Middle Eastern scholars taught Oriental studies in Russian universities

Evidence

Quite a number of Persians, Afghans, Turks and others taught at the University of Kazan and elsewhere in the Russian empire. For example, Mirza Kazem-Beg taught Arabic and Persian and Islamic history at the University of Kazan before becoming Professor of Persian in St Petersburg. Shaykh Muhammad ‘Ayyad al-Tantawi (1810–61) was headhunted from his teaching post at Cairo’s al-Azhar, where he had already taught Weil, Edward William Lane and other Westerners who wanted to learn Arabic. He arrived in Russia in 1840 and became Professor of Arabic at St Petersburg. He used traditional Azhari teaching techniques, which relied heavily on rote-learning and on the transmission of the opinions of earlier generations of scholars, something that many of his students found hard-going. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 282

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how did an al-Azhar-trained shaykh end up a professor in St Petersburg in the 1840s, and what reception did traditional Azhari pedagogy meet among Russian students?
• XREF: Complicates the one-directional ‘Western scholars study the East’ picture — echoes the critique Said’s Orientalism leaves under-examined.

Related

• Russia founded Oriental language schools to govern conquered Muslims (similarity 0.79)