Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers (note 1).

In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque (pic) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” (note 2).

The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border (note 3).

Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with uniformity of design and regulations informed by his Mennonite theology of community. This community flourished economically in comparison to other Nogai villages. While only a small fraction of the Nogai were directly impacted by Cornies’ mentorship and philanthropy, these economic developments led the Nogai to offer cheap, long-term leases to landless colonists before wheat prices sky-rocketed and market prices for sheep declined steeply (note 4). Unprepared to adapt their traditional culture to new market conditions with very little land, virtually all 35,000 Nogai left Taurida for the Ottoman Empire after the Crimean War in the late 1850s, together with Crimean Tatars.

Cornies’ lending library (1841) included at least one relevant book, Muhamads Religion aus dem Koran (Muhammad’s Religion from the Koran; note 5; pic 2). In his report to the state Cornies recommended teaching for the Nogai children in which a "thorough knowledge of the Koran and its interpretations" is given "special emphasis" (note 6).

This mosque appears to have been built shortly after Cornies' untimely death in 1848, i.e., in the early 1850s before the start of the Crimean War.

Cornies used the Koran to achieve his goals of improving the “moral condition” of the Nogai. David G. Rempel tells this story:

“[H]is first effort to improve their source of income [was] through the improvement of their breed of sheep, one of the poorest native varieties. In this attempt he was at first stoutly resisted, chiefly by the Nogai priests who maintained that the merino sheep could not be used for sacrificial purpose. Cornies was undaunted. He resorted to the Koran and in the end succeeded in persuading them that the merino sheep, which the Moors had brought to Spain, was the Mohammedan sacrificial sheep par excellence. This broke the opposition to the introduction of a fine-fleeced sheep.” (Note 7)

Rempel called this a “Cornisian” (!) contribution to the improvement of the Nogais’ lot.

To his Swiss friend Daniel Schlatter, a missionary to the Nogai, Cornies wrote (November 6, 1826): “Through the grace of Jesus, we endeavour to preach with our hands and otherwise to keep silent, which is better than the opposite" (note 8). The German missionary Ludwig Bezner noted that Cornies—one of the few Mennonites to learn the Nogai language—spoke winningly to his chief herdsman, a Nogai, convinced that God speaks through the conscience. For example, Cornies dissuaded the herdsman from using a horsewhip to “train” his wife, and made him promise to treat his wife with patience and love (note 9). A 1838 visitor’s report surmised that there was “still more affection and love between Tartars and Germans than between these two and the Russians” (note 10). Schlatter however saw a different side and judged that Mennonites generally “lacked the gift of communication, or the sense and willingness to influence others for the good,” and their “unfriendly” attitude and behaviour towards the Nogai did “not exactly evoke respect and love" (note 11). Mennonites seemed “to have reason enough to make fun of the Nogai without ever dreaming that they themselves [i.e., the Mennonites] are also uneducated and in many respects just as far behind,” in Schlatter’s estimation (note 12).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pic of Nogai man from Hermann Roskoschny, Rußland Land und Leute (Leipzig: Greßner und Schramm, 1883), vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/russland-land-und-leute-bd-1-1883/page/n7/mode/2up.

Note 1: See the finding guide: Ingrid I. Epp and Harvey L. Dyck, The Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, 1803–1920 [PJBRMA]: A Research Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), https://www.mharchives.ca/holdings/papers/pdfs/PJBRussMennArchiveFA2.pdf. Copies of the collection are also in Waterloo, Winnipeg and Abbotsford.

Note 2: See pic, from PJBRMA file 1828, “Philipp Wiebe—Large varieties of documents,” 1845-1864; see also file 1498: “Akkerman—Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859."

Note 3: Cornies, “The Nogai Tatars, 1825,” Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies, vol. 1: 1812–1835, translated by Ingrid I. Epp; edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 489. See sample pages starting at 455ff. https://books.google.ca/books?id=oHQ2CwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA468&dq=koran%20johann%20cornies&pg=PA458#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Note 4: This argument is made in detail by John Staples, “‘On Civilizing the Nogais’: Mennonite–Nogai Economic Relations, 1825–1860,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 74, no. 2 (April 2000), 229–256, https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/2000/06/april-2000-staples/.

Note 5 (pic): “Johann Cornies—Catalogue of Books, 1841 [1845],” in Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive, file 797, reel 34. From Robarts Library, University of Toronto.

Note 6: Cornies, “The Nogai Tartars,” Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe, vol. 1.

Note 7: David G. Rempel, “The Mennonite Colonies in New Russia. A study of their settlement and economic development from 1789–1914” (PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1933), 174f., https://archive.org/details/themennonitecoloniesinnewrussiaastudyoftheirsettlementandeconomicdevelopmentfrom1789to1914ocr/page/n193/mode/2up?q=koran.

Note 8: Cornies “No. 80, To Daniel Schlatter, 6 November 1826,” Transformation I, 97.

Note 9: Karl-Günther Jung and Heinold Fast, “Bericht Ludwig Bezner über seinen Besuch bei Johann Cornies, 1821,” Mennonitische Geschichtsblätter (1988), 74f.

Note 10: “Mennoniten an der Molotschna,” Hausfreund, no. 25 (June 23, 1838), col. 393.

Note 11: Georg von Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck, Beiträge zur Kenntniß der Mennoniten-Gemeinden in Europa und Amerika, Part I (Berlin, 1821), 371f., https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009717700. See in more detail Heinrich Dirks,“Aus den Aufzeichnungen eines Alten.” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1906/7 4 (1907), 92-97, https://chortitza.org/Buch/MJ/MJ06-4.pdf.

Note 12: Daniel Schlatter, Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828 (St. Gallen: Huber, 1830), 367, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11008440_00005.html.

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