Edited by Paolo Sartori and Danielle Ross, Sharīʿa in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1550–1917 is a welcome addition to Islamic legal studies. The former Soviet countries remain one of the least studied geographical regions in the field of Islamic studies in general and Islamic legal studies in particular. Such books were difficult to produce during the Soviet period due largely to the closing of the Soviet regime to the outside world, particularly to the perceptive eyes of scholars. This collection of essays by nine authors addresses the gap in the scholarship by uncovering, presenting, and analyzing manuscripts in the Turkic, Arabic, and Persian languages of Central Eurasia. Together the ten chapters cover the history of shari‘a in the region, acquisition and transmission of knowledge, and perspectives on the role of Islamic legal figures.

In the first chapter, “Islamic Education for All: Technological Change, Popular Literacy and the Volga-Ural Madrasa, 1650s–1910s,” Ross successfully demonstrates how the acquisition and transmission of legal knowledge among scholars and ordinary people was furthered by the advent of mass printing in the Russian Empire. Ross explains how changes in knowledge acquisition and transmission affected the previous practices of authority and power acquired through possessing knowledge. She also describes the ways in which Islamic law came to operate with other streams of thought, such as Sufi practices among Russian Muslims. Ross offers detailed information about the curriculum of the madrasa, including the textbooks, methods of teaching, languages, and activities. She also explains how religious knowledge gradually moved from being the province of a handful of elites in Muslim communities to the possession of the masses by the 1800s. She states that “by the 1800s, maktabs [schools before madrasa] and madrasas multiplied across the region[,]” and “[t]here was a proliferation of Turki-language manuscript religious guides and learning aids: books of ethics, doctrine, worship (‘ibadāt) and catechism (‘ilm al-ḥāl) and tales of the prophets” (44). Ross describes the rise of lay leadership of religious literature and the adjustments made to various textbooks for popular audiences. Ross writes about the milieu of Muslim Tatars and how reading became one of the normal activities for any person in the early 1800s. This new paradigm in knowledge acquisition and transmission impacted the way ulama’ (authoritative religious scholars) exerted their powers in many areas of religious life and scholarship, including Islamic legal practices. With the advent of mass printing, people could come to conclusions by reading themselves rather than relying on others who had access to resources, such as books and other publications.

The other nine chapters cover a range of topics, including imitation (taqlīd) and creative interpretation (ijtihād), marriage, secular and religious law, codification of laws, and customary laws not only in Russia proper, but also in regions occupied by Russia in later periods such as Central Asia. For instance, both Sartori (“What We Talk about When We Talk about Taqlīd in Russian Central Asia”) and Shamil Shikhaliev (“Taqlīd and Ijtihād over the Centuries: The Debates on Islamic Legal Theory in Dagestan, 1700s–1920s”) enrich the field of Islamic legal studies with their keen insights and new additions, which are relevant not only to the regions they study but also to other Muslim lands. With her chapter “Between Imperial Law and Islamic Law: Muslim Subjects and the Legality of Remarriage in Nineteen-century Russia,” Rozalia Garipova offers case-based examples of the interactions between the tsarist government and the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly regarding remarriage of Muslim men and women. Garipova demonstrates that the imperial government, despite leaving family matters to the local and religious entities, interfered in order to better control the population and integrate Muslims into the Russian empire (169–71). Nathan Spannaus (“Taqlīd and Discontinuity: The Transformation of Islamic Legal Authority in the Volga-Ural Region”), Allen Frank (“Islamic Scholars among the Kereys of Northern Kazakhstan, 1680–1850”), and Ulfat Abdurasulov and Sartori (“Take Me to Khiva: Sharī‘a as Governance in the Oasis of Khorezm (Nineteenth Century–Early Twentieth)”) discuss power struggles between the state and ulama’ in the Russian Empire and in the Central Asian region. Their discussions offer new ideas and fresh sources that will enrich scholarship in Islamic legal studies on Russia and on Central Asia.

One of the important issues addressed in this book is the education of women and their role in Islamic legal knowledge acquisition and transmission. For example, in “Debunking the ‘Unfortunate Girl’ Paradigm: Volga-Ural Muslim Women's Knowledge and Its Transformation across the Long Nineteenth Century,” Ross offers new insights into women's education and roles in the society in what she calls the “pre-reform” period (121). Criticizing previous scholarship on women's education in the region, which focuses on the reform of various sectors in general, Ross states that women's education was more robust than previously thought. In other words, if previous scholarship stated that women started acquiring and transmitting knowledge thanks to the reforms brought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Ross argues that women began obtaining education well before reform movements, such as the new educational methods of the Jadids, became famous. While Ross offers new insights into the education of women in the nineteenth century, she does not explore whether Muslim women in the Volga-Ural region were in any way influenced by similar trends happening in Europe or whether the fact that women had been educationally active in the region in the nineteenth century is due to earlier, native reform movements.

I must note that while in “What We Talk about When We Talk about Taqlīd in Russian Central Asia” Sartori offers a new perspective on the term taqlid (imitation of an earlier ruling by a jurist in a later time), he conflates the term with qiyās (comparison) in discussing the aspects of imitation. He also attempts to promote the idea that taqlid had a different meaning before it was changed by reformist Islamic scholars in the nineteenth century. He particularly argues that pitting taqlid against ijtihad is a later phenomenon. In making this argument, Sartori either does not know about or neglects the Kitāb al-tawḥīd of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 944 CE), in which al-Maturidi vehemently argues against taqlid. The opposition between imitation and creative interpretation is not a new phenomenon promoted by the reformists in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, as Sartori claims, for this opposition has always existed and continues to exist across Muslim communities.

Although some of the chapters need significant revisions, Sharīʿa in the Russian Empire is a welcome addition to the scholarship on this little-studied area. I have no doubt that the work will produce a number of responses and be of value to scholars and general readers who are interested in understanding more about shari‘a in the Russia and Russian occupied lands where Muslims live.