Khayredinova Z. The Establishment and Development of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government (late eighteenth to early twentieth century)

The thesis makes a complex analysis of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government (Tavricheskoye magometanskoye dukhovnoye pravleniye, late eighteenth to early twentieth century), the only body of the Crimean Tartars' Moslem self-government after the Crimea was annexed by Russia. Russian governmental policy for the Moslem population of Taurica is shown on the example of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government. The presence of the unwieldy and complicated system of appointment of both highest and lowermost clergy supplies evidence for in the given period the state's security services aimed at establishment close control of the religious life of the Crimean Tartar population of the Tauric government. The study draws the conclusion of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government was a state body with all its legally established rights and responsibilities. The Clerical government was in charge for an entire complex of affairs, among which there were opening and closing mosques and Moslem educational institutions (mactabah and madrasah), vacuf movable and real property of mosques and educational institutions, some of civics, and ordaining parish clergy. The study provides a detail analysis of the administrative system and structure of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government, as well as functions and responsibilities of each its official. The analysis of a few projects of reforms of the Tauric Moslem Clerical Government allows to draw a conclusion that the project developed by the 3rd "Ittifac al Muslimin" congress is the most worked over. This project is one of the most brilliant achievements of the liberal part of the Russian Moslem community's public thought in the early twentieth century.