Female Religiosity and Sainthood in Early Modern Iran and Central Asia
Panel 114, 2019 Annual Meeting
On Friday, November 15 at 2:45 pm
Panel Description
Despite the growing interest in the study of the role of women in Islamic societies, most studies have focused on contemporary issues while overlooking the historical dimensions of the question. The imbalance is particularly strong with regard to religious history, for which the relatively sparse sources that directly document women and their sociality need to be supplemented by new ways of interrogating other sources that do not immediately come to mind as sources on "women's religiosity." The present panel will explore historical dimensions of female religiosity in Iran and Central Asia, from the 14th century to the early 20th, on the basis of sources of both kinds, most of which have not attracted scholarly attention so far.
The first paper examines the poetry of the 14th century poetess Jah?n Malik Kh?t?n who was a contemporary of Hafiz. The presenter looks at her ghazals to study the mystical elements that appear in her poetry and contextualize them within the larger conversations about what we mean by the "mystical." The second paper explores the role that Sufi women played in the development of Sufism in Central Asia through the case of the 16th century saintly woman known as "Agh?-yi Buzurg." The presenter examines the hagiography, Ma?har al-?aj?'ib, devoted to Agh?-yi Buzurg by her disciple ??fi? Ba??r, and investigates the ways in which ??fi? Ba??r constructs his master's reputation as a spiritual leader. The third paper explores the place of a female saint of Yarkand in local devotional traditions in the region. These nas?b-n?mah and tazk?rah give both the genealogy and story of miracles performed by a saint alternately called B?b? P?dish?h and B?b? Halv?'?. The last paper examines the treatment of women in Muslim genealogical traditions from 18th- and 19th-century Central Asia based on a work compiled in the Farghana valley. This untitled work is cast as a record of the author's links to the Prophet Mu?ammad through two female ancestors, identified as M?m?sh B?b?cha and B?b? ???isha M?h Bégim, who appear in a series of lineages traced through them to a wide array of Sufi saints, and on back to the Prophet or the R?shid?n.
Each paper addresses the dual aim of expanding the source base and improving the questions we ask of the sources, together they work toward developing an analytical discourse for illuminating the historical dimensions of female religiosity and sainthood in early modern Muslim societies.
The paper will examine female religiosity and gender history in early modern Central Asia based on the 16th century male-authored work entitled, Ma?har al-?aj?’ib, devoted to a female Sufi master known as Agh?-yi Buzurg, who was active in the vicinity of Bukhara in the early 1500s. Few scholars have yet seriously conducted a careful textual analysis of the remarkable source, the Ma?har al-?aj?’ib, that is, as of today, the only known work produced in Central Asia that is devoted to a female Sufi master. Specifically, this paper will investigate the ways in which the author of the Ma?har al-?aj?’ib, ??fi? Ba??r, constructs his female master’s reputation as a spiritual leader. The paper argues that in its portrayal of Agh?-yi Buzurg, the Ma?har al-?aj?’ib represents a tradition that maintained an egalitarian conception of gender in the spiritual equality of women and men. The Ma?har al-?aj?’ib is a unique source giving us a glimpse of the gender specific aspects of perceptions of the 16th century author, and thus attests to the presence of multiple voices in Muslim discourse, and challenges the conventional ways of thinking about gender relations in Islamic societies.
This paper will examine the treatment of women in Muslim genealogical traditions from 18th- and 19th-century Central Asia, with particular attention to a work compiled in the late 18th or early 19th century in the Farghana valley; this untitled work, compiled by a certain Am?r Sayyid Shaykh A?mad N??ir al D?n b. Am?r Sayyid ?Umar al Margh?n?n? and preserved in a unique manuscript in Tashkent, is cast as a record of the author’s links to the Prophet Mu?ammad through two female ancestors, identified as M?m?sh B?b?cha and B?b? ???isha M?h Bégim, who appear, several generations back from the author, in a series of lineages traced through them to a wide array of (mostly) Sufi saints, and on back to the Prophet or the R?shid?n. The paper will first situate this work in the context of a larger body of genealogical texts from this era, which go well beyond the genealogies of major saints such as Khw?ja A?r?r or Makhd?m-i A??am, produced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in ‘populating’ diverse parts of Central Asia with multiple layers of genealogically sanctified families, and will note the division evident in these works between those that pay substantial attention to female ancestors and the lineages they bring into a genealogical structure, and those that do not. It will then focus on the work of Margh?n?n? and note its distinctiveness in claiming female ancestors as bearers not only of natural lineages, but of initiatic Sufi lineages as well. It will argue that several of these genealogical texts, and especially the work of Margh?n?n?, bear witness to significant changes underway, during the 18th century and the first half of the 19th, in the social framework of Sufi-inflected religious life in Central Asia, and that the diffusion of Sufi rites and devotional practices into wider social circles that has been argued for this era is paralleled by a broader inclusion, and recognition, of women in the way basic structures of the transmission of saintly authority were envisioned.
While the poetry of Hafez Shirazi has been the focus of many mystical analysis, the poetry of his contemporary, Jahan Malik Khatun, who was in conversation with the poet has rarely been studied. The introduction to her Divan illustrates that she consciously positioned herself as a female poet among his male peers in Shiraz in general, and Hafez in particular. In this paper, I look at the ghazals of this fourteenth-century poet to study the mystical elements that appear in her poetry and contextualize them within the larger conversations about what we mean by the “mystical".
This paper explores the place of a female saint of Yarkand, in modern day Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China, in local devotional traditions in the region. It focuses on the early twentieth century, during the reign of a series of warlords in the region and pays particular attention to documents associated with her shrine, as well as the pilgrimage traditions that surrounded it. These texts, a nas?b-n?mah and tazk?rah—a genealogy and a hagiography said to be the 29th chapter of the tazk?rah of the Bughr?-kh?ns—are, as are so many texts from the region, the product of an unidentified scribe and give both the genealogy and story of miracles performed by a saint alternately called B?b? P?dish?h and B?b? Halv?’?. This text was kept at the shrine of the saint just outside of the historical center of the city and was used in a devotional setting that was frequented almost exclusively by women who desired to fulfil a societally normative role, such as when they wished to marry, to conceive, or to ensure the health and prosperity of their offspring.
This paper will begin by situating the texts within the literary landscape of the region, which consisted largely of small treatises and devotional manuals, suggesting that these materials are, in point of fact, the most important source to the knowledge of religious and sacred practice in the region at the time of their transmission. It continues by situating the practices at the shrine within the context of the broader set of devotional practices that were the norm, paying attention to the fact that the shrine was essentially the domain of women and children. It will then narrow in focus and examine the texts themselves, probing the saint’s connection to a well-known Makhd?mzadah genealogy as an initiatic link and the role of place in her tazk?rah, which sees her travel from her birthplace to Mecca and settle in Yarkand. It argues both for the place of the text as central to women’s devotional practices, as well as their legitimate use as a source for the study of religious practice in the region. Finally, it suggests that normatively female devotions, typically thought of as located outside the world of texts, were in fact perfectly capable of centering itself around them.
