Agrizhan

The Agrizhan (Russian: Агрыжанские татары Agryzhanskie tatary) are primarily Muslim descendants of Tatar women and Indian merchants who operated in Astrakhan. The children of such Indo-Tatar couples were called Agryzhan Tatars.[1]

History

The community's decline began in the early 19th century, when the Russian Empire began to tightly regulate the trade of foreign merchants.[2] In 1857, they numbered 107. They later assimilated into the Astrakhan Tatar population.[3]

At least some of the earliest Indian merchants were Hindus. They were closely connected with Bukharan merchants in Astrakhan, and part of the trade network connecting Astrakhan with Bukhara and Iran before and after the Russian conquest of the city. Over time, they all became Muslims. They retained special privileges, as well as the so-called Gilani Tatars, the Iranian trading community in the city, and with the cities of Bukharan Tatars, until 1836.[4]

Some of the Agrizhan Tatars went together with other Muslims from Russia to the Ottoman Empire between 1860 and 1914 [5][6]

References

  1. ^ "Astrakhan's India Connection". 16 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Early traces of Indian life in Russia". 12 September 2014.
  3. ^ Dale, Stephen Frederic (1994), "The Indian diaspora in the Volga basin", Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101–127, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511523977.007, ISBN 978-0-521-45460-5
  4. ^ Allen J. Frank, Bukhara and the Muslims of Russia: Sufism, Education and the Paradox of Muslim Prestige (Brill), p. 50-52
  5. ^ Meyer, James H. (2007). "Immigration, Return, and the Politics of Citizenship: Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 39 (1): 15–32. doi:10.1017/S0020743807212516. JSTOR 4129110.
  6. ^ Hamed-Trojansky, Vladimir (2018). Imperial Refuge: Resettlement of Muslims from Russia in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914 (Thesis). Stanford University.

Further reading

  • Wixman, Ronald. The Peoples of the USSR: An Ethnographic Handbook. (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc, 1984) p. 6


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