Our summer school is designed to explore a range of scholarly approaches to the hermeneutics of records and the formation of archives on Islam in the territories of the former Russian Empire in the early modern and modern period. Here the term “archive” is used in a broad and all-encompassing sense, which includes all possible activities of record-keeping. The goal of this initiative is to draw attention to practices of information-gathering and knowledge production on the Muslim communities inhabiting the vast area encompassing Inner Asia, Siberia, Central Asia and the Caucasus from the fall of the Khanate of Kazan (1552) to the end of the Russian Empire. In addition, by bringing archival science into conversation with Russian and Islamic studies, our summer school promotes an extended reflection on the institutions and the individuals (archivists, historians, Orientalists, dragomans, and go-betweens of all walks of life) who played a significant role in the creation of the imperial repositories that today preserve records about Islam and Muslim communities in Central Eurasia.

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