Islam in Ukraine

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The Islam has in the Ukraine a long history mainly by the Crimean Tatars is embossed. On the Crimean peninsula , 250,000 predominantly Tatar or Turkic Muslims make up 12% of the population, a similarly high proportion as in Russia. Since the conflict in Ukraine, Islam has been in upheaval in Ukraine, and the Crimean Tatars have been affected by Russian control over the Crimean peninsula. There are no clear figures on the exact number of Muslims in Ukraine. In 2019, excluding the Muslim population in Crimea, around 170,000 people of Islamic faith lived in Ukraine, which corresponds to 0.4% of the total population (excluding Crimea). In 2010 there were around 410,000 Muslims (0.9%) living in all of Ukraine. Other figures from 2017 speak of around one million people belonging to Islam (2% of the total population).

Ethnic and geographical structure

The Islam has been present for about seven and a half centuries in the territory of modern Ukraine, five hundred years of which stood the entire Black Sea coast , and at times the entire southern half of the country (about south of the 49th parallel) under Muslim rule (11 of the 24 regions of Ukraine). Of these, Bakhchysarai was the center of Islam in the Crimea for three hundred years .

Today's centers are next to the capital Kiev and the second largest city Kharkiv also Donetsk , Kherson and Ismajil . The Crimea is the traditional homeland of Muslim Tatars. Like the Volga Tatars in Russia , the Sunni Crimean Tatars in Ukraine are the main representatives and disseminators of Islam among the Eastern Orthodox Slavs . Together with the Ukrainian Nogaiians and related peoples, the Tatars number 400,000–450,000 believers.

history

The first Muslims came to Kiev with the Khazars, who ruled southern Russia and eastern Ukraine , before the founding and Christianization of the Kievan Rus . Before the arrival of the Varangians , Kiev was also ruled by the Khazars, and the Slavic tribes of the region had to pay tribute. The Khazarian garrisons in Kiev and in the Crimea consisted partly of Muslim mercenaries (Arsija) and their families.

Islamization

In 1676 Repin's Zaporozhian Cossacks proudly rejected any rule of the sultan , but in 1711 Hetman Pylyp Orlyk became a Muslim

But only a minority of the Khazars had become Muslim, in the early 9th century the Khazar ruling class had preferred the adoption of Judaism to proselytizing by Islam, and after the destruction of the Khazar Empire by the Russians in the 10th century, the princes also moved Kievan Rus proposed the adoption of Orthodox Christianity to Islam. Chronicles from the 11th century confirm Muslim Pechenegs in the pay of the Kiev princes. The Kyptschaks of Sharukhan ( Kharkiv ), following the Khazars and Pechenegs , among whom was an influential Muslim minority, briefly conquered Kiev in 1093, but had to ally with the Russians in 1223 against the invading Mongols and Tartars, who occupied the Crimea in 1237.

After the Mongol storm and the fall of Kiev in 1240 dealt the fatal blow to the already broken apart Rus, in 1252 Berke Khan became the first Mongol ruler to convert to Islam and granted the Seljuk ex-Sultan Izz ad-Din asylum in the Crimea. His Tatar successors of the Golden Horde on the Volga sided with the Caliphate in Cairo in the fight against the also Mongolian Ilkhane of Persia , while in southern Ukraine Kara Nogai Khan briefly defected and occasionally ruled over the Crimea.

Crimean Khanate

See main article: Khanate of Crimea

After the collapse of the Golden Horde from 1430 and its final destruction by the Crimean Tatars in 1502, the eastern Ukrainian-Russian border area (Donetsk, Luhansk ) on the " Belgorod Line" or the " Isjum Line" fell under the rule of the Crimean until 1593 Khanate , which in turn had been under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Turks since 1475 . In Ochakiv the Turks built the vilayet Özü against the Cossacks , from 1599 Ochakiv and other formerly Muslim regions of Ukraine belonged to the Bulgarian- Turkish Eyâlet Silistria , which initially had a Crimean Tatar governor.

Loss of territory

Green areas 1 were under the rule of the Turks, orange under that of the Tatars, yellow under their suzerainty

As early as 1620–1621 and 1633–1634, Turks and Tatars tried in vain to conquer the whole of Ukraine. In northwestern Chotyn (near Kamieniec-Podolski), which was under Turkish rule with the vassal principality of Moldova until 1812, the Ottomans settled Muslim Caucasians ( Lasen ). T. can still be found today. The Turk Mustafa Bairaktar , who was Ottoman Grand Vizier until his death in 1808, was born there. Two other Turkish grand viziers ( Benderli Ali Pascha and Benderli Mehmed Selim Sırrı Pascha ), who held office between 1821 and 1828, came from the Moldavian town of Bendery (now the Russian-Ukrainian Transnistrian Republic).

The southern part of Bessarabia ( Budschak ) was under Muslim-Turkish rule from 1484 to 1812, Jedisan ( Odessa to Balta ) and Mykolaiv (west of the southern Bug ) from 1526 to 1792, even Podolia ( Vinnytsia and Khmelnitsky ) from 1672 to 1699 1 . In contrast, Zaporozhye (including Kropywnyzkyj , Dnipro and Donetsk) 1711-1739, Mykolaiv (east of the Southern Bug) and Kherson (north of the Dnieper ) until 1774, Tauria (Kherson south of the Dnieper) and the Crimea itself finally until 1783 under Muslim-Tatar Domination.

(1) including the Kherson area shown in orange on the map for chronological reasons (1774)

The Cossacks Bogdan Chmelnitzkis owed the successful solution of Ukraine from Poland-Lithuania to the Turkish-Tatar intervention and their alliance with the Crimean Khanate from 1648 onwards, and Tatar cavalry contributed significantly to the victory over the Poles. When Chmelnitzki submitted to Russia in 1654, the Crimean Tatars allied themselves with the Poles and with their auxiliary troops saved the previous enemy from destruction in the Second Northern War . Against the division of Ukraine between Russians and Poles, Hetman Petro Doroshenko called Tartars and Turks for help in 1667 and placed the hetmanate under the sovereignty of the sultan, the Polish-Lithuanian Lipka Tatars handed over Podolia to the sultan in 1672, and in 1711 the hetmans Pylyp Orlyk and Kost Hordijenko the territory of the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Tatar suzerainty before the whole region gradually fell to Russia after 1734. Until then, southern Ukraine had been the "borderland" ( Krajina ) between Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Islam, but from then on it was settled as " New Russia " by Russian Orthodox settlers and German colonists .

Population losses

The Crimean Tatars also fell victim to the Christianization and Russification that began in the late 19th century, parallel to Pan-Slavism and Pan-Russianism . After the Crimean War of 1853/1856, more and more Tatars emigrated to Turkey, from 1860/1863 and 1874, more and more Russian and Ukrainian new settlers poured into the country. Initially, the Muslim population fell in Tauria, in 1885 there were only 100,000 Tatars of around 1 million inhabitants.

In the Crimea, the Tatars made up 35% of the population in 1893, in 1927 - ten years after the October Revolution  - only 23%, and mostly in the country or in the mountains. The Stalinism forced atheism and the closure of churches and mosques , collectivization of the peasants in collective farms and state farms (and famines ) and exile in a prison camp (see also: Gulag ). On May 18, 1944, Josef Stalin had almost all Crimean Tatars deported to Siberia and Central Asia because of their collaboration with German troops ; Tatar Islam in the Ukraine came to a temporary end. Of the 6,400 Turks in 1926/1927, only just under 2,600 lived in Crimea in 1970; until 1988 the Muslim population on the peninsula was 0.1%. Only with Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost and the resulting collapse of the Soviet Union did many Tatars return and make up 12% of the Crimean population today.

Timeline (summary)

  • 8th century - a minority of the Khazars first adopted Islam, but the majority then accepted Judaism
  • 10th century - the Kievan Rus destroys the Khazar Empire, rejects Islam and becomes Christian Orthodox
  • 12th century - a minority of the Kyptschaks in Sharukhan (Kharkov) become Muslim
  • 13th century - Mongols and Tatars destroy the Kievan Rus, adopt Islam and settle in Crimea
  • 15th century - the Mongol Golden Horde collapses, the Crimea and the Black Sea coast come under Turkish rule
  • 16th century - Khanate of the Crimean Tatars on the defensive, loss of eastern Ukraine to Russia
  • 17th century - Turkish win and loss of Podolia
  • 18th century - Tatar loss of Zaporozhye, southern Ukraine and finally Crimea in 1783
  • 19th century - Turkish loss of Jedisan or Bessarabia, Russification of Crimea, but Tatar reform movement under Ismail Gazprinsky in Bakhchysarai
  • 20th century - population decline and deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 for forced labor to Siberia and Central Asia and their struggle for self-assertion in Ukraine, which has been independent since 1991

Division of Muslims

In the struggle for equality in Crimea, the Crimean Tatars predominantly sympathize with the Ukrainian government or the predominantly Orthodox or Catholic Ukrainians, while the predominantly Orthodox Russians and Russian-speaking Muslims (converts, North Caucasians , Azerbaijanis ) possibly more sympathize with Russia .

The community of Muslims in Ukraine is therefore organizationally divided. The Crimean Tatars dominate the much larger spiritual administration of the Muslims of the Crimea in Simferopol (Mufti Emir Ali Efendi), most of the remaining Muslims have come together in Kiev (under the Lebanese Imam Tamim Achmed Mohammed Mutakh) to form the smaller spiritual administration of the Muslims of Ukraine .

There are no successful political interest groups (apart from a nationalist Tatar party in Crimea), even if the party of Muslims of Ukraine supported the election campaign of pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian Viktor Yanukovych at the end of 2004 . This Islamic party is the powerless political arm of the Spiritual Center of the Muslim Communities of Ukraine , a third organization in Donetsk (Tatar-dominated secession of the Kiev administration under Sheikh Rashid Bragin). The Crimean Tatars helped pro-American candidate Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency . With their Tatar- language newspaper they are organized in 12 of the 24 regions, the other Muslims with a Russian- language newspaper and in 10 regions. The withdrawal of the Ukrainian occupation troops from Iraq by President Yushchenko has been interpreted as a concession to the Crimean Tatars who criticized the Iraq war, as these Muslims had helped him take power.

The Crimean Tatars are conservative , but traditionally oriented towards the West. Very close ties exist with today's Turkey , where a large number of Turks have Tatar family trees. In return, a large number of Turks live in the Crimea, Turkish companies invest in Ukraine, and the mosque in Simferopol is under the influence of Turkish ulamas . The rather small number of Chechen refugees in Ukraine leans more towards their government in exile and Saudi Arabia . The more liberal Russian-speaking Muslims orientate themselves eastwards towards Russia and the Muslim CIS republics of Central Asia, where a large part of them have their roots, as well as towards Arab states and z. T. also on Iran . Some Russian, Volgatar and CIS Muslims follow rival clerical administrations and muftis in Russia ( Moscow and Ufa ).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "The Crimean Tatars are afraid" - n-tv.de; accessed on September 27, 2014
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ "Religious Demographics in Ukraine" - US State Department
  4. ↑ "Muslims in Ukraine: Neighbors or Brothers?" - islam.in.ua
  5. ↑ Andreas Roth: Chasaren - The forgotten large empire of the Jews, pages 39 and 59f. Melzer-Verlag Neu-Isenburg 2006

See also

literature

  • Mykola Kyjuško: Islam on Ukrainian territory. In: History of Religions in Ukraine. Kiev 1999
  • Mykola Kyrjuško: Muslims in independent Ukraine. In: Man and the World 5–6. Kiev 2000
  • Mykola Kyrjuško (co-author): Islam in Ukraine. In: Religion and Politics in Ukraine. Kiev 2000
  • Ion Gumenâi: Istoria ținutului Hotin de la origini până la 1806. Chișinău 2002

Web links