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  • Pirship in Badakhshan: The Role and Significance of the Institute of the Religious Masters (Pirs) in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Wakhan and Shughnan
  • Abdulmamad Iloliev

Walk not without a pir, for you may go astray,   Even if you are the Alexander of your day. Jami

(d. 1492)1

Introduction2

Muslim religious institutions take varying forms, and this reflects the diversity of beliefs and practices that are associated with Islam in the modern world. This diversity is a historically cultivated phenomenon that echoes the gradual adaptation of Prophet Muhammad’s mission in the culturally and geographically diverse contexts of Islam. The Isma‘ilis, like many other Muslim communities, have developed their own distinctive ways of practicing Islam and being Muslim. These are also deeply rooted in their indigenous histories and cultures, but theoretically framed in relation to the Shi‘a doctrine of the Imamate. Based on the concept of the Prophet’s household (ahl al-bayt), this emphasises the significance of the continuity of the divine guidance in the line of ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661) – Muhammad’s cousin and son in-law – and his descendants, the Shi‘a Imams (Mozaffari 1987, Madelung 1997).3 For Isma‘ilis, this doctrine revolves around the core principle of their faith – the unconditional belief in the absolute authority of the living or ‘present’ (hadir) Imam from the line of Isma‘il, the eldest son of Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 785). Except for during some critical circumstances in Isma‘ili history, the [End Page 155] Imam has always been present to guide his followers (Daftary 2007). Yet, at the same time, other chains of religious authority have also developed alongside the Imam to (a) implement his guidance and/or (b) fill the gap of religious control and management in his absence.4 In geographically remote parts of the world such as Badakhshan (a region that today crosses the boundaries of modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan), where, until the last decade of the twentieth century, Nizari Isma‘ilis were for all intents and purposes disconnected from the Imam’s office due to a combination of both geographic remoteness and political difficulties, the community was solely managed by its local religious masters known as the pirs (sing. pir, a Sufi term for a spiritual guide) and/or the khalifahs (sing. khalifah, a pir’s deputy) (Daftary 2011). The khalifahs and the pirs were the most important sources of religious control and organisation prior to the advent of modern Isma‘ili institutions in Badakhshan. Scholarship on these persons of Islamic authority in Badakhshan is very scant except for a few case studies that document the genealogies of some selected pirs (Hojibekov 2002, Grigoriev 1998) and their role in regional politics, most especially during the nineteenth century Anglo-Russian ‘Great Game’ (Kharyukov 1995, Postnikov 2000).

This paper, which is based on my recent fieldwork in Badakhshan (both in Tajikistan and Afghanistan), seeks to move beyond these existing approaches and advances a broader argument concerning the role and significance of the Badakhshani pirs in the organisation and maintenance of the religious, social, and political matters of the community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. More uniquely it aims to examine the role of the pirs’ network – here, referred to as pirship – as an institution of social control and organisation that not only provides religious guidance, but also collects and distributes religious taxes, and responds actively to the immediate political and social environment of its time. It is argued here that the pirs of Badakhshan, though theoretically heteronymous to the central Imamate office, were practically autonomous in their own constituencies that were spread all over the region. The pirs not only controlled the religious aspects of their followers’ lives, but also dealt with their personal affairs and were actively involved in regional politics.

The area under investigation presents a case study of two significant localities, namely Shughnan and Wakhan, which, regardless of their modern political settings, possess a set of shared cultural and social values and common geographic bounds.5 It is therefore interesting to see how [End Page 156] the commonality of cultural elements and...

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