Immigration, return, and the politics of citizenship: Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Volumn 39, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 15-32

  Meyer, James H ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; IMMIGRANT; IMMIGRATION; NINETEENTH CENTURY; OTTOMAN EMPIRE; POPULATION ESTIMATION; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

BALKANS; EURASIA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION; TURKEY;

EID: 34249013065     PISSN: 00207438     EISSN: 14716380     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0020743807212516     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1995), 14-17. McCarthy estimates that up to 100,000 Muslims immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from the Crimea in the 18th century, with at least another 300,000 immigrating after the Crimean War.
2. Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 27, 66, 67. Karpat estimates that, between 1783 and 1922, the total number of Crimean Tatar immigrants was about 1,800,000.
3. See also Alan Fisher, "Emigration of Muslims from the Russian Empire in the Years after the Crimean War," Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas 35 (1987), 336-71,
4. and Mark Pinson, "Russian Policy and the Emigration of the Crimean Tatars to the Ottoman Empire, 1854-62," Güney-Doǧu Avrupa Araştιrmalarι Dergisi, I (1972), 38-41;
5. and Brian Glyn Williams, The Crimean Tartars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 172-75. McCarthy also estimates that up to 800,000 Circassian and Tatar Muslims emigrated to the Ottoman Empire from Russia in the late 1860s alone;
6. see McCarthy, Death and Exile, 35-36;
7. and see Karpat, Ottoman Population, 27, 67. McCarthy further estimates that "tens of thousands" of Muslims immigrated to the Ottoman Empire from Russia immediately before the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, with another 60,000 immigrating immediately afterward, with tens of thousands more Muslims abandoning lands ceded to the Russian Empire after the war;
8. McCarthy, Death and Exile, 113. McCarthy also writes that, by 1882, approximately 40,000 Laz (or Lezgin) had settled in the Ottoman Empire;
9. McCarthy, Death and Exile, 116.
10. Bedri Habiçoǧlu, Kafkasya'dan Anadolu'ya Göçler ve ̇Iskanlarι (Istanbul: Nart Yayιncιlιk, 1993), 73, also 70-84. Habiçoǧlu estimates that more than 600,000 Muslims emigrated from the Russian Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire during the years 1855 to 1907, with most of the migration occurring before 1878.
11. Other studies in the Ottoman context discussing Muslim immigration into the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic include Alexandre Toumarkine's Les migrations des populations musulmanes balkaniques en Anatolie (1876-1913) (Istanbul: Isis, 1995)
12. and Alexandre Popovic's L'Islam Balkanique: Les musulmans sud-est européen dans la période post-ottomane (Weisbaden: Osteuropa-Institut an der Freien Universität Berlin, 1986).
13. For Ottoman population figures, see Karpat, Ottoman Population, 198. In the first All-Russian census in 1897, Muslims were counted officially at 14 million, although they were considered to have been greatly undercounted, with their actual numbers closer to 20 million;
14. see I. K. Zagidullin, Perepis' 1897 goda i tatary Kazanskoi gubernii (Kazanc: Tartarskoe Knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 2000),
15. and Robert Crews, "Empire and the Confessional State: Islam and Religious Politics in Nineteenth Century Russia," American Historical Review 108 (February 2003): Fn. 1.
16. Literature on the "Pan-Turkists" (or Turkists) is indeed plentiful. Noteworthy works focusing primarily upon the theme of Russian Muslims in the Turkist movement include A. Holly Shissler's Between Two Empires: Ahmet Aǧaoǧlu and the New Turkey (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2003),
17. François Georgeon's Aux origines du nationalisme turc: Yusuf Akcura 1876-1935 (Paris: ADPF, 1980),
18. and Masami Arai's Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992).
19. See also Serge Zenkovsky, Panturkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960).
20. Notable works in Turkish and Azeri appearing in the past 10 years include Ufuk Özcan, Ahmet Aǧaoǧlu ve Rol Deǧişikliǧi: Yüzyιl dönümünde batιcι bir aydιn (Istanbul: Donkişot, 2002);
21. Ali Haydar Bayat, Hüseyinzade Ali Bey (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkesi Başkanlιǧι, 1998);
22. Rasim Mirz∂, Türkçülüyün babasι (∂li bey Hüseynzad∂nin fikir dünyasι) (Baku: Elm, 2000);
23. and Bilajet Guliev, Aǧaoǧlular (Baku: Ozan, 1997).
24. In addition to the sources cites in Note 1 of this article, see Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 68-88, 136-54, and 276-307;
25. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 65-70;
26. Habiçoǧlu, Kafkasya'dan Anadolu'ya Göçler ve ̇ Iskanlarι 67-69;
27. Williams, The Crimean Tartars, 173-74.
28. Fuat Dündar's ̇ Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanlarι iskan politikasι, 1913-1918 (Istanbul: ̇ Iletişim, 2001) provides a systematic discussion of settlement policies followed during the Unionist period.
29. Obviously, the term "citizenship" here is not entirely appropriate as the people under discussion were subjects, not citizens. My use of this term is not intended to imply a set of rights or responsibilities belonging to a "citizen," but rather the state of being a "subject," such as in the Ottoman tebi'yet or the Russian poddanstvo.
30. See, for example, Justin McCarthy, who writes, "Forced expulsion of peoples was an effective instrument of Russian policy" in the Caucasus, Death and Exile, 18;
31. Kemal Karpat writes that "forcible eviction became state policy only after 1856 when the Russian official attitude towards its minorities took on a discriminatory bent," Ottoman Population, 66.
32. V. O. Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane Severnogo Kavkaza: Obychai, pravo, nasilie (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura RAN, 2002), 17-19, 22-23.
33. A. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar v Turtsiiu v sviazi s dvizheniem naseleniia v Krymu," Vestiia akademii nauk SSSR (otdeleniia gumanitarnykh nauk) 1928 (Moscow), 400-401. An estimated 200,000 Crimean Tatars left during the years 1859-63, approximately two-thirds of their entire population.
34. The first of these to be created was the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in 1788. In 1794, the Tavridian Muslim Spiritual Assembly was established in the Crimea, eleven years after Crimea's incorporation into the Russian Empire. In the Caucasus, the Shi'ite and Sunni administrations were not created until 1872, although various attempts to create a Muslim spiritual assembly had been in the works since the late 1830s. On the Orenburg Assembly, see Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006);
35. Danil' Azamatov, Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie v kontse XVIII-XIX vv. (Ufa: Gilem, 1999);
36. Danil' D. Azamatov, "The Muftis of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in the 18th and 19th centuries: The struggle for power in Russia's Muslim institution," Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries: Volume 2, Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations (Berlin: Schwarz, 1998);
37. Vafa Kulieva, Rol' i pozitsiia musul' manskogo dukhovenstva v sotsial'no-politicheskoi i kul' turnoi zhizni Azerbaidzhana v XIX-nachale XX vv. V rakurse armiano azerbaidzhanskikh politicheskikh otnoshenii (Baku: Nurlan, 2003), 29;
38. Dana Sherry, "Mosque and State in the Caucasus, 1828-1841," Caucasus and Central Asia Newsletter 4 (2003): 3-9;
39. I. F. Aleksandrov, "K istorii uchrezhdeniia Tavricheskago Magometanskago dukhovnago pravleniia," in Isvestiia Tavricheski uchenoi arkhivnoi komissii 54 (Simferopol, 1918), 316-55.
40. D. Iu. Arapov, Sistema gosudarstvennogo regulirovaniia islama v Rossiiskoi imperii (posledniaia tret' XVIII-nachalo XX vv.) (Moscow: Moskovskii gos. universitet. Istoricheskii fakul'tet, 2004).
41. For a discussion of Muridism in the Caucasus, see Kemal Karpat, Politicization of Islam, 24, 33-41, 111, and Vafa Kulieva, Rol' i pozitsiia, 43 52.
42. See also Azerbaijan State History Archive (Baku, hereafter cited as ADTA), f. 291, op. 1, d. 618, 11. 1-4; f. 524, op. 1, d. 52, 11. 48-58; f. 288, op. 1, d. 5.
43. On Volga Muslim resistance to the 1897 census, see I. K. Zagidullin, Perepis' 1897, especially 36-57, 142-90.
44. On the use of the spiritual authorities by provincial authorities to help subdue Muslim protests, see National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (Kazan, Russia, hereafter cited as NART), see, for example, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4345,1. 32; f. 1, op. 3, d. 4637, 1. 233; f. 3, op. 1, d. 8137, 1. 8.
45. "Ottoman Prime Ministry Archives (hereafter cited as BOA), YA HUS 203/20, s. 11-13.
46. NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, 11. 7, 9, 17, 23, 48, and 64.
47. NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, 11. 142, 208-9-ob. A copy of this circular can also be found in Sbornik tsirkulirov i inykh'runovodiashchikh' rasporiazhenii po okrugu Orenburgskogo Magometanskago Dukhovnogo Sobraniia 1836 1903 g. (Ufa: Gubernskaia Tipografiia, 1905), 112.
48. Turkestan Wilayetining Gazeti was published from 1870 onward. See Alexandre Bennigsen, La presse et le mouvement national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris: Mouton, 1964), 25-26.
49. See also Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 82, 85-89, 112, 120, 125-27, 134, 146, 151, 203, 241, 286.
50. On the difficulties endured by Gasprinskii in obtaining permission to publish Tercüman, see Edward James Lazzerini, "Ismail bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1878-1914," (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1973), 10 29.
51. See also State Archive of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Simferopol, Ukraine, hereafter cited as GAARK), f. 26, op. 2, d. 1595, 11. 1-27.
52. "Ob ukhode v Turtsiiu ", Tercüman, 30 July 1893.
53. "Ob emigratsii," Tercüman, 18 March 1890.
54. GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 11. 133-133.
55. Ibid.
56. For other petitions making similar observations, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 11. 47-76, 113-17-ob.
57. See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 119, 11. 114-114-ob.
58. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83,1. 67-67-ob.
59. GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 11. 133-133-ob.
60. Cafer Seydahmet Kirimali cites the following four articles and dates: "Lazim bir nesihat, gafil olma!" 15 Mayis 1902; "Hicret," 21 teşrinevvel 1902; "Hicret pasaportu," 3 ikinciteşrin 1902; "Dost davuşi," 11 ikinciteşrin 1902. See Kinmah, Gaspirah Ismail Bey: Dilde, Fikirde, ̇ Işte Birlik (Istanbul: Matbaacilik ve Neşriyat Türk Anonim Şirketi, 1934), 163-64.
61. GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 237, 1. 211.
62. Russian State Historical Archive (St. Petersburg, hereafter cited as RGIA), f. 821, op. 133, d. 469, 1. 224.
63. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 400-401.
64. Although the original cost of these passports is not known, by 1902 they cost 10 rubles. A. N. Zorin estimates that factory workers in the Volga region at this time were earning between 3 and 9 rubles a month.
65. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 398-99.
66. GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24345, II. 1 2.
67. See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op.2, d. 3407, 11. 138, 222, 229-229-ob.
68. GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 1. 161.
69. BOA, HRH 575/40.
70. RGIA, f. 821, op. 133, d. 469, 11. 225 26.
71. For a view into Ottoman reactions to the plight of these families, see BOA, YA HUS 391/87.
72. BOA, Y. Mtv. 188/127.
73. Hakan Kirimli, National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars (1905-1916) (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 11;
74. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 395-408;
75. A. Markevich, Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar v Turtsiiu v sviazi s dvizheniem naseleniia v Krymu," Vestiia akademii nauk SSSR (otdeleniia gumanitarnykh nauk) 1929 (Moscow), 1-3. See also note 1 of this article.
76. Habiçoǧlu, Kafkasya'dan Anadolu'ya, 84, fn. 2.
77. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 1-2. Before this date Tatars had the option of paying a sum of money each year in lieu of service.
78. On rumors of Russian government plans to ban emigration altogether in 1861, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24165, 1. 1-1-ob;
79. on Tatar illegal emigration resulting from this, see GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24345, 11. 1-2-ob.
80. GAARK, f. 26, op. 3, d. 194, 1-ob;
81. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 1. 67.
82. See also "Evpatoriia, 4-ogo oktiabria," in Krymskii Vestnik, 11 October 1901, 3.
83. See, for example, GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 3407, 11. 122, 125, 138, 139, 193, 205, 229.
84. NART, f. 1, op. 3, d. 4627, 1. 179; f. 1, op. 3, d. 9602, 11. 1-5; f. 1, op. 3, d. 9603, 11. 7-9-ob, 17, 23, 48, 64, 142, 208-9.
85. Migration is a subject that can be discussed in many comparative contexts. Fouad Akram Khater's Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870 1920 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001) studies return immigration among Maronite Christian émigrés to the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
86. See also Ewa Morawska, "Return Migrations: Theoretical and Research Agendas," in A Century of European Migrations, 1830-1930, ed. Rudolph Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke (Urbana, III.: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 277-92;
87. Walter D. Kamphoefner, "The Volume and Composition of German-American Return Migration," in A Century of European Migrations, 293-314;
88. and Dino Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
89. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, 11. 39-66.
90. See also Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 396-401.
91. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 66.
92. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, 1. 39.
93. GAARK, f. 26, op. 1, d. 24165, 11. 41-44;
94. ADTA, f. 525, op. 1, d. 82, 11. 39-40.
95. This is also described in Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 404-5.
96. Markevich, "Pereseleniia Krymskikh Tatar," 401.
97. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 82, 11. 47-48.
98. BOA, HRH 574/26, s. 1-2.
99. BOA, HRH 572/55, s. 1-3.
100. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 55, 1. 12.
101. A noticeable increase in the number of formerly Russian - and currently Ottoman - Muslims applying for residence permits or Russian citizenship can be detected after the 1908 Unionist takeover in Istanbul, and particularly from mid 1909 onward. See GAARK, f. 27, op. 7, dd. 6434, 6447, 6461, 6468, 6493, 6494, 6495, 6553, 6568, 6573, and many others.
102. See also ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 1.67.
103. Indeed, even in 1902, police in the Crimea had begun to investigate the "noticeable" increase in Ottoman subjects living in the region permanently and without registration. GAARK f. 26, op. 3, d. 262, 1. 2.
104. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 11. 79, 90.
105. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 1. 90.
106. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 11. 1-8-ob.
107. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 11. 11-14.
108. ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 83, 11. 15-18.
109. BOA, HRH 576/41, s. 1-2.
110. BOA, HRH 572/19.
111. BOA, HRH 572/54, s. 1-2.
112. BOA, HRH 572/21, s. 1-6.
113. BOA, HRH 574/41, s. 1.
114. BOA, HRH 576/17, s. 1-2.
115. BOA, HRH 574/12.
116. BOA, HRH 574/49.
117. BOA, HRH 576/48, s. 1-5.
118. BOA, HRH 571/31, s. 1-2.
119. BOA, HRH 576/82.
120. GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 4314, 11. 1-1 ob.
121. GAARK, f. 26, op. 2, d. 4313, 1. 6; f. 26, op. 2, d. 4314, 11. 1-1-ob, 5-6-ob.
122. Karpat, Politicization of Islam, 184-88.
123. ADTA f. 45, op. 1, d. 35, 11. 22 23. A Muslim immigrant from Sheki, having settled outside of Bursa, wrote that the muhacirin in his area had been told they would be exempt from conscription for seven years. Fuat Dündar also remarks upon this but states that such practices occurred only in the case of married men.
124. See ̇ Ittihat ve Terakki, 225.
125. ADTA, f. 45, op. 1, d.35, 11. 22 23-ob.
126. BOA, HRH 575/40.
127. BOA, HRH 579/43.
128. See Michael A. Reynolds, "The Ottoman-Russian Struggle for Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1908-1918: Identity, ideology and the geopolitics of world order" (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2003), 147-48, and BOA, DH SYS 56/10, s. 8. One of Shahtakhtinskii's activities involved infiltrating Russian Muslim student groups in Istanbul suspected by the Russian embassy of Pan-Turkist activities. Shahtakhtinskii's report for the embassy was emphatic in its claims that the students had no such interests.
129. See Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI), Moscow, f. 180, op. 517/2, d. 4226, 11. 27-30.
130. For other cases of suspected Russian Muslim spying in the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, Y. PRK. ESA 30/21;
131. DH EUM 5inci Şübe, 3/60, s. 1/1;
132. and DH EUM 5inci Şübe, 9/7.
133. An exception is Paul Dumont's article, "La Revue Türk Yurdu et les Musulmans de l'Empire Russe 1911-1914," Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 3-4 (1974): 315-31.
134. On Akçura's views on staying permanently in Istanbul, see NART, f. 1370, op. 1, d. 20, 1. 18, Letter from Yusuf Akçura to Fatih Kerimi, 17 April 1909, and NART f. 1370, op. 2, d. 25, 11. 66-67, Letter from Akçura to Kerimi, 25 September 1908.
135. On Akçura's continued relationship with Vakit newspaper, see, for example, NART f. 1370, op. 1, d. 20, 1. 102, Letter from Akçura to Kerimi, 25 December 1909.
136. NART f. 199, op. 1, d. 948, 11. 52, 178.
137. See Ali Hüseyinzade, "Azerbaycan'da Düşündüklerim," Hilal-i Ahmer, 15 Şevval 1336/24 July 1918.
138. On Armenians wishing to emigrate from Russia to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 2773/23; HR SYS 2840/7; HR SYS 2840/10; and HR SYS 2840/31.
139. On Ottoman Armenians wishing to immigrate to Russia, see, BOA, DH. MKT, 1440/8.
140. On Ottoman Armenians who had earlier immigrated to Russia wishing to return to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HRH SYS 2840/38; HRH SYS 2840/39; and HRH SYS 2840/41-44.
141. On Russian Jews wishing to emigrate from Russia to the Ottoman Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 1299.
142. On Ottoman Muslims living in the Russian Empire, see BOA, HR SYS 1269/2, s. 23, 39-41, 171 73; ADTA, f. 524, op. 1, d. 32, 11. 16-17, 29-30-ob.
143. For information on cases involving Christians and Jews exploiting ambiguities in citizenship laws, see BOA, HRH 572/30, HRH 572/38, HRH 572/40, and HRH 572/41.