Tawarikh-e Bulghariyya (The Bulgarian Chronicles)/ ed. and trasl. by Azat M. Ahunov

 A study and the first complete commented and translated publication of the Old Tatar treatise by a famous Tatar Muslim theologian and historian Hussain Amirkhan (Amirkhanov) on the historiography of the Volga-Ural region "Tawarikh-e Bulgariyya" (the Bulgarian Chronicles). The translation is supplied with an facsimile of the first Tatar edition of the source in 1883. 

Husain Amirkhan (or Amirkhanov; Kazan, 1814/ 1816 – Ufa, 1893) was a Tatar Muslim theologian, public figure and historian, whose pioneering works on history, historical methodology and the Tatar historiography underlined the rise of the Tatar secular historian tradition in the 19^th century. 

His principal historical works are  “Tawarikh-e Bulghariya” (“the Bulgarian Chronicles”), “Nujum at-tawarikh” (“Stars of the chronicles”), “Tawarikh-e Mekka-ye mukarrama ala fatihiha afdal as-salawat wa akmal at-tahiyyat” (“The Meccan Chronicles, let the best of prayers and greetings be given for its conquer”), “Shajara-ye ghaliya fi bayan al-ansab” (“the Genealogy of the Prophet in understanding the history of the most noble clans”).

One of the most important works of Husain Amirkhan as an enlightener and a public figure is “al-Fawaid”, the first complete Tatar commentary on the Qur’an.

 

Azat M. Ahunov (b. 1970), Ph. D. holds a research fellowship at the Galimjan Ibragimov Institute for Language, Literature and Arts of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan.  His current interests are the medieval Arab and Turkic literature and the Tatar historiography and religious thought of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. He is an author of several publications, among them are the Arabic sources of the Turkic and Tatar literature: after at-Tabari  (2001), Islamization of the Volga-Kama region in 7^th  – 10^th   centuries: after the Arabic and the Old Tatar sources (2003).

Husain Amirkhan, Tawarikh-e Bulghariyya (Bulgarian Chronicles)/ ed., com. and transl. by Azat M. Ahunov. Moscow: the Mardjani Publishing House, 2010.  ISBN 978-5-903715-23-17