Affiliation
Kazan Federal University
Biography
Leila Almazova studies the intellectual history of the Volga Tatars, especially in the early twentieth century. She received her PhD from the Kazan State University in 2002 and, the following year, published on this basis the monograph Human Dilemma in the Legacy of Tatar Theologians (Late Nineteenth – Early Twentieth Centuries), awarded by the Tatarstan Presidential Award for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2004. In 2010-2011, she was Fulbright Invited Research Fellow at the University of Michigan.
Among her fields of research: the study, edition and translation of the theological works by Ziya al-Din Kamali (1873–1942). Leila Almazova and Rashid Kadyrov must publish in 2023 a translation of his monumental Falsafa-i islamiyya [‘The Philosophy of Islam’, 1909–11]. Currently, Leila Almazova is an Associate Professor at the Department of Arabic, Islamic and Asian Studies of the Institute of International Relations, Kazan Federal University. For several years, she has turned to the issue of Islamic education in post-Soviet Tatarstan, analysing the influence of different transnational trends and ideologies on the transmission of knowledge in this republic’s madrasas and other Islamic higher educational institutions.
Publications Related to the RedGold Programme:
Almazova, L., Sufism and Modern Muslim Ethics in 14th/20th Century Russian Islamic Thought, in B. Orfali, A. Khalil, Mohammed Rustom, eds., Mysticism and Ethics in Islam, Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 2022: 407-425
Almazova, L., Akhunov, A., ‘In Search of ‘Traditional Islam’ in Tatarstan: Between National Project and Universalist Theories’, Časopis za interdisciplinarne studije, 6/1 (2019): 11–46
Almazova, L., ‘Critics of Faith Concepts (Iman) in Traditional Islamic Dogmatic Literature and the Question of the Unity of the Muslim Ummah in the Work of Ziyaaddin Kamali’s “Religious Establishments” (Dini Tadbirlar)’, Islamic Studies, 9/4 (2018): 37–50 (in Russian)
Almazova, L., ‘The Phenomenon of the Shamil Mosque of Kazan: The Sufi Origins of Healing Practices’, in D. Brylev, ed., Islam in a Multi-Cultural World: Islamic Movements and the Formation of Islamic Ideologies in the Information Age, Kazan: Kazan University Printing House, 2014: 253–272 (in Russian)
