Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly

The role of the mufti was established in the assembly's founding documents of 1788, however neither his social status or the scope of his powers were made clear.

[5] The first mufti, Mukhamedzhan Khusainov, immediately began to push for more power, demanding the same status as the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He met several times with Catherine II in St. Petersburg, and began to see himself as an important political figure in the Volga-Ural region.

This worried local Russian administrators, who requested and received permission from Prince Alexander Bezborodko to severely limit Khusainov's influence and keep him under their control.

Local authorities then decreed "his [the mufti's] duty is to administer strictly religious matters, and not to touch secular ones, except when the administrations sees fit to use him for these".