Arabic-language and Arabographic printed production in Dagestan at the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries

Abstract

When talking about the scale of the spread of the Arabic language and its role in the life of the Dagestan Muslim community at the end of the 19-th and beginning of the 20-th centuries, one of the important arguments is the development of Arabographic printing and lithographic culture, which was given impetus by the significant number of manuscript monuments in Dagestan, as well as the establishment of periodicals. At that time, Dagestan was equally strongly influenced by two cultures: the Arab-Muslim one, which was associated with local ideological traditions, and the Russian one, which had an increasingly strong influence on the ideological political and cultural life of Dagestan.

Initially, printing houses contributed to the spread of Russian culture in Dagestan, and books were printed mainly in Russian, while Arabic-language literature, which spread from the East, continued to be distributed mainly in manuscript form. We practically do not have Arabic-language printed products until the beginning of the 20th century. Only by the beginning of the 20th century did the work of printing books in Arabic begin in Dagestan. In the Port-Petrovsky printing house (which existed since 1876), books in Arabic were already being published in 1904. In 1907-1908, Arabic book printing was carried out by Temir-Khan-Shuras M. It also began in the "Islamic Typography" founded by Mavraev, which published a significant number of books on various topics (grammar, literature, poetry, linguistics, fiqh, Sufism, theology, dogmatics, logic, rhetoric, practical astronomy, and others) in Arabic.

Of the approximately 400 printed books (traceable and studied to this day) published in the Dagestan and Tergi regions (in Temirkhanshura, Port-Petrovsk, and Khasavyurt) at the beginning of the 20th century, almost half are in Turkic (mainly in the Kumyk language), a significant part is also in Arabic, and the rest were printed in Dargush, Avar, Lak, Kabardian, Karachay-Balkan, Chechen, and other languages. Printed products It was as diverse in genre and subject matter as the manuscripts. 50% of printed matter was religious, while textbooks accounted for only 6%.

Apparently, among the Arabic-language books, local printing houses printed a considerable number of Arabic grammar textbooks, due to the demand for them. The frequency and number of reprints of handwritten grammar textbooks during the 15th-20th centuries also allow us to make such an assumption.

The end of the XIX and the beginning of the XX centuries are marked with the development of Arabographic manuscripts and lithographic culture. The development was stimulated by the establishment of periodical journals. During the First World War in the the administrative center of Dagestan Temir-Khan-Shura (modern Buinask) appeared Arabic-language periodicals, anewspaper” Dagestan", which used to come out in Turkish as well before the revolution. In 1913-1918 under the severe censorship, when every free thought was banned at the same printing house came out a newspaper “ǧarīda dāġistān”. The newspaper played an important role in the social life of Dagestan for quite a long time. It was written in literary Arabic to avoid the censorship, however for the same reason, it stayed not available for the wider mass of readers.

It is true that at the beginning of the 19th century, not a small part of the Dagestan region received education in Arabic in Muslim schools, but the level of development of Arab-Muslim science significantly lagged behind European and Russian ones. For this purpose, by the 1930s of the 19th century, Russian scholars began to establish Russian-type schools in Dagestan, which offered Dagestanis higher standards of education. In the wake of rapprochement with Russian culture, cultural orientation began to shift from the East to Russia.