The Lost World of Muslims: Ismail Gasprinsky's Intellectual Provocation

The publication consists of two parts, which offer the reader a journey through the history of ideas, literature and Islamic studies, exploring the complex cultural landscape of the Muslim world at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Given the considerable attention of modern Russian humanists to the figure of Gasprinsky, the author enters into a polemic with them regarding certain plots-canons of “colonial biography”, interpreting them through the prism of a postcolonial approach.

The first part — a study by Svetlana Kayuk — is devoted to the work and ideas of the prominent Crimean Tatar intellectual Ismail Gasprinsky. Analyzing his novel “French Letters” in the context of the genre of literature of “lost worlds” and Orientalism, the author draws attention to the key themes of Muslim culture, colonialism and cultural dialogue between the West and the East. The “Alhambras” of Al-Andalus and Crimea appear as symbols of cultural stratification and fluidity of ideas.

The second part is the novels “French Letters” and “African Letters”. Svitlana Kayuk classifies the novel “French Letters” as an adventure work that opens up to the reader a world of travel and encounters with the Other, and also reflects the complex identity of a Muslim intellectual against the backdrop of modernization challenges and colonial trends. In combination with the scientific part of the publication, the novel takes on a new sound, becoming an important source for researchers of the history of the Muslim world, Crimea, and intellectual history.

The book is addressed to historians, culturalists, Islamic scholars, literary critics, and everyone who is interested in issues of cultural interaction, decolonization, and the history of ideas.