Book chapter
Как звали думного дьяка Ивана Елеазаровича Цыплятева (из истории имянаречения XVI столетия)
The case of a Sufi shrine of the Dagestani origin in Turkey examined in the article relates to the history of shared transnational Sufi networks. The naqshbandiyya-halidiya brotherhood of the Ottoman origin once moved from the Middle East to Russia’s borderlands in the Eastern Caucasus and then came back to the Ottoman Empire from the North Caucasus. Dagestani Sufi networks and holy places represent a specific kind of interactions between the Muslim elites in the Middle East, the North Caucasus, the Volga-Ural region, and Anatolia from the late nineteenth century up today. The biographies of Muhammad and Sharaf ad-Din from Kikuni buried in Turkey are well documented in various written sources, epigraphs, and oral histories. They participated in the 1877 Uprising, were exiled in the Volga region, and then immigrated to the Ottoman Empire. Their biographies show that the Naqshbandiya-Khalidiyya often crossed political boundaries and ideological barriers established in the region during the demarcation of the possessions of the Ottoman Turkey and the Russian Empire. The exchange of territories and subjects between Turkey and Russia over the past one and a half centuries led to the emergence of hybrid identities. The article traces a micro-history of an identity in a muhajir (immigrant) village community in Western Anatolia. Contrary to popular belief, the Sufi brotherhood never represented a single elusive player in the “Big Game” between the Great Powers. Rather, it included numerous rival factions whose leaders formed complex relations with each other and with local political elites. Sufi ritual networks were and still are closely connected to more local networks of sacred sites (ziyarats) in the regions.
The article examines long-lasting confrontation between Spanish Inquisition and Conversos (and, later, Sephardi Jews in Portuguese Diaspora) as a contest in such intangible values as sanctity, honour and merits deserving memory of next generations. These values were believed to be acquired first and foremost through martyrdom. Martyrological theme and potlatch-like scenarios are traced through a wide range of sources: inquisitorial records, Sephardi and Spanish chronicles and Portuguese poetry.
This study focuses on the interaction between Russian princes and nomadic Cumans (Qipčaqs, Polovcians). The starting point of our work are names and family ties of individual Cumans captured in the oldest Russian chronicles which represent "minimum quanta" of the historical information. N. M. Karamzin in the notes to his History drew attention to the fact that some of the names of the Cuman families representatives are obviously associated with Russia. These "Russian" names, in our opinion, are the most important indicator of the cross-dynastic interaction, contacts between Russia and the nomadic world. What is the composition of the corpus of Russian names of Cuman elite representatives? In essence, it consists of only a very limited number of anthroponyms: Yuri (George), Daniil, Roman, Gleb, Yaropolk, Davyd (?), Vasili. It is crucial that all of these names are regularly used as dynastic by the Rurikids in the 11th — beginning of 13th century. Most of the names, borrowed by Cumans from Russians, are Christian names. At the same time attention is drawn to the non-trivial distribution reflected in the information of sources; while discovering Christian names of some representatives of the highest Cuman nobility, we do not find any mention of the fact that any of the owners of these names, their fathers and other close male relatives took baptism. On the contrary, they are consistently characterized as pagans. Moreover, ancient chronicles contain no reports of Cuman princes taking baptism until the beginning of the Tataro-Mongol invasion. Interestingly, Christian names of those few Cumans of whose conversion we can speak more or less confidently cannot be found in any records, whether it is a Cuman wife of a Russian prince, an anonymous monk of Kiev-Pechersk Monastery, an author of an inscription on the church wall or a powerful Cuman Prince, who was baptized on the eve of the Battle of the Kalka. In our work we have sought to demonstrate that the cause of the appearence of Russian names in this environment is a cross-dynastic, intergenic anthroponymic communication, a desire to consolidate the alliance with the Russian princes, but not a conversion of the male representatives of the Cuman elite. The set of "Russian" names used by Cumans allows us to determine the circle of their "anthroponymical donors" among the Rurikids and identify a number of rules and laws on which this communication in the language of names was carried out.
The article investigates the ways in which the celebration of the name day (imeniny) of Russian princes or their entourages was presented in the Russian chronicles. The custom of celebrating the name day was firmly rooted in the Russian princely environment. For a chronicle narrative, the very rootedness of this custom and the number of its associated actions plays an important role—it is this rootedness that makes stories told in the chronicles quite opaque to the modern reader. A prince’s Christian name and the day of his patron saint were considered to be important background knowledge for the audience of the medieval compiler. There were, apparently, clear ideas about appropriate behavior for prince or a person from his environment on his name day or on the eve of this day but, on the other hand, such assumptions explain why this kind of “normal” behavior rarely forms the subject of special reflection in the chronicles. It is not only a description of the celebration itself that might be very informative, whether it be a church service, a ceremonial feast with various relatives, or an exchange of gifts, but also the description of acts and deeds that were undertaken specifically on a prince’s name day. Therefore, particular attention is given here to stories about undue or inappropriate behavior on this special day. The paper deals with the function and nature of such episodes in the broader context of historiographical narrative.