Ismail Gasprinski

İsmail Gasprinsky also İsmail Gaspıralı (* March 21, 1851 at village Avci Bakhchisaray, † September 24, 1914 in Bakhchisaray ) was a famous krimtatarischer intellectual, educator, publisher and politician. He was one of the first Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire, who recognized that there was a need for education, cultural reforms and modernization of Turkish and Muslim communities. His surname is derived from the town of Gaspra from the Crimea.

Biography

Gasprinsky spread his ideas mainly through the newspaper Tercuman, which he founded in 1883 and was published until 1918. In his publications, he called for unity and solidarity between the Turkish people and destroyed their modernization by the Europeanization ago. He criticized the traditional system of education in Muslim schools, which focused much on religion, and he thought a new method of teaching children from to effectively read in their mother tongue and led reforms of the curricula. He developed a pan-Turkish language, which was a simplified form of the Turkish without Arabic and Persian words. He said in 1881:

"Our ignorance is the main reason for our backwardness. We do not have access to what has been discovered and what happens in Europe. We must be able to read to escape from our isolation; we must learn to European ideas from European sources. We must introduce into our primary and secondary schools compartments that allow our students this access. "

Gasprinsky launched a new magazine for women the Alem -i Nisvan (English: The World of Women ), which was edited by his daughter Şefiqa, and one for children, the Alem -i Subyan ( dt: World of children). Gasprinsky was one of the founders of the Union of Muslims ( Ittifaq -i Müslimin ), which was created in 1907 and members of the intellectuals of various Muslim Turkic peoples of the Russian Empire united. He was one of the main organizers of the first all-Russian Muslim Congress, which aimed to carry out social and religious reforms among Muslim people in Russia.

Art and literature

Bibliography: Selected Writings Relating to Ismail Bey Gaspirali

• Gasprinskij, Ismail; French and African letters; Istanbul, Isis Press, 2008