Research Interest
History of Islam in Russia and Central Asia/Eurasia, Women and gender in Islam, Islamic legal history, Islamic intellectual History, History of Religions
Rozaliya Garipova joined the Department of History, Philosophy and Religious Studies in
August 2017 as Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies and History. Rozaliya received her
Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Her research and teaching focus on
the Islamic history of Russia, Central Eurasia and the larger Muslim world. She is particularly
interested in exploring issues of religious authority (male and female), Islamic law and
women and gender in Islam as well as the interaction between Islamic law and empire.
Rozaliya’s current book project titled Islamic Family Law in Imperial Russia: Empire, Legality
and Religious Authority is a religious history of Muslim family life in the Volga-Urals and
Western Siberia. It traces the impact of imperial governance on the legality of Muslim
marriage and divorce and the legal authority of the ulama and looks at how Muslims
responded to the new challenges under late imperial rule. The research related to this book
project was published in a number of articles, most recent “Between Imperial Law and
Islamic Law: Muslim Subjects and the Legality of Remarriage in Nineteenth-Century Russia”,
in Sharia in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia,
1550-1917, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
Rozaliya’s other research interests deal with exploring female religious authority among
Volga-Ural Muslims during late Russian imperial and Soviet periods. On this topic, her most
recent publications include “Muslim Female Religious Authority in Russia: How Mukhlisa
Bubi Became the First Female Qāḍī in the Modern Muslim World” and “From Kolkhoz to
Pulpit: Rashida Iskhaqi and Female Religious Authority in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia”
(under revision). Rozaliya is also part of the collaborative project on Sacred Geography of
Kazakhstan and explores Tatar mosques in and around the city of Semipalatinsk in North-
eastern Kazakhstan.
She received a number of prestigious grants and fellowships, the most recent of which are
the fellowship at Slavic and Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University in Japan
(2019), a Grant from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Program, for digitization of
Islamic books and manuscripts in Semipalatinsk’s Wooden Mosque (2019-20). Before joining
Nazarbayev University, she was a recipient of inaugural James Billington fellowship at
Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., fellowship of the School of
Historical Studies at Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and Andrew Mellon
Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship at the Department of Religious Studies, University of
Pennsylvania. Her articles were published in The Journal of Economic and Social History of
the Orient, Islamic Law and Society, and Die Welt Des Islams.
“Between Imperial Law and Islamic Law: Muslim Subjects and the Legality of Remarriage in Nineteenth-Century Russia”, in Sharia in the Russian Empire: The Reach and Limits of Islamic Law in Central Eurasia, 1550-1917, (Edinburgh University Press, 2020).
“Where Did the Ākhūnds Go? Islamic Legal Experts and the Transformation of the Socio-Legal Order in the Russian Empire,” Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law 19 (2018).
“Married or not Married? On the Obligatory Registration of Muslim Marriages in Nineteenth- Century Russia,” Islamic Law and Society 24 (2017), 112-141.
“Muslim Female Religious Authority in Russia: How Mukhlisa Bubi Became the First Female Qāḍī in the Modern Muslim World,” Die Welt Des Islams 57 (2017), 1-27.
“The Protectors of Religion and Community: Traditionalist Muslim Scholars of the Volga-Ural Region at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 59, Issue 1-2 (February 2016), 126-165.
HST100 History of Kazakhstan
HST110/REL110 Introduction to World Religions
HST262/REL262 Islamic History of Central Asia/Eurasia
HST263/REL263 The History of Islam II: Modern Islamic History and Thought
HST329/REL329 Women in Islamic History