Analysis reveals the influence of Islamic themes and historic roots on Moscow's cultural development, implying essential religious roles.
The main purpose of the article is to analyze the influence of the theme of the Ottoman Empire and Islam on the rethinking of historical foundations and the formulation of ideas about the spiritual and religious mission of Moscow in the literature of northeastern Rusʼ from the mid- 15th to the first decades of the 16th century. The study is based on a diverse base of sources, including genre- and thematically diverse manuscripts (primarily historical stories and polemical treatises), representing the main spiritual trends and milestones of the cultural and political development of the ancient Russian state of this period. We pay attention both to the domestic texts and to the works of authors who were culturally and linguistically of foreign origin but whose activities and literary heritage became part of the spiritual world of Muscovite Rusʼ. The time frame of the study is determined, on the one hand, by the events of the so-called Union of Florence in 1439 and the fateful event for the entire Christian world – the fall of Constantinople (1453) under the onslaught of the Turks, which was widely reflected in the literature of that time. At the end of the analyzed period, ideas about the special religious mission of Moscow are formulated, the historical roots of the Moscow state and the origin of state (tsarist) power are intensively rethought.
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Marek Příhoda (2025) studied this question.
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