Only recently have scholars of Central Asian history begun to turn their attention to the family histories of religious notables, particularly those of the 18th-20th centuries. New archival research, a reexamination of the impact of Russian and Soviet policy concerning Islam and Muslim religious figures and intellectuals, and recent field research yielding an array of unpublished materials such as genealogies, oral traditions, state documents, and biographical narratives, have all contributed to a growing body of evidence that enables scholars to produce micro-studies as well as to consider the comparative issues that emerge from them. Scholars are exploring the history of Sufi communities and dynastic families, the roles and status of the ulama, the fate of old, well-established spiritual families, and the impact of tsarist and Soviet policies on traditional family networks. The papers in this panel represent new scholarship on the histories of religious notables in Central Asia. The first paper explores the history of a sacred family of Khwarazm through the unpublished Persian text, Ris?la-yi nuzdaham, which traces this family from the Prophet's uncle lAbb?s through the 18th century, and discusses issues raised by this work concerning the organizational development of "Sufi communities" in the early modern era. The second paper, which utilizes Persian and Arabic biographical materials, focuses on the rise to prominence of several family dynasties of ulama during the period of transition from the late 18th to the early 19th century. The third paper utilizes unpublished documentary sources (genealogies, photographs), written texts (correspondence, biography and poetry), and oral traditions collected during field research to examine the shifting roles and identities of the A rfrt descendants of the renowned Timurid shaykh, Khoja hUbayd Alljh A?rbr, who first settled in the village of Khistevarz near Khujand in the 17th century, where a shrine was built that contains their graves. The fourth paper examines how the Soviet experience affected traditional family networks associated with Sufi shaykhs and Islamic scholars, in particular the Boboxonov family, which directed the official Spiritual Board during the Soviet period. Finally, the fifth paper examines the family history of the Mujaddidiya of Shor Bazaar in Afghanistan, with a special emphasis on parallel authority structures created in the modern period.
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This paper will explore traditions of hereditary and initiatic succession within a Central Asian family that sought to define itself in terms of ties to ?ak?m Ata, a saint of Khw?razm best known as a disciple of the famous Turkic Sufi shaykh A?mad Yasav? (both figures most likely lived in the late 12th and early 13th centuries). It will note the range of hagiographical and folkloric traditions about ?ak?m Ata, preserved in written sources and oral accounts recorded from the 15th century to the present, but will focus primarily on a previously unstudied Persian text that outlines the history of a lineage descending from the saint down to the 18th century. The work, entitled Ris?la yi nuzdahum (reflecting its disposition in 19 chapters), survives in a unique manuscript preserved in Tashkent, and in effect follows three stages in the history of a sacred family of Khw?razm: first, a natural genealogy from the Prophet’s uncle ?Abb?s down to a disciple of ?ak?m Ata; second, a lineage combining natural descent and initiatic Sufi transmission from this disciple down to the late 16th century; and third, a hereditary lineage, from the late 16th to the early 18th century, in which members sought out other sources of Sufi initiation and training. This third phase in particular suggests important conclusions about the organizational development of what appear as ‘Sufi communities’ in the early modern era, and reflects trends evident also in other poorly studied ‘family histories’ from the 18th century; the paper will address parallels with these other family histories, and especially with two works among them that also focus on the region of Khw?razm. More broadly, the paper will consider two key issues raised by the Ris?la yi nuzdahum and these other texts: the relationship of the two succession patterns, hereditary and initiatic, which are sometimes parallel but sometimes intersect, and the question of what it was that individuals following these succession patterns were succeeding to.
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Dr. Jo-Ann Gross
Using ans?b literature, hagiographical lore, interviews carried out during fieldwork, and historical sources, this paper will explore the significance of sayyid pedigree in Shughnan, Badakhshan, the ways in which religious and political authority in Shughnan have been legitimated through sayyid descent, and the mythical aspects of foundational stories and their relation with the formation of communal identity. The paper will be divided into three parts: 1) first, a review of the published and unpublished nasab-n?mas and a discussion of their significance; 2) second, an examination of the legendary narratives about Sh?h Malang recorded in published works and conveyed orally to me during fieldwork; and 3) third, my concluding remarks.
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Dr. James Pickett
Throughout Islamdom family dynasties of the ulama have shown remarkable longevity and resilience in the face of constantly shifting politics. Nowhere was this more true than Central Asia, where new Turkic conquests were frequent and the reach of central authority was decidedly limited. Nevertheless, the conquest of Transoxiana by Nadir Shah in 1740 and the subsequent entrenchment of the Manghit dynasty in Bukhara offered the opportunity for new families of scholars to secure material resources and prestige. Relying primarily on Persian- and Arabic-language biographical materials, this research traces the rise to prominence of several such families of ulama during this period of transition in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and follows the careers of their descendants and acolytes into the early twentieth century. The scholars reaping political windfall from this dramatic political upheaval bequeathed a remarkably stable social power dynamic to their heirs, who formed the core of a Persianate elite buttressing Central Asian society until the Bolshevik conquest.
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Dr. Eren Tasar
Although the political significance of client-patron
networks and extended family ties has been documented throughout the
Soviet Union, including Central Asia, it remains unclear how the
Soviet experience impacted the traditional family networks associated
Sufi shaykhs and Islamic scholars. This paper navigates Soviet
archival materials dealing with Islam in Central Asia to reevaluate
the nature of these networks in the five decades following World War
II. Did master-disciple networks survive the anti-religious violence
of the 1920s and 1930s, and, if so, in which direction did they evolve
during the stable decades following World War II? In what areas of
religion life did some connection to a broader network of religious
authority, family-related or otherwise, NOT matter? To answer these
questions the paper will look at archival evidence concerning several
shrines as well as the Boboxonov family (sometimes referred to as
"dynasty"), which ran Central Asia's only legal Islamic organization
from 1943-1989.
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Dr. Waleed Ziad
The Mujaddidi family of Shor Bazaar, Kabul, is amongst the most celebrated and controversial Sufi lineages in Afghanistan. The Kabul Mujaddidis, who migrated from Sirhind to Afghanistan at the behest of Ahmad Shah Durrani, were direct descendants and caliphas of the Naqshbandi revivalist saint, Shaykh Ahmed Sirhindi (known as the Mujaddid, or reviver, of the 2nd Millennium). It is often argued that the Mujaddidi family were the principal carriers of Sirhindi’s revivalist teachings into Afghanistan, and transformed religious practice and identity in the region. However, their popular appeal, the structure of their networks, and their efforts at tajdid, or ‘renewal’, are not well understood.
Relying on the principal Kabul Mujaddidi biography, Umdat al-Maqamat as well as poetry, later biographies and local histories, this paper will explore how the first generations of the Mujaddidis in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, conceived of their project of tajdid, and the socio-religious function of their lineage. It will further examine how the shaykhs and students perceived the sources of their own authority, and relationship to state and broader society.
I argue that the Mujaddidis engaged their Naqshbandi lineage and Sirhindian epistemology to represent stability, authenticity, and regional unity in a time of political decentralization and turmoil. Problematizing Voll’s neo-Sufi hypothesis, the sources indicate that the Mujaddidi family endeavored to both solidify and expand the boundaries of sharia to incorporate local mystical practices from prevailing Sufi orders, as well as Alid beliefs. The Mujaddidi khaniqahs – extending from Kashgar to Bukhara to Sindh within two generations - formed a new network of public spaces which helped reassert Kabul’s position as a scholastic and religious center, drawing students from as far as Turkey, Kazan, and Bulgharia. The architecture of this transnational network, I will argue, provides insights into an emerging form of scholarly-saintly authority whose philosophy and institutions established the foundation for the revivalist movements of the early modern and modern Sunni Persianate world.
