Charitable Activities of Kazakhstan’s Muslim Merchants: 19th – Early 20th Centuries

Introduction. The 19th century witnessed the emergence of a powerful Muslim merchant class in the steppe zone of Imperial Russia. Those were ethnic Tatars, Kazakhs, Sarts, Bukharans, Uighurs, and Shala Kazakhs based in Petropavlovsk and Semipalatinsk. Goals. The work aims to identify outcomes of charitable activities undertaken by Muslim merchants. Another objective is to distinguish the specifics of charity efforts and the latter’s main directions. Material and methods. The paper investigates documents housed at the Central State Archive of Kazakhstan, Historical Archive of Omsk Oblast, National Archive (former Central State Historical Archive) of Bashkortostan, Russian State Historical Archive, Archive of North Kazakhstan Region, and pre-revolutionary periodicals, reports of Muslim charitable societies, reference and encyclopedic materials. The study employs both general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special historical research methods (comparative-historical and retrospective ones). Results. The paper outlines key directions of Muslim charities in the steppe, namely: social support, enlightening and educational endeavors. Muslim merchant benefactors tended to meet not only intra-confessional needs but also nationwide ones too. And while the imperial administration did welcome the assistance from entrepreneurs in solving country-wide problems, Muslim philanthropy would still face a number of obstacles. Officials were reluctant enough to grant permits for mosque constructions, inclined to limit the functioning of madrassas and charitable organizations, banned waqfs. However, despite all the bureaucratic and administrative barriers Muslims did manage to create a coherent system of funding their needs. 

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