By Inci Bowman
Gaspirali remains a towering figure not only in the history of Crimean Tatars but also in the rise of Islamic modernist movement in the Russian Empire. His early realization that all was not well with the Turkic and Islamic people living in Russia led him to undertake a program of action in the areas of education, language and social reform, and politics. He devised a new method of teaching children how to read effectively in their mother tongue and introduced curricular reforms. Through the newspaper he founded, Terjüman / Perevodchik (1883-1918) and other publications, he called for unity and solidarity among the Turkic people, as expressed in his well-known motto, "Unity in language, thought, and action." Following the 1905 Revolution in Russia, Gaspirali participated actively in all the Turkic congresses and was one of the founders of the Union of Muslims (Ittifak-i Müslümanlar) in 1907. Believing that better education of women was a key to bringing the Islamic society into the mainstream of modern life, Gaspirali remained a supporter of women's rights. He initiated a new journal for women, Alem-i Nisvan (World of Women), edited by his daughter Sefika, as well as a publication for children, Alem-i Sibyan. In his later years, he turned his attention to organizing an all-Muslim congress, with the ultimate aim of introducing social and religious reforms in the Islamic world, and increasingly got interested in discussions of Turkist issues. A clever and patient man, Gaspirali tried to steer a careful path in order not to anger his opponents (the Russian authorities and the Islamic establishment), and his influence on the nationalist awakening among the Turkic people and the implementation of educational reforms was profound.
May 1998
Allworth, Edward A., Ed. The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland, 2nd. Ed., Revised and Expanded. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. The following chapters relate to Gaspirali:
Chapter 2. "A Model Leader for Asia, Ismail Gaspirali" by Alan W. Fisher.
Chapter 3. "Ismail Bey Gasprinskii (Gaspirali): The Discourse of Modernism and the Russians" by Edward J. Lazzerini.
Chapter 7. "Documents about Forming a Modern Identity."
This chapter includes three documents: 1. Translation of Gaspirali's Russko-vostochnoe soglashenie (1896) by Edward J. Lazzerini; 2. "Isma'il bey hazratlari ila sohbat," an interview with Gaspirali that appeared in Ayina, 27 September 1914, translated by Edward Allworth; 3. "Ismail Bey Gasprinski, 1851-1914," a long obituary that appeared in four installments in Shura,1 November thru 15 December 1914, translated by Alan W. Fisher.
Bennigsen, Alexandre A. Ismail Bey Gasprinski (Gaspraly) and Origins of the Jadid Movement in Russia. Oxford: The Society for Central Asian Studies, 1985. (Reprint Series no. 6; includes the Russian text of Gaspirali's Russkoe musul'manstvo, 1881.)
Devlet, Nadir. Ismail Bey Gaspirali (1851-1914). Ankara: Basbakanlik Basimevi, 1988.
Ekinci, Yusuf. Gaspirali Ismail. Ankara: Ocak Yayinlari, 1997.
Kirimer, Cafer Seydahmet. Gaspirali Ismail Bey. Istanbul, 1934
Kirimli, Hakan. National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars (1905-1916). Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996.
Lazzerini, Edward James. Ismail Bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1878-1914. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation. Seattle: University of Washington, 1973.
The works by Bennigsen, Devlet, Ekinci, Kirimli and Lazzerini include bibliographies that list books, periodical articles, unpublished archival sources (correspondence, memoirs, official documents), and dissertations relating to Gaspirali and his time, as well as lists of Gaspirali's own publications.