did not come out from Emanet.
For the next couple of years, people were still waiting for the debut of Bigiyev's translation. For example, in 1914, Ebu Rifat, the imam of the Bishtepe Avil, urged Bigiyev to publish his translation of the Qur'an as soon as possible [39]. Likewise, in mid-1915, Vakit's readers, such as Nesimcan Efendi, were inquiring the newspaper's administration whether Bigiyev's translation made its way to publication. Vakit, in response, was straightforward: No [38].
After almost a ten-year hiatus, Bigiyev brought up the issue again in his Turkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisine Muracaat, which he completed in 1921, and published in 1931 in Egypt. In it, he stated his willingness to publish his Qur'an translation in the honor of the Grand Turkish National Assembly. Even though it would have been a good fit for the Turkish state in its project of the Turkification of Islam, apparently it did not interest the Turkish government.
8 The author of Tashil al-Bayan, Muhammed Sadik imankuli, in response to Bigiyev stated that he never claimed to author the best possible translation/commentary of the Qur'an in Tatar. What he did was the Turkish rendering of some of the classical commentaries. In the end, he accused Bigiyev himself for the mishap that befell on his translation since it was he who made people suspicious about his works when he brought up the topic of universal salvation back in 1909. Ever since, people got the sense that whatever Bigiyev wrote was his personal opinion which was not based on the Qur'an and the Hadith. imankuli also added that it was only Bigiyev himself who understood his own writings due to his peculiar use of language and style [21].
Another reference to it belonged to Bigiyev's sojourn in India during his life in exile. Taymas narrated that when Habiburrahman Shakir, the imam of Tampere, asked Bigiyev in 1942 in Peshawar about his translation, Bigiyev told him that he sent it to abroad through Russia to be published. Taymas asked if so, then why he did not publish it himself during his stay in Finland in 1933. Taymas further inquired it with Imam Veli Ahmed Hakim of Helsinki who told him that he was not aware of Bigiyev's sending his translation to Finland [44, p. 68-69].
One last reference to it worth mentioning during Bigiyev's life time was an advertisement in a Turkish newspaper one year before his death. Taymas informed us that an ambitious biweekly newspaper, Millet in Istanbul, in its September 9, 1948 issue, announced that Bigiyev handed in his translation to the newspaper administration to be distributed to its readers. Taymas did not give credit to the validity of the "good news". For Taymas, this was nothing but another indecent way of advertising [43, P. 40-41].9 He also noted that he had no reason to believe that Bigiyev left it to someone in Istanbul.
After almost half a century silence, finally, in 2010, the long awaited "good news" came from Kazan.
The Kazan Edition of Bigiyev's Qur'an Translation (2010):
The Story Continued
In 2010 in Kazan, a two volume The Book of Musa Efendi came out under the editorship of Elmira Tagirdjanova, the daughter-in-law of Bigiyev's youngest daughter, Fatma Tagirdjanova (d. 2006). While the first volume was presented as Bigiyev's translation of the Qur'an, the second book consisted of Bigiyevs' family archive which included a collection of some hitherto unknown documents and other relics that belonged to Bigiyev [42]. Since it was printed in limited quantity, the book did not get as much publicity as it deserved across the academic milieus.
I was able to obtain a copy of the book with great enthusiasm when I happened to be in Kazan for a conference in June 2016. However, my enthusiasm faded away as I dug into it more and more.10 When I finally concluded, due to a number of issues explained below, that it was not Bigiyev's translation, I concurrently became aware of an article written by Ilshat Saedov of the Russian Academy of Sciences at Moscow that was published very recently [41]. As Saedov claimed, the 2010 Kazan edition is a reprint of the Turkish author Suleyman Tevfik's 1926 translation of the Qur'an, except for the missing foreword and the
9 The imam of Tampere Habiburrahman Shakir in his letter to Taymas informed him that this ad was about the isolated sheets containing partial translations of the Qur'an that Bigiyev carried with him from India to Istanbul [44, p. 68].
10 It was my doctoral adviser at University of Wisconsin-Madison Uli Schamiloglu who first took my attention to the possibility of it's not belonging to Bigiyev.
index.11 Thus, from now on, I will deal with the Kazan Edition in reference to Saedov's relevant article.
The majority of resources which talk about the fate of Bigiyev's translation have cited it either as unknown or lost forever. However, around 2004, a historian of Islam, Efim Rezvan, of Petersburg State University was informed by the granddaughter of Ziyaeddin Kamali that Bigiyev's Qur'an translation was in the possession of Bigiyev's youngest daughter, Fatma Hanim, in St. Petersburg. Then he, along with his research assistants, started a research project in Bigiyev's archive which was handed down to Fatma Hanim from her mother Esma Hanim. The project gave its first fruit as a documentary film, The Manuscript and the Fate, about the life of Bigiyev in 2007 [41, p 61]. As a part of the project, Fatma Hanim also allowed the publication of her father's Qur'an translation [3]. In 2009, Efim Rezvan announced that the publication of the translation was on its way and would appear shortly [40, p. 47]. Indeed, the publication came out in 2010, not by Rezvan, but by Tagirdjanova and Gereeva.
We know that after Bigiyev left the Soviets in 1930, his books, along with other possessions, remained with his wife, Esma Hanim, and were passed on to their daughter Fatma Hanim. It is quite impossible for someone like Esma Hanim, who was well educated and literate in Russian and the old Tatar script, not to recognize her husband's translation. Thus, she probably knew that the Qur'an translation in her husband's archive did not belong to her husband. How about Fatma Hanim? Like her mother, she was also literate in the old Tatar script. Was not she supposed to be more familiar with her father's writing style than anybody else (because from a linguistic point of view, there is nothing Tatar in the translation as Saedov rightly pointed out)?
There is another question to ask about Fatma Hanim. Ahmet Kanlidere, who is the author of the most comprehensive book on Bigiyev in Turkey, narrates that he had an interview with Fatma Hanim back in 1999 in Petersburg [26, p. 36]. In it, he got some valuable personal information about Bigiyev and his family. At this point, one wonders why Fatma Hanim did not mention the translation to Kanlidere back then but instead waited until 2004 to reveal it. Likewise, it is also curious why Kanlidere did not ask about her father's translation.
Let me come back to the Kazan edition itself. Again, it is obvious that it is identical, except for the missing foreword of the author and the index, to that of Süleyman Tevfik's 1926 translation of the Qur'an, which was printed by Yeni §ark Kitaphanesi. The problem at this point is that, though I'm not sure how much
11 Tevfik's translation has an interesting story going back to the Second Constitutional Era in 1908. Even though he started publishing parts of his translation in 1908, the political and religious establishment of the time did not allow him to complete its publication. Under the premise of the newly established Turkish Republic, finally Tevfik found the necessary political support, not necessarily the religious one, and published his long awaited Turkish translation of the Qur'an in 1926.
it matters, the book was also published by another printing house, Suhulet Kutuphanesi, with the same page numbers in the same year [17]. The Tevfik edition that I have is the Yeni §ark Kitaphanesi, and the Kazan edition is identical with it. However, I was not able to obtain the other copy that was published by the Suhulet Kutuphanesi that has the same page numbers. Therefore, which edition is the Kazan Edition based on: Yeni §ark Kitaphanesi or Suhulet Kutuphanesi?
From here, let's ask another question. Why are the foreword and the index missing in the Kazan Edition? What happened to them? Have they disappeared over the course of time, or has someone removed them consciously? In fact, it is possible for such a book to lose pages, especially from the beginning and the end, but in the case of the Kazan Edition, the book was very well preserved till the last page, except for very few pages that are partially deleted. If so, was it Bigiyev or somebody else who removed them from the book and why? Saetov is of the idea that they were removed by Bigiyev himself in order to avoid a problem at the Russian customs [41, p. 66]. Saetov's assertion seems reasonable, but if it is not Bigiyev himself, then who? Esma Hanim or Fatma Hanim, or somebody else?
As mentioned before, the Kazan Edition has been well preserved. Except for the author's foreword and the index, the book is in excellent condition in terms of physical appearance, but the lines on a couple of pages are cut off. These pages are 253, 254, 255, 510, and 511. The missing parts on page 511 are filled out by hand. Looking at its writing style, it is quite safe to assert that it was filled out by Bigiyev himself in a way that is identical with the 1926 Tevfik edition.
Another important question about the Kazan Edition is how Bigiyev obtained it. Saedov is quite sure that Bigiyev acquired it on his way back from Mecca to Russia in 1926 and 1927. That is the case, but it requires further explanation. In May 1926, Bigiyev arrived in Istanbul in order to join the Cairo Congress organized by King Fuad of Egypt in conjunction with al- Azhar University. However, when he was denied a visa at the Egyptian Embassy in Istanbul (because of the Mufti of Russia's denouncement of the Congress on account of the possible British involvement in it), he joined the Soviet Muslim delegation in Istanbul, which was en route to Mecca for the World Muslim Congress, which was summoned by the newly crowned king of the Hijaz, Ibn Saud (1875-1953), in June and July. Tevfik's translation appeared in Istanbul's bookstores as early as April of 1926, so it is possible that Bigiyev obtained it in 1926. It is also possible that he obtained it one year later in 1927 when he stopped in Istanbul and got his book, Muskirat Meseleleri, published by Mahmut Bey Matbaasi, on his return back from the Hajj.
There are still other possibilities, albeit weaker. Because we know that Bigiyev regularly followed publications in his field of interests, it is conceivable that he ordered a copy of it at a later date through someone going on to Hajj. The Soviets started a Hajj campaign in 1926 that allowed non-Soviet Muslims to go Hajj in transit through the old Hajj routes, which included the Soviets
[25, P. 162-64]. One more possibility is that he might have obtained it through someone from the Turkish Embassy in Moscow.
Although Bigiyev had Tevfik's translation in his library, it is unlikely that Bigiyev liked or approved of it. The strongest evidence is a letter that he wrote to his friend, Veli Ahmed Hakim of Finland, while in exile. In it he said that many people in Turkey had translated the Qur'an, but all of them were "nothing," except Little Mehmet Hamdi Efendi's translation, which he had access to at the author's house in Istanbul earlier [45, P. 7-8]. This Little Mehmet Efendi is none other than the renowned scholar of the Qur'an and author of the best Turkish commentary on the Qur'an, Elmalili Hamdi Yazir (1878-1942). Thus, in comparison, it should come as no surprise that Tevfik's translation was "nothing" in Bigiyev's eyes. Perhaps the reason for his dislike had to do with the main source that Tevfik used for his translation. As mentioned in its early partial editions, Tevfik heavily relied on Fakhr ad-Din al-Razi's al-Tafsir al-Kabir in his translation, and not surprisingly, Razi was not Bigiyev's favorite commentator of the Qur'an [16].
Where Is It?
We are still left with the burning question of where the Bigiyev's notorious translation might be? We can begin with some of the statements of those who knew Bigiyev personally, such As Yusuf Uralgiray and Abdullah Battal Taymas. Uralgiray, who happened to be with Bigiyev in his last months in Egypt, narrated that it was among the piles of books that Bigiyev left at the Berlin Mosque.12 Additionally, Uralgiray stated that Bigiyev told him that he had left some of his books in India. This is another possibility. According to Uralgiray, if these locations proved to be unfruitful, then it should be sought out in Petersburg [45, p. XXII]. Wherever its whereabouts, it now has become clear that it is not in the archive that Bigiyev left to his family.
Taymas informed us that when the books that Bigiyev brought with him from India to Turkey in 1947 were inspected by Zeki Velidi Togan, the translation was not found in there. Taymas also added that these books should be the ones that he donated to the National Library of Turkey [44, P. 69-70].
Halife Altay, the author of the first Kazakh translation of the Qur'an, was yet another person who made a claim as to the location of the text, alleging that the only manuscript of Bigiyev's translation remained in Ufa [18, P. 140-41]. It is unclear whether or not he meant the Sobraniye when he said Ufa, but this cannot be the case since the Sobraniye did not even request a copy of it for inspection.
Saedov is of the idea that it should be sought in Turkey that it either lies in the repositories of the National Library in Ankara or in the family archive of one of
12 Taymas in this regard stated that he was not able to find someone to get further information about the books that Bigiyev left entrusted to the Berlin Qadyani Mosque [44, p. 69].
the Turkish high-ranking diplomats who worked at the Turkish Embassy in 1949 [41, P. 66-67]. As for the National Library option, it seems quite unlikely because Uralgiray, who prepared a catalogue of Bigiyev's donated books to the National Library, stated that it was not on the list [45, p. XXII].13 Taymas' aforementioned statement about those books also confirms Uralgiray.
Indeed, an online catalogue search at the National Library reveals that it is not in the section that harbors the books that were donated by Bigiyev. Nonetheless, ibrahim Mara§ of Ankara Divinity School interestingly claims that the important part of Bigiyev's books that he donated to the National Library are not present in the library's archive. He goes on to say that Turkish scholar Necip Hablemitoglu (d. 2002), one year before his assassination told him that these books were under his possession. Mara§ thinks that Hablemitoglu's archive did not only include Bigiyev's Tatar Qur'an translation but also his other notorious books that are only known in their title. However, Mara§ states that it was not possible for him to see them [34]. What could support Mara§' claim is the fact that Hablemitoglu was also the one who had the archive of Ismail Gasprinkii and his daughter Shafika Hanim.
After all, the remaining options are the books that Bigiyev left in Berlin and India. But who knows what happened to them.
Conclusion
Although it did not make its way to publication, Bigiyev's notorious Tatar translation of the Qur'an remains a significant work. Bigiyev realized the importance of the Qur'an's translation into the Turkic languages and the essential qualities it must possess and put forth much effort to produce a worthy text. Its legacy contains important materials for discussion of the religious and intellectual life of the Tatars at the beginning of the 20th century. Even though it occupied the public opinion of Russia's Muslims, the Russian state itself remained neutral to the translation discussions. One hundred years later, we are still looking for the manuscript of his translation, hoping to see one of the first full translations of the Qur'an in the Tatar language.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank to Micah A. Hughes and Shannon Kisa for their valuable feedbacks on the rough draft of the article.
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About the author: Selcuk Altuntas, Ph.D. Candidate, Languages and Cultures of Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Adjunct Instructor, Religious Studies, Edgewood College, WI, USA, e-mail: altuntasselcuk@gmail.com
Received May 03, 2018.
Accepted for publication June 07, 2018.
СТОЛЕТИЕ ТАЙНЫ: КУРЬЕЗНЫЙ СЛУЧАЙ
С ТАТАРСКИМ ПЕРЕВОДОМ КОРАНА МУСЫ ДЖАРУЛЛАХА БИГИЕВА (1875-1949)
Сел ьджук Алтунташ
Университет Висконсин-Мэдисон Колледж Эджвуд г. Мадисон, Висконсин, США altuntasselcuk@gmail. com
Резюме. В данной статье рассматривается татарский перевод Корана Мусы Джаруллы Бигиева в контексте внутренних мусульманских дел в России в начале ХХ в. Татарский перевод Корана М. Бигиева, который был завершен в 1912 г., остается одной из тайн научного изучения Корана в тюркском мире. В течение последних ста лет его местонахождение было неизвестно. Оценив перевод Мусы Бигиева в контексте внутренних мусульманских дел в России, в этой статье рассматривается история неудачной попытки публикации перевода Корана Бигиева в 1912 г. и ложное обещание Казанского издания в 2010 г.
Ключевые слова: Муса Джарулла Бигиев, Зиятдин Камали, Сулейман Тевфик, Коран Османа, мусхаф, Национальная библиотека Турции, Юсуф Уралгирей, Абдулла Батал Таймас.
Сведения об авторе: Сельджук Алтунташ, Ph.D., Университет Вис-консин-Мадисон; Адъюнкт-инструктор, Религиоведение, Колледж Эджвуд, Висконсин, США, e-mail: altuntasselcuk@gmail.com
Дата поступления материала 03.05.2018.
Принят к публикации 07.06.2018.
