July 25, 2008
Well,
I've finished my first week of work in Ufa and it has been really
great. The folks in the archive have been friendly, and I've been able
to get through a good amount of material here without being
overwhelmed. All in all, there wasn't all that much that I needed to
look through here, since I'd worked here for a few weeks back in 2005.
However, there had been a number of questions which had come up since
then and which I wanted to investigate here, and I think the two weeks
that I'll end up working in the archive this month will be enough time
to find whatever the archive has to help me answer them.
Today started off with some good news. Through a friend of a friend I was able to locate the personal fond
of Rizaeddin Fahreddin, who features prominently in my work. I'd heard,
through a number of channels back in Kazan, that his papers were
located here somewhere, but I'd been given conflicting reports as to
where. It turns out they're in the History Institute, which opens up on
August 4. That works out well, since the archive closes at the end of
July. From what I understand, most of the material here was produced
during the post-revolutionary era, when Fahreddin was the (second)
müfti of the Soviet Union. Thus, the material probably won't be too
much help for my current project (which is on the late imperial
period), but could prove helpful later on. Indeed, I've been collective
material on the Soviet muftiate for some time, and might do something
more serious on this topic at a later date--although I guess whether or
not that happens will probably depend upon someone thinking I'm good
enough to be given a job somewhere.
Since
the archive is closed on Fridays I went to the "National" Library
instead. Like the National Library of Tatarstan in Kazan, it's
basically a municipal library which was transformed into a national
institution once Bashkortostan became a republic in the immediate
post-Soviet era. Also like the National Library in Kazan, the National
Library in Ufa doesn't really have all that much of interest to me. I
looked through their manuscript guidebook--they've actually got a
number of manuscripts that would be of interest to scholars working on
Islamic jurisprudence, but not too much that relates to the work I'm
doing now. As far as their (Arabic script) book holdings are concerned,
I still don't know what they've got, since the catalogues are closed
right now (they're doing repairs in the catalogue room). However,
Ildar--the director of the rare book and manuscript reading
room--brought me a sampling of books that they had, and promised that
the rare book catalogues would be open by Monday. That's fine with me.
Among the books Ildar brought me, one of them--an 1897 history of the
Orenburg Assembly by Muhammadselim Ishmuhammadoğlu--seems useful, and I
made a copy of it.
The
rest of the time I just chatted with Ildar, who was the first person
here that I was able to engage in Bashkir conversation. I don't really
know Bashkir, of course, but it's close enough to Tatar that I can
speak Tatar and fake the grammatical endings while pretty much
understanding what is being said to me. As I may have mentioned in an
earlier post, I've been watching Bashkir television this week and
haven't had too much trouble comprehending things, and Ildar was easy
to talk to. He's a Turkologist who did his BA and master's degree in
Ankara, so he speaks Turkish and knows Tatar as well. He was also good
about correcting my Tatarisms and speaking to me mainly in Bashkir,
which was nice. We talked for a while and then, after the library
closed, he took me to a couple of bookstores in search of
Russian-Bashkir dictionaries and other works on local history. I bought
a couple of books--one on Bashkir grammar and a dictionary--and looked
at a bunch of others. The bookstore scene here isn't nearly as good as
the one in Kazan (where the government of Tatarstan subsidizes a
thriving book publishing industry, and late imperial history is an
especially popular subject), but they still had a number of interesting
works. Ildar says that there are some even bigger bookstores elsewhere
in the city, so I'll refrain from buying until I've had the chance to
check them out as well.
One
week into things I feel like I've settled in pretty well. I like my
routine, for one thing. I've been getting up early, working for a few
hours at home, and then heading off to the archive (or to the library,
as I did today) for the afternoon. After work I've been going to one of
a couple of different cafes in town for a late lunch/early dinner. My
current fave is a place called Mado, which sells ice cream but I think
has no relationship to the famous ice cream chain in Turkey. This Mado,
moreover, has lahmacun and kebab and other foods, and while the food
isn't quite what one would expect in Turkey, it is very clean and quite
good. There's also an American-style diner in town which has a great
patio and serves B- hamburgers and pizza. The diner has draft beer
(Mado is alcohol-free), which can be nice after a day reading archival
documents.
The
weather has been very hot, in the low 90s every afternoon, low 80s at
night. I've been walking a lot and having only one big meal a day,
eating a lot of watermelon (the ones I've bought have all been from
Kazakhstan). I've lost a few pounds, which has been good, and generally
feel pretty positive about the way things have been going here so far.
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