Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Tatar religious exegetics interested many scholars-theologians of both past centuries and modernity. In the heritage of these authors, the tafsirs of Nu‘man as-Samani and Muhammad-Zarif Amirkhan are mentioned often. Tafsir is a special genre of Islamic theological literature, Tatar authors were addressed to Tafsirs, trying to clarify the external (Zahir - arabic. ظاهر), and internal (Batyn - arabic. باطن) sides of the Qur‘an. This article discusses two works from the heritage of the Turk-Tatar interpretations of Qur‘an of the XIX-early XX centuries: “Tafsir Nu‘mani,” by Nu‘man bin Sabit as-Samani, and “Tafsir Faw’id” by Muhammad-Zarif Amirkhan. Thanks to the publications of recent decades, both tafsirs have become available to specialists, and it has become possible to more fully imagine the state of religious, philosophical, scientific, and artistic thoughts among the Tatars of the Middle Volga region. Nu‘man bin Sabit as-Samani and Muhammad-Zarif Amirkhan were among the first to contribute to the strengthening of the trend according to which, without exception, all the Volga region peoples are equal owners of the general history of Muslims. Their tafsirs read, studied, reworked, were used to create other books, and copies of their works were reproduced–all this is indisputable. Findings of Tafsir manuscripts in the Ottoman-Turkish language speaks of a wide zone of their fame.