Afanasy Nikitin - Nikitin, Christianity, and Islam

Nikitin, Christianity, and Islam

After studying Nikitin's account, and especially his references to Islam (at the time much of India was ruled by Muslim sultans and there were considerable numbers of Muslim merchants living along the coast), particularly the prayers he transliterates from Arabic and Turkic into Cyrillic letters, Gail Lenhoff and Janet Martin concluded that Nikitin probably converted to Islam while in India.

His loss of contact with Christianity and his life among Muslims (and apparent lapse from Christianity and conversion to Islam) bothered him and he mentions this several times in his account. Indeed, he begins his account calling it his "sinful voyage beyond three seas." He went on to explain that, while he continued to date events by Christian religious holidays and invoked the Mother of God and the saints("the Holy Fathers"), he could not remember when Christian holidays were, so he could not celebrate Easter and other movable feast days or keep the Christian fasts (Lent, the St. Peters' Fast, the fast during Advent, etc.). Thus, he kept the fasts of the Muslims and broke fast when they did. He also wrote that at Bindar in the third year of his journey he "shed many tears for the Christian faith." Very near the end of his account, he wrote of his wish to return home and to the Christian faith: "I, Afanasy, a damned servant of Almighty God, Maker of heaven and earth, pondered over the Christian faith, the Baptism of Christ, the fasts established by the Holy Fathers, and the apostolic commandments, and I longed to go to Rus!"

Yakov Lurye, an editor of Nikitin's Journey, sees his conversion as doubtful, pointing out that a circumcised convert should be persecuted or even put to death in Rus', so if Nikitin had indeed become a Muslim, he would have avoided returning to his country, while in fact he died on his way back in Lithuania not far from the Muscovite border.