Silver coins in Volga Muslim dresses Following the Muscovite conquest of Kazan in 1552, the Volga Tatars, like other Volga peoples, were banished from living along the Volga River. This retreat from the Volga River can be considered as a chapter in the history of human migrations in the Volga region and most likely resulted in a convergence of material and spiritual culture of Muslims and animist peoples. Allen Frank writes of this as the ruralization of high Islamic culture. Towards the end of the 18th century, with the establishment of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly, the Muslim community of the Volga-Ural region began to coalesce and imagine itself as one single community. This time period beginning in the late 18th century was characterized by intense theological debates about the nature of the Volga Muslim community. Influential in these debates were Muslims from Bukhara, whose faith was considerably more conservative than the Volga Tatars and who most likely disapproved of the unorthodox and superstitious elements found among the Volga Tatars. Before this time, it is likely that Tatar dresses had more in common with the other Volga peoples, including the use of silver coins, which were believed to protect the wearer from evil spirits. This is clearly visible in the drawing of a Tatar woman from the 18th century below. The dresses of Kriashens have in fact preserved this element to the present day as a result of their isolation from the Muslim community. Muslim Tatars, however, came to regard Bukhara as a place of high prestige and began emulating the Bukharans and wearing clothing imported from Bukhara. However, the fact that Tatar jewelry from the 19th century often contained silver coins is evidence that the Tatars abandoned their superstitions only gradually. If there was pressure from more orthodox Muslims to abandon their superstitions, wearing silver coins as jewelry may have been a clever way to conceal their true reasons for wearing them.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 22:41:40 +0000
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