When Muslim Charity Met Capitalism The Roots of Muslim Corporate Philanthropy in Russia

Abstract

This article examines the Muslim-owned Ḥusaynov companies in late imperial Russia (1860s–1919) and their participation in Muslim charitable activities. It argues that despite the structural differences between U.S. and imperial Russian economies, large commercial enterprises in Russia evolved along similar lines to their U.S. counterparts in terms of the professionalization of their management and their movement toward corporate organization. In the case of the Ḥusaynov companies, this evolution also entailed the development of an early form of corporate philanthropy that grew out of Islamic charitable practices. While these practices were rooted in an Islamic legal and moral framework, they served the same purposes that corporate philanthropy came to serve in the U.S. context. This paper is written based on Tatar- and Russian-language state archival records, manuscripts, and early twentieth-century published sources held in Kazan and Orenburg, Russia.