Russia and Islam

The Protohistory (Ninth to Twelfth Centuries): -

Russia’s position on the eastern flank of Europe has often been compared to that of Spain on the western side. Both are seen as bulwarks of Christendom facing the hostile world of Islam, of civilization facing ‘barbary’. Russia exhausted herself in a heroic struggle of several centuries, but this sacrifice was not to be in vain, for Europe was saved and could go on to develop its brilliant civilization well protected by the Russians. The price of this voluntary sacrifice was heavy, since in order to survive and finally to overcome the ‘Asia barbarians’, Muscovy was obliged to adopt their ways, such as tyranny, despotism, serfdom and lack of liberty. Such is the picture that is painted in nearly all Russian and Soviet historical works. Far-fetched as it is, there are deep reasons for defending this absurd concept. According to the Russians, ‘they have suffered more than any other people’ and have ‘played the role of protectors and saviours’, a kind of St George killing the Asiatic dragon and rescuing the European princess. This exclusive position ‘gives the Russians certain messianic rights’, in particular the right to assume the leadership over their lesser European brothers and to ‘civilize’ the world Asiatics.

The reality is of course far from this Manichaean approach to history. When the ancestors of the Russians first came into contact with Asia in the ninth century they were the ‘Barbarians’, not the highly civilized Muslims.

In the early tenth century, the borderline between ‘Civilization’ and ‘Barbary’ followed more or less exactly the frontier which today separates the Slavic ‘European’ people of the USSR from the area populated largely by Muslims: Middle and Lower Volga, North Caucasian mountains, Derbent, Syr Daria. However, ‘Barbary’ at this time was represented by the ‘Europeans’, ancestors of the Russians. (There are those who believe that the position has altered little over time.)

For the Muslims, the ‘Rus’ were wild and primitive natives, purveyors of rare blond slaves and such precious raw materials as fur and ivory. But they were dangerous neighbors and their plundering expeditions (912 and 941-4 raids in the Caspian Sea, the destruction of the Khazar Empire in 945 and 985 expedition against Bulghar) were described in gruesome detail by early Muslim chroniclers.

During 942-4 the ‘Rus’ devastated all Muslim Transcaucasia. Berdea, the most prosperous city of Azerbaijan, was completely destroyed and its inhabitants slaughtered. According to Ibn Hawkal, from the 1,200 5 remained. In 1850, a Russian historian, Grigor’ev, wrote”

When anarchy, fanaticism and barbarity were disputing the domination of Europe, the Khazar Empire was a center of law, order and religious tolerance, a refuge for all those who were persecuted for their belief. It was like a brilliant meteor over the dark horizon of Europe.

In the tenth century, when Russians were still mostly pagans, Islam had already penetrated Eastern Transcaucasia and Daghestan. It had conquered the whole of Turkestan south of Syr Darya and the King of Bulghar in the far north had adopted the religion of the Prophet, Except for the Bulghar Kingdom, all these territories had long been settled with highly developed urban societies going back to the second millennium BC. Even the nomadic Turks of the Caspian steppes – the Khazars – whose feudal nobility had adopted Judaism as their official religion, had attained a higher level of political and cultural development than the ancestors of the Russians, their vassals in the eighth and early ninth centuries.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries political and cultural equilibrium was established between the sedentary Kievian Rus, Christianized and civilized by Byzantium and the nomadic Qypchaqs (Polovtsy) – heirs to the Khazars who ruled over the Steppe territories between the Dniepr and the Aral Sea.

Contrary to the commonly accepted but totally misleading version put forward by Russian historians, relations between sedentary Russians and nomadic Turks were not limited only to plundering expeditions and punitive counter-expeditions, but included wide cultural and diplomatic exchanges between partners who treated each other as equals. Moreover, during this period Turkic princesses often married Kievian princes. (It is a well known historical fact that the vassal seeks the hand of his suzerain’s daughter.) This happy period ended with the Mongol invasion, but not before a considerable number of Turkic, Iranian and even Arabic words synonymous with advanced societies were borrowed and have become so thoroughly Russified as to make it nearly impossible to recognize their Asiatic origins: chugun, bulat, topor, sablia, saray, bumaga, khram, terem, yazyk, ochag, cherdak, loshad’, chemodan, bogatyr, magazin, karandash, karaul, etc. In contrast, Slavic vocabulary made no impression on Turkic languages – at least until the nineteenth century.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the equilibrium which existed between the sedentary Kievian civilization and the steppe nomads in the Black Sea-Caspian Sea area could be likened to an outwardly similar situation between the sedentary Irano-Turkic and nomadic Turko-Mongol worlds along the line of Syr Daria. To draw any sort of parallel would, however, be wrong. In Central Asia, Bukhara of the Samanids and Empire of the Seljuqs were the great centers of world culture at that time and the defense line on Syr Daria marked the border between civilization and Barbary. There could be no borrowing of Mongol-Turkic or Manchu words from the Qara Khitay by the Persians or the Seljuqs and a Samanid king or a Khwarezm shah would never dream of marrying the daughter of a nomad chieftain roaming the Mongolian outback.

One element only was common to both: lack of any religious problem. This stemmed from the nomads’ tolerance towards religious matters and willingness to drop their ancestral Shamanism for the more enlightened Islam in Turkestan and Christianity in the West.