Sadri Maksudi Arsal
| Sadri Maksudi Arsal | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1878 Taşsu, outside of Kazan |
| Died | February 20, 1957 (aged 78) İstanbul |
| Resting place | Zincirlikuyu, İstanbul |
| Nationality | Turco-Tatar |
| Citizenship | Turkish |
| Alma mater | Sorbonne University |
| Spouse(s) | Kamile Rami Arsal |
| Children | Adile Ayda, Naile Turhan |
| Parent(s) | Nizmeddin Molla, ? |
Sadreddin Nizamettinovich Maksudov or Sadri Maksudi Arsal (1878–February 20, 1957) was a prominent Tatar and Turkish statesman, scholar and thinker.
Sadreddin Nizamettinovich Maksudov was born in 23 july 1878 in Taşsu, outside of Kazan, the son of a mullah, and the younger brother of Hadi Maksudi, the well-known Jadidist. After the traditional mektep and medreseh education, he took the (then) unusual step of entering the Russian Teachers' College in Kazan (for which he was much criticized by his community at the time), then studied law in Paris.
Four years later, in 1906, he returned to Russia and began political activities that displayed a liberal nationalist tendency. Maksudi became the leader of the Muslim faction in the Russian parliament.
Sadri Maksudi Arsal was married to Kamile, the daughter of the gold-mining Rameev family of Orenburg, had two children - Adile and Naile. He died in Istanbul in 1957. He was interred at the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery in Istanbul.
On his return to Russia in 1906, thanks to the rights conferred in 1905 to all the subjects of the Czar, he entered politics in order to voice issues concerning the Tatar people and the Muslim community. He found himself elected at a very young age as a deputy of the (liberal) Kadet Party to the II. and III. Dumas. At the Duma, he favored a centrally administered cultural autonomy for all Russia's Muslims until it was apparent that the Volga Tatars, who mainly promoted this solution, had been abandoned by the other Turkic Muslims of the Russian Empire.
Political Leader/Statesman – Maksudi was the leader of the first state formation (in the 20th century) in his native Idel-Ural State since the fall of the Kazan Khanate to the Moscovite princedom in 1552. Like all the other peoples within czarist Russia, the Turkic peoples of Russia undertook political ventures with the advent of the 1917 Revolution. After the various “Moslem congresses” taking place in 1917, during which different and conflicting opinions were expressed concerning the political future of the Turkic peoples of Russia, the “National-Cultural Autonomy of the Turco-Tatars of Inner Russia and Siberia” was proclaimed in Ufa (in present-day Bashkortostan) on 22 July 1917, with a constitution drafted by Maksudi. General elections were held soon thereafter and a National Assembly (Milli Meclis) was convened in November. Maksudi was elected its president. The formation of a “National Council” composed of three ministries, also headed by Maksudi, followed. The autonomous government was gathering momentum with a project to turn itself into the independent "Idel-Ural State". But this was not to be. The Bolsheviks would not allow it. The National Assembly would stop convening and the National Council would be abolished by April 1918. After the defeat of the Tatar nationalists at the hands of Stalin and Tatar Communists, Maksudi emigrated to Finland. In 1919, he delivered a diplomatic note concerned with the demands of the Muslims of European Russia to the Versailles Peace Conference, along with Gayaz Iskhaki. In the early 1920s Maksudi was in Berlin where he began a scholarly career which he vigorously continued after he arrived in Ankara in 1925.
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