Ali al-Ghumuqi

ʿAlī ibn ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Ghumūqī^[1] was born in 1878 in the village of Gazi Kumukh to an aristocratic (uzden [ru]) family of ethnic Laks.^[2] The al-Ghumūqī family was among the oldest extant families in the village at the time, first being mentioned in 1474. Alī's father was a gunsmith active in southern Dagestan and Elizavetpol Governorate, and was killed in a knife fight in 1884, when Alī was seven years old. Following his father's death, Alī and his brother Ramazan were raised by their paternal aunt, Nazhavat. He was educated at the madrasa of Gazi Kumukh's grand mosque, as was common at the time. After completing his studies in Gazi Kumukh, al-Ghumūqī lived as a nomad, studying at several madrasas throughout the Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire. During this time he became well-read in Arabic, tafsir and the fiqh of the Shafi'i school.^[3]

Al-Ghumūqī was a student of several prominent sheikhs in Dagestan; the exact number of sheikhs that he studied under is unclear. It is known that sheikh Ali of Sogratl was particularly fond of al-Ghumūqī and played a significant role in his education, housing him for five years and supporting his studies by giving him full access to his personal library. His first major work, produced for his first teacher sheikh Ghazi ibn Sayyid Hussein, was a copy of Muhammad Tahir al-Qarakhi [ru]'s Brilliance of Dagestani Sabres in Some of the Battles of Shamil, which he completed in 1899 and delivered to Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an Islamic scholar in Astrakhan. Abd al-Rahman soon invited al-Ghumūqī to Astrakhan to teach at the city's madrasa and study the sciences, an offer which al-Ghumūqī accepted.^[4]

Al-Ghumūqī arrived in Astrakhan in 1899, at the age of twenty.^[4] His "Astrakhan period",^[c] as this time is termed by historian Vladimir Bobrovnikov, was the basis for his later activities, as he began studying the history of Islam in the Caucasus. Al-Ghumūqī was particularly interested in primary sources dating as far back as the medieval period, and he publicised several sources which had previously languished in obscurity in his former teachers' libraries. During this period al-Ghumūqī began to attract a devoted group of students, many of whom (such as Muhammad-Sa'id al-Awari) would later become academics in their own right.^[5]

In 1905 al-Ghumūqī left Astrakhan for Cairo, then part of the Ottoman Khedivate of Egypt, in order to further his studies at Al-Azhar University.^[6] Al-Ghumūqī's activities at Al-Azhar were disputed until the discovery of his manuscripts following the dissolution of the Soviet Union,^[7] and a popular legend claimed that he had been appointed as a professor due to his knowledge surpassing the university's curriculum.^[6]

At the time of al-Ghumūqī's arrival, Egyptian Islam was experiencing significant upheaval due to the Nahda and the emergence of Islamic modernism. The Egyptian modernists advocated for educational reform on the basis of Islamic sources and fiqh, in contrast to Muslim intellectuals within Russia, who argued that it was necessary to adopt European models of education to further develop society.^[8] Unlike Crimea and the Volga region, where Islamic modernism had previously emerged in the Russian Empire, the North Caucasus had closer connections to the Ottoman Empire and Arab world as a result of Arabic's status as the region's lingua franca at the time; Egyptian modernism was therefore more appealing to the North Caucasus than other forms of Islamic modernism.^[9]

Al-Ghumūqī left Al-Azhar in 1907^[9] or 1908 for Constantinople, intending to continue his academic studies. However, he soon became a supporter of the Young Turk Revolution, condemning Sultan Abdul Hamid II's rule as despotic and maintained by espionage, repression and fear. In response, the Ottoman government arrested al-Ghumūqī and, after a month in prison, deported him back to Russia.^[6] Later Soviet historiography claimed without evidence that he was deported due to his association with Young Turk revolutionary Mizancı Murat.^[10] Al-Ghumūqī would be one of the last citizens of the Soviet Union to have studied at Al-Azhar,^[11] and his time in Turkey and Egypt inspired his later ideological and theological views.^[7]

By the time al-Ghumūqī returned to Dagestan, the Jadid movement was on the rise. The Jadids advocated for a return to Islam as preached by Muhammad and his followers, as well as the adoption of technological achievements from Europe in order to bring about the end of Russian colonialism. They generally advocated for a system of classes and teaching in the local language, rather than Arabic, in madrasas, as well as the introduction of desks and blackboards to education.^[7]

Al-Ghumūqī, like many other Jadids, believed that poverty, neglect and the enforced teaching of Arabic were responsible for the poor state of Dagestan's education; he noted that complex Arabic grammar and syntax was presented to students at the beginning of their studies with the belief that they would spend one to two decades learning Arabic, which instead resulted in high rates of dropping out. Al-Ghumūqī instead argued that students should first be taught simple Arabic in their native language and later given more complex parts of Arabic grammar. He further advocated for the introduction of the sciences into madrasa curriculum and often criticised local Islamic theologians.^[12]

Al-Ghumūqī's proposed reforms were controversial at the time; more conservative voices argued that deemphasising Arabic would lead to moral decay and a decline in Islam,^[13] while other, more liberal scholars, following the model of Jadids elsewhere in Russia, believed that al-Ghumūqī's "Egyptian model" was too strict in its interpretation of Islam and that European models of education needed to be further emulated. Al-Ghumūqī attracted a group of loyal followers, including sheikhs Muhammad Aburrashid al-Qarakani, Masud al-Muquqi, Muhammad Umari al-Uqli.^[8] In 1908, he established a madrasa in the Terek Oblast village of Kyondelen [ru], followed by two madrasas in the Dagestani villages of Temir-Khan-Shura (now Buynaksk, 1913) and Gazi Kumukh (1918). As an educator, al-Ghumūqī was sought out by students from throughout the North Caucasus, and during his time at the Gazi Kumukh madrasa he had 300 students.^[10] Al-Ghumuqi published his first book, a history of Dagestan between the 8th and 19th centuries titled al-Hikayat al-Madiyah, was published in 1910 by Muhammad-Mirza Mavrayev, beginning a lifelong political and business partnership between the two men.^[14]

The newspaper Jaridat Daghistan [ru] (Arabic: جريدة داغستان, lit. 'Newspaper of Dagestan') began operating in January 1913 as the mouthpiece of the Russian colonial administration in Dagestan. Despite the Russian government's intentions, the newspaper quickly became an organ for Muslim intellectuals from as far west as Circassia.^[15] Al-Ghumūqī was the de facto editor of Jaridat Daghistan,^[16] and frequently wrote in favour of his reformist viewpoints.^[15] He expressed support for the revival of ijtihad among adherents of the Shafi'i school and used the newspaper to propagate the Jadid movement's ideas throughout the North Caucasus.^[16]

During this time al-Ghumūqī, influenced by Egyptian Islamic modernist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, argued that women were incapable of possessing equal intelligence to men, and that the statement that "men are the guardians of women" would soon be scientifically proven. At the same time, he lamented that men "have used and continue to use women for themselves as captives, slaves, and servants", and praised Ottoman feminists.^[17] Like many Jadids in Dagestan, al-Ghumūqī felt that women could contribute significantly to the reform of education due to their role in raising children, and he wrote in 1916 that it was positive for women to be taught the sciences.^[18]

Al-Ghumūqī was controversial among intellectuals at the time for his opposition to armed struggle in order to liberate the Caucasus from Russian rule after the Caucasian War and the subsequent Circassian genocide; he cited the Muhammad's refusal to begin the jihad until after the hijrah as an example, saying that in both cases to declare a jihad prematurely would have caused unnecessary deaths of Muslims. He instead believed that only a revolution in Russia proper would lead to the end of colonialism.^[19]