Biography
Shamil Shikhaliev holds the position of post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is currently involved in the project “Probing the Horizons of a Daghestani Polymath: ‘Alī al-Ghumūqī and His Library (1878-1943)”, which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Prior to this, from 2020 to 2023, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow within the ERC Starting Project “The Muslim Individual in Imperial and Soviet Russia” (https://mind-archives.com/ ) at the University of Amsterdam. Between 2000 and 2020, Shikhaliev held various positions within the Department of Oriental Studies at the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Ethnography in Daghestan, Russia, starting as a junior researcher and progressing to senior and leading researcher roles. Additionally, he served as the head of the Department of Islamic Manuscripts at the same institute from 2008 to 2018. Throughout the period from 1998 to 2023, Shamil Shikhaliev actively participated in annual archaeographic expeditions aimed at documenting, localizing, and cataloguing Islamic manuscripts found in the Eastern Caucasus and Volga-Urals regions.
Main Areas of Research
- Islam in the East Caucasus (medieval and modern periods), esp. Sufism, Islamic law, and history
- Islamic reformism (Jadidism)
- Islamic networks of education
- Historical-philological study of Islamic manuscripts
Selected Publications
Books
- Epigrafika nekropolia utsmiev v Kala-Koreishe [Epigraphy of the Utsmi necropolis in Kala-Koreish] (Makhachkala: Mavraev, 2019) [co-authored with M.A. Musaev & M.G. Shekhmagomedov].
- Katalog arabskikh rukopisei i staropechatnykh knig: kollektsiia Usmana-khadzhi iz Keleba [Catalogue of Islamic manuscripts and old-printed books: Collection of ‘Uthman-hajji of Keleb] (Makhachkala: Alef, 2019) [co-authored with A.R. Navruzov, A.R. Shikhsaidov, M.G. Shekhmagomedov,]
- Iz istorii zhizni i tvorchestva Ali Kaiaeva i Saifulla-kadi Bashlarova: dokumenty i materialy [From the life and work history of Ali Kayaev and Saifulla-kadi Bashlarov: documents and materials] (Makhachkala: Rizo-Press, 2018) [co-authored with A.N. Navruzov].
- Fikkh i musul’manskii obychai v rossiiskom Dagestane: istochniki i issledovaniia [Fiqh and the Muslim customary law in Russian Daghestan: sources and studies] (Saint Petersburg: Prezidentskaia biblioteka, 2017) [co-authored with V. Bobrovnikov and M. Shekhmagomedov].
- Torzhestvo svyatosti i krasoty: Korany Dagestana. Katalog rukopisnykh Koranov iz sobraniia Rukopisnogo fonda IIAE DNTs RAN [“Sanctity and beauty: Qur’ans from Daghestan. A catalogue of Qur’ans manuscript from the collection of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Daghestani Scientific Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences”] (Nizhnii Novgorod: Medina, 2008)
Articles
- “Archives of Discrimination. The Evolution of Muslim Book Collections in Daghestan," Journal of Islamic Manuscripts (2024) 82–109 [co-authored with Alfrid Bustanov]
- “Building an Archival Persona: The Transformation of Ijāza Culture in Russia, 1880s–1920s,” Journal of Sufi Studies 12 (2023), 216–252 [co-authored with Alfrid Bustanov and Ilona Chmilevskaya].
- “The Qur’ans of Dagestan: Practices of Copying, Using, and Translating,” European Muslims and the Qur’an Practices of Translation, Interpretation and Commodification, edited by Gerard Wiegers, Gulnaz Sibgatullina (De Gruyter, 2023), 117-142 [co-authored with Ilona Chmilevskaya].
- “Continuities and Complexities of the Islamic Discourse in Daghestan from the 1920s to the 1980s: What the Soviets Did not Know about their own Islam,” R. Sela, P. Sartori, D. DeWeese (eds), Muslim Authority in Central Eurasia (Leiden: Brill, 2022), 277-332.
- “Taqlīd and Ijtihād over the Centuries: The Debates on Islamic Legal Theory in Daghestan, 1700s – 1920,” Paolo Sartori and Daniella Ross (eds), Sharia in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia (1550-1900) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 239-280.
- “Muslim Reformism in Dagestan (1900–1930)”, State, Religion and Church 5 (1), 2018, 35-63.