Seyyid of the Kazan Khanate, Kul-Sharif, and the discovery of new facets of his work

Objective: To introduce into scholarly circulation a previously unknown ghazal by Kul-Sharif, the last seyyid of the Kazan Khanate, discovered in the archives of the Abu Rayhan Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan. Based on the content analysis of the ghazal, an attempt is made to clarify Kul-Sharif’s religious and philosophical views and to propose a hypothesis about the time of its composition. Research materials: This paper presents, for the first time, the poetic text in Arabic script, its transliteration, and a Russian translation. The comparative analysis involves other known works by Kul-Sharif, as well as data from Russian chronicles, the Kazan History, the writings of Andrei Kurbsky, and the works of Shihab ad-Din Marjani. Results and novelty of the research: The discovered ghazal naturally complements Kul-Sharif’s poetic corpus. In contrast to his previously known political-patriotic and didactic poems, this ghazal represents a specimen of Sufi lyric poetry. Through metaphors of the “fire of love,” “tears,” and “nakedness” (stripping off worldly attachments), it articulates the concepts of fanā (annihilation of the ego in God) and zuhd (asceticism). For the first time, based on this ghazal, the article suggests that it might have been written on the eve of Kul-Sharif’s heroic death in 1552, as the closing lines contain a call to sacrifice the most precious thing – life. The novelty of the research also lies in introducing a unique source that expands our understanding of 16th-century Tatar poetry and the spiritual culture of the Kazan Khanate

Arabic · Id, ego and super-ego · Novelty · Poetry · Sacrifice · Sufism · Cultural, Linguistic, Economic Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Linguistic, Cultural, and Literary Studies