SUMMARY:

The article by Diliara Usmanova offers the first comprehensive treatment of the practice of population registration and vital statistics of the Muslims of the Russian Empire through “metrical books” (parish registers). The author argues that the institution of Muslim parish registers reflected the hybrid nature of the imperial legal regime, which not only incorporated different confessional and regional systems of law but also practiced a kind of “outsourcing” by recruiting local elites to communicate administrative assignments to culturally diverse populations in their language and through their customary institutions. This thesis is unfolded against the background of early Modern and Modern European patterns of vital statistics and identification of the population, all originating in parish registers. At the same time, Usmanova points out the absence of such a practice in the Ottoman Empire, which collected population statistics through state censuses rather than Muslim confessional institutions. Russian Muslims not only embraced the Christian Church institution of parish registers, but turned it into an instrument of contestation with the state over religious and, later, national autonomy of the Muslim community. The article reconstructs the history of the introduction of parish registers for the Russian Muslims, the content of registers and the specifics of bookkeeping by clergy, the controversy over the language of documentation, and the problem of control over the vital statistics by the state and the Muslim religious elites. Usmanova shows how, in its need for population statistics and identification, the modernizing imperial state depended on the Muslim clergy, and at the same time resented granting them more administrative authority. On the other hand, the growing complexity and internal diversity within the Muslim community itself contributed to rising appreciation of the practical importance of the parish registers and competition for control over them among rival factions. Eventually, parish registers emerged as a principal institution of religious and national (Tatar) identification and cohesion. It was only in 1918 when the Soviet state officially outlawed parish registers as the basis for identification of individuals and population statistics, despite the fierce protests of Muslims.