From an «aBC book with prayers» to the primer of a new type: Tatar primers of the late 19^th-early 20^th century

Abstract

© 2014 eum (Edizioni Università di Macerata, Italy). From the second half of 19^th to early 20^th century, due to the distribution of the renovationist ideology of Jadidism, the life of Russian Muslims underwent profound changes. In the case of Tatars, these changes, among other things, came through the discovery of the childhood culture, reforming Tatar schools and textbooks. The new primers (alphabet books) based on a more advanced phonetic method of teaching, taught Tatar instead of Arabic or Turki, included secular texts and were often illustrated. They substituted the former religious primers which utilized the letter-by-letter reading principle. This article follows the process of creation and adoption of new Tatar primers in the educational space of the Kazan governorate and other regions of Russia at the turn of the 20^th century. In this paper, we aim to reveal the background, main features and the outcomes of this process.