Paper abstract:

This paper considers the development and evolution of paradigms of female sainthood and spiritual leadership in Central Asia and neighboring regions, which is the subject of my book in-progress: Sufi Saints of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and her Sacred Networks (Harvard, 2024).

This paper centers on the female scholar-saint Bibi Sahiba (d. 1803), who was designated as the khalifa and qayyum of the principal Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi order of Kabul and Qandahar, with branches from Bukhara and Xinjiang to Gujarat. Through written and oral sources on Bibi Sahiba, her female descendants, and twelve female deputies appointed to lead sizable spiritual communities from Tharparkar to Rajasthan, I explore the emergence of a new, malleable model of female sacred-scholastic-popular authority which was critical in enabling the expansion of Sufi orders throughout the Persianate world in the 18th and 19th centuries. I also examine the evolution of the practical offices of female inheritors of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi path in urban versus pastoral nomadic environments, and the development of the haram sarai or haveli, the female-centered and female-led portion of Sufi institutions.

Bibi Sahiba and her contemporaries engendered a new paradigm of Islamo-Persianate female religious leadership distinct from earlier models of women’s sainthood; it de-emphasized the ‘Rabia’ or ‘theology of servitude’ ideal, in favor of a novel interpretation of the ‘Fatima’ paradigm. This paradigm was a byproduct of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi cosmological framework and model of spiritual wayfaring. Like Fatima the Radiant, these saints were to be present in this world, as practical publicly engaged community leaders, scholars and spiritual guides, managers par excellence, and mothers to virtuous children, and sources of radiating divine light for creation – embedded within a patriarchal Sufi lineage. The case of Bibi Sahiba and her successors ultimately warrants a drastic reconceptualization of the implications of Sunni Naqshbandi orthodoxy on the role of women in knowledge transmission and popular leadership, and the emergence of alternative loci of religio-political sovereignty.

Paper abstract:

Unpacking the history of Hisar-i Shadman (i.e. the “joyous fortress” in present-day Tajikistan), this paper reveals the distinctive socio-political milieu of the eponymous fortress city in the 1580s. This paper posits that Sufis of the Ahrari Naqshbandi line, descended from the famous Sufi Khwaja Ubayd Allah Ahrar (1404-1490), reassessed their status as keepers and brokers of sovereign and sacred authority within the rapidly changing political environments of Central and South Asia during their sojourn in the city. As Hisar was home to numerous Naqshbandi commercial and sacred properties, protected by fortifications, connected to all major cities in Central Asia, and on the periphery of the Mughal and the Uzbek empires, it was a suitable destination for Ahraris fleeing the fall of Kabul to the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1582. In the Kingdom of Kabul, Akbar’s brother and rival Mirza Hakim along with the Naqshbandi Sufis had mobilized a nostalgia for the Timurid Empire championing the sharing of sovereign power between rulers and Sufis to present a traditional antithesis to the increasingly absolute sovereignty of Akbar that monopolized all sacred and worldly authority. Though Hisar briefly provided the Ahrari Sufis with some respite, it also impressed the radically changed socio-political reality of post-Timurid Central Asia upon them. While it had remained autonomous through the sixteenth century, Hisar had recently been conquered by the Uzbek ruler Abdullah Khan II. Like Akbar, Abdullah Khan was also centralizing his authority over his empire albeit by bringing the myriad autonomous appanages ruled by various clan members under his direct control. He had however not assumed an absolute sovereign status to the same degree as Akbar and still derived some sovereignty via a patronage of Naqshbandi Sufis, though from the Juybari and not the historically patronized Ahrari line. These realizations convinced the Hisari Ahraris to suspend their imperial project premised on a symbiotic sovereignty shared between the Ahrari Sufis and ruling dynasties. Observing the ascendancy of the Juybaris, the Ahraris also formally accepted Juybari pirs (Sufi masters) as their own, creating new initiatic connections to augment existing familial connections to Khwaja Ahrar before finally migrating to the Mughal Empire in the 1590s. This paper employs critical readings of tazkiras, waqf documents and akhlaq literature to engage with scholarship on both Sufism and sovereignty but most importantly add to the lacking body of literature on early modern Hissar and Kabul.

Paper abstract:

The religio-political milieu in sixteenth century Central Asia was a time of contestation

between various power-hungry groups, including the newly founded Sunni

Shibanid and Shiʿi Safavid houses. Post-Timurid Central Asia went through a process

of reformulation and reassertion of Sunni identity in response to the promotion of

the forceful militant Shiʿism by the Safavids. The public proclamation of pro-ʿAlid

sentiments that had been propagated by the Timurids became dangerous when the

veneration of ʿAlī and his descendants became associated with sympathies toward

the Shiʿi Safavids. Although the militant Shiʿi Safavid state rapidly became a major

political threat for its neighboring regions, the gradual conversion of the majority

Sunni population of Iran to Shiʿism under the Safavid rule led to even greater intimidation

for Sunni Central Asia from a religious standpoint.

Paper abstract:

From 1868 to 1920, the Amirate of Bukhara was a legally independent country with a sovereign monarchy dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. During this same period, Bukhara was subject to colonial rule, in many ways functioning like other provinces of the Russian Empire. How can both of these statements be true simultaneously? This paper reconsiders sovereignty in colonial-era Bukhara through the prism of bureaucracy. It argues that the logic of the multi-confessional empire -- a broad paradigm that characterized both Russia and Bukhara -- allowed for the coexistence of nested forms of sovereignty such that Bukhara was both a constituent part of the Russian Empire and a sovereign Islamic state at the same time. This seeming paradox is clarified by following the paper trail both within Bukhara and in dialogue with Russian interlocutors, fueled by translation between linguistic registers and corresponding symbols of sovereignty.