Muslims in the Nizhny Novgorod Region
First Muslims came here back in the 10th century having inherited Islam from the state of Volga Bulgaria. In the 15–16th centuries Muslim Tatars founded first settlements on the territory of today Nizhny Novgorod area.
For several centuries Islam has been one of the most widespread religions in the Nizhny Novgorod region. First Muslims came here back in the 10th century having inherited Islam from the state of Volga Bulgaria. In the 15–16th centuries Muslim Tatars founded first settlements on the territory of today Nizhny Novgorod area.
Throughout these centuries Muslim entity in the Nizhny Novgorod Region has developed several cultural and educational centers in Tatar settlements with mosques, Maktabs (Muslim elementary schools) and Madrasahs (Quran schools); Nizhny Novgorod imams and theologians have always been the religious teachers for Muslims in the region and all over the country and even far beyond its bounds.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 Muslims suffered a hard fate under the Communist regime. Anti religion, and especially anti Muslim campaigns of the Soviet leadership destroying mosques and subjecting the clergymen to repressions decimated Muslims’ religious, educational, and cultural institutions, and led to their intellectual stagnation.
The revival of Islam in Nizhny Novgorod didn’t begin until 1988 when Muslims regained the building of Nizhny Novgorod Cathedral mosque on the basis of which 3 years later, in 1991, the Nizhny Novgorod Muhtasibat — a provincial structure of the Religious Board of Muslims of the USSR — was formed.
A new period in the history of Nizhny Novgorod Muslim Ummah (community) began in 1993 when the Religious Board of Muslims for the Nizhny Novgorod region (DUMNO) with 57 member mosques and religious congregations was officially formed. It became the most powerful organization coordinating the work of five Nizhny Novgorod Region Muhtasibats, supervising religious and educational institutions and uniting all the Muslims in the region. From its very first days DUMNO was headed by Imam Khatyb of the Nizhny Novgorod Cathedral mosque Umar Khazrat Idrisov.
For over 20 years DUMNO has been successfully maintaining its educational activity along with reconstructing mosques and reviving system of educational institutions destroyed during the Soviet period, promoting Islam and moral principles of Islam adherents. Throughout these years Nizhny Novgorod Muslims have been the active part of Russian community and World Muslim entity.
Source: islamrf.ru
