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Masguda Shamsutdinova: Preface to the book about “Tatarskaya Kargala”
N.G. Chernyshevsky states: "A travelogue integrates elements of history, statistics, and science. It vividly captures, in an accessible and engaging form, the thoughts, emotions, and adventures arising from an individual's encounters with unfamiliar people. A travelogue is simultaneously a novel, a collection of anecdotes, a historical record, and a discourse on politics."
Who were they, and in what vanished hour, that dared to traverse the restless winds of the steppe, drinking deep from the silvered Sakmar, their souls alight with the fervor of ages? Tribes, clans, nations—sifted through the fine, unyielding mesh of time’s eternal reckoning. Our tale, luminous and wistful, tells of those who, to cradle their faith and the soft cadence of their tongue, set forth on distant pilgrimages, exiles treading barefoot across the boundless steppe, seeking haven in the tender embrace of Tatar Kargaly, nestled in the heart of Orenburg’s Sakmar realm.
These people of Tatar Kargaly, keepers of a language pure as starlight, bear it forward to generations yet unborn, a beacon undimmed. I hold an unshakable conviction that they are the radiant gem in the diadem of the Tatar spirit. Their village, poised at the very pulse of Orenburg, rests along the Sakmar’s enchanting banks, where the steppe sprawls in quiet splendor, its divine hues stroking the beholder’s gaze with celestial tenderness. Nature, in her boundless generosity, has strewn every shade across this land, a tapestry woven with the dreams of eternity.
The sorrow of centuries lingers in the hills, seeping into the earth, stretching toward a horizon that eludes the eye’s grasp, where the past and future entwine in silent communion. It was here that Sagit, the ataman, paused in his quest for a place to root his nascent settlement, arrested by the ineffable beauty of this hallowed ground.
And oh, our Sakmar’s banks, how they shimmer with an almost unbearable loveliness! White yurts rise like fleeting visions, built for the summers’ golden embrace. Wherever one wanders, friends are the true necessity—rushing forth to tether the horses, their laughter mingling with the steppe’s endless song.
Our Sakmar’s banks, so wondrously fair,
Where beauty blooms in the summer’s glare.
White yurts we raise ‘neath the season’s spell,
To house our dreams where the warm winds dwell.
Wherever you roam, friends must be near,
Their laughter calls through the steppe’s frontier.
They rush to greet, with a joyful cry,
To tether your steeds ‘neath the open sky.
By the decree of Catherine II, Sagit Khayalin, a man of indomitable will, arrives in these lands to found the village of Kargaly. Hailing from the Sabinsky region (now Sabinsky District, Tatarstan), this Tatar youth, Sagit Khayalin, is cherished and revered in Kargaly, remembered fondly as “Sagit the Ataman.” Such reverence is well-earned, for the order he established held firm until only recent years, when its foundations began to fray. According to Mukhtar Davletyarov, the kolkhoz chairman, in times past, outsiders dared not approach the village within the range of a rifle’s shot.
In the early eighteenth century, unable to endure the persecutions of the Christian missionary Luka Kanashevich, Muslim Tatars—among them Khaernisa Khayalina, born in 1906, who declared, “We are Tatars, once recorded as Muslims”—streamed to these lands in droves, following Sagit the Ataman. Swiftly, houses of adobe and stone rose in Sagit’s settlement, their forms taking shape with resolute purpose. The structures of the Soviet era have long since crumbled into dust, yet the buildings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries endure, as if mocking time itself, standing defiant against the erosions of modernity.
When asked, “Why is your village called Tatar Kargaly?” (Karga from Tatar is a“Crow”) the answer drifts back to Sagit the Ataman, who declared, “When I opened my eyes at dawn, I named it for what I saw.” Perhaps he slept beneath the open sky, and upon waking, beheld a flock of crows slicing through the morning. Indeed, this land teems with crows, but what truly astonishes is the countless swarm of flies.
We, a group of students from the Kazan Conservatory, led by me, Masguda Shamsutdinova, journeyed to Tatar Kargaly in Orenburg to gather the treasures of folk music. When Mukhtar, the kolkhoz leader ( a contraction of коллективное хозяйство, "collective ownership", kollektivnoye khozaystvo is the name given to large farms that existed in the Soviet Union, and that were organised as a cooperative), grasped our mission, he issued a command: “Provide them with meals as you would for the harvesters tending the fields.” Could there be greater honor in 1991, when the Soviet Union’s collapse cast shadows over our student days? Those who joined this expedition now thrive in scholarly circles of folklore in Kazan, Moscow, Petersburg, and even abroad in Belgium and Germany, their work a testament to that journey.
When asked, “Why is your village called Tatar Kargaly?” (Kargaly means „having crows” – SM) the answer drifts back to Sagit the Ataman, who declared, “When I opened my eyes at dawn, I named it for what I saw.” Perhaps he slept beneath the open sky, and upon waking, beheld a flock of crows slicing through the morning. Indeed, this land teems with crows, but what truly astonishes is the countless swarm of flies.
We, a group of students from the Kazan Conservatory, led by me, Masguda Shamsutdinova, journeyed to Tatar Kargaly in Orenburg to gather the treasures of folk music. When Mukhtar, the kolkhoz leader, grasped our mission, he issued a command: “Provide them with meals as you would for the harvesters tending the fields.” Could there be greater honor in 1991, when the Soviet Union’s collapse cast shadows over our student days? Those who joined this expedition now thrive in scholarly circles of folklore in Kazan, Moscow, Petersburg, and even abroad in Belgium and Germany, their work a testament to that journey.
The people of the village are radiant, open-hearted, brimming with curiosity. Despite the iron road from Kazan and other paths, ties with Tatarstan are nearly severed. Performers rarely visit, and in 1991, the bookstore held no Tatar books. Yet the villagers are learned, their history rich—once home to twelve mosques, eleven of which were razed with tractors, a labor of destruction that lingered painfully. Each mosque, they say, housed two mullahs, and nearly all had madrasas. “Seventy mullahs passed through this village,” recalled Nuretdin Salimov, born in 1897.
The village brims with souls who cradle their people’s treasures in their hearts. Our encounter with Rashid Iskandarov, a scholar and history teacher from the nearby village of Chebenny, born of Kargaly’s lineage, illuminated our quest. He knew Tatar Kargaly’s history as intimately as his own childhood, guiding our search with profound direction.
A century ago, fifteen thousand souls filled Tatar Kargaly. They say the village was as abundant as the crows that inspired its name, scattering over time like those birds, yet destined to gather again. And gather they will, for the spirit of Tatar identity burns fiercely here. From the depths of memory’s springs, I tasted their pure droplets, captivated by the melody of their speech. I recorded the ancient words of their ancestors, preserving the local dialect untouched, and now offer it to you, unadorned, as it lives.
Masguda Shamsutdinova
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