A CONTRIBUTION TO THE INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF POLISH-LITHUANIAN TATARS – ALI ISMAIL WORONOWICZ (1902 – 1941) AND HIS WORK

Abstract

This article is devoted to an eminent Polish-Tatar Orientalist, writer and activist of the first part of the 20th century, Ali Ismail Woronowicz. From 1937 he was an imam of the Muslim community of the city of Warsaw, and from 1938 he looked after Muslims in the Polish army. From 1933, he was a member of the editorial staff of the scholarly journal Rocznik Tatarski [Tatar Yearbook]. In 1941 he was accused of espionage and arrested by the NKVD. The subsequent fate of Woronowicz is unknown; he was probably killed by the Soviet army. Woronowicz published in Polish and foreign scholarly and popular periodicals. He focused mainly on the study of the Tatar region in the Polish-Lithuanian territories. In 1936, in Cairo, he published a brochure in Arabic Al-Islām fī Būlūnyā [Islam in Poland], which was probably the first publication about Poland in Arabic in the Middle East. While still studying in Cairo, he began working on the monograph “The Life of the Prophet Muhammad and the Dawn of Islam”.