By Dr. Victor A. Pogadaev – November 29, 2020
I WAS born and raised in the village of Sakmara, city of Orenburg, a region of the Southern Urals, about 2,000km from Moscow. The village was established in 1725 as a Cossack settlement.
The Cossacks (Kazak in Russian) have a legendary image, are known as brave soldiers, and able to be independent for centuries. Orenburg and Sakmara are key points at the crossroads from Russia to Central Asia and inhabited by various Muslim ethnic groups (Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakhstan, etc.)
The population in Sakmara is multiracial and multireligious. My friends included those from Tatar families, such as Shamil Ibrahimov, Yuri Rahimov, Boris Husainov, Misha Utarbaev, etc.
Although the Muslim population is quite large, there was no mosque in Sakmara. During the communist era, religion was not encouraged. Even the only church that existed there was converted into a cinema.
My grandmother considered it an insult to believers and never went to watch movies there. It is also true that Muslims of the older generation went for prayer at a nearby village Tatarskaya Kargala, where one mosque remains.
Tatarskaya Kargala was founded later than Sakmara (1744) by a group of Tatars (200 families), who came from the Kazan region on the Volga river (now the Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan).
The head of the village was Syed Khayal, therefore, the village was first called the Syedovskaya settlement. Before the communist revolution (1917), there were 11 mosques and several madrasah in the village.
It quickly became a major centre of transit trade between Russia and Central Asia. Some merchants from Kargala reached India (Delhi) in 1750.
The Husainov brothers became famous merchants throughout Russia, with branches in Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev and Nizhny Novgorod, trading with the English and Germans.
They contributed greatly to Islamic education. In 1889, they funded the Husainia madrasah, the largest in southern Urals.
After the communist revolution, the settlement became a collective farm, and the villagers had to cultivate the land by growing wheat.
All madrasah and mosques, except one (the Kush Manara), were closed. Some were destroyed, others used as stores.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the abolition of communism as a national ideology gave a new spiritual life to the two villages. In Sakmara, the cinema building was returned to the Orthodox Christian community and became a church again.
Muslims can be happy, too, because eventually, the mosque was also reopened.
The mother of my classmate, Maginur Husainova, who is famous for her knitting of a special Orenburg lace shawl (she used to donate some to the Museum of Islamic Art in Kuala Lumpur and the Museum of Asian Art at Universiti Malaya) proudly showed me the mosque when I visited several years ago.
In Tatarskaya Kargala, there are now three mosques: the Kush Manara that remained during the communist era, the Ak-Masjid (or White Mosque) that once existed but was long used as a store (it was renovated between 2002 and 2006), and the newly-built As-Salam Mosque.
Imam Faizullin Rafail Faritovich was very happy because young people were praying at the mosques and learning holy books, including the Quran.
Among the activities that received support are the annual Islamic camp for children and youth (since 1996), the launch of al-Quran and Islamic courses, the establishment of a charity fund to help poor families and orphanages, buying books for libraries and building Islamic education complexes.
Recently, a new madrasah was opened. Muslims now can perform the haj or umrah in Mecca.
Every year, Muslims celebrate the Sabantui festival (plough festival), which is the completion of harvest. The festival is ancient. It was mentioned in 921 by Ibn Fadlan, who came to the Tatar region (then Volzhskaya Bulgaria) as an ambassador from Baghdad. Recently, Kargala was given the honour of hosting Sabantui at the all-Russian level.
Among the events are high pole climbing, horse racing, traditional song and dance performances, culinary and handicraft exhibitions.
Such is the history of two small villages which are my hometown, reflecting the state of new spiritual life in Russia. Thus, dreams have come true, the dreams of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), the great-granddaughter of Khan Ahmat, who in her poem Prayer once wrote:
Give me sickness without an end,
Suffocation and fevers prolonged,
Take away both my child and friend,
My mysterious gift of the song –
After mass, thus I’m praying, impassioned,
After so many tormented days,
Let the menacing cloud over Russia,
Shimmer brightly in glorious rays.
The writer, writing from Russia, was a former lecturer at Universiti Malaya
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times
Dr. Abdul Rahman Zafrudin @ Ko Ko Gyi 