XXXI Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 23–25 июня 2021 г. Т. 1

Россия и Восток. К 100-летию политических и культурных связей новейшего времени. Т. 1 31 СЕКЦИЯ II • SECTION II ИСТОЧНИКОВЕДЕНИЕ И ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ АРАБСКИХ СТРАН HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SOURCE STUDIES OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES Halil İbrahim Erol (University of Kırklareli, Turkey) Azhari scholar Muhammad Ayyad Al-Tantawi and his travelogue of Russia The first and most probably, the only Al-Azhar scholar, Sheikh Muhammad Ayyad Al-Tantawi (d. 1861), whom Ottoman governor of Egypt Muhammad Ali dispatched to Russia in 1840 to teach Arabic at the Institute of Oriental Languages, St. Petersburg University and at the same time to investigate the Russian culture, traditions and military reforms, Sheikh Tantawi wrote a detailed account entitled Tuhfat al-adhkiya’bi-akhharbilad al-Rusiya [The Precious Gift of the Sharp-Witted in the News about the Russian Land] based on the first ten years of his stay in Russia. His travelogue, after Tahtawi’s, was the second one written in that period about the lands out of Ottoman territories. From this point, Tantawi’s account has unique and indispensable importance. Tuhfat al-adhkiya’ provides detailed information about Tsarist Russia, its historical background, its culture, the manners and customs of the people. But as compared to Tahtawi’s account, Tuhfat al-adhkiya’ had not been published for a long time. For this reason, unlike Rifaa Tahtawi who stayed in Paris five years (1826–1831) and wrote a travelogue, Muhammad Tantawi and his travelogue had relatively no functional impact onMuhammadAli’s modernization policies and Egyptian society at that time. Due to that fact, opinions of Tantawi as an Azhari-Muslim scholar should take into consideration by itself, especially in terms of intellectual perspective.