The business activities of Muslims of Moscow and St. Petersburg in the XIX - early XX centuries

The article deals with the business activity of Muslims in the capital cities of the Russian Empire. Tatars were not the most numerous ethnic group of Moscow and St. Petersburg; however, they found their niche in the business of megacities. In the middle of the XIX century, Tatars were mainly engaged in the sale of traditional Eastern goods and met the needs of the Muslim community. Then the Tatars moved to the service sector focused on the needs of the entire urban population. In addition, a large proportion of small Muslim entrepreneurs controlled small-scale trafficking and trade in second-hand goods. The paper analyzes the dynamics of business activity of Muslim entrepreneurs of the largest megacities of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.