This paper presents a survey of shrines and archaeological sites in Wakhan District of Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan, conducted over four years of field work (2004-2007). The goal of the paper is to elucidate the religious, social and historical context in which these sites exist so that the significance of the sites may be understood not only from a scholarly perspective but equally from the perspective of the people of Wakhan for whom they form a living landscape imbued with deep significance. This is accomplished through analysis of extensive interviews conducted in Wakhi at the sites and shrines. The paper focuses on one shrine as an exemplar; the shrine of the miracle of Nasir Khusraw in Yimit village. The paper draws comparisons between documented shrine traditions in adjacent Wakhan Tajikistan and Hunza-Gojal Pakistan and suggests outlines of a Pamir interpretive community.

The proposed paper aims to discuss the monumental history of Wakhan in the example of the pre-Islamic fortresses across the Amu-Darya River in the Pamirs. Through the examination of the available historical and archaeological evidence provided in the works of Russian and Tajik scholars and travelers, the paper advances a broad argument concerning the role and significance of the fortress to the socio-economic, political and cultural lives of the region and beyond. Although, historical evidence on pre-modern Wakhan in general and the fortresses in particular is hard to come by, this paper explores some early sources, including Chinese (in translation), Arabic and Persian documents that make references to the fortresses and their importance. The ruins of the fortresses of Wakhan, locally referred to as qala-yi Qah-Qah (the fort of Qah-Qaha) or kafir-qala (the fort of unbeliever), are still preserved and until recently some of them were used by the Russian military border patrol, reminding us of the purpose for which they were originally built thousand years ago. The architectural structure of the ruins suggests that the construction of the fortresses was commissioned by a strong political power for economic and political purposes, which could include trade and taxation, security and defense. According to some archaeological findings the fortresses were built around the early centuries of our era during the reign of the Kushan empire (2d century BC-3d century AD), one of the powerful pre-Islamic dynasties in Central and South Asia, and continued to function up until the Arab invasion of the region. It demonstrates the great interest of the Kushan authorities on the trade rout from China and India passing through the Wakhan corridor to Central Asian and the Middle East. The fortresses, therefore, served as a means of trade security as well as tax collection points. The paper also examines the legends and stories associated with the owners of the fortresses, who are polemically describe as the back clad infidels (kafir-i siyahpush), and the advent of Islam in the local Muslim traditional accounts.

This goal of this paper is to explore the interconnections between genealogical traditions preserved by families in the nineteenth-twentieth century, oral foundational narratives and the sacred landscape of Ismaili shrines located in the Shughnan Districts of Badakhshan in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The two formerly united regions were divided along the Panj River following the Pamir Agreement in 1895 established by an Anglo-Russian Commission that sought to create a neutral zone between the British and Russians. Focusing on nineteenth and twentieth-century local histories, documentary sources and oral narratives based on field research conducted between 2004-2008, this paper will discuss a series of foundational figures, political leaders, Isma'ili shrines, oral narratives and genealogical traditions preserved in oral and written (nasab-namas) forms that together, shed light on the socio-religious history of Shughnan. Special attention will be paid to the shrines and traditions of Shah Malang and Shah Kashan.

Human ecology describes the relationships between people and their environment, which includes relations between humans and human relations with other animals, plants, and their habitats. Relations such as these generate knowledge that is context-specific: nuanced by complex connectivity with the immediate environment, it is heterogeneous and empirically dense and has cumulative depth. These relations promote cultural systems that are vitally informed by their natural surroundings in a non-deterministic relationship. Historically the people of the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia have integrated the human body into the seasons and rhythms of nature through their calendar. Now the workings of these calendars are no longer widely known in the Tajik Pamirs, as they were replaced by the secular solar calendar under Soviet rule. Nonetheless, in some villages memory of use of these calendars is still present. Traditionally, farmers undertook agro-pastoral and hunting activities using their own bodies not only for labour, but as a mirror of the changing tempo of the seasons. Their bodies both interacted with the life on the land and acted as living clocks to mark the movement of time. Village elders who followed the movement of the sun and moon determined key religious festivals and integrated this information into the calendar of the human body. Thus, specific days are associated with each body part. As there is slight variation in the seasons from valley to valley, these calendars were location-specific to each relevant region of the Pamirs, and dependent on the ecological context. This paper describes the calendar and explores its role as an adaptive response to environmental change.

The Ishkoshimis of Tajik Badakhshan have been living in a situation of frequent economic and political shifts that have, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union, affected routine aspects of their lives. In coping with these changes there is an attempt to create stability through maintenance of both religious identity and socially-established kinship roles, although these fundamental aspects of life are also in flux. Most notably, the fall of socialism enabled Badakhshanis to have access to their religious leader, the Aga Khan. Religious practice started to become institutionalized with direction coming from the his Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. This institutionalization of faith is ongoing. In March 2009, an edict of the Imam was delivered to the villages of Ishkashim in which further changes to the daily prayer and to wedding and funeral prayers were promised. This paper will begin with an ethnographic analysis of the delivery to understand how an agenda of world-wide unification of Ismaili ritual practice is negotiated with the particularities of Ishkashimi traditions. The Ishkashimis' notable lack of shocked reaction to the promise of changes to such critical aspects of religious practice will be laid in contrast to the chaos produced when the age-old Ishkashimi tradition of unearthing and burning a corpse who is considered to be causing death among the living was contested by Ishkashimis themselves. In 2008, the legitimacy of the ritual, which had been overseen by the local khalifa, was questioned by a police investigation at the bequest of the woman whose father's remains had been burned. Feuds between neighbours and kin developed through this locally-based negotiation of ritual legitimacy; loyalties amongst kin had been betrayed and the authority of certain individuals contested. At the end of the investigation, khalifas were instructed to no longer authorize such unearthing and burning traditions. This paper compares the particular reactions to imposed change from an institution to negotiated change amongst kin. It argues that institutional changes, while altering the content and execution of daily rituals, do not threaten locally established social roles and therefore may appear continuous. The negotiation of ritual change on the ground, however, feels much more chaotic as it generates conflict amongst kin through its destabilization of established relationships. I assert that Ishkashimis foreground the local in terms of religious identity and daily kin relations in a way that distances even those aspects of institutionalized change that affect daily life.