Şefika Gasprinskaya

Şefiqa Gaspıralı (14 October 1886 – 31 August 1975) was a Crimean Tatar feminist leader, editor-in-chief and publisher of Alem-i Nisvan (Women's World), the first women's magazine of the Turkic world in Russia, a member of the Presidency Council of the Kurultai, and a deputy for two terms in the Crimean People's Republic. ¹ She was the daughter of Ismail Gasprinsky, the educator and publisher who inspired the Jadid movement, and became his closest assistant in his publishing work. ^{1 2}

She was born at Bakhchysarai in Crimea, in the Taurida Governorate of the Russian Empire, to Ismail Gasprinsky and Zühre, a member of the Akçora family; she was one of eight children. ^{1 2} The Turkish article gives her birth day as "14 October or 21 November 1886"; the English article and Wikidata give 14 October, and the museum's record states both readings rather than choosing silently. ^{2 3} She learned to read and write from her father and continued her education at his new-method (Usûl-ü Cedit) school in Crimea. ¹ Her mother died when she was seventeen, and she took on the responsibility of the household. ¹

Alongside her domestic duties she became her father's most important assistant in the management of his newspaper Terciman ("The Translator"): its correspondence, translation from Russian, and postal and distribution affairs. ¹ She wrote her first article in Terciman in 1903. ¹ In 1906 she married Nasib bey Yusifbeyli, a young Azerbaijani from Ganja who often visited her father and with whom she had corresponded on political questions. ^{1 3}

In 1906 her father founded the magazine Alem-i Nisvan ("Women's World"), judging Terciman inadequate for raising the low social status of women in Russia and for women's education and employment, and appointed Şefiqa its head. ¹ The magazine's articles informed, directed, encouraged and organised Turkic women, and carried detailed information on women and women's movements in the Turkish and Islamic world. ¹ She had a daughter, Zöhre, in 1908 and a son, Niyazi, a year later, and in this period she, her husband and her elder brother Rıfat together carried the whole burden of Terciman. ¹ In 1912, after Alem-i Nisvan closed, she moved with her husband to Ganja in Azerbaijan; at the end of that year she returned home, because no one else could be found to deal with Terciman. ¹ Her father died in September 1914. ¹

Turkic women in the Russian Empire were excluded from social, political, cultural and economic life and were neglected and deprived of education; Şefiqa Gaspıralı was among the pioneers who started a women's movement under these conditions. ¹ She led the Bakhchysarai and Akmescit (Simferopol) branches of the women's committees and was a member of the Bakhchysarai city council; she was nominated for mayor of Bakhchysarai but declined the candidacy because of the intensity of her work. ¹ In 1917 she became one of the first deputies of the Kurultai of the Crimean People's Republic and a member of its Presidency Council, and she took part in the All-Muslims of Russia Congress in Moscow within the Crimean delegation. ¹

In 1919 she fled Crimea for Azerbaijan under threat of death, with her two young children. ¹ Her husband, Nasib bey Yusifbeyli, who had been prime minister of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, was shot dead on 31 May 1920, and after the Red Army occupied Azerbaijan she escaped a second time: Memduh Şevket (Esendal), the Turkish Grand National Assembly's representative in Baku, procured false Ottoman identity documents and a place on a train to Turkey for her and her children. ^{1 2} She brought with her a large archive: runs of Turkic and Russian newspapers and magazines published in Russia between 1883 and 1920, original correspondence, congress minutes and resolutions, Duma documents, and the papers of organisations such as the Muslim Alliance and the women's committees. ¹

She lived fifty-four years in Turkey. ¹ To earn a living she worked at a hospital, sewed, and directed an orphanage (Daru'l-eytam); after its closure she sold even her wristwatch in poverty before finding temporary work. ¹ She founded and chaired the Crimean Tatar Women's Union (Kırım Tatar Kadınlar Birliği) in 1930, served for many years in the Red Crescent (Kızılay), and wrote for the magazines Crimea and Emel. ¹ She died at Istanbul on 31 August 1975 and was buried at Zincirlikuyu Cemetery after a religious service at Şişli Mosque. ^{1 3}

Her life's work was editorial and organisational rather than a list of books: the editorship and publication of Alem-i Nisvan (1906–1912), her articles in Terciman from 1903 onwards, and her later articles for Crimea magazine and Emel. ¹ She also assembled and preserved the archive of the Muslim reform movement in Russia that she carried out of Crimea and Azerbaijan, and which she continued to expand in Turkey. ¹ She aimed to publish the history of the Turkish women's movement in Russia as a book. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources; it is not a verdict by the museum.

Gaspıralı's stated aim, as the sources describe it, was to make Turkic women equal legally, socially and culturally in a male-dominated order of administration and society. ¹ The English article notes that Crimea had advantages for this work — it was the birthplace of her father's modernisation movement, and its women suffered less from polygamy and veiling than those of the Caucasus and Turkestan — while conservative opponents resisted the full and equal participation of women in social and political life, and progress was slow even with her father's efforts. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.