Ahmad Yasavi and the Ismailis of Badakhshan: Towards a New Social History of Sufi-Shii Relations in Central Asia

This article examines how a text attributed to the renowned Central Asian Sufi figure Aloud Yasavi came to be found within a manuscript produced within the Ismaili Shirt community of the Shughnan district of the Badakhshan region of Central Asia. The adoption of this text into an Ismaili codex suggests an exchange between two disparate Islamic religious traditions in Central Asia between which there has hitherto been little evidence of contact. Previous scholarship on Ismnli-Sufi relations has focused predominately on the literary and intellectual engagement between these traditions, while the history of persecution experienced by the Ismailis at the hands of Sunni Muslims has largely overshadowed discussions of the social relationship between the Isms ills and other Muslim communities in Central Asia. I demonstrate that this textual exchange provides evidence for a previously unstudied social engagement between Ismaili and Sunni communities in Central Asia that was facilitated by the rise of the Khanate of Khoqand in the 18th century. The mountainous territory of Shughnan, where the manuscript under consideration originated, has been typically represented in scholarship as isolated prior to the onset of colonial interest in the region in the late 19th century. Building upon recent research on the impact of early modem globalization on Central Asia, I demonstrate that even this remote region was significantly affected by the intensification of globalizing processes in the century preceding the Russian conquest. Accordingly, I take this textual exchange as a starting point for a broader re-evaluation of the Ismaili-Suil relationship in Central Asia and of the social 'connectivity' of the Ismailis and the Badakhshan region within early modem Eurasia.