How did Catherine the Great handle Muslims?

[RonaldReagram]

I'm broadly aware that as an Enlightenment bookworm, Tsarina Catherine II is a poster-girl of enlightened despotism, aggressively pursuing reforms to center power around the crown within the rule of law and to slowly dole out better-defined rights and duties to her subjects. Her policy of conquest and colonization redrew Russia's lines on the map around large and storied populations of Muslims, sedentary and nomadic. To bring them under the same yoke as the Russian Orthodox Church, she seemed to rely heavily on the carrot over the stick, permitting them to build mosques and make Hajj to Mecca, and even creating the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly - a state agency led by a Tsar-appointed mufti to regulate the Muslim population, support the clergy with state funds, and keep an eye on what they teach and preach.

This last part fascinates me the most. It was a long-lived project to erect a well-defined 'church hierarchy' over the people and clergy, with its officials appointed and watched over by a Christian monarch. How did the Tatars themselves feel about this? Surely, conservatives among them would have immediately screamed that it were bid'ah, an alien innovation, while many others saw the opportunity for rubles and state-backed power and played along, and there may have been pragmatists who suspected that this were the best-case scenario for an ascendant Russia's treatment of their community. How did they justify service in an agency overseen by a Tsarina actively engaging in wars against their own recognized Ottoman caliph?

Are there any good sources in English that go into detail on the Assembly and its structure?

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

How did they justify service in an agency overseen by a Tsarina actively engaging in wars against their own recognized Ottoman caliph?

Well this isn't the late 19th/early 20th century, and the ottomans most certainly aren't seen by all Muslims as the Caliphs. That title is in any case associated with the model of sacral kingship which is going out of fashion at the moment and being replaced by solely secular ruler's (emirs) whose only duty (apart from ghazi warfare) is to support the ulemma and enforce their rulings on the Muslim population. That's something the Russian monarch can provide.

 

[Idzni_Hezrin05]

Like how she handle the horses I think?

 

[Ursogulos]

Like how she handle the horses I think?

Lmao that's a myth. She apparently handled horses very well as she was one of the few European queens to break the 'sidesaddle dogma'

How did they justify service in an agency overseen by a Tsarina actively engaging in wars against their own recognized Ottoman caliph?

To this date it still intrigues me. But then I remember Lipka tatars of Sobieski in active participation against Ottomans. If that can happen this seems easier in comparison.

Also in islam if you can practice sharia under a non muslim monarch then It's called 'Dar Al Aman'( safe land) something between Dar al Harb and Dar al Islam.

 

[Aghasverov]

I'm broadly aware that as an Enlightenment bookworm, Tsarina Catherine II is a poster-girl of enlightened despotism, aggressively pursuing reforms to center power around the crown within the rule of law and to slowly dole out better-defined rights and duties to her subjects. Her policy of conquest and colonization redrew Russia's lines on the map around large and storied populations of Muslims, sedentary and nomadic. To bring them under the same yoke as the Russian Orthodox Church, she seemed to rely heavily on the carrot over the stick, permitting them to build mosques and make Hajj to Mecca, and even creating the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly - a state agency led by a Tsar-appointed mufti to regulate the Muslim population, support the clergy with state funds, and keep an eye on what they teach and preach.

This last part fascinates me the most. It was a long-lived project to erect a well-defined 'church hierarchy' over the people and clergy, with its officials appointed and watched over by a Christian monarch. How did the Tatars themselves feel about this? Surely, conservatives among them would have immediately screamed that it were bid'ah, an alien innovation, while many others saw the opportunity for rubles and state-backed power and played along, and there may have been pragmatists who suspected that this were the best-case scenario for an ascendant Russia's treatment of their community. How did they justify service in an agency overseen by a Tsarina actively engaging in wars against their own recognized Ottoman caliph?

Are there any good sources in English that go into detail on the Assembly and its structure?

I wasn't at all familiar with this programme of Catherine's among the Muslims, but it seems very similar to the (somewhat later) institution of "Crown Rabbis" of the Russian Empire:

YIVO | Crown Rabbi

yivoencyclopedia.org