A Person To Be Remembered’: On the History of Acquaintance of Musa Bigeev and Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi

Abstract

There are still many lacunae in the biographies of the Russian and Turkestan prominent religious scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries. In some cases, the biographies of their acquaintances and counterparts could provide some important data which are missing elsewhere. The present article describes two episodes from the history of acquaintance of the renowned Tatar theologian Musa Bigeev and Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi, a prominent scholar from Turkestan, who was forced to emigrate from early Soviet Central Asia and later became one of the leaders of the Turkestan diaspora in the Middle East. The author cites information from the biographies of both scholars and argues that they may have temporarily belonged to the same émigré circles, and were acquainted with each other. A research of their respective biographies indicates that Bigeev and Tarazi met in Bombay in the 1930s and also may have known each other for twenty years prior to their emigration.The subject addressed in this article is of particular significance in reconstructing the history of contacts between the Russian and Turkestan religious scholars during their emigration and in the period preceding it.Key words: Musa Bigeev, Sayyid Mahmud Tarazi, biography, emigration, Kabul, Bombay, Bukhara.