Abstract
This is an essential collection of high-quality essays by an international and gender-diverse group of capable scholars ranging from post-doctoral to senior. Each of the chapters significantly advances the study of Islamic history—particularly the history of Islamic law and related Muslim identities—within the Tsarist Russian Empire (1550–1917). The volume certainly contributes ‘towards integrating the Muslims of the Russian Empire into the global history of Islamic law under colonial rule’, and though debatably ‘a first step’, nonetheless a giant one in that direction (p. 4). Perhaps the volume best succeeds—in appreciable measure—at adding further nuance to and/or complicating a number of over-simplified dichotomies which have gained a degree of traction within Central Eurasian Islamic and colonial (legal) historiography, most notably those regarding the alleged lack of agency and continuity among the colonized in contrast to the control and influence of the colonizer, the historical and religio-political relation of taqlīd and ijtihād as well as ʿādat and sharīʿa, the relation of Muslim jurist to political ruler, and supposed advances by modernist Jadīd reformers to issues of gender, among others. Although the ‘Introduction’ tends at points to over-state the degree to which the volume, both in whole and its various parts, represents an alleged watershed achievement in Central Eurasian Islamic historiography, it is nonetheless a substantial one.