Ismail Gasprinsky

Ismail bey Gasprinsky (20 March [O.S. 8 March] 1851 – 24 September [O.S. 11 September] 1914) was a Crimean Tatar intellectual, educator, publisher and politician who inspired the Jadidist movement among the Muslims of the Russian Empire. ¹ He was one of the first Muslim intellectuals in the empire to argue that the Turkic and Islamic communities needed education and cultural reform and modernisation, and he communicated those ideas mainly through the newspaper Terciman, which he founded in 1883 and which lasted until 1918. ^{1 2} His surname derives from the town of Gaspra in Crimea. ¹ Wikidata places his birth at Avdzhikoy, a village near Bakhchysarai, and his death at Bakhchysarai itself. ³

In his publications Gasprinsky called for unity and solidarity among the Turkic peoples and advocated their modernisation through Europeanisation, holding that the only way to modernise was through education. ¹ He criticised the traditional education system in Muslim schools, which focused much on religion, devised a new method (usul-ü cedit, "new method") of teaching children to read effectively in their mother tongue, and introduced curricular reforms. ¹ He also developed a simplified "pan-Turkic" literary language, omitting words imported from Arabic and Persian, intended to be understood, in his phrase, by "the boatman of the Bosphorus and by the camel driver of Kashgar". ¹ Terciman had subscribers in the Caucasus, among the Muslims of the Russian Empire, and in Egypt and Iran. ¹

In 1906 he founded the women's journal Alem-i Nisvan (Women's World), edited by his daughter Şefiqa, and a children's publication, Alem-i Subyan (World of Children). ¹ He was one of the founders of the Union of Muslims (İttifaq al-Muslimin), created in Saint Petersburg in January 1906 from the intelligentsia of the empire's various Muslim Turkic peoples, and one of the main organisers of the first All-Russian Muslim congresses, which aimed at social and religious reforms among the Muslim peoples of Russia. ¹ In 1912 he visited British India. ¹

His chief vehicle was Terciman (1883–1918). ¹ In his 1881 book Russian Muslims he wrote: "Our ignorance is the main reason for our backward condition. We have no access at all to what has been discovered and to what is going on in Europe." ¹ He also initiated the journals Alem-i Nisvan and Alem-i Subyan. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

The position the sources attribute to Gasprinsky is programmatic: unity of the Turkic peoples, a common literary language, and modernisation through European-style education, argued from within the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire rather than against them. ¹ The Arabic article likewise presents him as one of the first Muslim intellectuals of the empire to see the need for education, cultural reform and the modernisation of the Turkic and Islamic communities. ² He received the Order of the Medjidie (4th class) from the Ottoman Empire, the Order of the Lion and the Sun (3rd and 4th class) from Persia, and the Order of the Noble Bukhara in gold (3rd class) from the Emirate of Bukhara. ¹

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