A Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism

shns, Dervishes, and a Vast Army of Murds:
Towards a Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism
By
Timothy Jack Rowe
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
(Languages and Cultures of Asia)
at the
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
2015
Date of final oral examination: 7/8/2015
The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee:
Charles L. Cohen, Professor, History
Dustin Cowell, Professor, African Languages & Literature
Uli Schamiloglu, Professor, Languages and Cultures of Asia
Samuel England, Assistant Professor, African Languages & Literature
Funda Gven Derin, Ph.D., Lecturer, Languages and Cultures of Asia
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i
Contents
Acknowledgments..iv
Chapter 1. Introduction1
Organization...9
Literature Review10
Mystical Islam in Central Eurasia, Eighth-Early Twentieth Centuries.....12
Rise and Development of the Central Asian orders...19
Central Asia in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries..49
Bukhara from the Sixteenth Century to the Russian Conquest..................................49
Khiva from the Sixteenth Century to the Russian Conquest.51
Kokand from the Eighteenth Century to the Russian Conquest53
Russian Conquest and Imperial Administration, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries...54
Chinese Turkestan, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries57
Chapter 2. Order Organization, Economic Basis, Membership, Demographics, and Networks...62

Identifying the Orders.63
Order Organization.68
Qalandariyya and Qalandarkhana.69
Dervishes ...73
Naqshbandiyya...76
Order Membership, Demographics, and Networks..86
Membership...87
Demographics90
Intraregional Networks..93
ii
Chapter 3. The Orders Spiritual Services to Society and Rituals.96

The Orders Spiritual Services to Society..97
Marking the Qibla, Officiating a Marriage, and Celebrating d al-a.98
Ulam and Guardians of the Sharia.101

Healing and Blessing...107
Distribution of Alms110
Rituals.112
Ziyrat..112
Initiation...115
Tahajjud and Talqn.119
Murqaba.120
Dhikr122
Chilla...130
Psychoactive Drug Use131
Chapter 4. Sufi Appearance, Connection to Shrines, and Place in Folklore...133

Sufi Dress, Accoutrements, and Appearance..134
The Proper Upper Class...134
Conical Caps and begging Bowls137
Shrines, Pilgrimage, and the Sufi Connection.142
Places of Pilgrimage: Saintly Association, Location, and Layout...146
Places of Pilgrimage: Administration and Rituals...150
Places of Pilgrimage: A Sufi-Shrine Nexus Case-Study.158
Sufis in Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Folklore.162
Saintly Patronage and Daily Survival..163
Holding Death at Bay...164
iii
A Donkeys Tomb166
Chapter 5. Toward A Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism168

The Orders..169
Naqshbandiyya.169
Qalandariyya181
Diversity and Uniformity in Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism.186
Pir Power and Murd Desire: The Goals of Discipleship188
Shaykhs: Modalities of Power and Authority..189

Murds: Balancing Din and Dunya..193
The Murd-Shaykh Nexus201
Adepts and Lay Affiliates: Unity in Aim, Divergence in Technology204
Chapter 6. Conclusion: shns, Dervishes, and a Vast Army of Murds.205
Bibliography212
iv
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thanks are due to the Lord of the Two Worlds, who makes the
impossible possible. Next, I must acknowledge my great debt to Truman and Merry for their
unflagging support. They followed me from Idaho to Arizona, to Wisconsin, to Washington DC,
back to Wisconsin, back to DC, to Turkey, all the while learning far more about Turkic peoples,
the former Soviet Union, shrine pilgrimage, and the Sufis of Central Asia than they ever wanted
to. Many thanks to Uli, advisor, academic murshid, friend. It is largely thanks to his guidance,
advocacy, and training that I was able to finish this project. Thanks to Anna Gade, whose
instruction and advice shaped my understanding of the complexities of Sufism, and Religious
Studies in general, and brought much-needed disciplinary rigor and nuance to this project.
Thanks to Dr. B, mentor and motivator, who convinced me, five minutes after completing my
second masters degree, to finish my Ph.D. Thanks to Handy Bey, without whose constant
slaying of bureaucratic dragons and shaking of money trees I would never have had the time and
resources necessary to reach dissertator status. Thanks to Christopher J. Doersam, living
encyclopedia of Central Asian history and culturewho taught me a good deal of what I know
about contemporary issues in the regionand Michael Coffey, editor, partner-in-crime,
consummate schemer, and yoldosh on the dusty roads of Central Eurasia. Their instruction in
bureaucratic skullduggery was instrumental in helping me temporarily escape the office to
continue my education. Finally, thanks to Dr. Nemchenok, whose frequent Russo-Bostonian
cajoling eventually persuaded me that even I could write a dissertation.

1
Chapter 1
Introduction
Let my life be sacrificed to you, if you decide to spill my blood,

I am your slave, you are my sultan, I only need you.
Scholars need books, Sufis need mosques,
The love-crazed need Leila, I only need you.
The ignorant need the world, the wise need the world to come,
Preachers need the pulpit, I only need you
Hoja Ahmad is my name, my fire burns night and day,
I have hope in two worlds, I only need you.
attributed to Khoja Amad Yasav (d. 1166-7)1
As the birthplace of the Naqshbandiyya, Yasaviyya, and Kubrawiyya, Central Asia has
received a significant amount of scholarly attention in the field of Sufi Studies. However, the
highest profile works among these studies tend to concentrate on the thirteenth-seventeenth
centuries when the region was associated with sizeable empires, or home to significant military
powers, and renowned as a center of Islamic high culture.2 With some notable exceptions, the
study of Central Asian mystical Islam in the nineteenth century is relatively underdeveloped.
Yet, scholars like Jo-Ann Gross, Hamid Algar, and Bakhtiyor Babadjanov have done much to
1
Ahmad Yassavii, Hikmat 117,in Devoni Hikmat (Tashkent: Gafur Gulom Nomidagi Nashriyot-Matbaa
Birlashmasi, 1992), 159; Saifiddin Nazarzoda, ed., Farhangi Tafsirii Zaboni Tojiki, vol. 2 (Dushanbe: Academy of
Science of Tajikistan, 2008), 365.
2
Among the best studies of Central Asia Sufism in this era are those by DeWeese: Islamization and Native Religion
in the Golden Horde: Baba Tkles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park, PA:
The Pennsylvania State press, 1994); The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the
Yasavi and Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions, Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford), 7/2 (July 1996): 180-207; The
Yasavi Order and Persian Hagiography in Seventeenth-Century Central Asia: Alim Shaykh of Aliyabad and his
Lamahat mi nafahat al-quds, in The Legacy of Mediaeval Persian Sufism, vol. 3, ed. L. Lewisohn (New York,
1992); Khojagani Origins and the Critique of Sufism: The Rhetoric of Communal Uniqueness in the Manaqib of
Khoja 'Ali 'Azizan Ramitani, in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics,
ed. Frederick De Jong and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: E.J. Brell, 1999), 492-519; A Neglected Source on Central Asian
History: The 17th-Century Yasavi Hagiography Manaqib al-Akhyar, in Essays on Uzbek History, Culture, and
Language, ed. B.A. Nazarov and D. Sinor, with D. DeWeese, Uralic and Altaic Series 156 (Bloomington, 1993), 38-
50; and Jo-Ann Gross: The Letters of Khoja Ubayd Allah Ahrar and his Associates (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
2
demonstrate the role of Sufis in the social, cultural, economic, and political life of the region in
this period using various methodological approaches and source bases.3 However, no attempt has
yet been undertaken to provide a comprehensive picture of the daily life and internal workings of
nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufi orders. Through current scholarship we possess insights
into Sufi participation in the grand, tumultuous sweep of Central Asian history, but we still have
only received the tiniest of glimpses into the most basic data pertaining to the orders as discrete
entities.
Collecting and analyzing this data is, perhaps, a more mundane task than exploring, for
example, Naqshband connections to revolts against the tsarist colonial authorities. But,
understanding what nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufi orders looked like is just as
essential as seeking to define their role in movements of revival, reform, and revolution.4 The
primary goal of this paper, then, will be to paint a comprehensive picture of these Sufi orders,
specifically the Naqshbandiyya and the Qalandariyya. This handbook of nineteenth-century Sufi
life will detail the orders organizations, economic bases, demographics, rituals, dress,
3
Hamid Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, in
Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change, ed. Jo-Ann Gross (Durham, 1992), 112-133; Jo-Ann
Gross, The Waqf of Khoja Ubaydullah Ahrar in Nineteenth Century Central Asia: A Preliminary Study of the
Tsarist Record, in Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia, ed. by Elizabeth zdalga (Curzon Press, 1999), 47-
60; and Baxtiyar M. Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, in Muslim Culture in Russia
and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 2 Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds.
Anke Von Kgelgen, et. al (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1998), 167-191.
4
Sufi involvement in such movements has long elicited scholarly and popular interest, see Michael Laffan, The
Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2011) and Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufis and Anti-Sufis: the Defence, Rejection and Rethinking of Sufism in the Modern
World (Surrey: Curzon, 1999). More specifically focused on Central Eurasia are Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders
Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
Uwe Halbach, Holy War against Czarism: The Links between Sufism and Jihad in the Nineteenth Century
Anticolonial Resistance Movement against Russia, in Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on
Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, eds. (German edition) Andreas
Kappeler, Gerhard Simon and Georg Brunner; (English edition) Edward Allworth, trans. Caroline Sawyer (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 251-276; and Abdullah Temizkan, Osmal Devlet ile Rus arl Arasnda
mam Mansur, Sf Aratrmalar Cilt 4, Say 8 (Yaz 2013): 1-35.
3
connections to shrines, and places in local folklore. Furthermore, this foundational study will
provide the data necessary for us to compare the Naqshbandiyya and Qalandariyya, and posit
general conclusions about the nature of Sufi life in Central Asia during the nineteenth century.
Finally, using an innovative methodology, we will delve into the goals of discipleship among our
Sufis.
In this way, this study will demonstrate that there existed great diversity under the
Naqshband rubric in nineteenth-century Central Asia, including shaykhs of a revivalist strain,
which arose in the context of Russian colonialism, shaykhs renowned for administering wealth
and displaying tangible affluence, and shaykhs acting as important figures in their communities
and playing roles that strengthened their connections to both the lower and upper strata of
society. At the same time, we will show that not all these Naqshband shaykhs could be
described as sober. Rather, some were involved in the performance of ecstatic rituals, the
institution of exuberant shrine feasts or co-optation of popular holy places, and the adopting of
the trappings of renunciation in terms of appearance. We will also see that the Qalandariyya of
our era were similarly diverse, with different dervish strains existing under the same conceptual
umbrella. These included the ascetic virtuosia remnant of earlier times who practiced
itineracy, public nudity, and graveyard seclusionand more mainstream Sufis whose appearance
was closer to that of the Naqshbandiyya. The relationship between Naqshbandiyya and
Qalandariyya will be revealed to not be one of cross-pollination, borrowing, or conservative
retrenchment and ideological quarantine in reaction to one anothers presence in the same space.
Rather, it will be shown as a hybrid, where the two orders moved toward one another in terms of
certain issues (appearance, for example), while remaining committed to the unique principles of
their spiritual lineages. Finally, it will establish that the murds of these orders associated
4
themselves with Sufi shaykhs for many reasons, some of them being, at least superficially,
temporal. At a deeper level, however, it will be evident that both types of disciples (adepts and
lay affiliates) end goal was nearness to the divine as manifested through saintly personages,
though they used different technologies to achieve their aims.
Methodology
Geographically, this study will rely on a modified definition of Central Asia, extending
it beyond the current geopolitical limitations associated with that term, and paraphrasing Denis
Sinors idea of Inner Asia as a cultural rather than geographical concept.5 Thus, hereafter,
Central Asia will indicate Turkestan, with specific attention paid to its western half (the region
that came under tsarist colonial rule by the late nineteenth century). Related religious phenomena
in East/Chinese Turkestan (essentially the Tarim Basin of the present day Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region (XUAR) will also be discussed. At the same time, this definition will be
narrowed to primarily focus on the settled oases and other parts of the region whose primary
economic basis was agriculture, i.e. those dominated by Tajiki and Turki speakers. The term
Central Eurasia will also be used when discussing broader trends, and will include both
Central Asia as well as culturally related regions (the Kazakh steppe, northern Afghanistan,
Siberia, and the Volga-Urals region).
Temporally, this study will largely confine itself to the nineteenth century. However,
recognizing that the beginning and end of a century hardly constitute objective starting and
stopping points for analyzing a religious phenomenon, associated data from the late eighteenth
5
The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed. D. Sinor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), xi-18.
5
and early twentieth centuries (prior to 1917 in western Turkestan and before 1911 in Chinese
Turkestan) will be considered, where appropriate.
This studys source base will primarily be composed of first-hand accounts of nineteenth-
century Western travelers to Central Asia. These accounts are problematic, in that they are often
replete with the biases and stereotypes common to the colonial era, when Westerners views of
the inhabitants of the Islamic world were frequently distorted by a sense of their own
technological (read: cultural) superiority.6 These accounts were written by outsiders who were
usually, both literally and figuratively, uninitiated into the Sufi world, and not always well
informed as to the meanings of the phenomena they encountered. It must also be recognized that,
to paraphrase Thomas Tweed, not even the most gifted traveler or observer is omnivagant or
omnispectivethey see only what the vantage allows[and their interpretations] emerge from
within categorical schemes and social contexts.7
Yet, any observation can be considered acceptable if it is internally coherent and
contextually useful and we do not claim that it corresponds to external reality.8 Indeed,
self-conscious positioning, not pretenses to universality or detachment, is the condition for
6
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). Part and parcel of this European viewpoint was
the notion of the decline or decadence of the imagined orient, which was perpetrated in Western scholarship. It is
only in recent decades that scholars, like Scott Levi, have made important strides in dispelling historiographical
canards that depict Central Asias post-seventeenth-century era as a period of political instability and socio-
economic declineattributed to Europeans monopolization of the transcontinental movement of commodities
between Asia and Europe, see Scott C. Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and its Trade, 1550-1900
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 1. For a better understanding of the specific cultural baggage some of our travels brought with
them to the region, see Anke Von Kgelgen, Buchara im Urteil Europischer Reisender Des18. Und 19.
Jahrhunderts, in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol.1 , eds.
Michael Kemper, et. al (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 415-430.
7
Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006),
15-16.
8
Ibid., 17.
6
making knowledge claims.9 Thus our travel accounts, an untapped source of data on mystical
Islam in the nineteenth century, can be made serviceable by keeping in mind the cultural contexts
in which they originated, a task often made easier by the travelers openly-stated biases. They
become contextually useful when balanced by a careful analysis of the Manqib-i Dkch
shn, a hagiography of the Naqshband shaykh involved in the 1898 revolt in Andijan. This
work, which suffers from its own biases and blind spots, will be mined for insights into the daily
life in the Sufi khnaqh (lodge), giving voice to the Central Asian Sufis themselves. Taken
together, these sources reinforce one another and provide both emic (Sufi) and etic (traveler)
perspectives.
Attempting to reconstruct Sufi life in nineteenth-century Central Asia is an enormous
task, and making even this first, exploratory step will require a hybrid analytical framework
cobbled together from the fields of anthropology, history, religious studies, and folklore.
Primarily, this paper will seek to present its data in the form of an ethnographythat is, an
empirical account of the cultural and social organization of [a] particular human population
reconstructing mystical Islamic life in the nineteenth century.10 This will be accomplished by
gathering, and coding, relevant data from the primary sources, allowing the information present
in these sources to shape the overall themes of the discussion. Although a close reading of the
sources will be conducted with an eye toward elucidating aspects of Sufisms appearance in
the era, other data encountered (such as descriptions of the physical layout of lodges, and the
spiritual services Sufis performed for local communities) will also be gathered, coded, and
9
Ibid., 18
10
Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct, ed. R.F. Ellen (London: Academic Press, 1984), 7.
7
analyzed. As this work will be based entirely on historical travelogues, however, it falls more
precisely into the field of ethnohistory.11
Using this inductive or discovery-based research method will provide an extensive and
complex data-set from which an interpretation of the meanings and functions of[ nineteenth-
century Central Asian Sufi] actions can be discerned, with the Sufi order serving as the specific
human population under study, and the lens through which the collected data is viewed.12 Thus,
as already noted, in addition to assembling a handbook of Sufi life in the region and time period,
this study will explore the meanings of Sufis participation (their purposes and goals) in an order.
Specifically, it will seek to do so from the viewpoint of the lowly murd (disciple) whose voice
is often neglected due to source limitations, methodological weaknesses, and an overemphasis on
the charismatic figure of the shaykh. This will be accomplished by exploring the activities of two
11
Ibid. The author is indebted to a number of classic and contemporary works (Soviet, Russian, and Western) for his
understanding of the methodology and structure of ethnographic and ethnohistorical studies: Paula A. Michaels, An
Ethnohistorical Journey through Kazakh Hospitality in Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present, eds. Jeff
Sahedo and Russell Zanca (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 145-159; Caroline Humphrey and David
Andrews Sneath, The End of Nomadism?: Society, State, and the Environment in Inner Asia (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1999); Yu. V. Bromely, Soviet Ethnography: Main Trends (Moscow: Social Sciences Today
Editorial Board, USSR Academy of Sciences, 1977); Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994); Russell Zanca, Life in a Muslim Uzbek Village: Cotton Farming
After Communism (Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2010); Paula G. Rubel, The Kalmyk Mongols: A Study in Continuity
and Change (Uralic and Altaic Series, 1967); M.G. Levin and L.P. Potapov, eds. The Peoples of Siberia (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964); Cynthia Ann Werner, A profile of rural life in Kazakstan, 1994-1998: comments
and suggestions for further research (The National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, 2000);
Vuorela Toivo, The Finno-Ugric Peoples (Uralic and Altaic Series, 1964); James Mooney, The Ghost-Dance
Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, reprint from 1896 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991); Robert
H. Lowie, Indians of the Plains, Bison Book edition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982); Ernest Wallace
and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, The Civilization of the American Indian Series
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952); Bertha P. Dutton, American Indians of the Southwest
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983); Kirin Narayan, Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography
in the Company of Chekhov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
12
Michael Genzuk, A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research
University of Southern California, [website]; available from http://www-
bcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Ethnographic_Research.html; Internet; accessed 17 January 2015.
8
types of murds (adepts and lay affiliates) and matching them to the types of Central Asian
shaykhs whose power and authority elicited their devotion.
Such analysis will require a proper understanding of the historical development of Sufi
orders in the region, and the political, economic, and social conditions that existed there in the
nineteenth century. In addition, knowledge of contemporary developments throughout the larger
Sufi world, specifically in culturally related regions (such as the Ottoman Empire), will be
necessary to augment and fill in gaps in our primary sources. For a general understanding of the
historical development of Sufism and its goals, doctrines, rituals, and institutions, two classic
worksJ. Spencer Triminghams The Sufi Orders in Islam and Annemarie Schimmels Mystical
Dimensions of Islamwill be utilized.13 These will be augmented by Alexander Knyshs Islamic
Mysticism: A Short History, which provides an excellent synthesis of recent scholarship.14 Arthur
Buehlers Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating
Sufi Shaykh will also be consulted. In particular, his proposed tripartite scheme for the
development of Sufism, explication of Naqshband ritual, and notion of the mediating-shaykh,
a type of shaykh which appeared among the Indian Naqshbandiyya during the colonial era, will
be used to understand similar developments in Central Asia.15 Ahmet T. Karamustafas Gods
Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200-1550 will provide similar
insight into the Qalandariyya, and give context to their activities in our nineteenth-century
13
J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Annemarie
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
14
Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History (Leiden: Brill, 2007).
15
Arthur Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh
(University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 168.
9
sources.16 Insights from Vincent J. Cornells Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in
Moroccan Sufism and Robert Rozenhals Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-
First Century Pakistan will be employed to analyze, respectively, the power and authority of
Central Asian shaykhs and the peculiarities of our two categories of disciples.17 Finally, Dina Le
Galls A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 will help illuminate
Naqshband lodge life in Central Asia, while Richard Eatons The Rise of Islam and the Bengal
Frontier: 1204-1760 will elucidate the role of holy men in founding communities through the
establishment of Islamic institutions.18
Organization
The remainder of chapter 1 will provide a review of key secondary literature used, a
substantial historical overview of mystical Islam in Central Eurasia (eight-early twentieth
centuries), and a very brief historical overview of political, economic, and social conditions in
nineteenth-century Central Asia. Chapter 2 will discuss the identity of the Sufi orders described
in the primary source material, the economic underpinnings of, and division of labor, at their
lodges, as well as order membership, demographic makeup, and intra-regional networks. Chapter
3 will examine the spiritual services the orders provided to the societies in which they lived, and
will explore their rituals. Sufi dress and appearance, the Sufi connection to shrines and shrine
pilgrimage, and the portrayal of Sufis in nineteenth-century Central Asian folklore will be the
Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200-1550 (Oxford:
16
Oneworld Publications, 2006).

17
Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1998); Robert Rozenhal, Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century Pakistan (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
18
Dina Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2005); Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204-1760 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993).
10
subject of chapter 4. Chapter 5 will be devoted to an analytically informed, holistic description of
Sufi life in the nineteenth century, and to understanding the goals of murd participation in the
orders. Chapter 6 will offer a brief conclusion.
Literature Review
As noted above, the amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufism
is, regrettably, limited. However, there are a few key works that point to the possibility of
successfully analyzing the nature of Sufism in this era. In addition, if we expand our search for
scholarship on nineteenth-century Sufism to culturally related areas in the Volga-Urals, and
northern Afghanistan, we discover many relevant works that can help shed light on the
phenomenon as it existed in Central Asia.
Jo-Ann Gross is best known for her scholarship on the luminary, Timurid-era shaykh
Nasir al-Din Ubaydullh Arr. Yet, her work on the influence of Arr and his associates in
the Naqshband order has not been confined solely to his lifetime. In her contribution to
Naqshbandis in Western and Central Asia she details how Arrs nineteenth-century
descendants (i.e. those of his spiritual lineage) continued to administer the waqf (pious
endowment) he established in the fifteenth century, using its revenues for education,
commerce, agricultural production, and philanthropic purposes.19 Gross description of the
Russian investigation of the waqf, following the tsarist conquest in the mid-nineteenth century,
testifies to the continued social and economic importance of Arrs followers and the nature of
their interaction with the colonial authorities at that time.
19
Jo-Ann Gross, The Waqf of Khoja Ubaydullah Ahrar in Nineteenth Century Central Asia: A preliminary Study
of the Tsarist Record.
11
Like Gross, Devin DeWeese is also best known for his work on Central Asian Sufism in
its earlier stages, particularly in mining hagiographies for precious information on Islamization,
and the development and interaction between the areas indigenous Sufi orders. At the same
time, DeWeeses digging into thirteenth-seventeenth-century hagiographies has laid a necessary
foundation on which to begin building an understanding of the nineteenth century. In particular,
his articles describing the process by which the Naqshbandiyya came to dominate and absorb
regional rivals are essential to discussing the complex combination of lineages and variations in
ritual that informed the Sufis of the era.20
The Uzbekistani academic Bakhtiyor Babadjanov is one of the few scholars to have
produced a substantial body of work on nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufism. This includes
contributions to multiple volumes of Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to
the Early 20th Centuries which used hagiographies to dissect the political and social role of Sufis,
particularly in the Emirate of Bukhara and the Turkestan krai of the Tsarist Empire. His
Kokandskoe Khanstvo: Vlast, Politika, Religiya also discusses the important role played by
Sufi-associated shrines in that polity.21 R.D. McChesneys Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred
Years in the History of A Muslim Shrine, 1480-1889, similarly discusses the nexus between Sufi-
associated shrines, society, economy, and politics, though its geographic focus is northern
20
DeWeese The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Yasavi and Naqshbandi
Sufi Traditions,; DeWeese, Sayyid Al Hamadn and Kubraw Hagiographical Traditions, The Legacy of
Mediaeval Persian Sufism, ed. L. Lewisohn (New York, 1992), 121-158.
21
Baxtiyor M. Babadanov, On the History of the Naqshbandiyya Mugaddidiya in Central Mawaraannahr in the
Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries, in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th
Centuries, vol.1 , eds. Michael Kemper, et. al (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 385-413; Dk n und der
Aufstand von Andian 1898.; Kokandskoe Khanstvo: Vlast, Politika, Religiya. NIHU Program Islamic Area
Studies Center at the University of Tokyo, 2010.
12
Afghanistan.22 Taken together, these works provide useful analytical paradigms for gauging the
significance of Sufi-associated shrines in the region during the nineteenth century.
Among the best scholarship on contemporary Sufism in neighboring regions is that by
Hamid Algar. In addition to his other works on the Naqshbandiyya, Algars 1985 A Brief
History of the Naqshband Order is a seminal description of the geographical extent of the
group and the inter-regional connections between its various branches.23 His contribution to Jo-
Ann Gross Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change on the life and work of
the Naqshband-Khlid shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev provides a specific case-study of these
extensive connections, particularly between the Volga-Urals and the Ottoman Empire, a theme
he further explores in Tarqat and Tarq: Central Asian Naqshbands on the Roads to the
Haramayn.24 Israeli academic Itzchak Weismann has endeavored to build on Algars
foundational work, providing an up-to-date synthesis and analysis of scholarship on the
Naqshbandiyyaincluding a particular emphasis on the orders role in its Central Asia
birthplacesince 1985.25
22
R.D. McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of A Muslim Shrine, 1480-1889
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
23
Hamid Algar, A Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order, in Naqshbandis: Historical Development and Present
Situation of a Muslim Mystical Order. Proceedings of the Sevres Round Table, 2-4 May 1985, ed. M. Gaborieau, A.
Popovic, Th. Zarcone, Varia Turcica 18 (Istanbul: Isis, 1989), 9-49. In the same volume see Political Aspects of
Naqshband History, 117-146 and The Present State of Naqshband Studies, 717-727.
24
Hamid Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region;
Tarqat and Tarq: Central Asian Naqshbands on the Roads to the Haramayn, in Central Asian Pilgrims: Hajj
Routes and Pious Visits between Central Asia and the Hijaz, eds. Alexandre Papas, et. al (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz
Verlag, 2012).
25
Itzchak Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition (London and
New York: Routledge, 2007).
13
Mystical Islam in Central Eurasia, Eighth-Early Twentieth Centuries
Religious life in pre-Islamic Central Eurasia was incredibly complex. As the region was
the nexus of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Chinese civilizations, as well as the cultures of
the steppe and the Siberian forest belt, it hosted nearly all of the great world religions. Mahayana
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity (particularly the Nestorian branch) and Manichaeism all played
important roles in the regions history.26 However, Eurasia was not devoid of its own peculiar
systems of belief, and the steppe and forest gave birth to both Zoroastrianism and the animistic
world view in which the regional type of shaman operatedshaman is, after all, a Tungusic
word. These last two traditionssharing similar notions of reverence for fire, water, and earth
were, respectively, dominant in urban and rural Central Eurasia upon the arrival of Islam.27
Islam first entered into this variegated religious landscape in the seventh century, as the
Arab armies of the Caliph Uthmn pursued the defeated Sasanian ruler Yazdgird III into what is
modern Turkmenistan.28 The conquest of neighboring Transoxiana, however, was a lengthy
process, as the Arab governors of Merv (capital of the Umayyad province of Khurasan) were, for
several decades, content to merely raid beyond the Oxus River (today the Amu Darya) in search
of booty, religious zeal figuring little into their decision-making.29 Qutayba ibn Muslim was the
26
Richard C. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the
Fifteenth Century (New York: St. Martins Griffin, 1999); Samuel Hugh Moffet, A History of Christianity in Asia,
Volume I: Beginnings to 1500 (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1998); Guiseppe Tucci, The Religions of Tibet,
trans. Geoffrey Samuel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
27
Mary Boyce, The Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (New York: Routledge, 2001), xiii, xvii;
Walther Heissig, The Religions of Mongolia (London: Routledge, 1980); Anna-Leena Siikala, Shamanism: Siberian
and Inner Asian Shamanism, in Encyclopedia of Religion (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005); Mircea
Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, trans. Willard Trask, Bollingen Series LXXVI (Princeton
University Press, 1964).
28
Svat Soucek, A History of Inner Asia (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 56.
29
Ibid., 56-57; V. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 3rd edition (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal Publishers Pvt Ltd, 1992), 182-183.
14
first governor of Merv to bring Transoxiana under control of the Caliphate (ruled at that time
from Damascus). Between 705 and 715 he conquered Bukhara, Samarqand, and Khwarazm,
installing Arab governors and building mosques throughout the region.30
The Islamization of the areas population that followedaccelerating after the failure of
several eighth-century revolts headed by non-Muslim religious leadersoccurred via various
means. Besides converting for genuinely pious reasons, some indigenous Persianate peoples of
urban Transoxiana embraced Islam to maintain positions of power in the provincial
administration, while others sensed the advantage conversion would bring to their participation
in Eurasian trade routes progressively coming under Muslim control.31 In the rural steppe,
Muslim mystics had success propagating Islam among Turkic nomads, who had become
increasingly involved in Silk Road-associated mercantile activity by the tenth century.32 These
early shaykhs fostered the development of popular Islam in the countryside, reinterpreting
indigenous religious practices through the lens of Islam.33 To describe these anonymous mystics
as Sufis, however, is to fall prey to the anachronisms of later Sufi historiography.
The Sufi labeltasawwuf (to put on or to wear a woolen garment)and its
associated systematic devotions designed to result in mystical union with deity, did not
immediately appear in the early days of mystical Islam.34 Rather, it was the result of centuries of
30
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 57-61; Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 185-186.
31
Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, 95-96.
32
Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 255; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, 96-97.
33
Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, 97.
34
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 5.
15
development, consolidated in the tenth-twelfth centuries, with the triumph of the Iraqi brand over
other ascetic and mystical movements in the Islamic world.35 Though later Sufis were often wont
to claim figures which emerged two or three generations after the prophet Muhammad as the
founders of their tradition, they often obscured these figures distinctive devotional styles
[which have been] rather arbitrarily crammed under the same conceptual umbrella.36 Hence,
the Muslim mystics present in Eurasia during its first few Islamic centuries used various modes
of piety to achieve greater measures of holiness, and did not always adhere to the specifics of
what was later recognized as the Sufi path.
Among these early mystics was Shaqq al-Balkh who lived in a rib (a fortified
stronghold occupied by fighters for religion) in eastern Iran, among volunteers gathered to battle
the non-Muslim Turkic peoples of Central Asia.37 Once a trader among the Transoxiana Turks,
Shaqq responded to a religious challenge from a Buddhist monk by becoming a warrior-ascetic
of the frontier, practicing tawakkula doctrine that promoted a complete trust in God and a
total abandonment, or reduction to a minimum, of gainful employment.38 Shaqq died in battle
in Transoxiana in 810, but left a systematic approach to asceticism behind.39 Like Shaqq, the
famed intoxicated mystic al-Husayn b. Mansr al-Hallj traveled in Turkestan and spent some
time at a rib in Khurasan. Al-Halljs travels likely exposed him to the religious diversity of
the region, which, along with Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, influenced his teachings. Famous
35
Ibid., 99, 116.
36
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 10, 25-26.
37
Ibid., 356.
38
Ibid., 33.
39
Ibid., 32-34.
16
for his ecstatic utterance an l-haqq, I am the truth [i.e., God], al-Halljs public preaching
flouted the convention that discouraged mystics from sharing their experiences with the
uninitiated.40 After his execution in Baghdad in 922, a few of his disciples escaped to Khurasan
and Central Asia.41
Ibn Karrm of Sijistan, another early mystic in the region, traveled throughout
Afghanistan and Khurasan, learning from various masters and preaching to peasants while
wearing a sheepskin and pointed hat. Ibn Karrm died in Jerusalem in 869, but the order that
bore his name, the Karrmiyya, remained important in Transoxiana and Khurasan until the
arrival of the Mongols. Though the Karrmiyya were ridiculed as heretics by their opponents,
they found patrons in the Ghaznavid dynasty (during the early part of the eleventh century), and
were known for their asceticism, their frequent preaching among societal outcasts, and
establishing the first khnaqhsan institution that outlasted their eventual replacement by the
triumphant Iraqi school (i.e. Sufism).42
A contemporary movement, the Malmatiyya, sprang up among middle class traders and
craftsmen in ninth-century Nshpr. It considered outward manifestations of pietyincluding
characteristic religious clothingto be a sign of hypocrisy. Indeed, the Malmatiyya may have
been reacting to the Karrmiyyas public displays of asceticism and begging, when it encouraged
its members to earn a living, engage in ascetic activity in secret, and be active participants in
society. Absorbed by and an important influence on the development of Sufism (including the
40
Ibid., 72-80.
41
Ibid., 81.
42
Ibid., 88-92.
17
Naqshbandiyya), the Malmat label was later appropriated by antinomian dervishes whose
wandering and attempts to conceal their inner piety through outrageous public behavior tainted
the original variants respected legacy.43
Roughly around the same time the Malmatiyya appeared, the first indigenous dynasty of
Islamic Central Asia, the Samanids (819-1005), was established. By the tenth century their realm
became a center of renowned religious scholars, and its capital Bukhara a hub of mystical Islam,
the notable text Introduction to the Doctrine of the Sufis being written there.44 The Turkic
Ghaznavids (977-1186) converted to Islam while in the service of the Samanids, eventually
wrested away Khurasan and parts of Afghanistan from their erstwhile masters, and, as noted
above, patronized the Karrmiyya.45 The founders of the Qarakhanid dynasty (tenth century-
1211), which replaced the Persianate Samanids and established the first Muslim Turkic polity,
were originally converted to Islam by mystics, and themselves initiated the Islamization of
Chinese Turkestan.46
The Seljuks (1038-1194), yet another Muslim Turkic dynasty, arose near the Aral Sea,
but came to dominate Khurasan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, and paved the way for the Turkification
and Islamization of Anatolia. The Seljuk leadership came under the influence of mystical Islam,
and during their rule links between mystics in Khurasan and Transoxiana flourished.47 The
43
Ibid., 94-99.
44
Richard N. Frye, Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 76;
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 71, 316; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 123.
45
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 97, 318.
46
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 83-92, 316; Richard N. Frye, Bukhara, 176; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road,
104.
47
Ibid., 93-95. Richard N. Frye, Bukhara, 169
18
Seljuk period witnessed the commencement of the institutionalization of Sufismthe rise of
arqas (orders) associated with specific silsilas (spiritual genealogies of Sufi masters),
established rules for rituals (e.g. khalwa (spiritual seclusion), dhikr (recollection of God),
sam (mystical concert), and the relationship between murd and murshid (shaykh, pir). It
also saw the beginning of the triumph of Sufism over other variants of mystical Islam, as with
the aforementioned absorption of the Malmatiyya.48
In the thirteenth century, following this process of Sufi consolidation and systemization
throughout much of the Islamic world, the Mongols conquered Central Asia. Despite the
disruptive nature of their entrance into the region, Mongol rulers gradually converted to Islam,
and, like the dynasties that had preceded them, extended patronage to Sufi shaykhs.49 Just as
their mystical predecessors had played an important role in the Islamization of Turkic rulers in
the early days of Islam in Central Asia, Sufis had a hand in Islamizing the Mongol khans. The
hagiographical narratives that recount these conversions, however, often impose features of
sixteenth-century Sufism onto thirteenth-century Sufis, and, in Central Asia, the orders
emerged, at the earliest, near the end of the fourteenth century.50 While the Sufis of the region
during the early period of Mongol rule did not yet constitute the disciplined organizations of the
centuries that followed, it would appear that charismatic shaykhs had considerable influence
among the khans and amrs of the western Mongol successor statesand were suitable
for adoption several generations laterby individuals and orderswho may have had
familial or silsilah links with those shaykhs.51
48
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 7, 170, 173.
49
Ibid., 173.
50
DeWeese: Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 135-137.
51
Ibid., 139.
19
Rise and Development of the Central Asian orders
From this point forward, Sufism in Central Asia was dominated by orders, three of
which, as already noted, were indigenous to the region: the Kubrawiyya, Yasaviyya, and
Naqshbandiyya. Other orders, including the Qalandariyya, also contributed to the rich tapestry of
mystical Islam in Central Asia.
Kubrawiyya
Najm al-Dn Ab l-Jannb Ahmad b. Umar (Najm al-Dn Kubr) was born in Khiva in
1145, but first became involved in Sufism while traveling and studying the exoteric Islamic
sciences in Egypt.52 He eventually returned to his native Central Asia, trained several prominent
disciples, and, according to tradition, perished fighting Mongol invaders in 1220. Among the
several treatises he left behind was The Ten Principles which admonished novice-Sufis to
minimize sleep, engage in fasting, practice khalwa, and concentrate on the personality of their
murshid.53 Kubrs disciples, and their followers, were staples of the Mongol Ilkhan court, and
are associated with the revival of Islam in Iran following the disruption of the Mongol conquests.
Two of these disciples, however, continued the work of converting the non-Islamic Turkic
peoples of Central Asia, and their recently arrived Mongol kin.54
Sayf al-Dn Bkharz, the more renowned of the two disciples, founded a Bukharan
branch of the Kubrawiyya which thrived into the fourteenth century. The wife of Chingiz Khans
fourth son Toluy reportedly appointed Bkharz the mutavalli (administrator) of a waqf which
52
53
Ibid., 235-236.
Devin DeWeese, The Eclipse of the Kubravyah in Central Asia, Iranian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1/2, Soviet and
54
North American Studies on Central Asia (1988): 45-83.

20
expanded following the shaykhs death; his tomb/khnaqh complex becoming a place of
pilgrimage. This waqf, the first administered by Sufis in Central Asia, existed into the eighteenth
century. Before his death Bkharz also played a prominent role in the conversion of Berke, khan
of the Juchid Ulus (Golden Horde). The second of Kubrs disciples to remain in Central Asia,
Bb Kaml Jand, carried out work among the Turkic nomads north of the Syr Darya until his
death in 1273. Jands last known successor, Husayn Khwarazm, famously associated with the
leadership of both the Timurids and their nomadic Uzbek enemies, though upon his death,
Jands line ceased to exist. Later in the fifteenth century, Sayyid Ali Hamadn reinvigorated
the order in Central Asia, thus establishing himself as a key link in the silsila between Najm al-
Dn Kubr and the latter Kubrawiyya.55
Hamadn, and his chief disciple Khoja Ishq Kuttaln, maintained strong connections
with various rulers of the disintegrating Chaghatay Khanate. Due to these relationships, the
Kubrawiyya-Hamadnyya ran afoul of the centralizing Timurid dynasty, Kuttaln being
executed by Timurs grandson Mrz Shhrukh. Following Kuttalns death, the Kubrawiyya-
Hamadnyya splintered into two factions, the Nrbakhshiyya and Dhahabiyya, each becoming
prominent in Iran, and, eventually, transforming into Shiite orders.
Yet another Husayn Khwarazm (born ca.1470) oversaw the last period of glory for the
Kubrawiyya-Hamadnyya in Central Asia. Khwarazm spent much of his career in Samarqand,
associating with colleagues belonging to both the Yasaviyya and Naqshbandiyya, while also
competing against them for influence with the newly established Uzbek conquerors. He
established khnaqhs throughout Khwarazm and Transoxiana, and also traveled widely in the
55
Ibid.
21
Islamic world, dying in Aleppo in 1551. Khwarazms Central Asian line (headquartered near
Bukhara) appears to have lasted at least until the end of the seventeenth century, though the
Kubrawiyya had all but disappeared from the region by the last years of the sixteenth century.
They were replaced by the Naqshbandiyya, who were more active in establishing a solid
financial base to support their activities, and far more comfortable than the world-wary
Kubrawiyya in involving themselves in regional politics.56
An understanding of Kubraw ritual, which both differed from and coincided with that of
its contemporaries, can be gleaned from a fifteenth-century hagiography of Hamadn
(Manqabat al-jawhir) written by a disciple of the founder of the Dhahabiyya. Here Kubraw
murds are instructed to refrain from drawing attention to their spirituality, taking a cue from
their Malmat predecessors. The hagiography also defends the use of sam and raqs (dance)
to achieve wajd (ecstasy occasioned by direct encounter with the Divine Reality) under the
guidance of a shaykh, practices whose legitimacy were challenged by the Naqshbandiyya. 57
More widespread Sufi practicesincluding performing bayat (the initiatory oath of
allegiance) to the pir, and the novices performance of menial labor for the good of the order
(gathering firewood and carrying water)are also discussed. In addition, the Manqabat al-
jawhir describes Kubraw association with the communal aspect of Central Asian Sufism,
where whole communities became the disciples of a patron-pir. This text marshals evidence of
56
Devin DeWeese, Sayyid Ali Hamadn and Kubraw Hagiographical Traditions, 121-158; Knysh, Islamic
57
Mysticism, 357.
22
the unique practices, doctrines and ethos of the Kubrawiyya, demonstrating that by the early
fifteenth century it had become a genuine, organized arqa.58
Yasaviyya
More geographically limited in the scope of its activities than the Kubrawiyya, the
Yasaviyya was a repository of the unique features of post-thirteenth-century Central Asian Islam,
though scholars have gone too far in labeling it as an exclusively Turkic order.59 The orders
origin is ascribed to Amad Yasav (i.e. from the town of Yas or Turkestan in present-day
Kazakhstan), who died in 1166-7. Yasav has often been portrayed as a disciple of Ab Ysuf
Hamadn (d. 1140 in Merv) along with Abd al-Khliq Ghijduvn, founder of the Khojagn
(or proto-Naqshand) Sufi line.60 This origin tale, recounted in numerous Khojagn and
Naqshband sources from the mid-fourteenth century forward, claims Yasav led Hamadns
community for a short while following his masters death, but then returned to his native
(Turkic) steppes, leaving settled Transoxiana to Ghijduvn and his, eventual, Naqshband
successors.
By contrast, strictly Yasav sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
identify their orders origin in the Suhrawardiyya tradition. Neither account is entirely
satisfactory, but each clearly demonstrates a rivalry between the Yasav and Khojagn
(Naqshband) traditions. Indeed, the Rashat, the foundational text of the early Khojagn
58
DeWeese, Sayyid Ali Hamadn and Kubraw Hagiographical Traditions.
59
Devin DeWeese, The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups Linked to
Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Shrine Documents and Genealogical Charters, International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Nov., 1999): 507-530; The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links
between the Yasavi and Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions.
60
Quoted in: Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 271-2; Devin DeWeese, The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan:
Rethinking the Links between the Yasavi and Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions.
23
and, later, Naqshband traditions, not only confines the Yasaviyya, geographically, to the
Turkic steppes, but portrays its silisila as merely an offshoot of the lineage that produced the
Naqshbandiyya[thus] it appropriates its charisma for the Naqshbandiyya and delegitimizes
it as an independent and rival tradition.61
This rivalry is further demonstrated in a vignette from the fifteenth-century Rislah-i
Bahyah, a hagiography of the founder of the Naqshbandiyya, Bah al-Dn Naqshband. Here
Bah al-Dn is pictured as a disciple of one of the mashikh-i turk (Turkic shaykhs)a term
often synonymous with the Yasaviyyawhose spiritual power he outshines in locating some lost
animals.62 Consequently, the Yasav shaykh adopts Bah al-Dn, placing him above his natural
sons in the pecking order, a story likely constructed to justify the Naqshband rejection of the
practice of hereditary succession followed by the shaykhs of the Yasaviyya.63
Beyond the rhetorical struggle with their Naqshband rivals, various hagiographies
demonstrate the Yasav role in the Islamization of the non-Muslim nomads in Central Asia
following the Mongol conquest, and their part in the political life of that era. Indeed, the mid-
fourteenth century saw shaykhs associated with the Yasav tradition, like their Kubraw
colleagues, gathering whole communities of followers from among both settled and nomadic
populations. However, this establishment of patron-client relations, even when clients
happened to be khans, did not reach the level of direct political involvement witnessed in the
activities of later Naqshband shaykhs, such as Khoja Ubaydullh Arr in the late fifteenth
Devin DeWeese, The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Yasavi and
61
Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions.

62
Ibid.
63
Ibid.
24
century. At the same time, these patron-client bonds between important figures in the Yasav
tradition and various Central Asian communities were not always expressed within the confines
of an order. Rather, communal affiliation was more often based upon the principle of hereditary
succession, as opposed to the silisila connections to the founder so ubiquitous in Sufisms later
centuries.64
Among the Yasav-associated figures whose saintly lineages provided a sense of group
cohesion to nomadic, and sedentary populations in the region was Isml Ata, who probably
lived in the late thirteenth-early fourteenth centuries. In an early fifteenth-century hagiography of
the Khojagn shaykh Amr Klal, one of Isml Atas descendants is described as maintaining a
community of more than a thousand disciples among the nomadic Turks. Another hagiography
describes a different scion of Isml Ata claiming the loyalty of 200 households and three
khnaqhs in a sedentary village in the Zarafshan Valley. It was via one such hereditary figure
though from the line of Zang Ata, a disciple of Yasavs successor akim Atathat the
Yasaviyya traced its connection to the founder, when it appeared as a bona fide order in the
fifteenth century.65
Unsurprisingly, these communal bonds were not always viewed from a strictly spiritual
perspective by the tribal amrs and Chinggisid princes jockeying for power in the fourteenth
century. In one tale, the large-scale acquisition of murds by a descendant of Isml Ata led a
local ruler to view him as a serious political rival, who banished him from his territory. Though
he built the celebrated tomb complex of Amad Yasav, Timur himself took similar measures
64
Ibid.
Devin DeWeese, Yasav ays in the Timurid Era: Notes on the Social and Political Role of
65
Communal Sufi Affiliations in the 14th and 15th Centuries, Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 15 (76), Nr. 2,
LA Civilt Timuride Comefenomeno Internazionale, vol. 1 (Storia I Timuridi e l.Occidente), (1996): 173-188.
25
against a Yasav-associated shaykh, Sayyid Nimatullh Wal, whose status among Turkic
nomads he perceived as a threat to his power. Lest we consider Timur and his fellow Central
Asian rulers overly paranoid in regard to the activities of Yasav-associated shaykhs, it should be
remembered that Islamization during the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries did not so much consist
of a convert exchanging non-Islamic for Islamic doctrine and ritual, but, rather, his adoption into
an Islamic community headed by a local figure of saintly lineage. To what ends such a local
powerbroker used his sway over the members of his communityinadvertently setting his client
emir against the policy of a Timurid sultan, for examplecould affect the political equilibrium
of the secular power structure, particularly when the competing Naqshbandiyya had the ear of
the sultan in question.66
By the sixteenth century the ideological rivalry between the Yasaviyya and the
Naqshbandiyya had fully flowered, and the chief weapons the increasingly dominant
Naqshbandiyya chose to wield against their rivals were the issues of hereditary shaykhs, and the
vocal dhikr (dhikr-i jahr, the distinctively Yasav variant being known as the dhikr-i arrah, the
dhikr of the saw so called because of its rasping sound).67 Near the end of the century, many
adherents of the Yasav way were joining the more vigorously proselytizing Naqshbandiyya.
These defections grew apace, illustrated by a dramatic incident from the seventeenth century
where a Yasav shaykh in Khwarazm took his 400 murds into the Naqshband fold, mirroring
the transfer of non-Islamic communities ideological loyalty to Islam in previous centuries. Even
the practice of a disciple obtaining multiple affiliations (e.g. both Yasav and Naqshband),
66
Ibid.
67
Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions.

26
which became common in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, did not slow the attrition
of the Yasaviyyas membership. Beginning around the second half of the eighteenth century,
The Yasav order [was transformed] from a significant and independent body of Sufi
communities into a silsila appropriatedby groupswith Naqshband
lineages[though] Yasav tradition in effect defeated the Naqshbandiyya[in] the
realm of popular religious practice [including the use of a Yasav-style dhikr and the
veneration of shrines associated with the Yasaviyya].68
Though the Yasaviyya, as a arqa, eventually lost its struggle with the Naqshbandiyya,
Yasav-associated shaykhs had long-since spread its influence beyond Central Asia, to the Volga
region and to Anatolia, forming close bonds with a branch of the Qalandariyya in the latter, as it
had previously done in its homeland.69 In addition, though they have been little studied, the role
of khoja descent groups of Yasav origin in Central Asian religion and society cannot be
overlooked, though such groups activities should not be considered synonymous with the
Yasaviyya as a distinctive Sufi order. These khoja groups asserted their rights to administer the
waqf associated with the Yasav tomb complex in Turkestan, via genealogical documents
presented to successive regimes (Bukharan, Kokandian, and Russian), purporting to show their
descent from Amad Yasavs family, specifically his brother and daughter.70
Unlike earlier communities that were founded by key disciples of Yasav and preceded
the establishment of an actual Yasav arqa in the fifteenth century, it was only in the nineteenth
century that descent from Yasavs family began to be used to claim the position of mutavalli.
68
DeWeese The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Yasavi and Naqshbandi
Sufi Traditions.
69
70
Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Nov., 1999): 507-530.
27
Whether or not these khoja groups were, in reality, literal descendants of Amad Yasav is
irrelevant, as their claim on his name as an ancestor speaks to their likely historical association, if
only a loose one, with the Yasaviyya order.71
Naqshbandiyya
In contrast to the Kubrawiyya and Yasaviyya, the Naqshbandiyya continues to be one of
the worlds most vibrant Sufi orders. As, perhaps, the most widely distributed arqa in history, it
has maintained a significant presence in its Central Asian homeland, as well as in Turkey,
Macedonia, Bosnia, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kenya, South
Africa, Daghestan, China, Germany, England, and the Hijaz.72 Its spread to such a diverse range
of locations, exhibiting a wealth of ethnic, political, religious, and cultural diversity, is not only
remarkable, but speaks volumes about the resilience and appeal of the arqa, its precepts, and
organization. It also shows the ability of the Naqshbandiyya brand to have reinvented itself
countless times since the disciples of Bah al-Dn Naqshband founded it in fourteenth-century
Transoxiana.73
Despite its spread throughout South, and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and
Europe, the Naqshbandiyya tradition has had some of its greatest impact in those Central
Eurasian regions closest to its birthplace. Here, Naqshband luminaries inspired their followers
with scholarship and poetry and moved from advising rulers to assuming the trappings of
political rule themselves. In addition, the order was used to mobilize discontented populations
against colonial rule, while providing learned individuals willing to collaborate with these same
71
Ibid.
72
Hamid Algar, A Brief History of the Naqshbandi Order.
73
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 18.
28
governments. It also produced ideologues which helped to construct the national identities of
Muslim peoples. Viewing this great diversity in total, it soon becomes apparent that the
Naqshbandiyya cannot be spoken of as a unified monolith, despite the many connections
between its various networks. Rather, it begins to appear as several loosely-associated
Naqshbandiyyasa network of networkseach utilizing the practices, doctrines, and charisma
of its eponymous founder to suit its own political or cultural goals.
Before discussing the role played by the Naqshband tradition on the Central Eurasian
stage, it is important to briefly note the basic differences between it and the other Sufi arqas
heretofore described, with an eye to, perhaps, understanding its widespread appeal, success, and
longevity in the region, and beyond. As in most Sufi traditions, the biography of Muhammad al-
Uwaysi of Bukhara (Bah al-Dn Naqshband) was written by his disciples who actually founded
the order, though it is relatively light on the miraculous behavior often associated with
hagiographies and rather unsystematic in proclaiming the specifics of his way. However, what it
does convey is that Bah al-Dn was trained in a variety of local traditions, including, as
mentioned above, those of the Khojagn and Yasav. Most interestingly, though, was his
supernatural connection to the deceased founder of the Khojagn, Abd al-Khliq Ghijduvn, to
whom he was linked by the silsila of his living master Khoja Amr Klal.74
In a vision Bah al-Dn was visited by Ghijduvn who taught him the dhikr-i khaf
(silent dhikr) and emphasized the importance of strictly adhering to the Sharia. In this way,
Bah al-Dn gained his epithet al-Uwaysi (i.e. someone who receives illumination outside the
regular path and without the guidance of a living shaykh) and spiritually linked himself to the
74
Ibid, 15-16.
29
founder of his tradition in a much more powerful, revivalist way.75 It also allowed him to
emphasize the importance of orthodox, legalistic Sufism, as well as the Malmatiyya-like
importance of a primary ritual that indicated reserve in religious practice, and the importance of
remaining a functioning member of Islamic society, rather than being given to public displays of
ecstasy.76
In addition to the dhikr-i khaf, Bah al-Dn adopted the eight principles laid out by
Ghijduvn, many of which had been laxly followed in the wake of the Mongol conquest of
Transoxiana in the thirteenth century. The most important among these in discussing the
subsequent importance of the Naqshbandiyya in the region is khalwt dar anjuman (solitude in
the crowd).77 Like the silent dhikr, it betrays a Malmat influence, and has inspired followers of
the Naqshband tradition to take part in both spiritual and temporal (political, cultural, and
economic) activities.78
The Naqshbandiyya in Timurid Transoxiana
The most significant figure during the early centuries of the Naqshbandiyya was Nasir al-
Din Ubaydullh Arr, a.k.a. Hazrat Ishan (1404-1490), under whose guidance the many
factions of the tradition in Transoxiana were unified in a single network. This fifteenth-century
luminary also began the spread of the tradition outside Transoxiana. Befitting a student of
religious sciences in Timurid Central Asia, Arr studied in both Samarqand and Herat,
75
Ibid, 16.
76
Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions.; Knysh, Alexander. Islamic Mysticism, 221.

77
78
Ibid, 11.
30
eventually being initiated into the Naqshband tradition and patronized by Mrz Shhrukh.
Thereafter, in accordance with the principle of khalwt dar anjuman, he parlayed his inherited
wealth into vast land holdings in Samarqand and Tashkent while simultaneously gathering
disciples.79
As both a man of considerable worldly wealth and a renowned pir, Arr had the political
heft to become involved in the great issues of his day. He acted as a trusted advisor to the
Timurid courts, guiding Sultan Abu Said of Herat, and restraining the warring princes in
SamarqandMrz Umar Shaykh, Sultan Amad, and Sultan Mamdfrom engaging in civil
war.80 Neither did he shrink from enjoining the leadership of the Timurid state to discontinue the
use of taxes associated with the Mongol ys (the legal code traditionally attributed to Chingiz
Khan) in lieu of or in addition to those associated with the Sharia.81As a counselor to sultans, a
powerful land holder and charismatic shaykh, Arrs influence was felt among the peasantry as
well as the religious and political elite. His palpable role in Timurid society set the stage for
further Naqshband forays into public life in Central Asia, where Sufis were no longer recluses or
occasional advisors to political rulers, but political forces in their own right.
The Naqshbandiyya in Timurid Afghanistan
A contemporary of Arr was the eminent poet, scholar and Naqshband shaykh Abd-
Al-Ramn Nur-Al-Din b. Nim-al-Din Amad-i Dashti (1414-1492), commonly known as
79
Ibid, 34-39.
80
Jo-Ann Gross, Authority and Miraculous Behavior: Reflections on Karamat Stories of Khwjah Ubaydallh
Arr, in The Heritage of Sufism: The Legacy of Medieval Persian Sufism (1150-1500), vol. 2, ed. Leonard
Lewisohn (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1999), 159-171.
81
Jo-Ann Gross and Asom Urunbaev. The Letters of Khwajah 'Ubayd Allah Ahrar and His Associates, 11-15; David
Morgan, The Mongols (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1986), 96.
31
Jm. Jm not only influenced his fellow authors in the Persian-speaking world, but also had an
appreciable impact on classical Ottoman Turkish literature. Not long after Jms death the
political and religious life of his native Persia was profoundly altered, and Sufisms influence
was lessened with the establishment of the Safavids as the ruling dynasty and Twelver Shiism as
the state religion. Hence, Jm is often celebrated as the last in a long line of Persian mystical
poets, his writings analyzed for an understanding of Sufi history and thought.82
Like Arr, Jm divided his studies between Samarqand and Herat where he mastered
many fieldsincluding adth (a record of actions or sayings of the Prophet and his
companions), astronomy and mathematicswhich led him to boast that he was a pupil who
needed no master.83 However, while in Samarqand, Jm had a dream of the great Naqshband
shaykh Sad-al-Din Kshghari who commanded him to enter the path leading to the divine
beloved.84 Following this dream the young scholar returned to Herat, married Kshgharis grand-
daughter and became a murd to the shaykh.85 Thereafter, he corresponded with Arr, a
relationship likely conducted on terms of equality, with the two exchanging praise of one
82
J.T.P. De Bruijn, Persian Sufi Poetry: An Introduction to the Mystical Use of Classical Poems (Richmond,
Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997), 2, 21, 25, 62, 123-124.
83
Losensky, Paul. JMI i. Life and Works, Encyclopdia Iranica last updated: April 10, 2012 [encyclopedia on-
line], available from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jami-i ; Internet; accessed 18 November 2013; Th.W
Juynboll, adt h, Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936), ed. M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R.
Basset, R. Hartmann [Brill Online, 2015], available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-1/h-adi-t-h-SIM_2580, Internet; accessed 31
March 2015.
84
Losensky, JMI i. Life and Works; Hamid Algar, JMI ii. And Sufism, Encyclopdia Iranica last updated:
April 10, 2012 [encyclopedia on-line]; available from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jami-ii ; Internet;
accessed 18 November 2013.
85
Algar, JMI ii. And Sufism.
32
anothers spiritual powers.86 In fact, Arr referred to Jm as the flood of light, reserving the
more modest title small lamp for himself.87
Despite being a duly sanctioned Naqshband pir in his own right, Jm rarely accepted
disciples, though among those select few he did train were some eminent persons, such as the
poet, Timurid minister, and champion of Chaghatay Turkic literature Alishir Navi.88 In
Navis Muhkamat al-Lughatain he refers to Jmhis shaykhwith the honorific Hadrat-i
Makhdumi, or Lord Master.89 A few sources even suggest that Jm was recognized as the
founder of an independent, though short-lived, branch of the Naqshbandthe Jmiyya.
However, Jms greatest contribution to Sufism was clearly his didactic writings, particularly
those expounding the doctrines of the famous Sufi Ibn Arab.90
Like Arr, Jm not only kept company with his fellow mystics, but also maintained a
robust relationship with the Timurid court, dedicating works to the rulers Abul-Qsem Bbur
and Abu Said b. Muhammad. The Timurid Sultan usayn Byqar was so impressed with Jmi
that he facilitated his pilgrimage to Mecca by providing the mystics traveling company with
equipment, and letters of introduction to various potentates on their route. Other rulers also fell
under Jms spell, including the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II and the Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun
86
Ibid.
87
Quoted in: F. Hadland Davis, The Persian Mystics: Jami (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1968), 8-9.
88
Algar, JMI ii. And Sufism.
89
Qouted in: Aliir Navi, trans. Robert Devereux, Muhkamat al-Lughatain (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966), 28.
90
Algar, JMI ii. And Sufism; Nr-Ud-Dn Abd-Ur-Rahmn Jm, Lawaih: A Treatise on Sufism, trans. E.H.
Whinfield and Mirza Muhammad Kazvini (Lahore: Islamic Book Foundation, 1978); The Abode of Spring (The
Baharistan of Jami), trans. David Pendelbury, in The Sufi Trust, Four Sufi Classics (London, Octagon Press,
1980); Chad G. Lingwood, Jms Salmn va Absl: Political Statements and Mystical Advice Addressed to the
q Qoynl Court of Sultan Yaqb (d. 896/1490), Iranian Studies 44 (March 2011): 175-191.
33
asan. Yet, Jm was also beloved by the average folk whom he instructed in Herats main
mosque.91 By the time Jm passed away at more than eighty years of age, his was a name famed
throughout the Persianate world, from the Ottoman Empire to the realms of the Mughal
Dynasty.92
The Naqshbandiyya in Chinese Turkestan, Fourteenth-Nineteenth Centuries
Following the death of Arr in 1490 his consolidation of Naqhshband networks in
Transoxiana was weakened, as one of his sons was killed in attempting to resist the Shaybanid
Uzbek conquest of the early sixteenth century. However, his disciple Muhammad Qazi carried
on in Tashkent, initiating Amad Ksn, a.k.a. Makhdm-i Aam the greatest master (d.
1542), a Sufi scholar who gained great political prestige as well.93 Like Arr in the Timurid era,
Ksn played a key role in advising the Shaybanid princes and emphasized the spreading of the
arqa. The branches of the order, which had been established in Chinese Turkestan since the late
fourteenth-early fifteenth centuries, were consolidated by Ksn from afar. Meanwhile his son
Ishq Wali (d. 1599) actually traveled to the oases of the Tarim Basin and set himself up as the
master of various networks in the region, establishing the Ishqiyya. Here he spread the
traditions influence among nomadic Kyrgyz as well as among sedentary peoples, and
engineered the rise of his murd to the Chaghatayid throne of Moghulistan.94
91
Abd al-Ramn ibn Amad Jm, Baharistan-i-Jami: Edited with Translation, Introduction, Full Notes, and
Summary, trans., eds. Chhotubhai B. Abuwala and Hasibullah Qureishy (Ahmedabad: Chhotubhai B. Abuwala,
Sankdi Sheri, 1914), xvi-xvii.
92
Losensky, JMI i. Life and Works.
93
94
Ibid, 39-44, 47-48; Joseph F. Fletcher, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China, in Studies on Chinese and
Islamic Inner Asia, ed. Beatrice F. Manz (Great Britain, Variorum, 1995), 4-8. For a discussion of Naqshband
34
Eventually another descendant of Ksn, his grandson Ysuf (d. 1653), immigrated to
Chinese Turkestan, but was murdered by the Ishqiyya. However, Ysufs son Hidyat Allah,
i.e. Khoja fq (d. 1694), founded a political dynasty: the Aq Taghliq (White Mountain)
Khojas (fqiyya) which was opposed by the older Qara Taghliq (Black Mountain) Khojas
(Ishqiyya). fqs network was initially weaker than that of his rivals, and thus, for protection,
he wandered in western China and Tibet, spreading the fqiyya among Hui (sinophone
Muslims) of Gansu, and the Turkic Salars. Khoja fq eventually was able to gain the support
of the Dalai Lama as well as the Mongol Zungars who set him on the throne of Kashgar in 1679,
though the Ishqiyya still remained a force to be reckoned with in the city of Yarkand.95
Both the White and Black Mountain Khojas ingratiated themselves further with nomadic,
settled, Muslim, and non-Muslim populations in the region by engaging in commerce, claiming
sayyid ancestry (descent from the Prophet Muhammad), descent from the Qarakhanids, and, in
the case of Khoja fq, marrying a Chinggisid princess.96 Both dynasties sought,
unsuccessfully, to rid themselves of their Zungar overlords, and the ruler Galdan Tseren (r. 1670-
1697) imprisoned the fq Khoja Mahmut in the Ili region. By the time Qing forces entered the
area in the 1750s, Mahmut had died in prison, but one of his captured sons was allowed to rule
Kashgaria under Manchu suzerainty.97
influence on the Shaybanids see Edward A. Allworth, The Modern Uzbeks: From the Fourteenth Century to the
Present, A Cultural History, Studies of Nationalities in the USSR (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1990), 52, 72.
95
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 81-84; Fletcher, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China, 9-10.
Isenbike Togan, The Khojas of Eastern Turkistan, in Muslims in Central Asia. Expressions of Identity and
96
Change, ed. Jo-Ann Gross (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 135, 139-140.
97
C.R. Bawden, The Modern History of Mongolia, Second Revised ed. (London and New York: Kegan Paul
International, 1989), 113; Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press, 2005), 290; Joseph F. Fletcher, China and Central Asia, 1368-
1884, in Studies on Chinese and Islamic Inner Asia, ed. Beatrice F. Manz (Great Britain, Variorum, 1995), 218.
35
Mahmuts younger son, who had also been captured by the Qing, eventually escaped
their custody and joined his brother in Yarkand where the two took a defiant stance towards
Beijing. When a Qing mission arrived in 1757 demanding tribute, it was massacred by the
Khojas and the two stirred up local begs against their new overlords. Eventually, they were
defeated, fled to Afghan Badakhshan, and were killed.98 Though the fqiyya never regained
their ruling position in Chinese Turkestan, a portion of them did manage to flee to exile in the
Khanate of Kokand. From there, they attempted, several times, to invade the region and reclaim
their throne, stirring up a series of nineteenth-century rebellions that proved unsuccessful.99
The Naqshbandiyya in the Volga-Urals, Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries
After the dissemination of the original teachings of the Naqshbandiyya to the Indian
subcontinent in the sixteenth century, they underwent a transformation at the hands of the
seventeenth-century shaykh Amad Sirhindthe renewer of the second millennium
(mujaddid-i alf-i thn)founder of the Mujaddidiyya.100 For Sirhind, following the Sharia
was superior to following the Sufi path alone, and his way required strict obedience to the
perfect master [and a general avoidance of] objectionable customs such as music, dancing
and ecstatic sessions.101 It was this reinvigorated version of the Naqshbandiyya that was
introduced into Central Asia in the latter half of the 1600s. Here it was patronized by and
98
Fletcher, China and Central Asia, 1368-1884, 218.
99
Hodong Kim, Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864-1877 (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2004), 67.
100
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 51; quoted in: Buehler, Arthur. Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 66.
101
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 58-60.
36
participated in by the Manghit dynasty (1742-1920) of Bukhara in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, eventually eclipsing the influence of the original Naqshbandiyya branch on
its home turf.102 One of the chief architects of this Mujaddid domination was Muhammad
Niyzqul of Khwarazm, perhaps the greatest Mujaddid-oriented shaykh in Transoxiana in the
late eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries. He enjoyed the patronage of the Manghits and
established his khnaqh in the famous Chor Minor in Bukhara. His disciples were also
instrumental in the spread of the Mujaddidiyya in the Volga-Urals region.103
After the Mujaddidiyya arrived in the Volga-Urals (ca. eighteenth century) it rose to
challenge the prominence of the original Naqshband tradition, which had already existed in the
region for some centuries. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the popularity of both
variants of the Naqshbandiyya had grown to such an extent that they eclipsed the local
Yasaviyya.104 From this period up into twentieth century, Sufi scholars of the region compiled
several biographical dictionaries detailing the lives of local saints. Once such described the
initiation of a group of Tatars by the Mujaddid shaykh of Kabul, Fayz Khan. Among these was
the Tatar Muhammad Jn b. al-usayn, appointed as the first head of the Dukhovnoe Sobranie
(the tsarist administrative body for the Tatars under their rule) in 1789. As noted above,
Niyzquls disciples were also prominent, including the modernist scholar Ab Nar al-Qrsv,
102
Ibid, 78-81.
103
Ibid, 81.
104
Hamid Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, 112-
113; Michael Kemper, Sufis und Gelehrte in Tatarien und Baschkirien, 1789-1889: Der islamische Diskurs unter
russicher Herrschaft (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1998), 24.
37
who rejected the traditionalism prominent in Bukhara and championed a return to ijtihd
(independent legal reasoning in search of an opinion).105
A murd of Niyzquls son, Shihabuddin Marjani (d. 1889), also studied in Bukhara and
followed in Qrsvs footsteps by advocating ijtihd, but departed even further from traditional
ideas by calling for secular education for Muslims, including the study of Russian language.106 In
addition, Marjani also acted as the father of modern Kazan Tatar national identity, particularly
through works like the Mstfad l-axbar fi ahval Qazan v Bular, which linked together the
histories of the Volga Bulgarians, the Golden Horde, the Khanate of Kazan, and the Muslim
Turks of the Middle Volga.107
The Mujaddidiyya, however, were not the most dominant branch of the Naqshbandiyya
present in the Volga-Urals region in the eighteenth-twentieth centuries. An offshoot of the
Mujaddidiyya known as the Khlidiyyafounded by the Kurd Diya al-Din Khlid in the
nineteenth centurywas transplanted to the area by Fatullh b. Safar Al al-Mnavuz and was
particularly dynamic. The most prominent Khlid Shaykh was Zaynullah Rasulev, who was
born in a Bashkir aul (nomadic encampment) in 1835. After a thorough education in the
traditional Islamic sciences, Rasulev became an imam and was initiated into the Mujaddidyya in
1859. However, while on his way to perform the ajj in 1870, he was initiated into the
105
Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, 113-115;
Uli Schamiloglu, Ictihad or Millat?: Reflections on Bukhara, Kazan, and the Legacy of Russian Orientalism,
Reform Movements and Revolutions in Turkistan: 1900-1924. Studies in Honour of Osman Khoja / Trkistan'da
Yenilik Hareketleri ve Ihtilaller: 1900-1924. Osman Hoca Anisina Incelemeler, ed. Timur Kocaolu (Haarlem:
SOTA, 2001), 347-368; Frederick Mathewson Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company, 1994), 198.
106
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 146; Uli Schamiloglu, Ictihad or Millat?: Reflections on Bukhara, Kazan, and
the Legacy of Russian Orientalism.
Uli Schamiloglu, The Formation of a Tatar Historical Consciousness: ihabddin Mrcani and the Image of the
107
Golden Horde, Central Asian Survey, 9:2 (1990): 39-49.

38
Khlidiyya in Istanbul. Though the orders did not differ in their attitude toward sobriety and
orthodoxy, the Khlidiyya was propagated more vigorously, and with a more centralized system
of networks. Accordingly, Rasulev returned to his home where he initiated murds in great
numbers and with surprising speed.108
This caused a great deal of jealousy among Rasulevs fellow shaykhsparticularly those
with lineages of Bukharan provenanceand they accused him of heresy and practicing the vocal
dhikr. The tsarist authorities then became involved, exiled Rasulev, and finally imprisoned him
for a number of years. Eventually, he was freed and used his usul-i jadid (new method)
madrassa (educational institution sometimes associated with a mosque) in Troitsk to educate
Tatars, Bashkirs, and Kazakhs, though he fell somewhere between the Jadid and, so called,
Qadimist camps in terms of his attitude toward many traditional Islamic practices. He and his
tens of thousands of murids also continued to propagate the Khlidiyya tradition in the Volga-
Urals region, and in Siberia.109
Rasulev also had a hand in the printing of Murd Ramzs history of the Volga Bulgars,
the Bashkirs, the Kazan Tatars, and Uzbeks (Talfq al-Akhbr), which upset the tsarist
authorities, and furthered his likely goal of preventing the Christianization of the empires
Muslims. Among his more prominent disciples were a mufti of Ufa, the scholar Rizaeddin b.
Fakhreddin, and the father of the famed Turcologist Zeki Velidi Togan (d. 1970). His eldest son
became the mufti of the Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of European Russia and Siberia
108
Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, 116-119.
109
Quoted in: ibid, 119-125; Johs Pedersen, R. A. Kern, Ernst Diez, Masdjid, Encyclopaedia of Islam, First
Edition (1913-1936), eds. M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann [Brill Online] available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-1/masdjid-COM_0155; Internet; accessed 23
April 2015.
39
established by Stalin in 1941. Rasulev himself died in 1917 on the eve of the Bolshevik
revolution.110
The Naqshbandiyya in Transoxiana, Seventeenth-Twentieth Centuries
Along with the White and Black Mountain khojas of Chinese Turkestan, the Jybr
shaykhs of Bukhara and the Dahbdiyya traced their lineage to Amad Ksn, the latter branch
being named after the village near Samarqand where Ksn was buried. One of his spiritual
descendants built a tomb complex there, including a mosque and khnaqh, in 1619 which
rivaled that of Khoja Arr as an object of pilgrimage. The Dahbd shaykhs who administered
the tomb, and also claimed sayyid ancestry, exerted considerable influence both in Samarqand
and northern Afghanistan, one of their disciples ruling a portion of western Badakhshan in the
latter part of the seventeenth century.111 Around this same time the Mujaddidiyya way was
transmitted to Transoxiana from either Mecca or India by one abballh Bukhari. Subsequently,
Ms Khan Dahbd, who had been initiated into the Mujaddidiyya in Kashmir, founded a branch
which combined both ways, though it was challenged in Transoxiana by the Mujaddid shaykhs
of Habibullahs line.112
The Mujaddidiyyas power and influence spread through the region, being championed in
Kokand by the Miyan family, and by the founder of the Uzbek Manghit dynasty of Bukhara,
Shah Murd (1785-1800), who was initiated into the order by a shaykh of abballhs lineage.
110
Ibid, 126-129. On the secularizing and Westernizing influence of reform madrassas among the Muslims of the
Volga-Urals region, including Togan, see Mustafa Tuna, Madrasa Reform as a Secularizing Process: A View from
the Late Russian Empire, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53(3) (2011): 540570.
111
Hamid Algar, DAHBDYA, Encyclopdia Iranica, last updated: November 11, 2011 [encyclopedia on-line];
available from http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dahbidiya-a-hereditary-line-of-naqsbandi-sufis-centered-on-the-
shrine-at-dahbid-a-village-about-11-km; Internet; accessed 26 November 2013.
112
40
His devotion to the Mujaddid way led Murd to push a more orthodox interpretation of Islam,
repair mosques and madrassas, and declare war on Shiis and Sufis who practiced the vocal
dhikr. Ms Khans khalfa (a spiritual deputy or successor, authorized to initiate and guide
disciples), Khudyr, came into conflict with Murd due to his relationships with Murds rivals
in Kokand and Shahr-i Sabz. In one instance Murd was forced to call off his campaign against
the rebellious city of Shahr-i Sabz after Khudyr entered and refused to leave the besieged city
lest he injure the popular holy man.113
Murds successor Amr aydar (1800-1826), though also a supporter of Islamic
institutions, lacked his fathers puritanical zeal and had a much more amicable relationship with
the Dahbdiyya. In fact, as the disciple of Muhammad Amn, a Dahbd shaykh, aydar removed
restrictions on the vocal dhikr, which, along with the silent variant, was practiced by his brethren
in the order.114 Amn decamped for Samarqand at the request of aydar, and acted there as an
advocate with the potentate on behalf of the people and Sharia-minded rule. The relationship
faltered, however, when aydar commanded Amns arrest upon his return from a pilgrimage to
the territory of one of the rulers rivals. Amn responded by pressing Khan Muhammad Alm of
Kokand (1798-1809) to capture the city of Ura-Tepe, then under the control of the Emirate of
Bukhara.
Dahbdiyya political activity was not confined to agitation, however, and its shaykhs
were known to mediate between the Manghits and rebellious Uzbek tribes. The Mujaddidiyya,
too, maintained a degree of influence with the Manghits, such as Abdalkarm al-Mujaddid, who
was invited by Narallh Khan (1827-1860) to dwell in the former house of a prominent shaykh
113
Babadanov, On the History of the Naqbandiya Muaddidiya in Central Mwarannahr in the Late 18th and
Early 19th Centuries, 393-394; Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism, 162.
114
41
in Bukhara and also granted a khnaqh in Shahr-i Sabz after the ruler had conquered the city.115
Still, Mujaddid political cache began to dissipate as the Emirs of Bukhara turned their gaze from
domestic stability to the encroachment of Russian imperialism.116
The Naqshband response to Russian colonial expansion in Transoxiana is often
described as mutedwhen compared to the North Caucasus, for exampleand, in the Emirate
of Bukhara, there were good reasons for this to be the case. For despite the sometimes
tumultuous relationship between Bukhara and the Russian Empire, the emirate was a Russian
protectorate (1873-1920), and Manghit rule remained intact during the entire period. This fact,
coupled with the close interaction between the dynasty and the Naqshbandiyya described above,
likely kept the order from being involved in anti-Russian movements, though further scholarship
would be needed to reach a decisive conclusion on this issue.117 Outside the emirate, however,
the Naqshbandiyya were associated with sundry anti-colonial uprisings, including that led by
Khoja shn Kulkara in the Chirchik valley in 1872, the defense of Gk-Teppe in 1879 and
1881led by shaykh Kurban Muratand, most famously, the 1898 uprising in Andijan led by
the Mujaddid shaykh Muhammad Al Dwna ibn Muhammad bir Dkch/Yikch shn
(1856-1898).118 Given the importance of the Manqib-i Dkch shn to the present study, the
115
Babadanov, On the History of the Naqbandiya Muaddidiya in Central Mwarannahr in the Late 18 th and
Early 19th Centuries, 396-397, 403, 407; Rafis Abazov, Map 31, in The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of
Central Asia (New York: Palgrave, 2008).
116
117
Seymour Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865-1924, Russian Research
Center Studies 54 (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 77-78; Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Mystics and
Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (London: Hurst, 1985), 32.
118
Bennigsen and Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars, 32; Manqib-i Dkch shn: anonim zhitiia Dkch shna-
predvoditelia Andizhanskogo vosstaniia 1898 goda, trans. B.M. Babadjanov (Tashkent: Institute of Oriental Studies,
2004), 11.
42
story of Dkch shn and his motivation for participating in the uprising of 1898 warrants
further discussion.
The events of the uprising have been subjected to a number of interpretations, ranging
from tsarist-era analysis informed by fears of Muslims fanaticism, and Soviet-era Marxist-
Leninist socio-economic critiques, to nationalist hero-making in independent Uzbekistan. The
uprising itselfconsisting of approximately 2,000 semi-nomadic Kyrgyz and Uzbek peasants
attacking a Russian barracks near Andijan and colonial government institutions in Oshlasted
for a matter of minutes. For the 22 Russian soldiers killedwith a like amount wounded, and
additional casualties among the colonial civilian populationDkch shn and 17 other ring-
leaders were hanged, and hundreds of their followers banished or imprisoned. The notoriety the
shaykh gained from this small, unsuccessful, insurrection is somewhat surprising, and,
seemingly, at odds with his humble origins (Dkch, the trade of his father, means spindle-
maker).119
Dkch shn studied the Islamic sciences in his youth in Bukhara, attached himself to a
Sufi master in Samarqand, and eventually became a murd of the prominent Mujaddid pir Sultan
Khan Tra in Andijan. Though designated as such, Dkch shn initially doubted his fitness to
succeed his master following the latters death in 1882. Despite taking on a few disciples in his
new capacity, it was only after receiving confirmation of his worthinessvia visions and similar
supernatural experiences at the tombs of Bah al-Dn Naqshband, Makhdm-i Aam, and the
Prophet Muhammad (while on ajj)that he was able to overcome these doubts.120
119
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 11, 16.
120
Ibid., 17-18.
43
On his return from Mecca, he gathered disciples from a wide swath of the ethnically
diverse Ferghana Valley, but found his greatest success among peasants and semi-nomadic
Kyrgyzthose who suffered the most from the political, social, and economic upheavals which
followed the Russian annexation of the Khanate of Kokand in 1876. It was this group who
gathered money and purchased land for their pir in the town of Mingtepa, where his khnaqh
complex was eventually built. It was they who visited him on a daily basis, sharing their tales of
woe regarding the depredations of the colonial authorities and the Russian settlers who had
robbed their lands. Several times, the shaykh talked the Kyrgyz of eastern Ferghana out of
attacking the encroaching settlers.121
The message Dkch shn preached to his visitors and disciples can be found in the
Ibrat al-filn (1893/94), which has traditionally been attributed to him. Here, the shaykh
adopted a revivalist tone, condemning decaying societal morals and hereditary shns (the
Central Asia variant of shaykh or pir) who, in his estimation, had largely departed from a
circumspect adherence to the Sharia. He also enjoined them, and the clerical establishment
(ulam and mulls), to labor with their own hands rather than, as he accused them of doing,
being charlatans that glutted themselves on the donations of the ignorant people. Unsurprisingly,
the ulam responded by accusing Dkch shn of stirring up the uneducated mob for his own
selfish purposes. Neither did Dkch shn spare other prominent spiritual, economic, and
secular authorities from his polemical invective, claiming that sayyids, trahs (a prince or,
usually, tribal leader claiming Chinggisid descent), bys (local leaders) and merchants
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 20; Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, 176, 179-180;
121
Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia, 90.

44
regularly ignored the Sharia. The shaykh also told his followers to ignore the colonial Christian
authorities and focused their energies on adhering to Islamic law.122
It was in this highly-charged climate (1895-1896) that Dkch shn was informed by one
of his murds that the Kyrgyz of eastern Ferghana had decided to attack the Russian settlers. The
shaykh quickly prevented his followers from carrying out their plan, convincing them of the need
to appoint an appropriate khalfa to lead the ghazavat (a raid carried out by ghzs, pious
volunteers in holy war against an infidel enemy), an office which he was then offered.123 He
began to vigorously fulfill his duties as khalfa by calling on various power brokersfrom
Uzbek tribal chiefs to the urban aristocracyto support the undertaking. Some agreed to
participate, others rejected the call outright, and still others vacillated, saying more adequate
preparations needed to be made. By March 1897, the Kyrgyz had grown impatient and implored
Dkch shn to act, though he preferred to wait until he could gather more support among the
settled elite. A year later, in May 1898, the Kyrgyz returned to beseech him again, and though he
felt the venture had not been sufficiently prepared, he succumbed to the pressure exerted by his
followers.124
The following week, over 500 men gathered at his khnaqh, and, against his will,
Dkch shns closest khalfas and murds placed him on a gray horse, followed him in dhikr
and sam, then cried out, Dkch shn has been raised to khan!125 After the evening prayer,
an ill-armed band set off for Andijan, cutting the telegraph line, and gathering followers as they
122
Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, 170, 174-177; McChesney, Waqf in Central
Asia, 323.
123
Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 389; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 354.
124
Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, 181-183
125
Quoted in ibid., 183-184.
45
went. However, the effort of the insurgents was divided, as the leader of the nomadic Kyrgyz
insisted on attacking Russian authorities and settlers further east before joining the main body of
men in Andijan, and some of Dkch shns khalfas failed to report with the forces they were to
have gathered. After the failure of the revolt, several of the murds did their best to place the bulk
of the blame for the uprising on their shaykh. In the end, it appeared that Dkch shns
polemics had cost him the support of the tribal and clerical authorities whom he had lambasted
for laxly following the Sharia.126
The subsequent role of the Naqshbandiyya in other socio-political movements in
Transoxiana, such as the reformist Jadids, and the Basmachi movement that challenged the
establishment of Soviet rule in the region in the 1920s, remains obscure. However, in this era
most adult men in the region were connected to a spiritual guide of some sort, who, by this
period, was mostly likely affiliated with the Naqshbandiyya.127
Qalandariyya
The dervish (darvsh, poor or indigent in Persian) groups that appeared in the Islamic
world between 1200 and 1500 shared some characteristics with the Sufi orders described above,
but focused their spiritual efforts, with greater intensity, on ascetic practices such as
mendicancy, itinerancy, celibacy, and self-mortification.128 These they combined with
antinomian activitiessuch as public nudity, the shunning of married life and employment, the
use of intoxicants, and ignoring prayers and fastingin a complete rejection of Islamic society,
including its established mystical institutions. What began as an eremitic trend in renouncing the
126
Ibid., 183-184.
127
Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 32.
128
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 2, 14.
46
existing temporal and spiritual order in the twelfth century had metamorphosed into a deviant,
yet cenobitic, analogue of the Sufi orders by the thirteenth century. The sixteenth century saw
these dervish groups mostly absorbed into existing arqas or transformed into their own, new
Sufi orders.129
Dervish piety, historically dismissed by pious Muslims and scholars alike as a
manifestation of popular religion, or a collection of non-Islamic practices varnished with a thin
Islamic veneer, was, in reality, a reaction to the internal dynamics of Muslim society. The
dervishes believed that the entanglements of society, (occupations, families, money, and
positions of influence and authority in the community) increased the cosmic distance between
man and his creator. Thus, their behavior, which was antithetical to such institutions, was
calculated to remove the worldly obstacles that inhibited closer proximity to deity. Despite this
common ethos, there was diversity among the different branches of the dervish movement, as
exemplified by the various attitudes toward property: some dervishes excoriated money as no
better than feces, while others survived by begging; some settled in hospices, while others
suffered lives of perpetual itinerancy, only occasionally stopping to seclude themselves in
cemeteries.130
The dervish ethos had its roots in the tawakkul philosophy of Balkh and the asceticism of
the Karrmiyya of Khorasan. As noted above, these movements fell out of favor with or were
absorbed by the Sufi variant of mystical Islam as it became part and parcel of the Muslim
worlds mainstream religious life. Preserved within Sufism, however, was the individualistic
path of renunciation, epitomized by the Qalandar type, which seems to have existed in Persian
129
Ibid., 2-4.
130
Ibid., 10-15.
47
literature from at least the end of the tenth century. Among the literary works portraying the
Qalandar were the eleventh-century Rislah-i Qalandar nmahwhere one such ascetic enjoins
poverty, itinerancy, and seclusion in graveyardsand the twelfth-century Qalandaryt poems,
extolling wine-drinking, gambling, profane love, and rejection of religion.131
The name Qalandar was eventually applied to the followers of Jaml al-Dn Sv (d. ca.
1232-33), appearing first as a discrete dervish group in the early part of the thirteenth century.
According to a hagiographical account, Jaml al-Dn was originally a wealthy, mainstream Sufi
master in Iraq who was converted to the dervish way upon seeing an almost completely naked,
weed-eating, renunciate in a cemetery in Damascus. The sight reportedly inspired him to seek
Gods help in overcoming his worldly entanglements, and, while praying, all the hair on his body
fell off. This marked him as one who was dead before his death, a state manifest in the
Qalandar penchant for graveyard seclusion, rejecting family life and employment, and shaving
off the hair, moustache, beard, and eyebrows, a practice called the four blows (chahr arb).132
Though Jaml al-Dn did not desire to proselytize his path, a few close disciples gathered
followers around him, though he eventually decamped to a cemetery in Damietta, Egypt, to end
his days in the solitude he craved.133
Muhammad al-Balkh, a chief disciple of Jaml al-Dn, remained in Damascus, where he
was revered by the Mamluk sultan al-hir, building a hospice for his adepts and instructing
them to wear jawlaqs (uncomfortable, heavy woolen garments).134 Only one of the deviant
131
Ibid., 28-33.
132
Quoted in: ibid., 39-41.
133
Ibid., 41-44.
134
Ibid., 41.
48
dervish groups present in Damascus (the aydars being the other), the Qalandars remained
active there into, at least, the early sixteenth century.135 The group also set up hospices in other
parts of the Near East, including Egypt, and Jerusalem (fourteenth century), their activities
coming to the notice of and being condemned by the likes of Ibn Taymyah. Though the
Qalandariyya sprung out of the early thirteenth-century Arab-dominated Fertile Crescent, its
original membership was largely comprised of ethnic Persians. Not coincidentally, the Qalandars
were also present in Persian-speaking lands by that period, including in Hamadn and at the
Ilkhnid court. Their subsequent activity in the region is obscure, though the Aq Qoyunlu ruler
Uzun asan (r. 1453-78), the Timurid sultan usayn Bayara (r. 1470-1506), and Jm all
discussed their presence.136 In addition, Khoja Arr defended the dervish way while
condemning some of its practices, and various accounts speak of dervish types among the
Naqshbandiyya wandering through Central Asia in seventeenth-eighteenth centuries.137 The
existence of Qalandars in the region, as will be discussed later, was attested to into the twentieth
century.138
Though explicitly created in reaction to Sufism, dervish groups borrowed heavily from
the Sufi model by tracing their lineages to founding figures, accepting senior members of the
group as guides and exemplars, wearing the Sufi-like jawlaq, recruiting members from among
135
The aydars distinctive appearance included iron collars, bracelets, belts, anklets, and rings suspended from
[their] ears and genitals, an open-front robe allowing the later to be seen. A native of Khorasan, the groups
founder, Qub al-Dn aydar, was, according to some accounts, associated with Amad Yasav before turning to the
dervish path: Ibid., 44-45.
136
Ibid., 52-59.
137
Alexandre Papas, Dervish, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three, eds. Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krmer, Denis Matringe,
John Nawas, Everett Rowson [Brill Online]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-3/dervish-COM_25986; Internet; accessed 26
March 2015.
138
49
the elites of society (such as the Persian poet Fakhr al-Dn Iraq), and associating with rulers
(like the Ottoman Sultan Murd II). Indeed, as noted before, some dervish groups eventually
became Sufi orders (such as the Bektshiyya in the Ottoman Empire) or were absorbed into
existing orders (like the Chishtyya-Qalandariyya in India, or, as noted above, even the
Naqshbandiyya). This process was a natural evolution, whereby practitioners of deviant
spirituality, ironically, came to seek a degree of respectability, and freedom from persecution by
Sharia-minded rulers among the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, and Shaybanids.139
Central Asia in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries
Bukhara from the Sixteenth Century to the Russian Conquest
The Abulkhayrid Shaybanid Uzbek conquest of Transoxiana in the sixteenth century
drove out the last vestiges of Timurid rule (in the person of ahr-ud-Dn Muhammad Babur),
while also seizing Herat. Thereafter, the resolutely Sunni Uzbeks began to butt heads with their
regional rivals, the Shii Safavids, in Khorasan, each side portraying the struggle as a holy duty
rather than a geopolitical contest. Under this Uzbek Khanate, Bukhara again became one of the
most splendid cities in the Muslim world (as evidenced by the construction of the Mir Arab
madrassa in 1535), and northern Afghanistan, including Balkh, was again linked with the
political fortunes of Transoxiana. On the death of the Abulkhayrid Shaybanid Abdallah Khan (r.
1583-1598), his brother-in-law Jani Muhammad (r. 1599-1603) claimed the throne of Bukhara,
beginning the Janid or Ashtarkhanid Dynasty (1599-1785), which maintained the cultural
florescence of Abdallahs capital, as well as that of Samarqand and Balkh. Indeed, it was the
Janids that built the famous madrassas of Samarqands Registan in the seventeenth century. By
139
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 92-95.
50
the mid-eighteenth century, however, the Janid dynasty had succumbed to growing pressure from
the Uzbek tribal amrs, particularly the Manghit amr Muhammad Rahim Bi who transformed
himself from ataliq (major-domo of the dynasty (1753-1758)) to its de facto ruler.140
The non-Chinggisid Manghits began a trend among the ruling dynasties of Central Asia,
whereby legitimacy of rule no longer needed to be derived through genealogical ties, genuine or
otherwise, to the Mongol khans of old. Tangible manifestations of this policy included changing
the rulers title from the Turco-Mongol khan to the Islamic amr, rulers burnishing their
Islamic credentials via support to the ulam and Sufis, and, under Nasr Allah (r. 1827-1860),
diminishing the influence of the tribal Uzbek elite by establishing a standing army and
bureaucracy partially staffed by non-Uzbeks (especially Persian slaves and Turkmen). This
centralizing tendency, however, continued to be challenged into the latter half of the nineteenth
century by petty polities such as Shahr-i Sabz, Hisar, and Kulab.141
The western, most populous, and politically prominent portion of the emirate consisted of
three oases separated by desert, the center of agricultural valleys along tributaries of the Amu
Darya, and the east of remote valleys in high, forbidding mountains. The population of the
emirate at the end of the nineteenth century, according to one estimate, was as much as three
million, 10-14 percent of which was concentrated in urban centers like Bukhara, Karshi, Shahr-i
Sabz, and Chardjui. During the era of the Russian protectorate, Uzbeks comprised 55-60 percent
of the population (inhabiting the oases and central valleys), Tajiks 30 percent (dwelling in the
central and eastern mountains, many of whom were Isml Shiis), and Turkmen 5-10 percent
(mostly found along the Amu Darya). The state was administered by the kush-begi (chief
140
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 149-161, 177-179, 325.
141
Ibid., 180; Becker, Russias Protectorates in Central Asia, 5.
51
minister), and his subordinates, while at the provincial (beglik) level begs (called mirs in
Tajik) chosen from among the amrs family or friends maintained authority with their own
staffs, mirroring those of the kush-begi.142 Despite the role of Persian slaves in the bureaucracy,
Uzbeks predominated. Among the official clergy, members of sayyid and khoja groups
frequently swelled the ranks of the ulam, and filled the positions of qazi-kalan (chief judge),
and mufti (jurisconsult capable of issuing fatw learned opinions on a point of law).143
Khiva from the Sixteenth Century to the Russian Conquest
As in Transoxiana, another branch of the Shaybanids, the Yadigarids, conquered
Khwarazm in the early sixteenth century, subsequently rebuffing several attempts by the rulers of
Bukhara to absorb their khanate. Also like Transoxiana, in Khiva there existed a division
between the Turkic, nomadic elites and the sedentary farmers and townspeople, the so called
Sarts, of mixed Persian and Turkic stock. Turkmen and Kazakh tribes also dwelt on the fringes
of the khanates authority, in the Kara Kum desert to the south, and in the corridor between the
Aral and Caspian Seas (abutting the Dasht-i Kipchak) respectively. The city of Khiva was
chosen as the politys capital in the early seventeenth century by the khan Arab Muhammad I (r.
1603-23), who defeated a raid by Cossacks from the Ural River in the first year of his reign. Due
to courtly intrigue and the instability of the realm, his son Abulghazi Bahadur Khan (r. 1643-63)
spent 20 years sojourning in Turkestan of the Kazakh khans, in the Kalmyk khanate on the lower
Volga, and in Hamadn of the Safavid shahs. Eventually enthroned by the Uzbek tribal chieftains
142
Becker, Russias Protectorates in Central Asia, 6-9.
143
Ibid., 9; Hlne Carrre dEncausse, Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia,
trans. Quintin Hoare (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 18-19, 255-257; E. Tyan, J. R. Walsh, Fatw, Encyclopaedia of
Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online];
available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/fatwa-COM_0219; Internet;
accessed 15 April 2015.
52
of Khwarazm, Abulghazi led his forces against the Turkmen tribes of the Kara Kum, and, like
Babur before him, left behind important histories of the region written in Chaghatay.144
One of Abulghazis successors, Shir Ghazi (r. 1715-1728), famously repulsed the
expedition sent against Khiva by Peter the Great in 1717-1718. He was killed, however, in
quarrels between the Manghit and Qungrat tribes, though the tribal powers behind the throne
continued to rule via puppet Yadigarids until 1803. Then, as in Bukhara, a non-Chinggisid
dynasty (the Inaqids of the Qungrat tribe) established themselves as the supreme power. Also
like their neighbors to the east, the Inaqids turned to the settled citizens of their realm to help
break the power of the tribal elite.145
The Khanate of Khiva had one major oasis to Bukharas three, most of her territory being
comprised of the surrounding desert. The southern portion of this oasis was the center of Khivas
population, estimated at up to 800,000. Similar to Bukhara, 72 percent of Khivas population was
sedentary, 22 percent was semi-nomadic, and 6 percent was nomadic. Unlike Bukhara, Khiva
could only claim two towns of any distinction, the capital, and the trading hub of Urgench.
Uzbeks made up the majority of the population, a large Turkmen minority (27 percent), and
much smaller groups of Karakalpaks and Kazakhs comprising the remainder. Smaller than
Bukhara, Khivas rulers did not need to delegate as much authority to their provincial
administrators, though similar offices existed. Khiva also had a qazi-kalan, but its clerical class
wielded much less power than in Bukhara.146
144
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 181-184.
145
Ibid., 186-187.
146
Becker, Russias Protectorates in Central Asia, 9-11.
53
Kokand from the Eighteenth Century to the Russian Conquest
Though long a dependency of Bukhara, the Ferghana Valley maintained its unique
character as an agricultural breadbasket, and a trade hub with links to China, India and
elsewhere. The valley, along with Tashkent, witnessed the rise of short-lived theocratic
governments led by Sufi shaykhs in the seventeenth century, but in 1710 Shhrukh Biy (r. 1710-
1721) of the Uzbek Ming tribe took possession of the region, his dynasty establishing its capital
at Kokand. Following Shhrukhs time, Kokand nominally accepted the suzerainty of the
Manchu Qing Dynasty, allied itself with Ahmed Shah Durrani of Afghanistan, and, in
approximately 1800, its rulers began styling themselves khan rather than biy (by or beg).147
In the early nineteenth-century the khans of Kokand conquered Tashkent, Shymkent, and
Sayram, founded Akmeshit, and garrisoned Bishkek.148 The khanates agriculture flourished via
a program of irrigation canal construction, cotton being grown for export to Russia. Magnificent
architecture, including the palace of the last khan, Khudyr (r. 1845-1875), and a great mosque
graced the capital. The latters builder, Umar Khan (r. 1810-1822), weakened the Uzbek tribal
aristocracy by creating a mercenary army composed of Persianate Pamiris. The citizenry of the
khanate was ethnically diverse, with settled Turki (Sart) and Persian-speakers (Tajiks), as well
as Kipchak, and Kyrgyz nomads. This diversity led to a great deal of instability between 1840
and 1876, which Bukhara used to its advantage in its geopolitical contest with the khanate,
annexing it, temporarily, in 1842. Bukharan meddling also extended to supporting Khudyr
147
Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 187-190.
148
Excluding Tashkent and Bishkek (the respective capitals of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan), all of these cities are
located in what is now Kazakhstan.
54
Khans last turn on the throne in 1865he had been toppled twice beforebut in that same
year, the Russians took Tashkent.149
Russian Conquest and Imperial Administration, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries
St. Petersburg absorbed the territory of Central Asia in two stages, 1730-1848, and 1864-
1884. The first stage witnessed the gradual co-optation, and subjugation of the Kazakh hordes,
while stage two was devoted to bringing the Uzbek polities and the Turkmen into the Russian
orbit. Russian motivations for expansion included an imperialistic hunger for raw materials,
markets, and martial glory, and a desire to prevent the spread of British influence into St.
Petersburgs self-designated sphere of influence. The move into the Uzbek polities, however,
was dictated by what was deemed militarily necessary in completing the absorption of Kazakh
territory. In order to finish this imperial project, St. Petersburg encroached on the territory of
Kokand, which abutted the Kazakh steppes, taking Akmeshit (1853), founding Vernyi (now
Almaty), and capturing Bishkek (both in 1854).150
Following the Crimean War and the troubles in the Caucasus, the Russians resumed
shoring up their southern border, seizing Shymkent and Aulie Ata (contemporary Taraz) in 1864,
and, as noted above, Tashkent in 1865. For three years the Tsarist Empire preferred a policy of
accommodation with the Uzbek polities, but skirmishes with these states, and Russian fears of a
power vacuum on their periphery, reignited the imperial drive south. In 1868 the Emirate of
Bukhara lost a large portion of its territory and became a Russian protectorate, with Khiva
following a similar path in 1873. Kokand had also been brought into vassalage in 1868, and in
149
Ibid., 190-193.
150
Ibid., 195-198.
55
1876, wearied with internecine struggles in the rump khanate, St. Petersburg annexed Kokands
territory outright, attaching Ferghana to its Turkestan Province. By 1884, even the oasis of Merv
and the surrounding Turkmen territories had been acquired by the tsars.151
St. Petersburgs administration for Central Asia, the Turkestanskoe General-
Gubernatorstvo (Governorate-General of Turkestan), consisted of five oblasts (regions)
Syrdarya, Semireche, Ferghana, Samarqand, and Zakaspieand the protectorates of Bukhara
and Khiva. This apparatus was headed by a military governor in Tashkent, a city which had
never before been the equal of Bukhara or Samarqand, but became a genuine metropolis under
Russia rule. St. Petersburgs imperial goals in Central Asia advanced quickly, with cotton
production soaring to such a degree that the region was reduced to importing wheat from Russia.
In addition, Russian and Ukrainian settlers arrived in the region, claiming many of the more
fertile pieces of ground and disrupting traditional nomadic patterns of life, while urban Russians
dominated regional trade and established European quarters in some cities. Tens of thousands of
Russian troops were stationed in the region, and by the early twentieth century it was
crisscrossed by telegraph and railroad lines.152
Under its second governor-general, Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman (1867-1882), the
Russian colonial system in Central Asia was firmly established, remaining largely unchanged
until the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.153 Russian policies, paternalistic and based on the
research of ethnographers, were intended to help the region evolve beyond its economic, cultural,
and political backwardness. Some Russian officials, referencing their experiences with the
151
Ibid., 198-199.
152
Ibid., 201-205.
153
Ibid., 203.
56
Muslim mountaineers of the Caucasus, and fearing Central Asias cultural, linguistic, and
religious ties with the Ottoman Empire, advocated a repressive approach to Islam in the region.
Kaufman, though he believed that Islam could not be at peace with any [alien] state, advocated
a policy of ignoring or disregarding the public religious institutions, which he believed were the
source of anti-colonial rancor.154 By so doing, Kaufman hoped to separate the private practices of
the believer from the public, political sphere.
To this end he abolished various religious offices in Tashkent, including that of the qazi-
kalan, but, according to his secular, progressive mindset, also prohibited the activities of
Orthodox Church missionaries. He also sought to quarantine the primitive nomadic peoples
from the urban fanatics, preferring what he saw as their notional Islam to the entrenched
institutions of the sedentary populous bigoted, hypocritical, and corrupt Muslim holy men,
mullas, judges, pilgrims, saints, and dervishes.155 Despite Kaufmans disdain for urban
manifestations of Islam, however, Muslim courts were retained and waqfs, though they suffered
from embezzlement and other depredations during the confusion of the Russian conquest, were
not liquidated as an institution.156
Russian rule also brought Central Asians access to European culture, including theatre,
printing, and benevolent societies. These were the means, along with their new-method schools,
harnessed by the Jadids in their attempts to reform Islamic society, which were seen as a weak
corruption of the pure faith of old when viewed through the prism of modernity. Their opponents
Quoted in: Daniel R. Brower, Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy in Turkestan, in Russias Orient:
154
Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 119.
155
Quoted in: ibid., 120-122, 130.
156
Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform, 68, 83-84.
57
among the established elites, often stereotyped as Qadimists, challenged the Jadid right to define
Islamic culture in the colonial context, though neither camp was ideologically monolithic, and
the boundaries between the two were often blurred. By 1917, the Jadids had succeeded in
publicly claiming the establishment of an alternative future path for Islamic society in Central
Asia. However, elites of a more traditional orientation continued to claim the loyalty of the bulk
of Central Asias Muslims.157
Chinese Turkestan, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries
Though portions of what has come to be known as Xinjiang (new territory or new
frontier) had been ruled by the Chinese under the Han (206 BCE-221 CE) and Tang Dynasties
(618-907), it was not until the late eighteenth-century Qing conquest of the region that it came
under the continuous rule of a Chinese state.158 The Qing Dynastys (1644-1911) view of Inner
Asia (here including Manchuria, Inner and Outer Mongolia, Qinghai, Tibet, Zungaria, the
Tianshan, and the Tarim Basin) was shaped by its understanding of itself as successor to the
Chinggisid imperial legacy.159 Emperor Qianlong (r. 1735-1796) became involved in the
succession struggles among the Zungars, after the death of their last effective ruler Galdan
Tseren (r. 1727-1745), installing the leader Amursana in Ili as one of four khans in 1755.
Amursana, desiring to be the sole ruler, revolted, was defeated, and decamped for tsarist
territory. The war, which shattered the Zungars as a political power on the steppe, nearly
157
Ibid., 1-6, 281-282.
S. Frederick Starr, Introduction, in Xinjiang: Chinas Muslim Borderland, ed. S. Frederick Starr (Armonk,
158
New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), 6; James A. Millward and Peter C. Perdue, Political and Cultural History of the
Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth Century, in Xinjiang, 35-40; J.A. G. Roberts, A Concise History of
China, second printing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 51, 79.
Nicola Di Cosmo, The Qing and Inner Asia: 1636-1800, in The Cambridge History of Inner Asia: The
159
Chinggisid Age, eds. Nicola Di Cosmo, Allen J. Frank and Peter Golden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009), 333-334; Roberts, A Concise History of China, 118, 206.
58
annihilated the Zungars as a people, the Qing claiming that their forces had killed 30 percent of
the population, while 40 percent had died of smallpox, and 20 percent had left for Russian
lands.160
Following their conquest, the Qing were saddled with administering an area over 2
million kilometers in size, containing approximately 600,000 peasants, nomads, and denizens of
settled oases, including the Altishahr (six cities): Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Ush Turfan,
Aqsu, and Kucha.161 As noted above, the Black and White Mountain Khojas also resisted the
Qing conquest, but Beijing did not affect a policy of massacre against the people of the Tarim
Basin as they had against the Zungars. Local Muslim sentiment toward the new regime was not
positive, however, given the Qing war on the fq Khojas, and the escape of one of their sons to
Kokand. Nonetheless, the Qing sought local support by establishing indirect rule via local begs
(here referring to the landed aristocracy), and the ulam. Viewed as collaborators, the begs
corruption, and adoption of infidel ways earned them the enmity of the local populace, opening
the way for numerous attempts by the fq Khojas to regain their power via ghazavat from their
base in Kokand. The presence of Qing military garrisons in the regionwith their tens of
thousands of ethnic Manchu, Han, and Mongol troops (numbering 40,000 in 1853)and
Beijings active role in encouraging Han resettlement in and transportation of criminals to the
area exacerbated the situation. Increased taxes, required by Beijing to maintain stability
160
Kim, Holy War in China, 8.
Millward and Perdue, Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth
161
Century,57; Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, 16-17.

59
following an fq Khoja invasion in the 1820s, and the Taiping rebellion in the 1850s, also
added to the tension.162
Relations between Kokand and the Qing during the eighteenth century were initially
restricted to trade, but as Kokand expanded toward the border of Chinese Turkestan (taking Osh
in 1762) their relationship became, at once, more complex and strained. The presence of the heir
to the religio-political legacy of the fq Khojas in Kokand, and Kokands demand that its
officials should be allowed to tax Kokandian merchants on Qing territorysomething it began
doing in 1820 without Beijings permissionfurther soured the relationship. Though Kokand
initially remained aloof from and actively discouraged the fq invasions (1820, 1825), Khan
Muhammad Ali (r. 1822-1842) was tempted by the potential booty to be earned by such
ventures, and participated by attacking Kashgar with 10,000 troops in 1826. The attempt ended
in failure, and the Qing retaliated by banning trade with Kokand, which merely served to inspire
further Kokandian support for the fqiyyas claims, resulting in yet another invasion in 1830.
Beijing finally decided the best way to neutralize the meddlesome little khanate was to grant it
the right to collect customs duties from Kokandian merchants in the six cities, and pay it an
annual subsidy (1832). The fq Khojas continued their machinations from Kokand, conducting
several invasions in the 1850s, though without state support.163
In June 1864, Hui in the city of Kucha revolted against the Qing, fearing they would be
massacred in retribution for the insurrection of their people in western China. Turkic Muslims of
the region soon joined the Hui, and various cities in the Tarim Basin and Zungaria rose in revolt.
162
Kim, Holy War in China, 10-18; Millward and Perdue, Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region
through the Late Nineteenth Century,59; Pamel Kyle Crossley, The Manchus (Oxford, United Kingdom: Blackwell
Publishing, 1997), 81, 107.
163
Kim, Holy War in China, 20-32.
60
Though the revolt was spontaneous and not religiously motivated, per se, Islam united, to a
degree, the regions various ethnicities against the Qing. After beginning the revolt, the Muslims
of Kucha approached a former governor of Kashgar and Yarkand (an initiate of the Qadiriyya
and Naqshbandiyya) to be their new leader, but he was murdered by a mob following his refusal.
A local khoja was then pressed into service as the new khan, who then raised forces and grappled
with the Qing army for the control of various cities.164
In 1865, Yaqb Beg, an official in the service of a Qipchak king-maker in Kokand, was
sent to accompany an fq Khoja to Kashgar as an instrument of Kokandian policy. Following
the death of his patron in Kokand, however, he began to carry out his own plans, ignored the new
Kokandian khan, Khudyr, molded Kokandian refugees into an army, conquered Kashgar,
deposed the khoja rulers of Kucha, and, during 1870-1872, controlled the Tarim Basin and
Urumchi. His rule, which favored Kokandian refugees with the highest military and provincial
administration posts, lacked legitimacy, a liability he sought to overcome by promoting
adherence to the Sharia and building tombs for local saints. He also sought diplomatic ties with
Russia, Great Britain, and the Ottoman Empire, seeking recognition and aid against the Qing re-
conquest. Yaqb Begs army, as large as the erstwhile Qing force in the region had been,
required similar taxes to operate, which eroded his support among locals. These taxes, Yaqb
Begs failed, quixotic attempts to negotiate with the Qing army rather than fight it, and his
sudden death in 1877, led to the collapse of his state. Khoja influence in the region, prominent
before the time of Yaqb Beg, was devastated by these events, and Chinese Turkestans wing of
164
Ibid., 39-40, 57,
61
the Jadid movement replaced it as a driving force in the intellectual life of the regions
Muslims.165
In 1884, Xinjiang became an official province of China, and reconstruction efforts were
envisaged to restore the regions agricultural capacity and infrastructure. Confucian schools were
also erected to train a new generation of local Muslim elites capable of reading, writing and
speaking Chinese. Heavy taxes, again, began to be required of the locals to fund the provincial
administration, as China fought with France for control of northern Vietnam (1884), and paid
indemnities to foreigners in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion (1900). Han resettlement to the
region was damaged by these economic conditions, but Uyhgurs from the Tarim Basin began
migrating to Zungaria in the 1880s and 1890s. By the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Uyghurs
were more widely distributed throughout the region than at any time in their history.166
165
Ibid., 80, 91-93, 179-185.
Millward and Perdue, Political and Cultural History of the Xinjiang Region through the Late Nineteenth
166
Century, 64-67.
62
Chapter 2
Order Organization, Economic Basis, Membership, Demographics, and Networks
Know, without a doubt, that this world will pass from all people
Do not believe in your possessions, one day they will slip through your fingers,
Consider where parents, kin have gone,
One day the casket litter will overtake you as well.
Do not grieve for the world, do not say that there is anything in addition to God,
Do not misappropriate anyones property, this will ensnare you on Sirat.
Not a woman, not a relativeno one will be a companion,
Be courageous, solitary wayfarer, your life will pass like wind.
Slave Hoja Ahmad, be obedient, I dont know how many years your life will be,
If you would know your origin it is water and clay, again it will turn to clay.
attributed to Khoja Amad Yasav167
In beginning a comprehensive description of Sufi life in nineteenth-century Central Asia
the first tasks that must be tackled are determining which orders existed in the region at the time,
providing a basic sketch of their organization, and discussing a few details concerning their
membership. By positioning an orders ethos, division of labor, economic basis, demographic
makeup, and other characteristics in the relevant spatial and temporal frame of reference, we will
be better able to grasp the significance of the daily activities in its institutions (lodges), its ritual
performances, and its ties to the regions shrines, which will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
At the same time, these nuts and bolts of the areas Sufism in this era are essential objects of
167
Yassavii, Hikmat 8,in Devoni Hikmat, 33. ir is the hairs-breadth bridge on which all must pass, over the
fires of Hell, on the way to paradise, see G. Monnot, ir, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P.
Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/sirat-SIM_7065; Internet; accessed 10 June
2015.
63
study in their own right, the analysis of which will provide a better understanding of these orders
as discrete organizations.
Identifying the Orders
Being armed with a basic understanding of which orders we should expect to meet in the
primary sources of the era will allow for comparisons with affiliate orders in regions for which
we possess greater data, and, hence, allow a more focused and nuanced analysis. Though a
seemingly simple inquiry, identifying orders becomes a thorny task when relying on the
observations of outsiders, sometimes not well-schooled in Sufi matters, to determine who was
who in descriptions of various Sufi individuals, ceremonies, and so forth. The peril of
misidentification is significantly reduced in a native source like the Manqib-i Dkch shn, but
its author was not interested in cataloguing the activities of other, rival, Sufi orders in the region,
and does not possess an outsiders curiosity and desire to understand new phenomenon through
classification and analogy. Hence, problematic as they are, the European traveler accounts are
likely to provide the most useful source data for identifying Sufi orders in the region during the
period in question.
As already discussed in chapter 1, true Sufi orders arose in the region around the end of
the fourteenth century, dominated by the indigenous Kubrawiyya, Yasaviyya, and
Naqshbandiyya. The Kubrawiyya, however, seems to have disappeared from Central Asia by the
end of the seventeenth century, replaced by the Naqshbandiyya.168 The Yasaviyya, who proved a
more formidable challenged to the Naqshbandiyya, were also subsumed by their rival order.
Beginning around the second half of the eighteenth century, the Yasaviyya lost its independent
168

64
identity, and its silsila became the property of groups with Naqshband lineages.169 Hence, by the
nineteenth century, it is likely that the majority of Sufis encountered by travelers and described
in the primary sourcesexcepting the Qalandariyyawere mostly of Naqshband affiliation,
though the Yasav tradition lived on via its distinctive dhikr, the continued veneration of Yasav-
associated shrines, and khoja groups claiming descent from Amad Yasavs family.170
Using two travel accounts from the late-nineteenth century, it is possible to obtain a
general understanding of the variety of Sufi orders present in much of agrarian Central Asia
(including Tashkent, the Ferghana Valley, and the Emirate of Bukhara) during that era. The first
is from the American diplomat Eugene Schuyler who, while journeying in the Tsarist Empires
recently conquered Central Asian possessions in 1873, attempted to classify the orders active in
the region:
Islam admits of many religious ordersto some one of these orders belong the Duvanas,
or Dervishes (called also Kalendar), who are so frequently seen in the towns of Central
Asiafraternities exist at Tashkent, and the most prominent ones are the Nakhshbandi,
Hufi, Jahri, Khodri, and Tschistia, the last, however, being chiefly followed in
Hodjent and Khokand.171
Unsurprisingly, Schuyler acknowledges the presence of the Naqshbandiyya. He also lists the
Qalandarsappropriately using the Central Asian synonym divnah, indicating an intoxicated
dervishidentifying them as an urban phenomenon.172 However, in listing the Hufi
Devin DeWeese The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Uasavi and
169
Naqshbandi Sufi Traditions, Journal of Islamic Studies (Oxford), 7/2 (July 1996): 180-207.
170
Ibid.; Devin DeWeese, The Politics of Sacred Lineages in 19th-Century Central Asia: Descent Groups Linked to
171
Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan: Notes of a journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja, vol.1
(New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1877), 158.
172
DeWeese: Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 455.
65
(practitioners of the dhikr-i khaf) and Jahri (practitioners of the dhikr-i jahr) as two
separate fraternities, and those different still from the Naqshbandiyya, he is clearly taking
variations in ritual performance as an indication of order affiliation. At the same time he admits
that, it is very difficult to ascertain the origin and foundation of these orderseach being
protected by some saint, the Nakhshbandi, for example, by Baha-uddin, the celebrated saint of
Bukhara; the Jahri by Hazret Yasavi, the eminent saint who is buried in Turkistan.173
Perhaps Schuylers informants on this issue, though he doesnt describe them, responded
to questions of their order affiliation by referring to their practice of one type of dhikr over
another, or their primary identification with a Yasav lineage vs. a Naqshband lineage. Of
course, as mentioned above, the process by which the Naqshbandiyya began absorbing Yasav
practices, and lineages, had been occurring for centuries by the time of Schuylers visit.
Therefore, though an independent branch of the Yasaviyya was likely not still in existence in
Central Asia in the 1870s, clearly some Yasav elements maintained a sense of semi-unique
identity under a larger Naqshband umbrella, both practicing the vocal dhikr and reverencing
Yasavs tomb in Turkistan. It is also possible that Schuylers Jahri suggests the presence of
the Dahbdiyya (which practiced both a silent and vocal dhikr) in Tashkent, which would not be
unusual given the citys previous association with the Emirate of Bukhara, the home of that
particular lineage, though the object of their pilgrimages would be Amad Ksns tomb in
Dahbd, rather than Yasavs in Turkistan.174
173
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 158.
174
Baxtiyar M. Babadanov, On the History of the Naqbandiya Muaddidiya in Central Mwarannahr in the
Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries, in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th
Centuries, vol. 2 Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Relations, eds. Anke Von Kgelgen, et. al (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz
Verlag, 1998), 167-191; Becker, Russias Protectorates in Central Asia, 5.; Hamid Algar, DAHBDYA,
Encyclopdia Iranica last updated: November 11, 2011 [encyclopedia on-line]; available from
66
Schuylers description of branches of the Khodri (Qdiriyya), and Tschistia
(Chishtiyya) in Central Asia is also instructive. The Chishtiyya, founded near Herat in the twelfth
century, had its greatest success in India, while the Qdiriyya, which claims spiritual descent
from a late eleventh-early twelfth-century Hanbali jurist from Mazandaran, was spread
throughout the Islamic world, arriving in Central Asia, possibly, by the twelfth century.175 Their
prominent presence among the orders of Central Asia in Schuylers time confirms the spiritual
links known to exist between the region, the Middle East, and South Asia. More specifically,
given that in the 1870s the Chishtiyyas primary location in the region was in Khojand and
Kokand, we can discern either contemporary or erstwhile links between the Ferghana Valley and
South Asia. Tashkent, by this time, had become the chief city of tsarist Central Asia, and it
should not be surprising that the most prominent orders in the region maintained branches there.
Our second account comes from Ole Olufsen, a Danish explorer who visited Central Asia
1896-1897, and again 1898-1899, leaving a fascinating description of various orders of what he
termed Islamic monks in the Emirate of Bukhara.176 Lacking Schuylers basic understanding
of eponymous, saintly lineages, as well as their proper names (except Qalandar), Olufsen is
reduced to categorizing his monks by types:
Besides the proper clergy there are all sort of monks (calandars and dervishes) and the
crazy devannahs [divnahs] and the lay preachers. The calandars or singing monks are an
order of mendicant friars, agreeing on all points with the same institution in the Catholic
Church. In Europe they are often called the howling dervishes, but dervish or darvish is
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/dahbidiya-a-hereditary-line-of-naqsbandi-sufis-centered-on-the-shrine-at-
dahbid-a-village-about-11-km; Internet; accessed 27 September 2013; Abazov, Map 28, in The Palgrave Concise
Historical Atlas of Central Asia.
175
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 40-44, 64-65; Bennigsen and Wimbush, Mystics and Commissars, 9.
176
Ole Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country: Journeys and Studies in Bokhara (London: William
Heinemann, 1911), 396.
67
something quite different from calendarIn Bokhara the number of calendar and dervish
orders is said to be 60.177
Leaving aside his reference to devannahs, whom he seems to believe are separate from
both dervishes and Qalandars, Olufsen was clearly striving to establish a dichotomy between a
normative, or respectable group (calandars), and a more extreme order (dervishes). The
former, in his estimation, could be favorably compared with a western religious organization,
while the latter, as will be discussed in more detail below, represented a more severe, ascetic
tradition. In making such a distinction, Olufsen, though an alien observer, hit upon the existence
of two distinct dervish traditions in nineteenth-century Central Asia. In addition, in his
description of sheikhs and ishans the Naqshband tradition will also easily be recognized.178
No doubt representatives of other Sufi orders either passed through or made their homes
in Central Asia during the nineteenth century. Absence of evidence regarding other Sufi orders in
the traveler accounts does not constitute evidence of their absence in the region in that era.
Indeed, there are some obscure, if tantalizing, references to the presence of other orders. For
example, in Joseph Wolffs well-known travel account, the globetrotting Orientalist and
clergyman claimed to have met a derveesh of Yarkandof that class of derveeshes called the
Bektash, while traveling in the Emirate of Bukhara in 1843.179 The Bektshiyya, though having
roots in medieval Khurasan, developed and flourished on the territory of the Ottoman Empire,
particularly in Albania and Anatolia. The order suffered a severe blow in 1826, however, when
sultan Mamd II destroyed the Jannissary corps, to which the Bektshiyya had acted as
chaplains, much of their property being confiscated and handed to other orders, particularly the
177
Ibid, 396, 398.
178
Ibid., 392, 394.
179
Joseph Wolff, A Mission to Bokhara, ed. Guy Wint (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 185.
68
Naqshbandiyya.180 Its seems unlikely, then, to find one of their number hailing from Chinese
Turkestan, though Wolff, who was certainly no novice to the region, is not likely to have
misidentified the dervish. Whether or not this dervish was actually a Bektsh (an escaped
remnant of the disbanded order, perhaps), this anecdote suggests a greater deal of diversity
among the Sufis of nineteenth century Central Asia, than previous scholarship has generally
suggested. Due to the limitations of our sources, however, this study will focus primarily on the
Qalandariyya and Naqshbandiyya.
Order Organization
Detailing the organization of a Sufi order, during any period in history, is a complex
undertaking. It requires an understanding of the guiding ethos of an order, the division of labor
among the members in terms of spiritual exercises performed, the role played by the orders
leadershipthe offices held and functions performed by members of the hierarchyas well as
the duties of the lower strata of the order, and, especially in the nineteenth century, its lay
affiliates. Finally, the economic basis of the order, which dictated, to some degree, the nature of
offices and duties of the orders Sufis, must also be explored. Thankfully, the Manqib-i Dkch
shn is a veritable goldmine of information on these issues. Before using it to begin a discussion
180
John Kingsley Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes (London: Luzac and Co. Ltd., 1965), 23-33, 74-81;
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 277-280; Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and
Modern Turkey: Volume II: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977), 21; John Norton, The Bektashis in the Balkans, in Religious Quest and
National Identity in the Balkans, eds. Celia Hawkesworth, Muriel Heppel and Harry Norris (England: Palgrave,
2001). For a discussion on the connection between the Bektshiyya in the Balkans and the teachings of Amad
Yasav, as well as those of other Central Asian Islamic mystics, see Brian Glyn Williams, Mystics, nomads and
heretics: a history of the diffusion of Muslim syncretism from Central Asia to the thirteenth century Turco-
Byzantine Dobruca, International Journal of Turkish Studies 7, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring 2001): 1-24.
69
of the Naqshbandiyya, however, it is necessary to explore the remarkable, though limited, details
which Olufsen provided on these topics concerning the Qalandariyya.
Qalandariyya and Qalandarkhana
As noted previously, the dervish movement which arose in the twelfth century to reject
Islamic society, and its established mystical institutions, was subsumed by various arqas, or
established its own new Sufi orders by the sixteenth century.181 This fascinating mlange of
simultaneous renunciation and acceptance of aspects of the mainstream Sufi tradition is on
display in Olufsens description of the calandars. He described a hierarchical existence for the
order, its adherents leading a regular monastic life in the so-called Calandar-khanh (mendicant
friars house) which is always situated in the outskirts of towns situated near the burial
places.182 There was, he wrote, one of these monasteriesin each of the larger towns,
including Qarshitraditionally the home of the emirs heir apparentthe one in Bokhara being
the largest.183 Olufsen noted the Bukhara qalandarkhana comprised a complex of flat-roofed
clay houses, a kind of serai [palace], where the chief, Calandar-Bb (the grandfather of the
calandars) has his official residence and each of the calandars his special room.184 Schuyler, too,
gave a brief description of a qalandarkhana, mentioning that it belonged to one of the few
orders of Dervishes remaining in Samarkand[was] situated just outside one of the gates[and
consisted of] a large garden containing one or two mosques, and a number of small cells.185
181
182
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 396.
183
Ibid., 396, 585.
184
Ibid., 396.
185
70
These travelers sketches of nineteenth-century qalandarkhanas can be fleshed out by
inferring details from the hospice of Seyyid Bal z in the Ottoman region of Eskiehir. This
hospice was the headquarters of another dervish group (the Abdls or Is) in the sixteenth
century. It was ordered, and functioned, much like the lodges of other Sufi orders in the
contemporary Ottoman Empire, comprising a mosque, hostel, hospice, refectory, and center of
pilgrimage in one, [and] the tekke [lodge], which housed around two hundred servants and
dervishes.186 Though removed from the lodge in Ottoman Eskiehir by space and time, there is
no compelling reason to suggest that the physical configurations or number of personnel present
in nineteenth-century Central Asian qalandarkhanas varied greatly from it, as they both sprung
from similar traditions. Before leaving the topic of the hospices physical layout, a final
interesting point from Olufsen must be noted: the hospices in the Emirate of Bukhara were
located near cemeteries, preserving, with the aid of sun-dried mud brick, Qalandariyya founder
Jaml al-Dn Svs penchant for seclusion in graveyards, part of being dead before his
death.187
186
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 70-71, 77. The hospice of Seyyid Bal z is dramatically located on a
hilltop in the present city of Seyitgazi in the Turkish province of Eskiehir. Though Western scholars tendency to
compare Sufism with Christian monasticism is often more confusing than helpful, it is somewhat apropos in regards
to this structure, as it began its existence as a Christian monastery in seventh century, its architecture being a
fascinating cross between a Greek Orthodox monastery and a Seljuk/Ottoman klliye (mosque complex). In
addition to the features listed above, the complex also comprises a semahane, for holding mystical concerts, and
more than half a dozen chillakhnas. During the authors visit in May 2015, one of the sites administrators
attempted to downplay the structures connection with dervishes, as opposed to the Bektshiyya who came to
control the complex in later years. In fact, he suggested that the local people had mistakenly labeled the poor who
had sought food or lodging in the hospice as dervishes. Though incorrect, this story preserves the tradition of
dervish hospices providing charity to the poor, an issue which will be explored in chapter 3: Seyit Battal Gazi
Klliyesi, T.C. Eskiehir Valilii [Turkish province website]; available from
http://mekan360.com/360fx_anasayfa_seyitbattalgazikulliyesi-anasayfa.html; Internet; accessed 25 May 2015.
187
Quoted in: Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 15, 41.
71
Alms and State Support
According to Olufsen the Qalandar motto was Poverty is my virtue.188 He claimed the
Qalandars pray in the monastery, when not wandering and
propagateIslam by singing religious songs all around the bazars of the towns and
sustain life exclusively by beggingsinging from shop to shop in the bazars where no
merchant refuses them his mite.189
The Qalandar Baba, who controlled membership in the order via an initiation ritual, was also the
orders chief financial officer, as all that the Qalandars obtain by begging they must in the
evening on returning to the monastery deliver to Calandar-Bb who distributes it to all the
calandars of the monastery.190 It would appear then that Olufsens qalandarkhanas, like their
sixteenth-century Ottoman analogues, were dependent upon carefully managed economic
surplus.191 Also, like the hospices in Istanbul, Bursa, Konya, and Edirne, Olufsen noted
qalandarkhanas in the Emirate of Bukharas major towns. Clearly, it was not coincidence that,
as in the Ottoman lands, an order that survived by begging was present in the urban centers of
the polity, where the chief bazaars were located, and where merchants readily supported them. In
fact, Olufsen said that both Qalandars and dervishes made the square in front of the famed
Mir-i Arab Madrassa in Bukhara a place for their special basis of action, the prospect of silou
(tips) from the well-to-do cotton merchants and caravanbashispossibly greater than from the
small merchants in the bazar streets.192
188
189
Ibid., 396-397.
190
Ibid., 397.
191
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 67.
192
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 543-544.
72
According to Olufsen, before the caravan masters set off through the steppe they would
seek divine aid for a safe journey via these holy men. And the holy men, who were only too
aware that caravan people, whose wages have been paid to them here on their expedition being
at an end, are not sparing of alms, would wait nearby.193 It seems unlikely, however, that a
sizeable qalandarkhana, on the order of the lodge in Eskiehir, could have been supported
merely by alms gathering. Not surprisingly, the Hungarian orientalist and traveler Arminius
Vmbry, who frequented Central Asian kalenterkhanes during his travels through the region
in 1863, described Qalandars who received support without begging. Vmbry relayed the
following about his stop at one such institution in the town of Shurakhan in the Khanate of
Khiva:
They [Qalandars] bade me welcome and had bread and fruit laid before me. I offered
money, but they laughed at that, and they told me that several of them had not, for twenty
years, had any money in their hands. The district maintains its Dervishes; and I saw,
indeed, during the course of the day, many a stately zbeg [Uzbek] horseman arrive,
bringing with him some contribution, but receiving in return a pipe, out of which he
extracted his darling poison.194
Leaving aside the issue of narcotics use for the moment, we see a Qalandar institution
surviving on government patronage, just as the Seyyid Bal z hospice had.195 Olufsen and
Vmbry did not provide enough evidence to state definitively that nineteenth-century Central
Asian qalandarkhanas were under the same sort of political control as, say, their Ottoman
equivalents.196 But, it seems unlikely that their presence in the Emirate of Bukharas chief cities
193
Ibid., 544.
194
Arminius Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia: Being an Account of a Journey from Teheran Across the Turkoman
Desert on the Eastern Shore of the Caspian to Khiva, Bokhara and Samarcand (London: John Murray, 1864), 150.
195
196
Ibid.
73
would have gone unnoticed by the Manghit emirs of Bukhara who were so active in religious
affairs. Nor would Khivas rulers, with their tight control of provincial administration, have been
ignorant of official financial support to qalandarkhanas.197 Falling under the gaze of the rulers in
such polities likely resulted in some political meddling, as it did in Russias Governorate-General
of Turkestan.
There, Schuyler related, the Pir of the qalandarkhana in Samarqand pleaded with him
to intercede with the tsarist authorities on the institutions behalf, that they might be allowed as
before to say their prayers and preach their sermons in public[as] the only means they had to
support it [the qalandarkhana] was by taking contributions from the faithful throughout the
city.198 According to Schuyler, the Russians had put a stop to this activity because the
Qalandariyya had been in the habit of inveighing against the Russians, and of preaching hatred
and hostility to the infidel, an accusation they denied vigorously.199 He did state, however,
that in Hodjent [Khujand] and Samarqand they are freer[while] in Tashkent the dervishes are
prohibited as dangerous to public order, their sermons and exhortations often being of a seditious
character.200
Dervishes
In contrast to his description of the Qalandars, Olufsen depicts dervishes[as] another
monastic order or sort of hermitsas the purest monks having even stricter rules than the
197
Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia, 9-11.
198
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1, 258.
199
Ibid.
200
Ibid., 158.
74
calandars.201 His dervishes are not allowed to have either house or home, wife or children
[and] are only allowed to maintain life by begging, and at night they have to take their rest in the
open air.202 Indeed, the dervishes were
especially seen lying at the tombs of the prophets and the saints, seeking shelter or
protecting their naked body from the burning rays of the summer sun under the shade of
trees.203
They too lived by charity, and were seen wandering through the bazars of the towns and always
singly walking silently with outstretched hands to ask alms, which is not denied by
anybody.204 Olufsen declared that they were often seen in Bukhara because of the abundance of
holy tombs there, but were absent from Khiva due to the lack of such exalted holy places. In
addition to their presence near the Mir-i Arab Madrassa, he stated that dervishes, as well as
Qalandars, were also to be found in the bazaar in front of the Ark, Bukharas well-known fortress
and palace, which featured goods from India.205
While the dervishes, like the Qalandars, were dependent on merchants for their
existence, and likely were a staple of most urban centers, they also required sacred places in
which to sojourn. Rather than in qalandarkhanas, they slept rough, near tombs, as Jaml al-Dn
Sv had, and maintained the original antinomian Qalandar practices of public nudity,
itinerancy, solitude, silence, and graveyard dwelling, the hallmarks of someone who has died
201
202
Ibid.
203
Ibid., 397-398.
204
Ibid., 398.
Ibid., 208, 537; APK, , (:

205
, 2012), 265 .
75
before death.206 Thus, they seem to have lacked association with an overarching, cenobitic
structure and hierarchy which characterized Olufsens Qalandars. Besides mendicancy, the only
other characteristic the two seemed to have shared was their devotion to celibacy. Clearly,
Olufsens dervishes were closer to their original twelfth-century forbearers, than the more
domesticated Qalandariyya he described.
Given this dichotomy, the question becomes, is Olufsen describing two separate
Qalandar orders, or were the dervishes merely an appendage to the Qalandariyya? Were they an
elite group among the order, who were able to practice the Qalandar ethos in its purest form?
Perhaps they stood in relation to the average member of the Qalandariyya, as the Starets (elder)
does to his brethren in Russian Orthodox Christianity, whose intense ascetic preparation[and]
radical flight into solitude allows him to be transformed by an encounter with God in solitude
and possess powers above those of ordinary monks.207 This question cannot be answered with
the limited data supplied above, but will require further analysis of associated topics, including
differences between the Qalandar and dervish mode of dress. It is apparent, however, that the
more extreme practices of the early Qalandar ascetic virtuosi survived through the 16th
-century period of institutionalization, at least in Central Asia.208
206
207
Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Spiritual Father in Orthodox Christianity, Cross Currents, Summer/Fall (1974),
pp. 296-313, Orthodox Christian Information Center, [website]; available from
http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/spiritualfather.aspx; Internet; accessed 16 July 2014. Comparisons can also be draw
with the early Christian institution from which the Russian Starets sprang. While not possessing any formal
authority in the monastery, the early Christian elder was still respected for his intense spirituality, see T.B.
, ,
1 (120)/`2011, 15-20.
208
76
Naqshbandiyya
In contrast to his description of Qalandars and dervishes, Olufsen depicted what were
certainly Naqshband Sufis:
The sheikhs are a sort of monks who live in special houses, they have a right to the title
of Aulia [awliy, Gods friends, saints]they swear they will maintain what is
prescribed in farg [far, obligatory], vajib [wjib, a synonym of far], sunnet [sunna]
and mustahab [mustaabb, recommendable ]belief in the mission of Muhammad is
prescribed, also prayer five times, fasting, the making of a pilgrimage to MeccaThey
must abstain from haram [aram, forbidden]men making such an oath receive a
certificate [ijza].209
In addition to their strict adherence to the Sharia, a hallmark of the Mujaddidiyya who played so
influential a role in the Emirate of Bukhara prior to the Russian conquest, Olufsen provided a
few details on the sheikhs order.210 He noted that the Khanaka (khnaqh) was the
residence of the oldest ishan (Pir)where he lived with his sheikhs, described the initiation
ritual administered to novices by the pir, and briefly described the sheikhs superintendence
of the tombsof saints and prophets whose financial resources they administered.211 Finally, he
209
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 392; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 354. Throughout the Sufi world
the ijza had three variants: 1) one certifying an adept was permitted to practice in the name of his master, 2) one
allowing a khalfa or muqaddamto confer the wird, that is, admit others into the arqa, and 3) one affirming
that the holder has followed a particular course of Sufi instruction,: Trimingham, The Sufi Orders of Islam, 192;
Mustaabb, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van
Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online]; available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-
of-islam-2/mustahabb-DUM_2899; Internet; accessed 22 April 2015; Th. W. Juynboll, "Far," Encyclopaedia of
Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online];
available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/fard-SIM_2277; Internet;
accessed 22 April 2015; "aram," Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936), eds. M. Th. Houtsma, T.W.
Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann [Brill Online]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-1/haram-SIM_2697; Internet; accessed 22
April 2015.
210
Early 19th Centuries, 393-394; Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 78-81.
211
77
offered a brief sketch of how an ishan (shn), which he erroneously considered as a type
different than a sheikh, attained his exalted position in society:
Among the ecclesiastics must be classed the so-called ishans, a sort of heads of the many
religious orders. An ishan is not appointed by the administration [i.e. the political
authorities] gathering a congregation by his sacred actions, especially distribution of
alms, prayers, religious eccentricity, sham interpretations of dreams or owing to their
receiving revelations from God or the Prophet.212
Thankfully, this brief, prescient, if prejudiced, outline of a Naqshbandiyya organization in the
emirate, can be greatly augmented by examining the record of an analogous organization further
east in the Ferghana Valley.
Dkch shns revivalist tone and understanding of himself as a genuine guardian of the
Sharia in a society of corrupt shns, ulam, mulls, sayyids, trahs, bays, merchants, and
infidel colonial authorities has already been mentioned. However, an anecdote from the
Manqib-i Dkch shn will demonstrate his primary commitment to the sacred law, as in the
case of Olufsens shaykhs, while providing an example of his own unique application of it in the
cultural circumstances of his day. The story concerns the son of a petty-official among the
Kyrgyz, who appears to have been a lay affiliate of Dkch shns order. The youth had fallen
ill, and a friend or relative had provided him with some medicinal vodka. Dkch shn then
appeared instantly, demanded to know who had advised him to partake of a forbidden substance,
twisted his tongue and struck him on the cheek. The youth lost the power of speech and lay in a
comatose state for five days. After the youth was miraculously awoken by his pir, his family
rejoiced and presented Dkch shn with a fine horse. When the family subsequently inquired
after the reason for the youths sudden serious illness, he scolded them for giving him vodka, and
212
Ibid., 394.
78
described being smitten by the wrath of Dkch shn, which led to his parents, friends, and
relatives developing greater faith in the holy man.213
This is but one of many examples of Dkch shns swift wrath against disciples that
violated his interpretation of the Sharia, but it is one of the most instructive. The youths father,
as a petty official, was, if only indirectly, in the service of the non-Muslim, colonial government
of St. Petersburgs Turkestan Krai.214 That being the case, it is not surprising that the medicinal
alcohol prescribed by the youths family was not the local drink boza (alcoholic beverage made
from graincorn, millet, sorghum, rice)which another of Dkch shns disciples partook
of, and was destroyed by the pirs wrath for so doingbut rather the drink produced by the local
factories of the infidel merchants.215 In drinking vodka, the youth was not only violating the
Sharia, and his oath to his pir, but also symbolically enslaving himself to the very corrupt
society against which Dkch shn was inveighing.
At that time the Ferghana Valley, unlike the Emirate of Bukhara, had been directly
absorbed by the tsarist state and was, therefore, subject to greater pressures from encroaching
European settlement, commerce, and the anti-Islamic practices of outsiders. Perhaps, then, the
actions of the colonial government were to blame for the youth and his family giving in to
temptation, and he was forgiven, unlike the murd who, without the provocation of a non-Muslim
213
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 121-122.
214
For a discussion of the tsarist use of native officials in its colonial administration in Central Asia, and the
Ferghana Valley in particular, see Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central
Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 244, 251-252; Elizabeth E. Bacon, Central Asians under Russian
Rule: A Study in Cultural Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), 97, 103, 108, 111-112; Serge A.
Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 75.
215
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 124; Jeff Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2007), 110; Karl A. Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary: Revised Edition (Springfield, VA:
Dunwoody Press, 2002), 29.
79
government, drank boza while his pir was away in Mecca. Furthermore, by showing himself to
be both the cause of and the remedy to the youths serious illness, Dkch shn was able to,
ideologically, win away the youths family, presumably including his petty-official father, from
the alien government.
The Khnaqh
Dkch shns reputation for austere and miraculously wrathful enforcement of the
Sharia did not prevent him from establishing a thriving community at his khnaqh in
Mingtepa. The complex, which began as a single small building where Dkch shn lived,
eventually grew to comprise the pirs personal chambers and office, a guesthousethe
complexs gossip center, where visiting disciples relayed the details of their interviews with the
pir to their fellow Sufis while being accommodated and provided with refreshmenta kitchen,
bakery, assembly hall, madrassa, maktab (Quranic school), stables, chillakhna, storage
rooms, four courtyards, workshops, a well, a dozen or so cells for resident murds, various other
buildings, and a mosque with a minaret. Unlike the flat-roofed buildings in the qalandarkhana
complex at Bukhara, Dkch shns khnaqh had domed roofs.216
This description is somewhat comparable to one of the larger Ottoman Naqshband tekkes
detailed in a sixteenth-century tax register. The Emir-i Bukhr Tekke in Fti had 16 rooms for
resident disciples, significantly more than other Naqshband tekkes in Istanbul with their 3-5
cells. The layout of one of these smaller institutions, which consisted of a mosque, assembly hall,
216
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 115-118, 126, 129, 154, 157-159. The plan of the khnaqh shown in V.P. Salkovs
Andizhanskoe Vosstanie v 1898 godu (reproduced in Manqib-i Dkch shn) appears to show approximately 12
cells around the perimeter of the main courtyard; L. Brunot, Maktab, Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-
1936), eds. M. Th. Houtsma, T.W. Arnold, R. Basset, R. Hartmann [Brill Online]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-1/maktab-SIM_4485; Internet; accessed 23
April 2015. See chapter 3 for a discussion of the chillakhna.
80
kitchen, dining facilities, a cemetery, and gardens, shared some elements with Dkch shns
complex, but they were obviously located in an urban setting, where space was a premium, and
there was no room, or need, for stables and out-buildings.217 The size of Dkch shns
khnaqh served both a practical and a spiritual purpose. From an anecdote told by one of his
Sufis, it is possible to understand how the relative grandeur of a nineteenth-century Central
Asian pirs complex could alter public perceptions of his spiritual prowess:
When I came into the service of this blessed person [Dkch shn], he had only a few
Sufis. On his land he had only a lounge, not even stables. All the time I thought, If this
man is an shn then why does he not have a khnaqh, a more decent, bigger lounge; he
himself says his prayers in the quarters mosque. How is he an shn if he doesnt have
food and bread to distribute to people? He has one poor ass, and doesnt even have one
decent horse. How will he do an shns duties?218
For this Sufi, the office of shn required tangible signs of affluenceas exemplified by
his khnaqhnot for the sake of ostentation, but as a representation of the holy mans power to
temporally bless his disciples and the surrounding community, i.e. to carry out his duties.
Though obviously a believer in his pirs spiritual power, the disciple doubted Dkch shns
ability to dispense the sort of charitable aid that clearly marked one as a genuine shn in 19th
-century Central Asia. Everything from the number of disciples he was able to accommodate in
his complex, to the number and type of horses (a prestige item and indicator of wealth) he
possessed, marked a pir as a spiritually successful individual.219 Clearly, according to this line of
thinking, one of the awliy would be endowed by God with blessings both worldly, and
217
Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism, 51.
218
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 157.
219
Bacon, Central Asians under Russian Rule, 58. On the paramount place of the horse as a symbol of good luck
and prosperity in Turkic folklore, see At, in Celal Beydili, Trk Mitolojisi Ansiklopedik Szlk (Ankara: Yurt
Kitap-Yayn, 2004), 71-73.
81
otherworldly. Indeed, this Sufi only overcame his doubts when he finally saw Dkch shns
prophetic description of his glorious future khnaqh come to pass.
Functions and Functionaries
Olufsen provides very little information on the division of labor in a qalandarkhana,
beyond noting that a novice had to perform the humblest monastic duties such as sweeping and
cleaning up the monastery, fetching water etc., and this in the context of an initiation ritual.220
By contrast, the Manqib-i Dkch shn is replete with anecdotes about various functions
performed by the pirs (both Dkch shn and his murshid Sultan-Khan Trah) disciples.
Beyond the expected khalfas, these included: carpenter/builder, herdsmen, cook, bazarchi (who
procured all necessities for the khnaqh, including sultanas (grapes), sugar, and other sweets
from the bazaar), treasurer, mulls and mudarisses (teacher), grooms (including one to oversee
pedigreed horses), wagon driver, gatekeeper/greeter, scribe, bakers, chief clerk, a ras
(official) who oversaw the Sufis and controlled the mulls of the madrasa, and Sufis who
oversaw the procurement of candles and oil for the lamps, provided trays of sweets and nuts to
guests, who poured water on the hands of guests, and engaged in gathering firewood and dry
herbs for fuel.221
220
221
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 94, 101, 109-110, 113, 116, 119, 126-127, 133-134, 142-143, 145-147, 151-153, 164;
Mudarris, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Glossary and Index of Terms, eds. P.J. Bearman, Th. Banquis,
C.E. Bowworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs Bowworth [Brill Online] available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2-Glossary-and-Index-of-Terms/mudarris-
SIM_gi_03187; Internet; accessed 23 April 23, 2015; Ras, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Glossary
and Index of Terms, eds. P.J. Bearman, Th. Banquis, C.E. Bowworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs Bowworth
[Brill Online]; available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2-Glossary-and-
Index-of-Terms/rais-SIM_gi_03840; Internet; accessed on 23 April 2015.
82
This list gives some indication of the complexity of daily operations at Dkch shns
khnaqh. In fact, in one anecdote the pirs bakers claimed that, besides guests, everyday there
were another 1,500 people which performed all sorts of errands at the khnaqh.222 Clearly
1,500 people could not be permanent residents of the lodge, and some of these activities were
more in the nature of occasional duties than full-time jobs. The bazarchis position, however,
was described as doimiy (permanent).223 The position of gatekeeper/greeter was also a job for
a resident-disciple, as illustrated in a story relayed about one shn Khoja who performed that
function. Once he took off time to visit family and friends, and, in the process, decided he should
leave Dkch shns service, build a home, start a family, and take up the life of a peasant. He
was subsequently struck with paralysis, which could not be cured by a local healer, or mull, but
only through the miraculous intervention of his shaykh, to whom he contritely returned.224 Thus
the gatekeeper/greeter lacked his own livelihood or home beyond the confines of the lodge, and
was obviously one of the more important functionaries out of the 1,500 who toiled daily.
It is difficult to conceive of an institution with such a massive staff of functionaries in the
rural Ferghana Valley. By way of comparison, waqfiyya (the document establishing a waqf)
associated with the Ottoman tekkes studied by Dina Le Gall usually only made provision for
compensating imms (prayer leaders), muezzins, Qurn readers, cooks, cleaners, and
gardeners.225 Dkch shns khnaqh likely possessed each of these functionaries in addition to
the host of others who made the institution run smoothly from day to day. Again, we are seeing
222
223
Ibid., 113.
224
Ibid., 149-150.
225
Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism, 52.
83
the difference between an urban institution, which acted as a lodge for Sufi-centric functions, and
what amounted to a small, rural village, that provided a variety of services to the pirs disciples
in local communities. As stated above, when one of Dkch shns early disciples doubted his
ability to be an shn, he was not doubting his spiritual powers, but his ability to be a pillar of the
local communities, like the very hereditary shaykhs (who provided services from their
accumulated wealth, and won the loyalty of the locals) that Dkch shn inveighed against. As
we shall see, however, despite his aversion to their questionable spirituality, Dkch shn
overcame his own initial poverty and joined the ranks of these genuine shns of nineteenth-
century Central Asia, gathering a congregation, as Olufsen described above, especially [through
the] distribution of alms.226
Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Donations, and State Support
An shn clearly had to have access to substantial financial resources to construct a
credible lodge complex, and employ a sufficient staff both for its upkeep, and to serve the
surrounding communities. The large operations of Dkch shn and his pir Sultan-Khan Trah
required a predictable economic basis, such as animal husbandry and agriculture, as well as
donations from disciples. In the Manqib-i Dkch shn one Mulla Slikh, who had been a
fellow murd of Sultan-Khan Trah with Dkch shn, told how their pir sent him a
considerable distance (60 kilometers) to bring fodder for 5-10 horses.227 While a small herd of
horses, the fact that they resided so far from the disciple indicates that his pirs financial
resources were geographically dispersed over the width of the eastern end of the Ferghana
226
227
84
Valley, and, therefore, not insubstantial. Indeed, Sultan-Khan Trah seems to have had 5-10
good horses in his personal stables, while, as noted above, Dkch shn had thoroughbred
horses, including a legendary jumper, which was oft discussed but rarely seen by locals.228
Among Dkch shns livestock was another rare animal, a white camel, from whose wool he
ordered a disciples mother to make him a jacket.229
Both pirs also maintained other types of animals, as a Sufi named Arab-Dvna and his
family are described as tending Dkch shns donkeys and cattle, though the size of the herds
are not mentioned.230 Prior to joining Dkch shns service, Arab-Dvna and he had been
fellow murds to Sultan-Khan Trah, and the pir had once sent the two, in a company of 10
disciples, to the house of a khalfa to fetch fodder for his cattle.231 Again, the number of cattle is
not mentioned, and it is unlikely that nine horses and one donkey could have carried enough
fodder, certainly on one trip, to sustain a large herd of cattle. But, it is instructive that there were
10 such animals available for the job, and that the khalfa mentioned lived away from the lodge,
and seems to have either produced or stored the fodder. Dkch shns wagon driver is also
described as always delivering fodder, in the form of hay and clover, but the record is silent on
its origin. However, we know the pir possessed his own crops, as a mull made whole through
his miraculous intervention showed his gratitude by working a few days in his masters fields.232
228
Ibid., 96, 142.
229
Ibid., 143-144.
230
Ibid., 87
231
Ibid., 88.
232
Ibid., 133.
85
The herds of livestock mentioned likely were self-sustaining with the careful
management of foundation animals provided by the pirs disciples. As already told above,
Dkch shn was given a fine horse for healing his wayward disciple who had used medicinal
alcohol. In another story, a disciple presented a large ram to the pir for miraculously
extinguishing a fire. Money was also given by disciples, such as by a Sufi who swore to provide
the proceeds from the sale of sheep he was ferrying across a river if he made the crossing in
safety. In addition, gifts in kind, including substantial amounts of meat, candles, and rice, were
presented to Dkch shns lodge.233 The origin of these gifts are not always clear, but it would
seem that Dkch shns was mainly a murd-sustained institution (a practice Olufsen decried as
shns overtaxing the congregations and enriching themselves).234
The absorption of the Khanate of Kokand by St. Petersburg deprived Dkch shn of the
kind of patronage Sultan-Khan Trah had, no doubt, derived from his relationship with
Khudyr Khan prior to 1876.235 Furthermore, Dkch shn had likely cut himself off from the
financial support of other powerful figures, due to his penchant for lambasting the secular and
religious authorities and commercial magnates of his day. However, not all Naqshband shaykhs,
and their institutions, found themselves in Dkch shns circumstances. There were those
which, like the qalandarkhanas mentioned above, were recipients of state patronage. Indeed,
Vmbry disparaged the emirs of Bukhara saying by their liberal support of the ishan class they
have contributed much to the religious fanaticism that exists in Bokhara.236
233
Ibid., 114-115, 116-118, 120, 143, 145-147
234
235
Ibid., 94.
236
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 429.
86
Order Membership, Demographics, and Networks
In exploring the organization and economic underpinnings of the Qalandariyya and
Naqshbandiyya the interesting question of order membership has been hinted at but not directly
treated, as it is a complex issue that deserves its own dedicated discussion. In chapter 1 we saw
how the Seljuk period (1038-1194) witnessed the commencement of the institutionalization of
Sufism, including the rise of orders, a process that reached full flower in Central Asia near the
end of the fourteenth century in the wake of the Mongol conquest.237 Trimingham describes this
process as a transformation of Sufis groups from mystically inclined individuals linked by
enthusiasm, common devotions, and methods of spiritual discipline[to orders] whose members
ascribed themselves to their initiator and his spiritual ancestry, and were prepared to follow his
Path and transmit it to future generations.238 According to Trimingham, this metamorphosis,
which occurred between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, led to a further stage of
development in the fifteenth century when arqa became ifa (organization). At this stage the
leadership of orders tended to become hereditary, their tombs being sources of baraka (divine
grace or blessing from a holy person) and the center of saint cults.239
Buehlers more recent mediating-shaykh theory proposes a class of holy men which
arose in colonial India as the sole intermediary between the Prophet and believers [which]
dramatically contrast[ed] with Naqshband directing-shaykhs [of previous eras] who taught
237
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 7, 170, 173; DeWeese: Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 135-
137.
238
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 13.
239
Ibid., 67-104; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 354.
87
disciples how they themselves could arrive near God and manipulate supernatural power.240
Both of these schemata strive to describe, among other things, the transformation of Sufism from
an avocation of the affluent to an activity welcoming the participation of the masses. This change
naturally had a profound effect on the size and character of order membership, as it was
converted, in the words of Trimingham, from a Bourgeois movement [to] a popular
movement [including] Two main classes of adherents: adepts [murds] and lay affiliates.241
For the lay affiliate, the order functioned much as a modern club or association, and, as it did not
require them to undergo the same rigors as the adepts, led to the orders expansion and
acquisition of new members.242
Membership
While setting aside the notion of popular movements, and the intellectual baggage
associated with the decline of post-classical Sufism, it must be noted that the idea of Sufi orders
as mass movements broadly corresponds with the source data from nineteenth-century Central
Asia.243 If, for example, we assume that the membership of the qalandarkhanas described by
Olufsen and Vmbry were roughly equivalent to their sixteenth-century Ottoman analogues,
then something on the order of two hundred personnel could have been associated with each
institution. Of course, the location of the lodge (whether it was in a smaller town or an urban
center) might have affected its membership. The personnel most likely would have been divided
240
Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 190.
241
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 103-104.
242
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 240; Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 177.
Ibid. For a more recent discussion on the topos of the decline of Sufism in the Persian context, see: Leonard
243
Lewisohn and David Morgan, eds., The Heritage of Sufism: Volume III (Oxford: One World Publications, 1999);
88
into resident dervishes and assorted non-resident functionaries, as even an operation as large as
Dkch shns could not have accommodated two hundred full-time inhabitants. But, what
exactly did the resident/non-resident division mean for the individuals involved? Did it affect the
sort of functions they performed at the qalandarkhana and, by extension, their relationship with
or closeness to the Qalandar Baba? Is it useful to think of an adepts vs. lay affiliates
dichotomy? Given the limited information in the sources, these questions are too difficult to
answer for the Qalandariyya, but due to the details in the Manqib-i Dkch shn we are able to
paint a more complete picture for the Naqshbandiyya.
As already relayed above, every day at Dkch shns lodge there were 1,500 people
present to perform errands in addition to guests. The numbered of honored guests, who dined
with the pir for example, was not large, only around 20 visitors in one anecdote. But, Dkch
shns cook said that he was often called on to prepare palov (rice stewed with meat and
spices) for hundreds or thousands of people. Indeed, on d al-a around 10,000 people came
to say the holiday prayer with Dkch shn and perform ziyrat (visitations).244 Even if we
assume these numbers are exaggerated (the size of crowds are notoriously difficult to estimate),
even a figure one half or one third the size of the reported number is still substantial. This raises
the question of whether we can consider all of these 10,000 (or 5,000 or 3,000) people as bona
fide members of Dkch shns organization, but the tale of shn Khoja, discussed previously,
sheds some light on the issue of membership status.
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 129, 163-167. A description of this ritual will be given in chapter 3. Krippes, Uzbek-
244
English Dictionary, 125. Palov, of which there are more than 40 varieties, is an important national dish in Central
Asia and a staple of both religious and secular celebrations, see ,
, (: , 2012), 34-35.
89
As the resident Sufi who met and accompanied guests which arrived and departed at the
gate, shn Khoja was in a position close enough to the pir that he brought the holy mans wrath
upon him for attempting to leave the lodge and start a family.245 Another Sufi, who prepared
trays of sweets and nuts, was described as being particularly intimate with the pir, while the
lodges cooks and grooms seem to have had frequent interaction with Dkch shn.246 Given the
nature of the lodge as rural hub for sacred gatherings, and its agricultural economic base, it is not
strange that grooms figure prominently in the narrative, nor is it surprising that functionaries in
charge of hospitality (cooks and greeters) are frequently discussed. It is only natural to conclude
that the individuals who filled these important positions were among Dkch shns choicest
disciplesi.e. those receiving regular instruction in the Sufi arts at his handand were likely
resident vs. non-resident disciples.247
However, we cannot conclude that only resident disciples were among the pirs inner
circle, as the story of the non-resident khalfa, who stored or produced fodder away from the
lodge, seems to suggest. Without diminishing their devotion and importance to the organization,
it seems reasonable to suggest that the majority of the 10,000 holiday visitors, for example, were
not integral to the daily functions of the lodge, not regularly receiving Sufi instruction, and,
therefore, can be considered lay affiliates. Certainly in Central Asia there were two traditions that
help account for such a large number. First, as already noted in connection with Yasav-
associated figures, scions of saintly lineages sometimes provided a sense of group cohesion to
245
Ibid., 149.
246
Ibid., 110, 129, 134, 141-142, 145-147, 154, 159, 163-165.
247
By way of comparison, greeting and service roles in a Nimatullah lodge are positions of authority occupied by
experienced Sufis, see Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh, The Path: Sufi Practices (New York: Khaniqahi Nimatullahi
Publications, 2003), 202-204.
90
entire nomadic and sedentary communities.248 Second, simple people sometimes accepted
initiation at the hand of a Sufi shaykh, considering him as a patron, and occasionally visited him
to bring offerings, without studying the Sufi arts with him on a regular basis, but were
nonetheless, considered to be murds.249 In the record of his travels in Russian Turkestan in
1908-1909 the tsarist bureaucrat Count K.K. Pahlen claimed that Dkch shn had 400 murds at
the time of the 1898 uprising, which seems a reasonable number to consider as belonging to the
core cadre of the organization.250
Demographics
In the Manqib-i Dkch shn we catch a glimpse into the geographic origins of Dkch
shn and Sultan-Khan Trahs Sufis. Many hailed from villages, including Qar-Qurghn
(likely not far from Mingtepa), Dzhlg, Bzr-Qurghn (55-km north of Osh, in present-day
Kyrgyzstan), Kirkr, Khqand-i Qishlaq, Kkat-Kart (Kugart 27-km southeast of Jalal-Abad,
Kyrgyzstan), Qar-Tpa (15-km north of Ferghana, Uzbekistan), S-smr (near Mingtepa), Tl-
mazr, and Mingtepa itself. Several Sufis came from small towns, such as Shaxr-i Khna (25-km
west of Andijan, Uzbekistan), Dzhumughn or Dzhamghn (a Kyrgyz town), Arvn (22-km
west of Osh), Kk-Bl or Kka-Bl (27-km south of Osh), while only a few originated from more
urban environments like Osh, Margilon, and Kashgar.251 The locations of some of these places
Devin DeWeese, Yasav ays in the Timurid Era: Notes on the Social and Political Role of
248
Communal Sufi Affiliations in the 14th and 15th Centuries, Oriente Moderno, Nuova serie, Anno 15 (76), Nr. 2,
LA Civilt Timuride Comefenomeno Internazionale, vol. 1 (Storia I Timuridi e l.Occidente), (1996): 173-188.
249
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 102 (footnote 122).
250
K.K. Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan: Being the Memoirs of Count K.K. Pahlen, 1908-1909, Richard A. Pierce ed.
(London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 54.
251
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 114-115, 116-119, 121, 124-127, 131-133, 136-137, 140-141, 145, 149-150, 152, 155,
161. Osh is Kyrgyzstans second city, Margilon is in contemporary Uzbekistan, and Kashgar is, of course, a
prominent city in Chinas XUAR.
91
are unknown, but these Sufis appear to have been largely drawn from rural hamlets clustered in
the eastern Ferghana Valley, straddling what is the modern border between Andijan and
Ferghana Provinces, in Uzbekistan, and Osh and Jalal-Abad Provinces, in Kyrgyzstan.
As mentioned in Chapter 1, Dkch shn found success in propagating his organization
among the semi-nomadic Kyrgyz of the eastern Ferghana Valley, and we see references to his
having disciples from the q chk community of the Tuylsa and the Yaflgh tribe. This also
included Kyrgyz leaders such as Chibil (head of the Kyrgyz in Kugart who was hanged along
with Dkch shn for his role in the uprising) and a son of a petty official of the Kyrgyz in
Dzhumughn.252 The discussion of ethnicities in Sultan-Khan Trahs order, on the other hand,
was limited to two disciples, a Turk called Mullah Rahman[and] a Turki called Razaq
Chal.253 Razaq Chal was surely only one of many Turki disciples, but Mullah Rahmans ethnic
identity is more problematic. Did the author mean to characterize both Mullah Rahman and
Razaq Chal as Turkis, rather than labeling Mullah Rahman as a Turk? If Mullah Rahman
truly was a Turk we can offer all manner of speculations on his place of origin. Suffice it to say
that he did not come from the Turki milieu of agrarian Turkestan.254
Given the rural origins of the majority of Dkch shns disciples, as well as those locals
who sought his counsel, we would expect to find traders in sheep, and a cotton farmer among
their number. Perhaps more interesting are two bys, a masnav reciter well-known for his craft
in Margilon, Andijan, and Namangan, a mng-bsh (highest official in the Khanate of Kokand
252
Ibid., 121, 126, 136, 155.
253
Ibid., 92.
Ibid., 300. These ethnic identifiers are clearly spelled differently in the text, but the Chagatai of the Manqib-i
254
Dkch shn is littered with misspellings, or spellings of the same word varying from paragraph to paragraph
92
during the nineteenth century), a trah who acted as an official and interpreter in the Russian
colonial administration, and a Qalandar.255 Even so, given his work among the Kyrgyz and his
railing against the established order, Dkch shn inhabited a lowly place in the social hierarchy,
which seems to have even occasionally upset the equilibrium of the lodge itself, as illustrated in
an anecdote concerning a descendant of his pir, Sultan-Khan Trah.
This youth, who studied at the khnaqhs maktab, once refused to join his peers in
standing respectfully when Dkch shn entered the guestroom where they were dining. The
shaykh then miraculously discerned that this przda (descendant of the pir) had told his
fellows not to stand long when Dkch shn entered because he was a dog of our father
[Sultan-Khan Trah] who did not deserve the honor.256 Not long after, the youth met an
undignified end, thanks to a curse from Dkch shn. The story ends with the warning, O
brothers, to rely on the fact you are mulla or sayyid, and show discourtesy to the friends of
Godis not good!257 This obviously alludes to the existence of members in Dkch shns
organization who felt that their lineage, and its social standing, should garner them respect
regardless of their spiritual gifts.
255
Ibid., 114-115, 116-118, 120, 127, 131, 137, 145, 156-157; Yu. Bregel, os h-Begi, Encyclopaedia of Islam,
Second Edition; eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online];
Internet; available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/k-os-h-begi-
SIM_4439; accessed on 27 March 2015.
256
Ibid., 151.
257
Ibid., 152.
93
Intraregional Networks
Algar has crafted some fine scholarship on Sufi networks linking together various parts
of the Islamic world, with a special emphasis on Central Asia.258 It is, however, necessary to note
a few examples of intraregional Sufi networks in nineteenth-century Central Asia. The first
comes from Vmbry, whose 1863 travels included a journey from Tehran to Samarqand in the
company of several hajj pilgrims returning home from Mecca to the Khanate of Kokand and
Chinese Turkestan. His experience demonstrates the connections between the Sufis among the
pilgrims and their co-mystics in the region. One Kokandi in the companyHadji Salih
Khalifed, candidate for the ishanprovided Vmbry, who was disguised as a dervish, with a
letter of introduction to an shn in the small Uzbek Khanate of Maymene in northern
Afghanistan.259 Here, at shn Eyubs tekke, Vmbry was able to make a favorable impression
on the Sufi, and with his help convince the khan of the state to release some Turkish prisoners
who had fled from captivity in Russia. Prior to arriving in Maymene, Vmbry had made a stop
in Qarshi where another letter from his erstwhile companions earned him the help of Ishan
Hasan, who stood in high repute in that town.260
Analysis of Vmbrys account also draws connections between qalandarkhanas in the
region. He mentions stopping at the village of Godje, a few miles from Khiva, which in spite of
its insignificancepossesses a Kalenterkhane (quarter for Dervishes) adding that he met with
Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region.; Tarqat
258
and Tarq: Central Asian Naqshbands on the Roads to the Haramayn, 21-135.
259
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 23, 245, 252-253.
260
Ibid., 225.
94
such in Khiva and Khokand, even in the smallest hamlets.261 After Khiva, he proceeded to the
qalandarkhana in Khanka (46-km northeast), and then to the one in Shurakhan, across the Amu
Darya River.262 Though he did not say so, Vmbry obviously seemed to be following a well-
worn route east, where qalandarkhanas in communion with one another served as ways-stations
along the road. Whether these institutions operated under the authority of the khalfas of a single
regional Qalandar Baba, or were only loosely connected is uncertain.263
K.K. Pahlen also commented on the widespread connections between Sufis within the
region, though he thought of Central Asian Sufism as an Ishan movement with Pan-Islamic
political goals furthered by underground cells of followers.264 He claimed that Though the Ishan
organization had branches throughout the whole of Turkestan the leaders concealed their
activities so skillfully that the Russian authorities were hardly aware of their existence.265
Pahlen also relayed how he made the acquaintance of a
Delightful mulla, attached to one of the Tashkent medresehsWell educated, even when
judged by European standards, and widely traveled, he had been to Paris, Algiers,
Morocco and, of course, Constantinople. He was the Ishan of about 400 to 1,000 murids
dispersed over the whole region of the Amu-DaryaI had definite information from my
own staff and from the Okhrana [tsarist secret police] that here was a powerful Ishan,
commanding the obedience of a vast army of murids.266
261
Ibid., 146.
262
Ibid., 146, 150.
263
From the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries khalfas began to take on the role of leaders of Sufi orders regional
branches, see Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 177-178.
264
Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 51-52.
265
Ibid., 53.
266
Ibid., 57.
95
Unfortunately, Count Pahlen is silent as to where exactly along the Amu Darya this Tashkent
shns 400-1,000 murds resided. However, if his information on the geographical extent of this
organization is correct (i.e. trusting in the efficacy of the devious intelligence collecting activities
of the tsarist Okhrana) these figures describe a Naqshband shaykh with as substantial a core
following as Dkch shn, though with a greater regional presence.

96
Chapter 3
The Orders Spiritual Services to Society and Rituals
Since Abdal handed me the Cup of Truth

All's equalmosque and altar are the same.
I burn, surrendering to Gnostic light.
Palace or ruinboth have equal claim.
Thought died, and of me only dust remained.

First I was mud and after fire and flame:
Outside I roasted, inwardly I burned.
Kebab or skewerboth have equal claim.
So passed I by a space that formed no place

And walked before a field which had no name,
Perplexed to find creation lacking form.
Exile or homelandboth have equal claim.
My passions led me, greed consumed my soul.

Though reasoning spelt Truth, I sank in shame:
A stone could teach me qualities of love.
Koran or versesboth have equal claim.
Yes, Makhtumkuli lingered at that place

Where sheikhs jumped up to join a dancing game.
The beauty of the One I loved shone forth.
Water or winethey both have equal claim.
Magtymguly Pyragy (1724-ca.1807),
Naqshband, Turkmen Poet267
267
The Cup of Truth, in Songs from the Steppes of Central Asia: The Collected Poems of Makhtumkuli,
Eighteenth Century Poet-hero of Turkmenistan [book on-line], available from http://www.turko-
tatar.com/lca314/magtymguly.pdf; Internet; accessed 28 March 2015; Annagurban Ayrow, Magtymguly
Pyragyny Terjimehaly, Medeniet [official website of Turkmenistans Ministry of Culture], available from
http://www.medeniyet.gov.tm/index.php/tm/biography-tm; Internet; accessed 28 March 2015.
97
As we do not possess a nineteenth-century Central Asian shaykhs appointment book, or
the diary of one of his murds, it is difficult to reconstruct a typical day in their life at the lodge.
Nonetheless, the sources do describe various Sufi activities that took place on a somewhat
regular basis, providing a glimpse into their workaday life. We have already seen that visitors to
the lodgeseeking counsel from the shaykh, brining donations, or partaking of the institutions
largessewere not infrequent. The labors of the lodges staff, and attendant economic activities,
have also been touched upon. A further description of some of these daily activities will be
provided below, as will an analysis of the more strictly spiritual pursuits of the Sufis, with a
specific emphasis on the performance of a variety of rituals.
The Orders Spiritual Services to Society
While this studys stated aim is to construct a picture of nineteenth-century Central Asian
Sufi orders as discrete entities, it is difficult to discuss the orders daily activities without
describing the services they rendered to the society in which they lived. Chapter 1 provided a
thorough overview of the Sufi part in the regions politics, as well as culture, from the fourteenth
through the early twentieth centuries. However, we have, as yet, only touched on their more
spiritual role in community life.268 As particularly holy persons, the orders members,
specifically their shaykhs, were called on to officiate in life-cycle rituals and lead the liturgical
observance of sacred holidays. As possessors of baraka and performers of karmt
268
It is often difficult, if not impossible, to separate the activities of a religious organization, or those of a religious
figure, into sacred and secular categories. It could well be argued that a Naqshband practicing khalwt dar
anjuman, for example, is always engaged in sacred behaviors, bringing a religious perspective to the political,
economic, and social spheres of his life. However, in heeding Thomas Tweeds call to engage in exegetical
fussiness, we will adopt a stipulative definition of Sufis spiritual services. That is, for the purposes of this paper,
spiritual services constitute those whose first-order effect is the provisioning of expertise of the sacred (in both its
esoteric and exoteric varieties) or material comfort to those in want, rather than achieving political or economic
goals, see Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, 34-35, 53.
98
(supernatural deeds or feats of a saint; saintly miracles) they were sought for healing and other
blessings.269 As reservoirs of knowledge on and guardians of the Sharia, they informally, and
formally, performed the duties of scholars and enforcers of the sacred law. Finally, as has already
been briefly covered, they gathered a following among the local communities through the
distribution of alms.
Marking the Qibla, Officiating a Marriage, and Celebrating d al-a
While somewhat outside agrarian Turkestan, the geographical boundary for this study, an
incident from Vmbrys time staying among the Yomut Turkmen on his way to Khiva
illustrates the sort of spiritual services a Sufi could be called on to perform for his community.270
Vmbry, who had up until this point in his journey affected the disguise of a pilgrim, began,
with the help of his traveling companions, to pass himself off as a dervish. Though he made no
reference to having pretended to belong to a particular order, it would seem that by his
frequenting of qalandarkhanas, and the description of his clothing, he attempted to present
himself to the locals he encountered as a Qalandar. According to Vmbry his deceit was so
successful that he won the respect of Kizil Akhond, a local Turkmen mull who had been trained
in Bukhara, and
when the intention was entertained of building a mosqueit was I [Vmbry] who was
requested to indicate the Mihrab (altar) [marker of the direction of prayer, or qibla], as
269
270
Abazov, Map 31, in The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia. The Yomut are one of the largest
tribes among the Turkmen of Turkmenistan. Traditionally, Islam among the Turkmen often lacked familiarity with
the great textual traditions as well as mosques and professional clergy. More prevalent in Turkmen religious life
was the role of Sufi shaykhs and baraka-seeking pilgrimages to the tombs of holy men, see Shirin Akiner, Islamic
Peoples of the Soviet Union (London: Kegan Paul International, 1983), 313-315, 325-326, and Adrienne Lynn
Edgar, Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 26.
99
Kizil Akhond had pointed me out as the best informed and most experienced Dervish for
the purpose.271
It is interesting to note that Vmbry indicated that determining the qibla was a job for a
dervish. Certainly a learned mull who had studied at Bukhara was capable of performing the
task, or he would not have been qualified to verify Vmbrys bona fides for completing the job.
Still, he indicated Vmbry, the dervish, as the one to mark the qibla. Perhaps it was the
novelty of having a foreigner who had recently come from Istanbul that led to his choice. But,
perhaps, there was also a recognition that as a Sufi he possessed spiritual power beyond an
academic knowledge of sacred texts, and was, therefore, more qualified to discern the qibla,
imparting his baraka to all those who subsequently prayed in the mosque.
Schuyler also provided an anecdote about the Sufi spiritual role in community life. He,
however, referred to the work of shns, not Qalandars, thus shaykhs of, likely, Naqshband
affiliation. After providing a detailed description of marriage customs and ceremony in sedentary
Central Asia, he noted that the Mullah from the nearest mosque, or in particular cases some
distinguished saint or Ishan, is invited to perform the ceremony.272 While he did not specify in
which particular cases an shn might be invited to conduct this life-cycle ritual, he mentioned
that a Hodja, or descendant of Mohammedcan marry only a Hodjas daughter, and among
271
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 48-52; A.J. Wensinck, D. A. King, ibla, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second
Edition, eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online, 2015];
available from http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/kibla-COM_0513; Internet;
accessed on 18 May 2015.
272
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1, 142-144.
100
those of good blood it is rarefor the first wife at leastthat any great inequality of birth is
allowed.273
We can speculate that the union of individuals of sacred lineages were the most likely to
employ the powers of a distinguished shaykh to solemnize the marriage contract.274 Whether
Schuylers khojas in late nineteenth-century Tashkent society were related to those who asserted
their rights to administer the waqf associated with the Yasav tomb complex in Turkestanbased
on claimed descent from Amad Yasavs familyis unclear. It certainly would not be
surprising to discover that his khojas claimed descent from both an eminent Sufi shaykh as well
as the Prophet (i.e. sayyid ancestry). It would also be fitting that a social group claiming descent
from such a shaykh would seek out the services of one of his spiritual descendants to officiate at
their marriage.
Similarly, the participation of a shaykh in the public observance of a sacred holiday made
the occasion that much more holy. As was noted previously, Dkch shn led the d al-a
prayer at his lodge for several thousand participants, who hoped for the opportunity to perform
ziyrat to the shaykh afterward. The role of Sufis in such public observances, as in the case of
the mawlid celebrations that mark the birth of the Prophet Muhammad, are well known.
However, unlike mawlid celebrations, which Sufis originally helped to popularize and legitimize,
d al-a (like d al-Fir) is a canonical feast of Islam celebrated from the time of the
273
Ibid., 142. It would seem that Schuyler mistook spiritual lineage which, for Sufis, stretches back to the Prophet,
with claimed physical ancestry from a holy individual. Though, as already discussed, the difference between
spiritual and literal descent seems to have blurred over time in the case of khoja groups.
274
Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 274-276.
101
Prophet.275 Thus, though any imm could lead the prayer, an d observance directed by a shaykh
presented an opportunity for the participants to obtain the usual spiritual benefits associated with
the event, with the added chance to access his baraka. For a rural shaykh like Dkch shn, this
holy celebration provided yet another opportunity to gather his murds from the surrounding
communities, and further establish his influence, and orthodox credentials, through the proper
public observance of the prayer and delivering of the khubah (sermon).
Ulam and Guardians of the Sharia
The place of Sufis among the ulam of Central Eurasia in this era is well
documented.276 Though they did not necessarily perform the duties of this profession by virtue of
their status in a Sufi order, these extra, spiritual credentials no doubt added to their prestige as
legal scholars. Count Pahlen made particular note of the intersection between the ulam and the
Sufi orders in order to show his readers the fearful degree to which Ishanism was spread
throughout society in Russian Turkestan. For example, the delightful mulla with the 400 to
1,000 murids, described previously, was attached to one of the Tashkent medresehs.277 Pahlen
also detailed a conference he held in Tashkent, to which he invited a group of learned mullas
with the object of studying and editing a Russian translation of rules based on the Shariat
275
Marion Holmes Katz, The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (London:
Routledge, 2007), 68-69; Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 134. Mawlid are panegyrical poems of a very legendary
character, which start with the birth of Muhammad, and praise his life and virtues in the most laudatory fashion, see
Nancy Tapper and Richard Tapper, The Birth of the Prophet: Ritual and Gender in Turkish Islam, Man, New
Series, vol. 22, no. 1 (March, 1987), 69-92.
276
Uli Schamiloglu, Ictihad or Millat?: Reflections on Bukhara, Kazan, and the Legacy of Russian Orientalism,
Reform Movements and Revolutions in Turkistan: 1900-1924. Studies in Honour of Osman Khoja / Trkistan'da
Yenilik Hareketleri ve Ihtilaller: 1900-1924. Osman Hoca Anisina Incelemeler, ed. Timur Kocaolu (Haarlem:
SOTA, 2001): 347-368.
277
Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57.
102
[Sharia] which he had prepared.278 Though Pahlen expressed how impressed he was with this
body of scholars attention to detail and determination to complete the work at hand, he
remarked, more cautiously, that he was alive to the fact that among the assembled mullas were
ten or twenty Ishans any one of whom had the power to unleash a wave of rebellion through his
murds.279
At the same time, Central Eurasian pirs, specifically among the Naqshbandiyya, had
acted as unofficial guardians of the Sharia from at least the time of Ubaydullh Arrthe
shaykh who had urged the Timurid state to re-enthrone taxes enjoined by Islamic law and
abandon those associated with the Mongol ys. This commitment to upholding the sacred law
was re-invigorated by the transmission of the Mujaddid way to the region in the seventeenth
century.280 As noted previously, the tendency toward Sharia guardianship is particularly evident
in the Manqib-i Dkch shn, where the shaykh was not depicted as issuing fatwa (learned
legal opinions) but was repeatedly shown calling to repentance his followers who had strayed
from the path of the sacred law, and that often in a wrathful manner.281 Thus, his role was more
that of a preacher of repentance, confessor, and supernatural enforcer of the Sharia, than that of
a legal scholar.
Previously we saw how Dkch shns disciples were smitten by his wrath for drinking
alcohol, even for medicinal purposes, in violation of the Sharia. It will be remembered that the
278
Ibid., 81.
279
Ibid., 83.
280
Gross and Urunbaev. The Letters of Khwajah 'Ubayd Allah Ahrar and His Associates; Weismann, The
Naqshbandiyya, 78-81.
281
Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 388.
103
lay affiliate, who had been misled through the corrupt influence of an alien colonial presence,
was forgiven, while another disciple, who had slighted his pir by surreptitiously consuming
locally-made alcohol in his absence, was destroyed.282 Dkch shn was also more lenient to a
potential disciple who had violated the law, but had not yet formally entered into the order. Once
a mng-bsh named Tash-fulat came to the shaykh to perform ziyrat, and Dkch shn warned
him, oh, mng-bsh, your father gave me his hand, submitted himself spiritually and stepped
onto the [Sufi] path. You, also will do this carelesslyyou are abusing the Sharia
nowdrinking boza and gambling, leave these practices and be a true adherent of the
Sharia.283 The mng-bsh then confessed his wrong-doing and sought the shaykhs
forgiveness.
In this instance, rather than threatening him with destruction, Dkch shn preached
repentance to a wayward Muslim, seeking to lift him out of the sinful practices that were
corrupting society in the Ferghana Valley of his day. For the leaders father, however, we see no
evidence of forgiveness, as the shaykh only accepted the gifts proffered by the mng-bsh when
he had assured him that they were not part of an inheritance from his father. The father had not
only violated the sacred law, he had also slighted the pir to whom he had formally committed
himself, and who was to guide him on the Sufi path.
In a similar vein, another of Dkch shns murds, Mukhammad-Azim of the q chk
community of the Tuylsa Kyrgyz tribe, also brought down the shaykhs wrath upon himself.
Once, while waiting for his laundry to dry, Mukhammad-Azim had appeared before his pir with
bare knees. Seeing this, Dkch shn said, hey dvna, to cover the forbidden parts of the body
282
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 121-122, 124.
283
Ibid., 145.
104
is far. You, having rejected this duty, have become a sinner.284 Thereafter a delegation of
senior disciples came before Dkch shn to plead for forgiveness on Mukhammad-Azims
behalf. However, the shaykh told them not to interfere, that God knew better than they, and that
he had beheld a vision where he stabbed the offending murd in the stomach. Later,
Mukhammad-Azim returned to his parents home and died.285
In these anecdotes we see that in his roles of preacher and confessor, Dkch shns
response to violators of the sacred law was not only dependent on their membership status
(disciple vs. prospective disciple), but also on whether the behavior violated the rules of adab
(the conduct and discipline of the Sufi in relation to his shaykh and associate Sufis) and
personally disrespected him as an eminent holy man.286 Yet, his guardianship of the Sharia was
not merely an attempt to maintain discipline in his order or enforce abstract legal principles
among his followers or the surrounding community. Rather, it was a means of binding them to
himself as a living embodiment of the sacred law. Thus, a slight to Dkch shn, as one of the
awliy, was a slight to the law and the deity who had given the law. Such slights were forgiven,
however, when proper confession was made. To a masnav reciters admission of sin (he had sat
silently in the company of mufts and qs who were disparaging Dkch shn) and pleas for
284
Ibid., 126; Denny, An Introduction to Islam, 388.
285
286
Adab was taught via manuals founded upon a series of observances additional to the common ritual duties of
Islam, which involved a noviciate, during whichthe novice must be in the hands of his director like the corpse in
the hands of the washer of the dead, see Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 29, 300. Among the most well-
known treatises on Sufi adab is that written by Abdul-Qhir Ab Najb al-Suhraward (d. 1168) in which he sought
to locate Sufism among the other Islamic scienceshadith and fiqhand did so in a systematizing, legalizing
fashion, see Menahem Milson, trans., A Sufi Rule for Novices: Kitb db al-Murdn of Ab al-Najb al-
Suhraward (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1975).
105
forgiveness, the shaykh smiled and replied, henceforth dont eat other peoples meat [i.e. dont
reproach people in their absence].287
Dkch shns Sharia guardianship, however, was not limited to issues associated with
disrespect to himself. He showed particular interest in enjoining the proper treatment of animals
in accordance with the law. In a particularly interesting incident the shaykh convinced the owner
of a dancing bear to free it, by relaying the tortures he would endure on judgment day if he
persisted in mistreating the animal.288 Bear taminga practice widespread in Medieval Europe,
and with a long history in India, Siberia, and the Middle Eastwas likely condemned by Dkch
shn, much like vodka drinking, as not only an infraction against Islamic law, but as a
manifestation of alien, colonial influence.289 Yet, his displeasure also fell on those misusing
animals according to local custom. For example, when the Kyrgyz leader Chibil presented a bird
(likely a type of raptor) to him as a gift, the shaykh served it food and released it into the wild.
Later, an individual (likely a falconer) tracked down and caught the released bird, and suffered
the shaykhs wrath in the form of a withered hand.290
287
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 127. A mathnaw is a Poem in doublets, see Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam,
307. Perhaps the most famous collection of such poetry in the Sufi world is that by Mawln Jall al-Dn al-
Rm (d. 1273), who was born in Balkh (located in either contemporary Afghanistan or Tajikistan) and died in
Konya, Turkey. Commentaries on Rms work were important in spreading his message to various parts of the
Muslim world. One such work, the first comprehensive commentary on his poetry in the Persian cultural millieu,
was written by one of the greatest Sufis of the Timurid era, the Kubraw Sheikh Kaml al-Dn Husayn al-Khorezm
(d. 1435-36), see Sleyman Gkbulut, Kemleddn Hseyin Harezm ve Yarm Kalm Farsa Mesnev ehr, Sf
Aratrmalar Cilt 4, Say 8 (Yaz 2013), 37-47.
288
Ibid., 135.
289
Neil D'Cruze, Ujjal Kumar Sarma, Aniruddha Mookerjee, Bhagat Singh, Jose Louis, Rudra Prasanna Mahapatra,
Vishnu Prasad Jaiswal, Tarun Kumar Roy, Indu Kumari, and Vivek Menon, Dancing Bears in India: A Sloth Bear
Status Report, Ursus, 22(2) (2011), 99-105; James Hollman, Travels Through Russia, Siberia, Poland, Austria,
Saxony, Prussia, Hannover, etc., etc., Undertaken During the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824, While Suffering from
Total Blindness, and Comprising an Account of the Author Being Conducted a State Prisoner from the Eastern
Parts of Siberia, vol. 2, 2nd edition (London: Geo. B. Whitaker, Ave-Maria Lane, 1825), 140.
290
106
Finally, the shaykh reproved both a group of youths and a Qalandar, who had come to
him to perform ziyrat, for beating dogs which had barked at them. In the case of the Qalandar,
Dkch shn explained that while barking at him, the dogs had been trying to tell him the
following:
Once or twice every few days our master gives us a cup of soup and leftover food. We
are content with this and do not wander beyond the domain of our master. But you, who
has such a feast at home, provided by God, why are you not content, do not praise your
Lord, and remain at his threshold? Why are you located on the threshold of your carnal
desires? wewould not leave our master, like you [have left] your Lord.291
Here, in a curious encounter between the primary orders being discussed in this study,
Dkch shn was not only performing his duty as a guardian of the law, but also as a defender of
the Naqshband way. Not surprisingly, as a practitioner of khalwt dar anjuman, the shaykh
essentially told the Qalandar that his chosen mode of piety was not only misguided, but
constituted a pursuit of carnal desires (seeking alms from place to place), and ingratitude toward
the bounty of God, i.e. the blessings he could have been experiencing if he had lived as a
conventional member of society. Following this rebuke, and Dkch shns miraculous
interpretation of the dogs speech, the Qalandar pleaded for forgiveness, essentially admitting the
error of his own, and the superiority of Dkch shns, spiritual path. This anecdote is but a late
nineteenth-century variant of an entire tradition, both literary and historical, of conversion
narratives, of Inner Asian provenance, employing the religious contest as the decisive event of
the storya motif we will return to later.292
291
Ibid., 137-138.
292
DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 174.
107
Healing and Blessing
The frequency with which the sources record narratives of Central Asian Sufis bestowing
healing, or similar blessings, speaks to the importance of such powers in shaykhs gathering
followers during this era. Olufsen, none too flatteringly, wrote that shns
keep[a]congregation collected by the maintenance of certain religious duties more severe
than common. These ishans, often quacks at the same timeheal by the help of prayers or tell
fortunes by the hand.293 Vmbry provided a firsthand account of his participation in such
healing, noting that during his time among the Turkmen he frequently accompanied one of his
ajj companions who was actively engaged in his medical capacity.294 While the ajj
dispensed medicine, Vmbry repeated aloud the blessing after which he received a present
of a little mat of felt, or a dried fish, or some other trifle.295 Indeed, the Hungarian was told by
his companion that the Turkmen would expect and demand that he bestow blessings on them,
and that it would occasion great surprise if, representing yourself to be a dervish, you do not
carry out the character to its full extent.296 Furthermore, his companion reminded him that in
performing the act to never forget to extend your hand at the same time, for it is a matter of
notoriety that we dervishes subsist by such acts of piety, and they are always ready with some
little present or other.297
293
294
295
Ibid.
296
Ibid., 70-71.
297
Ibid., 71.
108
Vmbry explained that he was never certain whether it was the power of being
simultaneously administered to by both a temporal and a faith healer, or the novelty value of his
status as a Turkish ajj, that brought significant numbers to him for treatment. However, he
recorded
my friends were much amazed that, after having been only five days [among the
Turkmen]I had a numerous leve of sick persons, or at least of men who pretended to
be such, to whom I administered blessings and breath, or for whom I wrote little
sentences to serve as talismans.298
A more likely explanation is that his foreign origin and his baraka as a dervish caused his
healing power to be perceived as more efficacious by the Turkmen. It is also interesting to note
the financial aspect of this activity, which the Hungarian cynically claimed never didtake
place without my receiving afterwards the proper honorarium.299
Dkch shns miraculous healing powers have already been mentioned, but a few
additional examples will show his ability to specifically aid those suffering from infertility. In
the first, one of the shaykhs disciples had a friend among the Kyrgyz Yaflgh tribe who, being
grieved at his lack of a son, asked to be taken to his friends pir whom he believed could help
him. After making his request to the shaykh, Dkch shn gave three apples to his disciples
friend and said, hey Kyrgyz, give these to your wife. God will give you three sons.300 As the
mans wife was elderly, the disciple wondered how she could bear him one son, let alone three.
298
Ibid. Schimmel noted the continued popularity of breathing upon the sick in the Muslim world even in the
late twentieth century, see Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 208.
299
300
109
But, the friend soon demanded gifts for the birth and announced that his wife bore him a son,
which was subsequently followed by the births of two others.301
Similarly, Ghz-Bk Trah, an official and interpreter in the Russian colonial
administration, once came to Dkch shn weeping, and implored, Im already old, I have three
or four wives, but no children. Say a prayer for me that I might have children.302 The shaykh
then gave him a sumak (the tube that removes urine from traditional Central Asian cradles) and
said, dont worry, if it is Gods will he will give you a child.303 Though the murd who relayed
this story claimed he had long doubted what he had overheard his pir say to that trah, he
admitted that eventually Ghz-Bks servant came to buy a cradle, proclaiming that his masters
wife had born him a son.304
It should also be mentioned that Dkch shns power to bless was not confined to
healing, or correcting infertility, and another anecdote relates how his benediction protected a
devoted sufi from the freezing snow on the Tng-Burn Pass while the latter was undertaking
a dangerous trade trip to Kashgar.305 We have already encountered a similar practice in Olufsens
description of caravan masters seeking Qalandar and dervish blessings prior to beginning their
journeys.306 The ability of barakapossessing shaykhs to heal or otherwise bless supplicants was,
301
Ibid.
302
Ibid., 156.
303
Ibid; Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary, 152; , ,
(: , 2012), 286.
304
305
Ibid., 119.
306
110
of course, not unique to Central Asia, but was widespread during what Trimingham calls the
ifa stage of Sufisms development, where belief in baraka, [was] materialized in the form of
touch, amulets, charms, and other mechanical means of protection and insurance.307 This
materialization included the tombs of deceased shaykhs becoming shrines, a pilgrimage to which
was conducted with specific goals (such as a woman seeking respite from infertility issues, like
the two men described above), a phenomenon which we will explore in greater detail later.308
Distribution of Alms
As noted before, providing alms to the local community was expected of anyone claiming
to be a genuine shn in nineteenth-century Central Asia. In a region where expressions of
hospitality have long been, and remain, integral to both nomadic and sedentary culture, it could
hardly be otherwise.309 Indeed, before the establishment of his successful khnaqh, Dkch
shn began building his following by pouring water for thirsty wayfarers in the hills near Asaka,
in the Ferghana Valley. It was during this period that one of his later disciples, Dsmat, was
drawn to the shaykh, moved by his charity, and asked the holy man to be allowed to serve him
some water. Dkch shn responded he could do so if he wanted to do it on the path of
God.310 Dsmat then became a disciple of Dkch shn, and was later characterized as always
being with our pir and pouring water for thirsty people, as had his master before him.311
307
308
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 239.
309
Russell Zanca, Fat and All That: Good Eating the Uzbek Way, in Everyday Life in Central Asia, 178-197.
310
311
Ibid.
111
When Dkch shn finally obtained the financial resources requisite with his station as
an shn, he was able to dispense robes to the poor, food to the homeless, and horses to the
horselesslargesse that benefitted thousands.312 As already noted, the shaykhs cook claimed he
was regularly called upon to cook for hundreds or thousands of people. Indeed, once during the
winter chilla (a 40-day period lasting from the end of December to the beginning of February),
Dkch shn commanded his builders to construct another kitchen in order to be able to prepare
sufficient quantities of food. His bakers too were expected to produce enough bread to feed these
crowds, though they said that no matter how many people came they always had enough, as well
as leftovers.313 In addition, the shaykh provided intimate meals for more honored guests.314
Though we only have evidence that it was provided on a much smaller scale, it should
not be forgotten that the Qalandars too offered room and board to visitors, as shown by
Vmbrys experience at the qalandarkhana in Shurakhan in the Khanate of Khiva.315 In
addition, during his visit to the qalandarkhana in Samarqand Schuyler was told by the chief of
the institution that his establishment of Dervishes had been founded long ago for pious uses;
that it was devoted to the reception of the poor, the sick, and the blind, and of persons who had
no other refuge.316 While not as impressive as feeding and clothing thousands, Qalandar charity
appears to have been more intimate and devoted to long-term care, rather than providing visitors
with a single meal and a new robe before sending them on their way.
312
Ibid., 157-158.
Ibid., 163-165, footnote 258 (163); , ,

313
(: , 2012), 93.
314
Ibid., 165-167.
315
316
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1,158.
112
Rituals
Though it might be said that spiritual practice is the core of Sufism[and] it is in
meditation, prayer, fasting, and other day-to-day performances that we find the life of this
mystical path, it is, perhaps, too simple-minded to suggest that the performance of rituals is a
Sufis most essential daily activity.317 Ritual performance is, it is true, a major part of the
traced-out Waybywhich the novice may attain union with God,the raison d'tre of the
Sufi orders.318 Not surprisingly, some of the individuals in our sources saw the diligent
performance of ritual duties as the foundation for all other Sufi practicetransforming the ego
or carnal soul, which amounted to a full-time calling.319 And, yet, the sources also reveal others
whose participation in ritual was on a more limited basis. Regardless of the level of their
involvement in the orders, each type of individual saw the value of engaging in the orders
activities, and drawing on the forces to which the shaykh and his close coterie had access.
Ziyrat
The frequency with which such a variety of supplicants perform ziyrat (visitations) in
the Manqib-i Dkch shn might convince the casual reader that it was among the most
mechanically performed, and hence spiritually empty, rituals in the Naqshband repertoire in 19th
-century Central Asia.320 As in other parts of the Sufi world during this era, this ritual not only
included pilgrimage to the tombs of holy persons but was also an expression of reverence to
317
Carl W. Ernst, Teachings of Sufism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1999), 40.
318
319
320
In Central Asia ziyrat (the Arabic plural form) is used rather than the singular ziyra.
113
particularly respected living persons (for example, to those who were considered awliy) and
included the supplicant kissing the revered persons hands and the hem of his clothes, or
performing other, similar devotions.321 Many times in the Manqib-i Dkch shn this ritual is
described as if it were merely a perfunctory element in every disciples greeting to his shaykh.
Certainly, there seem to be no instances in the hagiography where a supplicant approaches a
shaykh without displaying this form of reverence. However, comparing the contexts of various
instances in which the ritual was performed yields a more subtle pattern.
In one case, a Sufi who attributed the safe ferrying of his sheep across a river to Dkch
shn refused to be shown to the lodges guesthouse before he had been allowed to see his
shaykh and perform ziyrat.322 Another disciple came sobbing, to kiss the hand of Dkch
shn because his home had been saved from fire after he had called upon the name of his shaykh
for help.323 The disciple who was blessed to safely cross the snowy Tng-Burn Pass performed
the ritual with tears and cried, Praise to God, I have seen you! after surviving his freezing
ordeal.324 Each of these men was clearly a disciple, if lay affiliate, of Dkch shn, but their
performance of the ritual was not the equivalent of a respectful handshake, or mere greeting to
their shaykh. Rather, each instance was charged with emotion, as if touching the shaykhs hand
were the only proper means of displaying gratitude for supernatural services performed. Here
ziyrat was not only a means of borrowing and storing up sacred power for later use in similarly
321
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 90. The above information is contained footnote 78; J.W. Meri, W. Ende, Nelly van
Doorn-Harder, Th. Zarcone, et al, Ziyra. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; eds. P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis,
C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online, 2015]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/ziyara-COM_1390;
Internet; accessed on 27 May 2015.
322
Ibid., 114-115.
323
Ibid., 117-118.
324
Ibid., 119.
114
trying circumstances, but also constituted tactile communication with, and assurance of the
reality and the continued existence of, the mysterious power which had saved them. Its
importance to many of those who performed it was likely due to it being the only Sufi ritual in
which they participated.
At the same time, there are many examples of individuals not on intimate terms, or who
were not in regular contact, with the shaykh, who still sought occasion to perform the ritual.
Clearly not all of the thousands who came to celebrate d al-a with and perform ziyrat to
Dkch shn were resident disciples, and it seems likely that the throng also included numbers
of individuals who had no formal affiliation with the shaykhs organization.325 On another
occasion, a barber with no obvious connection to Dkch shn performed the ritual and asked
that his paralyzed hand might be healed.326 The Kyrgyz from the Yaflgh tribe performed ziyrat
when his friend, a disciple of Dkch shn, brought him to the shaykh for assistance with
infertility issues.327 The man with the dancing bear, obviously a stranger, approached the lodges
gatekeeper and asked for permission to perform the ritual.328 It will also be remembered that the
mng-bsh Tash-fulat, not yet a disciple, came to Dkch shn to perform ziyrat, as did the
Qalandar.329
In some of these stories ziyrat was, perhaps, a necessary, respectful preliminary to the
main business at hand, particularly healing. Yet, in others it was the primary reason for the
325
Ibid., 129.
326
Ibid., 132.
327
Ibid., 155.
328
Ibid., 135.
329
Ibid., 137, 145.
115
meeting. From these examples it is clear that the ritual was more than a show of deference to a
holy person, but a chance to obtain a rare commodity, as even individuals not attached to the
shaykhs order went out of their way seeking opportunity to access his baraka. Obtaining the
power of this touch was also something that could be done by proxy, as one of Dkch shns
Sufis once performed the ritual twice, and the shaykh replied, Hey, Sufi, you just did ziyrat for
that depraved boozer. Well, OK,discerning that the disciple had performed the ritual at the
behest of his drunkard friend, who eventually changed his ways.330
Initiation
Though many of the above examples show that even non-disciples could partake of a
shaykhs power, membership in an order ensured greater or more regular access to that power.
This transformation, from curious investigator or blessing-seeker to disciple, required a transition
marked by ritual. Such initiatory rites, found among both the Qalandariyya and Naqshbandiyya,
contained elements like an interview with the shaykh, a period of trial-service or examination,
where the applicants suitability for pursuing the orders Way was scrutinized, and a symbolic
separation of the supplicant from his old life (a symbolic death), and rebirth into his new
existence.331 This complex of rituals seems to have held a particular fascination for Olufsen, in
whose account both the Qalandar and Naqshband variants figured prominently.
Olufsen began his description of the Qalandar variant by stating:
If a man wants to become a calandar he reports himself to the so-called calandar-bb

(the grandfather of the calandars). In continual prayers he now performs service for some
330
Ibid., 146.
331
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York:
Harcourt, Inc., 1959), 187. The basic Sufi initiation is divided into three parts: instruction, oath of obedience to the
shaykh, and investiture with symbolic clothing, see Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 182.
116
months at the saints tombs as a sort of watch, and if he proves to be fit for becoming a
monk, he receives from the calandar-bb [his official] dress.332
Later in his account, Olufsen fleshed out the description of the initiation, noting that when an
applicant wants to become a Qalandar the
Calandar-bbputs him to the test for 5-6 months throughout which time he must often
pray both day and night and perform the humblest monastic duties such as sweeping and
cleaning up of the monastery, fetching water etc. If, in the opinion of Calandar-bb he is
fit for being a monk after the period of trial, the regular calandars dress is given to him
and together with the others he is sent out on his singing wanderings to beg.333
From this description it appears that the Qalandar applicant had to demonstrate his ability
not only to obediently serve the Qalandar Baba, and his fellow dervishes, but also to perform
prayer vigils in a graveyard like the orders founder Jaml al-Dn Sv. This activity
symbolically separated the applicant from his old life. Indeed, he suffered a symbolic death or
was dead before his death, by secluding himself among the tombs of the dead. If found worthy,
the initiates rebirth into Qalandar society was accomplished by his investiture with its official
dress (jawlaq) by the Qalandar Baba and his participation, with his fellow dervishes, in alms
gathering.
Olufsens description of the Nashband initiation process also offered some insights,
though interspersed by some fanciful interpolations:
To become a sheik one most go through a rather trying process. When a man, to become
a sheik, announces himself in Khanaka [khnaqh], the house of the oldest ishan, where
he lives with his sheiks, he must first prove that he has mastered the Koran etc.; then he
must address himself to God in order to learn in a dream whether he will be fit or not;
then he must run about for several days and not sleep before he has washed himself and
prayed, kneeling on a carpet of the purity of which he is sureIf he dreams of green
meadows or flowers, it is well, but if he dreams of snakes or scorpionshe is unfit and is
rejected. In any case, he goes to the oldest ishan (Pir) to tell him the dream. If
332
333
Ibid., 396.
117
admitted[the pir makes him] shut his eyes and repeat Allah no end of timesand he
must renounce his sins and promise not to commit new, they make the heart, as it is said,
pronounce the word Allah, often while holding their breath, then they repeat certain
passages from the Koran no end of times; and all this again and again so that many
become insane and are rejected,(in other words they have said their dreams were better
than was really the case).334
While this description is somewhat marred by Olufsens distaste for what he referred to
as fanaticism, he made some key observations about the process. First, that the initial test the
pir offered to the applicant was regarding his knowledge of the Quran, in line with the orders
commitment to the Sharia. Second, that the applicant was symbolically separated from society
via the confession of his sins, and a concomitant rejection of any aspects of his old life that were
not in harmony with Naqshband teachings (tawba, repentance or return to God ).335 Finally,
that the initiate was reborn into the order by the performance of a sacred formula. This process,
like the contemporary Naqshband initiation which may include an initiation
liturgyrecitation of the shahda, a formal statement of repentance by the murdand,
finally, the giving of instruction in the wafas (prayer offices) of the Order, differed markedly
from the Qalandar procedure.336 Each emphasized obedience to their own peculiar ethos, the
Qalandariyya to renunciation, and the Naqshbandiyya to the norms of the Sharia.
The Manqib-i Dkch shn adds another layer of detail to our picture of the Naqshband
initiation process. In particular, the ritual of the initiate giving the hand to the shaykhwhich
334
335
Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 357. By the tenth century, tawba was widely considered to be the first station
(mam) on the Sufi path, see F.M. Denny, Tawba, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P. Bearman,
Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online, 2015]; available form
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/tawba-SIM_7450;
Internet; accessed on 27 May 2015.
336
Ian Richard Netton, Sufi Ritual: The Parallel Universe (Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000), 76-77. Olufsen also
referenced the importance of dreams and visions in the whole scheme of the Sufi Path [which] can hardly be
overstressed, and the role of dream interpretation in the guidance of the murd by the murshid, see Trimingham,
The Sufi Orders in Islam, 158, 190, as well as Rozenhal, Islamic Sufism Unbound, 176-184.
118
followed repentance and the recitation of a sacred formulawas frequently mentioned.337 It will
be remembered that the mng-bsh was about to give his hand to Dkch shn, when the shaykh
reminded him how his father had also done so, in order to step onto the Sufi path, and then
continued his old life of sin. It was only then that the mng-bsh performed tawba, properly
preparing himself for the sacred commitment he was about to make.338 Unlike those described in
the hagiography as visitors merely seeking blessings, it is clear that those who had given their
hand to the shaykh, like the mng-bshs father and the Sufi supernaturally killed for drinking
alcohol, were formal disciples, and thus suffered his intense displeasure for their violation of the
sacred agreement.339 Others, like Babatay Sufi, who repented of his drunkenness and frequent
indulgence in smoking, held fast to their new life after taking the shaykhs hand, and were
changed beyond recognition for the better, following in the path of their shaykh.340
Tawba, however, was not merely a one-time activity associated with initiation, as
illustrated in an anecdote regarding gm-Brd. Once when this particular disciple came to
perform ziyrat, Dkch shn turned to him and said,
Oh, you wicked Sufi, who commanded you to do such things against the Sharia? Did
you not sin with a woman? Well, come here, you have already made your complete
confession. I need to take your confession again. Henceforth, dont take such
unacceptable actions!341
Apparently the fact that gm-Brd had maintained an inappropriate relationship with a woman
he had longed pursued was revealed to the shaykh, leading to this call to repentance. However,
337
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 100. Babadjanov describes this rituals place in the initiation process in footnote 118.
338
Ibid., 145.
339
Ibid., 124.
340
Ibid., 140-141.
341
Ibid., 150.
119
the most interesting feature of the story is that Dkch shns mercy, rather than his wrath, was
directed at the man and he was allowed to renew the sacred agreement.
Tahajjud and Talqn
As would be expected of a record of life in a Mujaddid lodge, the Manqib-i Dkch
shn is replete with references to the shaykh and his disciples performing alt (the five daily
prayers). In addition, instances of tahajjudsupererogatory prayers performed between
midnight and the fajr (dawn) prayer consisting of 13 or more rakat (unit of movements and
formulae in the ritual prayer)were also recorded.342 Arab-Dvna, who served Sultan-Khan
Trah and Dkch shn, claimed that he performed tahajjud with the former every night,
though, admitting to the difficulty of maintain this vigil, he related that he was once overtake by
ignorance and only woke up upon hearing the call for the dawn prayer.343 On realizing his
mistake he quickly made his way to his pir and was greeted by Sultan-Khan Trahs khalfa
(Dkch shn) who chided him, O my brotherit was possible to arise early and catch (the
prayer), rather than sleep and turn the night prayer into a deferred duty.344 It will be recalled that
prayer vigils were also an important element in the graveyard seclusion of the Qalandars, and
more especially to Olufsens dervishes who seem to have spent even more time among tombs,
342
Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 202 (footnote 43), 310; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 88 (footnote70); Schimmel,
Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 508; A.J. Wensinck, Tahadjdjud, Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, eds. P.
Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs [Brill Online, 2015]; available from
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/tahadjdjud-
SIM_7302; Internet; accessed on 27 May 2015.
343
344
Ibid., 89.
120
though these appear to have been performed singly, in communion with deceased shaykhs, or
other holy persons, rather than with a living one, in a group.345
The importance of this duty for the Naqshbandiyya was such that even after prophesying
his own impending death Sultan-Khan Trah performed tahajjud, after which he immediately
fell seriously ill. The shaykh then called for Dkch shn saying put your hands on my head,
which he did, and then performed talqn.346 As the loud recitation of the profession of faith
[shahda] in a dying persons ear, talqn is not a ritual conducted solely within the confines of
Sufism.347 It does, however, carry the connotation of giving (secret) instruction in the context
of Sufi initiations, and it is interesting to note that just before asking Dkch shn to perform the
rite, Sultan-Khan Trah turned to his preferred khalfa and said, Praise be to God for your
efforts, o my child. I desire you to achieve perfection [kaml, i.e. divine perfection, on the Sufi
path]. I relinquish to you my staff [hassa] and turban [dastor].348 After this symbolic
investiture of Dkch shn with the regalia of the lodges leader, Sultan-Khan Trah then
pronounced the shahda and gave his spirt to God.349
Murqaba
The Manqib-i Dkch shn records rituals other than supererogatory prayers that were
combined with night vigils. Once Dkch shn and another Sufi, Qych Khalfa, were waiting
345
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 206, 397-398.
346
Ibid., 96-97.
347
348
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 182; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 503; Manqib-i Dkch
shn, 97.
349
121
for their pir, when he appeared from his chambers agitated, saying he was angry with Khudyr
Khan, ruler of the Khanate of Kokand. Khudyr, who had declared himself a follower of Sultan-
Khan Trah, had strayed from upholding certain aspects of the Sharia, especially some of its
commercial applications, and the shaykh commanded Qych Khalfa, spend this night in
wakefulness, performing murqaba, and saying prayers, that this ruler will disappear.350 The
shaykh also instructed Dkch shn to remain in wakefulness and aid his companion in his
effort.
Murqaba, rendered variously as Awareness, watching or contemplation, as
performed in the Naqshband-Mujaddid tradition owes much to its development by Sirhind who
saw it as a means of achieving higher degrees of perfection in a well-articulated hierarchy of
mystical experiences.351 As a ritual for more advanced practitioners, murqaba required hours
of solitude to perform effectively, which could include visualization of the shaykh (establishing a
bond between murd and murshid, called rbia), and was key to developing the skills necessary
to becoming a guide along the Sufi path. However, it does not appear that the goal of Qych
Khalfas contemplation was to effect a cosmic journey or travel in the Essence to the
divine.352 Rather, it seems his murqaba was a means of focusing his spiritual power toward
ousting Khudyr Khan. In another anecdote, one of Dkch shns cooks approached him with
350
Ibid., 94. Khudyr Khan, a cruel and tyrannical sovereign, was even abandoned by two of his sons during the
1875 revolt that saw him flee his own subjects to Russian controlled Tashkent, and resulted in the end of his
khanates independence, see Hlne Carrre dEncausse, Systematic Conquest, 1865 to 1884, in Central Asia: 120
Years of Russian Rule, ed. Edward Allworth (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 145-146.
351
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam, 308; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 500; Buehler, Sufi Heirs
of the Prophet, 100.
352
Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 100, 104, 140, 163, 241-253, 304. Among the Naqshbandiyya, murqaba,
rbia, and silent dhikr comprised the triumvirate of prized devotional practices. However, rbia was a contentious
subject among nineteenth-century Naqshbands who were concerned that, at best, it made ones shaykhutterly
indispensable, or, at worst, constituted idolatry, see Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism, 115.
122
concerns that there was not enough food to feed the large number of guests present at the lodge.
In response, the shaykh lowered his head in murqaba, and after some time in contemplation, he
told the cook not to worry, because he had perceived a Sufi approaching with a gift of meat. 353
Clearly, at Dkch shns lodge these contemplations could have very practical applications.
Dhikr
In the words of William Chittick, the most important of Sufisms many devotional and
spiritual exercisesaround which the others are ranged as so many auxiliary means, is the
remembrance (dhikr) of God.354 For a Sufi, dhikr is an essential device for reaching God, a
formula which transforms the heart into a receptacle for the divine, which, at the last, never
ceases to recall the divine names.355 The two main variants of the ritualdhikr-i khaf (silent)
and dhikr-i jahr (vocal, or dhikr of the tongue) have already been mentioned, as has their use as
an identity-marker in intra-Sufi conflicts in Central Eurasia. The vocal variant used the
repetition of the word Allh, or of the rhythmical formula l ilh ill Allh, accompanied by
certain movementsto easily induce a state of trance.356 The silent dhikr, meanwhile, was a
mental repetition of formulae, with subcategories like the dhikr-i qalb (recollection of the
heart), where a disciple would focus on mentally picturing the heart saying Allh, Allh.357
353
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 145-146
354
William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Beginners Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 20.
355
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 167-169.
356
Ibid., 176.
357
123
In both variants breath control played an important role in aiding the practitioners concentration
during the ritual.358
It is fitting that this queen of Sufi rituals figured so prominently in our European traveler
accounts, being among the more impressively detailed descriptions of Sufi life they recorded.
Indeed, we have already become acquainted with one of these descriptions, in Olufsens
explanation of a Naqshband initiation given above. The shaykhs command for the disciple to
repeat the word Allah no end of times and make the heartpronounce the word Allah, all
while practicing breath control, is obviously a depiction of the recollection of the heart.359 While
it is not surprising to see that the Naqshbandiyya maintained this characteristic practice in
nineteenth Central Asia, it will be recalled that the Yasav-style, or vocal dhikr came to dominate
popular religious practice in the region by the second half of the eighteenth century, and, hence,
the recollection of the heart was but one style of dhikr in use.360 Indeed, as previously shown,
Schuyler, or his informants, sought to classify the Sufis he encountered at least partly based on
the manner in which they performed the ritual.361
Schuyler noted that each order had its method for obtaining the eternal blessing of the
Almighty, for exalting the soul, and arriving at a state of perpetual happiness. The Hufi believe
358
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 173; Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 127 (footnote 104).
359
360
DeWeese The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Uasavi and Naqshbandi
Sufi Traditions.
361
124
this spiritual exaltation is to be obtained by silent prayer.362 He contrasted this silent prayer with
the activities of the Jahri who held daily services in different locations around Tashkent:
Sunday until Monday morning in the mosque of Ishan HodjaMonday from eight
oclock in the morning until two oclock in the afternoon in the mosque of Hodja
Ahrarnine oclock on Thursday evening until five or six oclock on Friday morning in
the mosque of Ishan Sahib Hodja.363
Schuyler attended one of these services in person one Thursday evening with several friends, and
recorded the following:
Some thirty men, young and old, were on their knees in front of the kibleh [qibla] reciting
prayers with loud cries and violent movements of the body, and around them was a circle
two or three men deep standing, who were going through the same motionsFor the
most part the performers or worshipers had taken off their outside gowns and turbans, for
the night was warm and the exercise was violent. They were reciting the words hasbi rabi
jal Allah (My defence is the Lord. May Allah be magnified); Mo fi kabi [qalb] hirallah
[ghayrulla] (There is nothing but God in my heart); Nuri Muhammad sall Allah (My
light Muhammad, God bless him); La iloha il Allah (There is no God but Allah).364
Schuyler also described the physical movements that accompanied the wordschanted to
various semi-musical motives, in a low voice. He says that they included
A violent movement of the head over the left shoulder towards the heart, then back, then
to the right shoulder, then down, as if directing all the movements toward the heart. These
texts were repeated for hundreds and hundreds of times, and this Zikr [the Turkic
rendering of dhikr] usually last for an hour or twoAt first the movements were slow,
but continually increased in rapidity until the performers were unable to endure it longer.
If anyone failed in his duty, or were slowerthe Ishan who regulated the enthusiasm
went up to him and struck him over the heador pushed him out of the circle and called
another into itfinally the cry was struck up of Hai, Hai! Allah Hai! (Live Allah, the
immortal), at first slowly, with an inclination of the body to the ground; then the rhythm
grew faster in cadence, and the body more and more vertical, until at once they all stood
362
Ibid.
363
Ibid.
364
Ibid., 158-159.
125
upeach one placing his hand on the shoulder of his neighbor and thus forming several
concentric rings, they moved in a mass from side to side365
After this unified exertion, Schuyler notes that the participants returned to the qibla,
continuing to move and chant Hai, Hai! Allah Hai! and Hua Allah! while some of them
then came forward to the center of this ring and began a wild frenzied danceand often rushed
against some of those who surrounded them.366 Finally, exhausted by their effort, they sat
down again and devoted themselves to contemplation, while the Ishan recited a prayer.367
This remarkable and detailed account is likely the best description of a nineteenth-century
vocal Central Asian dhikr, but the rituals exact provenance remains murky. Like many dhikrs
the rite took place on a Thursday evening, and contained the formula hasbi rabi jalAllh
(usually render my Lord is enough for me).368 It is possible that this was a Qadrir ritual, but
Schuyler, though he realized that that order preferred gaining[exaltation] by exertion of the
voice and loud cries, drew a distinction between their activities and this Jahri event.369 Thus,
we are left to conclude that this dhikr was an example of the nineteenth-century Central Asian
Sufi complex that combined the Naqshband Way with the popular practices of the Yasaviyya,
including ecstatic dancing. Indeed, this description is reminiscent of the dhikrs of the mid-
nineteenth-century Mujaddid shaykh Muammad Abdassattr, which were held in the open
and attended by many people[and] frequently turned into spectacular shows after which the
365
Ibid., 159-160.
366
Ibid., 160.
367
Ibid.
368
Nurbakhsh, The Path, 198-199, 212.
369
126
spectators would make generous donations to the xnaqh.370 In Muammad Abdassattrs
time some Mujaddid shaykhs were scandalized by his approach, and we must assume that there
were those in Schuylers day who felt that the type of ritual he witnessed was beyond the pale.
Indeed, we have record of Sharia-minded claims, from the late nineteenth century, that dhikr
was being conducted for entertainment purposes while clowns and tight-rope walkers performed
nearby.371
Certainly Schulers description of the setting of this ritual is worth further consideration.
That the rite was open to a non-Muslim, American diplomat and his friends (the Russians, too,
could enter any of the mosques in Tashkent[where they smoked cigarettes, and were] not
even requested to take of their boots) suggests something more akin to a popular performance
than a sacred ceremony.372 Schuyler was under the impression that there was an element of
religious theatre at work in the dhikr, claiming that the shns assistant spurred the
participants onto to greater exertion, instructing them to devote more time to dancing and less to
recitationand even asked if we were pleased by it, in hopes of at least a ruble on our
departure.373 He concluded by wondering whether it be a wish to please their Russian masters,
370
Early 19th Centuries, 404, 409.
371
Ibid., 409, 411. Central Asia was certainly not the only region where the Naqshbandiyya used both forms of
dhikr. Various Medina-based seventeenth-century shaykhs, who combined Naqshband with other order affiliations,
passed both types of rituals on to students who spread them to regions as far-flung as northwest China and Southeast
Asia. The Umrav Naqshbands of seventeenth-century Kurdistan also practiced the vocal dhikr, see Le Gall, A
Culture of Sufism, 99-101, 117. In northwest China, conflict over dhikr issues, as well as over the temporal assets
amassed by the orders, resulted in violent brawls between the Khafiya (practitioners of the silent dhikr) and Jahrya
(practitioners of the vocal dhikr, called New Teaching by its detractors) sub-branches of the Naqshbandiyya in the
eighteenth century, see Jonathan N. Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle
and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), 86-91.
372
373
Ibid., 161.
127
or whether it be a sign of gradual liberalism, which has crept in, that the Mussulmans are so
willing to show Christians their religious rites.374
The Qalandariyya, too, performed a sort of dhikr in public which also coincided with
alms gathering, or, as Olufsen described it in more poetic terms, their being sent out by day in
bands of 8, singing from shop to shop in the bazars where no merchant refuses them his mite.375
This signing, was directed by the leader of the choirsetting up a loud yell: Ja hu, ja hak
[oh He, oh Truth (both being names of God)] and then the other members of the band join in
with a softer melody that sounds like a growling.376 We can speculate that the leader of this
choir was a khalfa who was trusted by the Qalandar Baba to carry out the essential task of
gathering alms and making a public display of the orders piety. The growling sound of the
melody can probably be identified with the rasping sound of the dhikr-i arrah or dhikr of the
saw of Yasav fame, which points to the Yasav influence on Qalandar, as well as popular
Naqshband, practices of the era.377
Schuyler left an even more detailed account of a Qalandar dhikr he witnessed at the
Kalendar Khana in Samarqand. There he
found some seven or eight wretched-looking devotees, and on paying respect to their Pir
or chiefthey proposed to singThey then stood in a row and began to sing, now in
Persian, and now in Turki. The chant was not unmelodious. One or two lines were sung
by the leader, and then the whole band broke out into the refrain. As they warmed up,
they went faster and faster, and the leader however much he might strain his voice, was
almost inaudible on account of the cries of the others, who, without waiting for the
response, sang, or rather shouted continuallywhen we were tired of one hymn, another
374
Ibid.
375
376
Ibid., 397.
377
DeWeese, The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Uasavi and Naqshbandi
Sufi Traditions.
128
was begun, and finally they started one very wild and quick, with numerous boundings
prostrations and whirlings, but the exercises, except those of the voice, were by no means
violent.378
Most peculiarly, Schuyler claimed that they sang one hymn in praise of the founder of their
order which contained the lines Than Thee there is no other, O God, our friend!...Our head is
Nakhshband Duvana, O God, our friend!379
Similar to Olufsens description, Schuyler shows the singing being directed by a leader,
but he adds the element of a tempo change in the chant, which was eventually paired with
various physical exertions, leaving no doubt that this was indeed a type of dhikr. The reference to
Nakhshband Duvana raises many questions. It seems unlikely that the Qalandars were
referring to anyone other than Bah al-Dn Naqshband, but why would a group of dervishes,
even one molded into a Sufi order in terms of organization, semi-sedentary existence, etc.,
reverence the founder of the austere Naqshbandiyya, particularly as represented by the legalistic
Mujaddidiyya in their day? Perhaps the answer is that not only had the Naqshbandiyya reduced
the Yasaviyya from an independent order to a silsila appropriatedby groupswith
Naqshband lineages, but they succeeded in making aspects of the Naqshband brand, such as
the venerated status of the orders founder, the common spiritual heritage of all orders in Central
Asia.380
378
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1, 257-258.
379
Ibid., 258.
380
DeWeese The Masha'ikh-i Turk and the Khojagan: Rethinking the Links between the Uasavi and Naqshbandi
Sufi Traditions.
129
Schuyler finished his description of the Qalandar dhikr, much as he had his account of
the Jahri ritual, noting his feeling that an element of popular performance and commerciality
had pervaded the event:
Fanatics as they were, they made no objection to exhibiting before me, as they felt sure of
a Sillau, or present, at the end, and they made no scruple about accepting the offered
money. The whole affair, as they themselves very well know, is a comedy played for
lucre. There are few of them that trouble themselves about piety or religion, except so far
as it can be made profitable.381
Peeling back the layer of biased cynicism that obviously colors Schuylers account, we can,
nonetheless, see that he has arrived at an objective truth regarding the performance of Sufi rituals
in nineteenth-century Central Asia. Though the dhikr-i qalb was, perhaps, being carried out in a
more secluded atmosphere, conducive to contemplation, the vocal dhikr, both among the
Naqshbandiyya and the Qalandariyya, had become a matter of popular, public performance.
However, we must assume that at the heart of some of these performances was a desire to
perpetuate the order, its spiritual capacities and spiritual services to society, rather than the lust
of corrupt shaykhs and murds for personal financial gain.
alqa
Before leaving the topic of dhikr a few words should be said about the practice of
forming a alqa, a circle formed around a qub, pivot.382 In this circle, Sufis would put right
hands on the left hands of their neighbors and with closed eyes repeat the shahda until it
consisted merely of the last h, or perform other rituals, such as murqaba.383 Dkch shn and
his disciples participated in this rite, though it is not always clear from the text for what purpose
381
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1 , 258.
382
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 176
383
Ibid.; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 91(note 83).
130
it was employed. However, the shaykhs revelation that a certain Sufi was then on his way to the
group after one such session indicates that murqaba was the purpose of that particular alqa.384
There are examples in the Manqib-i Dkch shn of the alqa being employed between the
ar (afternoon) and maghrib (evening) prayers, and following the dawn prayer, prior to
performing an ishraq prayer (a supererogatory prayer said before the sun rises), as well as at
the tomb of a shaykh.385
Chilla
The chilla, as a particular season reckoned among Central Asians, has already been
mentioned, but we have as yet not discussed its ritual significance. The Sufi chilla was a 40-day
period of fasting, meditation, and prayer, derived from the example of Moses practice in seeking
revelation from God.386 As Dkch shns lodge complex contained a chillakhna (a room or
house set aside for keeping the chilla), we can assume that the ritual was a regular part of ritual
life there.387 However, the only actual examples given of the practice were Dkch shns
pilgrimage/retreat to the tomb of Makhdm-i Aam at Dahbd, and the shaykhs seclusion in the
chillakhna before and after he led the d al-a prayer.388 The sources are silent on the
Qalandariyya keeping a chilla per se, but, of course, graveyard seclusion or life among the tombs
filled a similar purpose, sometimes in a more extreme fashion.
384
385
Ibid., 109, 111, 131 (note 203).
386
Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, 103. Interestingly, some Naqshband shaykhs rejected ascetic
exercises, like keeping the chilla, claiming their superior spiritual techniques, like rbia, made their use
unnecessary, see Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism, 118-119.
387
The chillakhna in the former tekke of the Bektshiyya in the Central Anatolian town of Hacbekta, Turkey, for
example, is little more than niche in a wall: observed by the author during a visit in January, 2015.
388
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 98, 129.
131
Psychoactive Drug Use
One area where there seems to have been a clear divergence between Naqshband and
Qalandar practice in nineteenth-century Central Asia, was in the matter of drug use. While none
of the sources suggest that the Naqshbandiyya of the era sought to obtain wajd by the use of
psychoactive drugs, there are examples of Qalandar drug use, though the lack of more detailed
information has prevented scholars from determining whether this use constituted a ritual among
them.389 Vmbry recorded two incidents where he witnessed Qalandar use of opiates, including
in the qalandarkhana at Godje, where he saw two dervishes on the point of swallowing down
their noonday does of opiumand in half an hour [they] were in happy realms.390 The two were
astonished when Vmbry declined their offer to join them, thought he remarked that he would
have liked to hear from their own lips on awaking an account of their dreams. Later, while
visiting the qalandarkhana in Shurakhan, Vmbry witnessed several Dervishes, who had
become as thin as skeletons by the fatal indulgence in the opium called Beng (prepared from
flax)were lying about dreadfully disfigured on the damp ground in their dark cells.391
Schuyler, too, recorded drug use among Qalandars, when he had seen the dhikr at the
qalandarkhana in Samarqand. He said that prior to the ritual it took some little time for a
sufficient number for a chorus could be collected, as many of them were in the town, and the rest
were lying asleep in different parts of the garden, or were half stupid from smoking nasha
[Cannabis], or hemp.392 Further, he noted that they only began the dhikr after taking a
389
390
391
Ibid., 150.
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1 , 257; , ,

392
(: , 2012), 117.
132
friendly pipe of nasha together, to give them the necessary inspiration.393 While this anecdote
does not conclusively show that drug use itself was a ritual among the Qalandariyya, it certainly
seems to have been used as a way to enhance ritual performance, though whether it was for their
own spiritual benefit, or the benefit of the spectators watching the performance, is uncertain.
Vmbrys incidents offer no such clear ties to ritual, but it would be odd to suggest that what
appears to have been wide-spread drug use among the inhabitants of the qalandarkhanas he
describedwhich after all were spiritual institutionslacked a religious dimension.
393
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol. 1 , 257.
133
Chapter 4
Sufi Appearance, Connection to Shrines, and Place in Folklore
Like a flute I sing the song of separation from You

Yet its true that You are near to me each instant.
Its Love that reveals itself to us in all we see;
Sometimes dressed as a Monarch grand,
Others as a beggar on the street, a begging bowl in hand.394
Jm
A description of nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufis would be incomplete, indeed,
without a vivid portrayal of their appearance. For the Sufi, clothes were not merely a matter of
fashion, though the sartorial refinement of some of the Naqshbandiyya, for example, acted as a
uniform of sorts. Clothing, accompanying accessories, and grooming all acted as identity
markers, advertising a Sufis order affiliation and spiritual state. In like manner, journey to and
performance of rituals at sacred shrines associated the pilgrim with the saint interned therein, if
not always with a specific Sufi order. However, there is no doubt that the Central Asian Sufis of
the era, including the sober Naqshbandiyya, patronized, administered, or otherwise included
these holy places in the activities of their organizations, effectively extending a form of
membership, and corporate identity, to a larger swath of society. Just as visiting the tombs of
saints was often the preserve of the common peoplethe majority of those associated with Sufi
394
Oh You, Whose Beauty, Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Mystics to Rumi, trans., ed. Mahmood
Jamal (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 277.
134
orders in this time periodtheir folklore reveals much about their own goals and aspirations in
seeking the baraka of Sufi shaykhs.
Sufi Dress, Accoutrements, and Appearance
A Sufis appearance was often the first thing noted in European travel accounts, with
descriptions accentuating clothing and implements that looked grotesque to nineteenth-century
western eyes. Indeed, dervish was something of a byword among Europeans, indicating a
person of outlandish, unkempt, and destitute appearance, as when the famed Swedish explorer
and geographer Sven Hedin described himself as a dervish amongst better folk in comparing
his worn traveling clothes to the festive garb of his hosts at a Kyrgyz celebration.395 Still, it was
this very scrutinizing, if biased, observance of Sufi dress that has provided us with detailed
descriptions from that time period, particularly of the Qalandariyya. Descriptions of Naqshband
Sufis, though less detailed, are not completely absent from the sources, and a few brief sketches
were provided of their dress, if only to demonstrate the contrast between their appearance and
that of their more colorful Qalandar counterparts.
The Proper Upper Class
In recording his attempt to discern friend from foe among the native elite of Russian
Turkestan, Count Pahlen left some thought provoking recollections on the appearance of the
Naqshbandiyya. It will be remembered how disturbed Pahlen was in surveying the group of
learned mullahs he had brought together in Tashkent because among their number were ten or
twenty Ishans.396 As he viewed Ishanism as a subversive movement, the count was clearly
395
Sven Hedin, Through Asia, vol. 1 (London: Methuen and Co, 1899), 285-286.
396
135
most disturbed by the fact that he was unable to distinguish between an shn and one of his
fellow scholars, who was not connected to a Sufi order, based on appearance. Indeed, in
describing his delightful mulla, he noted that outwardly there was nothing distinctive about
this middle-aged man who received his visitors garbed in the prescribed black khalat [xalat, an
open-fronted, quilted, Uzbek robe] and green turban of a pilgrim to Mecca.397 Clearly, it was
the unremarkable appearance of a Naqshband shaykhs, i.e. that they looked like any other hajjis
or scholars, that troubled Pahlen. To him, here was an enemy capable of the gravest disturbances,
but who lived out its existence clothed in a guise of respectability. Though not animated by the
same security concerns, Ole Olufsen depicted the Naqshbandiyyas patrician look in much the
same way. Though he devoted an entire page to the appearance of the Qalandariyya, he merely
noted that the ecclesiastics (the murids, the mullahs) are the proper upper class of Bokhara.398
Fortunately, the Manqib-i Dkch shn affords us more nuanced insight into a
Naqshband shaykhs appearance. We have already noted that Dkch shn was invested with
the regalia of Sultan-Khan Trah, including his staff and turban, when he became the lodges
leader.399 In addition, the shaykh wore a chakmon (felt jacket) made from the wool of his white
camel, which had been made by the mother of one of his Sufis.400 This jacket was prepared in a
ritually pure environment, as Dkch shn had lectured the old woman about wearing felt being
in accordance with the Sunna, and warned her that she must only engage in the felting process
397
Ibid., 57; Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary, 185.
398
399
Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary, 191; , ,

400
(: , 2012), 10.
136
after performing ablutions. In fact, the shaykh had to send a disciple to stop the woman from
visiting a friend during the process, having miraculously perceived that she was about defile
herself by entering an impure environment, which would have rendered the jacket unwearable.401
The hagiography also records that the shaykh had a doppi (embroidered skullcap worn by
Uzbeks and Tajiks) in which he kept money, and which, like a bottomless treasure chest, was
never empty.402
Given his populist proclivities, however, it should not be surprising to discover that
Dkch shns appearance did not often conform to the standards of the proper upper class.
One of his murds said the shaykh had a habit of going places wearing an old xalat and riding his
ass. Once when Dkch shn had been requested to present himself before the tsarist authorities
at Sm (the present city of Ferghana, Uzbekistan), a Russian guard mistook him for a neer-do-
well and threatened to throw him in prison. Several people came to his defense, and attested that
he was indeed an great shaykh, though the guard, apparently used to seeing spiritually exalted
individuals in more respectable attire (as in Pahlens description), skeptically replied, is he
really an shn? Youre lying to me.403 He then pulled the shaykh off his ass, and replaced him
with his servant, who was wearing a new xalat. The narrator finished this tale by suggesting
Dkch shns manner of dress was in accordance with the spiritual station he had obtained:
riya (contentment).404
401
Ibid., 144.
402
Ibid., 162; Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary, 47. There are several regional types of doppi, including variants
from Andijan and Chust in Uzbekistans portion of the Ferghana Valley, see ,
, (: , 2012), 434-435.
403
Ibid., 161.
404
Ibid., 162. Perhaps the most detailed schematic of Sufi spiritual stations and states was that conceived by the
eleventh-century Khursni Abd al-Karm al-Qushayr, see Knysh, Islamic Mysticism, 130-132, and Michael
137
From the above examples, it is clear that the Naqshbandiyya of nineteenth-century
Central Asia largely practiced the principle of khalwt dar anjuman in terms of their appearance,
taking their place among the assembled scholarly elite, for example, without resorting to unusual
or characteristic clothing to assert their piety (the green turban not being solely the preserve of
their order). Yet, the Manqib-i Dkch shn demonstrates that there were at least two schools
of thought among the order concerning proper dress for a shaykh, as Dkch shn seemed
determined to display his renunciation of finery, and the corrupt society to which it belonged,
through his more humble attire. That his was an unusual style of dress for a Naqshband shaykh,
however, is shown by the disbelief of the Russian guard who had apparently never before seen
an shn in such shabby apparel.
Conical Caps and Begging Bowls
Schuylers description of the Qalandars who participated in the dhikr he witnessed in
Samarqand contrast starkly with the general respectability of the Naqshbandiyya depicted above.
The seven or eight wretched-looking devotees he observed performing the ritual donned their
oldest robes of rags, slung their wallets over their shoulders, and put on the high conical caps,
which are a requisite to their religious toilette.405 Similarly, in My Life As An Explorer, Sven
Hedin included a sketch of A Dervish in Turkestan, which shows a bearded man wearing a fur-
trimmed conical cap, which appears to be decorated with embroidery, and carrying a staff.406 In
another of his works, under the heading of A Dervish From East Turkestan, Hedin
Anthony Sells, trans., ed., Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological writings, The
Classics of Western Spirituality 86 (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 97-150.
405
406
Sven Hedin, My Life As An Explorer, trans. Alfhild Huebsch (New York, Kodansha International, 1996), 106.
138
demonstrated even greater artistic facility, showing a bearded man clothed in rags, carrying a
curved stick, but covering his head with a type of turban rather than a pointed cap.407 Though
Vmbry gave very few details of the clothing he wore while disguised as a dervish, he did note
that he wore a Dervish or fools cap, and that he had an immense turban on his head.408
Olufsens account supplements these more general observations with greater detail,
describing Qalandars in the main square of Khiva all with pointed camel wool caps and a
calabash hanging in a string round their arm. They have alsoan old battle-axe, an iron spear, a
stick with bone rings or such like.409 The official Qalandar dress, according to Olufsen,
included a pointed cap, a black rope to be twisted around his head, a camel hair shirt, a broad
belt and a calabash (dried melon) in which he collects gifts.410 Later in his account the Danish
explorer painted an even more vivid picture:
The dress consists of a high, pointed cap or hood (kul [kuloh]) made of rough, brown
camel hair stuff; it is embroidered with black figures and edged with fur. Under this cap
they wear a roll of plaited, black rope (chiltar). The caftan (don or ton [ton]) is made of a
rough greenish woolen stuff with short white stripes, and under this they wear a small
leather jacket with coloured embroidery. The caftan is held together by a broad leather
belton whose front on the stomach a piece of black polished stoneis nailed. Across
the shoulder by a strap they carry a boat-shaped vesseland in their hand a large dried
pumpkin suspended by leather strapsIn the two latter they keep the articles of food
which they have obtained by beggingthey have a thick cane, ornamented with different
colours, and carrying at the end a short spear, and from their belt hang down one or more
chiselled brass rings. Sometimes instead of a canethey carry a short white stick on
which rings of bone are strung.411
407
Sven Hedin, Through Asia, vol 1, 450.
408
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 164, 293.
409
410
Ibid.
411
Ibid., 396. In Uzbek the kuloh is also known as the qalandar qalpogi (qalandars brimless felt hat), see
Krippes, Uzbek-English Dictionary, 82. The ton, like the xalat, is a type of quilted Uzbek robe. Like the doppi, it
139
Olufsen also included two photographs of Qalandar clothes in his work, one of The
original calandar dress in the town of Bokhara, consisting of a robe and conical cap, of rough
cloth, trimmed with fur, two gourd vessels suspended from leather straps, a wide sash, also
edged with fur, and a short staff, tipped with a spear.412 The other, a photograph of A choir of
calandars, shows a group of bearded men carrying gourd containers and staffs, dressed in a
variety of traditional Uzbek robes (some striped, as in the description above), but all wearing fur-
trimmed, embroidered, conical caps, very similar to that depicted in Hedins sketch.413
The conical cap, a key element in almost all these descriptions, likely indicates that all
these individuals were associated with the Qalandariyya. Such a cap was featured in an
engraving of a Qalandar in a sixteenth-century French travelogue describing the Ottoman
Empire, while an Ottoman writer in the same century noted that Qalandars wore conical caps
made of hair.414 Though other dervish groups in the sixteenth-century Ottoman realm (aydars,
Abdls of Rm) were also noted as having worn the pointed cap, Qalandars were distinguished
by showing slightly more concern with covering their nudity (using woolen jawlaqs), while the
aydars, for example, displayed their iron-pierced genitals.415 While the Qalandars wearing of
the conical cap survived into the nineteenth-century in Central Asia, their costume seems to have
become more elaborate, and practical, incorporating jackets, as well as other underclothes, and
boots instead of bare feet, judging by Olufens photograph. Indeed, by this time the Qalandar
comes in several regional varieties that vary in length, color, etc., see ,
, (: , 2012), 833-834.
412
Ibid.
413
Ibid., 395.
414
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, Figure 1, 66.
415
Ibid., 69, 72.
140
costume even incorporated colored embroidery, a far cry from the plain woolen sacks of Jaml
al-Dn Svs era. In addition, the shaving off of hair, moustache, beard, and eyebrows (chahr
arb) also appears to have been abandoned, as evidenced by the bearded men in Olufsens
photograph, and the individual depicted in Hedins sketch.
That the begging bowl figured prominently among the Qalandar accoutrements in
Olufsens description should not be surprising, given the importance of alms-collecting to the
orders survival. In fact, the museum that now inhabits the former palace of Khudyr Khan in
the city of Kokand, Uzbekistan, features a rather finely made metal Qalandar begging bowl
among its collection.416 The spear and the battle axe are similar to the hatchets and clubs known
to have been carried by other dervish groups for defensive purposes, and the staffs likely served
a similar purpose.417 More curious are the belt with chiseled brass rings, and the stick strung with
rings of bone. They call to mind the iron rings, collars, and bracelets worn by the aydars
which illustrated their triumph over the desires of the fleshand the ankle-bones, of obscure
origin, carried by the Abdls of Rm.418
Perhaps the brass rings symbolically represented something of a conquest of animal
passions to nineteenth-century Qalandars, or, perhaps, like the iron bells of the aydars, they
served to keep the group together and also to convey secret messages to those who were capable
of receiving them, while they wandered from place to place collecting alms.419 The stick with
416
Observed by the author during a visit to the museum in May, 2011.
417
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 14. The author saw similar Sufi-owned defensive implements displayed in
the Mevlna Museum, located in the former tekke of the Mevlev order in Konya, Turkey, during a visit in June,
2014.
418
419
Ibid., 69.
141
bone rings, whatever its symbolic value (a reflection of the Qalandar focus on pre-mortem
death, perhaps), no doubt functioned like the drums and tambourines they used to accompany
their chanted prayers and singing.420 However strange these Qalandars appeared to the likes of
Olufsen, Schuyler, and Hedin, it is clear that their costume had undergone significant changes
from that of their early predecessors, and that by the nineteenth century they had adopted, to a
certain degree, a more respectable appearance, in line with the norms of Islamic society, and
fellow Sufi orders like the Naqshbandiyya. The Qalandars in Olufsens photograph certainly
look very tame when compared to the sixteenth-century engraving which depicts a Qalandar
wearing little beyond the above-mentioned conical cap and the skin of a wild animal.
Animal Hides and Clubs
We have already discussed some of the major difference between Olufsens Qalandars
and dervishes, whom he considered to be two distinct groups. As befitted their commitment to
the original, antinomian Qalandar practices of public nudity, itinerancy, solitude, silence, and
graveyard dwelling, the dervishes appearance was markedly distinct from that of the
mainstream Qalandariyya. Olufsen noted that their dress only consists in a large bears, tigers
or panthers skin tied around the waist with a rope. The other parts of the body are naked, and
their heads must only be covered by their longish black hair hanging down their backs.421 The
Dane also noted another variant of dervish, who shave their heads quite bare, and stated that
both types carried clubs.422 Indeed, he remarked, that they are forbidden, or to put it more
420
Ibid., 66
421
422
Ibid., 208, 397.
142
correctly, it is an established custom that they do not possess anything except the club and the
skin.423
The wearing of animal skins by Qalandars in the Ottoman Empire was noted by an Italian
in the early part of the sixteenth century. As already noted, an engraving from the same century
shows a Qalandar clothed in such a skin (apparently that of a large feline, judging by the still-
attached claws depicted dangling from the hide), though the Abdls of Rm dressed in a similar
fashion.424 The latter group was also known to carry clubs, probably as a protective measure, as
did the dervishes described by Olufsen. Interestingly, even among the dervishes he describes
further variations, some wearing long, flowing hair, while others had their heads (if not their
eyebrows, and other facial hair) shaved in the tradition of Jaml al-Dn Sv. While we cannot, at
this stage, determine the relationship between Olufsens Qalandars and dervishes, this brief
analysis of differences in appearance between the groups, again, demonstrates that the early
Qalandar ascetic virtuosi type survived into the nineteenth-century in Central Asia.
Shrines, Pilgrimage, and the Sufi Connection
It is difficult to overstate the paramount place that pilgrimage to sacred places has played
in the religious life of Central Asias Muslims through the centuries. These sacred sites, which
offered spiritual succor to a variety of individuals seeking supernatural intervention in the
vicissitudes of their daily lives, dotted the region. Indeed, a study of the post-Soviet revival of
shrine pilgrimage in contemporary Uzbekistan found that in that country alone there is an
423
Ibid., 397.
424
Karamustafa, Gods Unruly Friends, 19, 65-66.
143
estimated 3,500 such sites.425 The goals of supplicants visiting shrines has traditionally included
relief from infertility or other illness, requests for a highly-valued male child in families with all
female children, and pleas for prosperity in social or economic ventures.426 As already shown,
ziyrat to a living holy person in pursuit of such goals, especially in the case of infertility or
illness, was a frequent occurrence in the nineteenth century. Visiting the tombs of deceased holy
persons fulfilled the same role, and, due to their proliferation in the region, were more accessible
than living saints to a majority of the population.
What made these places sacred? No doubt many criteria can contribute to the valorization
of a locality. In the context of Islamic Central Asia, however, holy places were either connected
with the burial places of actual or imaginary saints, including prophets from the Biblical and
Quranic traditions, or their miraculous power was associated with the surrounding landscape
(caves and rocks of unusual shapes, healing springs, trees, etc.).427 In addition to those
connected to scriptural figures, the Soviet ethnographer S.P. Snesarev noted the existence of
shrines associated with saintly personages of vague identity (lacking proper names and
biographies), figures from the early history of Islam, and medieval Sufis, while also noting that
the tombs of local rulers had become the subject of pilgrimage out of inertia.428
425
David M. Abramson and Elyor E. Karimov, Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the
Uzbek State, in Everyday Life in Central Asia: Past and Present, eds. Jeff Sahedo and Russell Zanca
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 319.
426
Ibid., 322; Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 626.
427
Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 626. In May 2011 the author visited just such a sacred spring in the
mountainous Vorukh enclave of Tajikistan, where a small shrine dedicated to Khoja Chimurghan Baba is located.
428
Quoted in: Ibid., 626 (Footnote 1). In analyzing a shrine catalogue (from either the mid-eighteenth century or the
second half of the nineteenth century) regarding the tombs of saints in the city of Sayrm, in southern Kazakhstan,
DeWeese discovered that rulers, jurists, scholars, those connected to Islamization, participants in holy war,
descendants of Yasav, disciples of famous Yasav and Naqshband shaykhs, disciples of unknown Sufi shaykhs,
and famous healers figured among there number, see Devin DeWeese, Sacred History for a Central Asian Town
144
Beyond their role in the lives of pilgrims, shrines imparted financial benefit and an aura
of respect to those who could claim descent from the holy person buried there, such as the khoja
groups which asserted their rights to administer the waqf associated with the Yasav tomb
complex in Turkestan.429 Such tomb complexes also took on political significance, as in the
Emirate of Bukhara where political rituals, such as coronations, took place at shrines.430 Indeed,
an early nineteenth-century Muslim traveler from India claimed that the Manghit Emir Haydar
Trah (r. 1800-1826) made a pilgrimage, on foot, to the shrine of Bah al-Dn Naqshband every
Wednesday morning.431 Similarly, the Alid shrine at Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, source of
the toponym Mazar-i Sharif, has figured prominently in the political history of the region,
being embraced and affected by various polities, from the Timurid state in the fifteenth century
through the Muhammadzais of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, to the present. Successive
shrine mutavallis (an office passed through lineal descent) elicited the patronage of successive
regimes, increasing the holy places economic and political clout, though the savvy management
of its associated waqf properties and pilgrims offerings was also key to the shrines longevity.432
To adequately analyze the history, architecture, economic basis, political and economic
significance, and administration of even one major shrine is far beyond the scope of the present
Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in Histories of Sayrm, 18th-19th Centuries, Revue des mondes musulmans
et de la Mditerrane, Vol. 89-90 (Jul., 2000): 245-295.
429
430
Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 628.
431
Hafiz Muhammad Fazil Khan, The Uzbek Emirates of Buhkara and Khulum in the Early 19 th Century, As
described in an Indian Travelogue: Tarikh-i-Manazil-i-Bukhara (1812 A.D.), trans., ed., Dr. Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui
(Patna, Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, 1993), 31.
432
McChesney, Waqf in Central Asia, 316-318.
145
study.433 Rather, it will be our purpose to explore, on a more basic level, the Sufi-shrine nexus in
Central Asia during this era. In order to do so, it will be necessary to begin by providing a very
brief sketch of the place of shrines in Sufi orders throughout the Islamic world, a trend which
Trimingham, rather derisively, referred to as part and parcel of the saint-cult.434 In his
estimation, this cult related to the tombs of holy men arose during the later, ifa stage of
Sufism, and was overly focused on obtaining baraka from the awliy, which represented a
degeneration of Sufisms original goals, fettered the individual creative freedom of the
mystic, and led to the perpetual hiving off into new orders.435 Schimmel, too, noted the
importance of baraka in shrine pilgrimage, saying that the high ambitions of the classical Sufis
were considerably watered down, while conceding that, in Sufisms latter days, shrines
provided the rank and file of the faithful with an emotional outlet for their feelings of
veneration for the holy man.436 Knysh put shrine pilgrimage in the context of the rise of the
orders, suggesting that their emphasis on the study of the hagiographies of deceased masters
was instrumental in the rise of the posthumous cult of Sufi saints.437
Buehler has provided a more nuance understanding of the place of shrines in Sufism,
while avoiding the value judgments and lamentations about the post-classical decline of Sufism
so characteristic of earlier scholarship. His mediating-shaykh arose in the latter stages of
433
For a fascinating discussion on the structure, architecture, and pre-Islamic origins of tombs and associated holy
sites in our region, see Yelizaveta Nekrasova, The Burial Structures at the or-Bakr Necropolis Near Bukhara
From the Late 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asiafrom the 18th to the
Early 20th Centuries, vol. 1, eds. Michael Kemper, et. al. (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 369-385.
434
435
Ibid., 103-104.
436
437
146
Sufisms development (as late as in the colonial-era in India) and acted as the sole intermediary
between the Prophet and believers [which] dramatically contrast[ed] with Naqshband directing-
shaykhs [of previous eras] who taught disciples how they themselves could arrive near God and
manipulate supernatural power.438 It was these shaykhs who were connected with a variegated
religious topography of tomb-shrinespotent places to contact God, where even the sober,
revivalist Mujadiddiyya partook in shrine pilgrimage.439 This tolerance of pilgrimage, he argued,
allowed the Naqshbandiyya to bridge the gap between the urban ulama and the activities
associated with thefestive atmosphere of rural Panjabi shrine practices that demanded little
from the visitor except a material contribution for services rendered.440
Places of Pilgrimage: Saintly Association, Location, and Layout
As today, the shrines of the awliy in nineteenth-century Central Asia varied widely in
their locations. Though not all-important, a shrines accessibility, among other factors (including
the notoriety of the holy person linked to the site, and the nature of his miracles), contributed to
its popularity, and, hence, its financial base, and physical layout. For the purposes of the present
study, it will suffice to roughly divide holy places into rural and suburban/urban varieties, while
keeping in mind the typologies of Snesarev, and begin the discussion of the Sufi-shrine nexus by
providing a few representative examples from the era.
With a geographers eye for collecting and recording topographic data, Sven Hedin
provided some of the most meticulous descriptions of nineteenth-century Central Asian shrines.
438
439
Ibid., 169.
440
Ibid., 175.
147
Representative of the holy places he noted in the mountainous territory among the Kyrgyz was
his description of the shrine on the Kyzylart Pass (which crosses the Trans-Alay Range between
contemporary Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) as it appeared in March, 1894:
On the very highest point of the pass stood the burial-cairn of the Mohammedan saint
Kizil-art, a mound of stones, decorated with the religious offerings of pious Kirghiz,
namely tughs (i.e. sticks with rags tied round them), pieces of cloth, and antelopes
horns.441
The Kyrgyz traveling with Hedin told him that Kizil-art was an aulia [awliy] or saint, who in
the time of the Prophet traveled from the Alai valley to the countries of the south to preach
abroad the true faith and that after his death he had been buried on the passs highest point.442
The Swede noted, however, that other Kyrgyz informants related that the cairn had simply been
built in commemoration of the saint, which he considered a more likely explanation for its
existence.443 This figure, whose name simply means red pass in Kyrgyz, belongs to that
category of vaguely identified saints said to hail from the early years of Islam.
In contrast to this remote holy place, accessible only to the hardy souls who braved the
over 14,000-foot pass, was the prominent tomb of Zang Ata (a legendary follower of Hakm
Ata, the chief successor of Amad Yasav) in Tashkent.444 In his description of the place,
Schuyler referred to Zang Ata as the patron of Tashkent and of all the country round about
441
Sven Hedin, Through Asia, vol.1. (London: Methuen and Co, 1899), 153.
442
Ibid.
443
Ibid.
DeWeese, The Eclipse of the Kubravyah in Central Asia, Iranian Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1/2, Soviet and North
444
American Studies on Central Asia (1988): 45-83; Devin DeWeese, Three Tales from the Central Asian Book of
Hakm Ata, in Tales of Gods Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Translation, ed. John Renard (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009), 126.
148
noting his tomb was on the way to Samarqand, about eight miles from the town.445 This very
shabby suburban shrine, however, was reminiscent of that dedicated to Kyzylart in its
decoration of rams horns and long bits of dirty rag which every pilgrim had felt it a necessity to
tie there on some stick or tree.446 Schuyler noted that the tomb of Zang Atas mother was
located close by, though he dismissed the tomb itself as being of very minor importance,
suggesting that the nearby madrassas fine garden, with orchard, ponds, and canals, suited to the
pic-nics and out-of-door feasts that necessarily accompany pilgrimages of piety to the country
was a bigger draw.447 In contrast to the vague holy person associated with the Kyzylart Pass, here
we have the shrine of a medieval Sufi, if a legendary one, with a more defined biography.
In February, 1895 Hedin visited another rural shrine near the pasturelands at the foot of
theMasar-tagh (tomb/shrine mountain) mountain range, near Maralbashi in what is now
Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). There the Ulug-masar (the Great
Tomb) [stood] surrounded by a grey wall of sun-dried bricks.448 It had a
large square courtyard, in which a ring of long sticks were thrust into the ground round a
bush. Both sticks and bush were hung with flags and pennonsThence a door led into a
khanekah [khnaqh] or prayer house, the floor of which was covered with carpets. At
the far end was an open woodwork screen, and behind it the tomb of the saint in a square
dark room decorated with flags, tughs (rags), deers antlers, and the horns of wild sheep.
The shrine, together with its gumbez (dome) was built of kiln-burnt bricksIn the outer
court there was an ashbazkhaneh, or kitchen, where they [pilgrims] cook their food.449
445
446
Ibid.
Ibid. In addition to the madrassa the grounds also contain a mosque, see ,
447
, (: , 2012), 26-27.
448
Hedin, Through Asia, 451.
449
Ibid., 451-452.
149
Unfortunately, Hedin provided no information as to the identity of the saintly personage
associated with this particular shrine, though, by this very absence in the account, we can deduce
that it was likely that of a saint only known locally, or about whom there was only limited
biographical information.
The following month, Hedin journeyed to the shrine of Ordan Padshah in the desert, two
days journey west of Lailik, a village on the Yarkand River in the contemporary XUAR.450
Hedin provided a detailed description of the holy place, noting that there was a
khanekahadjoining the shrine which stood in a village of twenty-five households.451
Among the other structures associated with the shrine was a kazan-khane, (cauldron house)
which contained five large cauldrons set apart for receiving the pilgrims offerings, the biggest
being called the Altyn-dash or Gold Stonesaid to date back eight hundred years, from the
time of Ordan Padshah himself.452 These cauldrons, one of which was a gift from Yakub Beg
of Kashgar, who himself made three pilgrimages to the place were used by the custodians of
the shrine [to] make ash or pillauWhen there [was] a great influx of pilgrims.453 The other
features of the shrine were a grave-mound decorated with tughs[which] contained the dust of
Shah Yakub Sheikh, a spring, and the tomb of Ordan Padshah himself, composed of a sheaf of
two or three thousand tughs, each with a pennon attached, stacked up in the shape of an Eifel
tower. Standing forty feet high on the top of a sand dune.454
450
Ibid., 463.
451
Ibid., 465.
452
Ibid., 467, 469.
453
Ibid., 469.
454
Ibid., 470.
150
According to Hedin, the shrine was the resting place of
Sultan Ali Arslan Khan [of the Karakhanid dynasty, a.k.a Ordan Padshah] [who] eight
hundred years agowas at enmity with the tribe of Togdarashid-Noktarashid, among
whom he was endeavouring to propagate Islam. In the midst of the strife he was
overtaken by a kara-buran, or black sand-storm, from Kharesm (Khiva) which buried him
and the whole of his army.455
Here we have a shrine associated with a historical figure who was both a local ruler and a
member of dynasty well-known for propagating Islam, having initiated the Islamization of
Chinese Turkestan. At the same time, the remains of other figures, such as Shah Yakub
Sheikh, were also located at the complex. It must be noted that the fact that the complex
contained a khnaqh, as did the shrine at Ulug-masar, points more readily to a Sufi
connection than, say, the cairn on the Kyzylart Pass.
Places of Pilgrimage: Administration and Rituals
Though it is not possible in the current study to adequately describe the administration of
such shrines in the nineteenth century, even where sufficient information exists, any discussion
of the Sufi-shrine nexus would be incomplete without at least making mention of the shrines
staff, and their ties to Sufi orders. Similarly, to detail the complex of rituals which took place at
these holy places would require a complete study in itself. However, a glimpse into some of
these sacred activities will be provided below, with an eye to tying them to more specifically
Sufi-associated modes of piety.
455
Ibid.
151
Administration
As noted previously, the Sufi role in administering Central Asian waqfs (especially the
shrines associated with them) stretches back to the time of Sayf al-Dn Bkharz, the thirteenth-
century Kubrawiyya shaykh that founded a Bukharan branch of that order.456 Using the
documents associated with the waqf of the great fifteenth-century Naqshband pir Ubaydullh
Arr of Samarqand, Jo-Ann Gross has demonstrated the longevity of the ties between the scions
of prominent Sufi lineages and the shrines of their illustrious forbearers. In the late fifteenth
century Arr created a waqf to support various institutions (madrassas, khnaqhs, mosques),
which his lineal descendants were to administer as mutavallis. Through the centuries the Arri
family parlayed this office into a significant social, economic, and spiritual role in the
community. By 1884, 800 tenants inhabited houses linked to the waqf, while by the early Soviet
era, when the endowment had been liquidated along with the Arri familys administrative
duties, hundreds claimed to be descendants of Arr. Thus, through the nineteenth century this
descent group (many of whom were likely of actual Arri lineage) administered the shaykhs
waqf, including his khnaqh-shrine complex.457 Gross, however, provides no specific reference
to the Arri familys active participation in the nineteenth-century Naqshbandiyya as an order.
The Scottish soldier, explorer, and spy Alexander Burnes noted a similar phenomenon of
administration via lineal-descent during his visit to the shrine of Bah al-Dn Naqshband in the
456

457
Gross, The Waqf of Khoja Ubaydullah Ahrar in Nineteenth Century Central Asia: A preliminary Study of the
Tsarist Record, 47, 49, 60. Further north, in southern Kazakhstan, the hereditary shrine administrators visited
appointed nomadic tribes and clans in the region to gather alms in addition to collecting offerings from pilgrims, see
Airbek K. Muminov, Veneration of Holy Sites of the Mid-Srdarya Valley: Continuity and Transformation,
Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asiafrom the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 1, eds. Michael Kemper,
et. al. (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 366.
152
village of Qasr-i Arifan, Emirate of Bukhara, in the early 1830s. Burnes wrote that the complex
was very richly endowed, and the descendants of Bhawa Deen are its protectors.458 He was
entertained by one of these descendants, presumably the mutavalli, who Burnes said gave us
cinnamon tea, and wished to kill a sheep for our entertainment and was most particular in his
enquiries regarding the name of the saint [i.e. Naqshband], and if it had travelledinto
Europe.459 As in Gross analysis of the administrators of Arrs waqf in the nineteenth century,
it is not entirely clear if the individual Burnes met was, strictly speaking, a member of the
Naqshband order, or merely claimed descent from Bah al-Dn Naqshband. Perhaps, in both
cases, the individuals discussed were more akin to the khoja descent groups who oversaw the
Yasav tomb complex in Turkestan, and not practicing Sufis (i.e. members of an order), per se.460
However, it should be mentioned that during Schuylers visit to Qasr-i Arifan, some forty years
later, the diplomat noted the presence of Two or three monks[as well as an] Ishan at the
tomb complex.461
Like Burnes, Hedin also failed to draw explicit connections between an order and a holy
place in his account of the Ordan Padshah shrine. However, he made one tantalizing observation
on the link between the complexs workaday administration and an unnamed Sufi. He noted that
458
Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara; Being the Account of a Journey from India to Cabool, Tartary, and
Persia; also Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus from the Sea to Lahore, with Presents from the King of Great
Britain; Performed under the Orders of the Supreme Government of India in the Years 1831, 1832, and 1833, vol. 1
(London: John Murray, 1834), 318-319.
459
Ibid., 319.
460
461
Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan: Notes of a journey in Russian Turkistan, Khokand, Bukhara, and Kuldja, vol. 2
(New York: Scribner, Armstrong and Co., 1877), 114.
153
near to the shrine, in the desert village of Lengher, a dervish resides during the great annual
religious festivals [at the shrine of Ordan Padshah], to take charge of the pilgrims horseshe
also sells maize to the pilgrims and supplies the shrine with fuel.462 In addition, similar to the
findings of Gross and the account of Burnes, the Swede said that while most of the villages
denizens only remained there temporarily, the shrines caretakers consisted of
four families [who] remain the whole year round to take care of the saints tombThe
permanent personnel of the shrine [were] an imam or reader of prayers, a mutevelleh
[mutavalli] or steward of the shrine properties, and twenty supehs or men-servants.
Allfed and maintained at the exclusive expense of the pilgrims.463
Here again, it would seem, is a reference to a descent group who maintained the shrine, and
benefitted from the administration thereof. Furthermore, Hedin noted their links to another shrine
complex, stating the holy places principal sheikh also had control over the Hazrett Begims
tombat Yangi-Hissar [also in todays XUAR]and constantly travel backwards and forwards
between the two shrines.464
One nineteenth-century source that does make an explicit connection between a shrine
administrator and an (un-named) Sufi order is the Firdaws Al-Iqbl, a court-sponsored history of
the khans of Khiva. In it is described an 1807 hunting trip of the Inaqid khan Muhammad Rahim
during which he visited a shrine near Kohna-Urganch in present-day Turkmenistan. There,
he had the honor to visit the sayyid of the holy lineagea star in the constellation of the
mystical path (tarqat), a gem in the jewel-box of the Divine Reality (aqqat), the
462
463
Ibid., 465-466.
464
Ibid., 465.
154
shaykh of the shaykhs of the worldhis holiness ishan Pirim Khojawho was the
guardian of the holy tomb of his own shaykhMawlana Niyaz Akhund Baba.465
While light on detail, this snippet, like Schuylers description of Bah al-Dn Naqshbands
tomb, mentions the presence of an ishan at the tomb. Furthermore, this individual, rather than
being described as a mere descendant of the tombs holy occupant, is referred to as having been
guided by the saint on the Sufi path, i.e. as being part of an order.
Rituals
Practices performed by pilgrims at Central Asian shrines have traditionally included
lighting candles, tying bits of cloth on nearby trees, and making animal sacrifices or other
offerings.466 Feasting and festivals have also played an important role in shrine pilgrimage in the
region, and featured prominently among those rituals recorded in the nineteenth-century sources.
Schuyler, for example, attended the festival associated with the tomb of Zang Ata, which was so
popular among the inhabitants of Tashkent that the city was nearly deserted while it was
underway. However, beyond a large row of womenweeping and wailing near the lattice of
theshrine the main activity was not at the tomb, but in the adjacent
tents and boothsSamovars were smoking everywhere, and all along the brook were
pots where pilaf was preparing. In almost every booth there was someone playing on the
guitar and singingboys were constantly dancing to the music of a large native
orchestra.467
465
Shir Muhammad Mirab Munis and Muhammad Riza Mirab Agahi, Firdaws Al-Iqbl: History of Khorezm, trans.,
ed., Yuri Bregel (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 259.
Abramson and Karimov, Sacred Sites, Profane Ideologies: Religious Pilgrimage and the Uzbek State, 320-322;
466
Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 643.

467
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 138-139.
155
Hedin, too, described a shrine festival (at Ordan Padshah) though it had a decidedly more
religious, if no less exuberant, character:
Forty-fivemen, women, and childrenwere on their wayto pray at the tomb of the
saint. Fifteen of the men carried tughs, i.e. long sticks with white and coloured pennons
fluttering from the ends. At the head of the procession rode a flute-player, and on each
side of him was a man banging away at a drumEvery now and then the whole
concourse shouted Allah!when they drew near to the shrine, they greeted the sheikh
who had charge of it with wild howls of Allah! Allah! while the standard-bearers
performed a religious danceOne of the resident custodians informed me that, every
winter 10,000 to 12,000 pilgrims visit the shrine of Ordan Padshah; but in the summer
there are usually not more than 5,000 [due to] the heat and scarcity of water468
This festival also contained a sacrificial component, Hedin noting that its rites included pilgrims
depositing sacks of maize in the shrines khnaqh. Subsequently, they made a thorough good
meal of it [the maize offering], in which they were joined by the custodians of the shrine. The
tribute was, however, a prayer for a fruitful year.469
Schuyler noted offerings of a different character in his visit to the famed Shah-i-Zinda
necropolis outside Samarqand. There pilgrims prostrated themselves in front of an
object covered with clothsthese cloths are small offerings which have been placed in it
at different times, consisting of prayer-cloths on which Mussulmans have knelt, and in
fulfillment of some vow, or in gratitude for some favor, have been bestowed on the
saint.470
These cloths likely fulfilled a function similar to those Schuyler witnessed tied to trees at the
tomb of Zang Ata, and which Hedin described at the shrine on the Kyzylart Pass.471 The
468
469
Ibid., 465-466.
470
471
The author has seen many such wish trees in close proximity to holy tombs throughout Central Asia and
Turkey. The tree next to the purported tomb of the Biblical Prophet Daniel (Xoja Daniyor) near Samarqand is
particularly festooned with colorful bits of cloth: observed during a visit in August 2010.
156
animals horns also noted at each of these locations (as well as at the Ulug-masar) may have
been the remnants of animal sacrifices. Alexander Burnes remarked that the shrine of Bah al-
Dn Naqshband and most buildings of a similar nature were marked with the horns of the
rams that had been sacrificed at the spot.472 This may not account for the presence of the horns
and antlers of other creatures (deer, antelope, wild sheep), but Burnes comment that they
denote power is accurate, if lacking in nuance.473 Similarly, the tugs frequently noted by Hedin,
and alluded to by Schuyler, (consisting of sticks trailing flags, bits of rag, or tufts of hair) have a
long association with military standards, and thus power, among Turkic and Mongolic
peoples.474 As votive offerings they were often installed in their thousands, either accruing over
time or ceremonial planted en masse by pilgrims accompanied by a collective shout.475
Amidst this proliferation of offerings and boisterous festivities, rituals more-properly
associated with Sufi orders also took place at shrines. Of his visit to Shah-i-Zinda, Schuyler
wrote
I paid but little attention to the tomb of the saint, my curiosity being attracted by the
proceedings of the Jahria brotherhood in the little mosque at the entrance. The rites were
much the same as I had seen at Tashkent, but there seemed far more excitement, and the
mosque was crowded with worshippers, all looking intently at the struggling crowd of
devotees, who were pushing each other from side to side of the mosque, with continual
shouts of Hasbi rabi jal Allah!476
472
Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, 319.
473
Ibid.
474
A tug, made of horse or ox tails, was used by the Uyghur Khanate in the eight century and by Chingiz khan in
the thirteenth century, see , , (:
, 2012), 806-807. The Ottoman sultans also used a tug, specifically one with six tails, see
Ziya Gkalp, Trk Medeniyeti Tarihi (Istanbul: Bilgeouz, 2013), 155.
475
Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 645, 650.
476
157
It must be admitted that, as described, this dhikr was hardly more restrained or somber that many
of the other rites performed at shrines. Indeed, the wild howls of Allah! Allah! and religious
dance witnessed by Hedin at the shrine of Ordan Padshah was likely a variety of vocal dhikr.
Similarly, Babajanov notes that Sufis performed a dhikr-i jahr at the transfer of a relic (a hair
from the beard of the Prophet) to its new resting place in the city of Marghilan, in the Ferghana
Valley, in the early nineteenth century.477
While dhikr could lend itself to popular performance at shrines, the Manqib-i Dkch
shn recorded the observance of other rituals at holy places, conducted in a more subdued
manner. It will be recalled that Dkch shn sought confirmation of his calling by performing a
pilgrimage to the tomb of Bah al-Dn Naqshband where he lived for many days.478 After
communing with the spirit of Naqshband during this vigil (murqaba), the shaykh decamped for
Dahbd, where he engaged in chilla at the tomb of Makhdm-i Aam.479 Later, in the company
of some of his murds, the shaykh made a pilgrimage to a qadamjoy (holy place) associated
with Khoja Padshah in the village of Quva (40 km southeast of Andijan) and formed a alqa.480
The Qalandariyya, too, performed their months-long watch at the tomb of saints as part of their
initiation, and Olufsens dervishes seemingly lived in graveyards.481
477
Babadjanov, Kokandskoe Khanstvo, 647. Vocal dhikrs also accompanied pilgrimages to the tomb of Yasav in
Turkestan until it was closed by the Soviet authorities in the late 1920s, see Muminov, Veneration of Holy Sites of
the Mid-Srdarya Valley: Continuity and Transformation, Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asiafrom the 18th
to the Early 20th Centuries, vol. 1, eds. Michael Kemper, et. al. (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 366.
478
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 98
479
Ibid. See chapter three for a description of this ritual.
480
Ibid., 111.
481
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 206, 397-398.
158
Places of Pilgrimage: A Sufi-Shrine Nexus Case-Study
Beyond these mentions of ritual observance at tombs, a few incidents from the Manqib-i
Dkch shn clearly demonstrate the connection between a living, practicing Sufi shaykh (i.e.
one who maintained a khnaqh and turned out competent disciples) and shrines, nicely
addressing issues of their establishment, administration, and place within the shaykhs order. The
first incident occurred at the qadamjoy of Khoja Padshah, where, in the midst of his alqa,
Dkch shn suddenly arose and then quickly sat back down. When later asked by one of his
murds why he had done so, the shaykh explained
I saw that two saints [aziz] had come forth from their mausoleums [maqbara]. I stood up,
welcomed them, and having shook hands, realized that I was in a alqa and immediately
sat back down. During the alqa these venerable [saints] complained that there was no
true man [mard] who would hang a cauldron [qazan] (over fire) and who would arrange a
feast in their honor, accompanied with the saying of benevolent prayers. Now we [i.e.
Dkch shns order] need to build a facility for preparing food [oshxona], put a
cauldron there, invite Sufis from Quva and charge them to read the Xatm-i Khoja
[formulae/verses from the Quran used by the Naqshbandiyya, a variant of the wird ].
God willing, it will be good, if they also say benevolent prayers in honor of these
venerable, blessed people.482
That same day Dkch shn gave orders for the construction of the oshxona, and within two
days it was built, and the reading of the Xatm-i Khoja and the preparation of food was
established on Thursdays and Fridays. Having completed the work, Dkch shn said let this be
dedicated to the charitable works of these two venerable saints.483
This was not the only time, however, that the shaykh was directly involved in physically
altering a place of pilgrimage. On another occasion a delegation of murds from a town named
482
483
Ibid., 112.
159
Kk-Bl, south of Osh, came to ask their pir to build them a mosque. Their forefathers, likely
nomadic Kyrgyz, had never built a mosque and Dkch shns disciples wanted a place for their
children to be educated and where they could perform the five daily prayers. The shaykh decided
that if he did not build a mosque for these ignorant people, they might fall into sin, and went
to oversee the project in person.484
Upon arriving at the hamlet where the mosque was to be built, Dkch shn noticed that
there was no place nearby to cut timber for the construction, except one stream along which
poplars grew. The shaykh asked, what are those trees? The [local] Sufis replied those poplars
are beside a shrine (mazr), and under them there is a spring.485 After investigating the holy
place he saw that the spring under the trees no longer flowed, and that the remaining water was
mixed with the urine of cattle.486 The shaykh then ordered his disciples to bring axes and hoes
saying, before we build a mosque we should dig and equip a hauz [water storage pool].487
Several local Sufis, however, objected O master, this is an old mazr, and we anciently
worshipped the one who is buried there. How can we cut these poplars?488
At this protest, Dkch shn became indignant, exclaiming that he heard enough of this
supposed saint (awliy), who was satisfied to rest near a filthy stream, and stating that the
shrines unhygienic character indicated the saints lack of authenticity. He roared, if I could see
this saint of yours, whom you worship so, I would knock off his head. Well, cut down those
484
Ibid., 102.
485
Ibid., 103.
486
Ibid.
487
Ibid.
488
Ibid.
160
poplars!489 As the disciples began to cut down the trees, an old and large snake crawled out of
the shrine and Dkch shn said, well, cut off that snakes head. This is the very saint in
which you and your fathers have believed and have worshiped.490 After the snake was
dispatched, the construction of the pool was continued, with the shaykh ordering a wall to be
built around it, to prevent it from being fouled by cattle and to preserve its ritual purity.491
Both of these anecdotes demonstrate the power of shrines in perpetuating a Sufi order in
nineteenth-century Central Asia. In the first, the qadamjoy of Khoja Padshah is clearly the
resting place of Naqshband or Naqshband-affiliated saints. Otherwise, the revivalist Dkch
shn would not have made a pilgrimage there, performed a ritual with his disciples, and
established the recitation of a Naqshband formula on the saints behalf. By setting up rituals to
honor saints who inhabited an already established place of pilgrimage, the shaykh was laying
claim to their lineage and further burnishing his own credentials as a prominent holy man. He co-
opted this holy place, and likely made it an even more popular pilgrimage destination by
involving local disciples and founding a feast for visitorsa key component of the festivities at
the tomb of Zang Ata. By so doing, Dkch shn, like the mediating-shaykhs of colonial
India, expanded the membership of or extended the reach of his organization, showing that his
order could accommodate both sober revivalism, as well as the exuberance of shrine festivities.
The building of the hauz among the nomadic Kyrgyz tells of a different manner of co-
opting a local shrine. Here the issue is not Dkch shn weaving himself into a provincial
Naqshband shrine cult, but his attempt to thoroughly Islamizeand better connect himself to
489
Ibid., 103-104.
490
Ibid., 104.
491
Ibid.
161
those who had already accepted him as their spiritual patron.492 It is interesting that the
individual buried in the tomb was referred to in the hagiography as an awliy though the
Kyrgyz admitted that they and their fathers had worshipped him anciently. The identity of this
saint, like that of Kyzylart and countless others, is unclear, though it seems that he had pre-
Islamic origins, even if he had been ascribed some Islamic credentials, because rather than
absorb the saints worship into his order Dkch shn sought his entire destruction.
This tomb, like one described by Hedin among the Kyrgyz of the Pamir Mountains, was
the only source of wood in the neighborhood, because, like in Hedins account, it was associated
with a holy place.493 By re-purposing the wood associated with the tomb, and by turning the
tomb area itself into a pool where wu (ritual washing) could be performed, the shaykh was
seeking to revalorize the place of pilgrimage. Here he established a covenant between himself
and the Kyrgyz, definitively replacing the local shrine cult with an Islamic institution that would
be traced to his authority; using water, a symbol of regeneration, purification, and rebirth. 494 The
shaykhs unblocking and cleansing the spring, and placing a fence to prevent future
contamination by flocks (perhaps symbolic of the Kyrgyzs nomadic past), is also demonstrative
of this narrative of renewal. At the same time, like the seventeenth-century holy men of Bengal
who brought forest peoples into the cultural orbit of the Islamic Mughal state via agriculture and
the construction of shrines and mosques, Dkch shn was establishing himself as the founder of
a new Islamic community.495 Using a hauz, and mosque, he more forcefully bound a semi-
492
493
494
Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, 129-132.
495
Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, xxii-xxiii, 113-119, 307-308.
162
nomadic group to a geographic location that, though not exactly a place of pilgrimage, was
subsequently associated with his organization. It is fitting that this process could only go forward
after the shaykh had defeated a counterfeit saint in corporeal form, having his disciples behead it.
As in the conversion narrative of zbek Khan of the Golden Horde (r. 1313-1341), where the
saint Baba Tkles defeated the khans sorcerers through a religious contest in a sacred enclosure,
Dkch shn killed the old saint, and destroyed, in one sense, the old communal order and
reorganized it with Islam as the focus.496
Sufis in Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Folklore
Sufis, and associated saints, appeared in the folklore of nineteenth-century Central Asia,
as revered figures wielding supernatural powers and, occasionally, as objects of ridicule. As a
hagiography dedicated to the miracles of a Mujadidd shaykh, the Manqib-i Dkch shn is a
prime example of a collection of legends or stories about events, including historical events,
placed in a supranormal contexttold with the tacit assumption that it is a true story, that it is in
agreement with accepted belief and localized in known surroundings and ascribed to trustworthy
persons.497 Again and again, the hagiography relates that one of Dkch shns old Sufis, i.e.
a respected member, holding an important position in the order, shared how he witnessed an
example of the shaykhs karmt. The story-teller further validated the legends accuracy, by
alluding to their occurrence in a local geographical and cultural setting, such as among visitors
496
DeWeese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde, 179-203.
497
Reimund Kvideland and Henning K. Sehmsdorf, eds., Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 18-19.
163
seeking blessings at the khnaqh. However, Sufi-associated figures did not only appear in
hagiographies.
Both Schuyler and Hedin recorded folkloric stories concerning Sufis and saints shared by
their native interlocutors. Unfortunately, much of the time, it is not clear who was telling the tale,
and we are left to wonder if these were stories current among Sufis themselves, or merely among
the general public. However, regardless of their origins, the examples of folklore below provide
opportunities to see how Central Asian Sufis, and Sufi-associated figures, were viewed by the
common folk, many of whom likely had some attachment to a Sufi order, or, at least, availed
themselves of a shaykhs baraka from time to time. Unlike official hagiographies, there are
perhaps more reasons to trust collective folk wisdom, because people can be more discriminating
in what they choose to remember, than the memoirs of shaykhs, or their disciples, who had
vested interests in the continuation of the order.498 That is, folklore is more apt to provide an
unvarnished picture of how the majority of those associated with a Sufi order actually viewed it.
Saintly Patronage and Daily Survival
Though the relationship of the nondescript saint Kyzylart with a Sufi order is unclear
from Hedins account, his legendary attachment to the Islamization of Central Asia is enough to
associate him with the anonymous Muslim mystics of that era.499 Not only did this awliy travel
throughout the region preaching Islam in the time of Prophet, he made the crossing of the
Kyzylart Pass possible. For, if the holy Kizil-art had not discovered the pass, it would be
498
Radu R. Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, Dracula Prince of Many Faces: His Life and Times (Boston: Little
Brown and Company, 1989), 214. The author is indebted to this works illustrative use of analyses of folklore and
visual arts in filling the gaps in a historical narrative.
499
Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 255; Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road, 96-97.
164
impossible, even at the present day, to travel across the Pamirs from this direction.500
Furthermore,
tradition has also preserved the memory of his six brothers, all of them holy men like
himself. Their names were Mus-art [Ice Pass], Kok-art [Green Pass], Khatin-art,
Kolun-art, Ghez-art, and Ak-art [White Pass]. The suffix art is one out of several
Kirghiz words meaning pass, and each of these six names is applied to a pass in the
mountains of the Pamirs.501
As Kyzylarts shrine was high in the Pamirs it is doubtful that few ever visited it. However, the
legend associated with it had an etiological function, explaining natural phenomena, (i.e.
passes, or at least their serviceability) which were associated with the power of a saint. In other
words, for the common disciple, the patronage of a holy person, living or dead, was essential to
trade, communication, and other aspects of everyday life. Indeed, it was as if Kyzylart and his
brethren were the only shield the Kyrgyz possessed against the savage forces of nature, allowing
them to survive in their harsh climate. Thus, along with its etiological purpose, this tale likely
fulfilled another of the four functions of folklore, by creating a sense of identity and
enculturation a sense of territorialitya feeling for the geographic and cultural space they
inhabited.502 After all, who benefitted from the patronage of this saint beyond the Kyrgyz of the
Pamirs?
Holding Death at Bay
In his account Schuyler shared a legend concerning Korkut Ata, which he heard on the
southern Kazakh steppes, near Kazakhstans present-day border with Uzbekistan. The figure of
500
Sven Hedin, Through Asia, 153.
501
Ibid.
502
Kvideland and Sehmsdorf, Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, 22.
165
Korkut Ata is an archaic motif of Turkic mythology, variously portrayed as an awliy, shaman,
shaykh, or physician. This cultural hero and demiurge, adopted into Islam, figures
prominently in the legends of the Oghuz Turks (especially in The Book of Dede Korkut), as well
as among the Turkmen, Bashkirs, Kazakhs (who traditionally know him as a great saint and pir),
and Kyrgyz (who traditionally considered his tomb an important place of healing). 503 Schuyler
related that
This Khorkut, who was fourteen feet tall, was once living on the extreme edge of the
world, when he dreamed one night that some men were digging a grave there. For whom
do you dig it? said the saint. For Khorkut, was the reply. The anxious Khorkut, wishing
to avoid the death which threatened him, went the next day to live on the other edge of
the world. There he had the same dream. Again at dawn he set out, and in this way,
followed by his vision, he went over all the corners of the earth. In despair, not knowing
where to go, he resolved to move to the center of the world, which proved to be the bank
of the Syr [Syr Darya River]The holy man then thought to cheat fate. Concluding that
there was no safety for him on land, he made up his mind to live on the water, so spread
his mantle on the Syr and sat down on it. He sat for a hundred years, always playing on
the lute, till at last he died.504
This story of cheating death, or at least delaying it for a century, is part and parcel of many of the
legends associated with Korkut Ata.505 The story further corroborates the idea that, in the mind
of the common disciple, saints living or dead, could grant healing or even forestall the inevitable
for a significant period of time. It too likely had an enculturating function, encouraging
503
Beydili, Trk Mitolojisi Ansiklopedik Szlk, 320-325; The Book of Dede Korkut, trans. Geoffrey Lewis (London:
Penguin Group, 1974). Among the Oghuz, Korkut Ata was considered a legendary patriarch, prophet, and counselor
to khans. As portrayed in the epic, he lost many of these original features, thought traces of his shamanic origins in
folk belief are still visible. His image was so thoroughly Islamized that the seventeenth-century historian and Khan
of Khiva, Abulgazi, claimed Korkut Ata was a contemporary of the Abbasid Dynasty, saw a vision of the Prophet,
accepted Islam, and became a missionary, see .. , (: , 1970),
42. Similarly, in the poems and songs of the Kazakh aristocratic courts in the khanate period, such figures played a
role in a genre which mingled Sufi thought with the traditional glorification of the Kazakh warrior, see Martha
Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs, Studies of Nationalities, 2nd edition (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1995), 21.
504
505
Beydili, Trk Mitolojisi Ansiklopedik Szlk, 323.
166
continued pilgrimage to Korkut Atas tomb, which would confirm the existing social structure
and underlying norms by adding to the prestige and wealth of those charged with its
maintenance.506
A Donkeys Tomb
Not all of the legends of this era, however, shone a positive light on Sufis and saints. In
what is surely the most entertaining legend recorded by Hedin, or any of the other nineteenth-
century travelers, we have an incredibly irreverent account of the founding of a shrine.
According to Hedin, this story was current during his stay in Kashgar, in December 1890:
A sheikh used to teach the Koran to his disciples at a saints grave outside Kashgar. One
day, one of the pupils came to the sheikh and said: Father, give me money and food, so
that I may go out into the world and try my luck. The sheikh answered: I have nothing
else to give you but a donkey. Take it, and may Allah bless your journey. With his
donkey, the youth wandered for days and nights, and finally crossed the great desert.
There the donkey pined away and died. Bewailing his loss and his loneliness, the youth
dug a grave in the sand, buried the donkey, and sat down on the grave to weep. Then
some rich merchants passed by with their caravan. Seeing the youth, they asked: Why do
you weep? He answered: I have lost my only friend, my faithful travelling-companion.
The merchants were so touched by this fidelity, that they decided to have a magnificent
mausoleum erected on the hill. Huge caravans carried bricks and faience to the place, and
a sacred edifice, with a shining cupola and minarets reaching to the clouds, rose in the
desert. The tale of the new saints grave travelled fast, and pilgrims from far and near
thronged there to perform their devotions. After many years, the old sheikh from Kashgar
also went there. Astonished at finding his former pupil a sheikh at so prominent a saints
grave, he asked: Tell me, in confidence, who is the saint that rests under this cupola?
The pupil whispered: It is only the donkey you gave me.Now you tell me who was the
saint that reposed where you used to teach me? To which the old sheikh replied: It was
the father of your donkey.507
Though entertaining, this piece fulfilled another of folklores functions, acting as a form
of social criticism which offered a compensatory escape from social hardships and injustice,
506
Kvideland and Sehmsdorf, Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, 21-22.
507
Hedin, My Life As An Explorer, 100-101.
167
without necessarily propounding social change.508 It is possible that the individuals sharing this
story did so because they considered the powers of Sufis, and associated saints, as completely
fictive, and it was their only means of mocking the powerful guardians of places of pilgrimage.
Yet, as in general, folk tradition is conservative rather than reformist, we might consider that
this social criticism was not aimed at all shrines and their overseers (i.e. a challenge to an entire
mode of worship), but, rather, only to those considered illegitimate by the patrons of rival
shrines. After all, before relating the tale, Hedin stressed the significant number of pilgrimage
places in Kashgar, which could hardly have operated without some manner of patronage.
Furthermore, the history of Sufism in Chinese Turkestan has a history of deadly antagonism
between competing orders.509
508
Kvideland and Sehmsdorf, Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend, 22.
509
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 81-84; Fletcher, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China, 9-10.
168
Chapter 5
Toward A Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism
This is the meaning of the Mystery,

Which to know wholly ponder in thy Heart
Till all its ancient Secret be enlarged.
EnoughThe written Summary I close,
And set my Seal
The Truth God Only Knows510
Jm
In chapters 2-4 we have explored a variety of Sufi-associated phenomena, using studies
of similar issues in other parts of the Islamic world in order to augment through inference, where
necessary, the information in our nineteenth-century sources. This has also allowed us to
interpret our sources, which out of ignorance of the intricacies of Sufi life or (in the case of the
Manqib-i Dkch shn) because the author did not feel the need to elaborate on these issues,
appear incomplete in the historical record. Incidentally, it has also given us an opportunity to
place the Sufism of our era and region into a larger historical and geographical context, allowing
us to note connections with or similarities to developments in Central Eurasia, the Ottoman
Empire, and South Asia.
At this point, however, it is necessary to synthesize the discoveries we have made during
this process, with an eye toward providing a holistic picture of nineteenth-century Central Asia
Sufi life. To begin with, this process will require an examination of the Naqshbandiyya and
510
Jami, Salman and Absal: An Allegory of Jami, trans. Edward Fitzgerald, in The Sufi Trust, Four Sufi Classics,
51.
169
Qalandariyya as separate entities. As it was perhaps the most earth-shattering event of our era,
this synthesis will necessarily include an attempt to gauge the effect of the advent of Russian
colonialism on the internal workings of each order. After obtaining a nuanced understanding of
the differences between these orders, we will then draw broader, more general conclusions about
the nature of the lives of our Sufis. Finally, we will seek to understand our murds goals in
participating in Sufi orders. This will require us to first answer two contributory questions: 1)
what were the sources of our shaykhs power and authority? and 2) how can we differentiate
between adepts and lay affiliates among our murds?
The Orders
Naqshbandiyya
Like their brethren spread throughout the Islamic world, the Naqshbandiyya of
nineteenth-century Central Asia were known for their strict adherence to the Sharia, including
proper observance of alt, sawm, and the hajj.511 It need not be supposed, however, that the
Naqshband shaykhs of the region comprised a monolithic organization, or even recognized one
anothers piety. We have already discussed the existence of competing branches of the
Naqshbandiyya in the region, such as the Mujaddidiyya and the Dahbdiyya, though we have had
more occasion to refer to the former given Dkch shns affiliation with that lineage.512
Unfortunately, our sources make it difficult to ascertain the specific lineages to which many of
our Sufis belonged, and thus we must be satisfied, for the present, to paint a picture of the
Naqshbandiyya using, regrettably, broad strokes.
511
512
170
Suffice it to say, some Naqshband shaykhs, like Dkch shn, claimed to more strictly
adhere to the holy law, or to administer the order in a purer fashion, than their contemporaries.
Such revivalist sentiment could lead to shaykhly denunciations of both religious (including Sufi)
and secular native elites, and a determination to purge infidel and colonial influence (like the use
of medicinal vodka) from the region via various methods (including violence).513 Though Dkch
shns revivalism was geared toward solving nineteenth-century problems, it will be recalled
that he was inspired or guided in his reformist mission by supernatural experiences with great,
departed shaykhs of the past, including Bah al-Dn Naqshband whose own Sharia-mindedness
stemmed from a vision of Ghijduvn.514
Thus, though Dkch shn himself learned the Islamic sciences in his youth in Bukhara,
was the disciple of a Sufi master in Samarqand, and eventually became a murd of and successor
to a prominent Mujaddid pir (Sultan Khan Tra) in Andijan, his legitimacy did not derive from
these sources alone. As an uways he could claim spiritual instruction, and hence authority for his
knowledge and actions, from Bah al-Dn Naqshband, as well as Makhdm-i Aam and even
the Prophet Muhammad himself.515 Not only does this demonstrate that the notion of the uways
was alive and well in nineteenth-century Central Asia, it helps us understand further why Dkch
shn was at enmity with the hereditary shns of his era. Not only had he denounced them as
charlatans, his uways status was outside the norms of the shaykhly social order. By claiming a
direct line to the luminaries of the past, he was cheapening his fellow shns lineages, which had
to reach back through the centuries via longer, more complex chains.
513
514
515
171
Why was such revivalism a feature of the Naqshbandiyya in our era? Clearly the presence
of all manner of alien influences in the region during the nineteenth century with which previous
generations in Central Asia had not been confrontedthe military, political, and economic
penetration of the region by a Christian, technologically superior colonial power and the social
upheavals this process entailedwas a primary factor. However, the fact that some Naqshband
shaykhs found ways of successfully negotiating a society altered by these momentous changes,
while others did not, was likely the key impetus for the have-not shaykhs seeking out or claiming
alternative sources of power and authority, in an attempt to circumvent the social prestige of their
rivals. We see a similar series of events in the Volga-Urals region, though it had long been
controlled from Moscow by the nineteenth century. There Rasulev, though not of a revivalist
mind-set per se, energetically preached the Khlid path (to which he had been initiated in
Istanbul), as well as engaged in educational and other pursuits in order to prevent the
Christianization of the areas Muslims by Russian missionaries. By so doing, he effectively
undercut the traditional shaykhly elite with lineages of Bukharan provenance who subsequently
accused him of heresy.516 In short, the colonial presence seems to have had a way, though
sometimes indirectly, of exacerbating inherent, if dormant, tensions among the Naqshbandiyya.
Piety, while important, was not sufficient to demonstrate a Naqshband shaykhs
greatness, and tangible signs of affluence, such as a khnaqh with sufficient disciples and
wealth to bless the surrounding communities, marked one as a genuine shn.517 Even a revivalist
shaykh like Dkch shn, it would seem, could not forego ornamenting himself with the
516
Algar, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, 116-129.
517
172
trappings of a land owner or pillar of the communitya standard by which the greatness of pirs
had been measured since Khoja Arrs influence was felt among the peasantry and the religious
and political elite of the region in the fifteenth century.518 Thus his lodge, even in the rural
Ferghana Valley, was a beehive of activity, employing a variety of skilled workers, and keeping
hundreds of individuals busy with other tasks, either on a temporary or permanent basis.519
Such an institution required a stable economic foundation which, in the countryside, was
based on agriculture and animal husbandry, along with the gifts of disciples or other supporters,
including the patronage of rulers.520 This was a continuation of a long tradition of Sufis funding
their activities through various financial activities and attaching themselves to all manner of
potentates, as in the case of the White and Black Mountain Khojas of Chinese Turkestan who
engaged in commerce, married into a Chinggisid line, and gained the support of the Dalai Lama
as well as the Mongol Zungars.521 Though such patronage was lacking at Dkch shns lodge,
both lay affiliates and adepts performed the labor that allowed the institution to function. The
tasks performed likely demonstrated a disciples status in the lodge, as caring for prestigious
animals or, especially, playing a role in dispensing hospitality, required a constant presence in
the khnaqh and marked one as an adept. However, being quartered near the shaykh in the
lodge did not necessarily indicate a disciples place in the organizations hierarchy.522
518
519
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 94, 101, 109-110, 113, 116, 119, 126-127, 133-134, 142-143, 145-147, 151-153, 164.
520
Ibid., 87-88, 94, 96, 114-115, 116-118, 120, 133, 142-147.
Isenbike Togan, The Khojas of Eastern Turkistan, 135, 139-140; Fletcher, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest
521
China, 9-10.
522
Ibid., 110, 129, 134, 141-142, 145-147,149, 154, 159, 163-165.
173
Beyond the hundreds of visitors and toilers frequenting the lodge on a daily basis,
thousands of people turned up on special occasions.523 Yet Central Asian traditions of murds
who accepted the patronage of persons with saintly lineages but who did not study the Sufi arts
indicate that many of the persons present at the khnaqh on any given day were lay affiliates. A
reasonable estimate for the size of a shaykhs core followingthose who maintained regular
contact with him and sought spiritual learning at his hand, as opposed to blessings, charity, or
other boonsis 200-400 adepts.524 It seems unlikely, however, that even the most energetic
directing-shaykh could regularly guide so many disciples, yet there is no evidence to suggest
that the pirs of nineteenth-century Central Asia had abandoned the practice of producing students
competent in the Sufi arts, and able to propagate the orderindeed there is evidence to the
contrary.525
The location of a lodge obviously played a significant role in its demographic makeup.
As the Manqib-i Dkch shn makes clear, an organization in a rural area, like the Ferghana
Valley, drew some members from nearby urban areas (even from among its elite), but
predominantly from small hamlets, and nomadic populations, and included farmers and
herdsmen.526 This geographic diversity often meant ethnic diversity (Turki as well Kyrgyz
disciples in the case of the Ferghana Valley, for example), as in the fqiyya order in the Tarim
Basin which included Hui and Turkic Salars, or the organization of Rasulev which comprised
523
Ibid., 129, 163-167.
524
525
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 92, 114-115, 116-119, 121, 124-127, 131-133, 136-137, 140-141, 145, 149-150, 152,
526
155-157, 161, 300.

174
Tatars, Bashkirs, and Kazakhs.527 Naturally, even among disciples committed to strengthening
the same order, these social, cultural, economic, and ethnic disparities were not completely
forgotten and could upset the equilibrium of the organization.528 Larger organizations also likely
consisted of a number of local branches which recognized the overall authority of a single
shaykh, but who were too spread out (along the length of the Amu Darya or Ferghana Valley, for
example) to be effectively governed from one lodge. Thus, non-resident khalfas would have
been required for a shaykh to maintain control of his disciples in towns and villages distant from
the primary lodge.529 As in the Volga-Urals, the colonial governments improvement of
transportation and communication infrastructure, and new developments in local education in the
colonial context (such as the rise of usul-i jadid schools) probably helped the spread of these
organizations in Central Asia.530
In adhering to the principle of khalwt dar anjuman Naqshband shaykhs not only
advised, or chastised, Central Asian rulers, they officiated in life-cycle rituals, lending their
prestige to the marriage of societal elites, such as members of khoja groups.531 Shaykhs also led
the liturgical observance of sacred holidays, cementing their influence, and orthodox credentials,
Weismann, The Naqshbandiyya, 81-84; Fletcher, The Naqshbandiyya in Northwest China, 9-10; Algar,
527
Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev: The Last Great Naqshbandi Shaykh of the Volga-Urals Region, 119-125..
528
529
Ibid., 133; Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57.
530
Tuna, Madrasa Reform as a Secularizing Process: A View from the Late Russian Empire, Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 53(3) (2011), 540570. On the development of the railways and telegraph in Central Asia, see
Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform, 62; Becker, Russia's Protectorates in Central Asia, 11-112, 125-
128; Sahadeo, Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923, 120. On Sufi use of railways in colonial India, see
Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet, 195-196.
531
175
in the minds of the gathered thousands who participated in the rites and heard their preaching.532
In the case of the Naqshbandiyya, such sermons comprised both esoteric and exoteric teaching,
as the orders shaykhs acted as reservoirs of legal knowledge, inhabiting the ranks of the ulam
and teaching at the madrassas.533 Outside the ranks of the official clergy, however, Naqshband
shaykhs served as guardians of the Sharia, who played the role of preachers of repentance,
confessors, and supernatural enforcers of the holy law, rather than of legal scholars. Shaykhs
could grant repentance, given proper confession, but it was administered in accordance with the
sinners membership status in his order (disciple vs. prospective disciple), the circumstances
under which the sin was committed (whether it was due to alien influence, for example), and
could also depend on whether the behavior violated the rules of adab, and had personally
disrespected the shaykh as an eminent holy man.534 His role as a guardian of the Sharia also
gave the shaykh the orthodox credentials with which to successfully challenge the influence of
rival orders, like the Qalandariyya, as well as the encroachments of the colonial state.535
Wrath against sinners and religious sobriety were only part of the Naqshband shaykhs
image. Their supernatural powers were regularly sought by those in need of healing, particularly
in cases of infertility, or to provide protection, such as on treacherous journeys.536 More tangible
was the shaykhs distribution of alms, providing everything from water, to food, to clothing, to
horses, to those in need.537 This search for blessings was most often accomplished via ziyrat, a
532
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 129, 163-167.
533
Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57, 81, 83.
534
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 121-122, 124, 126-127, 145.
535
Ibid., 119, 137-138.
536
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 394; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 155-157.
537
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 139, 157-158, 163-167.
176
ritual that not only granted access to the holy mans baraka but was also a tactile, physical
connection to the divine.538 This ritual was not merely a privilege of members of the shaykhs
order, but could be experienced by strangers, even members of rival orders (such as the
Qalandariyya), and could also be performed on anothers behalf.539
To become an adept required an initiation process consisting of an initial test by the pir to
determine the applicants knowledge of the Quran, a symbolic separation from society via the
confession of his sins, a concomitant rejection of any behavior inconsistent with Naqshband
teachings, and a rebirth into the order by the performance of a sacred formula.540 The ritual was
then capped by the initiate symbolically giving his hand to the shaykh, an act which marked him
as a full-fledged disciple.541 Once complete, the ritual likely was not performed again in its
entirety, though, as noted above, the pir did receive subsequent confession of sins from wayward
disciples.542 Infractions requiring forgiveness included improper performance of rituals, such as
falling asleep during tahajjud.543 Authority on ritual as he was, even the pir required assistance
from his khalfas from time to time; he obviously could not perform talqn for himself.544 His
own performance of ritual, or the manner in which he directed his followers to perform ritual
(murqaba, for example), sometimes had very practical applications, including seeking the
538
Ibid., 114-119.
539
Ibid., 129, 132, 135, 137, 145-146, 155.
540
541
542
Ibid., 150.
543
Ibid., 89.
544
Ibid., 96-97.
177
downfall of a sinful ruler or supernaturally ensuring disciples were doing as they had been
instructed.545
The chief ritual of the Naqshbandiyya was dhikr, and in nineteenth-century Central Asia
this consisted of both vocal and silent variants (including the subcategory dhikr-i qalb)not
unusual given the presence of the Dahbdiyya as well as Yasav elements that maintained a sense
of semi-unique identity under a larger Naqshband umbrella.546 Even among these proverbially
sober Sufis, however, the vocal ritual could include ecstatic dancing, and other elements of a
theatrical performance, with shaykhs pushing their disciples to provide a more exciting spectacle
to visitors (such as colonial tsarist authorities), with the intent of securing donations from
them.547 We already know that there was contention among the Mujaddid shaykhs of our era
over the propriety of such performances, but we can assume that most of those exerting their
disciples to behave in this manner did it for the financial upkeep of the order, and not for
personal gain.548 Yet, we must also expect that some shaykhs took advantage of these
performances to line their own pockets, or to increase the fame of their lodges for the satisfaction
of their own egos. We must not lose sight, however, of the more private, more subdued rituals in
which the Naqshbandiyya participated (alqa, chilla), alongside ecstatic, public performances.549
The disparate appearance of shaykhs among the body of the Naqshbandiyya is further evidence
of the diversity that was admitted under the Naqshband aegis, with pirs of homely, if not quite
545
Ibid., 145-146, 194.
546
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 393; Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 158.
547
548
Early 19th Centuries, 404, 409.
549
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 98, 109, 111, 129, 131.
178
ascetic attire taking their place alongside those whose clothes were indistinguishable from the
refined look of the scholarly elite.550
Associated with this diverse Naqshband body were individuals claiming descent from
prominent shaykhs of the order, including Bah al-Dn Naqshband himself. It is unclear if these
descent groups occupied a place in the order as genuine practitioners of the Sufi arts in the
nineteenth century, but they certainly played an important role in administering the tomb shrines
of their illustrious ancestors, such as at Qasr-i Arifan.551 Among the rituals carried out at such
shrines were animal sacrifice, and the chilla and alqa mentioned above, with, at least, the latter
of the two being employed within the context of a Sufi ordera shaykh and his disciples
necessarily performing it together.552
Naqshband shaykhs not only visited and conducted rituals at shrines, they perpetuated
theirs orders by co-opting already established places of pilgrimage, and the lineage of the holy
persons whose remains resided there. By involving local disciples and founding new rituals at
shrines, including feasts for pilgrims, Naqshband shaykhs expanded the membership or
extended the reach of their organization, demonstrating their orders accommodation of both
sober revivalism, as well as the exuberance of shrine festivities. Similarly, they repurposed
sacred places whose origin (such as an association with a pre-Islamic holy figure) made them
unfit for co-optation, by replacing the local shrine cult with an Islamic institution (mosque, hauz)
that would be traced to the shaykhs authority. Thus, among Central Asias semi-nomadic
550
Ibid., 97, 144, 161-162; Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57, 81; Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country,
399.
551
Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, 318-319.
552
Ibid., 319, Manqib-i Dkch shn, 98, 111.
179
peoples, who often lacked them, the shaykh who established these institutions was seen both as
Sufi pir and founder of an Islamic community.553
Conclusion
There is nothing surprising about the Naqshband shaykhs of our region and era being
renowned for administering wealth, participating at the highest levels of society, being
committed to upholding the principles of the Sharia, nor even challenging one anothers piety.
After all, they were the product of a spiritual lineage that stretched back to Bah al-Dn
Naqshband, via Amad Sirhind, Makhdm-i Aam, and Ubaydullh Arr. However, the
centuries that elapsed between these luminaries and the Naqshbandiyya of the nineteenth century
brought many upheavals and concomitant adaptations on the part of the order. Most potent
among these upheavals was the advent of Russian colonialism, but how exactly did it affect the
Naqshbandiyya of our era? Before we answer this question we must first state what was most
unique about our Naqshbandiyya.
When the nineteenth-century Central Asian Naqshbandiyya is analytically reduced to a
single unit, as we have done above, the most singular point that emerges from this experiment, is
the diversity, particularly in ritual observance, that was fostered by the organizations of shaykhs
all laying claim to the same spiritual heritage. Some shaykhs clearly saw no issue in adopting
ecstatic rituals, or in instituting exuberant shrine feasts, or otherwise co-opting already popular
holy places. Nor were they averse to adopting some of the trappings of renunciation, such as in
appearance, in a challenge to their more worldly Sufi rivals. This somewhat belies the traditional
image of the emphatic orthodox outlook of the Naqshbandiyya, particularly during its
553
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 102, 103, 111-112.
180
development into conservative and modernist-fundamentalist camps in the seventeenth-twentieth
centuries.554 Why did this diversity exist? The most logical answer seems to be a desire for
shaykhs to expand their organizations, both geographically, materially, and in terms of their
overall number of disciples (both adepts and lay affiliates). By incorporating more popular
elements of worship into their repertoires, some shaykhs were able to appeal to a broader swath
of the regions population and affiliate them to their organizations.
Does this phenomenon have any connection to colonial influence? It is probable that
improved communications and transportation infrastructure, as well as new methods of education
developed in response to Russian colonialism, helped shaped the size and geographic distribution
of some Sufi organizations. Yet, Sufi orders transformations into mass organizations had been
underway some centuries before the arrival of colonialism. Russian appropriation of native lands,
the importation of culturally alien practices, and the colonial projects effect on the old social
order (as in the dissolution of the Khanate of Kokand) clearly shaped shaykhs like Dkch shn,
as well as their orders. As noted above, however, colonialism seems to have exacerbated extant
fissures among the Naqshbandiyya, though it did not serve as their ultimate cause. The
competition between orders for expanded membership was a centuries old issue to which
Moscow contributed a few new tools with which shaykhs could challenge one another. More
research is necessary, however, to determine why the competition between the Naqshband
shaykhs of nineteenth-century Central Asia was specifically conducted via popular practices.
554
181
Qalandariyya
The Qalandars of nineteenth-century Central Asia embodied the tension between
renunciation and accommodation with mainstream Sufism that had characterized the order since
the sixteenth century. Though committed to some of the principles of their founder Jaml al-Dn
Sv, Qalandars spiritual lives, like those of their Naqshband neighbors, were focused on their
hospices (qalandarkhanas), where they lived a cenobitic existence. These institutions were
located both in small communities and, especially, in the larger towns (in the Khanate of Khiva,
the Emirate of Bukhara, and the Khanate of Kokand), with a particularly large hospice being
located in the capital of Bukhara. In keeping with Svs focus on worldly renunciation through
pre-mortem death, these hospices were located near the cemeteries at the edge of towns.555
The hospices were under the administration of a shaykh (Qalandar Baba), who, along
with his closest disciples, lived there.556 The number of his disciples probably reached around
200, including servants, and visitors to the hostel. Like a Naqshband shaykh, the Qalandar Baba
regulated life in his hospice, controlling membership in the order, assigning tasks (both rituals
and manual labor for the upkeep of the qalandarkhana), and collecting and distributing the alms
received by his Qalandars.557 For the Qalandariyya, alms gathering was both a commitment to
the ethos of Sv as well as an essential means of maintaining the institutions of the order.558
Thus, it was necessary to locate hospices in the commercial centers of Central Asia (in Bukhara,
555
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 396, 585; Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 146.
556
557
Ibid., 396-397.
558
Ibid., 396.
182
for example), where Qalandars could seek charity from the merchants and caravaneers of the
bazaars.559 Alms gathering alone, however, was likely insufficient to maintain larger hospices,
and in Khiva, and likely in Bukhara as well, qalandarkhanas were supported by the patronage of
the local elite.560 Such support probably also entailed some degree of oversight from the
governments of these polities.
Though they were spread throughout the region, qalandarkhanas in different towns and
villages maintained contact with one another, serving as hospices for weary pilgrims. It is also
reasonable to surmise that these disparate hospices were united through their leaders allegiance
to a common silsila, or to the Qalandar Baba of a central lodge, whose khalfas they were.561
Despite this centralized organizationwhich, as in the case of the Naqshbandiyya, could have
been aided by colonial communication and transportation infrastructureQalandars still
maintained their ability to associate with the members of other orders. The most obvious
example we have of this phenomenon is the Qalandars visit to Dkch shn, which resulted in
the formers conversion to the Naqshbandiyya. Clearly, the Qalandar saw nothing odd in
approaching a Naqshband shaykh to perform ziyrat, neither did Dkch shn seem perplexed
at the Qalandars arrival.562 Vmbrys account also references this intercommunal intercourse,
noting that while disguised as a Qalandar, he was offered hospitality in a Naqshband network
that stretched from Kokand, to Qarshi, to the Khanate of Maymene.563
559
Ibid., 543-544.
560
561
Ibid., 146, 150.
562
563
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 23, 225, 245, 252-253.
183
Despite their renunciation of society, the Qalandariyya of our era and region provided,
and were expected to provide, various services to the communities in which they lived. For
example, a Qalandar could be called upon to bestow his baraka on those who prayed in a
mosque by determining its qibla.564 His power would also be sought out by those in need of
healing, and who desired blessings, talismans, or the touch of his holy breath.565 In addition to
healing the sick, a Qalandar could also impart blessings of safety to those, like caravaneers, who
were about to embark on a perilous journey.566 As mentioned above, qalandarkhanas also
provided room and board for travelers, requiring no money in return.567
Like the Naqshbandiyya, the Qalandariyya participated in ziyrat (as evidenced by the
Qalandars visit to Dkch shn), dhikr, and initiation. Entry into the order required an interview
with the Qalandar Baba who assigned the aspirant tests of worthiness, including months of
menial labor at the hospice, and prayer vigils at saints tombs in imitation of the founder of the
order.568 The Qalandar dhikr was utilized to collect alms on behalf of the order, being
specifically employed by small groups of dervishes, likely led by a khalfa, in public
performances in the bazaars, though they were forbidden to do so in certain cities by the Russian
authorities.569 They similarly performed for visitors to their qalandarkhanas, adding ecstatic
dancing to the ritual, and seeking some donation at the conclusion of the performance, though,
564
Ibid., 48-52.
565
Ibid., 50.
566
567
568
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 206. 396.
569
Ibid., 258, 397.
184
as in the case of the public performances of the Naqshbandiyya, it is not entirely clear what were
their motivations for doing so.570 Unlike their Naqshband contemporaries, however, the
Qalandariyya frequently used psychoactive drugs. Though it is unclear if these substances had a
specifically religious connotation for the Qalandars, they did use them to enhance or otherwise
aid their performance of dhikr, for example, and the frequent use of drugs in the qalandarkhana
suggests a religious dimension to the activity.571
In nineteenth-century Central Asia, there were at least two strains of Sufis which
stemmed from the dervish tradition. Olufsen contrasted the Qalandars, whom he compared to
Catholic friars, with dervishes, a group more extreme in its asceticism.572 However, Schuyler,
who had a better understanding of lineages and orders, considered Qalandars and dervishes to be
the same group, or at least the two terms to be synonymous.573 Both groups frequented towns,
where they could gather alms in the bazaars, but Olufsens dervishes did not inhabit
qalandarkhanas, sleeping rough at the tombs of saints. Consequently they were seen less in
areas, like Khiva, that had fewer holy places to accommodate them.574 These dervishes seem to
have lacked a cenobitic structure and hierarchy, and practiced itinerancy, solitude, silence, and,
along with the Qalandars, celibacy.575
570
571
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 147, 150; Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 257.
572
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 396, 398.
573
574
Ibid.; Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 208, 397-398, 537.
575
185
Although both Qalandars and dervishes stood out from other Sufis due to their unusual
appearance, the former had made significant changes it its attire since the days of their
development into an order in the sixteenth century. In the nineteenth century they could still be
seen wearing rough woolen clothes and conical caps, and carrying their begging bowls, weapons,
and other paraphernalia.576 However, their wardrobe also incorporated a variety of local robes,
underclothes, footwear, and even embroidered designs, and they had abandoned the shaving off
of all hair on the head and face for full beards.577 Indeed, special accoutrements aside, their
appearance was comparable to that of Dkch shn, if not his more sartorially refined
Naqshband colleagues. Dervishes, however, retained a greater commitment to their traditions
earlier focus on nudity, barely covering themselves, if at all, with their long hair and the skin of a
wild animal.578 Yet, not all dervishes wore long hair, and there were those who, again according
to tradition, shaved their heads bare.579
Conclusion
Unfortunately, we lack sufficient data (such as further information on variations in ritual
practice) to determine the relationship between the Qalandars and the dervishes with a high
degree of certainty. What we do know is that they sprang from the same tradition, representing
two separate ends of the dervish spectrum, with one group seeking greater accommodation with
mainstream Sufism, and another focused on earlier modes of piety. Perhaps the dervishes
ascetic virtuosi who survived the sixteenth-century institutionalization of the Qalandars
576
Ibid., 206, 396.
577
Hedin, My Life As An Explorer, 106; Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 395-396.
578
579
Ibid., 208, 397-398.
186
were, as Schuyler suggests, an appendage (like the Starets in Russian Orthodoxy) of the
nineteenth-century Central Asian Qalandariyya. As in the case of the contemporary Central Asia
Naqshbandiyya, all dervish strains found diverse means of expressing devotion under the same
conceptual umbrella.
It is even less clear than in the case of the Naqshbandiyya how Russian colonialism
affected Qalandars and dervishes. The same developments in transportation and communications
infrastructure that probably facilitated Naqshband-order growth may have aided the spread of
the Qalandariyya. However, it is hard to imagine a renunciate like a Qalandar Baba or a dervish
sending messages via telegraph or traveling by railroad. Unlike the Naqshbandiyya, we have no
reports of intra-order tension aggravated by the Russian presence, though the dervish strains did
earn the suspicion of the colonial authorities who restricted their public activities in the region. It
is unclear if the alteration of Qalandar appearance had any relation to the colonial experience, as
our nineteenth-century sources may have recorded a phenomenon that had been developing since
the sixteenth century. It is conceivable that by the time Olufsen described them in the 1890s,
some Qalandars had tried to make themselves more presentable to the Russians, and colonial
society as a whole, to escape the ban on their public activities Schuyler noted in 1873.
Diversity and Uniformity in Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism
We have already noted that a number of Sufi orders beyond the Naqshbandiyya and
Qalandariyya were present in Central Asia during our era, including the Chishtiyya, Qdiriyya
and, perhaps, even remnants of the Bektshiyya.580 In the midst of the doctrinal and ritual variety
represented by these disparate orders, we would expect to see cross-pollination, borrowing, or,
580
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 158; Wolff, A Mission to Bokhara, 185.
187
on the contrary, conservative retrenchment and ideological quarantine in reaction to one
anothers presence in the same space. What we see in terms of the relationship between the
Naqshbandiyya and Qalandariyya, however, is a hybrid: a move towards one another, in terms of
ritual and appearance, for example, while still maintaining a sense of commitment to the
principles of the spiritual lineages that had spawned them.
Doubtless, neither a Naqshband shaykh nor a Qalandar Baba of our era would have
admitted that his order resembled the other. Surely no Naqshband of Bukharas proper upper
class could have looked at a dervish, barely covering his nudity with a panther skin, and
considered him a kindred spirit. The fact remains, however, that in the nineteenth century our
Qalandars sang hymns of praise to Bah al-Dn Naqshband, and performed ziyrat to
Naqshband shaykhs.581 Qalandars also, while still sporting a distinctive appearance, blended in
more with the Naqshbandiyya in terms of clothing and grooming. Yet, lest this be seen merely as
the Qalandriyya aping the Naqshbandiyya, we must remember that the latter was, like the
former, given to ecstatic public performances (both practiced the dhikr-i arrah), and the wearing
of clothing that expressed a spiritual state, rather than ensured public respect or solitude in the
crowd.582 In seeking ways to propagate their orderseither to swell their ranks and their
coffers, or to obtain greater legitimacy in the eyes of societyeach resorted to practices beyond
the channels of established tradition. In doing so, perhaps quite unconsciously, they ended up
drawing closer to one another in outward form, though remained on opposite ends of the
spectrum in their interior, ideological content.
581
582
188
Just why this convergence in ritual and appearance between the Naqshbandiyya and
Qalandariyya occurred in the nineteenth century is unclear. Was it a process that had begun some
centuries before? Was the process hastened or intensified by Russian colonialism? These are
questions which will require further research to adequately answer.
Pir Power and Murd Desire: The Goals of Discipleship
Armed with a more holistic image of what Sufism looked like in our era and region, we
can proceed to explore our Sufis goals in participating in orders. Specifically, it is our goal to
understand the murds desire to be associated with a Sufi organization or shaykh. Generally
speaking, the voice of the disciple is not often heard, the focus of the scholarship being directed
toward the charismatic, miracle-working shaykh. This omission frequently occurs because of the
lack of biographical information on the common disciple, who possessed only limited literacy or
was not accustomed to recording the mundane details of his everyday life, while his or her
activities did not inspire the literary talents of biographersparticularly before the twentieth
century. An innovative methodological approach, however, can be devised to overcome this
dearth of direct source material.
Heretofore, we have only occasionally and obliquely alluded to the meanings and
functions of actions (rituals, shrine pilgrimage) of individuals in our orders.583 To move beyond
these basic observations we must undertake the more difficult task of bundling actions into
patterns of behavior, and from them derive an understanding of disciples aspirations in
participating in an order. In order to do so, we will adapt the methodology of Robert Rozenhal,
583
Michael Genzuk, A Synthesis of Ethnographic Research Center for Multilingual, Multicultural Research
University of Southern California, [website]; available from http://www-
bcf.usc.edu/~genzuk/Ethnographic_Research.html; Internet; accessed 17 January 2015.
189
who used ethnographic contexts to help illuminate Chishti Sabiri motivations in choosing
shaykhs and participating in rituals.584 While we lack the sort of interviews Rozenhal used,
which closed information gaps through direct questions, we too can arrive at an understanding of
disciples aspirations by analytically categorizing and exploring their activity in our sources.
Obviously, however, we lack the sort of detailed information that would allow us to discuss
individuals, and we will, instead, focus on two categories of murdsadepts and lay affiliates.
Before we can discuss disciples, however, we must first understand the men they
followed, the shaykhs, like Dkch shn, who appear as prominent characters in our sources. By
understanding the roles these shaykhs played in their orders, we can understand the source(s) of
their legitimacy and authority, from which they derived the power to affect the lives of their
disciples. By painting a clearer picture of the authority and power of the shaykh, we will be able
to better determine what drew his disciples to him, and thereby illuminate the hopes, desires, and
aspirations of the murd in seeking out the association of a shaykh.
Shaykhs: Modalities of Power and Authority
As throughout the Islamic world in the nineteenth century, the shaykhs of Central Asia
were classified as belonging to the awliya designation indicating nearness to the divine and
attendant supernatural power and esoteric knowledge (ilm al-bin).585 In his study of pre-
modern Moroccan Sufism, Vincent Cornell noted that though sainthood is a doctrinal concept of
mystical Islam, it was primarily as a social phenomenon that it was experienced by the majority
of the Moroccan people. He distinguished between the concepts of walya and wilya, the
584
Rozenhal, Islamic Sufism Unbound, 14.
585
190
former representing the product of a particular mystical epistemology that relied on its own
educational apparatus or regime of trainingthe metaphysical essence of sainthood, and the
latter being the outward visage ofsainthoodthe actions of the saintexperienced directly
by the saints audiencephenomenologically more real to the general public.586
Wilya was manifest in the saints mediation between different symbolic
universesurban-rural, esoteric-exoteric, literate-illiterate, Sufi-non-Sufi, or juridical-popular,
and in eight role typologiesreflecting modalities of power [and] authority [which were]
not mutually exclusive.587 These included the li (the ethical authority of sainthoodbased
on a moral commitment to carry out the commands of God), the qudwa (the exemplary
authority of sainthood[who] symbolized the symbiosis of praxis and doctrine), the watad
(who upheld the Shara in an urban locality[and] exemplified juridical authority), the
murbi (an exclusively rural ideal type whose authority was based on his relations within a
local tribal contextrepresentingsocial authority), the shaykh (who personified doctrinal
authority), the ghwath (the generative authority, nurturer and teacher of saints and shaykhs),
the imm (possessing religiopolitical authority), and the qub (the most comprehensive ideal
type of saintaxial saint[who] exemplifiedinclusive authority).588
Many of these typologies are applicable to our shaykhs, and it is possible to fit someone
like Dkch shn into several simultaneously: the li (for his personal commitment to
adhering to Shari a), the watad and the murbi (for his unofficial juridical authority, albeit in a
rural setting, and his social authority among the Kyrgyz), and, for a very short time, the imm
586
Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 272-273.
587
Ibid., 274-275, 277.
588
Ibid., 277-285.
191
(during the failed uprising against the tsarist colonial authorities and settlers).589 Yet, removed
from their cultural and historical context these concepts fail to convey the breadth of the
modalities of shaykhly power and authority in our region and era. In order to make them more
serviceable to our purposes, we must adapt them to the holistic picture provided above. While it
must be admitted that the source material of this study is not of sufficient breadth to definitively
establish shaykh typologies for nineteenth-century Central Asia (this would require a lengthy
study of several hagiographies in itself), they provide sufficient data with which to suggest eight
preliminary categories of our own.
Above we have mentioned various roles played by shaykhs both in their communities as
well as in their own orders. By grouping these roles together according to their functions, we find
they naturally coalesce around a few basic types. First, for example, is the lim, representing the
proper upper class in appearance, and recognized as an official legal scholar by both the
population and the colonial government, particularly in an urban environment like Bukhara,
where he likely officiated in the life cycle rituals of the elite.590 Second, is the Sharia Guardian,
a preacher of repentance, confessor, and fearless and wrathful defender of the holy law, which
operated outside the confines of the official clergy and in a rural area amidst an ethnically and
socially diverse network of followers on the fringes of colonial authority.591 Third, is the shn,
589
Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, 115.
590
Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57, 81, 83; Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 399.
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 92, 114-115, 116-119, 121-122, 124, 126-127, 131-133, 136-137, 140-141, 145, 149-
591
150, 152, 155-157, 161, 300.

192
manager of an economically successful organization which was able to dispense charity and
offer employment to hundreds, if not thousands, of disciples in surrounding communities.592
Fourth and fifth, are two types of shaykhs associated with shrines, the Community
Founder and the Khoja. The former built, altered, or co-opted shrines and other Islamic
institutions, institutionalizing himself as the founder of a Muslim society or ritual complex tied
to a specific geographical point. The latter represents the shaykh who claimed descent from a
saintly lineage and thus managed a shrine complex (such as at Qasr-i Arifan, Turkestan, and the
shrine of Ordan Padshah) but was not necessarily a directing-shaykh.593 Sixth is the Miracle
Worker, he was the source of baraka and the object of ziyrat, offering healing through his
touch, his breath, his reciting of sacred formulae, or the provision of amulets. He also provided
blessings to travelers setting forth on perilous journeys. Seventh, is the Ascetic who purposely
defied the conventions of Islamic society to dedicate himself to the renunciation of the world and
its entanglements. This ascetic virtuoso shunned marriage and family life, roamed in near nudity,
slept near the tombs of saints, and survived by begging.594 The eighth and final type is the
Ecstatic, who gathered alms, and increased the size and reach of his organization, via public
displays of rituals, like dhikr, that featured elements of religious theater calculated to engage the
observer. His rituals were conducted with the intent to achieve more than strictly religious
ends.595
592
Ibid., 157.
593
Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, 318-319; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 98, 111.
594
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 160-161; Babadanov, On the History of the Naqbandiya Muaddidiya in Central
595
Mwarannahr in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries, 404, 409.
193
As with Cornells typologies, ours are not mutually exclusive. Dkch shn was a
Sharia Guardian, shn, Community Founder, and Miracle Worker. Also, though we have no
record of his disciples performing ecstatic dhikrs in publicat least in the manner described by
Schuylerwe do know that 500 disciples gathered at the shaykhs lodge to perform dhikr and
sam before they proclaimed him khan. The combination of these rituals suggests something
beyond the sober dhikr-i khaf, especially when paired with a religiopolitical ceremony.596 We
would also expect to find pairings of lim and shn, Ecstatic and shn, Community Founder
and shn, etc., given the financial resources associated with the proper upper class, the public
performers, and the builders of Islamic institutions. Nearly all of these typologies fit neatly under
the capacious Naqshband umbrella described above. The one clear outlier is the Ascetic, a type
which even had an ambiguous relationship with the Qalandariyya. The main body of the
Qalandariyya, however, could accommodate Miracle Workers, Ecstatics, and, possibly, Khojas.
With these preliminary typologies in place we can now delve into the psychology of
disciple motivation.
Murds: Balancing Din and Dunya
A murd is literally one who desires, his desire (irada) being the pursuit of an
intimate association with a spiritual master, an intermediary of the Prophet Muhammad and,
through him, deity.597 This paradigmatic quest could lead the seeker into the presence of
various murshids until he found the one whose personal charismadepth
596
Babadanov, Dk n und der Aufstand von Andian 1898, 183-184.
597
Rozenhal, Islamic Sufism Unbound, 142, 153.
194
ofpietyrighteousness ofactions and silsila elicited his devotion and loyalty.598 After his
submission, the murd received personal, individualized guidance from his shaykh and, in the
process, developed a dependence on his master for guidance in worldly as well as spiritual
issuesthough not all disciples progressed along the Sufi path at the same rate.599 Rozenhal
notes that among the 21st century Chishti Sabiri this pir-murd relationship provides the disciple
the tools necessary to balance din and dunya (religion and world, i.e. the spiritual and
temporal spheres), as they effectively live within two interdependent spheres: a historical now
and a sacred now.600 The former represents the social, economic, and political vicissitudes of
the everyday, lived-in, mundane world, while the latter is a thoroughly sacralized universe
that impacts every dimension of their public and private lives.601 Though our murds inhabited a
different historical nowdiffering in the intensity rather than the kind of worldly
distractionsthey too grappled with striking a balance between din and dunya. Indeed, we may
say that the fundamental difference separating adepts from lay affiliates was the formers greater
devotion to din, or the Sufi path.
Adepts
Throughout this study we have sought to make a distinction between those disciples who
studied the Sufi arts with a shaykh, and those who sought out his presence for other reasons. We
have used a variety of terms to refer to the former, including Triminghams adept, as well as
core, key, formal, or actual disciple. In doing so, we have, perhaps, seemed to insinuate
598
Ibid., 144-145.
599
Ibid., 151-152, 155.
600
Ibid., 135-137, 171.
601
Ibid., 171.
195
that this murd was somehow superior to his lay or nominal counterpart, inadvertently giving
credence to the orientalist trope of the post-classical decline of Sufism in the era of mass
participation in the orders. However, this search for an appropriate term should be seen as a
struggle to come to grips with what is actually a complex issue, namely how to judge a disciples
motivation in seeking out the company of a shaykh. In reality, it is impossible to present a
comprehensive picture of the motivations of a group of murds participating in, say, a public
dhikr. Among hundreds of participants there were likely hundreds of different, individual reasons
for their simultaneous involvement. What is really at the heart of this dichotomy is a difference
between the disciples level ofcommitment to (and engagement with) the silsilatheir
dedication to the rigors of suluk and active involvement in the orders myriad ritual activities.602
However, not only do we lack sufficiently granular data to gauge the participation of
individuals in rituals, furthermore, even in the Manqib-i Dkch shn, we find very few
descriptions of intimate teaching moments between murshid and murd, where customized
guidance was imparted, and the bridge between the abstraction of theoretical knowledge and the
concrete, visceral, and transformative power of direct experience was affected.603 How then can
we distinguish those Sufis in our sources who comprised the shaykhs 200-400 adepts?
Unfortunately, there is no single answer, rather we must list a number of factors that, when
consider together, indicate a disciples more sustained interest in the rigors of suluk.
The first and most obvious hallmark of an adept is that he passed through an initiation
ritual. Though we have relayed the stories of individuals who merely gave their hand to a
602
Ibid., 133.
603
Ibid., 141.
196
shaykh, it is clear that there were others who did much more.604 These included Qalandars who
underwent months of tomb prayer vigils and menial labor at the lodge, and prospective
Naqshband disciples who confessed sins and demonstrated Quranic knowledge and
commitment to upholding Sharia to prove their fitness for joining their respective orders.605
After passing these initiatory tests, which obviously required a level of commitment beyond that
of an occasional associate of the shaykh, adepts were presented with the regalia of order
membership, the jawlaq (or official dress) for the Qalandariyya and an ijza (license) for the
Naqshbandiyya.606 With these symbols of membership, the adept was prepared to participate in
the particular rituals of the order.
As we have seen in chapter three, however, not all rituals required the same level of
commitment to the order. For example, tahajjud, those supererogatory prayers said between the
midnight and dawn prayers, were not for the casual participant, but required a significant level of
self-discipline and intimacy with the shaykh, such as Arab-Dvna who performed the vigils
with Sultan-Khan Trah every eveningeven then, this murd admitted that he once fell asleep
in the attempt.607 Another ritual for more advanced practitioners was murqaba, which required
hours of solitude to perform effectively and could include visualization of the shaykh, and
constituted a means of sharpening the skills necessary to become a murshid. This ritual, too,
604
605
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 206, 392-393, 396.
606
Ibid., 206, 392.
607
197
required close instruction from the shaykh, such as when Qych Khalfa was commanded by
Sultan-Khan Trah to use murqaba as a means of affecting the overthrow of Khudyr Khan.608
The alqawhich, after all, was a circle formed around the shaykhwas yet another
ritual that necessitated a significant degree of intimacy between disciple and master. It will be
remembered that in Dkch shns lodge it was combined with murqaba, shrine pilgrimage in
the company of the shaykh, and was an antecedent to superogatory prayers, practices that were
mostly the preserve of adepts.609 Similarly, those who entered the chillakhna at Dkch shns
lodge, in order to spend 40 days in fasting, prayer, and meditation, were surely those whose
dedication to the rigors of suluk was a fulltime avocation.610
Though the sources are less detailed in terms of Qalandar rituals, we must not forget that
they also had their vigils in the qalandarkhana and among the tombs.611 In addition, they marked
themselves as separate from the rest of society by a combination of their distinctive clothing,
itineracy, and psychoactive drug use.612 These deviations from societal norms were calculated to
affect a break between the Qalandar and his neighbor, thus making the following of the
Qalandar path necessarily the activity of an adept vice a part-time, lay affiliate. The Qalandar
bands that gathered alms, sometimes accompanied by the public performance of a dhikr, were
also likely adepts, groups of disciples that could be entrusted with returning the proceeds of these
608
Ibid., 94.
609
Ibid., 109, 111, 131.
610
Ibid., 98, 129.
611
612
Ibid., 206, 396; Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 147; Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 257.
198
activities to the Qalandar Baba for distribution.613 Each of these disciples would have had his
special room, at the qalandarkhana, just as some, though not all, of Dkch shns murds, like
his bazarchi and gatekeeper/greeter, remained constantly at his side.614 We must also assume
that, like their Qalandar counterparts, those Naqshbandiyya that regularly participated in dhikr
(obviously the dhikr-i qalb but also the vocal, public variant) were adepts, especially in the case
of the latter, ensuring the propagation of the order as it did.615
From the above we can discern that there were four basic hallmarks of an adept among
our murds. First, he underwent a rigorous initiation, which involved much more than a pledge of
loyalty to the shaykh. Second, he received a tangible sign of membership in the order, either
distinctive clothing or a certificate of his affiliation. Third, he was a regular participant in rituals
that required an intimate relationship with and close instruction from the shaykh to accomplish.
Fourth, an adept was usually, though not always, to be found lodging with his murshid on a
permanent basis.
Lay Affiliates
Describing an adept is a relatively easy task when compared with attempting to describe
his lay counterpart. The adepts activities were fairly circumscribed, fitting neatly into the pursuit
of the goals of the Sufi path. The term lay affiliate, however, encompasses a whole host of
activities whose connection to the the rigors of suluk were often tenuous at best. It is perhaps
best, then, to begin a description of the lay affiliate by stating what he was not. Though he was
613
614
Ibid., 396; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 113, 149-150.
615
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 161, 258.
199
considered a murd, and had accepted the patronage of a shaykh, he did not regularly take part in
rituals, especially those of an advanced nature, nor did he live at the lodge.616
Beyond giving the hand to the shaykh, these disciples likely participated in very few
Sufi rituals, with the exception of ziyrata means of displaying gratitude for supernatural
services performed, borrowing and storing up sacred power for later use in similarly trying
circumstances, and tactile communication with the sacred power of their pir.617 Indeed, for
many, ziyrat was the most non-committal means of obtaining the benefits of associating with a
shaykh, without making a formal pledge to his order, as evidenced by the strangers who
approached Dkch shn seeking his blessing, such as the Qalandar and the thousands who
came to celebrate d al-a at his lodge.618
We have already noted that shrine pilgrimage in the company of a shaykh was likely the
preserve of adepts, but our definition should be restricted to describing smaller gatherings, such
as when Dkch shn and some of his murds journeyed to the qadamjoy associated with Khoja
Padshah in the village of Quva, where they formed a alqa.619 Other pilgrimages and their
associated rituals, however, elicited and thrived on the participation of the masses, such as the
festivals attached to the shrines of Zang Ata and Ordan Padshah.620 Again, the connection
between these festivities and a Sufi orderbeyond the shrine shaykhs possible claimed descent
616
617
Ibid., 100 (footnote 118), 114-115, 117-119.
618
Ibid., 129, 132, 135, 137, 145, 155.
619
Ibid., 111.
620
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 138-139; Hedin, Through Asia, 465.
200
from a sacred lineageis unproven.621 Yet, Dkch shns role in establishing a feast at the
Khoja Padshah qadamjoy, and the Naqshband connection to rural Punjabi shrines during the
same era, suggests that these festivities had some connection with the dominant orders among
our Sufis.622 Thus, shrine visitation, like seeking the association of a living saint via ziyrat, was
an activity performed predominantly by lay affiliates, including women who otherwise do not
appear in our sources as disciples of Sufi shaykhs.623
It may be stretching the point to refer to individuals like the Qalandar who performed
ziyrat to Dkch shn as a lay affiliate. But therein lies the conundrum at the heart of
attempting to categorize the murds of our era. Many times in the sources, we have record of
those who sought blessing or healing at the hands of a holy person, such as those on whom
Vmbry breathed and the Kyrgyz of the Yaflgh tribe who petitioned Dkch shn for a son.624
Their connection to an order, particularly in the case of the charlatan, Hungarian dervish, seem
extremely shaky. Nevertheless, it would be arrogant to look back on these events from more than
a centurys distance and state definitively that someone seeking the association of a shaykh for
help in fertility issues, for example, was not counted among his disciples. Whatever the nature of
the relationship, some type of bond existed between the saint and the seeker.
621
Hedin, Through Asia, 465-466.
622
623
Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 138-139; Hedin, Through Asia, 465.
624
Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 50; Manqib-i Dkch shn, 155.
201
The Murd-Shaykh Nexus
The above working definitions of adept and lay affiliate provide us a baseline
understanding on which to build our understanding of murds goals in participating in or being
loosely associated with a Sufi order. It may seem from these definitions that we can simply state
that adepts were drawn to achieving the traditional ends of the Sufi path, and that lay affiliates
merely sought access to the shaykhs power. While largely correct, such a characterization is also
crude, simplistic, and lacking in nuance. In order to introduce a higher degree of methodological
rigor to the discussion, we must match disciples with a few of the typologies of nineteenth-
century Central Asia shaykhs we established above. This formula, applied to some representative
examples, will yield a clearer picture of our murds and their hopes and aspirations.
shn
It will be remembered that one of Dkch shns early disciples questioned the shaykhs
ability to carry out the duties of an shn due to his lack of financial resources.625 Though the
shaykh possessed qualities that drew this adept to him even in his poverty, the disciples doubts
about his pir were due to his belief that there was an implicit connection between a holy mans
degree of tangible wealth and saintly power. Indeed, the murd, who left Dkch shns service
for a time, finally overcame his doubts only when he saw how wealthy his master had become.
Those thousands of lay affiliates who visited the khnaqh to receive food, clothing, and
horsesand to perform ziyratlikewise considered the shaykhs material and spiritual powers
to be inextricably linked.626 It could be argued that the disciples that followed this shn type
625
626
Ibid., 157-158.
202
were interested primarily in being associated with sainthood tied to worldly riches, and we must
assume that there were those who entered such a shaykhs service for purely material reasons.
However, that does not account for the adept who joined Dkch shn when he was destitute.
We must, therefore, assume that there were other adepts and lay affiliates who followed poor
shaykhs for spiritual reasons, but whose faith in their masters powers were bolstered by
evidence of his, and their own, temporal success.
Miracle Worker
We have previously noted that the position of gatekeeper/greeter was the preserve of an
adept, and discussed how one such disciple, shn Khoja, attempted to leave this role, and his
shaykhs side, in order to start a family and live the life of an ordinary peasant. It was only when
Dkch shn miraculously healed the murd of the paralysis with which he had been struck for
his disloyalty that the wayward shn Khoja returned to the fold. 627 This demonstrates the pull
that some shaykhs supernatural powers had in attracting adepts who both feared and hoped to
acquire them, though such faculties were equally if not more alluring for lay affiliates. Olufsens
cynical suggestion that shaykhs maintained orders via quackery, and Vmbrys claims to have
gathered a following through his healing, show that there were those whose association with
saintly figures were based on a need to obtain respite from physical ailments via supernatural
intervention.628 That the Sufi-associated heroes of nineteenth-century Central Asian folklore,
627
Ibid., 149-150.
628
Olufsen, The Emir of Bukhara and his Country, 394; Vmbry, Travels in Central Asia, 50.
203
such as Kyzylart and Korkut Ata, wielded power over life, death, and the elements indicates
what the lay affiliate expected in exchange for his devotion to a shaykh.629
Shari a Guardian
Our final example is bound to that quintessentially Naqshband role of preaching and
defending the sacred law. It was on display when Dkch shn called the mng-bsh and the
Qalandar to repentance, and especially when he miraculously cursed and healed the son of the
petty-official among the Kyrgyz. It will be recalled that in that anecdote, the youth had brought
down Dkch shns wrath upon himself by partaking of medicinal vodka while ill.630 Certainly
in each of these stories there was an element of the miraculous at work, such as Dkch shn
knowing the secret deeds of the mng-bsh and the Qalandar, which brought them more firmly
into his orbit. But the most attractive feature of the shaykh to all the individuals involved in these
incidents seems to have been his firm and uncompromising adherence to Sharia. After all, these
miracles essentially served no purpose beyond demonstrating to those to whom he was preaching
that they had gone astray, and in each case the offender admitted his guilt. Clearly these
individuals were acting on a personal desire to be in sync with the sacred law as interpreted by a
saintly, powerful figure. It is also interesting to note that each of the men involved in these
anecdotes were lay affiliates, showing that it was not only hope of material prosperity or freedom
from illness that drew the common people to shaykhs.
629
Sven Hedin, Through Asia, 153; Schuyler, Turkistan, vol.1, 62-63.
630
Manqib-i Dkch shn, 121-122, 145, 137-138.
204
Adepts and Lay Affiliates: Unity in Aim, Divergence in Technology
Our murds were a diverse group who sought association with Sufi shaykhs, and their
orders, for a variety of reasons including obtaining the traditional goals of the Sufi path. Other
goals, on the surface at least, included desires for material prosperity, healing or other
miraculous blessings, and to live life in accordance with the teachings of a pious and spiritually
formidable leader. However, as in pursuing the rigors of suluk, at the heart of these goals was
the disciples thirst for achieving nearness to the divine as manifested through saintly
personages. The path of the adept and the lay affiliate diverged in that they used different
technologies to achieve their aims, but each hoped to obtain more or less the same end. Perhaps
it is best described as a difference in the degree of closeness to the divine, such as in the
distinction between Buehlers directing-shaykh and mediating-shaykh, but it can hardly be
argued that one group of murds hopes and aspirations for order participation were nobler or
purer than those of their fellow Sufis.

205
Chapter 6
Conclusion: shns, Dervishes, and a Vast Army of Murds
In flying close to fire I am aflame,

A moth singed by desire, a lover's game.
I weep. My body is a coal of shame.
I am a ruinsee, grave-robbers came!
In exile from all men of honoured name.
I freed my mind and made the world stand back.

Look where you tread. Turn into ashes black,
Fly, flyand burn, whichever way you tack.
Oh, you must read ana'l-Hak wa mina 'I-Hak.
I gulp down wine to try and drown the blame.
Folk don't enjoy me, I don't them enjoy.

Fire burns! I do not any mirth employ:
I wouldn't buy this world for gold alloy.
My friends are enemies who just annoy.
Misunderstood, I stand here scorched and lame.
My mind dwelt in a magic realm of thought

Where soul was in a net of slumber caught;
My body vanished set my heart at nought -
By love and all its magics overwrought.
Thus I became a madman without name.
Here's Makhtumkuli, weeping, out of shape,

Sunk in a mire of thought, without escape.
My inner citadel has suffered rape,
The soul's outside the corpse, sockets agape.
Work lies ahead. Recovery's my aim.
Magtymguly631
We began our exploration of nineteenth-century Sufism in the birthplace of the
Naqshbandiyya, Yasaviyya, and Kubrawiyya, with the goal of describing what the phenomenon
631
The Burning, in Songs from the Steppes of Central Asia.
206
looked like during this era. Rather than merely depicting the physical appearance of Sufis or
the layout of their lodges, however, we have provided a comprehensive picture of the daily life
and internal workings of two Sufi orders: the Naqshbandiyya and the Qalandariyyaor, as many
of our nineteenth-century sources would refer to them, shns and dervishes. In moving
beyond a focus on the Sufi role in cultural, economic, and political life, we have created a
religious ethnohistory of these ordersthe particular human population on which we have
concentratedas discrete entities.632 The result is a handbook of Sufi life in our era and region,
detailing their organization, economic basis, demographics, rituals, dress, connection to shrines,
and place in local folklore. More accurately, perhaps, it should be described as a baseline or
foundational study on which further scholarship on nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufism can
be predicated. Just as important, in establishing a baseline, we have obtained a nuanced
understanding of the differences between our Naqshbandiyya and Qalandariyya.
Among the Naqshbandiyya there was a revivalist strain which, in the context of Russian
colonialism, denounced alien influence in society and went so far as to attempt to purge it by
violence. The revivalist shaykh could seek to bolster his own legitimacy, and justify his
activities, by circumventing the shaykhly social order of the era. In addition to the lineage of his
contemporary master, the revivalist could claim uways status, or a direct connection to the
imminent shaykhs of centuries past. Thus he could assert that his orthodoxy was greater than that
of his fellow shaykhs. Revivalist shaykhs, like Dkch shn, likely sought to make these claims
and challenge their contemporaries, because they, unlike many shns who constituted part of the
632
Ethnographic Research: A Guide to General Conduct, 7.
207
proper upper class, had failed to come to terms with the altered social order following the
Russian conquest.
Like their contemporaries throughout the Islamic world, the Naqshband shaykhs of our
region and era were renowned for administering wealth. The fifteenth-century legacy of Khoja
Arr was alive and well in the nineteenth century, even among revivalists like Dkch shn.
However pious and renowned a shaykhs spiritual powers, a genuine shn displayed tangible
affluence. Like Arr, he was a land owner and pillar of the community. His wealth could be
based on a variety of sources, including agriculture and animal husbandry, offerings from
disciples and supporters, or, like many Naqshband shaykhs in previous centuries, the patronage
of rulers. As an important figure in his community, a Naqshband shaykh officiated at life-cycle
rituals and sacred holidays, as a means of cementing ties with both the lower and upper strata of
society and burnishing his orthodox credentials. He also populated the ranks of the ulam, a
position which could also offer entre into the proper upper class as well as lead to
collaboration with the colonial state. Other Naqshband shaykhs acted in a similar capacity, as
unofficial guardians of the Sharia, who, like Dkch shn, could be found on the fringes of the
colonial state, combining their knowledge of the sacred law with revivalist sentiment.
Naqshband shaykhs likely had followings of hundreds of adepts, though thousands of lay
affiliates could swell their organizations. While it seems unlikely that even the most active
shaykh could thoroughly instruct each of these disciples in the path, there is evidence to show
nineteenth-century shaykhs continued to produce followers competent in the Sufi arts.
Geographically these organizations could be widespread, a phenomenon likely aided by the
communications and transportation infrastructure provided by the tsarist authorities. This
geographic scope fostered ethnic, economic, etc. diversity in these organizations.

208
Though our Naqshband shaykhs participated at the highest levels of society, upheld the
Sharia, challenged one anothers legitimacy, and administered wealth and extensive
organizations, not all of them could be described as soberthe adjective so often associated
with the order. Among the Naqshbandiyya we have discovered further evidence of the
performance of public, vocal dhikrs accompanied by ecstatic movements. We have also noted
Naqshband institution of shrine feasts or co-optation of popular holy places, and their adopting
of the trappings of renunciation in personal appearance. There was great diversity to be found
under the Naqshband rubric in nineteenth-century Central Asia.
The Qalandariyya of our era were similarly diverse, with different dervish strains existing
under the same conceptual umbrella. In the nineteenth century this order continued to
demonstrate the tensions between ascetic virtuosi and more mainstream Sufis, a process which
had begun in the sixteenth century. Like their Naqshband counterparts, the life of the
mainstream focused on the lodges located in the towns and cities of Central Asia. From these
qalandarkhanas they were sent forth to seek alms in the bazaars by their Qalandar Baba, whose
organization could extend over a significant geographical region. Like the organizations of their
Naqshband contemporaries, colonial infrastructure possibly played a role in facilitating their
spread. These larger organizations likely relied on resources beyond begging, like seeking
subsistence from government patrons. These organizations also played a role in the life of their
communities, providing lodging and food to weary travelers.
Lest this more mainstream dervish strain seem too much like their Naqshband
contemporaries, we should remember their attachment to devotion in graveyards and
psychoactive drug use. Even more outside the norms of Naqshband practice were the dervishes
proper, or ascetic virtuosi, who wandered nearly naked, slept in the open, kept silent, and
209
secluded themselves in cemeteries. Yet, from one perspective, it is possible to look at these
dervishes as merely inhabiting the left end of a spectrum of nineteenth-century Central Asia
Sufism, with the main-stream Qalandar variant in the center, followed by the less-sober
Naqshbandiyya, and the traditionally sober, proper upper class Naqshband shaykhs on the
furthest right. Clearly the Naqshbandiyya and the Qalandariyya each maintained a sense of
commitment to the principles of the spiritual lineages that had spawned them. However, in the
nineteenth century, we see that these orders moved towards one another in terms of ritual and
appearance. The most likely explanation for this congruence, and both orders employing tools
outside the canons of their respective traditions, is that they desired to maintain and/or propagate
their organizations. If the Naqshbandiyya sought to engage in ecstatic public rituals and establish
exuberant shrine feasts in order to appeal to a broader swath of society, then the Qalandariyya
seems to have dressed up their asceticism to a greater degree in order to appear more respectable
to the mainstream. It is unclear the degree to which Russian colonialism spurred, exacerbated, or
otherwise affected this process. We can see that it provided new tools with which rival
Naqshband shaykhs could challenge one another, and that the Qalandariyya found themselves at
odds with the Russians over their activities in public. However, more research is needed to
understand when and how the Naqshbandiyya and Qalandariyya began to resemble one another.
In addition to analyzing the orders, our baseline has also encompassed an attempt to
delve into the purposes and goals of our Sufis participation in their orders. Specifically, we have
attempted to leave behind the charismatic shaykh and see through the eyes of the lowly murds, a
vast army of which filled the ranks of the orders during our period.633 Our sources, of course,
633
The phrase is Count Pahlens, see Pahlen, Mission to Turkestan, 57. While Pahlen mistook Sufi orders for
paramilitary organizations, hence his use of army, the word, in its other sense, certainly helps convey the scale of
participation in our orders.
210
often saw the Sufi world from the pirs viewpoint, but the innovative methodology applied above
has allowed insight into the hearts of his many disciples. By understanding the sources of our
shaykhs power and authority we have shown the diverse reasons that drew murds to their
service. For example, the preliminary shaykh typologies we have established for our era and
region include the shn, Miracle Worker, and Sharia Guardian. Though not mutually exclusive
typologies, it is possible to make broad observations as to what attracted disciples to each of
these types. First, however, we had to differentiate between two types of disciples: adepts (who
received tangible signs of membership in the order and were regular participants in rituals that
required an intimate relationship with the shaykh) and lay affiliates (who had accepted the
patronage of a shaykh but did not regularly take part in rituals, especially of an advanced nature).
We showed that each type of murd sought out the company of these shaykhs: the shn
because disciples faith in their masters powers were bolstered by evidence of his, and their
own, temporal success; the Miracle Worker because they feared and hoped to acquire or benefit
from his supernatural powers; and the Sharia Guardian because they were acting on a personal
desire to be in sync with the sacred law as interpreted by a saintly, powerful figure. Broadly
speaking, we have confirmed that among the adepts was a greater propensity toward achieving
the traditional goals of the Sufi path, while lay affiliates sought material blessings, healing,
miracles, and to be taught by men of exemplary piety and great spiritual power.
It is important to emphasize, however, that both types of murd sought nearness to the
divine through saintly personages, though the technologies they employed to obtain this end
differed. Seemingly, these ends were qualitatively different, but in reality, they merely
represented a difference of degree, of closeness to the divine. This distinction is nicely
exemplified by considering the contrast between those disciples who sought the presence of a
211
directing-shaykh (who guided them on the path of their own journey to the divine) and those
pursuing the company of a mediating-shaykh (who traveled the path on their behalf). Not all
disciples had the time, talents, or spiritual fortitude to suffer, like Magtymguly, the rape of their
inner citadel. But that does not mean that their yearning for the sacred was any less noble or
genuine than that of their fellow Sufis possessed of such gifts.
Though the intent of this study was to paint as comprehensive a picture as possible of
nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufism, it is but a first, exploratory step in a long-term process.
There are many other sources to explore and methodologies to employ before the definitive word
on the subject can be claimed to have been said. Though not the final word it is, hopefully, a key
word, which will, among other things, allow future scholarship to come to grips with the ultimate
fate of Sufism during the Soviet period. It is hoped that it will inspire a greater desire to break
out of Sufi Studies concentration on Central Asias thirteenth-seventeenth centuries. As it is, the
relative dearth of research conducted on this period seems to indicate that colonial-era,
Orientalist notions concerning the decline or decadence of both Sufism and the political and
economic fortunes of Central Asia have been internalized by, and, however unwittingly, made
manifest by some scholars in the field. If nothing else, this study should foster a discussion of
why Sufism in this era is understudied and what can be done to remedy the problem.
212
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A Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism

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shns, Dervishes, and a Vast Army of Murds:

Towards a Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism

Timothy Jack Rowe

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

(Languages and Cultures of Asia)

Date of final oral examination: 7/8/2015

All rights reserved

INFORMATION TO ALL USERS

All rights reserved.

Chapter 2. Order Organization, Economic Basis, Membership, Demographics, and Networks...62

Chapter 3. The Orders Spiritual Services to Society and Rituals.96

Marking the Qibla, Officiating a Marriage, and Celebrating d al-a.98

Ulam and Guardians of the Sharia.101

Chapter 4. Sufi Appearance, Connection to Shrines, and Place in Folklore...133

Chapter 5. Toward A Holistic View of Nineteenth-Century Central Asian Sufism168

Pir Power and Murd Desire: The Goals of Discipleship188

Shaykhs: Modalities of Power and Authority..189

Chapter 6. Conclusion: shns, Dervishes, and a Vast Army of Murds.205

resources necessary to reach dissertator status. Thanks to Christopher J. Doersam, living

about contemporary issues in the regionand Michael Coffey, editor, partner-in-crime,

bureaucratic skullduggery was instrumental in helping me temporarily escape the office to

continue my education. Finally, thanks to Dr. Nemchenok, whose frequent Russo-Bostonian

cajoling eventually persuaded me that even I could write a dissertation.

Let my life be sacrificed to you, if you decide to spill my blood,

attributed to Khoja Amad Yasav (d. 1166-7)1

Naqshband rubric in nineteenth-century Central Asia, including shaykhs of a revivalist strain,

Qalandariyya will be revealed to not be one of cross-pollination, borrowing, or conservative

though they used different technologies to achieve their aims.

Siberia, and the Volga-Urals region).

Turkestan) will be considered, where appropriate.

within categorical schemes and social contexts.7

Yet, any observation can be considered acceptable if it is internally coherent and

self-conscious positioning, not pretenses to universality or detachment, is the condition for

Attempting to reconstruct Sufi life in nineteenth-century Central Asia is an enormous

precisely into the field of ethnohistory.11

is often neglected due to source limitations, methodological weaknesses, and an overemphasis on

shaykhs whose power and authority elicited their devotion.

nineteenth century. In addition, knowledge of contemporary developments throughout the larger

Dimensions of Islamwill be utilized.13 These will be augmented by Alexander Knyshs Islamic

development of Sufism, explication of Naqshband ritual, and notion of the mediating-shaykh,

be used to understand similar developments in Central Asia.15 Ahmet T. Karamustafas Gods

establishment of Islamic institutions.18

substantial historical overview of mystical Islam in Central Eurasia (eight-early twentieth

Oneworld Publications, 2006).

subject of chapter 4. Chapter 5 will be devoted to an analytically informed, holistic description of

orders. Chapter 6 will offer a brief conclusion.

As noted above, the amount of scholarship on nineteenth-century Central Asian Sufism

scholarship on nineteenth-century Sufism to culturally related areas in the Volga-Urals, and

phenomenon as it existed in Central Asia.

commerce, agricultural production, and philanthropic purposes.19 Gross description of the

their interaction with the colonial authorities at that time.

time, DeWeeses digging into thirteenth-seventeenth-century hagiographies has laid a necessary

foundation on which to begin building an understanding of the nineteenth century. In particular,

ritual that informed the Sufis of the era.20

significance of Sufi-associated shrines in the region during the nineteenth century.

Among the best scholarship on contemporary Sufism in neighboring regions is that by

the Naqshband-Khlid shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev provides a specific case-study of these

Haramayn.24 Israeli academic Itzchak Weismann has endeavored to build on Algars

foundational work, providing an up-to-date synthesis and analysis of scholarship on the

Naqshbandiyyaincluding a particular emphasis on the orders role in its Central Asia

Mystical Islam in Central Eurasia, Eighth-Early Twentieth Centuries

modern Turkmenistan.28 The conquest of neighboring Transoxiana, however, was a lengthy

installing Arab governors and building mosques throughout the region.30