In the history of Islam in late imperial Russia, the Crimean Tatar Ismail Gasprinskii (Gaspırali, 1851-1914) is a towering figure; he is seen as the founding father of Muslim cultural reform in Russia (Jadidism). Gasprinskii had a strong impact on Muslim intellectuals, in particular, among the Volga Tatars, who saw in him the pioneer of modern education among Russia's Muslims. In Russian, Soviet, Tatar and Western historiography, Gasprinskii is mostly associated with the aim of uniting all Turkic Muslims of Russia, under the famous slogan ‘unity in language, thinking, and action’ (in Turkish: dilde, fikirde, işde birlik). In his journalism and his novels he developed a ‘common’ Turkic literary language supposedly understandable to all Muslim Turks of Russia. For friends and critics, Gasprinskii stood at the cradle of political pan-Turkism in Russia but also prepared the ground for the emergence of particular national movements, including of the Crimean Tatars and the Volga (Kazan) Tatars.

The present chapter is about Gasprinskii's Russian-language essay ‘Russian Muslimhood: Thoughts, Annotations and Observations’ (1881). One of his first publications, Gasprinskii's essay is not at all a pan-Turkist pamphlet. Rather, it discusses the situation of Tatar Muslims between Islam and Europe. Even more, the text is completely focused on the Russian context, and distances Russia's Muslims from the Turks of the Ottoman Empire.