Kaium Nasyri

(real name, Gabdelkaium Gabdennasyrovich Nasyrov). Born Feb. 2 (14), 1825, in the village of Verkhnie Shirdany, in what is now Zelenodol’sk Raion, Tatar ASSR; died Aug. 20 (Sept. 2), 1902, in Kazan. Tatar scholar, educator, and writer.

From 1841 to 1855, Nasyri studied in a Kazan madrasa, and from 1855 he taught the Tatar language in a Russian divinity school and in a seminary; he also audited courses at the University of Kazan. Between 1871 and 1876 he was a teacher at the first Russian-Tatar school in Kazan, which he had founded. Nasyri’s pedagogical views were influenced by K. D. Ushinskii and L. N. Tolstoy. His first works, both appearing in 1860, were Syntax and the popular-science work for children At Play.

Nasyri compiled and published a scholarly grammar of the Tatar language, rules of orthography, and textbooks on such subjects as mathematics, geography, and history. His published works include The Beliefs and Rituals of the Kazan Tatars. . . (1880, in Russian), Samples of the National Literature of the Kazan Tatars (1896, in Russian), and A Comparative Study of the Fairy Tales of the Kazan Tatars and Those of Other Peoples (1900, with P. L. Poliakov).

Nasyri popularized the Russian language and compiled the Tatar-Russian Dictionary in 1875. The short stories of Nasyri were important in the development of Tatar fiction and in the formation of a realism based on Enlightenment ideas.