蘇聯波蘭外交關係研究 (1939-1947)

Grodno as a city in the Republic of Belarus, with its rich and diverse culture, is almost 1000 years old. It arose as one of the political and administrative centers of ancient Rus. In the middle of the thirteenth century it stood at the beginning of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which formed in the Neman region. The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas received the city from his father Kestutis and from that moment on Grodno became the residence of the great dukes of Lithuania, and later Polish kings. At the end of the eighteenth century, after the partition of Poland, Grodno was seized by the Russian authorities. As a provincial town of the Russian empire it suffered a violent Russification, which was continued in the times of the Soviet Union. On receiving independence in 1991, the Republic of Belarus began an independent political life. However, the election in 1994 of A. Lukashenko for President shattered the independent Belarusian state development trend and started a restoration of Soviet institutions of power and traditions. Instead of Belarusian national symbols in public life, Soviet symbols reappeared, which blurred the traces of the rich and varied history of the country. Grodno is perhaps the most interesting city of Belarus because of its multiculturalism.

The article presents a selected genealogy of the descendants of Cossack elders of Hetmanate and Slobozhanshchyna, who in the second half of the 19th century held positions of governors or vice-governors in the Russian administration of the Kingdom of Poland. The aim of the work is to find those key moments in the history of the family who chose such a career and their proteges in the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire. Representatives of the Left-bank Ukraine were a notable group of 134 governors and vice-governors in the Kingdom of Poland, during the russified administration of the Kingdom by the Russian Empire (1867–1918). Thus, it was a larger group than the emigrants from the Rightbank Ukraine, Podolia and Volyn together. This observation may lead to a conclusion that this was the result of a specific relationship between the Russian Empire and the Cossack elite of the former Slobozhanshchyna and Hetmanate in the 19th century.

This thesis analyses the significance of the flying boat to modes of imperial British connectedness through aviation, with a specific focus on interwar Australia. The thesis demonstrates the evolution of the flying boats' contribution to Australia’s development through their position at the crucial intersection of the nation’s economic development and military defence. It argues that the flying boats provide a unique lens through which to explore Australia’s changing sense of national and global connectedness in a period of rapid technological change. The significance of flying boats to the commercial and social life of Australia should not be understated. However, recognition of their significance has been diminished by a tendency to focus exclusively on their role during World War II. The result has been to disassociate and understate the salience of the flying boat era as a whole. This thesis demonstrates the rapid evolution of aviation in the period and situates the flying boat in the history of Australia’s then fledgling aviation industry. It argues that flying boats’ early significance derived from its role in pioneering long-distance routes, and from the Empire Air Mail Scheme (EAMS), a programme instigated to transport first-class mail throughout the British Empire by air. The Empire Flying Boats were central to this scheme through which the British Government proposed to develop international air travel to its dominions, including Australia and New Zealand, initially financed by subsidised airmail. EAMS had an equally significant objective of maintaining Britain’s links with and influence across its empire. Flying boat operations were severely curtailed by the outbreak of World War II, as many of the aircraft were requisitioned into their respective British and Australian Air Forces. However, the demands for passenger travel remained high, in particular for military personnel. As a result, airmail surcharges were reinstated in order to reduce the quantity of airmail and increase the scope for passengers. The Short S 25 Sunderland was manufactured alongside the Empire Class flying boats to satisfy military demands for a long-range reconnaissance aircraft and this aircraft, and its derivatives, proved themselves to be highly effective in this role both for the RAF and its dominions. This thesis demonstrates that the era of the flying boats’ dominance was both a catalyst and a fundamental component in the development of aviation in Australia. In doing so it traces the increasing degree of airmindedness among the Australian public, and the gradual emergence of a distinctive airmindedness that differentiated Australia’s aviation needs and imagined futures from those of Britain. The thesis also discusses how the initial bias towards seaplanes transformed into a pragmatic acceptance of landplanes, resulting in the end of the flying boats’ dominance in both civil and military contexts. In this study I provide, for the first time, a concise discussion of flying boat operations in Australia during the first half of the twentieth century, situating their history within the broader evolution of Australia’s sense both of imperial connectedness and national potentials through aviation.

World Revolution and International Diplomacy, 1900–39 Jan Hennings Alastair Kocho-Williams, Russian and Soviet Diplomacy, 1900–39 xii + 215 pp. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ISBN-13 978-0230252646. $100.00. Key to the participation of a state in international diplomacy is its recognition by foreign powers. Recognition, however, cannot be imposed on others by brute force. Successful negotiation requires membership in a group of states with shared norms, practices, and procedures. Diplomats have to master the “structure, grammar, and rules of a common language; … the rules and understandings underlying the practice of international politics.”1 Revolutionaries have always faced difficulties in communicating to the world the legitimacy of their new state. The English Civil War and the French Revolution are cases in point. The leaders of social revolutions often vacillated between sweeping efforts at replacing the symbolic sphere of monarchs with the insignia of a new ideology, on the one hand, and the alignment of new political practices with the old international order, on the other.2 But one need not hark back to the early modern period to see this dynamic: the same [End Page 204] principle holds true for the Soviet case. Alastair Kocho-Williams has written an insightful monograph about the tensions between traditional diplomacy, inherited from the Russian Empire, and Soviet foreign relations. A central concern of his book is whether diplomacy was shaped by developments external to the course of events in Russia and the Soviet Union, or whether diplomatic practice evolved from national political ideology and domestic politics. Recently, diplomatic history has emerged from the shadows that the proverbial “great men” continued to cast over the discipline while cultural and social historians were shedding light on many unexplored areas of the past. Historians of international relations have since called for an opening up of their field by turning to “culture” broadly conceived.3 Meanwhile, the cultural turn has embraced high politics, top-level decision making, and foreign policy, resulting in numerous studies of the sociocultural conditions and symbolic dimensions of the political process across domestic and international domains.4 The convergence of politics and culture set the stage for the emergence of a field that, labeled as the “new diplomatic history,” has been bringing together scholars of diverse methodological backgrounds, different periods, and varied geographical expertise, including Russian and Soviet history.5 Their interests range from traditional subjects such as the European states-system, diplomatic institutions, recruitment and staff [End Page 205] organization, to nonstate actors, go-betweens, language, ritual, norms, and behavior of diplomatic practice, cultural encounter, and network analysis, as well as broader literary, legal, and intellectual contexts. Although Kocho-Williams does not explicitly situate his work within this historiographic landscape, his original, multiarchival research is an important contribution to the rejuvenated field of diplomatic history, especially since he covers a period, and a world region, that because of both linguistic barriers and a predominant focus on more recent eras tends to be underrepresented. Kocho-Williams’s analysis focuses on the changes wrought upon Russian diplomacy by the revolutions during the transition from the late tsarist empire to the new Soviet state. Drawing on source materials from archives in Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the author combines a prosopographic analysis of Russian foreign policy institutions with a study of diplomatic norms, behavior, ceremony, and conceptions of prestige. For the latter, he makes moderate use of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital, although, in general, he gives significantly more room to solid institutional history and biographical case studies than to the cultural unpacking of revolutionary diplomacy.6 The book proceeds in strict chronological order. It covers 40 years of Russian and Soviet foreign policy from the beginning of the 20th century to the eve of World War II, tracing the internal friction between international diplomatic culture and socialist dogma in four stages. Taking 1900 as his starting point, Kocho-Williams emphasizes continuity in the period up to 1917. Until then, the institutional culture and the composition of the diplomatic corps were shaped by the administrative instrument of the tsar’s foreign policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerstvo inostrannykh del, MID). Despite reforms resulting from the 1905 revolution, the...

From the late tsarist period onward, terms such as ‘colonial’ and ‘colonialism’ entered the vocabulary of the radical intelligentsia of Russia and were used in a politically adversarial manner. In the early Soviet period, they were used to express the new political elite’s perception of itself as anti-colonial, both in its domestic and foreign policies. Subsequently, these terms were applied to the Soviet Union itself in emigre literature by numerous non-Russian former inhabitants of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, who depicted Soviet rule over Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and other peoples as a form of Russian colonial rule. These different historical usages complicate the task of defining the terms ‘colonial’ and ‘colonialism’ in a precise way, detached from these traditions, in order to analyse their validity in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian relationship in the interwar period. It is useful to discuss the history of the usage of these terms in more detail.

The article presents the process of the nationalizing of the notarial services in the first years after the Second World War in Poland. In this period the civil law, the criminal law, organization of justice and every legal institution has been changed because of social and economic conversions. After warfare, structure and system rules of the public notaries was still regulated by the notary law act of 27th October 1933 year on the Notary Law. In the first sequence the notaries have concentrated on restitution functioning of the notarial offices and the notarial houses and also they have made efforts to recover the public notaries. The important changes have stepped in functioning of the public notaries in 1946. Then three decrees were enacted completely, which have changed the notary law, but the act of 1933 on the Notary Law has not been amended. On 17th of July, 1946 the Minister of Justice issued regulation – the Temporary Instruction regarding reorganization of the notaries to determine the practice of using those three decrees. The notaries estimated negatively the Temporary Instruction. They underlined that provision of the Temporary Instruction underlines functioning of the public notaries. Under the influence of the public notaries Minister of Justice repealed the Temporary Instruction regarding reorganization of the notaries in 28th of October 1947. After hawing achieved success on the way of normalization of the functioning of the post-war public notaries, in the second half of 1948 the situation considerably changed because of political problems.The public notaries put forward numerous proposals to keep the basic rules of the notary law from 1933 and to avoid the nationalizing of the public notary, for example the notary teamwork, they have not found apprehension in the department of justice. The position of the authority regarding the reform of the public notary, its organization, and its function was stated in the new notary law – the act of 25th May, 1951, which rejected the basic rules of structure of the public notary from the interwar period and was based on the new principles, patterned upon the Soviet legislation. The fundamental assumption of the new regulation was the rule that the public notary is state authority, which is acting by the public notary offices under control of the Minister of Justice and his organs. The return to the Polish tradition of the Instruction took place after several years, in 1991, due to the act on the Notary Law of 14th February, 1991.

У статті розглядається адміністративно-територіальний поділ Галичини та Буковини російською окупаційною владою в період Першої світової війни. Простежується декілька періодів російської окупації території краю в 1914-1918 рр. та політика царського уряду щодо цих земель. Висвітлюється спрямування політики російської окупації та підкреслюється факт створення Обласного комісаріату Галичини й Буковини.

Relations between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire were quite close. Starting in the 15th century, with some mutual treaties, the relations between two countries often took on peaceful lines, despite the wars and conflicts intervening in between. It is accepted that the first Polish envoy was sent to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries during the reign of Mehmed I. (Ҫelebi Mehmed). And others followed. From the end of the 18th century until its dissolution, around 150 envoys visited the Ottoman Empire from Poland. In the 18th century, the Ottoman Empire started to send delegations of envoys to Poland. This is the manner in which the political, commercial and cultural dimension of such relations have been determined.

The topic of the relations between the French Socialists and Poland from the end of World War II until the end of 1970s is relatively unknown. The French Socialist Left approached the Polish Communist Left with distrust, even downright aversion. A big disappointment for SFIO was the forced unification of Polish Socialists and Communists in 1948, because up to this point the French had counted on keeping their Polish Comrades in the Western orbit. When the Iron Curtain was dropped, the French Socialists could only observe from a distance the excesses of the Polish People’s Republic government. From as early as 1950s on, the French Socialists created numerous doctrinal analyses concerning the perspectives of a possible “real socialist” reform. Interestingly, when the period of easing of the tensions in international relations (Detente) came, the right-wing French Socialists made an effort to improve the relations with Warsaw, which had been significantly enfeebled by the years of the Cold War.

HISTORY, REALITY, AND_______ CENTRAL EUROPE'S SECURITY Petr Lunak Pcoland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have, throughout their histories, been mere "grains of dust" between two great millstones: Russia and Germany. These countries have been affected by both friction and harmony between their powerful neighbors, who repeatedly subjugated them by military means. Poland was first carved up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the 1790s; in 1939 it was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union; it then fell under Soviet domination. What is today Czechoslovakia was first divided between German-dominated Austria and Magyar-dominated Hungary; it was occupied by Germany during the Second World War and then became a satellite of the Soviet Union. For Hungary the twentieth century began in 1919 at Versailles, when it was deprived ofits empire. Budapest's World War II alliance with Hitler was motivated by the desire to renew its empire; it resulted first in German and then Soviet occupation, confirmed by the invasion of 1956. How does history affect the actions ofthe Central Europeans? Some see it as a key of interpretation for the present and the future. Poland, Hungary , and Czechoslovakia, they claim, should look into the past for a way to avoid a repetition of decades of traumatic non-history under alien domination . However, others claim that history can deceive rather than guide. They argue that the historical experience of the region is negative, a curse that should be forgotten, for it cannot explain and change current realities. Petr Lunak is a recent graduate of SAIS (M.A., 1992). 129 130 SAISREVIEW This article traces the efforts ofHungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia to find their foreign policy identities in an atmosphere in which reliance on history and its refusal awkwardly coexist. A Czechoslovak-Polish Confederation? The following historical parallel can be seductive: After the First World War Central European nations attained independence because Germany and Austria-Hungary had been defeated, and the Russians were distracted by their revolution. However, an attempt to stabilize the region through an alliance system with the French failed, and World War II put an end to the independence ofPoland and Czechoslovakia. In 1941 Czechoslovak President Benes and Polish Prime Minister Sikorski began negotiations on a possible postwar confederation of Czechoslovakia and Poland in order to prevent history from repeating itself. The talks were soon interrupted, however, by Stalin. The idea of a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation was revived by Andrzej Kozminski in late December 1989. Kozminski argued that the region's security would be augmented by such a move, and that the opportunity was not to be missed, as was done in 1943.1 This proposal was repeated by Zbigniew Brzezinski in January 1990 and gained considerable attention, particularly in the Polish parliament. Senator Jerzy Rusecki said: "I think that the concept is interesting and right. I back it also because the Czechs and Slovaks are closest to us among Slavic nations, they are our kinsmen."2 The idea of a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation had the full support of Polish Foreign Minister Skubiszewski,3 but Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki did not express any particular enthusiasm for the plan. Prague's reaction was not as favorable Warsaw's. Before his visit to Poland, Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier said: This is a proposal brought in by an American political scientist of Polish origin. I myself do not think, and hardly any Poles do, that we can resolve our situation by creating some kind of Polish-Czechoslovak confederation. Our problems are absolutely different.4 1.Gazeta Wyborcza, December 28, 1989, p. 3. 2.Some deputies and senators went even further. Senator Stanislaw Hoffmann proposed that "a union ofcountries ofBulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary should counterbalance other economic and political forces in Europe." FBIS-EEU, January 11, 1990, p. 58. 3.See the Mazowiecki's interview in Zycie Warszawy, January 20, 1990, p. 2. 4.Lidova demokracie, January 8, 1990, p. 3. HISTORY, REALITY AND CENTRAL EUROPE'S SECURITY 131 After Prague's cold reaction, Polish attitudes toward the proposal began to change. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa called it "a proposal from another era."5 Bronislaw Geremek, who was personally in favor of the plan, acknowledged that the differences between Czechoslovakia and...

The activities of the Greek Catholic Theological Academy in Lviv are examined. It is stated that this higher educational institution was founded by Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytskyi in 1928. Despite the difficult relationship between the Ukrainians of Galicia and the Polish government, the Theological Academy was able to exist and quite quickly developed. The situation changed in 1939, after the partition of Poland between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Thus, Galicia came under Soviet rule. In 1941, after the beginning of the German-Soviet war, all Ukrainian lands were quickly occupied by the Germans. However, already in 1944, the Bolsheviks came to Galicia again, finally joining it to the Ukrainian SSR. As a matter of fact, this research is focused on studying the state of Greek Catholic theological education during the first Soviet occupation of Galicia in 1939–1941 and after the return of communist power in 1944. It is shown that, despite the openly anti-religious policy of the new government, the leaders of the Church tried to ensure the continuity of the development of theological science and the training of new clergy. In the conditions of the ban on the official activities of any theological educational institutions during 1939–1941, Metropolitan Sheptytskyi managed to organize illegal theological courses for his students and sought to restore the activities of a full-fledged educational institution. Instead, it is researched that after the return in 1944, the Bolsheviks became more cautious in their attitude towards Greek Catholics and did not close the Theological Academy, which resumed normal activities during the Nazi occupation. The management of the academy used this time to expand its activities, in particular to open new faculties. However, this policy of the Bolsheviks in relation to the Greek Catholics turned out to be temporary. A few months later, the persecution of this Church began. Among other measures, the work of the Theological Academy in Lviv was finally stopped. Keywords: Theological Academy, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Andrei Sheptytskyi, Josyf Slipyi, Second World War, Soviet occupation

After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in September 1939, a network of Jewish underground organizations and active conspiratorial groups was established. Its objective was to resist the violent imposition of the Soviet system, to preserve Jewish culture and religion and, for those with a Zionist orientation, to work for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. The Zionist parties and organizations among them were particularly active, especially the youth groups. The fate of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe under the Soviet occupation of 1939–41 remains understandingly overshadowed by the tragic events of the Holocaust. As a result, the activities of this Jewish underground are not widely known and have received little attention from scholars. Only in recent years have historians researching the history of Jews in eastern Poland begun to look more closely at Jewish resistance and especially at Zionist activity under Soviet occupation. These scholars have, however, relied exclusively on the eyewitness accounts of the few survivors. At the same time, Polish and Russian historians conducting intensive research on the war-time Soviet occupation of eastern Poland have published contemporary Soviet documents that confirm the existence of this Jewish underground. The material currently available shows that the Jewish underground was more widespread than previously thought, and that the Soviet authorities viewed Jewish resistance groups, and indeed any clandestine activity, as a serious threat to their rule.

The year 1917 represented a real nightmare for the Ottoman Empire in the context of the First World War. In fact, even though the Sultan surrendered more than a year later, both the military and diplomatic events occurred in 1917 stroke a final blow to an already tired and obsolete empire. In this essay I have analyzed the root causes of the Ottoman weakness before the war, to better understand how a single year put an end to a more than six hundred years old empire

This thesis examines Anglo-Russian rivalry in Transcaucasia in general - and Azerbaijan in particular - focusing on the years 1918-1920. The first part of the thesis provides a general review of the history of the Great Game - the geopolitical rivalry between the British and Russian Empires fought in the remote areas of central Asia - before going on to examine the growing investment by British firms in the oil industry of Baku. It also discusses how the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907 changed the texture of AngloRussian relations without resolving the tensions altogether, which lasted until the February Revolution of 1917, despite the wartime alliance between Britain and Russia. The thesis then goes on to examine British policy towards Transcaucasia after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The thesis argues that the political turmoil in Russia provided the British government with an opportunity to exert greater political control over the south of the country, securing its access to oil and control of the Caspian Sea region, thereby reducing any potential threat to India. The allied victory in the First World War, and the weakening of Turkey in particular, meant that British policy in central Asia after November 1918 increasingly focused on advancing British economic and strategic interests in the area. Although the British government did not seek to exert direct long-term political control over Azerbaijan, its policy in 1919 was designed both to support the local government in Baku against possible Bolshevik attack, whilst simultaneously exerting control over Baku oil. The thesis shows that the British military authorities who controlled Azerbaijan in the first part of 1919 typically acted as an occupying force, manipulating the local government, and behaving in ways that alienated large sections of the local population. This pattern of quasi-imperial rule, which was designed to secure the economic benefits of controlling Baku oil while avoiding the costs of large-scale military occupation, eventually proved fruitless. The final part of the thesis then examines how the British sought to defend their economic interests in Azerbaijan even as they removed their military forces. The government in London supported the local Musavat government in its attempt to gain international recognition, hoping that this would bolster its position both abroad and at home. Yet this policy failed to recognise the radical mood on the ‘streets’ of Baku and the appeal of Bolshevism to the many of the local population. When the Bolsheviks finally took control of Azerbaijan in 1920 they did so with the support of significant sections of the population. This thesis suggests that developments in Azerbaijan during this period can be analysed by using a Marxist framework that emphasises how imperialism creates divisions between imperial powers - divisions that endure over time even as they take new forms. It also examines how British policy towards Azerbaijan can be seen as an attempt to establish a form of colonial control that promoted the economic and political interests of key economic and political groups in Britain at the cost of the local Azeri population. In order to develop this argument and avoid the dangers of over-simplification, the thesis draws on a massive array of archive and published sources in English, Russian, Azeri and Turkish. In doing this it offers perspectives and arguments that are absent from the existing scholarly literature whilst introducing the reader to new material unfamiliar to most English-language readers.

This article is devoted to the issue of the character and channels of communication within the Muslim umma during the first third of the 20th century in the Russian Empire and in the state entities that arose after its collapse. What ties existed between the Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims in this period? Was it the matter of episodic contacts or was there a long-term and permanent communication? Did Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims sense themselves to be part of a unified Muslim umma, or was their regional identity stronger? How informed were they about each other’s problems, interests, history, and culture? Which tendencies were stronger: centrifugal or centralizing (uniting)? These questions will serve as the research tasks.In this interaction, we can distinguish several stages:1. The beginning of the 20th century, especially 1905–1913. At this stage, students became the main facilitators of the idea of interaction, as well as various capital-city cultural, educational and benevolent organizations in which they took part (Dzhemil Aleksandrovich).2. 1914–1917. During the First World War, refugees with their own problems emerge as the chief factor for integration.3. 1917–1920. The revolutionary period and the civil war, during which many public figures and soldiers of the Polish–Lithuanian Tatar origin operated in the orbit of revolutionary events (at the eastern extremes of the former empire, i.e. in the Crimea, the Volga region, and Azerbaijan, among others; the Krichinski Brothers, Aleksandr / Iskander Talkovskii, Matvei Sulkevich, and others).4. The 1920s and 30s. In the west of the former empire, the Tatars were divided among three independent states: the USSR, Poland, and Lithuania. At this stage, the ideological emigration of Russian Muslims was a factor; these included such prominent examples as Gayaz Iskhaki, Gayan Vaisov, and others who were in the Baltic States and Poland.As for the contacts within Muslim society, another peculiarity deserves mention: for the most part these contacts were formed by the efforts of specific personalities. That is, one can speak of a rather high level of personification of these contacts, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, in this work, each of these stages will be characterized through the biographies and fates of actual historical figures: Dz. Aleksandrovich, Al. Akhmatovich, Gayaz Iskhaki, and Gayan Vaisov.As to the contacts between Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims in the first third of the 20th century, one should note the following basic tendencies. The empire’s vast territorial extent and the poor mobility of its population were the most important factors impeding the establishment of close and long-term ties within the Russian umma. The situation changed fundamentarily with the advent of the First World War when western Tatars who were forced to flee the occupation of their lands by the enemy found themselves in the eastern portions of the empire and became acquainted with their co-religionists from these regions. These processes were strengthened and received a new impulse during the revolution and the civil war. On the whole, we see that the Tatars from the empire’s western regions were actively included in the social and political life of Muslims at the imperial level as a whole. They played an important role in the national movement and in the creation of national state formations, such as the Tatar Autonomy in the Crimea, the independent Azerbaijani state, and in attempts to create an independent state in the Volga–Ural region (Leon Krichinski, the Akhmatovich father and son, and Matvey Sulkevich, among others). In the 1920s and 30s, many of them returned to their homelands where there were Volga–Ural Tatars who had been forced to emigrate. As a result, with the creation of independent states with sometimes unfriendly relations (Soviet Russia and Poland), normal communications among regions of the formerly united empire became practically impossible. However, within the Polish state which included a portion of the Lithuanian lands and the city of Vilnius, not only Polish–Lithuanian Tatars but also émigrés from the eastern territories of the empire (Gayaz Iskhaki and Gayan Vaisov, among others) played an important role in the life of the Muslim community.