R.R.GARIPOVA MUSLIM WOMEN’S RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY AND THEIR ROLE IN THE TRANSMISSION OF ISLAMIC KNOWLEDGE IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA Rozaliya Garipova, Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 USA,
[email protected]. The historiography of the education of Muslim women in the Volga-Urals presents Jadid schools for girls as both a rupture from traditional female education and a triumph for women’s liberation from the patriarchal backwardness which accounted for women’s inferior and miserable position in society. The article suggests two important points. First, notwithstanding the Jadid claims about the backwardness and superstitious nature of the traditional female education, it fulfilled important func- tions within the community and could reach high levels of traditional scholarly knowledge. Muslim women were educated according to the criteria of traditional education and many of them were part of the high scholarly culture of the ulama. Second, the new Jadid education was built upon traditional female education, and many women masters (abïstays) supported and made possible the transforma- tion of education methods for girls. Key words: abïstay, religious authority, women’s education, Jadidism. Much of what we know about Volga-Ural these scholars suggest that abïstays’ literacy was Muslim women in the late nineteenth to early low, that the so-called “women’s schools” situated twentieth centuries is based on the Jadid or Muslim at an imam’s house were hardly suitable for wom- reformist writings – both fiction and non-fiction. en’s education, that girls’ education consisted of Scholars have taken the Jadids’ depiction of wom- memorizing prayers in Arabic, which they hardly en at face value, accepted the paradigm of wom- understood, and that Tatar women were highly su- en’s backwardness, ignorance and servility and perstitious.