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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.