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(Ḥakhan) Seraja Szapszał (1873–1961) and His Role in Shaping of the Turkic Identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite Community

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(Ḥakhan) Seraja Szapszał (1873–1961) and His Role in Shaping of the Turkic Identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite Community 4 Ḥakham (Ḥakhan) Seraja Szapszał (1873–1961) and His Role in Shaping of the Turkic Identity of the Polish-Lithuanian Karaite Community Кто с верой, любовью и правдой Who with faith, love and truth Трон славный гахама займет? Shall keep the ḥakham’s throne? Кто вечной заботой и лаской Who with eternal care and kindness К добру свой народ поведет? Shall bring his people to prosperity? Karaite poet M. Sinani, 19131053 Detailed narration of Szapszał’s biography would require from us writing a whole book about him and his life-adventures. His life was as full of them as the life of Count of Monte Cristo. Krymchak historian Lev Kaia, 19881054 4.1 Seraja Szapszał’s Biography Before the Arrival in Poland (1873–1927) The author of numerous publications and hero of a few belletristic novels whose life- story is enshrouded in the mist of most dramatic myths and legends, the last ḥakham of the East European Karaites, Seraja Szapszał1055 (1873–1961), spent a lengthy and 1053 M. Sinani, “Kto tron pochivshego zaimet?” Svetloi pamiati S.M. Panpulova,” KS 3-4 (1913): 2. 1054 “Подробное изложение биографии Шапшала потребовало бы написания нами целой книжки о нем и его жизненных приключениях. Его жизнь была ими не беднее, чем жизнь графа Монте-Кристо” (L.I. Kaia, Balovni sud’by. Ocherki po istorii karaimov v Rossii (Simferopol, 1988), 37 (Archive of Vaad of Russia, L.I. Kaia collection (uncatalogued)). 1055 In Russian: Серая/Серайя/Серайа/Сергей Маркович Шапшал or sometimes incorrectly Хан Шапшал (this is how he is called, for example, on his symbolical grave in the valley of Jehosaphath :Adib as-Soltan, i.e. “Sultan’s lawyer”) and Shapshal Khan; in Polish) ادیب السلطان :in Crimea); in Persian Hadży Seraja Han Szapszał (the title of Hadży (“pilgrim” in the Turkic languages of the Karaites) was added after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land; Han (Khan) – during his stay in Persia); in Turkish: Thüreyyâ/Süreya Şapşaloğlu (it is important to notice here that in Muslim countries he normally altered his Hebrew name to the Turkic Süreyya which sounds almost identical with Biblical Serayyah); Serayah ben Mordecai Shapshal; in his/שריה בן מרדכי שפשל :in Lithuanian: Seraja Šapšalas; in Hebrew is a ))שְׂרָ יָה)ו) (early student papers he also used a penname Ibn-Karay. The name Serayah/Seraya(hu highly rare masculine Hebrew name, although it is referred to several times in the Bible (e.g. 2 Kings (It originates from the verb sarah and Yah (name of God .(שְׂרָ יָה כֹּהֵן הָרֹאׁש/Seraiah the chief priest – 25:18 and means “Yah persists”. Shapshal/şapşal is a Turkic word which means “lazy, sluggish, slovenly, untidy” (KRPS, 644; cf. other dictionaries of the Turkic languages). © 2015 Mikhail Kizilov This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Seraja Szapszał’s Biography Before the Arrival in Poland (1873–1927) 217 eventful life.1056 In spite of the fact that much has been written on Szapszał’s biography, the topic is far from being exhaustively examined.1057 In my study I use the Polish spelling of his name (pronounced as Seraya Shapshal/Şapşal). Although originally a Crimean Tatar- and Russian-speaking Karaite, he lived in Poland and Lithuania from 1928 to 1961; furthermore, it was the Polish variant of his name – Seraja Szapszał – that he normally used for his publications in the interwar period. Nevertheless, when referring to his relatives, who lived in the Crimean Khanate or Russia/Soviet Union, I apply the standard English transliteration – Shapshal. Historians possess little information about his childhood. Seraja Szapszał himself said in his official autobiographies on this subject only a few brief and not too informative sentences. The only reliable data about Szapszał’s early biography and about his genealogy was found by me among the Lev Kaia uncatalogued manuscript documents. One of these documents, ḥakham’s biography which had been prepared (evidently, on the basis of some unpublished documents) by Szapszał’s follower, Karaite Boris Yakovlevich Kokenai, was copied by Kaia on 22.04.1964. According to the document, the earliest-known member of the family, Szapszał’s grand-grand- grandfather, Alyapaq (Elijah?)1058 Moses Shapshal, lived in Çufut Kale in the 1720s. His son Mordecai Shapshal (b. Çufut Kale, 1742/3) was a learned person, shammash, of the larger synagogue-kenesa of Çufut Kale. His son, Moses ben Mordecai (b. Çufut Kale, 1772), together with Seraja’s father Mordecai ben Moses, moved from Çufut Kale to Bahçesaray in 1846. Szapszał’s father, Mordecai ben Moses Shapshal (b. Çufut Kale, 1056 Szapszał’s life can be roughly divided into the following periods: 1873-1884 – years spent in Crimea; 1884-1901 – in St. Petersburg; 1901-1908 – in Persia; 1915-1919/1920 – as the Taurida and Odessa ḥakham in Eupatoria (Crimea) and St. Petersburg; 1919-1928 – in Turkey; 1928-1939/1944 – as the ḥakham of the Polish Karaites in Wilno; 1944-1961 – as an assistant of the History Institute of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Soviet Vilnius. 1057 I intend to dedicate a separate monograph to S. Szapszał’s biography. The following studies on this problem deserve to be mentioned: Yola Yanbaeva, “Iz materialov k biografii prof. S.M. Szapszała,” in Evrei v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1995), 27-29; Dan Shapira, “A Jewish Pan-Turkist: Seraia Szapszał (Şapşaloğlu) and his work ‘Qırım Qaray Türkleri (1928)’,” AOH 58 (2005): 349-380; Mikhail Kizilov, “New Materials on the Biography of S.M. Szapszał (1928-1939),” in Materialy Deviatoi Mezhdunarodnoi Konferentsii po Iudaike (Moscow, 2002), 255-273; D. Prokhorov and M. Kizilov, “Seraja Szapszał,” in Krym v litsakh i biografiiakh (spravochno-literaturnoe izdanie), ed. A.I. Dolia (Simferopol, 2008), 396- 400; Il’ia Zaitsev, Mikhail Kizilov, and Dmitrii Prokhorov, “Shapshal Seraya (Sergei) Markovich,” in Vostokovedy Rossii: XX – nachalo XXI v.: biobibliograficheskii slovar’ v 2 kn., ed. S.D. Miliband, vol. II: N–Ya (Moscow, 2008), 991; Mariusz Pawelec, “Listy do Wilna. Seraja Szapszał jako korespondent Ananiasza Zajączkowskiego,” AK, 19-36; Hannelore Müller, Religionswissenschaftliche Minoritätenforschung. Zur religionshistorischen Dynamik der Karäer im Osten Europas (Wiesbaden, 2010), 107-115. Articles by Karaite authors often provide important data which cannot be found in other published or archival sources (Khadzhi D.[avid] Tiriyaki, “K 140-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia gakhama S.M. Szapszała,” IKDU 7 (16) (2013): 2-4; Szymon Pilecki, “Rol’ prof. S.M. Szapszała v pravovom ukreplenii polozheniia karaimov v dovoennoi Polshe” (Russian; unpublished)). 1058 Alyapaq seems to stand for Eliya-apaq (i.e. Hebrew name and Turkic nickname). 218 Ḥakham (Ḥakhan) Seraja Szapszał (1873–1961) 1811 or 1812 – d. Bahçesaray, 1895), according to this biography, lived on the estate near the village of Oysun-köy (Oysuñki). He held conservative views and possessed a traditional “Biblical” countenance, with long beard and Semitic features.1059 He apparently did not know any Russian and for certain period of time had been working as the gabbai in the local Karaite community of Bahçesaray. In 1879 he was elected candidate to the ḥakham’s office. He was buried in 1895 in the valley of Jehosaphath near Çufut Kale.1060 Seraja ben Mordeсai Szapszał (b. 8.05.1873, village of Oysun-köy in Crimea1061) was the last – the twelfth – child in the family; his mother, Akbike Kazas, died when he was only a babe-in-arms in 1874. He attended a Karaite beit midrash in Simferopol from 1880 to 1884, where his instructor was Samuel ben Shemariah Pigit, an influential Karaite author and the ḥazzan in Ekaterinoslav (b. Çufut Kale, 1849 – d. Ekaterinoslav, 1911).1062 Szapszał was open and sincere concerning his early years only once – in a story, which he narrated as a type of a Karaite folktale to Abraham Szyszman. According to this story, young Szapszał demonstrated his independent and revolutionary way of thinking by asking his teacher (apparently, S. Pigit) an awkward question concerning the non-Jewish ethnic origin of the Karaites. In reward for this initiative he was physically punished, first at school, and later – by his father 1059 There is the portrait of Mordecai ben Moses Shapshal made by Boris/Barri/Barukh Egiz (MS LMAB F. 143, no. 1260, fol. 7). It appears to be a copy of another portrait of photo no longer extant. A short note in ink on the reverse side of the picture calls him “Murat-Khayri Musaevich” (this is a Turkicized corruption of his Hebrew name) and mentions that he participated as a volunteer in the defence of Sevastopol during the Crimean war. For more information about the Karaite painter Egiz, see Bari Egizas: tapyba, piesiniai/Bari Egiz: zhivopis’, risunki/Bari Egiz: paintings, drawings (Vilnius, 2009); a biographical note on B. Egiz by Abraham Szyszman, 1945, Russian in MS LMAB F. 143, no. 1586, fols. 1-4r. 1060 His large tombstone with inscriptions in Russian and Hebrew, and a large magen david engraved on its side, was erected in the most prestigious part of the cemetery. The stone was near the so-called grave of “Isaac Sangari” (on this “grave,” which in fact was one of Firkovich’s numerous forgeries, see Dan Shapira, “Yitshaq Sangari, Sangarit, Bezalel Stern i Avraam Firkovich,” Materialy po Arkheologii, Istorii i Etnografii Tavridy 10 (2003): 535-555). One may speculate whether young Szapszał started thinking about the connections between the East European Karaites and Khazars after visiting his father’s tomb and having an inquistive look at “Sangari’s” grave located nearby. 1061 Oysun-köy (Oysuñki), today Rastushchee near the Pochtovaia train station in the vicinity of Simferopol; later Szapszał was apparently registered in the Bahçesaray Karaite community. This is why it is written in many Szapszał’s biographies that he was born in Bahçesaray.
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