Innovations in the education system of Muslims of the Samara province at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries and issues of financing of new-fashioned educational institutions

Abstract

Islamic education in the Samara region at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries began to change gradually: from the existence of the Kadimist (old-fashioned) system to the appearance of the Jadid (new-fashioned). This article highlights the most significant Jadid educational institutions of the Volga-Ural region, thanks to which it became possible to develop religious schools of a new format in the Samara province. The work is written on the basis of unpublished archival data contained in the archives of the Samara Provincial Government, the Samara Governor of the Central State Archive of the Samara region. The dynamics of the emergence and development of Jadid schools since the late 19th – early 20th centuries is analyzed in connection with the sources of their financing in the territory of the Samara Region. At the beginning of the 20th century, the growth in the number of new-fangled institutions in the province became especially noticeable, their appearance was dictated, among other things, by the changed financial situation in the Muslim communities of the Volga-Ural region – the appearance of a layer of bourgeois ready to invest in the activities of educational institutions of a new format. This study confirms that the main source of funding for both Kadimist and Jadid educational institutions in Samara province were donations from parishioners and individual major benefactors, which proves the existence of divergent ideological approaches to the question of the place and role of religious education in the development of the Ummah among Volga-Ural Muslims in the period under study.