Yusuf Akçura and Ahmet Ağaoğlu, Turkic Muslims born in Russia who are well known in late Ottoman and Turkish historiography for their roles in the “pan-Turkist” movement, have long been seen by scholars primarily as “intellectuals.” Because Akçura and Ağaoğlu are discussed in the scholarly literature mainly in the context of their “ideas” and “arguments,” the published newspaper and journal articles of these two individuals, usually taken from their years in Istanbul, tend to constitute the major source base of scholarship devoted to these figures. Using a different set of sources—including documents from state archives in Istanbul, Baku, and Kazan, as well as publications appearing in the Russian Empire and previously uncited and unpublished personal correspondence—I discuss Akçura and Ağaoğlu not simply within the context of an “emerging” Turkish nationalism, but rather within a broader, trans-imperial milieu of Muslims traveling between Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Iran. In this setting, Akçura and Ağaoğlu appear less as consistent Turkic nationalists and more like identity freelancers, less like intellectuals focusing primarily upon identity and more like activists devoted principally to constitutionalism and progress. In their mobility, Akçura and Ağaoğlu fell within a well-established pattern of both elite and non-elite Muslims traveling between the Russian and Ottoman empires—often playing the two empires off of one another as they moved between them.