(three years’relief from poll tax and recruit obligations) and by violence (more than
400 of 518 mosques in Kazan province were destroyed). Resistance wasfierce, and
although an estimated 400,000 animist Finno-Ugrians and Chuvash and another
7,000 Tatar Muslims were forcibly converted, the victory was hollow. The Ortho-
dox Church did not follow up with sufficient education and pastoral organization.
Bashkiria remained so volatile that the local governor succeeded in keeping the
Conversion Commission out. After another Bashkir revolt in 1755, the state
relented somewhat, allowing construction of new mosques in 1756 for communi-
ties of at least 200 male inhabitants in the Middle Volga and Urals. All in all,
V. M. Kabuzan concludes that gains for Orthodoxy in the Middle Volga and Urals
(Kazan, Nizhnii Novgorod, Voronezh, and Orenburg gubernii) came primarily
from animist peoples, while Muslims resisted. Muslim percentage in the population
of these areas stayed the same (about 12 percent) in thefirst half of the eighteenth
century.
In an Edict of Toleration in 1773 specifically directed at Islam, Catherine II shut
down the Commission for Conversion and declared religious toleration for all faiths
(save atheists, free-thinkers, and heretics). This Edict, issued at a time when
Catherine was embroiled in the conquest of Crimea and the Black Sea steppe,
guaranteed unimpeded construction of mosques and freedom of Muslim worship.
As Robert Crews has detailed, Catherine II followed up with administrative
reorganization of Islam in the Crimea and Middle Volga to bind Muslims loyally
to the tsar. In 1784 Russia took control over the existing Crimean organization of a
senior mufti and lesser clerics, appointing men loyal to Russia and giving them
jurisdiction over Muslims in Crimea and the Black Sea steppe. In 1788 the state
created a similar structure for Muslims in the Middle Volga, Siberia, and major
cities of the empire. Calling it the“Spiritual Muslim Assembly,”it was located in
Ufa (moved to Orenburg 1797–1802) and consisted of a senior mufti and religious
judges (kadi) from the Muslim clergy.
These Muslim hierarchies were to appoint and oversee local Muslim imams and
teachers, giving preference to those trained in the empire (Kazan and Orenburg),
not allowing foreign Muslims whose loyalties might be suspect. Local Muslim
clerics were to supervise religious education, to rule on disputes in areas of marriage
and divorce, and (most sensitively) to rule on Islamic orthodoxy when groups posed
rival interpretations, as often happened in the decentralized Muslim faith. In Ufa
the Assembly was overseen by Orenburg gubernia secular government. Thefirst
mufti, Mikhamedzan Khuseinov, was a consummate politician and loyal servant of
the empress: he demanded and won from the Russian government perquisites
including a large state salary and the right to own land; he was sent to neighboring
Muslim communities (Kazakhs, Kabarda) on diplomatic missions; he quelled
opposition from local Muslim leaders wary of this unprecedented institution.
After his term Russia prevented later muftis from building up so much independent
power. Under Catherine II the Russian state promoted itself as defender of its
Muslim subjects. It subsidized the building of some mosques in the Middle Volga,
Urals, and Siberia, paid salary not only for the mufti but also other Islamic officials,
supervised the founding of Muslim schools, and published the Koran and religious
Confessionalization in a Multi-ethnic Empire 399