Taking Islam and the Russian empire for natural antagonists, such a vision relied on the Orientalist approach representing Islam as a homogeneous and timeless entity opposing all non-Muslim cultures. Having recognised Islam at the end of the eighteenth century, the authorities constructed a complicated imperial network of Islamic institutions including Muslim clergy, parishes and four regional muftiates. The administration of Muslims differed in central Russia and the borderlands. In a number of frontier regions such as the North Caucasus and Central Asia, Islam had not been institutionalised even at the end of the old regime. New Muslim elites emerged in response to these new Islamic institutions, which were accepted by most Russian Muslims. Despite this long history of interaction, however, the crisis of the tsarist regime beginning in the last third of the nineteenth century generated new fears and trepidations concerning Islam among tsarist functionaries.