i

Thus Spake the Dervish

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_001

ii 

Studies on Sufism

Edited by

Rachida Chih
Erik S. Ohlander
Florian Sobieroj

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sufi

 iii

Thus Spake the Dervish

Sufism, Language, and the Religious Margins in
Central Asia, 1400–1900

By

Alexandre Papas

Translated by

Caroline Kraabel

LEIDEN | BOSTON
 iv 

Cover illustration: Road from Faizabad to Mazar-e Sharif. Ethnographic views, religion and ritual. Dervish
with sheep. Josephine Powell Photograph, 1959-1961. Courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library,
Harvard University, W282976_1.

The original French edition of this book, Ainsi parlait le derviche, was published by Editions du Cerf (Paris,
France).

Published with the support of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Papas, Alexandre, author.

Title: Thus spake the dervish : Sufism, language, and the religious margins
in Central Asia, 1400-1900 / by Alexandre Papas ; translated by Caroline
Kraabel.
Other titles: Ainsi parlait le dervice. English
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Studies on Sufism,
2468-0087 ; VOLUME 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019018991 (print) | LCCN 2019022248 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004398504 (hardback : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Dervishes--Asia, Central--History. |
Mysticism--Islam--Asia, Central.
Classification: LCC BP188.8.A783 P3713 2019 (print) | LCC BP188.8.A783
(ebook) | DDC 297.409581/0903--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018991
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022248

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 Contents
Contents v

Contents

Acknowledgements VII
List of Figures VIII IX

Introduction 1
1 A Manifesto: The Qalandarnāma, by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī 11
2 In Search of the Margins 16

1 In the Streets of Herat 28

1 A Presentation of the ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī’s Maḥbūb al-qulūb 28
2 Musicians, Singers, Storytellers 33
3 Ruffians, Bohemians, Paupers 38
4 Real and False Dervishes 42
5 Other Sources: Names and Words 48

2 Outside the Madrasas of Bukhara 59

1 About the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 59
2 The Head of the Dervish 61
3 The Trunk and the Arms 71
4 The Lower Body 88
5 From Lexis to Relics 97

3 In the Ruins of Aksu 104

1 Kharābātī, a People’s Poet 104
2 To Peasants, Artisans, Doctors and the Powerful 120
3 The Call to Renunciation 128
4 On the Paradox of Language 139

4 In the Depths of the Grottoes of Central Asia 144

1 Silences in Khotan 144
2 Whispers in Tashkent and Samarkand 153
3 Graffiti in Manguistaou 163
4 Legends in Fergana and Pamir 174

5 On the Road with Cantors and Itinerants 183

1 The maddāḥ in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang 183
vi Contents

2 Abdāl tili, the Language of Outsiders 195

3 Argot and Mystical Language 200

Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday and Today 206

Bibliography 211
Index of Names 223
Index of Places 228
226
 Acknowledgements
Contents vii

Acknowledgements

Many friends and colleagues have contributed in one way or another to the
writing of this book. I’d like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Mehran Afshari,
Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Michel Bovin, Rachida Chih, Nathalie Clayer,
Stéphane Dudoignon, Arienne M. Dwyer, Aftandil Erkinov, Jürgen Wasim
Frembgen, Nile Green, Masami Hamada, Thibaut d’Hubert, Sergei Khachatu-
rian, Caroline Kraabel, Pierre Lory, Yana Pak, Anne Papas, Margot Papas, Ryoko
Sekiguchi, Marc Toutant, Sara Yontan, Thierry Zarcone.
viii Figures Figures

Figures

1 Hookah smokers in Bukhara, 1911 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 17

2 Ecstatic dance of the dervishes (Ḥāfiẓ, Dīwān, MS Metropolitan Museum,
Herat, ca. 1480, attributed to the painter Bihzād) 49
3 Visit of Alexander, in the guise of Sulṭān Bāyqarā, to a saint in his grotto
(Niẓāmī, Khamsa, MS British Museum Or. 6810, 1490–99, attributed to the
painter Bihzād) 58
4 Grottoes of Kashgaria (Scientific Mission in Upper Asia, 1890–1895, vol. 1,
p. 39) 145
5 Shrine of Kuhmārī (Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, vol. 1,
p. 165) 146
6 Grottoes of Kuhmārī (Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, vol. 3,
p. 161) 147
7 Shrine of Kuhmārī (Ancient Khotan, vol. 1, p. 186) 148
8,9 Entrance and interior of the grotto in 2008 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 149
10 Cell for spiritual concentration in 2008 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 151
11 Shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā in Tashkent in 2007 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 154
12 Cell adjoining the shrine, with the entrance on the right, in 2007 (@ Archives
Anne & Alexandre Papas) 157
13 The interior of the cell with a dervish’s staff as a relic, in 2007 (@ Archives Anne
& Alexandre Papas) 157
14 Shrine of Danyāl in Samarkand in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 160
15 Uzbek pilgrims at the entrance in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 160
16 Cenotaph of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 161
17 Doors at the entrance to the grotto of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne &
Alexandre Papas) 161
18 Interior of the grotto of Danyāl in 2013 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 162
19 Entrance of the shrine of Shopan Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 166
20 Entrance of the main grotto in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 166
21 Collective yurt for pilgrims in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 167
Figures ix

22 Shrine of Shaqpaq Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 170
23 Central chamber of the grotto (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 170
24 Ritual for receiving the influx of the saint (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre
Papas) 171
25 Walkway leading to the shrine of Beket Ata in 2016 (@ Archives Anne &
Alexandre Papas) 172
26 Entrance of the grotto in 2016 (@ Archives Anne & Alexandre Papas) 173
27 Dīwāna in Keriya (Ruins of Desert Cathay, 1912, vol. 2, p. 639) 193
28 Dervishes of Kashgar (Anonymous, ‘Nasha sredneaziatskaia granitsa. Kashgar’,
Niva, 15, 1879. <http://zerrspiegel.orientphil.uni-halle.de/i126.html>) 194
x Figures
 Introduction
Introduction 1

Introduction

In his 1978 chapter on people who live in the margins of society1, long since
accorded classic status, Jean-Claude Schmitt observed that a sort of ‘Coperni-
can Revolution’ was taking effect in history-writing. Historians could no longer
present a dynastic, elite or clerical scenario, in which the centres of power took
up all of the social space, while claiming that any other details or points of
view were hidden, their interstices, intervals and angles swallowed up in the
darkness of (lack of) sources. As a result, Western Europe between the elev-
enth and eighteenth centuries began to present a new face, especially as con-
cerns religion. Evidence perhaps of the ‘permanence throughout occidental
history of a desire for transgression and wildness in life’, faith’s outsiders ap-
pear across the centuries: heterodox tendencies were absorbed by new reli-
gious orders during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but thereafter heresies
came flooding back and people continued to sing the praises of God’s holy
fools. In spite of the inquisition’s immolations and the two yellow crosses that
former heretics were forced to wear, groups such as the Brethren of the Free
Spirit openly despised the laws of the Church. It was not until the sixteenth
century that the irremediable decline of the ideal of voluntary poverty, as ex-
emplified by the Beguines, became evident. During the very early modern pe-
riod the Fool is finally imprisoned, while ‘the time of sects begins’: churches
multiplied on the margins of a society that now doubted more often than it
believed.
The medievalist concluded his chapter by bringing up the question of
sources: ‘How can we hear the voices of the past’s outsiders, since they were, by
definition, stifled by the powerful, who discussed the outsiders but never al-
lowed them to speak for themselves?’ In order to get around this obstacle, his-
torians of the medieval and early modern period in the west searched carefully
within the ‘official’ papers produced by repressive institutions to document
their actions: registers of inquisition, legal archives, polemical works…. Here
they were able to find traces of the people who had been absent from history,
and to use these to fashion new indicators of social transformations.
The Copernican revolution never took place in the historiography of the
Muslim world, though it did carry in its wake a few pioneering works in French
and English that presented an initial analysis of it. Here we must understand
marginality in the strict sense, as precarious social position and as a rupture

1 Jean-Claude Schmitt, “L’histoire des marginaux,” in La Nouvelle histoire, ed. Jacques Le Goff
(Paris: Complexe, 1978, republished 1988), 277–305.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_002

2 Introduction

with an established order, both inscribed over the long duration. We cannot
confuse the truly marginal with the poor, migrants, lone women, prostitutes
(male or female), Jews or other religious minorities, for example2: these groups
are often excluded completely or considered pariahs, rather than being seen as
being genuinely on the margins.
Opening the drama during the first centuries of Islam in the East3, particu-
larly in the cities of Syria and Upper Mesopotamia after the tenth century, we
find a people’s organisation called aḥdāth. This was a militia of fighting men
(some of whom were of modest extraction), which was as likely to disturb pub-
lic order as to keep it. A second, more violent and more spontaneous group
then hits the chronicles, the ʿayyār (pl. ʿayyārān/ʿayyārūn). Described in the
sources as ‘an ugly crowd, thieves’ (awbāsh), ‘thugs’ (rind), the ʿayyār were im-
plicated in many insurrectional incidents – notably in Baghdad between the
ninth and eleventh centuries whenever there was a need to eliminate a gover-
nor, officer or chief of police. Their reputation was ambiguous and their way of
life unclear: for some they were vandals and looters while others would say
they stole from the rich to give to the poor. The ʿayyār skulked through marsh-
lands and seedy suburbs or were seated at the palace tables. In the oases of
Iran and Central Asia, popular uprisings were led or encouraged by ʿayyārān
right up to the modern period. These bad boys came overwhelmingly from the
lower strata of society, the poor neighbourhoods or the urban periphery, and
sometimes from prisons. Their immediate aims were pillage and the redistri-
bution of wealth. Some of these insurgents, a few of whom might also be from
the salaried or notable classes, would at times pass over to the side of order,
shifting from the margins to the centres of power.
During the same period the world of con-men and traffickers is less equivo-
cal.4 The bandit-poets of the highways (ṣaʿālīk, pl. ṣuʿlūk) resembled French
poet-criminal François Villon. Each of them inhabited his own zone in Arabia
or Persia, and they are difficult to identify except through their own verses,

2 A few Muslim minorities in India represent borderline cases of confessional marginality, but
their situation is due to a process of acculturation or of social segregation, rather than to a
deliberate perturbation. See M.K.A. Siddiqui, ed., Marginal Muslim Communities in India (New
Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 2004), 10, 22, 74–75, 145–46, 149, 225, 257, 351–52, 388–90,
399–400, 426, 439–40, 488.
3 Claude Cahen, “Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie musulmane du
Moyen Âge 1,” Arabica 5/3 (1958): 225–50; id., “Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain
dans l’Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge 2,” Arabica 6/1 (1959): 25–56; id., “Mouvements popu-
laires et autonomisme urbain dans l’Asie musulmane du Moyen Âge 3,” Arabica 6/3 (1959):
233–65.
4 Clifford Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground. The Banū Sāsān in Arabic
Society and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1976).
Introduction 3

which intersperse tales of their adventures with passages of lyrical flight. The
Banū Sāsān (a generic name for all sorts of beggars) are better-documented,
following in the path of the legendary disinherited king of Persia, Shaykh
Sāsān. The polymath al-Jāḥiẓ, who had already died by 255/868, made up a very
colourful list of the different types of hustlers, among the eloquent examples
of which one finds the kāghānī, who plays the role of a man possessed so well
that he foams at the mouth, inspiring pity for his incurability in those who give
him money, and the mustaʿriḍ, who takes on the respectable air of a gentleman
in difficulty, sits down (miserably) next to his mark and discreetly asks for a few
coins.5 These Banū Sāsān are described in odes (qaṣīda) composed in Arabic
by authors from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries, who were themselves
close to the margins of society, being at once long-term travellers, sometime
spies for the sultan, or amateurs of erotic (taghazzul) or obscene (mujūn) lit-
erature. These authors detailed the categories and techniques of beggars, and
certain sexual practices, while also providing a glossary of the slang of their
underworld milieu. The urban centres of Iraq, Syria and Iran now unveil a very
different face from the one that Muslim chroniclers usually present: as he
leaves his home, the citizen cannot avoid deformed beggars and false invalids;
in the bazaar he must protect his pockets and beware as much of the self-de-
clared dentist as of the fortune-teller; at the doors of the mosque the kneeling
men wearing homespun wool and stretching out an open hand are not all as-
cetic saints … this is a familiar crowd, but one that’s always a bit apart, with its
own language and codes that are deliberately distinct from those of their
‘dupes’ (khushnī, pl. akhshān).
There are also texts, unanimously critical, evoking a less well-known mar-
ginal group that arose in Egypt and Syria from the end of the Ayyubid Dynasty
to the time of the first Mamluks: the ḥarfūsh (pl. ḥarāfīsh).6 This word means
vagabond, scum, person of the lowest class, and was used in Arabic to speak of
people who were ‘vulgar, voracious, common, crazy’, in their behaviour or in
their speech. The term also covers a social reality that finally faded away at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, that of the urban underclass who were or-
ganised into groups, alternatives to the guilds of beggars. These groups existed
in Cairo, Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, and were regularly implicated in
acts of violence, street fights, and sometimes even in public protests.
Historians of Muslim societies during the medieval, pre-modern and mod-
ern periods have also examined the problem of drug-taking, specifically the

5 al-Jāhiz, Le Livre des avares, trans. Charles Pellat (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1951), 65, 73–75.
6 William Brinner, “The Significance of the Harāfīsh and their ‘Sultan’,” Journal of the Economic
and Social History of the Orient 6/2 (1963): 190–215.
4 Introduction

consumption of hashish.7 Without entering into too many details of a long and
complex story, we can mention a few social aspects of the marginality of ad-
dicts. Hashish (also called banj/bang), which was cheaper than alcohol, was
used across all of the Muslim East, particularly in the lower strata of society, as
indicated by the slang names that were employed by different social groups to
name it: the ‘sweetie’ (sukkarī) of the grave-diggers, the ‘girlfriend’ (ʿashīra) of
the lamp-lighters, etc. The consumption of hashish was condemned very early
on by Muslim jurists (with the exception of some Hanafite authorities); they
said it harmed the spirit and the body, rendered users anti-social and gave rise
to a perverse counter-culture in cities. During the thirteenth century there was
apparently a ‘house of hashish’ in Baghdad; in fifteenth-century Cairo addicts
lived in the ill-famed quarters of Ard al-Tabbālah and Bāb al-Lūq. In spite of its
negative image, hashish and its spiritual virtues continued to be defended, as
in India, until very late, notably in the Book of Infusions of Cannabis (Bangāb
nāma) by Maḥmūd Baḥrī (d. 1130/1718), a solitary and rebellious mystic. Never-
theless, times did change, and with them ways of thinking. If one is to believe
colonial power and Muslim modernists of India and Egypt (the two countries
that seem to have been the most affected by mass dependency on hashish at
the end of the nineteenth century), this drug makes its mostly lower-class us-
ers not only confused and asocial, but also pathologically dangerous. The defi-
nition of this newly dangerous class, despite its origins in the discreet
interstices of the big cities (especially in the cafés, which were later replaced by
clandestine establishments the ornate calligraphy of whose shop-fronts might
conceal the word kif), leads to the marginalisation of all those who are impli-
cated, sometimes without their knowledge, in the trafficking of hashish: peas-
ants, transporters, informers, customs-men etc. Worse, since, according to
certain doctors, the taking of hashish led to lunacy, it became urgently neces-
sary to imprison addicts. The asylums of Bombay and Cairo were thus quickly
filled.
It is evident, anthropologists agree, that in spite of repression the consump-
tion of cannabis continued into the twentieth century in Tunisia, Turkey,

7 Franz Rosenthal, The Herb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Leiden: Brill, 1971); Ibn
Taymiyya, Le Haschich et l’extase, texts translated from Arabic, presented and annotated by
Yahya Michot (Beirut: Al-Bouraq, 2001); Farid U. Alakbarov, “Medicinal Properties of Cannabis
According to Medieval Manuscripts of Azerbaijan,” Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics 1/2
(2001): 3–14; Liat Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League
of Nations Diplomacy,” Middle Eastern Studies 47/3 (2011): 443–60; Nile Green, “Breaking the
Begging Bowl: Morals, Drugs, and Madness in the Fate of the Muslim faqīr,” South Asian History
and Culture 5/2 (2014): 226–45.
Introduction 5

Egypt, India and Central Asia, especially among working people.8 Most often
smoked in a pipe (a calumet or hookah from the 1600s), hemp created a mas-
culine, private and marginal sociability (as opposed to creating an entire social
group on the margins) that freed people to speak their minds and express their
humour and high spirits.
Lunatics, whom we have mentioned above, were an important social reality.
However, for our purposes we will not take all mentally ill people into account:
only those who troubled public order, whether they were then interned or al-
lowed to remain free, really concern us as a marginal group.9 If this category is
still a little difficult to delineate, we may agree that, for example, patients suf-
fering from melancholy (waswās) or epilepsy (ṣarʿ) are not included in it,
whereas people with severe delirium, the furiosi (sabārī), and the wise fools
(ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn) should be considered to belong to the group with which
we are concerned.
The historiography of madness in the world of Islam has shown that intern-
ment in hospital (māristān) came about as early as the ninth century in Cairo.
Establishments in twelfth and thirteenth century Baghdad and Damascus
sometimes tied or chained up the most agitated residents, but without isolat-
ing them from the other patients. This was also the golden age of Arabic and
Persian medicine, which ended at about the time of the nosographic encyclo-
paedia of Ismāʿīl Jurjānī (d. 531/1137) and during which the psyche (nafs) that
was deprived of reason benefited from meticulous examination. Later, how-
ever, gloomy cells were constructed for people who were considered danger-
ous, as in Fez during the fifteenth century. Marginalisation did not always
mean exclusion: the asylums were located in cities and visits were possible.
According to the Ottoman traveller Evliyā Çelebī (d. 1095/1684), numerous
Cairo hospitals closed for lack of public funds over the following centuries, and
the Sufi lodges took over the task of looking after the insane. In Istanbul, where

8 Mahmoud Sami-Ali, Le Haschich en Egypte. Essai d’anthropologie psychanalytique (Paris:

Dunod, 1971, republished 2013); Gunnar Jarring, Stimulants among the Turks of Eastern
Turkestan (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1993); Kamal Chaouachi, Le Narguilé.
Anthropologie d’un mode d’usage des drogues douces (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997).
9 Michael W. Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992); Katia Zakharia, “Le statut du fou dans le Kitāb ‘uqalā’ al-mağānīn d’al-Nīsābūrī: Les
modalités d’une exclusion,” Bulletin d’études orientales 49 (1997): 269–88; Abdelhamid
Larguèche, Les Ombres de Tunis. Pauvres, marginaux et minorités aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles
(Paris: Arcantères, 2000); Eugene Rogan, “Madness and Marginality: The Advent of the
Psychiatric Asylum in Egypt and Lebanon,” in Outside in. On the Margins of the Modern Middle
East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 104–25; Bertrand Thierry de Crussol des
Espesse, La psychiatrie médiévale persane. La maladie mentale dans la tradition médicale per-
sane (Paris: Springer, 2010).
6 Introduction

there was a guild of psychiatrists, just one of the five hospitals specialised in
mental illness. Thus it is clear that many mentally ill people evaded detention
and lived on the margins of society, confined within the family, in a Sufi com-
munity, or simply on the street. As for the ‘Great Confinement’ described by
Michel Foucault, it did not come about in this part of the world until the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century, once colonial psychiatry had taken root, espe-
cially in Tunisia but also elsewhere, such as in Lebanon.
In fact, insanity (junūn, walah), as violent as it might be, enjoyed a lastingly
ambiguous status in medieval and modern Muslim societies. On the one hand
it was disapproved of, but it was also subject to divine blessings that allowed
the possessed man or woman access to wisdom and sometimes to holiness.
Nevertheless, these men and women were definitely marginalised and mis-
treated, kept apart in cemeteries or ruins at a distance from civic life, as shown
by a careful historical reading of Nīsābūrī’s (d. 406/1016) biographical collec-
tion, the Kitāb ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn (the Book of Wise Fools). A more classically
literary reading of this text, through stereotypical figures such as Uways Qaranī
(d. ca. 37/657) and Bahlūl10, tends rather to underline the power of the sub-
jects’ anti-conformism and mystical flights, as expressed in aphorisms, ardent
preaching and elegiac poetry that drew big crowds.
Criminals, vagabonds, drug addicts and the mentally ill continually appear
as a sort of filigree across the entire corpus, without many observable changes
brought about by time and cultural differences. Of course Muslim society still
evolved, but here as elsewhere an alternative point of view resisted the ­changes
wrought by different epochs and said no to new values. Another point relating
to the elements that lived on by the sidelines as events progressed, and one
that is striking for the historian of protracted time (temporalité lente), is the
omnipresence of a particular type of individual, a sort of tutelary spectre and
the principal subject of this book: the dervish.
As early as the eleventh century, Sufis from the Khorasan region had ide-
alised the ʿayyārūn, ṣaʿālīk and ḥarāfīsh in order to make their code of honour
into a spiritual model, the futuwwa.11 This absorption of social marginality by
Sufi institutions should not distract us from the fact that, in a parallel counter-
movement, much rougher Sufi mystics also themselves frequented these shady
milieux, so that the groups mixed rather than simply providing inspiration for
each other. They occupied the same spaces, shared the same vision and used

10 Abū al-Qāsim Nīsābūrī, Kitāb ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn, ed. ʿUmar al-Asʿad (Beirut: Dār al-nafāʾis,
1987), 94–99, 139–60.
11 Lloyd Ridgeon, Morals and Mysticism in Persian Sufism. A History of Sufi-futuwwat in Iran
(London-New York: Routledge, 2010).
Introduction 7

the same language. And how does the historian distinguish differences among
the rogue, the needy beggar and the ascetic? While on the one hand the Banū
Sāsān were excluded from the pacified futuwwa during the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries, on the other, far from the romanticism of ‘chivalry’, dervishes
exposed the hidden, religious face of the counter-culture. In this regard it is
significant that Arab scholars credited the mystic Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar, of whom
we will speak again, with having (unfortunately, according to them) in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries discovered the psychotropic virtues of hash-
ish, suggesting that he thus became the patron saint of smokers of the weed.
These smokers counted among their number many dervishes who found it
amusing to nickname this experience ‘the visit of the green Khidr’ (ziyārat
al-Khiḍr al-akhḍar), in reference to the apparitions of the initiatory prophet
al-Khidr, often mentioned in Sufi literature. Equally significant here, in ad­
dition to the mystical folly that entitles the dervish to the Persian appellation
dīwāna or bīhūsh (lit. ‘unconscious’), is the porous outlook that regularly
equates the simple of spirit with seekers after truth. As Émile ­Dermenghem
wrote, ‘The Sufis of this period [fourteenth century] were not averse to ques-
tioning the patients in asylums, in order to find the rare jewels in the gangue of
their incoherent discourse. Ibn al-Qouçâb tells us that “In the Mâristân [hospi-
tal], a boy who was very severely ill cried out to wake the dead, and stirred our
interest. ‘Look at them’, he said, ‘embroidered clothes, perfumed bodies. They
have made of lies a merchandise; taken folly for a career. They have completely
renounced science, they are no longer men among men.’ We asked him, ‘Dost
thou know science?’ ‘Perfectly. My science is considerable. You may question
me.’ ‘Who is generous?’ ‘The one who provides subsistence for you when you
do not merit even the ration of a single day.’ ‘Who among men has the least
gratitude?’ ‘The one who has avoided an affliction, seen that affliction fall upon
another and yet not understood this as a warning to flee futilities.’ He was
breaking our hearts, and we asked him still further questions: ‘What qualities
are the most to be appreciated?’ ‘The opposite of what YOU are!’ He began to
weep, saying, ‘O my God, if you will not return my reason to me, at least take
the chains from my hands that I may give a slap to each of these people!’”’12
As an incarnation of social and religious marginality in the Muslim world,
particularly in the Turko-Persian regions, the figure of the dervish is unclas-
sifiable. Popular etymology expresses this well, by linking the first syllable of
the word darwīsh to dar (the door), while diverse explanations have been pro-
posed for the syllable wīsh, such as pīsh (before, in front; thus dar-pīsh, be-
fore the door), wīz (from the verb āwīkhtan, to hang, to suspend; thus dar-wīz,

12 Émile Dermenghem, Vies des saints musulmans (Algiers: Baconnier, 1943), 299.
8 Introduction

suspended from the door) and yūza (beggar; thus dar-yūza, the one who begs
at the door).13 The same idea returns again and again: ‘dervish’ designates the
individuals or the groups that remain in front of the door as beggars, who are at
the edges of society, simultaneously included and excluded, who, standing on
the mystical threshold, are knocking on the door of the absolute or of God. In
the absence of a linguistic argument, folk etymology provides a vernacular and
endogenous translation of a materially, socially, and symbolically inscribed
socio-religious reality. For the historian, the difficult task remains that of un-
earthing parts of this reality, one that Sufi writings (including treatises, manu-
als and biographies) tend to pass over in silence. One must turn away from the
well-known names and texts, avoid the light and, to perceive the spirituality
of society’s dregs, look rather into the shadows for the small masters and the
anonymous practitioners.
Before looking specifically at Central Asia, we would do well to remember
that the wider Turko-Persian Muslim world also played host to many forms of
religious marginality and transgression. It is impossible for us to be exhaustive
on this topic, which is beyond the remit of the current volume, but we can note
that Iran was the starting point of a number of strong personalities, whose
words made a big impact. The tradition of the shaṭḥ or ‘ecstatic speech’, a sort
of intemperate exclamation that put the mystical experience into words, was
carried on by such emminent figures as Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī (d. 261/875 or 234/848),
who declared ‘Glory be to Me! How great is My Dignity!’, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hama­
dānī (d. 526/1131) and Rūzbihān Baqlī (d. 606/1209). Their words, formulated
within a state of ecstasy but nevertheless in an intellectually rigourous way,
must not be understood in the literal sense, and even less as nihilistic manifes-
tations; rather, they express the limits of legalism and the paradoxical nature of
gnosis. However, after the sixth/twelfth century, mystical Persian poetry had
reduced these cries to literary topoi.14 Yet it is literature, specifically hagio-
graphical and poetic literature, that teaches us the most about the Qalandari-
yya, a protean dervish movement whose members proclaimed their founder to
have been Jamāl al-Dīn Sawī, said to have lived in Iran during the seventh/

13 Alexandre Papas, “Dervish,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline. Mohammad Ali
Amir-Moezzi informs me of an interesting etymology that circulated among Ishrāqī Zoro-
astrians in seventeenth century India: the words darvīsh and dāriyūsh were said to be
prolongations of a common root. The second of these words, coming from the Achaeme-
nid sovereigns, related to the ancient Persian dārāyāvūsh, ‘the possessor of the supreme
good’, that is, immortality. By antithesis, darvīsh would designate the person who, because
of his poverty, would be the richest.
14 Carl W. Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1985).
Introduction 9

thirteenth century. Thanks to the publication of his hagiography and other lit-
tle-known texts, it is possible to find out about a tradition that was inspired by
the futuwwa that we have just mentioned, but also by the Malāmatiyya, the
‘path of blame’, which required its followers to avoid all public manifestation of
piety while constantly blaming themselves for these very failings. Elsewhere
one discovers details of very transgressive habits among the Qalandars, such as
the consumption of psychotropic drugs, the adoption of a repulsive physical
appearance, etc.15 Finally, this broad-brush portrait would be incomplete with­
out a mention of the ‘nefarious’ practice called (in Persian) shāhidbāzī or
nazarbāzī (gazing at beautiful faces). Reading the hagiography of Awḥad al-
Dīn Kirmānī (d. 636/1238), or the poetry of Fakhr al-Dīn ʿIrāqī (d. 688/1289), we
learn that the contemplation of beautiful male or female features was under-
taken with the aim of seizing divine beauty as manifested through God’s most
sublime creatures. However, this controversial practice, which sometimes took
place during private dance shows, contained the same ambiguities and possi-
bilities for moral drift – and consequences – as any sensual passion.16
Anatolia was less studied, unfortunately, but it was also fertile territory for
the transgressive currents of mystical Islam. What first strikes the observer is
the diversity of these currents. In the wake of Iranian masters, Qalandars,
Ḥaydarīs, Jāmīs, and Shamsīs travelled across Anatolia and Roumelia from the
eighth/fourteenth century to the tenth/sixteenth. There were also groups of
Turkish origin, among them the Abdāl-ı Rūm, the Torlaqīs and the Bektāshīs.
Opposed to the institutionalisation of Sufism (that is, the enrichment and in-
creasing hold on power of the Sufi brotherhoods), these dervishes rejected any
compromise relating to the acquisition of money and power. An event that il-
lustrates the extent of this atmosphere of protest, though it must not acquire
an exaggerated importance : the attempted assassination of Sultan Bayezid II
by a dervish in 897/1492.17 On a deeper level, an attentive reading of dervish
writings has revealed that these popular groups also included members of the
politico-military elite in their ranks: young educated men capable of putting

15 Khaṭīb-i Fārsī, Qalandarnāma-yi Khaṭīb-i Fārsī, yā, Sīrat-i Jamāl al-Dīn Sāvujī, ed. Ḥamīd
Zarrīnkub (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Tūs, 1362/1983); Muḥammad Riḍā Shafīʿī-Kadkanī, Qa-
landariyya dar tārīkh: digardīsīhā-yi yak īdiʼuluzhī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Sukhan, 1386/2007).
16 Ève Feuillebois-Pierunek, A la croisée des voies célestes. Faxr al-Din ʿErâqi: poésie mystique
et expression poétique en Perse Médiévale (Tehran: Institut français de recherche en Iran,
2002); Lloyd Ridgeon, Awḥad al-Dīn Kirmānī and the Controversy of the Sufi Gaze (London:
Routledge, 2017).
17 Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle
Period, 1200–1550 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994); Ahmet Yaşar Ocak,
Osmanlı imparatorluğunda marjinal sufîlîk. Kalenderîler (XIV–XVII. yüzyıllar) (Istanbul:
Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999).
10 Introduction

into writing the beliefs of heterodox dervishes. This undermines any too-sim-
ple division between the popular and the elite, belief and doctrine, despite the
undeniable existence of social and religious differences. The famous Kaygu-
suz/Qayghusuz Abdāl, a local governor’s son who lived during the second half
of the fourteenth and the first quarter of the fifteenth century, was a member
of the Abdāl-ı Rūm, described as a voracious and drug-addicted beggar. Kaygu-
suz proferred ecstatic speeches in Turkish, called şaṭḥiyye; these reformulated
the speculative teachings of Sufism in a language that was popular and acces-
sible to the masses.18
The research cited above, though fundamental, does not venture to ex-
plore any further to the east than Khorasan, restricting itself to the Turko-
Persian world. What’s more, it rarely pursues its analysis beyond about 1550,
which might persuade some readers that marginal mystics disappeared with
the institutionalisation of Sufism, or even that this institutionalisation was
in part motivated by a need to regulate those Sufi practices and beliefs that
paid little attention to norms. Might pre-modern and modern Muslim socie-
ties have ceased giving birth or sustenance to movements that contested these
norms? Central Asian Sufism demonstrates that this was not the case, and in-
vites historians of other areas to leave the beaten track in order to uncover
the socio-religious traces of transgression or at least of marginality. The shaṭḥ,
Qalandariyya, shāhidbāzī and other alternative forms are found in the region
under study here, alongside practices that are measurably less intellectualised
and more socially incarnated than these. In an earlier volume we followed in
the footsteps of mystical vagabonds in the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
ries, whose writings recount their pranks, passages and pilgrimages between
eastern Turkestan and Istanbul.19 It is true that, generation by generation, the
evolution of these dervishes tended towards a progressive return to the law
and the norm. Nevertheless, it was evident that even when the power of Sufi
institutions in the regions was at its height (and thus at a relatively late date),
some individuals, and even some groups, continued to lead a religious life on
the margins of the society of the day, based on poverty (faqr), celibacy (tajrīd
or tajarrud, lit. detachment, disengagement) and wandering (siyāḥa). The pre-
sent work starts where the medievalists leave off, expanding the space and
time under investigation without dwelling on episodes that are already well-
known (such as the attempt by a dervish to stab the sovereign Shāhrukh in

18 Abdülbâki Gölpınarlı, Kaygusuz Abdal, Hatayi, Kul Himmet (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınevi,
1953); Zeynep Oktay Uslu, “L’Homme Parfait dans le Bektachisme et l’Alévisme: Le Kitāb-ı
Maġlaṭa de Ḳayġusuz Abdāl,” PhD diss., Paris, EPHE, 2017.
19 Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam. Portraits de trois soufis qalandar (Paris:
Cerf, 2010).
Introduction 11

830/1427)20, and without limiting itself to the more spectacular manifestations

of antinomianism – to do this would exclude the more subtle deviations and
discreet aspects of difference – undertaking a close examination of the way of
life and means of expression of dervishes. This form of history ‘from below’,
based on the lives of authentically marginal people from whom we have not,
by definition, yet heard (despite the fact that their words offer doctrinal teach-
ings) casts a new light, one that reveals the tensions that existed within Sufi
milieux between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries and the existence and
cohabitation in Central Asian Islam of forms of mysticism that were not only
diverse but divergent.

1 A Manifesto: The Qalandarnāma, by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī

Let us return to late medieval Central Asia to discover a simple text that illus-
trates the spiritual path of the dervishes. As we have seen, among the marginal
groups that have been most clearly identified are the Qalandars. However, the
name Qalandar, of obscure origin, appears as early as the fifth/eleventh cen-
tury. Much less frequently cited than the Qalandarnāma, or book of the Qalan-
dar dervish, attributed to Herat’s well-known scholar ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d.
481/1089), in which a Sufi interrupts a study session in a madrasa, berates the
pretentions of scholarship and convinces the young Ansārī to throw away his
books and embrace the path of total renunciation by joining the madmen in
the asylum21, the text of the same name by Amīr Sādāt Ḥusayn Harawī never-
theless repays attention.22 Its author (d. 718/1318) was born in Ghuziv, near
Herat. As an adolescent, he encountered a group of Jawlaqī dervishes, whom
he followed as far as India. Other versions of the story relate that it was his

20 Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), 241.
21 ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī, Rasāʾil-i jāmiʿ-i ʿārif-i qarn-i chahārum-i hijrī Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī,
ed. Waḥīd Dastgirdī (Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi Furūghī, 1347/1968), 92–99. It is interesting
to note that the collective memory of Sufis has preserved an image of a reclusive Anṣārī
because of two cells for spiritual retreat (chilla khāna) situated in the mausoleum of
Gāzurgāh, if one is to believe Serge de Beaurecueil and Rawān Farhādī, Sarguzasht-i Pīr-i
Hirāt Khwāja ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī Harawī (Kabul: Bīhaqī Kitāb Khparawulo Muʾassisa,
1355/1976), Fig. 18 and 19.
22 Text published in a facsimile version and transcribed in Saadettin Kocatürk, “İran’da is-
lamiyetten sonraki yüzyıllarda fikir akımlarına toplu bir bakış ve ‘Kalenderiye tarikatı’ ile
ilgili bir risāle,” Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 28/3–4 (1970):
215–31. Amīr Ḥusayn is identified neither by Saadettin Kocatürk nor by Ahmet Yaşar Ocak
in his excellent Osmanlı imparatorluğunda marjinal sufîlîk, xxxvii and 144.
12 Introduction

father who took him to India. There, in Multan, he was initiated into the
Suhrawardiyya, becoming representative of this gnostic school of thought, on
the subject of which he produced several works.23 His tomb became a holy
place. Although the Qalandarnāma to which we refer does not figure in his
bibliography, it was incontestably his work. As well as representing a written
trace of the long tradition of dervishes in Herat, this brief mathnawī (poem in
rhyming couplets) suggests that dervishes were speaking up to announce their
arrival, and as a preamble to a celebration of antinomianism in the name of
devotional love. This translation of the Persian original conserves the rhyme
scheme.

1 We, the authentic Qalandars, bring

The scent of religion to our lodgings24
Unbound by right and wrong acts in this world,
Free from heaven and hell and all that’s beyond
5 Not wanting fame, careless of reputation
Not at peace nor at war with God’s creation
Owning nothing, no wealth or treasure, no gold,
Having no self-belief; folk leave us cold.
9 The habit we wear is all that we own
Unlike most, we don’t make ourselves at home
He who confesses his sins goes astray
Merely denying genuine prayer
Homeless and solitary, we explore
From the ends of the earth to distant shores25
15 We practice celibacy, renunciation
Patience, unity, consent, resignation
For we have received the gift of His grace
God’s mandate on earth brings us to His grace
21 We are the gems from a beautiful mine
In eternal flame we are butterflies
Be! And we existed, at God’s command26,
For us He created the sky and the land

23 There is a detailed bibliography and list of works in Lewisohn, “Haravī, Amīr Ḥusaynī,”
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline.
24 ‘Lodgings’ translates the term langar, place of residence frequented by Central Asian der-
vishes.
25 ‘From the ends of the earth to distant shores’ translates the expression zi qāf tā qāf, liter-
ally ‘from Mount Qaf to Mount Qaf’, from one end to the other.
26 A reference to the Quran 36:82.
Introduction 13

25 The Sufi’s heavenly cloak is ours,

As are our garments from earthly bazaars
We are sultans on His glorious throne,
We are dervishes before God’s great home
29 We are oppressed, downtrodden, failed attempts
To worldly folk we are beneath contempt
We may, outwardly, be falling apart
But shining inside there is light in our hearts
Although compared to you we have nothing
In our own world we are sultans or kings
35 We are falcons, adrift on the breath of God
We live in a place beyond this world
As whales, we swim in angelical oceans
On mystical mountains we’re leopards in motion
39 Master delinquents in pious quarters,
We are God’s madmen in His own quarters
There are one hundred thousand of us and more,
Yet we number only four hundred and forty-four27
God gave us his Kaʿba to have as our home
He lives in our hearts and makes them His own
45 Each time God’s divine light opens our eyes
It shows us the secrets of earth and of skies
The tables of God are preserved in our hearts
God’s enigmas are spoken in our hearts
49 Divine knowledge is expressed in our speech
There is nothing excessive in our speech
We don’t put religion in secular hands
We do not pray to fulfil our own plans
The truth we covet and the truth alone
What someone needs we’d take from no one
55 Censors do not inspire distress in us
For our natures are pure in holiness
We lack not for pleasure, joy or wine
Carried by ecstasy we dance, sing and rhyme
59 We admire young lovers, adore good wine28
We are good people, whatever our line

27 The numeral 444 is a symbolic one, but also indicates the minority status of the dervishes
during the period in which this was written.
28 Translating the expression shāhidbāzī.
14 Introduction

Connected to young love, and glasses of wine

Yes, this is who we are, and that is fine!
If we try our luck at a game of chance
In one roll worlds now and to come are chanced
65 If our spirits are livened by drinking good wine
The world and his brother are pardoned this time
When we display a little drunkenness
We are moving through life in happiness
69 We raise our voices to heaven’s great dome
And say ‘hey hu’29 to the stars in their home
Self-denial that’s false we do not adopt
We would not betray the creatures of God
Fraud, tricks and ruses are beyond our remit
Subterfuge, concealment are not our habit
75 We march on ahead, straight down our own path
Alongside the Abdāls, along the same path
In our school dishonesty has no place
Just as, for us, existence has no place
79 Why should death make us suffer, or dying,
Since we know our fate: in light to be flying
Poverty is our dearest companion
Love is what drives us to our reunion
When reason30, alas, becomes our ally
Then rosaries and prayers form our reply
85 Horseback on love, we ride and are free
Of reason and its inconsistency
In the world of love there’s no joy or pain
No sorrow or pleasure is there to be gained
89 Since for us intention has no intention
All pain is a joy for our attention
Since we are not shamed by our poverty
We couldn’t care less about notoriety
By ourselves we ignite the bright flame, so
That in ourselves all, on fire, may glow
95 We cause trouble for no one, the proof’s
That our voices only speak the truth
Here today on this earth so wide open,

29 ‘Hey hu’ denotes Sufi repetition (dhikr).

30 ‘Reason’ here translates the term ʿaql.
Introduction 15

Beneath the dome of infinite heaven

99 No one else subsists here where we are, from
Ourselves to God the path is a short one
Because this world is fragile and perishes,
And God’s existence is unchanging riches
We are close friends of all the saints
We serve the master of all the saints
105 The sun, the sky, glory and elevation
Shihāb31, the people’s sage of religion
Sultan, leader of all the Qalandars
Who protected the path of the Qalandars
109 May his purity live forever, past time’s end
So may he live, eternally our friend

This vigorous manifesto by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī brings together the funda-
mental ideas of the dervishes, whether by referring to Shihāb al-Dīn al-
Suhrawardī, the protector of the dervishes (in the sense that, according to the
dervishes, he left the door open for a sort of wild mysticism that was already
being domesticated and institutionalised elsewhere), or in the approach to the
Abdāl, a poorly-identified and heterodox group of mystics, evidently secretive,
to whom we shall return.32 Both of these names were regularly invoked by Cen-
tral Asian dervishes when they were referring to themselves. Doctrinally, three
types of idea appear. The way of life of the Qalandars was characterised by idle
wanderings, by vagabondage (‘… homeless and solitary, we explore/ From the
ends of the earth to distant shores…’) in the service of a permanent adoration
of God that takes the name of love and is expressed in devotional acts (‘Carried
by ecstasy we dance, sing and rhyme…’), deliberately risking the disapproval of
the more carefully conscientious (‘… Not wanting fame, careless of reputa-
tion…’). Our author also cultivates the ambivalence that is at the heart of
Qalandarī thought. He speaks in registers that are simultaneously physical and
symbolic in order to show that the poverty of the dervish is at once spiritual
and temporal (‘… owning nothing, no wealth or treasure, no gold/ having no

31 This refers to Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar al-Suhrawardī (d. 632/1234), master of the
master of Amīr Ḥusayn, founder of the Suhrawardiyya, originating in Iraq but mostly de-
veloped in India. See Florian Sobieroj, “Suhrawardiyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.,
BrillOnline.
32 For various mentions of Abdāl, see Christiane Tortel, L’Ascète et le bouffon. Qalandars,
vrais et faux renonçants en islam (Paris: Actes Sud, 2009), passim. This book (pp. 265–268)
also contains the translation of a brief anonymous Qalandarī treatise, said to be by
Suhrawardī.
16 Introduction

self-belief…’). He openly admits to the vices or risky behaviours practiced by

the mystics (‘… We admire young lovers, adore good wine…’; ‘… If we try our
luck at a game of chance/ In one roll worlds now and to come are chanced…’),
without reducing these to mere poetic tropes, and without excluding the pos-
sibility of a radical liberation from social and religious conventions. He doesn’t
hesitate to answer the usual accusations brought against dervishes by turning
the argument around (‘… Self-denial that’s false we do not adopt…’; ‘… Fraud,
tricks and ruses are beyond our remit…’), suggesting that the ambivalence of
the unstable dervish is better than the hypocrisy of the comfortably estab-
lished Sufi. Those whom we expected to be imposters are not. Finally, through
all of its couplets the Qalandarnāma expresses an antinomian ‘philosophy’
that claims to be above the law in the name of a superior comprehension of
the law.33 Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī is saying exactly this when he rejects life here
on earth and also the afterlife (‘… Unbound by right and wrong acts in this
world, / Free from heaven and hell and all that’s beyond…’). The privileged re-
lationship that the dervish has with God frees him from the rules of mankind
(‘… For we have received the gift of His grace/ God’s mandate on earth brings
us to His grace…’). The antinomianism of the Qalandars is also a mysticism of
language in which their inspired flights use rhetorical devices sparingly, and
limit their voluble effusions (‘… Divine knowledge is expressed in our speech/
There is nothing excessive in our speech…’): short verses, apothegms, abbrevi-
ated writings.
We have briefly introduced these themes here, and they recur throughout
the rest of this work. In order to get beyond the medieval manifesto and at-
tempt to find the social realities behind these discourses we must seek addi-
tional and later sources.

2 In Search of the Margins

Dervishes, who were among the outsiders of Islam, reappear incessantly in its
history until their almost complete eradication in the contemporary period. In
spite of this final coup de grâce, which came at the end of centuries of repres-
sion, some believers continued to choose a mode of religious life that differed
from that of the masses. It is therefore necessary to avoid any interpretation
that reduces the history of the Islamic world to a series of broad phenomena.
To seek here and there to uncover faint traces of the outsiders, tiny fissures

33 See Alexandre Papas, “Antinomianism (ibāḥa),” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOn-
line.
Introduction 17

Figure 1
Hookah smokers
in Bukhara, 1911

that are barely perceptible, in times that have long passed, would be the path
of a different historiography, because although the conversion of populations,
the expansion of the Sufi lineages, and the dominance of modernist and re-
formist ideologies were all incontestably important events, none of them ever
completely precluded the possibility of alternative approaches, no matter how
fragmentary, or rarely adopted. This permanent desire for transgression, which
has too often been assumed to exist only in occidental society, has thus always
been present throughout the Islamic world. Equally, one must beware of a his-
tory of Muslim spirituality in which the doxa equates jurists (fuqahāʾ) with
mystics (fuqarāʾ). True, it is historically false systematically to set erudition
and the erudite in opposition to Sufism, as was attempted by an Islamology
that is now widely called into question. Often these two groups were in fact
identical, and the circles they moved in were the same. Nevertheless, one must
18 Introduction

remember that the most radical of the Muslim mystics denied any legitimacy
either to the fuqahāʾ or to the fuqarāʾ; to forget this would be to imagine that
Islamic fervour had avoided its most profound contradictions.
This study concentrates on a particular region within the Muslim world,
without attempting to cover it in its entirety. In any case, Central Asia is not
easily forced into static geographical boundaries. Let us just imagine a com-
mon Turko-Persian space stretching from Khorasan to today’s Xinjiang and
taking in the southern Kazakh steppe, the great historical oases – Bukhara,
Samarkand – and the Kirghiz mountains. As we have seen, one part of this vast
area held numerous dervishes as early as the thirteenth century. Rather than
Central Asia being the only part of the dār al-islām to have tolerated, willingly
or not, this radical form of mysticism, in this region we see a demonstration of
the form’s astonishing capacity for resilience right up until the end of the mod-
ern period. Is this due to the progressive relegation of this vast region to the
periphery of the Islamic lands after the religious, cultural and intellectual flow-
ering that had occurred there over several centuries, notably at its apogee un-
der the Timurid dynasty? There is no definite reply to such a question (which
may in any case be too vague). What remains is a state of affairs that this book
will try to describe by exploring the protracted duration, without pretending to
be exhaustive. The sources begin to speak relatively freely on the subject of
marginal people just towards the end of the Timurid period, and continue to
do so until the dawn of the twentieth century. Once again it must be empha-
sised that we are not undertaking a thesis on five hundred years of Central
Asian history. Our only ambition is to re-read a few forgotten pages from with-
in the mass of sources that overall tend to, or intend to, mask or set to one side
the existence of real or presumed Muslim heterodoxies, and thereby divert the
attention of historians away from these.
What is offered here is more to do with an opening of spirit or outlook, rath-
er than with winning a contest of erudition. The study of Central Asian Islam
offers two broad historiographic visions, which can be described as Sovieto-
logical and post-Sovietological, or, in a wider sense, orientalist and post-orien-
talist.34 The first thesis, which was well-developed in Russian ethnology from
the 1960s to the 1990s and is still upheld by some today, holds that practices as
diverse and widespread as the cults of saints, initiatic rituals, and Sufi spiritual
exercises betray the presence of lasting traces of their pre-Islamic foundations,
blending animism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc. In reaction to this initial
idea a second thesis has evolved, which has principally been defended among

34 Alexandre Papas, “L’histoire et les sciences sociales à l’épreuve de l’Asie centrale. A propos
d’un récent numéro des Annales,” Turcica 37 (2005): 365–75.
Introduction 19

historians during recent decades; this reaffirms the depth of the Islamisation
of Central Asia and interprets religious practices and doctrines in strictly Is-
lamic terms. Rather than coming down on one side or the other in a debate
that would, in any case, limit us to a broad, generalising historicism or else
consign us to a Quixotic quest for origins that have been known to be illusory
since the work of Marc Bloch, let us instead attempt to pierce some holes in the
barriers and see our way more clearly. The aspects of dervishes and antinomi-
anism that we have briefly looked at remind us that in its socio-religious reali-
sation Islam is full of accumulated unevenness, ambivalence and anomalies.
These other manifestations tell us as much about a society or societies as does
a majoritarian spirituality. Regardless of the source or name under which we
find them, they constitute Sunni, Hanafite, and Sufi Islam’s internal alterity.
What, after all, would be the scientific point in deciding whether a specific act
of healing, for example, had its source in shamanism or in Islamic exorcism?
The question is rather to understand how, in concrete terms, the cure is brought
about: what are the actual techniques employed? Who are the actors? What is
it that the texts are describing? How does the approach evolve over time? We
want to know what this reveals of the essentials of a history of health-care.
Distancing ourselves from the vain polemics on the exact original nature of
collective practices, let us recall that the historian’s work consists of formulat-
ing the anthropological problems facing societies in contingent situations –
here we have the human body, we have illness; there we have religious order
and disorder – so that in fact nothing actually works as expected, or as it’s ‘sup-
posed’ to work, and what appears to be the machinery of social events and
structures is hindered or reset.35
Instead of taking soundings for improbable geneses, it strikes us as more
stimulating to seek the synchronic margins that are inscribed in territories,
societies and language.36 We will look at five examples in five successive peri-
ods, each with its own sources.
Our first instance of marginality is situated in Herat, called ‘the pearl of the
Khorasan’.37 During the medieval period, the Khorasan was much bigger than

35 In the field of Turkish studies, I find these two collectively written volumes exemplary in
this regard: Gilles Veinstein, ed., Les Ottomans et la mort. Permanences et mutations
(Leiden: Brill, 1996); François Georgeon and Frédéric Hitzel, eds., Les Ottomans et le temps
(Leiden: Brill, 2012).
36 We will use the term ‘language’ to mean types of language, specifically sociolects, and also
languages such as those, of Turkic and Persian origin, used in Central Asia.
37 Terry Allen, Timurid Herat (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1983); Rafi Samizay, “Herat: Pearl of
Khurasan,” Environmental Design 1–2 (1989): 86–93; Maria Szuppe, Entre Timourides,
Uzbeks et Safavides. Questions d’histoire politique et sociale de Hérat dans la première moitié
du XVIe siècle (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 1992).
20 Introduction

today’s province in the Republic of Iran, and its inhabitants enjoyed a very
fertile cultural and religious life, as much in the fields of jurisprudence and
literature as in theology and mysticism. Heterodoxies were, as we have seen,
particularly vigorous in this place and at this time. Herat had been Timurid
since its conquest by Tamerlane in 782/1380, and its medieval splendour, which
had previously been diminished by the Mongols, was rediscovered under the
reign of Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā (r. 874–912/1469–1506), a cultivated sovereign
and patron of the arts. Herat was a fortified quadrilateral accessed through five
great portals and divided into four (literal) quarters forming a cross around the
chahārsū(q), or central crossroads. Herat brought together within its protec-
tive walls political and military power, the religious elite, landowners, shop-
keepers, and artisans. Outside of the walls, the aristocracy had villas and vast
holdings of land. Islam was omnipresent via the great mosque, the madrasas,
the Sufi lodges, the mausoleums, and the dozens of holy places for prayer. The
taking of the town by the Uzbeks and then by the Savafids in the sixteenth
century complicated things between Sunni majority and Shiite minority, and
turned class relations upside-down, especially for the elite and the city nota-
bles, but the social fabric itself changed little. Chronicles and biographical dic-
tionaries shed light on many aspects of this history, but concentrate almost
exclusively on the military, political, intellectual, artistic or religious elites.
In order to help us divine what lies beneath Herat’s blue glinting roofs, our
‘fixer’, to use a journalist’s term, will be the counsellor of Bāyqarā himself, ʿAlī
Shīr Nawāʾī (d. 906/1501).38 Super-rich patron of the arts and writer of all sorts
of texts, both in Turkish and in Persian, he composed a unique description of
Herati society during the second half of the fifteenth century (which also ap-
plies to some of the following century), called The Beloved of Hearts (Maḥbūb
al-qulūb). Without anticipating the next chapter, we can say that numerous
passages in this work are devoted to marginal people, notably those who haunt
the town’s streets and invoke or implore God aloud. Other sources comple-
ment this text and allow us to sketch a social and religious picture that differs
in important respects from that presented by classical historiography. The way
things actually happen gives the lie to the seemingly perfect political organi-
sation reflected in the Timurid urbanisation of Herat (as far as the ideals of
the sovereigns and viziers who undertook this urbanisation are concerned,
anyway, evoking as they do Norbert Elias’s description of the architectural

38 On Nawāʾī, we can now read Marc Toutant, Un Empire de mots. Pouvoir, culture et soufisme
à l’époque des derniers Timourides au miroir de la Khamsa de Mīr ‘Alī Shīr Nawā’ī (Leuven:
Peeters, 2016).
Introduction 21

r­ epresentation of royal power)39, allowing a few fissures to develop in their

facade. Finally, different words and facts appear, revealing the sound of the dif-
ferent drum (or minaret) that some people were marching to, as well as much
about language that is exclusive to dervishes.
A second case of marginality takes us to the heart of the Māwarāʾ al-nahr,
the ‘territory beyond the river [Oxus or Amu Darya]’ in the region of Bukhara.
The city retained its plan, comprising citadel, town centre and outskirts, from
its Samanid glory-days, but also its reputation as a scholarly city.40 The great
families of ulamas and the high madrasas remained its most distinguishing
feature while the political role of the town declined under the Timurids. In the
hands of the Uzbek Shaybanid and Janid dynasts, Bukhara became the capital
again. It was during this period that militant Sunnism dominated, encouraged
by shaykhs from the Naqshbandiyya Sufi order, whose influence on the khans
was decisive. Hostility towards Shiism, even though it often served as a mere
political pretext, remained marked, and had a strong influence on Bukhara’s
religious and political life at least until ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 1055/1645–1091/1680),
whose reign was considered by local chroniclers as the final great period of
their history. However, a recently discovered text dedicated to this sovereign
has introduced a more nuanced thesis to replace that of unilateral domination
by Naqshbandī Sunnism.
Outside of the madrasas a society of more or less educated dervishes
evolved, leaving written traces from the seventeenth century. In an earlier
work (mentioned above), we established the existence in Central Asia of
Qalandarī dervishes who were affiliated to the Naqshbandiyya, using their
own writings as sources. Instead of a simple dichotomy between a brother-
hood with a particularly established reputation for orthodoxy and Sufi groups
taxed with heterodoxy, or even with crypto-Shiism, there is a porous boundary
here that allows passage for the mystics, who seem to wander from one side to
the other both literally and figuratively, although not without tension or con-
flict. Among these mystics was a Sufi called Nidāʾī (d. 1174/1760) who had re-
ceived as part of his initiation four items of regalia considered specific to Sufis
(a cloak, a hat, a staff and a begging bowl). These were given him by a certain
Bābā Mullā Imān Balkhī, himself a caliph (khalīfa) of the Qalandarī master,
Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ʿĀqibat bi-Khayr. Heretofore we had known that
this last-named was from Balkh, in the north of today’s Afghanistan, where he

39 Norbert Elias, La Société de cour, trans. Pierre Kamnitzer and Jeanne Etoré (Paris: Flam-
marion, 1985), 256–57.
40 Clifford E. Bosworth, “Bukhara,” in Historic Cities of the Islamic World, ed. Clifford E. Bos-
worth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 58–62; Yuri Bregel, “Bukhara iv. Khanate of Bukhara and Kho-
rasan,” Encyclopedia Iranica, online.
22 Introduction

founded a ‘monastery’ (takiyya), and that he supported several caliphs to rep-

resent and propagate his movement in India and Central Asia. In the southern
part of Central Asia the contours of a society of wandering dervishes were vis-
ible around Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm and a few other Sufi masters. Nidāʾī de-
clares at the end of his Risāla-yi ḥaqqiyya or Treatise on divine truth, completed
in 1165/1752, that a part of his work is just a re-telling of a much denser treatise
by master Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm.41
We now have access to the actual treatise written by this master, under the
title of The ways of the path (Ādāb al-ṭarīq), edited by the Iranian scholar Me-
hran Afshari.42 At the intersection between the Naqshbandiyya and the Qa-
landariyya, or, to be more precise, identical with the boundary between these
two paths, the teaching of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concerns itself exclusively with
that which seems most superficial: the physical attire and appearance of the
dervish and its origin stories, or the symbolic objects around him and the mul-
titude of terms, legends and significations that are associated with these. It is
clear to us that marginality, both socio-religious and doctrinal, characterises
the milieu that our author claims as his own.
The third halt on our journey finds us in eastern Turkestan, in Aksu. During
the eighteenth century the region was called Altishahr, the ‘Six Towns’: Kash-
gar, Yarkand, Khotan, Kucha, Turfan and Aksu. Later called ‘the city of the holy
warriors (ghāziyān)’, Aksu doesn’t appear in the texts by this Turkish name un-
til the fourteenth century.43 A legend recounts that it got its name, which
means ‘sweet water’ or ‘mountain water’ after a Muslim saint miraculously
freshened its bitter waters. Although Aksu acquired a certain commercial im-
portance in the fifteenth century as a node in the routes between China, Sibe-
ria, Central Asia, and northern India, and also as a notable exporter of rice and
felt, the city remained in the shadows compared to the great oases of Kashgar
and Yarkand, and so did any writings concerning it. There were 6,000 houses in
eighteenth-century Aksu, along with a bazaar, six caravanserails and five ma-
drasas, all surrounded by a wall with four gates cut into it. What was it like?
Doubtless it already resembled Fernand Grenard’s description, dating from his
explorations in the 1890s: ‘The shops (doukkàn), which lie pressed together, are
made of a stone-work terrace about two and a half feet high and six or seven

41 Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 25–28, 238.

42 Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī bi nām-i Ādāb al-ṭarīq, ed. Mehran Afshari
(Tehran: Chashma, 1346/2016).
43 Bertold Spuler, “Aḳ Ṣu,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Ho-Dong Kim, “Mus-
lim Saints in the 14th to the 16th Centuries of Eastern Turkestan,” International Journal of
Central Asian Studies 1 (1996): 285–322; Alexandre Papas, Soufisme et politique entre Chine,
Tibet et Turkestan oriental (Paris: J. Maisonneuve, 2005).
Introduction 23

feet wide, attached either to an isolated wall or to another house, and covered
by a roof supported on posts. (…) Once a week, merchants set up their stalls
beneath these modest and unrefined shelters, piling up their textiles, their
spices and their hardware and then, sitting on their heels as is the way in this
country, they await their clients. People arrive from the neighbouring areas to
do their shopping and sell their crops, foodstuffs and animals, and there is
great animation for the entire day, with much noise: conversation and discus-
sion, animal noises, the supplications of beggars, declamation from the wan-
dering readers, and musical instruments squeaking and creaking. Then, once
the sun has set, each person goes home to his or her penates, everything re-
turns to silence, the stalls are empty and the bazaar is deserted again until the
following week. (…) The streets are narrow and tortuous, but well-lit because
the houses are not tall. They are unpaved and thus very dusty, but since it ­never
rains they are in better condition than houses in Chinese cities (…) The houses
are made of sun-dried clay or cob bricks, whose distribution is arranged ac-
cording to uniform principles.’44
At one time the regional capital of the Khanate of the eastern Chaghatayids,
Aksu had more impact on history through two very different facts or events,
one isolated in time and the other continuous, although, as we shall see, from
the point of view of the actors of the period these events were not unlinked.
The first event was the earthquake that devastated the town in 1716. Although
it remains impossible to find out much more about this major event, one can-
not help seeing connections between this earthquake and the title and tone
adopted by the author who will serve as our mouthpiece for religious mar-
ginality in our third chapter. Again, we will avoid anticipating explanations
that will follow, instead just mentioning that the mystical poet Kharābātī (d.
1143/1730?) was, like his own home-town and unlike Nawāʾī, just a secondary
actor – yet it is precisely this subordinate role that makes him so fascinat-
ing. The word kharābāt means literally ‘the ruins, the devastation’, and such
a pseudonym inevitably leads one to conjecture that our author took on the
name of the actual disaster that he had mutely witnessed. Evidently, this is
pure speculation, and weakened by other possible explanations, about which
we will speak later, but it is reinforced by the discourse of Kharābātī, whose
radical pessimism flirts with free thought – in some ways after the fashion of,
say, Omar Khayyam (d. ca. 517/1123) – and seems to recognise the fragility of all
things. The second fact that characterises the history of Aksu is to do with Sufi
Islam in eastern Turkestan over the long duration. Hagiographies reveal that
the town was built in the fourteenth century with the help of a Sufi community

44 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:94–96.
24 Introduction

on the site of the ancient town of Ardabil (homonymic with the Iranian town),
which had been swallowed up by the sands. Later, its regent Muḥammad Khān
(r. 1000–1018/1591–1609) followed the teaching of the Naqshbandī master Isḥāq
Khwāja (d. 1008/1599), for whom he built a Sufi lodge. Isḥāqī ‘vicars’ followed
the shaykh and carried on his religious and political aims. When their rivals
(also Naqshbandīs but members of the branch founded by Āfāq Khwāja, who
died in 1105/1694) took power in the Altishahr, Aksu passed into the hands of
the Āfāqīs. At the end of the seventeenth century, the Isḥāqīs retook the town
and remained in power until the 1740s.
The vengeful verses of Kharābātī must be seen in the light of this second
fact, that is, political Sufism in the region. His writings are very close to dervish-
ism, speaking up against all politicisation of mysticism, as though renuncia-
tion, only, could follow a permanent destruction brought about as much by the
ravages of history as by earthquakes or the ontological absurdity of the world.
A fourth marginal space is situated in the grottoes. One sometimes forgets
that once the oases, the steppes and the desert are left behind, Central Asia, es-
pecially in the southern regions, contains high mountainous landscapes, too. It
was here that, at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeologists uncovered
extraordinary material and textual vestiges of Manicheanism or Buddhism, ves-
tiges that had been forgotten during a thousand years of Islamisation.45 These
treasures, still being studied today, eclipsed a more modest and less spectacu-
lar reality whose vitality was nevertheless obvious to observers of Islam during
the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. The grottoes had
become sacred spaces for Islamic cults, or for Sufi ascetic practices. While in
the foreground most of Central Asia was being progressively colonised from
opposite directions, either by the Russian Empire or the Sino-Manchu Empire,
and Islam, including Sufi Islam, was undergoing an institutional and intellec-
tual crisis, in the background anonymous people were hiding and practicing in
caves, safe from political vicissitudes.
The body of knowledge upon which we draw is for the most part the work of
archaeologists and ethnographers, complemented by our own field notes from
the past fifteen years. Given the diversity of sources used for this chapter, three
brief biographical notices of scholars whose work we have used should suffice
to give an idea of the nature of our sources.
Our first source is the duo of whom we spoke above. Jules-Léon Dutreuil de
Rhins (d. 1894) and Fernand Grenard (d. 1942) led an expedition to the

45 For a captivating re-telling of this archaeological gold-rush, see Peter Hopkirk, Foreign
Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia
(London: Murray, 1980).
Introduction 25

southern part of Central Asia between 1891 and 1893, before going on to Tibet.46
It was there, unfortunately, that Dutreuil de Rhins lost his life during an attack
by brigands. After having begun his career in the Navy, navigating the waters
around the Annam and the Congo, he had studied the geography of Central
Asia and Tibet intensively and was able to convince the French Ministry of
Public Instruction and the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters to finance his
expedition. The team then crossed Transoxiana, Fergana and all of Kashgaria,
as far as Khotan and Niya. Thanks to the work of the orientalist and former
student of the School of Oriental Languages, Fernand Grenard, who was also
very interested in the borderlands between Central Asia and Tibet and who
later became a diplomat in the Ottoman Empire and in Russia, the results of
this expedition were nothing less than multidisciplinary. They covered geolo-
gy, botany, meteorology and economics, but also geography, history, linguistics,
ethnography, etc.; their work became the first encyclopaedia of Xinjiang.
Thanks to the encyclopaedic outlook of these scholars, many unusual and orig-
inal aspects of Central Asian Islam spring from their pages, pages that seek to
embrace it in its entirety.
Our second scholarly source comes to us from Samarkand.47 Little is known
of Abū Ṭāhir Samarqandī (d. 1874). He was the son of Abū Saʿīd, supreme qadi
of the city and himself the son of a qadi and scholar, Mīr ʿAbd al-Ḥayy (d.
1243/1827). As the issue of this great lineage, Abū Ṭāhir rose with ease to the
summit of the regional judiciary and became governor of Karmana (today’s
Navoiy in Uzbekistan). He wrote a single work, entitled Samariyya, during the
1830s or 1840s. This consists of nine chapters describing the city of Samarkand
and its outskirts in Tadjik-inflected Persian; he focusses particularly on reli-
gious institutions. Moved by the loss of various monuments after earthquakes
and conflicts, he decided to create a record of such structures, which he saw as
a spiritual patrimony rich in divine signs. In his search for information about
mosques, madrasas and especially shrines, this native of Samarkand did not
hesitate to use oral sources, and he was as meticulous in identifying the names
of specific places as in relating the lives of saints. For our purposes here, how-
ever, we refer only to one brief chapter of his work, relevant because it eluci-
dates the Islamic and mystical history of the sacred grottoes.
Finally, Nikolai Kisliakov (d. 1973) represents a third type of informant.48
­Little-known outside the circles of Central Asia specialists, he merits particular

46 Svetlana Gorshenina, Exporateurs en Asie centrale. Voyageurs et aventuriers de Marco Polo

à Ella Maillart (Paris: Olizane, 2003), 211–15.
47 Alexandre Papas, “al-Samarqandī, Abū Ṭāhir,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., BrillOnline.
48 Here I am summing up V.N. Kisliakov and A.M. Reshetov, “Krupnyi sovetskii etnograf i
muzeeved Nikolai Andreevich Kisliakov (k 100-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia),” Etnografiches-
koe obozrenie 5 (2002): 108–20.
26 Introduction

attention. As a young man, in spite of his noble Saint Petersburg antecedents,

he sided with the 1917 revolution and became an instructor at the Red Army
School in Moscow until his demobilisation in 1925. Two years later he began
his undergraduate career back in his home-town, specialising in Iranian stud-
ies in the ethnology department. In 1930 he was named administrative chief of
public instruction for Karategin, in Tajikistan, as part of the Soviet programme
responsible for sending young students to far-flung provinces. Strongly in fa-
vour of Communism and against the Basmatchi armed uprising undertaken by
Central Asian activists, the Comrade instructor was an ardent defender of the
Sovietisation campaigns but nevertheless familiarised himself with the Tajik
language and society. Kisliakov returned to Saint Petersburg to finish his stud-
ies in the winter of 1931–32 and then went back on a mission to Pamir until
July 1933. After having defended his thesis, he divided his time between field
work in Tajikistan and his job at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnogra-
phy of his home university. At the end of the war he was employed at the So-
viet Embassy in Tehran, where he was able to travel in the region and improve
his knowledge of Iranian culture. He returned to Russia as an acknowledged
and powerful expert, taking on numerous responsibilities: at the University,
at the Ethnographic Museum, and with the Stalin-era Soviet programme for
collectivisation and development. Much of his work dealt with questions of
marriage, of family and of parental relationships in the societies of southern
Central Asia. In spite of his perfect fidelity to the principles of Soviet science,
which at the time was in search of primary forms of communism in so-called
feudal social organisations, Kisliakov left some very interesting field notes on
religious phenomena, particularly one innovative but forgotten article about a
grotto in Pamir.
The last chapter of this book, with its slightly romantic title, wanders the
pathways of Central Asia. Avoiding the major axes of commerce’s winners and
the exchanges that have for so long attracted the historians of globalisation, we
take the small unfrequented byways of the losers, of travellers, minor artistes
and all sorts of beggars. Although colonial administration was being rein-
forced, as much on the Russian as on the Chinese side, in a way that was pre-
paring the ground for the establishment of the socialist states of mass control
that would soon follow, yet there were some surviving elements of society that
the mounting bureaucracy had trouble identifying. We have used a few ar-
chives that express this sentiment. In the Governor-Generalship of Turkestan,
from which was born first the autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of Turke-
stan in 1918 and then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Uzbekistan in 1924, as in
the province of Xinjiang (‘the new frontier’), which was created in 1884 by the
Qing before being integrated first into the Republic of China in 1912 and then
Introduction 27

into the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the same evasive social milieu ex-
isted, marked out as different by its very nature, ungraspable by institutions.
Maddāḥ, lūlī, dīwāna, dārbāz, abdāl and others: these different itinerant sub-
groupings, some of whom were already mentioned as early as Nawāʾī, shared a
common space for public activities related (to varying extents) to the world of
live spectacle. They also shared a single religious culture, linked to dervishism,
that surfaced only in the sea of their words, that is, in the words of their songs
or their argotic languages.
As in the preceding chapters, we will draw on ethnographical research
(alongside some linguistic enquiries), much of which, especially in Uzbeki-
stan, is very recent. The main aim of the research to which we refer was to col-
lect memories from a past that has now vanished. The Russian ethnologist
Anna Troitskaia (d. 1980) was a pioneer in this domain.49 Let us recall that she
was born in Tashkent in 1899, but studied first at the Medical Institute of Saint
Petersburg and then, until 1923, at the Oriental Institute in Tashkent, where she
learned Persian, Tajik and Uzbek while participating in the population census
in the capital and in Samarkand. It is conceivable that this human inventory
was part of what later led her to pay such close attention to unidentified social
groupings. Although Troitskaia settled in Saint Petersburg, she continued her
Central Asian ethnological research on two fronts: in the constitution of a cor-
pus of archives and in the pursuit of field expeditions. It was while she was
posted in Tashkent during the Second World War that she undertook her pre-
cious enquiries into dervishes and cantors, and the rest of her career was di-
vided between the Institutes of Ethnology and of Orientalism.
From these five case studies we will draw a few rapid conclusions, trying to
perceive a comparatist perspective that could engage with other parts of to-
day’s Muslim world.

49 Russian-language biography available on the website of the National Library of Russia

(Saint Petersburg): <http://www.nlr.ru/nlr_history/persons/info.php?id=184>.
28 Chapter 1

Chapter 1

In the Streets of Herat

1 A Presentation of the ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī’s Maḥbūb al-qulūb

Although it is well known among philologists, Nawāʾī’s book has not been
much read by historians.1 The Maḥbūb al-qulūb – in French L’Aimé des cœurs
(The beloved of hearts), or L’Aimé de tous (The beloved by all), or even The be-
loved of the people (Le Populaire), according to the Lazard dictionary – was
written in 906/1501 and is a text on ethics and morals. Adopting the tone of a
wise old man who has seen it all, the author describes the lives and activities of
people in the different strata of his society at the time in which he lives. He
writes in rhyming prose and a quite complicated Eastern Turkish, interspersed
with verses in Turkish or Persian. Numerous manuscripts of this text are known
to exist; at least 26 are recorded worldwide.2 Dated 961/1554 and created in
Mecca by a certain Mūsā al-Samarqandī, the oldest manuscript copy is pre-
served at the French National Library, shelved under Supplément Turc 747. The
Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul holds another of Mūsā al-Samarqandī’s manu-
script copies, dating from 966/1558. The Soviet orientalist Andrei Kononov was
unaware of the existence of the Paris manuscript when he was preparing his
edition of this text, for which he referred to eight manuscripts from Saint Pe-
tersburg (of which some were shelved under V. 2095, V. 283, V. 2378, S. 139, and
V. 266. A particularly important example did not have a shelving reference; it
was copied in 1004/1595 by ʿAlī Fayḍī in the Mazandaran), as well as referring to
a manuscript from Tashkent (IVAN Uz 3324 and 697). This text seems also to
have travelled to Cairo in a copy made as early as 960/1560.
The table of contents of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb reads as follows:

1 I use and refer to the following edition: ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, ed. Andrei N.
Kononov (Moscow: Nauka, 1948), and sometimes have recourse to: Kazuyuki Kubo, “Navāī
(Mīru Arīshīru) no shakaikan Maḥbūb al-qulūb dai isshō nihongo yaku,” Memoirs of the
Faculty of Letters, Kyoto University 47 (2008): 183–295; this latter text gives the most faithful
transliteration, as well as a translation into Japanese of the introduction to the first part of the
book. I also verify my findings by referring to ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb (Istanbul:
Maṭbaʿa-yı ʿāmire, 1289/1872).
2 Zuhal Kargı Ölmez, Mahbūbü’l-kulūb (inceleme-metin-sözlük) (Ankara: Hacettepe Üniversitesi,
1993), 9–16.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_003

In The Streets Of Herat 29

Introduction (muqaddima)

First part: On the nature of the ways of being, activities and words of
people (khalāʾiq aḥwāl wa afʿāl wa aqwālïnïng kayfīyatïda)
Ch. 1: On just sultans (ʿādil salāṭīn dhikridä)
Ch. 2: On the very Muslim bey (islām panāh bek dhikridä)
Ch. 3: On the improper governor (nāmunāsib nāʾib dhikridä)
Ch. 4: On the tyrannical, ignorant and vicious king (ẓālim wa jāhil wa
fāsiq pādishāh dhikridä)
Ch. 5: On viziers (wuzarā dhikridä)
Ch. 6: On incompetent chancellors (nāqābil ṣadrlar dhikridä)
Ch. 7: On cowards who play at being brave (fāsiq wa bad maʿāsh
bahādurluq lāfīn urghanlar dhikridä)
Ch. 8: On the company of chamberlains (yasawul gurūhï dhikridä)
Ch. 9: On officers (yasaghlïq wa qara cherik dhikridä)
Ch. 10: On the resemblance of the King to his people (shāh ulusï özigä
mushābih bolur dhikridä)
Ch. 11: On the shaykh al-Islam (shaykh al-islām dhikridä)
Ch. 12: On the qadis (quḍāt dhikridä)
Ch. 13: On the muftis who are jurisconsults (muftī faqīhlar dhikridä)
Ch. 14: On professors (mudarrislar dhikridä)
Ch. 15: On doctors (iṭibbāʾ dhikridä)
Ch. 16: On the melodious birds in the garden of verse [poets] (naẓm
gulistānïnïng khūsh naghma qushlarï dhikridä)
Ch. 17: On scribes (kātiblar dhikridä)
Ch. 18: On schoolmasters (dabīristān ahlï dhikridä)
Ch. 19: On imams (imāmlar dhikridä)
Ch. 20: On readers of the Quran (muqrīlar dhikridä)
Ch. 21: On reciters of the Quran (ḥūffāẓ dhikridä)
Ch. 22: On the singer and the musician (muṭrib wa mughannī dhikridä)
Ch. 23: On the storytellers (qiṣṣasāz wa qiṣṣakhwān dhikridä)
Ch. 24: On the preachers of sermons (nasīḥat ahlï wāʿiẓlar dhikridä)
Ch. 25: On the astrologer (ahl-i nujūm dhikridä)
Ch. 26: On the merchants (tijārat ahlï dhikridä)
Ch. 27: On the shopkeepers of the town (shahrdā alïp satquchïlar
dhikridä)
Ch. 28: On the retailers in the bazaar (bāzār kāsiblarï dhikridä)
Ch. 29: On all the skilful artisans (sāʾir-i hunarwar-i ṣanʿatpardāz
dikhridä)
Ch. 30: On the chief of police, the jailers, and the agents of the night
(shaḥna wa zindanīlar wa ʿasaslar dhikridä)
30 Chapter 1

Ch. 31: On the peasants (dihqānlïq dhikridä)

Ch. 32: On thieves and good-for-nothings (yatīm wa la⁠ʾīmlar dhikridä)
Ch. 33: On strangers and the destitute (gharīb wa bī nawālar dhikridä)
Ch. 34: On the insistent beggars (mubrim gadālar dhikridä)
Ch. 35: On the falconer and the hunter (qushchï wa ṣayyād dhikridä)
Ch. 36: On the servant who receives an education and becomes deceitful
(tarbiyat tapïp ḥarām namaklïq qïlghan nöker dhikridä)
Ch. 37: On the quality of husbands, and on wives (katkhudālïgh ṣifatï wa
khātūnlar dhikridä)
Ch. 38: On the hypocritical shaykhs (riyāʾī mashāʾikhlar dhikridä)
Ch. 39: On the dissolute (kharābāt ahlï dhikridä)
Ch. 40: On the dervishes (darwīshlar dhikridä)

Second part: On the nature of praiseworthy acts and blameworthy

inclinations (ḥamīda afʿāl wa dhamīma khiṣāl khāṣiyatïda)
Ch. 1: On repentance (tawba dhikridä)
Ch. 2: On asceticism (zuhd dhikridä)
Ch. 3: On confidence in God (tawakkul dhikridä)
Ch. 4: On contentment (qanāʿat dhikridä)
Ch. 5: On patience (ṣabr dhikridä)
Ch. 6: On humility (tawāḍuʿ dhikridä)
Ch. 7: On [Sufi] repetition (dhikr sharḥidä)
Ch. 8: On attention to God (tawajjuh dhikridä)
Ch. 9: On consenting to God (riḍā dhikridä)
Ch. 10: On love (ʿishq dhikridä)

Third part: Anthology of various morals and sentences (mutafarriqa

fawāʾīd wa imthāl ṣūratï)

In 1866, the French orientalist and diplomat François Alphonse Belin made
a partial translation (which is not without its omissions and approximations
because of the state of scholarship at the time) of this text, including its intro-
duction and some extracts from the second and third parts, but nothing or al-
most nothing from the first part.3 It is difficult to avoid interpreting his choice
of sections to translate otherwise than as a deliberate setting aside of the so-
cial realities of medieval Herat. Only exemplary good morals seem to interest

3 François Alphonse Belin, “Moralistes orientaux. Caractères, maximes et pensées de Mir Ali
Chir Névâii,” Journal asiatique 7 (1866): 523–52; id., “Moralistes orientaux. Caractères, maximes
et pensées de Mir Ali Chir Névâii,” Journal asiatique 8 (1866): 126–54.
In The Streets Of Herat 31

this holder of high office in Constantinople. It is true that Nawāʾī writes as a

pious moralist in his final work, released as a last call to his contemporaries.
His gesture recalls another, performed a century later by an equally prolific
author of varied texts, the functionary and historian Muṣṭafā ʿAlī, of Gallipoli
(d. 1008/1600), who at the end of his life composed the Mevāʾid al-nefāʾis fī
qavāʾid al-mecālis (The tables of tactful manners concerning the rules of
assemblies).4
Here we shall translate the second part of Nawāʾī’s introduction, trying to
conserve its concrete aspect, which is more present than it may initially seem
to be. We also attempt to preserve some of the rhythm of this rhyming prose of
which our author is a real master5:

‘Poor wretch that I am, from my most tender youth to my ripest old age,
so long have I seen so much come to pass, such events and trials; I have
faced so many experiences of every kind, among good folk and among
bad; at times I wept as my fate grew worse, at times I rejoiced at honours.
Ode:

I have been weighed down by fate at times,

At times taken advantage of destiny
I have known great heat and great cold frequently
Have tasted sweetness and bitterness equally

At the time of my misfortunes, I would sit on the threshold of the ma-

drasas and warm my heart by the light of the scholars. In the mosques,
I would touch my forehead to the spot where pious folk placed their
feet, and it bled from the force of my genuflections. At times I made the
effort to refill the ewers of the people of the Sufi lodges; at times I car-
ried the pitcher for the drinkers of mystical wine. I was revealed to be
vulgar among the vulgar people, trivial among those who were trivial. In
the back alleys of love I behaved impurely, and I lost myself among the

4 Muṣṭafā ʿAlī, The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Āli’s Mevāʾidüʾn-Nefāʾis
fī Ḳavāʾidʾil-Mecālis ‘Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings’, annotated
translation by Douglas S. Brookes (Cambridge: The Department of Near Eastern Languages
and Civilizations-Harvard University, 2003). Marginal people are mentioned in chapters 17
(drug addicts), 25 (pleasure-seekers and hedonists), 49 (drunkards), 69 (dervishes), 71 (fre-
quenters of cafés), 73 (frequenters of alcohol shops), 74 (consumers of fermented millet), 75
(parasites and lazy people), 89 (Sufi opium addicts).
5 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 4–8 (257–60). The first part, in accordance with classical
tradition, tells of Creation and the Revelation.
32 Chapter 1

murderesses who kill men. I suffered a hail of blows when I went into
the district of the lunatics, and children threw stones at me there. On
another occasion I was forced to flee abroad to escape oppression at the
hands of my townspeople. I found repose at the tops of mountains, ref-
uge in the heart of the desert. I then resolved to return to my own land
and there hid myself away in the obscurity of a cloister (zāwiya). In my
exile I was weakened, among strangers I was corrupted. Among my own
I was able to smile and be joyous again. Quatrain:

I was burdened with sorrows by fate

Even my joys were driven by fate
My will, too, was directed by fate
Every change brought about by fate

In the happy days when I was in charge of the kingdom’s public order,
I sat on the throne of the emirate and heard plaintiffs’ cases; I became a
counsellor to the king himself and appeared before the people; I then
took my place in the palace, welcomed with sweet honours noblemen
and sharifs; I arranged joyous banquets and rejoiced there to hear the
singers and cup-bearers. I intervened in the conflicts of sultans and re-
established harmony between them. I fought on the battlefields and
I suffered the slander of the ignorant. I joined the people of charity and
built all sorts of edifices with the aim of thus creating hostels (ribāṭ) that
might please poor travellers (musāfir). Verses:

Many ideas came into my consciousness

While I was in charge of high functions

This introduction is meant to act as a reminder: I have followed many

roads and met many people. I have known good as I have known bad ac-
tions, I have tested good nature and evil nature. In my own throat have
I tasted good’s sweetness and evil’s bitterness; in my own heart have I felt
the balm of the good man and the blow of the vile one. Yet today many of
my friends who lack experience have no conscience of good and evil.
Fragment:

What does the one who has not tasted honey and wine know
Of the sweetness of union, the bitterness of disunion
Only by walking can the worthless traveller learn
Of the softness of the dunes and the hardness of the ascent
In The Streets Of Herat 33

It was therefore my duty to awaken the consciousness of each friend on

the subject of manners within the various social classes (ṭabaqa), that
they might hasten to approach the good people and stop frequenting the
harmful ones, divulging to no-one their secrets, avoiding becoming vic-
tims of any diabolical ruse; and that they might then inspire friendship
among people of every class, and profit from my experience. Since it is for
love of them that I have written this book, I have called it The beloved by
all. It is composed of three parts (...) I hope that readers will profit from
consulting it with attention, and that in return they will say a prayer for
the repose of my soul.’

In this eloquent introduction, Nawāʾī, who was then 60 years old, looks back on
his life, not forgetting to allude to some of the events that marked him: his exile
from 850/1447, his obtention of the title of emir in 876/1472, etc. Even though
his ultimate intention was to write a moral treatise founded on the values of
Sufi piety that are enumerated in the second part of his book, the poet tends to
emphasise the qualities that legitimise him as an honest man, that is, his expe-
rience of life. Inscribed in the body itself, as the reader is unceasingly remind-
ed by metaphors relating to sweet or bitter tastes, and by references to limbs,
organs and postures, this experience will be useful in the composition of a so-
cial survival manual for close friends. Readers who are aware of Nawāʾī’s taste
for descriptions of reality, and for concrete examples, will not be surprised,
therefore, to find in these initial proposals a profound sense of space as a coun-
terpart to biographical time. Alternating between peaks and troughs, the life
he describes to us passes through the city and the country, through streets and
whole neighbourhoods, sometimes moving into the heart of power, knowledge
and faith, mixing in public and private spheres. Social space is the principal
subject of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb, at least in the first part of the text; it expresses
a fairly explicit class hierarchy and yet is exhaustive enough, unlike other
sources, to include the most far-flung fringes of Herati society (in the table
of contents these, including dervishes, are placed, mischievously, at the end of
the list of society’s estates).

2 Musicians, Singers, Storytellers

Though they are, of course, not dervishes, the singers (or musicians) and the
storytellers, described respectively in chapters 22 and 23 nevertheless come
close. They resemble dervishes not only in occupying an equivocal place in
Timurid culture, but also because they move in the same circles and meet
34 Chapter 1

in the same sensory experiences. Certainly courtly music was well-established

and appreciated, as indicated in miniatures and classical sources such as the
Book of Babur or the Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ by the chronicler Wāṣifī, for the first
decades of the sixteenth century.6 What Nawāʾī is talking about is at once
more general and less consensual, although even in descriptions by Babur
(d. 937/1530) many lyrical séances evolve into memorable drinking bouts.7 Be-
yond the courts or the traditional soirées held by aesthetes (majlis), these other
musical contexts bring together people with diverse artistic profiles, having
much in common with the Sufi adepts of devotional love, and being generally
hostile to all sobriety both literally and figuratively. Might the bards of con-
temporary Khorasan be their distant descendants? The term bakhshi, by which
they are known in Iran, does not figure in our source, but the question is nev-
ertheless a tempting one.
Nawāʾī begins by reminding his readers that among ‘sensitive and spiritual
people (hāl ū dard ahlï) who devote their souls to a musician of joy or a singer
of sorrow, hearing them perform a sweet soft song or melody (mulāʾim), if they
give their entire attention to the singer or musician the listeners no longer suf-
fer, and their hearts and spirits are strengthened by the very beauty of the voice
or the sound – a good singer can as easily fan the flames of suffering as those of
exaltation; when the artiste strums a heart-rending song (dardmandānarāq)
with his plectrum, his pain sows pain in the listener’s heart. The ardent singer
who tears a sweet piece of music from his throat inflames the heart of the sen-
sitive man; the soft and smooth musician who has talent and intelligence will
melt the hardest heart. As for musical accompaniment to reciting, how this
may disturb the equanimity of our hearts!’8 There is no need to dwell on these
almost normative premises, intended to define in an almost physical way what
the artiste and his public should be. We merely note our author’s insistence on

6 A number of portraits of artistes and musical scenes can be found in Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd
Wāṣifī, Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ, ed. Alexandre N. Boldyrev (Tehran: Intishārāt-i bunyād-i farhang-i
īrān, 1350/1972), 1:19–20 (Qāsim ʿAlī qānūnī), 1:20 (Sayyid Aḥmad ghijakī), 1:20–21 (Muḥibb
Allāh balabānī), 1:21 (Ḥasan ʿūdī, Ḥusayn Kūchak nāʾī and several singers), 1:22 (a private con-
cert), 1:22–23 (the dancer Maqṣūd ʿAlī raqqās), 1:81–82 (a musical session), 1:118–19 (the singers
Mawlānā Khwāja gūyanda and Amīr Khalīl khwānanda), 1:296 (the singer Mawlānā Qizili),
1:312 (a musical soirée), 1:405 (list of names of singers and musicians), 1:436–38 (Ḥāfiẓ Qazaq
qānūnī); 2:36–38 (a musical session), 2:193 (list of instruments), 2:219 and 2:399–400 (the
­science of music).
7 The best translation into a western language is still: Le Livre de Babur. Mémoires de Zahiruddin
Muḥammad Babur de 1494 à 1529, trans. Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont (Paris: Publications
Orientalistes de France, 1980), 207 (support from Nawāʾī for musicians), 217 (portraits of musi-
cians) and 225–28 (drunkenness).
8 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 35 (277).
In The Streets Of Herat 35

crediting music with definite effects on spiritual people, an insistence that in

fact betrays a mistrust that Nawāʾī shares with ulamas and Sufis – a mistrust of
musicians and the religious or moral byways along which their art can lead the
listener.
It is for this reason that Nawāʾī is careful to specify: ‘For the person who fol-
lows the mystical path (ahl-i sulūk), one of the most dangerous stages is the
one during which he will know both perfection and imperfection. At this point
the mystic may reach his goal in a single breath, or he may lose all that has
been acquired over many years for the sake of a single glass of wine. [The fact
remains that] it was during a spiritual concert (samāʿ) that Shiblī and Nūrī at-
tained the goal of the mystical path.’9 This warning echoes repeated debates
within Sufism on the rights and wrongs of the samāʿ. Without always sharing a
single point of view, Naqshbandī theoreticians nevertheless agree that listen-
ing to music or song presents the danger of distracting the mystic instead of
initiating him. This may be because of an inappropriate use of music by the
performer, or because the spiritual training of the listener is insufficient.10
Nawāʾī refers to the same risk. Although he does not reject the samāʿ himself,
he does remind his readers that only great Sufis such as Abū Bakr Shiblī (d.
334/946) or Abū al-Ḥusayn Nūrī (d. 295/907) – two often-cited spiritual refer-
ence points in polemics referring to spiritual audition – can get the most out of
this sensitive experience.
The following section of the text reveals that Nawāʾī is wary of musicians.
They appear as imperious corruptors, complicit in the worst excesses and prey-
ing above all on the devout. ‘Most men of God who, attracted by the sound of
the organ (arghanūn), enter the tavern (dayr), end up paying the waiter (mugh-
bachcha) with the currency of Islam. In the drinking-place (maykhāna), even
for the man who abstains from alcohol, well, the voice of the flute (nay) will
make him drink (literally ‘will give him cause for shame’) with its attractive
song. Even if a man avoids the call of wine, when the viol (gījak) lamentingly
implores him to drink, when the bandore (tanbūr) incites him to shameless-
ness with its noise, when the harp (chang) dries up his throat with its plaints
and by its very language the oud again calls on him to drink; while the lute
(rabāb) prostrates itself and begs him to drink and the vielle (qobuz) seizes his
ears and fills them with music that draws him towards pleasure; and when the

9 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 35–36 (278).

10 For a dense discussion of this subject by a Naqshbandī shaykh, see the Treatise on audition
(Risāla-yi samāʿiyya), by Aḥmad Kāsānī (d. 949/1542), studied in my article, “Creating a
Sufi Soundscape: Recitation (dhikr) and Spiritual Audition (samā‘) according to Ahmad
Kāsānī Dahbidī (d. 1542),” Performing Islam, special issue ‘Islamic Soundscapes of China’
(ed. R. Harris) 3/1–2 (2015): 23–41.
36 Chapter 1

qanun and the rattle (chaghāna) make their voices heard, with the handsome
cup-bearer stooping to serve, and the wine flowing in streams, those who try
not to drink no longer know abstinence and no longer listen to reason.’11 The
passage deliberately plays on two levels, literal and figurative. Regular clients of
alcohol-soaked dives, dervishes constituted part of the audience for organists,
flutists, chorus singers and other musicians. The very well-informed picture
that Nawāʾī paints demonstrates the decline into which numerous believers
fell when they came into contact with the marginal people of the spectacle.
Here it is no longer a question of samāʿ in the sense of a concert of devotional
songs, although underlying Nawāʾī’s description here is another, describing the
avowedly perilous mystical intoxication that may overtake the pious listener.
He concludes in sibylline fashion, ‘Although all this experience of love
would shame the poor in God (faqr ahlï), the breath of the flute and the oil of
the wine fan the flames of his love. The Arabic camels speed their rhythmical
steps in the desert and groan like thunderclouds. This is a mistaken thought,
common among men, and it is impossible for them to avoid this catastrophe.’12
By this Nawāʾī means to say that it is a fatal error to seek mystical love among
the musicians and singers.
‘As for the rest of this social group (ṭāʾifa), people who drown their sorrows
in amusements, they are in fact nothing but a bunch of low beggars (gadā).
There are the singer (aytquchï) and the musician (chalghuchï), earning a living
from their moans. As long as the master gratifies them with a reward, they re-
main his servants. For them it’s pure profit to continue spending time with
him, and so all orders are well received! But when the banquet is less luxurious,
then their work becomes haphazard. When they benefit greatly, their hearts
are full of thee, but if they are so rewarded for years, in the end they don’t even
thank thee for thy favours; if they don’t get enough, they have no gratitude at
all, and even when they receive a great deal, they are hardly grateful.’13 Here
our author incriminates artistes who are in service with the aristocratic fami-
lies of Herat, always on the lookout for feasts and celebrations of various sorts
so that they might earn their bread. Nawāʾī’s undiscriminating diatribes against
these people, whom he reduces to the condition of scroungers, betray not so
much the moral reality as the out-of-kilter situation of this part of the popula-
tion, ill-seen, unaccepted, always suspect, and reputed to care more for money
than for the arts. He drives home his point:

11 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 36 (278).

12 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 36–37 (278).
13 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 37 (278).
In The Streets Of Herat 37

‘Most of them are impious and vice-ridden, with twisted and rude (durusht­
gūy) attitudes. Their gestures resemble detuned instruments and their way of
talking is dressed up in a false and misplaced gravity. They lack all feeling
of loyalty (wafā), to such an extent that adepts of loyalty suffer among them.
The singer is indeed as disloyal as the shame-faced beggar (kungur). Even if
thou shouldst protect them for years, letting them live beneath thy roof, and
givest them nothing on just one single occasion, they will treat thee as a perfect
stranger. They are women (shāhid), who trick people by taking the appearance
of men, intriguers who hide behind affable facades to corrupt households. The
nobility sees them as charmers using voice and music, for the common folk
they are thieves carrying drums and banners. Ode:

May no one suffer this din

For its cry sends hope flying
When it returns, the noise of the drum
Drives away this bird so uncommon’14

If one is to believe the last lines of chapter 22, there’s decidedly little to admire
among these second-rate artistes. Referring less to artistic patronage, which is
often described in historiography despite its affecting only those at the top of
the heap, than to acts of charity, Nawāʾī underlines the coarseness of behaviour
and language that, according to him, characterises musicians, who are compa-
rable to charlatans. We are close to the world of the streets, with their noises,
their cries of jugglers – these may pull the wool over the eyes of polite society
in Herat for a short time, but (Nawāʾī tells us) the good sense of the common
people means they are not taken in. More serious than the moral fault or the
abuse of trust, and shocking for our poet, is the depravation of language, echo-
ing hollowly and rendered trivial. Chapter 23 confirms this impression: ‘The
tellers of tales (qiṣṣasāz, qiṣṣakhwān) are good-for-nothings (bīkār) who re-
count ridiculous stories. They consume opium (maʿjūnnāk) or hashish (bangī)
and try to draw a big crowd for their declamations. They’re constantly clapping
their hands and speaking in loud gruff voices that frighten away the bird
of decency and reason. They have the gestures of madmen and the words of
drunkards. [The storytellers] sell camel-dung and call it sweetmeats and those
among the crowd who believe them buy it and eat. Verse:

14 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 37–38 (279).

38 Chapter 1

They who buy neither elixir nor sweetmeats [the storytellers]

Because of their noise the bazaar never knows peace’15

Not situated in the taverns, or in the backyards of the homes of the ruling
­classes, the qiṣṣakhwān occupy an improbable space between the street and
the bazaar. Nawāʾī often exaggerates, but what he tells us is more realistic than
it seems, whether he’s on the subject of drugs, dirty tricks, or raucous voices.
He is speaking of small bands of street artistes, part jugglers (in the medieval
sense) and part petty criminals, who skim the foam from the urban market-
places, and in the description of whose activities the Maḥbūb al-qulūb delights.
Once again, the poet deplores the empty, chaotic and rackety language of those
who are in fact charged with taking on the burden of words.

3 Ruffians, Bohemians, Paupers

The reader of The beloved by all continues his descent into social hell in chap-
ters 32, 33 and 34. Eternally forgotten by history, society’s rejects are no more
dervishes than are musicians, singers and storytellers. Nevertheless, these peo-
ple approach religious marginality in that dervishes seek among them, in a
shared urban or peri-urban space, a source of inspiration and perhaps even
a model of behaviour.
On the subject of the yatīm – which should be translated as ‘crook’, ‘hood-
lum’, ‘street urchin’, and not as ‘orphan’ – Nawāʾī explains that these people are
‘a rabble of scoundrels (awbāsh bilä ardhāl), whose lives and habits are not
worthy of Muslims. Their natures are devoid of humanity; their characteristics
draw on the vocabulary of savagery (sabuʿiyyat) even more than on that of ani-
mality (haywāniyyat). When the hoodlum starts his knife-play, he becomes an
enraged dog and his knife turns into fangs. Sober he’s a mad mastiff, and when
he’s drunk even the packs of wild dogs flee from him. [With] his hands, as a
hyena would when sharpening his claws, he learns the technique (literally
‘learns a poem like a creed’) for the day when he will kill. Then he runs people
through, whether they’re good or bad, and like the scorpion poisons those
whom he stings. Among these men there is neither faith nor reason, nor shame
nor dignity. Their work is dirty and inspires no trust; they act without pride and
without fear. These ruffians inhabit the depths of the town (shahr tahï), crawl-
ing like reptiles. It is not only a necessity but also a duty to beware of them.
Verse:

15 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 38 (279).

In The Streets Of Herat 39

The thing about them is that they wrong us

The Prophet said: ‘kill beasts who harm us!’16

Chapter 32 continues to speak of the delinquents of Herat. One learns that

they haunt its dark alleys and form a sort of mob of thieves, discreet but active,
adept at armed attacks. Besides the final injunction to exterminate them, a
sign of the elderly Nawāʾī’s disappointed vigour as he swings his walking-stick
around his head, it is the violence of the language that is striking here. Reflect-
ing like a mirror the brutality of the acts described, it unpityingly accuses peo-
ple who have lost the right to call themselves believers and are excluded from
humanity itself. Reptiles, scorpions, hyenas, dogs – insults rain down on them.
Here it is troubling to note that this same vocabulary is applied to dervishes
from the quills of the heresiographers and orthodox Sufis, although Nawāʾī is in
two minds about this, as we will see. In some ways this language is not without
relevance, since the marginal mystics deliberately lay claim to animal wild-
ness, especially through the figure of the dog. The theme is too vast to attend to
in detail here.17 Let us simply bear in mind that this canine figure offers a mod-
el for a humble piety bolstered by various behaviours, the sense of which is to
define the mystic as God’s dog.
The next chapter, 33, treats of strangers and the destitute (gharīb wa bī
nawālar). In fact, the author is referring here to gypsies, as is made clear in the
text from the beginning: ‘Most gypsies (jat wa lūlī) earn a living as jesters (muz-
hik) and follow simple rules. When they stand on their heads (muʿallaq urmaq)
their baseness (khāksārlïgh) is fully revealed; when they raise their faces back
up it’s their perfidiousness that becomes visible. On their arrogant faces [one
can see] the camel releasing its dung; on their monkeys’ leashes [hangs] their
humanity. It is from the very fact of being human (kishilik) that they are trying
to flee by capering so; they open the door of reprobation themselves when they
make a mockery of goodness.’18 Here again, playing with his habitual verve on
metaphors of bodies and giving vent to a certain scatology, Nawāʾī does not
hesitate to equate a human group with animals in order, finally, to exclude
them from the human world. Nevertheless, behind these diatribes one discov-
ers the little-known world of the gypsies of Herat. Acrobats and animal-tamers,
of dubious origin, are perceived as foreign to the city. A tenacious tradition

16 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 48 (285–86).

17 For more details, please see my study, “Dog of God: Animality and Wildness among Der-
vishes,” in Islamic Alternatives. Non-Mainstream Religion in Persianate Societies, ed. Shah-
rokh Raei (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2017), 121–38.
18 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 48–49 (286).
40 Chapter 1

considers them to be suspect beings denuded of all morality. What follows re-
affirms this:
‘They eat what they have earned that very day. They don’t worry about the
morrow. They don’t even complain about not having received what they’d
asked for. Their homeland is any wretched ruins (khwārlïq wayrānasï); their
houses are shabby hovels (khāksārlïgh kāshānasï). From sunrise their men and
women disperse to find their pittances, boys and girls spread out across the
streets of the town. Then each one brings back what she or he has earned and
all assemble in a single place. They will not sleep as long as they have not con-
sumed what they have earned. They don’t even know the question, “what shall
we eat tomorrow?” What they will do on the morrow will be the same as what
they did today; if such work could be worthy of a man it would be work indeed.
This baseness is better than the pride that thinks itself human, this error is
preferable to the illusion that such a life is good. Verse:

A man, if he is a man, does not call himself a man

He works and never says that he does the work of a man’19

Relegated to what were effectively the squats of the period, often ruins in
which shelters were improvised, the gypsies were described almost as ‘noble
savages’ – although the notion is of course a much later, occidental, usage – liv-
ing from day to day without real worries but also without futures. However,
Nawāʾī specifies that they are organised into bands of acrobats or mendicants,
busy all day and coming together in the evening to share their booty. These
activities inspire extreme contempt in our scholar, who sees in them a fresh
sign of the inhuman state, from the enactment of which, as he writes in these
few lines, the gypsies would not know how to desist. Dervishes are nowhere
mentioned, in spite of the fact that they may also find themselves stumbling in
rags through devastated neighbourhoods, coming together into mendicant co-
horts and freeing themselves from the weight of all responsibilities. This may
be a fairly vague analogy, beyond which it is difficult to go, but these common
points can only awaken our desire to know more. We will return to a part of
this problem when we discuss argotic languages.
Chapter 34, the insistent beggars (mubrim gadālar): ‘Most indigent people
have neither honour nor modesty. They wander around all day harassing peo-
ple with their demands and marking out those whom they will burgle at night.
They have no gratitude to people who do them favours; they never excuse
themselves to those who grace them with their aid. Even when they’ve eaten,

19 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 49 (286).

In The Streets Of Herat 41

they’re like starving people, their stomachs are never filled; the same when
they have drunk, it’s as though they had dropsy, their thirst is never quenched.
Their wooden bowls (kachkūl) are full of chimeras like those of drug addicts
(bangī) and their sacks (khārīṭa) contain visions that are multi-coloured like
the spirits of false Sufis. Each patch that they’ve sewn [to their rags] could only
be detached by the washer of cadavers; of all the money they’ve buried in the
ground it would be impossible to dig up the least piastre. Their eyes are the ‘a’
of avidity and the ‘c’ of cupidity (‘the ‫ ﺺ‬of hirṣ and the ‫ ﻊ‬of ṭamaʿ’); it would be
a dishonour to their souls and hearts to have to do without these two! Among
them those who call themselves Qalandar shall be cursed, deprived of their
humanity and attacked by Satan and his demons. They are so distant from
humanity and Muslim identity (musulmānlïq) that hogs and bears would be
more entitled to a place among men. Having arrived at the margins (karāna)
of humanity through the metamorphoses in their appearance (shikl ṭaghryīri),
they clothe themselves with an animal skin turned inside out (pūstīn ewürä),
carrying this mark of animality and savagery. Whatever their appearance, be
they tall or small, these horrible beggars make the pure of heart feel sick, as
[would] perverse thoughts (fāsid). Quatrain:

We cannot give them an order as we would to a man

Nor as we would to a believer, a Muslim or a man
Harmful natures, that we must rebuff, cannot know
Of receiving orders that are meant for men’s souls’20

Beggars find no more favour in the eyes of Nawāʾī than do street thugs or gyp-
sies – he sees through them right away: predatory wanderers during the day,
thieves at night, faithless and lawless, for him indigent beggars are certainly
part of the dangerous classes of Herati society. Balanced between gluttony and
œdema, the bodies of the destitute say everything about their monstrous con-
dition, cut off from all possibility of humanity. What strikes us as more inter-
esting is the comparison with the dervishes. Both groups live in destitution,
with only a few small coins, their begging bowls (the famous kachkūl or
kashkūl), their flat purses and the pelt (pūstīn) that serves as a coat, a rug, a
blanket. Here again, what our emir perceives as evidence of a bestial savagery
can also be seen to signify pious humility among the antinomian mystics who
admire animal innocence. In addition, the text explicitly cites the religious and
anthropological marginality that Muslim antinomianism seeks out, regardless
of the author’s disapproval. Finally, we must not forget the mention of hashish

20 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 50–51 (287).

42 Chapter 1

(bang) whose psychotropic virtues are used in various ways by the dervishes,
as we have seen in our introduction.
It is clear that for Nawāʾī there is a strict distinction between beggars and
real Sufis. The first group apes the second in order to extract additional alms.
They resemble the many false Sufis that seem to swarm in Herat, and of whom
the next part of the text will speak again; these beggars do not hesitate to call
themselves Qalandars. They are, alas, a mere caricature of the Qalandar, to
such an extent that the name Qalandar itself is from this point on (at the be-
ginning of the sixteenth century) an insult that the poet never again uses in
this text to refer to those whom he recognises as authentic ascetics. In fact, this
was already a familiar problem: the first treatises of Sufism already complained
of false mystics and sought normative criteria in order to discriminate between
real and false Sufis. The Maḥbūb al-qulūb expresses the same disquiet, but con-
tinues to believe in the existence of sincere dervishes. For the historian of the
marginal, on the other hand, to differentiate among things that cannot be told
apart has no sense, since it is precisely in ambiguity that the dervish is situated
– somewhere between misfortunate and mystagogue. It is therefore a question
less of uncovering a mystical truth than a sociological reality. What is more
relevant for our purposes is that the problem of appellation brings us back to
the question of names that popular language corrupts, according to Nawāʾī,
who concludes by declaring that beggars, as perverse beings par excellence,
understand nothing of what men, believers or Muslims say to them. This is the
case not only for orders (ḥukm), and for law, but even for the understanding of
the contents of the law. Where is the good in addressing people who misap-
propriate even words themselves?

4 Real and False Dervishes

The final chapters of the social study of Herat are devoted to dervishes: the
kind who appear dervish-like or those who genuinely are so. Hypocritical
shaykhs, the bêtes noires of the Sufi poet, are reputed ‘to take great care of their
appearances (jilwa namāyï). Like vulgar copper that is covered with gold leaf,
their exteriors are beautiful, but their interiors are ugly. Their bodies (ṣūratï)
are like those of the dervishes, but their spirits (maʿnīsi) are profoundly per-
fidious. Their ornaments (ārāstalïghï) are well-anchored, but their prodigious
accomplishments (karāmātï) are pure illusion.’21 Nawāʾī is attacking charlatans
who pass themselves off as mystics. He remains faithful to the provisions put

21 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 59 (293).

In The Streets Of Herat 43

into place from the beginning of his text, interpreting bodies and acts to unveil
their symbolic meaning. The next part of the text specifies what these orna-
ments are:
‘Their turbans are the weight of authority, and each hair on their heads is a
perverse idea; the frock on their shoulders is entirely parti-coloured, and their
coats hide their vices, in which each thread turns the wheel of cunning; their
tooth-picks sharpen the teeth of greediness; in their comb-purses they conceal
the instrument that mocks people to their faces (rīshkhand ālatï); they tell
their beads as one would play at dice, and stretch their prayers out to impress
their audience (literally ‘so that people see them’); The [poor] hat they happen
to wear (kulāh-i dawlat) happens to be a turban of good fortune (dawlatmand-
gha dastār), and the hat’s longest ribbons (ʿilāqa) are as fine as the fox’s neck-
fur; their untimely exclamations (maḥallsïz ṣayḥa) are as hard to put up with
as those of hens who cackle at all hours; they are so negligent that their litanies
resemble the crane-like cries uttered by the drunkards at banquets.’22 Nawāʾī
mocks the accoutrements so characteristic of these dervishes who are too
beautiful to be real, and purposely distorts the symbolic meanings that are, in
theory, attached to these too-perfect garments; in the second chapter of this
book we will discuss similar subjects in depth. Here spiritual virtue is com-
pared and opposed to vice, cupidity, imposture, etc. In addition, by borrowing
from the register of the animal kingdom, the text again insists on the harm that
false shaykhs do to language itself – the very language of the Sufis who praise
and psalmodise – which here is reduced to drunken squalling. But there is
worse to come:
‘All that they recount is but ruse, all that they do is from selfish motives only.
All their dreams are invented and awake all that they say is only lies. Their con-
certs (samāʿ) are not according to regulations, their ecstasies disregard all defi-
nition. They are as over-fussy (pīch dar pīch) in appearance as they are
completely useless at interiority, from their heads to their feet. This perverse
nature and all this decoration present such a contrast to the essence of virtu-
ous men. Alas, alas! Such shamefulness, such shamefulness! It is poignant to
observe that they even have disciples and that these serve them blindly. [These
false shaykhs] do good business (dukkānï yürütüp), with a head for sales (tadbīr
bilä), keeping hold of their troops through fraud, to such an extent that Satan
himself is speechless and demons are disgusted. Quatrain:

What ruses, deceit and falseness in the name of poverty

Like a sultanate sitting on straw employing his majesty

22 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 60 (293).

44 Chapter 1

If the king thinks he’s a dervish and the false dervish thinks he’s a king
Both are wrong, both lack integrity, so it’s not surprising’23

Chapter 38 comes to a close in bitterness. Nawāʾī sees the charlatans of Sufism

as mere hoaxers, often comical. The contemporary historian may concede
them the benefit of the doubt and certainly notices the sinuous courses fol-
lowed by dervishes, leading them to the frontiers of Islam in the very name,
usurped or not, of Islam itself. There is a certain arrogant grace, an insolence
even, in playing at piety and overplaying faith. The words of the hypocrite
shaykhs may ring false, but they still leave their mark on the faithful of Herat
who are always on the lookout for new signs. Their music and their ecstatic
dances seem outrageous and yet it is this very excess that defines Muslim anti-
nomianism. Their accoutrements are absurd, but does this not drive home the
ridiculousness of social appearances? The regrets that our old observer ex-
presses are proportional to the popular success enjoyed by his salesmen of the
mystical. If the final poem dwells with anxiety on the reversal of roles that re-
sults from a confusion between saintliness and sovereignty, it also betrays the
existence of a tendency in society to subvert political and religious norms. We
are approaching the situation in which there is a little Carnival every day.
The next chapter, 39, deals with the dissolute (kharābāt ahlï, rind-i kharābātī),
on the subject of whom our author writes that ‘they spend their time drinking
wine; the desire for drink makes bubbles in their heads and like the bottle near
the glass they rest their heads. At the tavern (dayr), in any corner where he
spots a little party (bazm) [the alcoholic] slips in on the pretext of serving peo-
ple, encouraging them to drink more so that he can polish off what’s left in
their glasses (literally ‘takes the turban of pride from their heads and throws it
down at the feet of the bartender’). Frequenting the places where alcohol is
sold, he loses all his worldly goods; dependent on alcohol he has nothing left.
When he takes the glass in his hand every young waiter in a tavern (mughbach-
cha) seems even more magnificent than Jamshīd the king, so [the drinker] ven-
erates him like an idol and prostrates himself at the feet of the bartender (dayr
pīri). His collar the drunkard tears off with joy; his heart is wounded by the
sharp tips of love. At the tavern he begs unceasingly for his wine and holds a
potsherd in his hand. In the stinking alleyways (ruswālïgh kūyïda) he walks
barefoot and bare-headed, beaten as high as his brow by nasty drunkards.’24
This gripping portrait of the average alcoholic in Herat during the fifteenth or
sixteenth century reveals a sombre face of society that the historical sources

23 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 60–61 (293).

24 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 61 (294).
In The Streets Of Herat 45

habitually prefer to forget. But what bothers Nawāʾī, who is little inclined to
pity, is not so much the physical or social descent that he has just so minutely
described as the drunkard’s general attitude that is contrary to laws and espe-
cially to good Islamic mores, thus presenting a model that’s counter to that of
the Sufi gentleman.
‘To trample (pāmāl qïlur) on his own being, in gathering places he takes a
place on the doormat (saff-i niʿāl). He doesn’t bother to put his turban on or to
cover his neck with a mantle (ridāʾ). His soul is so lowly, so near the earth (tof-
raqqa hamdast), that when it rises up even the sky becomes low. His heart is
not saddened by the current mood (zamān nawāyï); the blows of destiny cause
no pain to his spirit. He fears neither life nor death (wujūd ū ʿadam); in the or-
der of his aspirations (himmatï alïda) being and nothingness come to the same
thing. He takes pleasure in weeping tears as bitter as the jar of wine, and re-
joices in sinking downward like the flow of wine. In the wine-shop he never
looks healthy, he never thinks of the state of the world or his times, he couldn’t
care less (ishi yoq) about the good or evil of his times. One could persuade one-
self that no such individual could possibly exist anywhere in the world!’25
Nawāʾī refers implicitly to Sufis several times in this passage: the turban, the
mantle … and especially the threshold where one removes one’s shoes, as in
the mosque he evokes in his autobiography. Here it becomes a doormat to be
trampled over, with a person squatting on it whose potentially great soul is re-
duced to its basest instincts. This himmat, so prized by the Persian moralia,
especially by the Sufis, represents a cardinal virtue, naming the elevation of
spirit that the pious Muslim who follows any initiatic path must aspire to. It’s
just the other way around for the inveterate drunkard who, in the same way as
his actions matter to him only in their literal sense, understands only the lit-
eral meaning of taverns and wine, with no inkling of their mystical interpreta-
tion. Everything happens as if the debased man had abolished metaphor in
order to preserve only the cold dry contents of his own destruction. One would
almost think he was an antinomian! Finally, our author reproaches the drinker
for his sovereign indifference both to the zeitgeist that presides in his day and
to the promised life beyond, and this contrasts markedly with the man of the
world that the Sufi must to some extent remain as he waits anxiously for
the Last Judgement. It is therefore religion that is at stake in this chapter, even
more than morality, and what follows underlines this:
‘The obscurantism of the materialists (dahr ahlï ẓulmï) tries to tell us that
this is a correct way of life, and even invokes God’s mercy. [They think that] ex-
istence is annihilated in the earth of their tavern and hope that God’s grace will

25 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 61–62 (294).

46 Chapter 1

grant them eternal subsistence (wujūd maykadasï tofraghïda fānī umīdi ḥaqq
karamïdïn baqā-yi jāwidānï). [Thus] happiness and good fortune would accrue
to wrong-doers; kings would sigh for not having the same chances. Quatrain:

The ruffian who drinks unceasingly of non-existence

Neither on earthly life nor on heaven feels dependence
He blunts himself day and night, relying on God’s power
He overdoes things even more than the false renouncer

Let us nevertheless hope that it is to the unfortunate (nāmurādlar) that God

grants the fortune of annihilation, the opportunity of repentance and eternal
subsistence itself.’26
The end of this chapter is therefore a doctrinal discussion, as allusive as it is
determinative. According to Nawāʾī, the partisans of materialism (ahl-i dahr,
dahriyya) identify bodily drunkenness with drunkenness of the spirit. There is
nothing metaphorical about debauchery if it once finds its justification in the
annihilation of the self and the hope for divine pardon, regardless of lifestyle.
Approaching antinomianism, from the point of view of orthodoxy and the her-
esiographers, materialism is reputed to assign all human life to the here and
now, which leads rapidly to a hedonistic morality; worse than the false Sufi of
the preceding chapter, dahrī can signify ‘he who “denies the Lord”, creation,
reward and punishment, all religion and all law, who listens only to his own
desires and sees evil only in what constrains him; he knows not the difference
between men and cattle or even wild animals.’27 If ‘mystical’ and ‘ethyl’ are a
single entity according to the materialists, suggests Nawāʾī, there is no longer
any morality or faith. Values are inverted and there is no meaning to God’s ac-
tion. These arguments also act as a transition, leading to the final social group
to be highlighted in the Maḥbūb al-qulūb: dervishes.
Chapter 40 begins with a definition: ‘The dervish is the one who meditates
on consent to God (riḍā andīsh). Even if one hundred needles were to pierce
him from inside, outwardly he would remain perfectly calm.’28 It is therefore a
general attitude that defines the mystic, who masters himself and is promised
to God’s divine will, never straying or showing off. ‘The dervish must be like
this: he puts into practice the path of sincerity (ṣidq) and of annihilation
(fanā), and shows himself exactly as he is; with severe exercises he attenuates

26 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62 (294).

27 Ignaz Goldziher and Anne-Marie Goichon, “Dahriyya,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed.,
BrillOnline.
28 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62 (295).
In The Streets Of Herat 47

the coarseness of self-love (anāniyyat) and, thanks to enormous efforts, es-

capes the violence of his personality (nafsāniyyat); thus he steps onto the path
of poverty, crosses the valley of separation from existence and reaches the
peaceful and contemplative home of annihilation of self. To his own spirit,
thus elevated, it seems (himmatï naẓarïgha) that he has no being outside of
God, and even that there is only nothingness aside from absolute existence.
Not only does his interior conform to his exterior, he is in fact more pure than
this; his interiority (bāṭin) is not merely equal to his exteriority (ẓāhir), it is
even more luminous. If one can see from his appearance that he is dissimulat-
ing in order to hide his essence, his intentions will not be accomplished.’29
These explicitly normative passages prescribe rather than describing. This is
a point of view that’s the opposite as much of antinomian conceptions as of
the historic figure of the dervish as depicted in the manifesto of Amīr Ḥusayn
Harawī and in the preceding developments, devoted to so-called false dervish-
es, of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb. Here Nawāʾī is indulging in the (after all) classical
exercise of explaining the concept of ṭarīqat (the path), which the reader must
understand as a spiritual journey from inside oneself to beyond the self, and
towards God. Having alluded to the spiritual baseness of the drunkard (read:
the antinomian dervish), he then reintroduces the himmat in its real sense: the
elevated moral and religious viewpoint of the Sufi. According to this logic,
from the false we can distinguish the genuine mystic by his intellectual rigour,
which affects even his body, his behaviour and his way of life. Thus this rhe-
torical question: ‘How could interior clarity be opposed to external obscurity?
The habit of the dervish is torn, as treasure is concealed within waste; the mys-
tic (ṣafā ahlï) wears rags like king Feridun who hides his treasure among ruins.
Among spiritual beings (maʿnī ahlï) the truth is kept hidden, superficial people
(ṣūrat ahlï) make an exhibition of the truth (daʿwī), but to exhibit oneself
makes no sense, in truth.’30 Here Nawāʾī certainly allows for the possibility of a
savage-looking mystic, but not for the idea that such a mystic would be antino-
mian.
‘Great men (erenlär) conceal their own spiritual states and invert (bāz-gunā)
their actions into behaviour that is blameable; they destroy the foundations of
appearance and build up the foundations of essence. Whatever their fate, they
side with consent, tolerate the insults and reproaches of society (ʿālam ahlï).
They manage without food and drink; in consent to God they accept suffering
and vexation. Their home is the lodge of consent and submission (riḍā ū taslīm
zāwiyasï); their resting-place is the desert of poverty and of annihilation (faqr

29 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 62–63 (295).

30 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 63 (295).
48 Chapter 1

ū fanā bādiyasï). Civility and modesty form their golden rule; for friends as for
enemies they bear only good thoughts. It is through these qualities and rules
that one becomes a dervish. Quatrain:

Lord! May the bird of annihilation be prepared

May he be caught by my net, not prepared
May God put me on the path of destitution
And send me to the lodge of annihilation’31

For Nawāʾī, the ‘blameable’ form adopted by the dervish is not that of the mar-
ginal person, but rather that of the ascetic. The society that despises him is not
the conformist majority but the profane world in general, excluded from the
spiritual elite. This text echoes the hierarchies of the Sufis as established by
Nawāʾī’s friend and mentor, Jāmī, in one of his writings.32 As for the dervishes,
what Nawāʾī defines in the above lines in no way corresponds to the marginal
dervishes with whom we are dealing here, and has more to do with Sufi saints
(eren) – ascetic, submissive and consenting – who are entirely oriented to-
wards legalism and orthodoxy. At the very heart of this debate lies the notion
of fanā or annihilation. For our Timurid scholar it is essential to disassociate
this notion from any practical or social significance or context, that is to say,
from all the life choices (causes of marginalisation) mentioned in chapters 38
and 39. Promoted as an intellectual discipline to purge the ego and no longer
conceived in terms of socio-religious nihilism, the fanā re-establishes the der-
vish at the very centre of the Muslim city. It is for this reason that Nawāʾī does
not attribute any specific space to the dervish, unless we count the space of
public transparency, where civility and proper sentiments stand side by side.

5 Other Sources: Names and Words

In spite of the very definite opinions expressed in the Maḥbūb al-qulūb, Nawāʾī
was more fascinated by religious marginality than was any other observer of
Timurid Herat. Wāṣifī, who wrote his personal memoirs a few decades later in
the 1530s, spends little time on this subject. He nevertheless evokes the pres-
ence of wise fools (ʿuqalāʾ al-majānīn) by mentioning Mawlānā Darwīsh

31 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 63–64 (295).

32 For more on this point, see Alexandre Papas, “Individual Sanctity and Islamization in the
ṭabaqāt Books of Jāmī, Nawāʾī, Lāmiʿī, and Some Others,” in Jāmī in Regional Contexts: The
Reception of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī’s Works in the Islamicate World, ca. 9th/15th-14th/20th,
eds. Thibaut d’Hubert and Alexandre Papas (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 378–423.
In The Streets Of Herat 49

Figure 2
Ecstatic dance of
the dervishes

Dīwāna-yi Shamʿrīz (‘the lamplighter’) along with a few anecdotes about him
that were recounted to divert the court of the Uzbek khan ʿUbayd Allāh (r.
940–946/1534–1539)33:
One day the dervish set himself up in the central crossroads (chahārsūq)
of the town. A crowd gathered around him. He raised his voice and cried:
‘Ho, bunch of ignoramuses! Why aren’t you praising God for having brought
you into this happy era? In olden times pious men were masters of the mys-
tical arts, like Junayd Baghdādī (d. 297/910), Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Aḥmad Jāmī

33 Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd Wāṣifī, Badāʾiʿ al-waqāʾiʿ, 1:249–52.

50 Chapter 1

(d. 536/1141) and ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī (d. 481/1089). Today, who are the pious men?
Palang Tabarrānī, Ḥusāmī Maddāḥ, Ashraf Astarābādī and Zangīcha Tūnī – the
worst heretics, notoriously bad, sinister, faithless, stupid and ignorant!’ This
happened at the time of the Savafid regime, and this last list of names (which
are unknown) alludes to Shiites and their cantors.34 Elsewhere the dervish
searches the ground around him but fails to find dung from any Uzbek horses;
here his implicit reference is to the defeat of the Uzbeks at the hands of the
Savafids. Beyond these specifics, it is the very character of Darwīsh Dīwāna
that attracts attention, because his provocations so recall one of the prima-
ry functions of marginal people. Reputed for his witty sayings (nukāt-i shīrīn
rangīn), the wise fool attracts hordes of people to such populated spots as the
bridge of Mālān, not far from Herat, where he is said to have told a story so
funny it made the laughing ʿUbayd Allāh Khān roll on the ground (az khanda
bar zamīn ghaltīdand). Another tale sees Darwīsh Dīwāna liberating himself
from vengeful Shiite extremists by making them burst out laughing in a sort of
momentary complicity among heterodox believers.
Less anecdotal is a pilgrimage guide by Aṣīl al-Dīn (d. 883/1479), written in
864/1459, which includes almost twenty biographies of marginal dervishes
among its 209 biographical notices. These have heretofore been overlooked by
historians of Islam under the Timurids.35
Shaykh Sayf al-Dīn Turk was an enraptured Sufi (majdhūb) who had for-
merly been under the spiritual direction of Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar, the twelfth-
thirteenth century mystic whom we have already mentioned.36 Beloved by all
the inhabitants of Herat, who forgave him his ecstatic excesses, he wore the
habit of the Malāmatī, the ‘men of blame’. Initially he lived near a mausoleum
in the Khiyābān quarter, but there he was constantly disturbed by the coming
and going of the public. Finally he settled in Gāzurgāh, north of Herat, where
the remains of the saint ʿAbd Allāh Anṣārī are preserved and where he prac-
ticed his devotions. He had some disciples. Among the enraptured can also be
numbered Akhī Muḥammad and Akhī Maḥmūd, both disciples of a certain

34 Jean Calmard, “Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir. L’imposition du shiisme safavide: eulogies
et malédictions coraniques,” in Etudes Safavides, ed. Jean Calmard (Paris-Tehran: Institut
français de recherche en Iran, 1993), 130–31.
35 Sayyid Aṣīl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh Wāʿiẓ, Maqṣad al-iqbāl-i sulṭāniyya wa marṣad al-āmāl-i
khāqāniyya, ed. Māyil Hirawī (Tehran: Pazhūhishgāh-i ʿulūm-i insānī wa muṭāliʿāt-i
farhangī, 1386/2007). This book contains a second guide, composed in the eighteenth cen-
tury, which supplements the first with 94 additional notices. Here, on p. 105, one may find
the name of the dervish Mawlānā Ghiyāth al-Dīn Shamʿrīz, who was buried near the
Naqshbandī shaykh Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456).
36 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 41.
In The Streets Of Herat 51

Bābā Sangū (d. 786/1385), to whom we shall return.37 The first of these men is
buried beside a madrasa in Khiyābān, the second on the Mukhtār hill north of
Herat. All of the people who make pious visits to their tombs tell them their
most intimate secrets. Outside one of the gates of the town fifteenth century
pilgrims could find the holy remains of Malāmatī Pīr Fakhr Thānī, of the luna-
tic (majnūn) Bābā Qanbar and of the enraptured dervish Mawlānā Ḥājjī
Abdāl.38 They probably lived during the Kart period (643–791/1245–1389), like
the majdhūb Bābā Ḥidā39 and possibly Pīr Turk.40 Our ‘prosopographer’ is nat-
urally more laconic when describing the more recent dervishes, that is to say
those who had died during the first half of the fifteenth century.
On the subject of Bābā Arslān, God’s madman (dīwāna), a great Sufi shaykh
advised Aṣīl al-Dīn himself to pay him a visit in town each week, in order to
witness his wonders; Pīr Sih Sad Sāla, who died in 823/1420 after having lived
more than 300 years (according to popular legend), spent most of his time
among the gazelles in the mountains or the desert.41 Town dervishes or coun-
try dervishes, this handful of marginal men did not saturate Herat’s market in
spirituality, which was mostly taken up by the Sufi orders and masters, but they
added a great deal of colour to the scene. Most of them were majdhūb: after
having studied the hadith and jurisprudence with the great scholars, Zayn al-
ʿĀbidīn joined the ranks of the ecstatics and ended his 120-year life (!) on the
hillside where he lived; Bābā Zakaryā, for his part, lived in the street in
Khiyābān.42 A former soldier and man of violence, Bābā Ḥasan Turk was pun-
ished once, in Tus (Iran), and when he returned to Herat he gave his horse, his
weapon and his personal effects to the dervishes of the Injīl quarter, near the
ramparts. He put on the skin of an animal (pūstīn) and settled in Khiyābān’s
cemetery. His gift of second sight drew Turks as well as Tajiks to the town to
consult him.43 Bābā Khamīrgar (the baker’s man) also lived in this cemetery.
As for Bābā Jamāl, he had started out as a schoolmaster. After a mystical crisis
he began taking care of cleaning the canals, in summer as well as in winter. He
would speak the letters of the alphabet aloud, as well as a few surahs of the
Quran, and stood upright (qiyām) at the end of his prayers, rather than at
the beginning as is customary. His few followers supported him by inviting him
into their homes, and sometimes Bābā Jamāl would ask what his host was

37 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 47.

38 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 59–60.
39 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 62.
40 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 67.
41 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 74.
42 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 84.
43 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 85–86.
52 Chapter 1

d­ oing disturbing him there! Then he would jump up and furiously leave the
house, without thanking anyone. This story is slightly reminiscent of Nawāʾī’s
descriptions of artistes and beggars, whom he reproaches for their lack of grati­
tude to their benefactors.
Summer and winter, rain or snow – we read – Pīr Surkh manned his stall on
the outskirts of Herat, on the road leading towards Sāq Salmān village; his feet
were black and blue as a result.44 He prayed and performed his ablutions and
never asked anyone for anything. Those who knew of his state helped him with
food, but the dervish would accept and eat it only when he had no doubt about
the donor’s intentions. Presented as a Malāmatī, Bābā Gīlānī first settled in the
boiler room of a hammam opposite one of the gates of Herat, and later lived in
a lodge (takiyya) near the Zubaydā park, around which he planted crops on
several pieces of land, making agricultural fields of them.45 Malāmatīs and Qa-
landars served him constantly, city-dwellers came to see him and a big caul-
dron of food circulated among them at all times. In this text one also finds the
name of Sayyid Ghiyāth al-Dīn (d. 862/1457), who was said to have a penetrat-
ing gaze, to speak decisively and to pierce mysteries.46 Finally we have the rav-
ing Bābā Kūkī, who died in 864/1459 and whose body rests in Khiyābān. He was
known for his sarcastic sallies (sukhanān-i talkh).47 The text tells us that one
day he even threw a stone at a minister of Babur, but escaped the caning that
he was threatened with because the vizier had in the meantime been dis-
missed.
The urban legends collected by that scrupulous memorialist Aṣīl al-Dīn (if
we remember to make allowances for exaggerations the unlikeliness of which
is matched only, for the believer, by their evident truthfulness) indisputably, if
disconcertingly for modern eyes, testify to the religious realities of his time.
Such dervishes were flesh and blood men, who really existed. What they actu-
ally said and did is of secondary importance, because all that counts is what
they represent. It’s therefore not a question of separating the good historic
wheat from the hagiographic chaff, but rather of understanding the general
feelings of the population regarding Islamic marginality. The Maqṣad al-iqbāl
concerns itself with distinguishing between the true and the false dervish, fol-
lowing the example of the pious society of which it is the memorial product
and with which it shares a common preoccupation: if God so chooses, then
sainthood can exist among madmen and ruffians. However, the attribution of

44 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 86–87.

45 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 87–88.
46 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 89.
47 Aṣīl al-Dīn, Maqṣad al-iqbāl, 93.
In The Streets Of Herat 53

saintliness to these dervishes varies much more than with ‘conventional’

saints, and resists settling into a consensus. Someone might be venerated at
one time and not in the following period; someone else might be saluted by
some people and not by others. Consequently, one must understand marginal-
ity as, on the one hand, antinomianism – being at odds with or apart from the
law – and on the other as precariousness, with acceptance into society con-
stantly being called into question. Another of Nawāʾī’s writings, the great hagi-
ographical dictionary Nasāʾim al-maḥabba composed in 901/1495, or just over
three decades after the Maqṣad al-iqbāl, reveals that the prolific author is more
fascinated by dervishes than is Aṣīl al-Dīn, but especially differs in his choices
of subjects – either because some names were forgotten or because certain
dervishes had lost their auras of holiness.
As Nawāʾī’s dictionary covers a very large geographical area, we will present
only the Khorasanian cases here.48 The mystic Bābā Sangū, who is mentioned
only in passing by Aṣīl al-Dīn, because he was not Herati, got more attention in
the Nasāʾim al-maḥabba49: this majdhūb lived in the small town of Andkhoy
in the north of today’s Afghanistan. A story that was well known at the time
relates that Bābā Sangū threw a piece of fresh meat at the feet of Tamerlane as
he was preparing to conquer Khorasan. To the emir, the gesture seemed to au-
gur well, signifying that God would deliver the province to him like the remains
of this animal. Nawāʾī adds that Bābā Sangū’s tomb in Andkhoy also contains
the body of his successor, Bābā Jān Bābā, and of this latter’s own successor,
Bābā Ibrāhīm, and that there is a Sufi lodge nearby where dervishes live.
A companion to this preceding biographical notice presents Mawlānā Muḥyī,
also from Andkhoy (d. 865/1460)50: as a child, while crossing the bazaar with
his imam father, they encountered Bābā Sangū. The dervish took the little boy’s
hand, accompanied him to the sweetshop, and offered him some halva. Later,
the young Muḥyī always remembered: ‘The sweetness of that halva has never
left my spirit’. He went to Samarkand to study and devoted his life to spiritual
exercises, reading the entire Quran each day. He and his disciples had a Sufi

48 For more details, biographies and a comparison with other hagiographical dictionaries,
notably the Nafaḥāt al-uns, by Jāmī, I refer the reader to Alexandre Papas, “Individual
Sanctity and Islamization.”
49 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba min shamāʾim al-futuwwa, ed. Hamidxon Islomii
(Tashkent: Movarounnahr, 2011), 334. The anecdote that follows is often cited by histori-
ans of the Timurids, starting with Vassili V. Barthold, Four Studies on the History of Central
Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1958), 2:20. The orientalist reduces Bābā Sangū to the status of an idiot
and misses the antinomian aspect of his character completely.
50 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 341–42.
54 Chapter 1

lodge. His only clothing was a large woolen shawl (probably similar to the
‘patu’ worn in today’s Afghanistan) and a piece of cloth worn as a tunic.
As with his defence of radical piety and Sufi asceticism, formulated in the
Maḥbūb al-qulūb and the introduction to the Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, Nawāʾī does
not exclude their most radical forms when he speaks of names or of life stories,
any more than he excludes them from a moral discussion. The madman Bābā
Kūkī, already mentioned by Aṣīl al-Dīn, was the object of stories transmitted
to Nawāʾī by his (Nawāʾī’s) own father.51 The tribulations of Bābā Ḥasan Turk
are also mentioned in the Nasāʾīm al-maḥabba, but these are more provocative
in nature.52 The scene takes place one winter: lost in a state of ecstatic uncon-
sciousness the majdhūb is completely naked when he leaves his lodge. Freez-
ing, he spots the smoke from the hammam. The guard refuses to let him enter
and Bābā Ḥasan accidentally kills him. When a relative of the victim brings
the murderer before Shāhrukh, that he might be judged, the dervish says to
the khan: ‘Thou hast killed so many people, myself I have killed only one!’ The
relative eventually accepts pecuniary compensation and withdraws his com-
plaint.
The important thing is not whether one believes this story or not, it is rather
the formula that has been put together here – the verbal farce that catches
hold of the reader. Nawāʾī cites many spectacular cases that are not mentioned
by Aṣīl al-Dīn. For example, Mawlānā Shams al-Dīn Maʿdābādī spent thirty
years inside a mosque (possibly in Torbat-i Jām), never going outside except to
perform his ablutions and fulfil his bodily needs. He was in the habit of lying
down on an old rush mat with a brick for a pillow. Following the Prophet’s ex-
ample, he broke his own thirty-two teeth.53 A fourteenth century poet called
Darwīsh Manṣūr fasted almost permanently, while the mystical madman Bābā
Jalīl was said to manage without food, or even drink, for most of the time.54
Another majdhūb, Bābā ʿAlī Pāy Ḥiṣārī, lived to the east of Herat under the
reign of Shāhrukh; as a sign of penitence after the execution, in a sort of bad
conscience on the part of a village community, of a man of religion who had
been accused of fanaticism, he stopped speaking altogether.55
It is fascinating to observe that Nawāʾī personally knew and even frequented
several of these marginal people. The demented (tilbe) Baluchi, Bābā Shihāb,

51 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 350.

52 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 353–54.
53 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 349. The fact of pulling one’s own teeth refers to
Uways Qaranī who was said to have uprooted 32 of his teeth in honour of the Prophet, and
who lost two teeth in the battle of Uḥud.
54 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 343, 354.
55 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 352.
In The Streets Of Herat 55

was a poverty-stricken man who was ceaselessly tormented by children who

often threw stones at him.56 He maintained some sort of relations with Nawāʾī
and visited him on occasion. One day, ‘attacking his own ego’ (as the text tells
us), wearing filthy clothes, he sat down near Nawāʾī, who heard him pronounce
the following verses: ‘I sit where my path takes me/ I do not sit where my place
may be’. One fine day he disappeared and no one knew whether he was alive or
dead. A sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) from Anatolia (Rūm) called Bābā
Sarïgh Pūlād was also close to Nawāʾī.57 Plunged into a permanent state of
fanā, this dervish wore only a woolen cape and refused to accept any food from
people. If they continued to insist, he took only the smallest portion. He was
killed somewhere on the road to Mecca and it is not known where his body
lies. A final name is that of Bābā Pīrī58: this ecstatic majdhūb occupied the
same decrepit spot for nearly forty years, never leaving it. Living more or less
on the street, he had the unfortunate habit of insulting passers-by. Nawāʾī ad-
mits that he was himself afraid to approach him. On one occasion, in reply to a
friend who asked the poet why he always avoided the street where Bābā Pīrī
lived, Nawāʾī explained that he didn’t want to have to listen to obscenities. His
friend urged him to go there anyway, because the dervish had a reputation for
supernatural powers. When Nawāʾī finally nerved himself to pass in front of
the misanthrope, he saw that against all expectations Bābā Pīrī was engaged in
prayer. Bābā Pīrī’s tomb can be found near the bridge over the Injīl canal.
Rather than just continuing to add biographical notices to the pile, let
us retain two lessons from this series: in spite of the warnings and discrimina-
tions formulated by Nawāʾī in The beloved of all, the examples offered in other
­sources, of dervishes promoted to the ranks of sainthood, allow for a certain
ambiguity because of the extent to which their practices, choices and ways of
life seem to resemble those of antinomianism. The border between spirituality
and deviancy thus remains fairly indistinct. Whatever the state of legitimacy of
one or other of these men, the fact remains that a historiographic window has
been opened on the little-known world of Herat during the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries. Behind the big names, so to speak59, seethes an off-centre
social life that mixes Sufism and subversion, the traces of which would be lost
over the coming centuries. It seems, in effect, that at the dawn of modernity
the dervishes little by little disappeared from the urban landscape, moving
from the margins to the outside, to exist alongside other excluded groups, of

56 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 354.

57 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 354.
58 ʿAlī Shī Nawāʾī, Nasāʾim al-maḥabba, 353.
59 For the first half of the fifteenth century see, for example, the personalities presented in
Beatrice Forbes Manz, Power, Politics and Religion in Timurid Iran, 228–38.
56 Chapter 1

which the final incarnation would be none other than the ‘growing army of
addicts’ in the outskirts of Herat mentioned in a recent New York Times article.60
Another possible incarnation might be represented, less dramatically, by the
Afghan Shaykh Mohammadi pedlars who claimed descent from saint Ruḥānī
Bābā, in spite of their social decline, and who used a secret language, the
ādūrgarī, at least until the 1970s. The Malang shaykh himself would have lived
three or four hundred years ago.61 Let us declare that other sources will cer-
tainly allow us to learn more, and that we will also learn more details about
chronology (while acknowledging its summary nature).
In addition and above all, if we look again at the number of references to
speech, to language and to words in these texts, we see that the dervish adopts
a paradoxical linguistic regime. While the Maḥbūb al-qulūb hears only a depra-
vation of a language, that is reduced to a tissue of coarseness, a loss of meaning
when all content is drowned out within grunts and groans, a degradation that
makes word mean their opposites, maybe even an end to metaphor forever,
our other sources, including the Nasāʾīm al-maḥabba, discern language that
has been liberated. Whatever the distinctions established among the speakers
– and we have observed that these distinctions are incompatible with a histo-
rian’s vision of facts as remaining indifferent to normative stakes – the dervish
is primarily the one who laughs and makes others laugh. Jokes and practical
jokes, sarcasm, provocations … there is something of the buffoon in this per-
sonage who seems to say aloud in a tone of raw truth the things that everyone
is thinking – could one see the resemblance with, for example, Ortis, the Mus-
lim jester who became a Cordelier at the court of François I? What’s more,
marginal people demonstrate economy of speech, opposed to eloquence, lyri-
cism, erudition and everything that would constitute the refined ways of
speaking of the honest man, rejecting refined speech in favour of clever quips
and sound-bites, (some) prayers, scattered verses, and even the merest letters
of the alphabet, and so inclining inexorably to mutism. However, it is striking
to read, in the third chapter of the Maḥbūb al-qulūb entitled ‘Anthology of var-
ious morals and sentences’, several observations on language that do not en-
tirely do away with doubts about dervishes’ use of language. The first of these
says that ‘for the men of the fanā, to speak much is deplorable and to listen
much is desirable; listening fills men’s hearts, speaking empties them; the
speaker is such that he is a listener as much as a speaker; to say too much is to
be wrong often; to eat too much is to fall often; too much food sickens the body,

60 Azam Ahmed, “That Other Big Afghan Crisis, the Growing Army of Addicts,” The New York
Times, 2 November 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/world/asia/that-other-big-
afghan-crisis-the-growing-army-of-addicts.html?_r=0#>.
61 Asta Olesen, Afghan Craftsmen. The Culture of Three Itinerant Communities (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1994), 131–44.
In The Streets Of Herat 57

too much discourse sickens the soul; excessive speech comes from pride in
words, excessive eating comes from submission to the ego; these defects are
excessive among mankind and cause him to make an idol of himself (khūd
parastlïq).’62 Evidently, Nawāʾī, like the good moralist that he is, exhorts the
Sufis to moderate their language as they temper their appetites. Nevertheless,
nothing forbids us from recognising in these lines of his an intuition, about
mystical language defining itself as the opposite of a poetic language trapped
in its own rhetorical artifice.63 The poet (for he is a poet) uses the very metrical
and rhythmical ruses of poetic eloquence in order to denounce poetic elo-
quence and promote a language for ascetics, not so different from that of the
most radical dervishes.
One certainly reads in the Maḥbūb that ‘in the heart, acid words are like
wounds, bitter words like poisoned arrows. The heart does not heal from a
word-scar, no balm can cure this pain; as the cutting word wounds the heart,
so the soft word can bring it peace; sweet words will sooth savages and incan-
tations call serpents forth from their lairs (…) A language without meaning is
for a people who honour nothing; he who constantly gabbles (harzigūy) is like
a dog that barks all night; slander wounds hearts but strikes its author’.64 This
moralisation is not content merely to police language, it also recalls what is es-
sentially at stake in a series of allusive phrases: ‘The agreeable tongue is better
if it works with the heart (…) Man by his language distinguishes himself from
the animals, and from his brothers, too (…) The worthy language of Hamadānī
made a Messiah of him, but the too-quick tongue of Ḥallāj made him worthy
of the pillory.’65 There follow some thoughts about lies and the necessity of
telling the truth66, summed up in a single phrase: ‘The liar is not a man, to tell
lies would not be the way of saints’.67 Finally, the reader may appreciate this
last discreet provocation: ‘In the words of the drunkard all is not senseless-
ness, in the nonsense of the madman all is not unreason.’68 Proper to humans,
language, according to Nawāʾī, also distinguishes the mystic from other men in
that it binds together his entire vocation with no possible evasion, as evinced
by ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī and Manṣūr Ḥallāj (d. 309/922), both tortured to
death for having blasphemed.

62 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 101.

63 I have also attempted to uphold this hypothesis using another text by Nawāʾī, the
Muḥākamat al-lughatayn or Trial of the two languages, in my article “La Makhfî ‘ilm ou
Science secrète de ‘Alī Shîr Nawâ’î : le projet d’une langue mystique naqshbandî,” Journal
d’histoire du soufisme 3 (2002): 229–55.
64 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 125–26.
65 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 126.
66 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 126–27.
67 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 162.
68 ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Maḥbūb al-qulūb, 141.
58 Chapter 1

Figure 3
Visit of Alexander, in the
guise of Sulṭān Bāyqarā,
to a saint in his grotto
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 59

Chapter 2

Outside the Madrasas of Bukhara

1 About the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm

The manners of the path remained a little-known text for a long time, in spite of
the existence of several manuscript copies.1 Located more than twenty years
ago by Iranian researchers Mehran Afshari and Naser al-Din Shah Hosayni,
there was a copy of this text in the personal collection of Sayyed Muhammad
Sadeq Tabataba’i (d. 1961), the tenth president of Iran’s National Consultative
Assembly; this copy was given to the Assembly library, where it was shelved
under 1055. This copy has a mistake in the title (it was called Arbāb al-ṭarīq, The
masters of the path), and contains numerous errors and gaps, which helps to
explain why it was impossible to edit it for many years. Mehran Afshari found
a second copy, dated 1238/1822, in the Library of the Institute of Orientalism,
Saint Petersburg. Unlike the Tehran manuscript, this one was copied by a scribe
who did not use Central Asian spellings and dialects. There are also substantial
differences between the two versions. Four other copies are held in the Library
of the Tajikistan Institute of Orientalism in Dushanbe; these were produced
between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Because of a lack of coopera-
tion on the part of the Tajik institutions, these copies were not used for the
critical edition published in 2016.
Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm composed his treatise in Tajik Persian in 1083/1672 dur-
ing the reign of ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the khan of Bukhara, to whom he addresses his
praises in its introduction. The author was evidently not an erudite scholar, or
at least this is the impression given by his use of language, adopting an acces-
sible register and making frequent grammatical errors. Thus we are certainly
dealing with someone from a milieu of relatively educated dervishes, rather
than one of the Sufi scholars who had followed the whole curriculum of the
madrasa. If we are to believe what is written in the incipit2, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-
Raḥīm wrote his treatise at the demand ‘of a group of men who were madmen
(dīwānagān wa āzādagān), disheveled and agitated, neglecting their appear-
ance and very thirsty’; these men wanted to know more about the founding
saints and their spirituality, having endless discussions about the paths of the
great masters. So ‘each of the people in this group addressed himself to me,

1 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 133–37.

2 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 144–46.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_004

60 Chapter 2

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, a humble character if there ever was one. They demanded
that I write a substantial text on the Qalandarī path and method, the robing
(khirqa-pūshī), deliverance (āzādagī) and manners (ādāb) of this spiritual tra-
dition, so that all of these could be recalled to the memories of the current
members of the ascetic school. But I was perfectly incapable of composing a
work in this domain, since myself I follow God’s terrible path with faltering
steps only. As my friends pressed me hard, I implored great men for help, that
a few beneficial words and learned extracts from texts written for novices
might be set down, so that those who so far during their existences have re-
nounced rules, falsely worn the precious habits of sainthood and followed the
trail of ignorance should be touched by these arguments and through listening
to the words of Sufi saints rediscover their desire to reach God. They will avoid
improper actions and acquaintances, devote themselves to renunciation of the
world and to deliverance (tark-i dunyā wa āzādagī) as long as they truly wear
the habits and commit no perverse acts (fāsid). For as the verse says, “God loves
not corruption” (Quran 2:205). They will commit no sins if they do not find
themselves in the flock with those who “are like cattle; nay, rather they are fur-
ther astray” (Quran, 7:179).’
Aside from the usual pose, of an author who is solicited to write by his en-
tourage, one discovers in this extract the need and demand for the Qalandarī
path’s authenticity, defined as a rupture with the world and founded on a num-
ber of traditional sources, written and oral.
The treatise is composed of twelve thematic chapters:
1. The hat (kulāh)
2. The hair (mū-yi sar)
3. The cloak (dalq wa khirqa)
4. The belt (kamar)
5. The staff (ʿaṣā)
6. The begging bowl (kachkūl/kashkūl)
7. The calabash (kadū-maṭbakh)
8. The napkin (sufra)
9. The service (khādimī)
10. The animal hide (takhta-pūst)
11. The broom (jārūb)
12. The parts of poverty (aqsām-i faqr)
The author does not furnish an explanation for the fact that he includes twelve
chapters and it would be wrong to see this as a veiled reference to the twelve
Imāms of Twelver Shiism. On the other hand, the introduction briefly reminds
the reader that the paraphernalia of the dervish contains eleven elements –
the first eleven chapters – each of which has four faces or aspects (rukn),
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 61

making a total of 44, which are to be detailed in the Ādāb al-ṭarīq. The precise
numeration in which the numeral four plays a constant role is less important
than the general principle governing the logic of the treatise. Throughout this
work, and according to a conceptual tradition that is well established among
the Qalandars, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is working both in and between the physi-
cal and symbolic registers. As a result, he mentions the Arabic formula that the
dervishes would speak when wearing or making this or that piece of their
equipment. This very concrete incursion into the ritualised world of the Qalan-
dars shows the point to which words flood the religious environment of our
ascetes. Nothing escapes the naming process and the hidden meanings
of words. More generally, into this treatise are woven metaphors of making
and of investiture as representations of the history of dervishes. In other words,
the act of making and wearing the Sufi equipment also recalls to memory the
stages of the advent of the Qalandariyya, one piece at a time, one part at a
time, like a patchwork, as manifested in the cloak made of disparate scraps
that every mystical beggar wears, but also in his various utensils. Each frag-
ment corresponds either to a tutelary figure, to a prophetic legend or to a spec-
ulative teaching. The attire thus functions simultaneously in a concrete and in
a conceptual way; in practical terms the scraps are the vestments of the der-
vishes, but they are also a doctrinal account of the ‘history’ of the Qalandars.
Finally, if the body of the dervish forms the substrate of this material culture
full of multiple meanings, it also occupies the background of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-
Raḥīm’s book, in a physically descending order. The very structure of the Man-
ners of the path goes from top to bottom, from the head to the feet via the trunk
and arms, as if it was based on an intuitive observation of the Sufi body while
also displaying an attitude of voluntary abasement as a sign of the dervishes’
humility. Our own chapter will, in its turn, follow this structure, bringing to-
gether the utensils in succession on three physical levels. For the twelfth sec-
tion, which recapitulates the preceding ones and re-memorialises the
mythological past of the dervishes, we will reserve a different sort of approach.
The reader should therefore avoid expecting a historical anthropology of
Bukhara’s Qalandars, and look instead for a doctrinal ‘ideal type’ of Central
Asian dervishes in the seventeenth century.

2 The Head of the Dervish

2.1 The Hat

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm devotes his first chapter to the hat, starting with an eso-
teric (and not linguistic) etymology for the Persian term kulāh. Originally, he
62 Chapter 2

explains, this was kull-i āh, composed of the word kull (totality, universe) plus
āh, which corresponds to hastī (existence). The doubling (tashdīd) of the letter
‘l’ signifies the pride (nakhwat) inherent in believing in the existence of the
universe, a pride that remains anchored in the believer’s head. As long as this
belief, ‘materialised’ by the double letter, is not removed from the head, it will
not be worthy to wear the hat; he who aspires to wear the Sufi headgear must
renounce it to be able to put it on.3 Qalandarī terminology takes its teachings
right into the details of the letters. Having said this, this is not the esoteric sci-
ence of letters as found elsewhere in the Sufi tradition. Here it is rather the
origins of the words that interest our author, because they simultaneously re-
count and incarnate the genesis of the spiritual path of the Qalandars. The
legendary history of the dervishes is inscribed on their very bodies, almost like
a tattoo, but recounted by their apparatus.
A rhetorical question follows: How many hats are there? The equally rhe-
torical response is four, based on a scheme that is constantly repeated through-
out the treatise. This play of questions and responses comes, along with the
quadruple paradigm, from the oral teaching methods of Qalandarī circles, de-
sirous of cultivating their disciples’ memories. Let us decipher this response in
detail.
The first hat is named amr (order, commandment) for the following rea-
son4: when Adam had to leave paradise and found himself in the world, he
had no help in his misfortune except the divine essence. Conscious of his er-
rors, he addressed this supplication to God: ‘Lord! We have wronged ourselves,
and if Thou dost not forgive us, and have mercy upon us, we shall surely be
among the lost’ (Quran 7:23). God forgave him, then gave him the order (amr)
to wear the hat, to drink the syrup of divine unity and thenceforth to act in the
world. In other words, added to the original sin was the fault of having sought
aid elsewhere than from God. It is thus God himself who created the first der-
vish object, an Adamic hat the aim of which is to remove from the wearer’s
body the illusory belief in any salvation outside of God. The text specifies that
the hat is symbolically made of four renunciatory objects (tark), each of which
leads to elimination by a different faculty (daraja, lit. degree). The hat leads
one to renounce forbidding (muḥarramāt) thanks to reason (ʿaql); to renounce
simple knowledge (dānish) thanks to love (ʿishq); to renounce obscure and hu-
man veiling (ḥijābāt-i ẓalmānī wa basharī) thanks to light; and to renounce
creatures (maṣnūʿāt), that is to say, all worldly things and qualities, thanks to
the spirit (rūḥ). Lastly, the reader is reminded that putting on the hat of the

3 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 149.

4 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 149–50.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 63

order (kulāh-i amr) accompanies the wearing of the cloak of joy (khilʿat-i
saʿādat).
The second hat is that of vision (rūʾyat). It was worn by Noah and consists
of four renunciatory objects, each of which leads to elimination by a differ-
ent faculty5: renunciation of creation (khalq), that is to say, avoiding vile men;
renunciation of moods (khulq), meaning abstention from all dispersion of
the spirit; renunciation of the mantle (dalq), meaning avoiding the wearing
of elegant clothing; renunciation of foolishness (khurq)6, that is to say, avoid-
ing taking advantage of false miracles, in order not to remain lost. Ḥājjī ʿAbd
al-Raḥīm then gives details of the four faculties. The first is vision of friend-
ship (rūʾyat-i āshnāʾī) that novices obtain thanks to exoteric and esoteric love
and service (khidmat) together with their companions (musāḥibat-i aṣḥāb).
This designates the life that the young dervishes live as part of a community.
This vision can also be called ‘the vision of the novice’ (rūʾyat-i ṭālib). The sec-
ond faculty is the science of the word (ʿilm-i qāl) for, according to a Sufi formu-
la, ‘The word is the instrument of the spiritual state’ (qāl ālat al-ḥāl). Here we
are dealing with Sufi teachings. We read that it manifests itself among the peo-
ple of science (arbāb-i faḍāʾil wa ʿuqūl). It can also be called ‘the vision of the
combatant’ (rūʾyat-i mujāhid). The third faculty is vision of resolution (rūʾyat-i
irādat). This is obtained when a link (rābiṭa) is established with the spiritual
master, who then gazes on his disciple while the portrait (nigāristān) of the
master illuminates the disciple. The fourth faculty is vision of contemplation
(rūʾyat-i mushāhida), which arrives when the sun, full of different lights, rises
in the sky of the divine truths. The text does not explain the logical relation-
ships between the four things to be renounced and the four faculties. What-
ever this logic may be, and without making assumptions about a drive to be
systematic that is often absent in the speculations of the Qalandariyya, let us
simply understand that the wearing of the second hat symbolises theoretical
and practical progress by the disciple along the course of his initiation.
The third hat is that of generosity (sakhā). Worn by Abraham, it also consists
of four renunciatory objects and mobilises four faculties.7 Renunciation of
envy (bukhl) means that one should put distance between oneself and the
cause of envy, which is one of the attributes of harmful action (dhamīma); one
does this in order not to be among the enemies of God. Renunciation of fa-
vours (minnat) means that one should not be resentful towards anyone, and

5 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 150–51.

6 The edition studied indicates tark-i khirqa (renunciation of the cloak) but I believe that what
was meant was tark-i khurq (renunciation of foolishness). This interpretation makes more
sense specifically and contextually.
7 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 151–52.
64 Chapter 2

one should avoid favouritism. Renunciation of hypocrisy (dūrangī) means that

one must remove from one’s head (az sar bar dārad) all hypocritical thoughts,
which are attributes of the brainless. Renunciation of pride (nakhwat), for
‘pride is one of the attributes of wrong actions’ (al-nakhwat min ṣifāt al-
dhamāʾīm). The faculties are as follows: science (ʿilm), for the bonnet is suit-
able for whoever has knowledge and is active; the spiritual path (ṭarīqat), for
whoever keeps vigil over the path may wear the hat, as in the well-known Sufi
formula, ‘ṭarīqat resides entirely in good manners’ (al-ṭarīqa kullu-hu ādāb);
the grace of God (faḍl allāh), for whoever is devoid of the graces of God cannot
wear the hat; gnosis (maʿrifat), for this hat is suitable for gnostics (ʿārifān). Es-
sentially, this third bonnet symbolises the ethical demands on the dervish.
These ethics, which conform completely with Sufi tradition, nonetheless have
a certain specificity: according to Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, ‘the wearing of the hat is
lawful (ḥalāl) for any dervish who has the gift of generosity and applies univer-
sal conciliation (ṣulḥ-i kull). [He] accepts the believer and does not reject the
unbeliever (mūʾmin rā maqbūl wa mushrik rā mardūd nakunad)’.8 Perhaps be-
cause they favoured religious tolerance and the welcoming of miscreants, the
Qalandars, at least on this issue, occupied a marginal position in Central Asian
Sufism during early modernity, which was very influenced by militant Sunnism
at this time.
The fourth hat is called ‘gift’ (ʿaṭā), a reference to the gift of its benefits; it
was worn by Muḥammad. This hat consists of four renunciatory objects and no
fewer than seven faculties.9 The Adāb al-ṭarīq enjoins the wearer to renounce
the world, as in the hadith ‘The renunciation of the world is the source of all
devotions’ (tark al-dunyā min kull ʿibādat); to renounce agitation of the ego
(nafs-i bī tāb), which forms a veil between ourselves and God; to renounce
­paradise, for the mystic who encounters God does not care about paradise; to
renounce existence (wujūd), the four walls of which are non-existent. Besides
the recourse to a forged hadith, what seems remarkable in this section is the
radical nature of the two latter calls, against existence and paradise, which
echo the principles of Sufi antinomianism.10 We shall pass over the seven fac-
ulties to look at the ritual description, since the fourth hat inherits from the

8 A symptomatic fact – the manuscript copies diverge here, saying either mardūd bukunad
(rejects) or mardūd nakunad (does not reject). Nevertheless, the intended meaning is
clear since it strengthens the call for universal conciliation; it also appears a second time
in the text on p. 207, followed by the verse ‘Look not with contempt on any infidel/ Hope
remains, he may return among Muslim people’ (hīch kāfir rā bi khwārī manigarīd / dar
musulmān gastanish bāshad umīd)
9 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 152–53.
10 See Alexandre Papas, “Antinomianism (ibāḥa).”
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 65

three that precede it while also being the hat that has come down to the Sufis:
‘O novice, know that in the path of the Khwājagān (Naqshbandī), at the mo-
ment when they put on the hat they speak the sacred words “the summit of the
summit” (al-rās biʾl-rās). The Khwājagān are the beginning of the paths and
the holy word is the beginning of words. The ʿIshqiyya speaks the tawḥīd (there
is only one God) and the novice in the path of Jahriyya11 pronounces the Fatiha
surah because it is at the beginning of the Quran. The novice of the Kubrawi-
yya pronounces the tawḥīd that empties out thoughts. In the Qādiriyya path,
one recites the prayer “O God, peace be upon Muḥammad and on his family by
the number of each atom multiplied by a thousand”, because this is the first of
their initiatic formulae (talqīn).’ If Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm assigns the first place to
the Khwājagān, ancestors of the Naqshbandī Sufis and providers of inspiration
for the Central Asian Qalandars, he also mentions the rituals of other Sufi
brotherhoods. However, it is always the language of rituals, the content of what
is recited during their execution, that interests our author and never their
mode of operation.
The chapter devoted to the hat ends with a linguistic focus on the doctrinal
foundations of the Qalandariyya.12 If putting on the hat removes desire and
greed from the wearer’s head, that is, makes them poor, then it becomes neces-
sary to understand properly what is meant by poverty (faqr). The text gives a
response with three elements, semantic, phonic and etymological. First, prac-
ticing poverty means ‘raising and lowering the head, advancing and retreating,
reaching out and pulling back with the hand, closing and opening the eyes, of-
fering and taking back one’s heart’, all expressions that are at once literal, signi-
fying the concrete gestures of the mendicant, and metaphorical, representing
spiritual progress: advancing on the path of will and retreating on the way of
ignorance, reaching out one’s hand to men of good heart and pulling it back to
restrain the dog of ego, closing one’s eyes to the vices of men while opening
them to one’s own vices, etc. The phonic aspect of poverty, that is to say the
voice, obeys this order: ‘Do not twist your tongue with perverted words, do not
contaminate your mouth with senseless verbiage (parīshān). The Qalandar is
he who not only avoids the way of non-sense, he also avoids pronouncing it.’
Therefore Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, unlike Nawāʾī, does not prize non-sense. He
adds his etymology, saying that the word faqr (poverty) has three letters: ‘f’ for
fatḥ (victory), because when the novice steps outside of himself sincerely, God,
who opens doors, offers him victory over himself as in the verse, ‘help from
God and a nigh victory’ (Quran 61:13); ‘q’ for qāl (word) because ‘the science of

11 In fact this refers to the Yasawiyya; see the section on the cloak.
12 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 153–54.
66 Chapter 2

the word is one part, and the science of the spiritual state is the totality, [or ex-
ists in order to reach] the totality, there is no way to avoid one part, for (as in
the proverb), “the metaphor is a bridge towards truth” (al-majāz qantaratuʾl-
ḥaqīqat), the proof of this being that the word is the instrument (ālat) of the
spiritual state.’ Finally there is the letter ‘r’, for riyāḍat (mortification, austeri-
ties), because ‘the poor man (faqīr) is the one who seizes the sabre of austerity
with the hand of contentment (qanāʿat), decapitates the concupiscent soul
and is content with all that may befall.’ So the Qalandars’ fundamental lesson
of poverty is entirely contained in the word faqr, which itself defines an ascesis
of the language, methodically impoverished and deprived of its diversions, its
digressions and its non-religious uses.
At the end of the chapter the author includes a brief epilogue on the desti-
nies of the different prophetic hats.13 Adam’s hat was transmitted to his son,
Seth, then to Idrīs. It was on his head when he went to paradise. The hat of
Noah disappeared during the flood. Abraham’s hat passed to Isaac, then to Ja-
cob, Jethro, Moses and Jesus; when Jesus ascended to heaven the hat also as-
cended. Finally, the Prophet’s hat became a part of the vestments of poverty
and came down to Abū Bakr. Thus, only the Muḥammadan hat ‘survived’.

2.2 The Hair

Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s second chapter is devoted to the dervish’s hair (mū-yi
sar)14, immediately relaying the following specifics: to leave one’s hair to grow
from the ears to the shoulders is in agreement with the Sunna (the rule, the
practice) of the Prophet; to have it longer than that is illicit (ḥarām), and to
shave it off also conforms to the Sunna, but only for those who are well ad-
vanced (muntahī) on the spiritual path, not for beginners (mubtadī). We know
that dervishes were characterised by their hair, whether it was long and disor-
dered, shaved or shorn; notably, this was expressed in the Qalandarī initiatic
ritual of the quadruple tonsure (chahār ḍarb), during which the hair, eyebrows,
moustache and beard were cut off. No longer practiced today, the aim of the
chahār ḍarb was to render the body repulsive in order to control desire and
sexual inclinations; symbolically the ritual signified a renaissance in a body
returned to the appearance of childhood and its innocence.15 However, this

13 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 155.

14 This chapter was translated into English by Lloyd Ridgeon as an appendix to his arti-
cle, “Shaggy or shaved? The Symbolism of Hair among Persian Qalandar Sufis,” Iran and
the Caucasus 14 (2010): 256–64. My translation diverges from this in places.
15 See the article by L. Ridgeon, as well as Abū Ṭālib Mīr ʿĀbidīnī and Mihrān Afshārī, Āyīn-i
qalandarī. Mushtamal bar chahār risāla dar bāb-i qalandarī, khāksārī, firqa-yi ʿajam wa
sukhanwarī (Tehran: Farārawān, 1374/1995), 35, 54, 56.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 67

ritual is not mentioned in our text – perhaps we may deduce from this that the
practice had never, or no longer, existed among Qalandars in the region of
Bukhara, or that of the Māwarāʾ al-nahr.
On the contrary, our author is preoccupied with the growing of hair. Allow-
ing one’s hair to grow, we learn, is the method and the choice for the Abdāliyya,
an already mentioned type of dervish that is difficult to classify, and to which
we shall return in chapter five; here we consider them as a group of ecstatic
dervishes.16 The people of the Abdāliyya who ‘have been plunged into the
ocean of mystical intuition and struck down by the blade of majestic unicity
with God’ may allow their hair to grow. The ones who may not allow their hair
to grow are ‘those who “are like cattle” (Quran 7:179), who are attached to earth-
ly foodstuffs, who in spite of this discuss the methods of the stages and spiri-
tual states of the shaykh, who speak of spiritual mastery and pose as dervishes,
who are counted among the liars and are called to become “further astray”
(Quran 7:179), as the Quranic verse says. In other words, allowing his hair to
grow is good for the man who pays no attention to his own hair.’ The argument
is clear: as with the tonsure, hair-growing is not suitable for everyone, it is right
only for a category of mystics who have the radical experience of union with
God and have no awareness of the hair on their heads or even of their physical
appearances in general. As for the false dervishes, they inspire the greatest
wariness, because they discredit authentic men of God.
In fact, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm continues, ‘let it be known that among the stages
of this spiritual school there is one called the stage of the abdāl. This is the
stage of the rapture (jadhb) and of madness (junūn). How many titularies of
this stage are there, and what are their spiritual states? They are defined as ‘the
enraptured man who travels’ (majdhūb-i sālik), ‘the travelling man who is en-
raptured’ (sālik-i majdhūb), or the one who ‘is enraptured and does not travel’
(majdhūb-i ghayr-i sālik).17 Before exploring this typology, let us note the defi-
nition of these abdāl dervishes as enraptured in God, madmen in God whose
heads bear long hair.
The enraptured man who travels is the one whom God calls to Himself,
whose rapture is commanded by God.18 Free of worldly preoccupations, he
can set out on his spiritual voyage with perfect awareness of the Quranic pre-
cept of ḥisba ‘commanding that which is proper and forbidding that which is
blameable’ (Quran 3:104 and others). Although he is enraptured in God, this
dervish knows his obligations and responsibilities as a Muslim. This is why he

16 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 157.

17 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 157–58.
18 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 158.
68 Chapter 2

is permitted to allow his hair to grow – as a consequence of having gone be-

yond the Sunna, though the text does not explicitly announce this – he has lost
his will (bī ikhtiyār), but only to the point at which he places himself at the
service of a spiritual master who can guide him in his voyage. Once he has set
out on the path, he is forbidden to keep his hair and must shave it off, on the
basis of the verse ‘God has indeed fulfilled the vision He vouchsafed to His
Messenger truly: “You shall enter the Holy Mosque, if God wills, in security,
your heads shaved, your hair cut short, not fearing”’ (Quran 48:27), as empha-
sised by the exegetes of the Sufi path. In the same way as pilgrims on the Hajj
shave their heads before reaching their sacred destination, the novice must
prepare himself for the encounter with his master, who is like the Kaʿba. Thus
it is in a state of ritual purity, guaranteed by his tonsure, that the dervish must
start out, called by God but guided by a mentor, to begin his initiation.
In the second case, the travelling man who is enraptured has already begun
his spiritual voyage and arrived at the moment when, thanks to his many aus-
terities and devotions, he is seized by divine rapture, as though ‘the soldiers of
mystical love caught his soul’s collar and dragged it through the streets and
bazaars’.19 This dervish, having reached this stage, is unaware that his hair is
growing. In this case as well, long hair is permitted because he is in an ecstatic
state.
As for the dervish who is enraptured and does not travel, he has attained the
stage of mystical love ‘from the beginning unto the end’; at this stage he is en-
dowed with a majesty ‘that could with a simple glance transform the world
into a garden’, that is to say, his ecstasy is such that he sees the divine every-
where.20 In the same way as this experience occurs involuntarily, he is hirsute
(zhūlīda) without knowing it. This, then, is ‘the sign of mystical love, which
casts a shadow on his head’ A dervish who is in a state of beatitude could not
be denied his disheveled head of hair.
There remains a fourth, subsidiary case, that of the ‘traveller who is not en-
raptured’. This category includes the ascetes (zuhhād), the servants (ʿubbād)
and the abstinents (muttaqiyān). According to the Qalandariyya, for which
‘commanding that which is proper and forbidding that which is blameable’ is
important, to abandon the practice of the Prophet is a grave sin. Going beyond
the Sunna is therefore only possible under strict conditions. The path of these
sinners consists of practicing additional devotions, beyond the five prayers, us-
ing especially the supererogatory prayers and others that are recited with a
rosary and are considered compulsory – the long hair fulfils the same function

19 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 158–59.

20 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 159.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 69

of being supplementary to requirements. The Qalandars consider that it’s in-

correct to abandon the precepts of the Prophet, so they prefer not to make it
obligatory to allow the hair to grow; in the absence of an ecstatic state there
should be no long hair for dervishes. In conclusion, ‘it is evident that to allow
one’s hair to grow is appropriate for lovers and gnostics, but not proper for as-
cetes and servants’.
Now the definition of the problem is displaced towards the ecstatic experi-
ence, for this represents the touchstone in hair theory. According to the Ādāb
al-ṭarīq, there are two types of enrapturement (jadhb), one by fire (nārī) and
one by light (nūrī). The first of these consumes the soul, the second illuminates
faith; the first affects the ‘enraptured man who does not travel’ (majdhūb-i
ghayr-i sālik) while the second touches the ‘enraptured man who travels’
(majdhūb-i sālik). Each of these two types of enrapturement can also be sub-
divided into two.
Enrapturement by fire can be either majestic (jalālī) or essential (dhātī).21
Rapture by fire is said to be majestic when it comes from mystical love. Each
time the lover is absorbed in the thought of God, his beloved, he imagines that
every voice or call that comes forth is addressed to him by God. This is the
meaning of the romantic episode during which Majnūn immediately followed
Leylī’s female camel: Leylī had called her dog, Ram, to her side, but Majnūn
imagined she was calling to him (Majnūn) under the name Ram, and he went
to her side. In other words, rapture by fire of the majestic type comes from the
amorous passion that the mystic is living through. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm adds, ‘O
dervish, if you claim to be an abdāl you must wrap around yourself the belt of
perseverance in devotion, and never turn away from submission to the order
of what is proper, and beware of the interdictions that have been suppressed.
If you apply this advice, God will be your lover as Leylī was the lover of Majnūn.’
We shall discuss the belt in the next section, but let us take note of this new
recurrence of the allusion to the precept ‘commanding that which is proper
and forbidding that which is blameable’, in order to help us frame the mystical
experience in its potential excesses.
As for the second, essential, sort of enrapturement by fire, the text explains
that Satan (Iblīs) was created by the essence of fire, and that his task, from
the very start of the novice’s spiritual quest, is to mislead and betray him with
various perverse temptations: ‘For example, there may appear [to dervishes]
strange colours and shapes, such as seas of fire, lush green gardens, assem-
blies of shaykhs bringing good news from the other world. When they see these
colours corrupted air blows across their palates, they begin to speak of their

21 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 159–60.

70 Chapter 2

mystical inspirations and imagine that they are speaking of their enrapture-
ment and spiritual drunkenness. The first stage of the dervish is that of the
Satans, as we have just explained. O dervish, the spiritual schools that remain
at this stage must be avoided in order not to contract their defilement.’ As we
can observe, there is danger in the ecstatic moment, the danger of erroneous
enrapturement and Satanic illusion – these could mislead Sufis into believ-
ing that they have reached their goals. Here the false dervishes are again de-
nounced for their mistake, and for their disastrous inclination to talk about it.
The other type of enrapturement, by light, is produced either by the light of
majesty (nūr-i jalālī) or by the light of beauty (nūr-i jamālī).22 ‘From the first
comes love and from the second come theophanies of the vision (rūʾyat) of
perfection. The light of majesty produces spiritual combat (mujāhida), spiri-
tual strife (mujādila), and religious fervour (shawq) and savour (dhawq). The
light of beauty produces contemplation (mushāhida), relation (munāṣibat),
quietude (sukūniyat) and proximity (qurbat). Whoever appears in the light of
majesty is at the stage of love, and whoever appears in the light of beauty is at
the degree of gnosis. Know that the adept of poverty (faqr) benefits from both
of these qualities, being at much the lover as the beloved. It is no secret that the
difference between the light of majesty and the light of beauty is that the for-
mer is metaphorical whereas the latter is real.’ To sum up, the ecstatic experi-
ence of illumination, which is at once physical and metaphysical, corporeal
and spiritual, goes further than does enrapturement by consummation; this
enrapturement is accessible only to dervishes, the poor in God, who as a result
then enjoy the right to allow their hair its full freedom.
The conclusion of the chapter warns readers that ‘on the path of spirituality
a bristle (sar-mū) is a veil, so what would that make of a hair (mū-yi sar)! For in
truth this path is narrower than a hair, and to render proper service to the mas-
ter is sharper [narrower] than the sabre.’ Faithful to his methods and caught up
in his wordplay Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm uses hair to create an allegory for the initia-
tory path of the dervish that is at once narrow, fragile and firm, though our
author doesn’t allow his allegory to be swallowed up in the abstraction of an
image, but keeps to the surface of the body and of the very history of dervish-
ism. Thus he adds that four great Sufis of the past had allowed their hair to
grow: Barāq Abdāl, Shāh Naqshband, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qalandar and
Pādishāh Ḥusayn Qalandar. The first of these names may refer to Barāq Bābā
(d. 707/1307), a Turkmen dervish and crypto-shaman from Anatolia; the second
is the eponymous founder of the Naqshbandiyya, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband
(d. 791/1389); the fourth may be Laʿl Shāhbāz Qalandar (d. ca. 661/1262 or

22 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 161.

Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 71

673/1274), an antinomian Sufi from India. The third-named individual remains

difficult to identify. We then learn that most Sufi masters of this type allowed
their hair to grow at the beginning of their spiritual quests and later, once they
had set out on their initiatic journeys, shaved it off. Whether this historic re-
minder is true or not is unimportant for our purposes; rather it serves to under-
line the prudence that novices would have been well advised to observe on the
subject of their hair.
A final linguistic digression closes this chapter23: ‘If one is asked what is
the root (aṣl) of hair, one should reply that it is good and courteous man-
ners (adab). If one is asked what is the tip (farʿ) of the hair, one should reply
that it is service (khidmat). And the base (bun) of the hair is sincerity (ṣidq).’
The three words echo the general values shared by Sufis, here represented by
the parts of the hair, implying that whatever the state of a person’s hair, (shaved,
short or long), capillary symbolism does have an importance. The three initial
letters of these words spell akh(a)ṣ, which means ‘the most particular’, but
since the text does not specifically mention this fact, we may not presume fur-
ther. The fact remains that this attention paid to the parts of the object under
discussion reappears in the following chapters, as if no detail could be allowed
to escape the speculative lexicomania of the Qalandarī author.

3 The Trunk and the Arms

3.1 The Cloak

The tattered clothing worn by seekers after truth, which bears the general
name of dalq, consists of two items, the cloak (khirqa) and the shroud (kafan),
each of which possesses specific characteristics.24 The cloak has sleeves and a
collar where the shroud does not; there is also the patched garment (zhanda),
a short-sleeved garment that wraps around (mudawwar) the body like a shirt
(pīrāhan). In the past the Sufi authorities also called this a kurta (kurdaqa), and
this was worn by most of the masters, such as Junayd, Bahlūl Dānā (second/
eighth century), Maʿrūf Karkhī (d. ca. 199–204/815–820) and Manṣūr Ḥallāj. Be-
fore he begins a detailed exploration of these types of clothing, it is important
to our author to explain the habits of Muslim mystics in general.25 Whether
worn by prophets and saints or by novices, these habits allow the wearer to
practice austerities secretly, without attracting punishment or opprobrium. In

23 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 161–62.

24 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 163.
25 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 163–64.
72 Chapter 2

other words, the cloak hides an intense spiritual life, which can be summed up
by the terms ‘destitution’ (tajrīd) and ‘isolation’ (tafrīd). According to the trea-
tise, destitution consist of freeing one’s existence (wujūd) from worldly ties
(ʿalāʾiqāt) in order to consecrate it to devotional acts, and emptying one’s heart
(qalb) of everything except the essence of the absolute (wājib al-wujūd). Isola-
tion also means freedoms from the shackles of worldly things (ʿawāʾiq).
The Sufi apparel demarcates a precise line between existence in society and
the spiritual life, a limit reinforced, as we shall see, by a tangled web of warps,
threads and joins, rendering material the wearer’s separation from the social
body.
Concerning the cloak Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm tells us that the collar alone
consists of seven joins (paywand) and four seams (bakhya). ‘The first join
is ­consent (riḍā), which means that the dervish consents to everything that
comes to him from God. The second is fidelity (wafā), for if thou art faithful,
thou art human (mardī) and if thou art unfaithful thou art inhuman (bī dardī).
The third join is subsistence (baqā): when thou movest from consent to fidel-
ity, thou attainest subsistence. The fourth is purity (ṣafā): when thou arrivest at
the stage of subsistence, thou attainest purity [of heart] (…) The fifth join is an-
nihilation (fanā), which means renunciation of human existence (…) The sixth
join is the quarrel (mujādila), in the sense that on the path of the quest for God
one must fight to stay on the right track, and each time thou fallest back by
one step, thou stayest behind. The seventh join is contemplation (mushāhida)
for all that thou seest in the 18,000 worlds [whether it be] beautiful or ugly,
thou doth see its spiritual nature.’26 These seven joins in the collar symbolise
seven stages (which are not so much progressive as inter-cut with each other)
along the initiatic path, a path that here is represented as a complex form of
tacking – in technical millinery terms this is the joining of two pieces of fabric
by temporary stitching before making the definitive seams. Such is the precise
metaphor from the textile arts for the Sufi path, made visible in the nearly cir-
cular collar at the top of the dervish’s trunk.
The four seams of the collar are the law (sharīʿat), the path (ṭarīqat), the
truth (ḥaqīqat) and gnosis (maʿrifat). Disconcertingly, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm
says no more about these, preferring to underline that to take up and wear the
Sufi cloak is to adopt a lineage of Sufi masters (silsila), and that each of these
constructs its habit with a specific number of seams.27 As he had done previ-
ously and would subsequently do again, here he studies the practices of five
brotherhoods. The eponymous master of the Qādiriyya, ʿAbd al-Qādir Gīlānī

26 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 164–65.

27 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 166–67.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 73

(d. 561/1166), is said to have taught that the novice should make his cloak with
thirty-five seams, of which thirty correspond to the thirty days of the month of
Ramadan and five to the five prayers; the devotional justification of the Rama-
dan fast is that it muzzles the animal self and fulfils the spiritual self, while the
daily prayers tear the mystic away from the world of creatures so he can reach
God. The Khwājagān were said to make their cloaks with 1001 seams represent-
ing – according to masters making up part of the silsila of the Khwājagān such
as Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī and Abū al-Ḥasan Kharaqānī
(d. 425/1034) – the 1001 names of God, which will thus be attached, in every
sense of the verb, to the Sufi. For the ʿIshqiyya the cloak must be put together
with 444 seams, since the masters Nuʿmān Miṣrī28, Aḥmad Badawī (d. 674/1276)
and Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) all agree that the human skeleton is composed of
444 parts. The follower of the Jahriyya must make his cloak with 360 seams,
because for Khwāja Aḥmad Yasawī (d. 562/1166), Sayyid Ata (eighth/fourteenth
century), ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata29, and other authorities, human existence is made
of 360 veins. Finally, for adepts of the Kubrawiyya, 99 seams must be sewn in
the cloak, since great masters such as Mawlānā Rūmī (d. 672/1273), Najm al-Dīn
Kubrā (d. 618/1221), Maṣlaḥat al-Dīn Khujandī (eighth/fourteenth century)30,
and others, had taught that these correspond to the 99 names of God.
It is impossible to verify the details of what Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm tells us.
However, there is nothing to stop us accepting that there were symbolic num-
bers of seams in the garments of Qalandarī dervishes, at least in theory and
probably also in practice. In this regard, again demonstrating his affinity with
the concrete dimensions of Sufi religious life, our author cites the words spo-
ken by Sufis when sewing their cloaks. The Khwājagān pronounce the verse
‘Help from God and a nigh victor. Give thou good tidings to the believers!’
(Quran 61:13); the ʿIshqiyya novice says ‘God is sufficient for us, an excellent
Guardian is He’ (Quran 3:173) and ‘an excellent Protector, an excellent Helper’
(Quran 22:78); in the Jahriyya, the spoken formula contains ‘no associate has

28 I have not succeeded in identifying this shaykh.

29 This may refer to the Yasawī shaykh Khalīl Ata, who lived during the eighth/fourteenth
century.
30 The Qalandarī author does not burden himself with rigour in scholarly identification of
the Sufi orders, as seen in his mentioning the mystical poet Rūmī and the Sufi shaykh
Khujandī among the authorities of the Kubrawiyya when in fact the first of these men was
linked to it only through his father, who was Kubrā’s disciple, and the second may have
had some contact with Kubrā, but was not part of his spiritual lineage. However, else-
where Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is meticulous: ‘On the subject of the mantle, the cloak and the
patched garment, certain – nay, even many – masters consider them to be synonymous.
However, I doubt (tardīd) this because the treatises on certain ancient names teach us
that there are many differences between these garments.’ (p. 108).
74 Chapter 2

He!’ (Quran 6:163); as for the Kubrawī, they say ‘We indeed created Man in the
fairest stature’ (Quran 95:4).31 As the work on the cloak progresses, additional
citations are made. The Khwājagān utter the profession of faith (shahāda); the
members of the ʿIshqiyya say ‘Allah is great’ a single time; those of the Jahriyya
say ‘Glory to Allah’ once, and followers of the Kubrawiyya say ‘Praises to God’
once. The Qādiriyya use the words ‘O the living, the eternal, the lord of maj-
esty and of generosity’. Among the Qalandars, the shahāda is recited when the
top (sar) of their cloak is sewn; for the collar it is ‘Great glory, great holiness’;
reaching the waist (miyān) they say ‘We adore you and you alone’; for the skirts
(dāman) the phrase is ‘Every soul shall taste of death’ (Quran 29:57).32
As well as the ritual formulas, each sewn piece of the cloak has a symbolic
meaning, too: the top represents resolve in following the master; the middle
means service to the master; the skirts are devotion; the sleeves (āstīn) stand
for austerities (riyāḍat). And the six other parts (pāra) of the cloak symbolise
love, religious savour, the gift, faithfulness, following the path, and poverty.33
The patched garment and the shroud remain, of which Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm
wrote at the beginning of his chapter that they constitute part of the torn hab-
it of the dervish, and have their own different characteristics. The tatters worn
by the prophets such as Ṣāliḥ, Isaac and Lot are short, because ‘this is a habit
for a man, and the shorter the man’s habit is, the better the omen’. This enig-
matic phrase may have to do with the rules of ritual purity, and is followed by
the less mysterious observation that the sleeves are also short, in order to
‘shorten the mark of the hand on the world’, in the sense that the Sufi’s actions
should draw back inwards, aiming for interiority, as illustrated by the story of
Najm al-Kubrā who, when his son asked him for a grape, put his hand on his
own heart to give him the fruits of the garden of paradise. Finally, being
‘washed by the tatters’ (zhanda shustan) means to wash oneself in the waters
of the law, of the path and of truth while fasting and performing Sufi repetition
(dhikr) until a state of purity is reached, because ‘the water of the law removes
stains, the water of the path keeps vain thoughts at bay and the water of truth
takes away polytheism (…)’.34 In a sort of inversion of the pure and the impure
that is habitual in Qalandarī antinomianism, the tatters cleanse the body and
the spirit of the dervish, removing physical and spiritual impurities.
The shroud has no sleeves, collar or fringe (farāwīz). It is reserved for the
dervish who is ‘annihilated’ in God (ahl-i fanā), the mystic who has become

31 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 167.

32 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 168.
33 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 167–69.
34 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 169–70.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 75

like a corpse insofar as ‘he who walks on the spiritual path and puts on this
garment must imagine himself dead and perceive all the qualities of death in
[the actions of] his own life, such as eating, drinking, taking, etc. For the novice
completely annihilates his will (ikhtiyār) within that of his master until he re-
moves this habit. Once the novice has arrived at the point of being called with-
out will (bī ikhtiyārī) and imagines that he is indeed dead, then the accomplished
master removes all carnal dimensions from the life of the novice with the wa-
ter of repentance and forgiveness (istighfār).’35 Here the text repeats a classical
adage of Sufism, attributed to the Iranian shaykh, Tustarī (d. 293/896), which
teaches that the aspirant is in the hands of his master as the cadaver in the
hands of the washer of corpses. Less classical is the stance that affirms that
there are shrouds that are quite real and could be worn by dervishes anxious to
give the adage a tangible significance.
The Ābāb al-ṭarīq ends its meticulous analysis of the Sufi cloak, its charac-
teristics and its construction by discussing the knot (ʿaqd) and the piece of
fabric (ruqʿa). Here the evocation of knots relates to the Bektāshiyya, an Ana-
tolian Sufi brotherhood with a notable tendency to antinomianism, close to
the Qalandariyya in its medieval origins and including some extremist Shiite
elements from the sixteenth century. This reference is an additional sign of the
religious tolerance of the Bukhara Qalandars in the confessional atmosphere
of the times. In any case, we learn that to sew his habit a Bektāshī ties a knot at
one end of the thread and then sews four stitches before making another knot
(at the other end of the thread), so that the stitches cannot become undone.
These four stitches symbolise the four stages that are the law, the path, the
truth and gnosis (as with the collar of the Qalandars). It is important that at
each stage of stitching the single thread not be lost or broken; this would indi-
cate the consecutive failure of the stages of spiritual progress.36 In other
words, the knots in the thread ensure that both the garment and the mystical
journey cohere, and that even the small gesture of knotting a thread has an
initiatic dimension. In a contrasting approach, the people of the Qādiriyya do
not make knots in their thread because, in the same way as the Sufi has been
vowed to the annihilation of his self in God, according to the verse ‘All things
perish, except His Face’ (Quran 28:88), the Sufi’s habit is condemned to de-
struction. Thus it is actually preferable for the garment to become threadbare
and disintegrate. As for the masters of the Qalandariyya, such as Amīr Sādāt
Ḥusayn Harawī, author of the poetic manifesto cited in the introduction to the
present volume, they limit themselves to teaching that it is the cloak of human

35 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 170.

36 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 171.
76 Chapter 2

existence, with its 360 seams or veins (going along with the thinking of the
Jahriyya), that must be torn up by the dervish. They appear not to have any
rules about the knotting of the threads, but just to advise the wearing away of
the cloak (that represents the human body) until it is annihilated.
Mentioning a mythical scene sometimes evoked by Sufis, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-
Raḥīm writes that one day the Prophet Muḥammad fell into ecstasy (wajd) and
his mantle (ridāʾ) fell from his shoulders. Fragments of this mantle (ridāʾ) fell
from his shoulders and he shared them out among his companions, who then
sewed these pieces of cloth to their own clothing. The tradition of the patched
garment (muraqqaʿ) among the Qalandars originated from this, and our author
assures us it continued to be cultivated in his own time, when dervishes knew
ecstasy and tore their clothing, reducing it to scraps. Aside from the legitimacy
conferred through this association with the Prophet, which is intended to jus-
tify the sometimes spectacular attitudes of dervishes, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm ex-
plains that this tearing of clothing is designed to produce 73 scraps of fabric,
which must then be brought back together to make the patched garment. One
thus obtains an external habit consisting of 73 pieces and patches, in order to
clothe one’s interior with 73 sciences. More concretely, the beginner, in tatters,
will serve for two years and three months, until he is able to grasp and profit
from the lesson (talqīn) of this habit. The novice will know he has acquired this
lesson, ‘First, by the fact of seeing the Prophet in reality, and second, by the fact
of seeing him during every second of attention, until the patches are received
from His own hand’.37 There is no comment on the significance of the number
73. As well as being legitimised by the Prophet, the patchwork cloak promises
that, once a specific amount of time has elapsed, there will be an encounter
with the Prophet Himself.

3.2 The Belt

There are three founding belts, each originating with a prophet, namely Adam,
Solomon and Muḥammad. ‘The first is the belt of the emirate (imārat) because
Adam was put in charge of the emirate; the second is that of the caliphate
(khilāfat), because it is a royal belt; the third is that of poverty (faqr) and of
intercession (shafāʿat).’38 Like the hat, the belt relies on an esoteric prophetol-
ogy that, as we will see, is essentially narrative in nature, assimilable to the
genre of mirabilia, and devoid of speculative developments.

37 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 172.

38 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 173.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 77

The first principles of Adam’s belt became apparent when he arrived from
paradise.39 He took a fig leaf to cover his nakedness and used grapevine
to make a belt, which he later confided to his son Seth, who transmitted it to
Noah; it then passed to Abraham and Ishmael and finally to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib,
Muḥammad’s grandfather. One day, when the Prophet was only seven years
old, he found a chest in his grandfather’s house and suddenly the belt came out
of the chest and wrapped itself firmly around Muḥammad’s waist. As for Solo-
mon, he did not receive his belt until he was 40 years old.40 He was still in the
service of his father, King David on the day when the archangel Gabriel ap-
peared to David to tell him that God had named Solomon as his messenger.
When he learned of this, Solomon feared that he would not be able to fulfil
such a mission, and that God might expect repayment on the Day of Judge-
ment. Gabriel reassured him, telling him that he, Solomon, would obtain mas-
tery of the world, and that God would not take any repayment from him.
Solomon accepted the mission from God, and Gabriel then put around his
waist a divine belt decorated with rubies, emeralds and pearls. As soon as Solo-
mon was wearing the precious belt all creatures submitted to him and he ruled
as sultan over them.
When Solomon was on the verge of death, he was revisited by the angel,
who revealed to him that the belt would be transmitted to Muḥammad.41 Sol-
omon asked his vizier Āṣaf b. Barakhyā to protect the relic, and assembled all
the most marvellous species of bird, among them a crow, who flew away to
hide the relic on the mountain of serpents (kūh-i mārān) in Kashmir. When
Solomon died, discord broke out among the creatures. A demon captured the
crow and threatened to kill it unless it revealed the location of the belt.42 Hav-
ing obtained three days’ grace, the crow encountered a hoopoe, to whom he
told his sad tale. The hoopoe quickly went to warn Āṣaf b. Barakhyā. When the
crow and the demon arrived at the mountain in question, the crow was forced
to indicate the location of the belt by pecking at the soil.43 Just as the demon
was about to roll away a stone, his body froze and Gabriel threw him to the
ground. The angel punished the crow: since that time these birds are obliged to
clean the ground with their beaks. Gabriel hid the belt elsewhere, in a grotto on
the mountain of the garden (kūh-i bustān), where it remained for 1,250 years
until the birth of Muḥammad.

39 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 173–74.

40 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 174–75.
41 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 176.
42 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 177.
43 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 178.
78 Chapter 2

A jinn called Samlākhayl learned that the Prophet was going to be born; he
went to find the belt and then to offer his services to the young Muḥammad,
having first protected him from an attack by the Qurayshites, orchestrated by a
demon who had possessed one of their idols. The jinn gave the belt to
Muḥammad, and as soon as he had put it on, the angel Gabriel appeared and
offered him the key of the world, permitting him access to all the treasures of
the earth.44 But the Prophet declared that he would renounce them because
he had chosen poverty. The belt reinforced his power – unbelievers became
believers and worshippers of idols abandoned their practices. Later, this belt
was transmitted to ʿAbbās (son of ʿAlī, martyred at Kerbala, d. 61/680), then to
his descendants until it passed to a certain caliph Abū Sufyān, who one day let
the belt fall into the river Tigris, where a fish swallowed it!45
After the belt of the emirate and the belt of the caliphate comes the belt
of poverty. The story of this belt pictures the prophet Ṣāliḥ demanding of the
angel Gabriel that God open the gates of paradise, that he might see there
the beauty of creation.46 God granted his request, and Ṣāliḥ was taken to para-
dise. There, at the foot of the divine throne, he saw a chest that shone in the
light, in which was a belt made of seven cords (band).47 God told him that it
belonged to his protégé Muḥammad, and that this man was the seal of the
Prophets, ‘O Ṣāliḥ, know that although I sent Adam before him [Muḥammad],
He is the architect of his kingdom; Seth is one of the chamberlains in the pal-
ace of His great vizierate; Idrīs is one of the tent-makers of His State; Noah is
the torch-carrier of the palace of His truths; Lot is one of the vagabond mad-
men in the streets of His message; Hūd is the herald of the government of His
quintessence; Abraham is the cook of the interior of His generosity; Ishmael
is the martyr of the arrow of His love; Joseph is the friend of the assemblies
of His joy; David is the singer of His palace; Solomon is one of the command-
ers in the combat of His splendour; Moses is the preacher of the lodge of His
truth; Jesus is one of the recluses on the path of His spiritual road (…) I have
made of you the guardian of the cell of attachment to Him.’ Ṣāliḥ expressed
his gratitude and accepted his mission. One tale recounts that on the night
that Muḥammad ascended to heaven (miʿrāj) he got as far as the sixth heaven,
where the archangel Michael put the belt around his waist at God’s command,
without revealing its secrets.48 And the archangel Raphael did not divulge any-
thing to the Prophet Muḥammad when he acceded to his divine throne. Then

44 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 179.

45 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 180.
46 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 180–81.
47 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 181–82.
48 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 182.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 79

God explained that this was the belt of prophecy, of intercession and of pov-
erty, ‘intercession means the forgiveness of sins. O Muḥammad, when the day
of the last judgement is here, put on this belt and practise intercession for the
men of yesterday and today (…)’
What conclusions can we draw from these tales? Here again, the desire for
Prophetic legitimacy is not the whole story. It’s true that as with the hat of the
dervish, described in the first section of the text, the belt is transmitted along a
chain that converges on the Prophet, confirming his status as Seal while the
object itself acquires first a divine and then a Muḥammadan ancestry. As for
later transmissions, they would provide relics held by various Sufis, as the end
of the treatise reveals (but let us avoid anticipating our story). The framing of
this tale of the dervish’s equipment contains just below its surface some hints
at a specific position: the belt of the emirate was inside a chest that was held in
the heart of the family, in an intermediary space between the telluric world of
the mountain and the grotto, a grotto such as the one protecting the belt of the
caliphate, and the celestial plane where the belt of poverty and intercession
was held. The accidental, almost comical, loss of the second belt illustrates in-
difference to the caliphate and the earthly world, even if, as we will see in the
fourth chapter of the present volume, grottoes, and even snakes, are important
to dervishes. For the time being, only two of the three belts still exist according
to the proper symbolic values. A definite primacy is ascribed to the third belt.
The next section of the text is devoted to a lengthy discussion of the sym-
bolic meanings of the seven cords that make up the belt of poverty. This
­symbolism represents the spiritual progress of the dervish. The first cord stands
for the law (sharīʿat), defined as ascesis (zuhd), piety (taqwā), distinction be-
tween the licit and the illicit (tafrīq), the refusal of lies and demand for sin-
cerity (salb wa ījāb).49 The second cord represents the path (ṭarīqat), defined
as certainty in knowledge and the vision of God (yaqīn), submission to the
spiritual master (mutābiʿat), lengthy combat for the truth and for union with
God (mujāhida), increasing contemplation of God in all things (mushāhida).50
The third cord symbolises truth (ḥaqīqat), defined as the common objective
of singers, those who know and those who see God.51 The fourth cord means
prophecy (nubuwwat), defied as the esoteric degree reached by a saint.52 The
fifth cord stands for intercession (shafāʿat), defined as the dervish’s faculty for
the obtention of mercy for others, and for the protection of his disciple.53 The

49 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 182–83.

50 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 183–84.
51 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 185.
52 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 185–86.
53 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 186.
80 Chapter 2

sixth cord ­signifies love (ʿishq), defined as hesitation in God’s love (taraddud),
adulation in this love (tamalluq), loving stupefaction (taḥayyur), access to di-
vine love (taqarrub).54 The seventh cord symbolises poverty (faqr), defined as
the ­science of the mystical secrets (ʿilm), the zeal of the soul in search of God
(ghayrat), the vision of divine perfection (rūʾyat), identity with the object of
the mystical quest (ʿayniyat).55
In terms of ritual, the reader learns that one must sing when knotting the
belt. The words to be uttered are ‘O the vigorous one, O the defender, O
the ally’. When untying the belt one must pronounce the following prayer: ‘O
my God, O the one who opens doors, O the maker of the possible’.
Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm completes his evocation of the belt with a few lines on
the cummerbund (alif-i namad), a woolen scarf worn tied around the waist.56
Its mythical origins go back to the prophet Abraham: in the place of Ishmael,
God sent Abraham a ram to be sacrificed, and the prophet made a belt (a cum-
merbund) of its skin for Agar, Ishmael’s mother. The cummerbund was trans-
mitted to Isaac, then to Jacob and on down the line to Muḥammad. On the day
of departure for the battle of Tabūk, ʿAlī complained of a pain in his lower
back, so Muḥammad gave him the gift of half of his cummerbund. As soon as
ʿAlī tied it around his waist, his pain disappeared. Our treatise affirms that the
tying of the scarf (alif-i namad bandī) of the dervish dates from this period. Ac-
cording to another story, at the time of Jihad against the infidels the Prophet
gave ʿAlī his authorisation to do battle, and knotted the belt around his waist.
For our author, this justifies the Qalandars’ girding of the belt (kamar bastigī)
– in which the master sets the novice on his spiritual path by tying a belt
around his waist – as having been practiced by the Prophet. As well as confirm-
ing that the cummerbund was not the sole preserve of the Mevlevi Sufis (the
‘whirling dervishes’) of the Near East, as is sometimes thought, these lines slip
in an allusion to the prophylactic, or even magical, function of the dervishes’
attire.57

54 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 186.

55 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 187.
56 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 188. From the Persian kamarband, the term ‘cum-
merbund’ was introduced to English from British India and thence into French.
57 For more data, see Thierry Zarcone, “Anthropology of Tariqa Rituals: About the Initiatic
Belt (shadd, kamar) in the Reception Ceremony,” Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Areas Studies
2/1 (2008): 57–68; or the same author’s “L’habit de symboles des derviches tourneurs,”
Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2014): 47–76.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 81

3.3 The Staff

On continuing to read the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, and therefore on continuing to ob-
serve the entire body of the dervish from top to bottom, one comes next to the
arms and hands. Here we learn that it was precisely the height of the body that
posed a problem for the first man and ancestor of Muslim mystics: ‘Know
that on the day when Adam left paradise his head was high enough to hear the
songs of the angels. One day he confided in God that his height disturbed him.
So God commanded, “O Gabriel, take away the wings between Adam’s two
shoulders”. Which was done by Gabriel, and he reduced Adam’s size. After that,
his strength diminished. Then God ordered Gabriel, “Go to Paradise and find a
staff that I, by my omnipotence, have cut from a branch of Ṭūbā [tree of para-
dise], bring it [to Adam] and give it to him that he may recover his strength.”
Which was done by Gabriel. When Adam seized the staff, he wept and lament-
ed; Eve asked him why he was crying. Adam said, “I weep because this staff
belongs to Muḥammad. Ah, if I was part of his pious community, I would act
according to his rules (sunnathā).”’58
The next part of the tale tells how the staff that was predestined for the
Prophet finally reached him – another case of convergence and legitimising by
the Prophet. The staff ‘of Adam went to Seth then to Noah then to Abraham
then ultimately to Shuʿayb then to Moses, it was by him that its [the staff’s]
prodigies were drawn forth. In fact, God has said in the Quran (20:17–18) “What
is that, Moses, thou hast in thy right hand?” “Why, it is my staff,” said Moses.
“I lean upon it, and with it I beat down leaves to feed my sheep; other uses also
I find in it” (…) After Moses, it passed via intermediaries to Jaʿd b. Aṣfar and
then to ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb. When the latter was dying, he gave an order to send
the staff to Mount Ḥijāz. ʿĀṣim went to the mountain and placed the staff in a
secure spot until the time of Jesus. When Jesus was returned to life, he was or-
dered to go to Mount Ḥijāz where the staff of Moses was preserved, and to ask
the mountain to give him the staff. The mountain did so, and Jesus kept the
staff for a certain time. He passed it on to Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib and told
him, “If you see the Muḥammadan light on anyone’s forehead, give the staff to
that person.” Abū al-Fatḥ carried on until he gave the staff to ʿAbd Manāf, tell-
ing him, “In your tribe there will appear a Prophet for the end of times and his
name is Muḥammad.” ʿAbd Manāf replied “I have read this in the Gospels
(injīl), which confirm what you say.” The staff stayed with him for a time, and
after him came to Hāshim, then to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib [Muḥammad’s grandfa-
ther] and then to Bībī Umm Hānī until the time when Muḥammad went to
Medina. At that point the staff had been confided to one of Muḥammad’s

58 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 191.

82 Chapter 2

servants, Zayd Aʿrābī, that he might give it to Muḥammad. When this was done,
Muḥammad took the staff in his hand, and the staff saluted him on God’s or-
ders, told him its history and said, “I desired to approach your beauty; thanks to
God that today I have been honoured to embrace your hand.”’59
For Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, this odyssey of the staff from hand to hand refers to
the dervish’s spiritual progress, which goes from stage to stage towards God –
from hardship to hardship but also from support to support. One notes that the
intermediary between Jesus and ʿAbd Manāf the Qurayshite was called Rāhib,
which means ‘(Christian) monk’. Can one see in this a metaphorical allusion to
transmission via a mythical Christian monasticism? This question must re-
main open. The notion that the staff was predestined refers, of course, to the
Prophetic vocation of the Sufi object, as has been said. A more original vision
of this notion is revealed when the staff takes on a life of its own and calls for
personification (which will be confirmed in the following chapter of the
Qalandarnāma), the goal of which is literally to flesh out the symbolic content
of the object. Here, in a final concession to the concrete description of Sufi re-
ligious life, the end of this chapter teaches ‘what must be pronounced when
taking up the staff; the response is: “O guide of those who are in error, show us
the straight path.” Taking up the staff is the Sunna of the Prophet, and has
many effects.’60 This ritual re-states the magical nature of the dervish regalia
and its ‘many effects’.

3.4 The Begging Bowl

Another utensil that is carried in the dervish’s hand, the begging bowl (kachkūl)
also calls on a mythical past. The treatise reports that on the day when ʿĀysha
was due to marry Muḥammad, she needed a jug (kāsa-yi ābkhūrī); ‘at this mo-
ment God addressed his archangel, “O Gabriel, go to paradise, there is a bowl
(qadaḥ) that I have carved from a root of the tree Ṭūbā, take it and give it to
Muḥammad, he has no jug.” And Gabriel did so, saying, “O Muḥammad, your
God salutes you, he has said that you should take this bowl and drink water
with it, for it is the bowl of poverty (qadaḥ-i faqr).” The Prophet praised God,
blessed the bowl and drank water with it. He rendered grace unto God. It is
since this time that one renders grace unto God after having drunk, this is the
Sunna.’61 In addition it is said that the Prophet carried a begging bowl at his
waist on the day he departed for the battle of Badr. It fell and broke; he added

59 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 192–93. I have been unable to identify the bearers
of these four names: Jaʿd b. Aṣfar, ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb, Shaykh Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib and Zayd
Aʿrābī.
60 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 193.
61 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 195.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 83

iron to it and was able to drink water from it. These two tales rehearse the Pro-
phetic vocation of the begging bowl and recount its material composition of
wood and iron, but we shall see that it is not only the Prophet who serves as a
source of legitimacy.
More than any other utensil, the begging bowl is the mark of the mystical
mendicant. The Manners of the path reminds readers that the word kachkūl
comes from ancient Persian, and that the term kishtī (boat) is also used be-
cause the shape of the begging bowl recalls that of a ship.62 Both of these words
also mean ‘jug’, but the Qalandars prefer kachkūl. ‘O dervish, know that kachkūl
belongs both to the language of dishes and to the vocabulary of Sufis. It desig-
nates something that is proper for various licit foods, and great masters say
that kachkūl means the heart of progress along the path, which is washed clean
of all contamination, and is full of knowledge, practice, favour, love and
gnosis.’63 Thus, dervishes explicitly retain the literal as well as the figurative
meaning of the word. They use the begging bowl for begging (daryūza kardan)
and consider this activity compliant with the Sunna on the basis of the follow-
ing tale: a man one day approaches Muḥammad, who is sitting at the mosque.
He salutes him and says, ‘O Prophet, I am weak and poor and I have a family to
feed.’ He was dying. The Prophet ordered ʿAlī to go and beg among the compan-
ions, which he did, with the help of the begging bowl. He gave everything he’d
collected to the unfortunate man. Since this event, assistance (pāymardī) is the
term used.64 This story introduces the Prophet’s son-in-law, ʿAlī, as a supple-
mentary source of legitimacy, and as a model whose behaviour is to be imitat-
ed by the dervishes. Here we see, added to the well-known principle of imitatio
Muḥammadi, the much less explored idea of imitatio Ali. The chapter’s epi-
logue reaffirms this by relating that at the time of ʿAlī’s marriage to the Proph-
et’s daughter Bībī Fāṭima, the Prophet eventually offered as a gift to ʿAlī the
same bowl he had previously loaned him for begging.65 As a result, ʿAlī is as-
sured of receiving the transmission of the distinctive object of God’s beggar.
Begging has two parts, exoteric and esoteric, which is to say that here again
we find a literal and a figurative meaning. Exoteric begging designates in ‘the
disciple on the path of poverty the fact of holding the begging bowl in his hand,
going from stall to stall, house to house, crying out, “it is God’s will!” Having
thus begged, he returns to his lodge (takiyyagāh) and prays in order to distance
misfortune from the generous and obtain their happiness. The great spiritual

62 For more on this, see Michel Boivin, “La force symbolique du soufisme : l’exemple de la
sébile (kishtî),” Journal of the History of Sufism 6 (2014): 77–84.
63 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 196.
64 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 196–97.
65 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 199.
84 Chapter 2

masters [of yesteryear] did the same thing, and lived as beggars. Esoteric [beg-
ging] is the seeker after God who holds the begging bowl of his heart in the
hand of the unbridled quest; he begs for truths among the hearts of gnostics
who are approaching the spiritual stage of proximity [to God].’66 In this pas-
sage we find incontestable proof of the upholding of both senses of seeking
alms. Poverty, the faqr that institutionalised Sufis have tended to interpret as
an intellectual or esoterist comprehension – a purely spiritual begging – is a
concept that the Qalandars have tried to maintain without differentiation:
there can be no poverty on the spiritual plane without material begging. The
example of the first Sufi masters imposes the duty on later dervishes of return-
ing to the radical sources of Muslim mysticism by living as mystical beggars, on
the margins, rather than as religious notables or settled scholars.
Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm certainly underlines that the esoteric aspect must never
be forgotten, but that nevertheless one should understand this as being at once
an exterior demand and an internal battle. It is necessary to beg ‘at the doors of
the gnostics and not from base individuals’, by confiding themselves to the
spiritual masters in order to learn from them, but equally to learn by begging,
not on their own behalves but for others (bi wāsiṭa-yi dīgarī) as ʿAlī did, and
even by begging in opposition to the self. For ‘the [final] goal of the assistance
(pāymardī) is the torment of the ego (āzār-i nafs) (…) to beg is to wage Jihad
against the dog of the ego. This is why the group [of dervishes] goes out to beg
– we say we are going into battle (ghazā); this word means Jihad against the
concupiscent ego that is the novice’s enemy.’67
Returning to the actual begging bowl, the text resorts to personification. The
utensil is represented as a human body. The eye of the begging bowl symbol-
ises the dervish’s contemplation because other men do not see correctly; the
nose stands for the sense of smell (dar yāftan-i būy) distinguishing the odours
of holiness from those that are harmful; the mouth means the repetition (dhi-
kr) practised by adepts of poverty; the chest harbours the ‘home of grace’
(manzil-i fayḍ) in the sense that the esoteric begging bowl receives divine
grace; the leg represents the fact of turning away from the path that does not
lead to truth, as well as that of returning to the truthful path.68 Ultimately, the
author concludes, ‘know that this entire discussion is for thou who art a novice
on the path of poverty. All these symbols (chīz-i kināyat) have to do with hu-
man existence – otherwise, the precise elements that have been evoked would
not be present in the wooden bowl. The bowl is nothing but an object. We offer

66 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 197.

67 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 197–98.
68 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 198.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 85

thee all these examples that thou mayest leave sensuality (nafsāniyat) behind
and open thy eyes to these examples until thou becomest one with the mystics.
O dervish, if it is thy desire to torment the ego through begging thy ablutions
must be renewed, thy exoteric and esoteric bowl held out, thy vow of absti-
nence made (niyat-i imsāk), thy steps observed (naẓar bar qadam), thy con-
sciousness retained in the breath (hūsh dar dam), thy assurance of constant
repetition and meditation completely sustained. If thou reachest not this
stage, thou must speak incantations in God’s name, “O Nourisher, O Living
One, O Eternal One, O Magnificent One, O Generous One.” Thou must go into
the street or the bazaar and beg, remaining determined until thou seest the
[divine] signs.’69
This passage invites several remarks. Symbols here exist only through ob-
jects, used by the dervishes, that are quite real. In other (better) words, these
objects show that the physical world itself cannot be reduced to its appearance
alone, and that anything in it may be a carrier signifying the divine presence.
One must, then, beg as much in reality as one begs symbolically. It is only by
being confronted with the material nature of the world that the dervish can
hope eventually to acquire the spiritual knowledge he needs to surpass it. The
mention here of Naqshbandī teachings such as attention to one’s steps (naẓar
bar qadam) and consciousness of one’s breath (hūsh dar dam) is not surpris-
ing, these concepts having been profoundly integrated into the Central Asian
Qalandariyya at this period. Nevertheless, their incorporation along with prac-
tices of abstinence and alms-seeking shows the extent to which these spiritual
techniques are conceptualised in relation to the body and to the daily actions
of existence, without ever resorting to or being content with an exclusively in-
tellectual or introspective experience.70

3.5 The Calabash

As the final element of the arm of the dervish, often held at waist-height, the
calabash (kadū-maṭbakh) serves as a flask. The Ādāb al-ṭarīq weaves a long and
marvellous tale about it.71 The essence of the calabash is in the seed of the
gourd (kadūī). When Jonah emerged from the whale’s mouth he was naked and
the heat of the sun struck him hard; at this moment, God ordered the angel
Gabriel to bring a gourd-seed from paradise and put it down on the seashore.
In a single hour it grew into a tree and cast shade over Jonah, who then thanked
God. Jonah kept the tree with him, as well as the young gourd-vine. When the

69 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 198–99.

70 For more on this, see A. Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 213–26.
71 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 201–2.
86 Chapter 2

vine began to grow, Jonah noticed that the gourds were ripening; he picked
them and kept them. The angel Gabriel appeared and cut the gourds in half, so
Jonah made a sort of cup out of two half-gourds, and kept another one. A voice
from the next world exclaimed, ‘O Jonah, don’t waste that gourd, for someone
will come and demand it of thee.’ Elsewhere at the same time there lived a
devout man called Farzūq, to whom an angelic voice spoke, enjoining him to
seek out Jonah, take the gourd and use it to give water to the people living near
Jerusalem. When Jonah saw this man coming, he knew he was coming for the
gourd. Gabriel appeared, holding a thin cord in his hand, which he attached to
the four sides of the gourd and gave to Jonah, who offered the gourd to Farzūq.
Farzūq left for Jerusalem immediately, distributing water to the people. This
devout man hid the gourd in a grotto at the foot of Mount Ṭāʾif, where it stayed
for some time. One day, a certain ʿAlqama-yi ʿĀd, a member of the Thamūd
tribe, was grazing sheep at the foot of this mountain. One sheep’s foot sank
into the ground. When ʿAlqama wanted to extract the animal’s leg from the
hole, a tablet appeared, with a few lines inscribed thereon. Try as he might,
ʿAlqama couldn’t read them. He took the tablet to a scholar called Marzāq, ac-
cording to whom it was written that this was the gourd of Jonah, which had
many properties. Hearing this, ʿAlqama rushed back to the grotto, found the
gourd there, and enjoyed limitless wealth.
The principle function of this long tale is to assign a divine, angelic and pro-
phetic origin to the dervish’s calabash. Here as elsewhere the grotto, a marginal
space if ever there was one, is part of the mystery surrounding the object – a
mystery that is only intensified by the advent of the undecipherable tablet.
A second narrative follows, focussing more on the purpose or use of the
calabash, to which we have already briefly alluded in the earlier part of
the story; that is, the distribution of water.72 After ʿAlqama there are forty in-
termediaries for the calabash, until ʿAbd Manāf who, according to the chapter
on that subject, had also received the staff. One day, ʿAbd Manāf led his flock
into the valley of Baṭḥā where there was a spring with a fresh green tree grow-
ing next to it. ʿAbd Manāf passed by this spot. He saw a man sitting there and
asked him his name and family origins. The man replied that he was called
George (Jirjīs), and invited him to take the gourd he had in his possession. ʿAbd
Manāf questioned him about his background. George recounted, ‘One day, on
Mount Saʿdāniya, I met a disciple of Jesus, who gave me this gourd, said he
was close to death, and told me it had belonged to Jonah. I was meant to take
it, go to the banks of a certain spring and give the gourd to ʿAbd Manāf, chief
of the Qurayshites, from which tribe Muḥammad will be born.’ The narrative

72 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 202–3.

Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 87

continues, telling us that the gourd passed from ʿAbd Manāf to Hāshim, then to
ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, then to Bībī Umm Hānī, then to ʿAbbās, then to Muḥammad,
and then to Abū Dhar, who received the order from Muḥammad to use it to
give water to his men during battle. It was at this time that the Prophet gave
the name maṭbakh (pot, receptacle) to the gourd because he used it to hold
the dishes he distributed to his people. During the war of Uḥud, this gourd,
which had become as hard as steel, was split in two. On the Prophet’s orders,
Abū Dhar covered it with an animal skin and the calabash retained this form
among mystics; ‘It is one of the obligations of poverty to give water. No merit is
equal to the merit of giving water.’
Along with the importance of the mythical transmission of the utensil
to Muḥammad (here again, notably, passed on by a Christian), the value of
the implement’s usefulness preoccupies our author. By distributing water to
the spiritual combatants, the dervish’s calabash ensures that alms can be re-
distributed. Going beyond the sociological principle of gift and counter-gift,
the giving of water (āb dādan) by the Qalandars renews ties with a sort of re-
ligious merit (thawāb) that, according to this text, goes back to Adam, Abra-
ham, Moses – on the basis of the verse ‘And when Moses sought water for his
people, so We said, “strike with thy staff the rock”’ (Quran 2:60) – and, finally,
to Muḥammad.73
As an epilogue to this chapter the Ādāb al-ṭarīq undertakes a brief material
and symbolic analysis of this object, an approach that until this point has been
virtually absent from this chapter.74 The gourd is supported by four ties, each
of which represents a Sufi practice: service (khidmat) rendered to people both
noble and common; the miracle (karāmat) that our author claims has already
been explained in the chapter on the hat, although this is not the case (!); the
attention (naẓarāt), which allows one to recognise God in all that one sees; and
gnosis (maʿrifat), which can be either mental (dhahanī) or direct (mustaqīm)
– the first of these leads the intellect into the realm of the earthly imaginary
while the second takes the spirit to the cosmological spheres. This section on
the calabash completes the description of the dervish’s trunk and arms, this
upper part of the body and vessel of gnosis.

73 It is interesting to observe that a ritual of water distribution (saqqāʾī) is still practised in

today’s Iran during the month of muḥarram. Its origins go back to the initiatic rituals of
the medieval futuwwa and to those of the Qalandarī and Ḥaydarī dervishes of the Savafid
era. See Mojtaba Zarvani and Mohammad Mashhadi, “The Rite of Water-Carrier: From
Circles of Sufis to the Rituals of Muharram,” Journal of Shi‘a Islamic Studies 4/1 (2011): 23–
46. In addition, later pages of the present work mention two Qalandarī dervishes named
Saqqā (water-carrier).
74 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 203–4.
88 Chapter 2

4 The Lower Body

4.1 The Napkin

The auscultation of the dervish ends at the bottom of the body, finding the
napkin or sufra at knee-level. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm immediately specifies an an-
cient Persian origin for sufra, although this is in fact incorrect. As before there
are not one but four fundamental napkins, each with its tutelary prophet.
The first napkin is that of Abraham.75 Legend tells us that at the moment
when Abraham sacrificed Ishmael God put a ram (qūchqār) in Ishmael’s place.
The skin of this animal was tanned and made into a napkin. Since that time, it
is known as the napkin of Abraham, and has four corners, each also pertaining
to an aspect of prophetic tutelage. The first corner is called Adam’s, because
when Adam wanted God to show him his (Adam’s) children, God told him to
close his exoteric eyes and open his esoteric eyes. Adam did so, and saw all the
prophets and their attributes. He noticed among them a man who had spread
the napkin of generosity (khwān-i karāmat), which brought abundance to the
nobility as to the people. When Abraham saw Adam, he invited him to be seat-
ed, and Adam sat on the first corner of the cloth. The second corner is attrib-
uted to Noah, the third to Ishmael and the fourth to Abraham. Here the text
does not furnish any explanation, preferring to concentrate on the Muḥam­
madan destiny of the object: After Abraham, the napkin was transmitted to
Ishmael; then to Qedar, son of Ishmael; then to Ḥamal, son of Qedar; then
to Nabt, son of Ḥamal; then to Hamaysaʿ, son of Nabt; then to Udad, then to
Udd, to ʿAdnān, and to Maʿadd. After twelve intermediaries it passed to ʿAbd
Manāf, then to Hāshim and to ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. It was at the time of his mar-
riage to Khadīja that Muḥammad had to recover the napkin, which was hidden
on the mountain of Abū Qays. Muḥammad sat on the fourth corner, that of
Abraham, because it held the source of the Prophetic Message.
From this legend, let us retain the idea of a transmission that is evidently
not historically accurate, nor even continuous, but rather is tangled and moves
forwards and backwards. The metaphor of weaving, previously used in the sec-
tion on the cloak, presents the initiatic path as a web of criss-crossing pro-
phetic inheritances.
The second napkin is Joseph’s.76 It is said that Joseph freed himself from
servitude and set himself on the throne of the sultanate. He made the napkin
with palm fibres (līf-i khurmā); it had seven corners. The first of these symbol-
ised patience, because Joseph had remained patient in spite of the torments

75 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 205–6.

76 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 206–7.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 89

inflicted by his jealous brothers and the suffering of Zulaykha. The second cor-
ner symbolised deliverance, the key to which is patience. The third represents
forgiveness and the fourth magnanimity, like that of Joseph towards his broth-
ers. The fifth corner corresponds to the face (laqā), for when Egypt was cursed
with scarcity, God showed men the beauty of his face to free them from want.
The sixth corner of Joseph’s napkin refers to the symbol (pl. rumūz) by which
one distinguishes God from all other beings. Finally, the seventh corner sym-
bolises ‘attention (naẓar) because when there are miracles [performed by
whomever], thou seest the same [God]. Accept the believer and do not reject
the unbeliever’. Aside from the now customary symbolic descriptions, what
strikes the reader is the repetition of this formula for religious openness. The
sufra reaffirms the Qalandarī principle of tolerance.
The third napkin is attributed to Jesus.77 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm reports that
the infant Jesus cried out from his cradle, ‘O unbelievers, do not heap calumny
on my mother who is chaste, I am a prophet and the spirit of God is my attri-
bute’. They replied, ‘If Jesus is really a prophet, let the decorated napkin (sufra-
yi pur māʾida) appear from the invisible world, that we may declare our faith in
his message.’ The archangel Gabriel brought the cloth to Jesus. Some of the
pagans made a profession of faith. This napkin, pursues our author, was made
from the bark of the tree of Ṭūbā, and from it came nourishment, in particular
two foodstuffs said to be specific to Jesus: milk and honey. Milk leads to purity
while honey leads to gentleness. Like Abraham’s napkin, this one had four cor-
ners: compassion, generosity, humility and spiritual guidance. The Christ-re-
lated heritage in this napkin therefore consists of certain moral and pastoral
values crossed with magical prodigality.
The Ādāb al-ṭarīq has more to say on the subject of the fourth and final nap-
kin, that of Muḥammad.78 It comprises four animal skins: the first is that of the
sheep served to the Prophet in a companion’s home; the second is that of
the gazelle that praised the Prophet; the third that of the goat that an elderly
woman killed to serve to the Prophet; the fourth that of the cow offered by the
companion Jābir Anṣārī as a sacrifice to the Prophet. The complexity in the
composition of the Prophetic sufra was, according to the legend, perpetuated
when the four well-guided caliphs shared the napkin out among themselves,
dividing it into its four constituent skins, each associating the types of animal
skin mentioned above with particular moral values: sincerity for Abū Bakr, jus-
tice for ʿUmar, modesty for ʿUthmān, goodness for ʿAlī. What’s more, the Proph-
et’s napkin has 24 buckles (ḥalqa), grouped into six categories: the law, the

77 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 207–8.

78 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 208–9.
90 Chapter 2

path, the truth, gnosis, the path of the meeting with God (sulūk-i mulāqāt), the
knowledge of God and of what is other than God. Each buckle within these
categories corresponds to a Sufi action. The law brings together the following
buckles: persisting in the quest to know the mourning of the world and the
honour of the beyond; bringing together knowledge and practice; persevering
in practice; avoiding pride in one’s practice. The buckles of the path group are:
finding the perfect master; serving him; being opposed to the ego; not wanting
to punish the enemy. The four buckles of truth are: to direct oneself to God; to
hide the divine secrets; to rid oneself of artifice; to neglect everything that is
empty of God. And the list, in its intentional fastidiousness, continues.
These buckles complete the representation of the initiatic path as a tangled
web. The complexity of the road that the Sufi must follow is unceasingly re-
called to him by the humblest of his possessions. Simple as it may seem, the
napkin contains a series of signs inherited from the prophets, signs that ad-
dress the dervish each time he eats or takes a break. The next chapter gives less
abstract explanations.

4.2 The Service

Linked to the napkin, the service that the dervish renders each day stems not
only from a gesture of the Prophet’s but also from the principles of humility
and altruism that govern all the acts of his Sufi successors.
There is a founding myth at the origin of this service.79 On the night that
Muḥammad made his celestial journey (miʿrāj) he saw a domed edifice be-
tween the sky and the land. He questioned the angel Gabriel, who told him
that this edifice was called the temple (duwār) and that the ‘men of the in-
visible’ (rijāl al-ghayb), or saintly spirits, were within. Muḥammad wanted to
know more, so Gabriel enjoined him to go to the door of the temple. When
the Prophet put his hand on the door, a voice from within asked ‘Who is it?’
The Prophet said, ‘It is I (manam), Muḥammad, I am on a celestial voyage.’
The voice responded, ‘This is not the place for egotism (manī).’ Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-
Raḥīm’s commentary says that the Prophet was obliged to continue on his way
because egotism was still part of his life and he was still affected by pride. Later,
Muḥammad came back to the door of the temple, but to the voice that asked
him the same question he said, ‘the chief of the tribe is at their service (sayyid
al-qawm khādimu-hum)’. The door opened. Here intervenes another commen-
tary from our author on the hadith that would become a Sufi adage: pride shuts
off the vision of the dervish, one must free oneself from pride in order that
the door of the invisible may begin to open. Muḥammad passed in through the

79 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 213–15.

Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 91

door and saw forty individuals (chilil tan) there, all seated. One of them rose
and prostrated himself. Muḥammad asked why they did not all prostrate them-
selves, and they replied, ‘O Prophet, we are all submitting to you, for we forty
men are all one man.’ Then one of them cut his hand with a knife and blood
flowed from each man’s hand. Another drop of blood came from the ceiling,
and when Muḥammad asked about this they replied that it was the blood of
one of their party who’d gone out to beg. When he heard this, the Prophet
undid his turban, which wrapped around his head (pīch) 39 times, and shared
it out between the 39 individuals present. A bit later, Salmān Fārisī arrived –
the companion of the Prophet, said to have been the first Persian to convert
to Islam and, as it happened, the fortieth member of the chihil tan. He had a
bunch of grapes in his hand, which he gave to the Prophet. The forty reminded
the Prophet of what he had said, ‘the chief of the tribe is at their service’, sug-
gesting that he ought to share out the grapes. Using the grapes and some water
from Kawthar, the river of paradise, the Prophet made grape juice, which he
shared with the forty. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concludes that the Prophet’s service
dates from this episode.
The sharing out of the grapes and the turban are the basis for the practice of
service among Sufis. Often conceived as service rendered to the master by dis-
ciple and to the disciple by the master, both being united in service to God,
among the Qalandars service is understood differently. From the Prophetic
model they retain the sharing of goods, or of alms, and focus more precisely on
commensality, sharing nourishment together both literally and spiritually.
This transition from Muḥammad’s gesture to a tradition of service among
dervishes passed via Salmān Fārisī, the ‘archetype of the initiated adept’.80 Our
Qalandarī author puts forward the hypothesis, drawing on unspecified hadiths,
that the celestial temple in the story corresponds to the mosque in Quba, not
far from Medina, and the forty individuals are the people of the bench (aṣḥāb
al-ṣuffa or ahl al-ṣuffa). Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr, the Caliph’s son (d. 38/658)
relates, ‘I was in the service of the Prophet, one of the companions brought a
dish of dates. The Prophet ordered Salmān Fārisī to distribute them to the
aṣḥāb and to say, on presenting each date, “in the name of God, the merciful
the compassionate”. And Salmān Fārisī did so. On the Prophet’s orders, the re-
maining dates were shared with the spouses of the aṣḥāb. Then the Prophet
turned to Salmān and declared, ‘O Salmān, congratulations! You have become
the servant of Muḥammad.’ Thus, adds Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, the first person to

80 I borrow this expression from Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi.

92 Chapter 2

be admitted to the lineage of the Khwājagān by the caliph Abū Bakr was
Salmān Fārisī, who served for eighteen years.81
In line with other Sufi authors, our Qalandar attributes the origins of the
men of Sufism (ahl al-taṣawwuf) to the ahl al-ṣuffa. We are not concerned
here with the (improbable) historicity of the beginnings of Muslim mysticism.
What matters for this text is elsewhere: on the one hand, the transmission of
the notion of service must be aligned with the lineages of the Sufi masters,
especially those belonging to the Naqshbandī Khwājagān, which was followed,
at least nominally, by the Central Asian Qalandariyya. They are the ones, more
than any others, who passed down the practice of khidmat/khādimī. On the
other hand, this is a practice that brings the values of altruism to the fore in
the commensual ritual. The collective and ritualised meal puts the altruistic
ideal into day-to-day practice without denying its esoteric significance.
How does the service of dervishes play out? ‘When the pot is placed on
the hearth, begin by washing [the hands] three times and say this verse three
times: “And you devour the inheritance greedily, and you love wealth with an
ardent love” (Quran 89:19–20). Know that the purity of the pot signifies purity
of heart and that when the servant puts the pot on [the hearth], lights the
fire and pours water into it, it is good to cook the meal until the water boils,
so that the meal may be boiled and become good to eat. The pot that is the
heart must pass from the world of the lower earth of negation to the hearth
of the higher world of proof [it is necessary that] it be washed in the water
of mortification and heated in the fire of ardour – for if there is no fire, the
meal remains raw – thus it will boil through contemplation and quarrel when
the dish of gnosis is cooked (…) Another servant receives instruction from the
master while he cooks the dish. When [this servant] obtains [the master’s] per-
mission, he brings the tub and the pitcher. After having cleaned and spread the
tablecloth and taken the pot off [the fire] he asks for the blessing, “My God,
bless the dish of the poor”. When he serves the dish to the spiritual guide, he
says, “Praises to God who guided the two worlds with a holy mouthful”. When
he serves the dish to other people, the guardian (ḥafīẓ) says, “Let us not be
unequal, may none [of you] be wronged” (…) While the tablecloth for the feast
is removed, one chants this prayer, on the importance of which the Prophet
insisted: “Praises to He who has nourished me from this dish and allowed me
to nourish [others] in my turn.”’82
This immersion in everyday religious life shows the readers the exact reality
of the manners (ādāb) of dervishes, while underlining that everything they do

81 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 217–18.

82 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 215–16.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 93

has a hidden esoteric aspect. Washing, cooking, distributing and eating food;
these actions are indistinguishably corporeal and spiritual, public and private,
material and ritual. As elsewhere in this text, a very speculative etymology is
cited to confirm the mystical meaning: in the word khādim, the letter ‘kh’ con-
tains the word khiyāl (imagination), the letter ‘a/i’ the word istiqāmat (perse-
verance), the letter ‘d’ the word dūtā (bent), for the servant bends at the waist,
and the letter ‘m’ contains the word murād (meaning), for one understands the
meaning of service once one is worthy to perform it.83 This etymology, and
the interpretation that seeks to recommend humility, altruism and service to
God, finds a final support in the sayings of several Naqshbandī authorities,
such as the eponymous master himself, Bahāʾ al-Dīn (d. 791/1389), or Aḥmad
Kāsānī (d. 949/1542) alias Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, who was a well-known figure in
Central Asian Sufism.84

4.3 The Animal Hide

Down at the dervish’s ground-level we find the takhta-pūst, an animal hide on
which one sits. The beginning of this chapter of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq immediately
specifies that ‘to sit on the animal hide is the Sunna of the Prophet, [then] the
Four Caliphs and the shaykhs of the spiritual path sat down on it as well. Know
that to sit on the animal’s hide symbolises the fact of sitting on the carpet [of
spiritual authority] (sajjāda) and that this is the initiatic stage of the advanced
masters (muntahiyān).’85 Thus the animal hide appears as an accoutrement of
the master or even of the saintly man, who as such sits in authority over other
dervishes. As with the other objects, the animal hide has mythical origins at-
tributed to it.
One day, the caliph ʿUthmān wanted to serve a meal to the Prophet, and he
had a sheep. The Prophet said to him, ‘On the occasion of this meal for me,
sacrifice your sheep today, so that tomorrow at the last judgement I may praise
to all the banquet in Muḥammad’s honour.’ ʿUthmān sacrificed the sheep and
tanned its skin, bringing it to the Prophet. The Prophet made a rug from the
skin, on which he practised his devotions. In another anecdote, the Prophet
once prayed on a goat-skin, and on other occasions on a gazelle- or rabbit-skin.
The companions gathered the four hides to make a prayer rug. When this rug
of animal hide was finished, the Prophet sat in the middle of it while the Four
Caliphs took up their posts on the four corners.86 This myth regarding the use

83 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 216.

84 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 217.
85 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 219.
86 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 219–20.
94 Chapter 2

of hides from different animals authorised the dervishes to manufacture differ-

ing takhta-pūst, although they were most often made from sheepskin. On a
deeper level this myth illustrates the transmission of the relic to the caliphs,
and then to the Sufi masters, an exoteric as well as an esoteric transmission
since each extremity of the animal hide has its assigned prophet and caliph, as
well as a spiritual value. The first corner teaches patience, is linked to the
prophet Job and to Abū Bakr; the second is marked by consent and is linked to
the prophet Ishmael and to ʿUmar; The third corner symbolises modesty and is
linked to Yaḥyā and to ʿUthmān; finally, the fourth corner represents generosity
and is linked to Moses and ʿAlī. This being the case, the takhta-pūshs of later
dervish masters necessarily also signify these things, with which the adepts
must be familiar: ‘for all these dervishes who are ignorant of the principles at-
tached to the fact of sitting on the animal hide, it’s as if they were sitting on the
skin of a pig’. And the explanation does not end there. Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm adds
that the object has five faculties: ascetic poverty, devotional love, the experi-
ence of unity with God, the progress of the spirit in the knowledge of God, and
gnosis as supreme knowledge.87 As with other paraphernalia of the dervish,
this simple hide reminds him of the stages on the path he must follow.
After the staff and the begging bowl, the animal hide in its turn inspires a
personification whose rhetorical power lies in the way it fleshes out the item of
the master’s regalia while serving as a reminder of the disciple’s proper place.
The animal’s face on its hide symbolises devotion because it is precisely the
devotions enacted by the disciple that make him a disciple; the skin of
the chest refers to knowledge, the acquisition of which is necessary in order to
perform the devotions correctly; the feet on the animal hide refer to the love
that must serve as a foundation for the intellect.88 To make things flesh again,
restore them to their bodies: these ambitions also act as a reminder that the
gestural aspect of devotion has a bottom, centre and top, representing, in or-
der, the degrees of: ‘respect for existence’ (to which the Qalandars are very at-
tached, as our author underlines); ‘accomplishment of religion’; and ‘expression
of mystical love’. It is clear that for the dervishes such regalia as the animal hide
cannot be reduced merely to a manifestation of the shaykh’s spiritual authori-
ty. These items are devotional tools above all. ‘Know, finally, that the animal
hide is a throne, that is to say that the decorum (zīnat) of kings is the throne of
the sultanate, which is made of stone and wood for the repose of the existence
of the king [while] the decorum of dervishes is the throne of devotion, which
is made of animal hide for the repose of the spirit.’

87 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 220.

88 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 221.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 95

The chapter ends with two anecdotes intended to remind the dervishes of
the necessity for devotion: as a defence against the neglect of ritual and quite
apart from any magical acts or events.89 The first story tells of an animal hide
that was offered to the shaykh Aḥmad Jurjānī. He put it down in a corner of his
sanctuary (maʿbad) without a second thought. Several days passed. A voice
spoke from the hide, ‘My God, a tyrant is holding me prisoner.’ When the
shaykh heard the voice, he asked the hide who this tyrant was. It replied, ‘You,
who do not pray upon me!’ From this, Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm draws the following
lesson, ‘Know then that the hide is not meant for sleeping on, but for piercing
the heart of the stone of devotion.’ The second anecdote reports that one day
Shaykh Masʿūd Jabalī placed his sheepskin on water, and prayed on it! When he
took it off the water’s surface it was still dry. Shaykh Ḥasan Baṣrī (d. 110/728)
was there at the water’s edge and witnessed this miracle, but smiled in an iron-
ic fashion. He said to Masʿūd Jabalī, ‘O shaykh, know that remaining uncon-
sumed by fire, flying in the air and avoiding drowning in water are in no way
acts of valour, for being unconsumed by fire is the power of the salamander,
flight in the air is the power of the fly, and avoiding drowning in water is the
power of the twig, but accepting to enter in to the confidence [of God] is giving
one’s heart. Walk on the water and you are but a twig, float in the air and you
are but a fly. Do without these two [miracles]. Give your heart to become some-
one.’

4.4 The Broom

Sign par excellence of humility, and the final degree of the bottom of the body,
the broom that the dervish sweeps with is not an innocuous object. Neverthe-
less, this treatise touches only lightly on its origins, limiting itself to the decla-
ration that the archangel Gabriel manufactured the broom and brought it to
earth, God having created it for the purposes of cleaning the earth. At a very
early date, the first Sufi masters included its use among the services (khidmat)
that a dervish must render.90 In Qalandarī mysticism, sweeping with the broom
amounts to ‘[for] the gnostic, opening the eyes of his heart and observing the
particles of the universe, for in each particle the light of the sun and the beauty
of God are abundant’. He affirms that ‘it is clear that [regarding] each plant,
animal and man, the Creator of things has not made them without qualities.
Each blade of grass coming out of the earth says “unique, unequalled” (…) and
within each leaf grows the guardian of praise for divine favours.’91 The mystical

89 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 222.

90 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 223.
91 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 223–24.
96 Chapter 2

experience promising what one might call observation while sweeping is de-
scribed in these terms: ‘When, thanks to the great number of his austerities,
the enslaved mystic obtains unity, and when, thanks to the product of his spir-
itual efforts, he acquires gnosis, for every species that he looks at his ardent
desire (ishtīyaq) orients him helplessly towards God. The one who arrives at
this stage will hear [raised] from each blade of grass a voice testifying to the
unicity [of God].’92 As with other spiritual exercises, sweeping overturns
the dervish’s vision of the world. Capable of reading a sign of God in each mote
of worldly dust, with a broom in his hand the Qalandar claims, not without
mischief, to have the same experience as the great mystics.
On the practical front our author underlines that the broom is good for
young dervishes (kūchak-abdalān), apprentices in the rapture of God, for it is
service that initially seems to them the most accessible and achievable task
until they realise its esoteric significance and hidden spiritual virtues, gaining
a more adequate understanding under their superior’s direction of the Sufi
concept of service. Every task accomplished in the lodge (khānaqāh) has, in
fact, a double meaning, interior and exterior. ‘If thou desirest to enter the
lodge, come in from the right and go out by the left, in the same way as
the psalmodists (dhākirān) say the letter lā, which is negation [of God], on the
right and express affirmation [of God] on the left, which is the heart (…)
Mawlānā [Rūmī (d. 672/1273)] said that the vestibule of the house of human
existence is the heart and that the house of the Lord is also the heart. Each sin
committed by the one who is in servitude to God throws a veil over the face of
his heart. Then the mystic must, with the broom of the lā that is negation, wash
the carnal dust (khāshāk-i nafsānī) from the heart until the heart is touched
with divine grace.’93 Going in and out of the Sufi lodge, sweeping it, etc. are ac-
tions that, like begging, have a double meaning. The broom not only cleans the
lodge, but teaches, as an article of the dervish’s paraphernalia, the purgation of
sensual or intellectual dross from the spirit: ‘Know that the broom signifies the
tongue (lisān) and the earth signifies the human conscience (ḍamīr). The
tongue, which is the broom that sweeps away dust, must enter with the hand
of resolution into the harem of the heart and there deploy the napkin of repeti-
tion of “there is no God but God”, meeting the home of theophanies of the in-
comparable essence.’94
As esoteric as it may be, the analysis of the broom does not neglect the ritu-
al rules that accompany the actual sweeping. While the novice is cleaning, he

92 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 224.

93 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 224–25.
94 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 225.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 97

must say, ‘I seek refuge near God against the accursed Satan, that “surely God
forgives sins altogether; surely He is the All-forgiving, He is the All-compas-
sionate” (Quran 39:53).’ After having swept, he must pronounce the following
formula: ‘I seek refuge near God against the accursed Satan, “My Lord, lead me
in with a just ingoing, and lead me out with a just ongoing; grant me authority
from Thee, to help me” (Quran 17:80).’95 Sweeping the ground also means im-
ploring God to purge one’s sins; entering and leaving the lodge also means
­affirming one’s submission to divine justice. To underline the reality and ordi-
nariness of the task, of which the Prophet himself is supposed to have said,
‘whoever takes care to clean their house will receive many favours’, Ḥājjī ʿAbd
al-Raḥīm recounts, in addition to the ritual formulas, two brief anecdotes. In
the first, Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr relates, ‘One day I was in Mecca, where there
was a madman plunged in mystical rapture who was sweeping the sacred sanc-
tuary. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he cried. I asked him why he was
behaving in this way. He replied, “I laugh at the one who is ignorant of the mer-
its of this service, I weep because I’m afraid that God may judge me unworthy
of this service and take it away from me.”’ The second anecdote is from Kaʿb
al-Aḥbār (d. ca. 32/652), a Yemeni rabbi who converted to Islam. According to
him, the Prophet’s daughter Bībī Fāṭima stipulated that each devotee who
spent forty days sweeping the mosque or the cemetery of Medina would rap-
idly attain his spiritual goal.96 The religious value of the act of sweeping thus
lies in its posture of humility before God and dust.

5 From Lexis to Relics

The twelfth chapter of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, by recapitulating the eleven preced-
ing chapters, restates the steps in the transmission of the dervishes’ entire at-
tire and gives the reader the final key to understanding the treatise as a whole.
Everything begins with the Prophet, who is the insurmountable model for the
dervish, or even history’s first dervish; what follows stems from the Four Ca-
liphs and the companions of the Prophet. The fundamental principle of pov-
erty, contained as we have seen in the word faqr and its etymology, has its
material existence through the attire of poverty (libās-i faqr). However, Ḥājjī
ʿAbd al-Raḥīm affirms that the Prophet had two other habits: the habit of raz-
zia or raiding (libās-i ghazā) and the habit of law (libās-i sulūk-i sharʿ); he wore
the first of these in times of war and the second when he was practising the five

95 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 225–26.

96 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 226.
98 Chapter 2

prayers of going to the mosque. As for his habit of poverty, Muḥammad put it
on at night to practice the hidden cult, that is, the Sufi spiritual exercises. When
he was on the threshold of death, he asked for his habit of poverty, which com-
prised a hat, a belt, three cloaks and a shirt (pīrāhan).97 For the Qalandars, who
use this to justify their spiritual choice of poverty above combat or the law, the
Prophet preferred the attire of the dervish to that of the combatant or the man
of law at the critical moment when he was offering his most precious legacy.
What became of these elements of Muḥammad’s habit? The Prophet con-
fided the hat and one cloak to caliph Abū Bakr, and the shirt to caliph ʿUmar. In
addition, he told ʿUmar and ʿAlī to find Uways Qaranī, a disciple of Muḥammad’s
who was supposed to have communicated with him by telepathy and brought
forth the initiatic mode called uwaysī; this man gave ʿAlī a cloak. Adam’s belt
of grapevines was transmitted to the companion ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf. The
staff and the napkin of Abraham, which went with it, were transmitted to ca-
liph ʿUthmān. Each of these relics had a different destiny.
When Abū Bakr became caliph, he gave the hat and the patched cloak to
his son Muḥammad. Once Abū Bakr had died, Muḥammad put the hat on the
head of Salmān Fārisī. Then the hat was transmitted successively to Qāsim b.
Muḥammad, Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq, Bāyazīd Bisṭāmī, Abū al-Ḥasan Kharaqānī,
Abū al-Qāsim Gurgānī (d. 450/1058 or 469/1077), Aḥmad Fārmadī (d. 476/1084),
Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī (d. 535/1140), ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduwānī (d. 574/1179
or 617/1220), Khwāja ʿĀrif Riwgarī (d. 657/1259), Maḥmūd Anjīr Faghnawī
(d. 670/1272 or 710/1310), ʿAlī Rāmitanī (d. 716/1316 or 721/1321), Bābā Sammāsī
(d. ca. 734–6/1334–6 or 755/1354), Amīr Kulāl (d. ca. 771–2/1370), Shāh Naqsh-
band, Yaʿqūb Charkhī (d. 851/1447), Khwāja Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), Muḥammad
Qāḍī (d. 921/1516), Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, Mawlānā Khurd ʿAzīzān (Tāshkandī)
(d. 977/1570), Mullā Aka Shiburghānī (d. 1005/1597) and Mullā Pāyanda
Muḥammad Aqṣī (or Akhsiketī) (d. 1010/1601). Then the hat was divided be-
tween four caliphs: Mawlānā Mastī, Mawlānā Ṣāliḥ Tarkībī, Muḥammad
Darwīsh Ghijduwānī and Abū Saʿīd Andikānī (or Andijānī). The text is not
clear about what happened to this cloak, because it does not go further back
than Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī and does not specify if the cloak and hat stayed to-
gether, or whether the cloak was lost without leaving a trace for the Sufi memo-
rialists. From Hamadānī the cloak was passed successively to Aḥmad Yasawī,
Ḥakīm Ata (sixth/twelfth century), Zangī Ata (seventh/thirteenth century),
Ṣadr Ata (eighth/fourteenth century), ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata, Shaykh Khudā(y)dād

97 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 227.

Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 99

(d. 939/1532), Bābā Turkesh, ʿAbd al-Shukūr and ʿAbd al-Quddūs98. Then the
cloak was sent to the Khwarezm region; the reader is not told to whom.99
That the contemporary historian should entertain strong doubts about this
reconstitution and its impossible continuity is unimportant. All reliquaries
slip through the fingers of modern historicity. What is striking in our author is
his concern for memory. From his viewpoint as from that of his readers, the
attire of the dervish does not consist only of symbolic garments, and if there
are plenty of symbols, myths and esoteric teachings in this text, yet they ap-
pear only because of a panoply of objects, real for the readers, that actually
exist across time. The material culture of the dervishes says all there is to say
about their history and their system of thought. What’s more, although several
of the personages mentioned in these spiritual genealogies are difficult to
identify, it remains the case that they define the contours of a Sufi milieu that
is, temporally and spatially, relatively close to Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm. The brother-
hood affiliations and the nisba (names with geographical origins) place this
milieu at the confluence of the Naqshbandiyya and the Yasawiyya, in Fergana,
the Māwarāʾ al-nahr and Khwarezm.
Let us return to this chapter where we left off. The napkin of Abraham that
had been left to Abū Bakr was then passed to ʿUmar then to ʿUthmān, ʿAlī,
Ḥasan, Ḥusayn, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, Muḥammad Bāqir, Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq, Bāyazīd
Bisṭāmī, Aḥmad Khadruyya, Abū al-Fattāḥ Daqqāq, ʿAbd Allāh Ṣaffār, Nuʿmān
Mānūrī, Shaykh Sulaymān, Shaykh Burhān, Ḥamīd Walad and Shaykh Muẓaffar.
At this final stage it remained.100 Apart from Khadruyya Balkhī (third/ninth
century), a Khorasan Malāmatī101, the identification of the bearers of these
names is not currently possible. The problem is additionally complicated by
the appearance of another passage revealing a second chain of transmission
for the napkin without any indication of whether this relates to a part of the
napkin, passed on via different transmitters, or the same entire napkin, passed
via an alternative transmission. In any case, one reads in this second passage
that after Imām Jaʿfar Ṣādiq the napkin went in turn to Mūsā Kāẓim, Imām
ʿAlī Mūsā Riḍā, Yūsuf Saqatī, Yūsuf Ashʿarī, Muḥammad Jurjānī (d. 816/1413),
Niẓām al-Dīn Khāmūsh (d. 826/1423?), Khwāja Aḥrār, Muḥammad Qāḍī and

98 This could be a disciple of Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, according to the Anīs al-ṭālibīn wa
ʿuddat al-sālikīn by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ibn Mubārak Bukhārī (eighth/fourteenth century), as
cited by Mehran Afshari in Bābā Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 290, but this iden-
tification would be detrimental to the chronology as presented.
99 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 228.
100 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 228–29.
101 According to, among other sources, Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, the oldest Persian trea-
tise on Sufism, trans. Reynold A. Nicholson (Leiden: Brill, 1911), 119–21.
100 Chapter 2

Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam. In this version, after the last-mentioned of these men

died the napkin (or piece of the napkin) was divided into four parts: One part
went to Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1625) in India; one was given to the lineage
(khāndān) of ʿAbd al-Shahīd – one of Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam’s grandsons ­­­– anoth-
er piece ended up in Herat via the lineage of the descendants of the scholar
Niẓām al-Dīn Harawī (eighth/fourteenth century), and a final piece went to
Tashkent in the lineage of Shaykh Khāwand Tahūr (d. 755/1354).102
According to the author of The Manners of the path, the relic seems at some
point to have been dispersed between India, the Māwarāʾ al-nahr and the Kho-
rasan, among Sufi families with Naqshbandī affiliations. Once again, we needn’t
seek historical exactitude. Instead let us retain, without being able to be more
precise, this reference to India, which as we noted above was, during the seven-
teenth century, a region in which Central Asian Qalandars, especially the ca-
liphs of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm himself, were particularly active.
The treatise is less prolix on the subject of the staff that accompanied the
napkin of Abraham: after ʿUthmān, it went to a certain Kalbī. When Kalbī died,
the staff disappeared. According to tradition, the staff passed to the Prophet’s
uncle, ʿAbbās (d. 193/809) and thence to his descendants until it reached Hārūn
al-Rashīd (d. 193/809), the fifth Abbasid caliph. We also learn that until this
epoch any sick person who called on the staff was given it and thus healed.
When Imām-i Aʿẓam (a name given to the jurist Abū Ḥanīfa, who died in about
150/767) fell ill he also called on the staff; it was given to him and he returned
to health. Thereafter, ‘thanks to this staff he manifested numerous perfections
and spiritual states and his name floated above the world like a banner’.103 So
here, too, our text limits itself to underlining the magical character of the ob-
ject, as in section five of the text, devoted to the staff. This twelfth chapter deals
more substantially with the shirt of the Prophet. ʿUmar received it, and then
ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar (d. 73/693), then the companion Zayd b. Arqam (d. ca.
68/688), Bahāʾ al-Dīn Mashriqī, Abū Yazīd Simnānī, Bahlūl Kāmlāʾī, Ḥamīd
Rūdbārī, Abū ʿAlī Rūdbārī (third/tenth century), Fattāḥ Khwārizmī, Abū al-
Qāsim Balkhī, ʿAbd al-Qahhār Shahrisabzī, ʿAbd al-Jabbār ʿIshqī, Shaykh Ṣādiq,
Khwāja Qāsim, ʿAbd Allāh Buzurg, Khwāja Jawānmard, Khwāja Isḥāq, and fi-
nally ʿAbd Allāh Kūchakī.104 Although it is frustrating for the historian to be
unable to identify at least a dozen names in this genealogy, the nisbas and the
search for some continuity, illusory as it may be, confirm Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s
desire to put together a historical reconstruction of the Sufi reliquary.

102 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230.

103 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 229–30
104 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 229.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 101

Having noted this, it’s not surprising to read, on the subject of the belt
(not Adam’s belt, which was mentioned at the start of the chapter), the fol-
lowing: ‘Know that the Prophet’s belt was transmitted to ʿAlī, it was made of
wool from the she-camel of the prophet Ṣāliḥ. It was then transmitted to Imām
Jaʿfar Ṣādiq [from] whom the [subsequent] stages have been described, then
to ʿAbd al-Qādir (Gīlānī), Aḥmad Badawī (d. 674/1276), Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿArabī
(d. 638/1240), Qāsim Tabrīzī (d. 837/1433), Darwīsh Bahrām Saqqā (d. 970/1562),
Sayyid Awtad al-Dīn Khwārizmī, Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Khwārizmī, Sayyid ʿAbd
Allāh Khwārizmī, Sayyid Qāsim Khwārizmī and Sayyid Marjān Muḥammad
Qalandar. I was in his service and saw this belt, which he wore knotted around
his waist.’105 It’s relatively unimportant that these lineages are forged in order
to bring some prestige to the spiritual pedigree of the Qalandars, as is clearly
the case here where our author includes the names of the great figures of clas-
sical Sufism. What interests us here is the final phrase, which expresses our
author’s evident faith in the existence of the relics; other sources relate that
Marjān Muḥammad Qalandar was indeed the master of Bābā Qul Mazīd, mas-
ter of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm.106 Another interesting point is the mention of a
large number of sayyids from the Khwarezm region.
The next part of the twelfth chapter comes back to the cloak. There were
two additional Prophetic relics. One of these cloaks was confided to ʿAlī and
was then transmitted to Imām Riḍā, Maʿrūf Karkhī, Abū al-Qāsim Jurjānī107,
Shaykh Bahrām Ṭabasī, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and Shāh Qāsim Anwār (Qāsim
Tabrīzī), in whose shrine it was supposed to remain.108 The second cloak was
given by the Prophet to Uways Qaranī in the invisible world. After the death of
the Prophet, ʿUmar and ʿAlī took this cloak with them to Yemen, where Yemeni
chiefs came to meet them. ʿUmar and ʿAlī questioned them on the subject of
Uways, telling them of the well-known cloak that was intended for him. Ini-
tially, the chiefs said that no one in Yemen was worthy to receive the cloak of
the Prophet. Nevertheless, one of them told the travellers that there was a man
enraptured in God (dīwāna) in the village of Qaran, who was a camel herder.
They went to the village, found Uways and gave him the cloak. He accepted it,
then deposited it in a corner of the ruins (kharāba) in which he lived. Then the
cloak was transmitted to Ḥasan Baṣrī and then to Ḥabīb ʿAjamī (d. 156/772).
After this latter the text tells us there were eight intermediaries before the
cloak passed to Ḥamīd ʿIshqī, ʿAbd al-Qāyyūm, ʿAbd al-Ṣamad and finally to

105 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230.

106 See Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 232–34.
107 Maybe this is Abū al-Qāsim Gurgānī (d. 450/1058), for more information on whom see
notably Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 169–70.
108 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 230.
102 Chapter 2

Shaykh Mubram. The text tells us that this cloak is preserved in the latter’s inn
(langar).109 Many of these names are unknown to us, and it’s likely that Ḥājjī
ʿAbd al-Raḥīm is equally in the dark about some of them, because his memo-
rial quest seems to crumble as the chapter wears on. So the tale of the trans-
mission of the relics finishes with three indications that are as brief as they are
fragmentary: ‘The prayer rug of the Prophet was put into his tomb at his re-
quest. When Imām Ḥusayn was martyred, the begging bowl was broken; it still
retains the marks of this. The calabash was also broken during the time of the
companion Abū Dhar, who lived in the mosque of Quba. When Adham Saqqā
advanced in the Sufi path he acquired a calabash to which he attached four
thongs, [with it] he distributed water to people or else used it to hold food of
which he gave abundantly to the worthy (ahl-i istiḥqāq). From that time to this,
the calabash spread among the dervishes (fuqarāʾ).’110
It is less important, from our point of view, that the Adham Saqqā men-
tioned above was part of the genealogical lineages of the Indian and Central
Asian Qalandars111 than that here our author indicates that Adham Saqqā
modelled his own calabash on the Prophet’s. Here is the crux of this insistence
on the importance of the relics: as the life, the acts, the values and the sayings
of the Prophet form a model for dervishes to follow, so his utensils must also
be reproduced. This lesson had already been formulated: against an overly in-
tellectual Sufism the Qalandariyya extols a total mysticism in which there can
be no spirituality without materiality. Where most of the scholarly authorities
of Sufism – for example, Nawāʾī, whom we studied in our first chapter – see
the heterodox or marginal dervishes as having gone astray, accusing them of
exhibitionism if not of faking, the Qalandars perceive here a radical salvation.
Not to carry replicas of the holy relics would mean never having cut oneself off
from society, from its comforts and conventions.
Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm concludes his treatise by declaring that he felt he had a
duty to make known any and all speculations (tāʾammul) relating to each detail
of the objects, and, for each word, to make known any and all etymological
meanings (taḥammul). His goal was not literary or poetical, he did not aim for
‘the ornament of words’ (ārāyish-i alfāẓ), but to provide an explanation (bayān)
of such objects as the hat, the cloak, etc. Confident of the precepts of the great
mystics of the past and of his own progress on the Qalandarī path, Ḥājjī ʿAbd
al-Raḥīm believes that he has explained, in the gnostic mode or system of

109 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 231.

110 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 231–32.
111 Simon Digby, Sufis and Soldiers in Awrangzeb’s Deccan: Malfúzát-i Naqshbandiyya (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 54.
Outside The Madrasas Of Bukhara 103

thought of the prophets and saints, the part played by teaching (taʿlīm), para-
bles (tamthīl), and the metaphorical (takniya), as well as the part played by al-
lusion (talmīḥ) and metonymy (talwīḥ).112 In an approach that is consistent
with his argumentation throughout the Manners of the path, and is the oppo-
site of an aesthetic of language, the Qalandarī master describes his way of
working as a denial of any separation between the lexicon and the relic, be-
tween the dervish’s words and his objects; this because they are intrinsically
tied together by the linguistic operations of metaphor and metonymy. In their
understanding of Sufi gnosis as a system of figures and rhetorical relationships,
it seems to us that the Central Asian dervishes occupy a marginal space in the
doctrinal universe of the region during this period.113

112 Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Qalandarnāma⁠ʾī, 232.

113 In this regard it is symptomatic that the Risāla-yi ḥaqqiyya of Nidāʾī, a reader and disciple
of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, only repeats a few of the ‘material’ parts of the Ādāb al-ṭarīq, and
shows a clear preference for the doctrinal explanations. Anyone would think that Nidāʾī
was performing a re-alignment of the text towards the traditional teachings of the Naqsh-
bandiyya and away from Qalandarī principles, as a way of reinforcing Sufi orthodoxy, as
I proposed in Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, chapter 3, to call a return to the Law.
104 Chapter 3

Chapter 3

In the Ruins of Aksu

1 Kharābātī, a People’s Poet1

Although he is unknown in the west, even among most Central Asia specialists
– except for a few lines by the German orientalist Martin Hartmann mention-
ing Chirabati (sic)2 – from the vantage point of today Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd
Allāh Kharābātī looks like an enlightened intellectual of Xinjiang and an early
hero for the Uyghurs, who at that time were seeking morality and social justice.
In a book written in 2003 under the name Abbas Muniyaz, the thinking of
Kharābātī the poet is gradually revealed in the pages of a fiction that is a work
of imagination more than of history, and that presents to the reader the poet’s
ideas about the struggle against obscurantism.3 Abbas Muniyaz, who is a
teacher in an Aksu high school, explains in two short articles that although
Kharābātī was influenced by mystical poetry that was laden with esoterism, he
was an ardent defender of knowledge (ilim in Uyghur) of all sorts, and of those
who transmitted it (scholars and professors).4 Although this contemporary
reading of Kharābātī legitimately reflects recent debates among the Xinjiang
intelligentsia, who are on the alert to distinguish any early signs of modern
humanism (insanpärwärlik), it finds few echoes in Kharābātī’s work itself, or at
least in the sole text to have survived, a mathnawī. I shall therefore present a
different reading, more artful and perhaps darker, based on careful attention to
verses drawn from the thousands of distichs that make up this vast poem.
Kharābātī is thought to have been born in 1638 in the village of Choghtal,
part of the town of Egärchi, five kilometres south of Aksu. Almost nothing is
known of his life. There was an anonymous biography called Ḥājjī Kharābātī
Tadhkirasī that appears to have been lost; testimony collected from a descen-
dant, Nuranjan, in 1980, affirmed that the young man, from a family of ulamas,

1 This sub-chapter is a revised and modified version of my article, “Kharābātī (1638–1730), un

poète populaire du Turkestan oriental,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 24 (2015): 127–44.
2 Martin Hartmann, “Die osttürkischen Handschriften der Sammlung Hartmann,” in
Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin 7/2 (Berlin, Georg Reimer,
1904), 4, 15, 21.
3 Abbas Muniyaz, Riyazätkar ädib: Kharabati (Urumqi: Shinjang Khälq Näshriyati, 2003).
4 Abbas Muniyaz, “Khabarati näziridä ilim wä alim,” Shinjang ijtimayi pänlär munbri 2 (2010):
31–38; id., “Kharabati näziridiki qährimanliq,” Shinjang ijtimayi pänlär munbri 4
(2010): 38–45.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_005

In The Ruins Of Aksu 105

studied in Aksu, then Bukhara, and then returned to the region of his birth to
provide instruction as both an imam and a teacher (mudarris).5 This scholar
is said to have made the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned home safely, before
dying in 1730 at the age of 92 years. His body was laid to rest in a shrine in
Choghtal, the village of his birth, next to a mosque and a madrasa and also, it
seems, to a Sufi lodge (khānaqāh), which today no longer exists. All of these
edifices were financed by a waqf that was ended in 1953, after the Chinese
agrarian reforms, as were the other pious foundations of Xinjiang.6 Neverthe-
less, pedagogical and especially religious (or even initiatic) activities continue
to be pursued in these places to this day.
As far as we know, Kharābātī was the author of a single work, a mathnawī
consisting of almost thirteen thousand verses in Chagatay Turkish, and using
the ʿarūḍ metre. Apart from a very abridged and sometimes incorrect Uyghur
edition published in Urumqi in 1985–6 by Eziz Sabit and based on a lithograph
from Tashkent dated 1330/1911–12, which was edited by a certain Mullā Mīr
Makhdūm ibn Mullā Shāh Yūnus, we also have one apparently complete man-
uscript at our disposal, comprising 211 folios; this is held in the Gunnar Jarring
Collection at the University of Lund, shelved under Prov. 90. This book, Jāmiʿ-i
Kharābātī, was composed (taṣnīf) in 1145–1146/1732–1734, that is, very soon af-
ter the poet’s death, by Mullā Muḥammad Sayyid Khān; it was copied (doubt-
less during the nineteenth century) by Mullā Hāshim in Chafūrchāq. The
names of the compiler and copyist, as well of that of the place, remain difficult
to identify exactly.7 There are at least ten manuscripts of the text at the Insti-
tute of Orientalism in Tashkent, shelved under IVAN Uz 219, 1407, 3794/I, 5938/
II, 7504, 7181/I, 7736/I, 11271, 11867, 12070. Four more manuscripts have been
discovered at the Bureau of Ancient Texts (qädimki äsärlär ishkhanisi), in the
province of Khotan, by Hörmätjan Fikrät, a philologist at the University of Xin-
jiang. This scholar prepared a new edition of the work in 2011 and wrote sev-
eral articles that stand out from the other publications devoted to Kharābātī8
in that they re-introduce a Sufi reading of the text, one that for a long time was
obscured.

5 According to the introduction by Eziz Sabit, written in 1982 and appearing in Kharābātī,
Mäsniwi Kharabati, ed. Eziz Sabit (Kashgar: Qäshqär Uyghur Näshriyati, 1985).
6 Rahilä Dawut, Uyghur mazarliri (Urumqi: Shinjang Khälq Näshriyati, 2001), 174–75; Alexandre
Papas, “Les tombeaux de saints musulmans au Xinjiang: culte, réforme, histoire,” Archives de
sciences sociales des religions 142 (2008): 47–62.
7 Gunnar Jarring transcribes this as Chapūrchāq and thinks that it is a neighbourhood in
Kashgar.
8 Eziz Atawulla Sartekin, Uyghurchä näshr qilinghan äsärlär katalogi (tarikh-mädäniyät qismi)
(Urumqi: Shinjang Universiteti Näshriyati, 2004), 664–65, gives a detailed list that I have re-
produced in my article in the Cahiers d’Asie centrale.
106 Chapter 3

Detailed, profuse, disconcerting, recalling a Jacques Prévert inventory, the

structure of the Mathnawī-yi Kharābātī is presented as follows9:

Incipit (ff. 1b–2a)

Eight invocations (munājāt) (ff. 2a–6a)
Praises of the Prophet (naʿt) (ff. 6a–7b)
Invocations (munājāt) (ff. 7b–8b)
On repentants and seekers after truth (ahl-i tawba wa ahl-i taḥqīqlar
bayānï) (ff. 8b–9a)
Advice for Turks and Tajiks (naṣīḥat-i turk wa tājik) (ff. 9a–10b)
On the spirit, on the virtuous, and on guides (dar bayān-i ʿaql wa muttaqī
wa rāhbarān) (ff. 10b–11a)
On cruelty (dar bayān-i dil āzārī) (ff. 11a–b)
On goodness (dar bayān-i yakhshïlïq) (ff. 11b–13a)
On joy and on pain (dar bayān-i shād wa gham) (ff. 13a–b)
On the beyond (naṣīḥat-i ʿuqbā) (ff. 13b–14b)
On the pious and the hypocrites (dar bayān-i ṣāliḥ wa munāfiq) (ff. 14b–
15a)
On the benefits of supplication (khāṣiyat-i istighfār) (ff. 15a–16a)
On the fact of taking one’s heart back from the world (bu faṣlda köngilni
dunyādïn yïghmaq) (ff. 16a–b)
On the benefits of eating little (bu faṣlda kam yemekning khāṣiyatï)
(ff. 16b–17b)
On the fact of accepting destiny and enduring misfortune (bu faṣlda
qazāgha bolup balāgha ṣabr qïlmaqnï aytur) (ff. 17b–18b)
On the mark of the believer (bu faṣlda ishārat-i ahl-i īmānnï ayturlar)
(ff. 18b–19b)
On good and evil (naṣīḥat-i nīk wa badnï ayturlar) (ff. 19b–20b)
On the patient and the impatient ones (dar bayān-i ṣabr wa bīṣabrlarnï
ayturlar) (ff. 20b–21b)
On the company of superficial people (ahl-i dunyālar ṣuḥbatï bayānïda)
(ff. 21b–22a)
On service to the master and to those who are close to God (dar bayān-i
khidhmat-i pīr wa hamsāya-yi ḥaqqï) (ff. 22a–23b)

9 The numbering of the folios corresponds to the manuscript at Prov. 90, Lund University
Library, Jarring Collection, hereafter notated as Kharābātī, Mathnawī. I have corrected the
most evident of the fairly numerous omissions and spelling mistakes inserted by the
copyist.
In The Ruins Of Aksu 107

On the link between the virtue of impotencies and purification (dar

bayān-i waṣl-i faḍīlat-i ʿajiza wa tahārat) (ff. 23b–24a)
On attention and on the path of God (dar bayān-i āgāhlïq wa rāh-i ḥaqq)
(ff. 24a–25a)
On the virtue of the five prayers (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i besh waqt namāz)
(ff. 25a–b)
On the indecency that lies in speaking much (bu faṣlda köp sözlämäkning
qabīḥlïqï) (ff. 25b–26a)
On the fact of seeking God (dar bayān-i ḥaqq ṭalab bolmaqnï aytur)
(ff. 26a–b)
On the virtue of what is legal (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i sharʿīnï ayturlar)
(ff. 26b–27a)
On the virtue of fasting and prayer (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i rūza wa namāz)
(ff. 27b–28a)
On the competent doctor (dar bayān-i ṭabīb-i ḥādhiqni ayturlar) (f. 28a)
On the fact of setting out on the path of God (dar bayān-i rāh-i ḥaqq
kirmek) (ff. 28b–29a)
On the book of advice for the lord (dar bayān-i pand-i ṣāḥib kitāb)
(ff. 29a–30a)
On divine precepts (dar bayān-i farāʾiḍhānï ayturlar) (ff. 30a–b)
On vain possessions and on obedience (dar bayān-i maghrūr māl wa
ṭāʿat) (ff. 30b–31b)
On the virtue of the ulamas (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i ʿulamānï ayturlar)
(ff. 31a–32b)
On the fact of coveting and of borrowing from a ‘nouveau-riche’ (dar
bayān-i ṭamʿ qïlmaq wa yangi bāydïn qarḍ almaq) (ff. 32b–34a)
Advice for the learned (bu faṣlda naṣīḥat-i ahl-i dānālarnï ayturlar)
(ff. 34a–b)
On just sovereigns and unjust sovereigns (bu faṣlda pādishāh-i ʿādil wa
pādishāh-i ẓālimni aytur) (ff. 34b–35a)
On the order and the prohibition (dar bayān-i amr wa nahīnï ayturlar)
(ff. 35b–36b)
On the succession of times (dar bayān-i tajdīd-i dawr) (ff. 36b–37a)
On the duty of the peasant (dar bayān-i niyat-i dihqān) (ff. 37a–38a)
On the condition of the artisan (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i kāsib) (ff. 38a–b)
On the knowledge of mankind (dar bayān-i ādam shināslïq) (ff. 38b–
39b)
On the fact of abstaining from good and evil actions (bu faṣlda yakhshï
wa yaman ishlärdin parhīz qïlmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 39b–40b)
108 Chapter 3

On the benefits of the morning (bu faṣlda khāṣiyat-i ṣubḥnï ayturlar)

(ff. 41b–42b)
On the satisfaction of spirits (dar bayān-i rāḍī shudan-i arwāḥlarnï aytur-
lar) (ff. 42b–43a)
On the journey of the companion (dar bayān-i rāh-i hamrāhnï ayturlar)
(ff. 43a–44a)
On the fact of finding a guide (bu faṣlda bir rāhbarnï tapmaqnï ayturlar)
(ff. 44b–45b)
On the fact of being liberated from society and being close to God (bu
faṣlda jamʿiyatdïn khālī bolup ḥaqqgha yaʿqīn bolmaqnï aytur) (ff. 45b–
46b)
On the spiritual states of the shaykh (aḥwāl-i shaykhni aytur) (ff. 46b–
47b)
On the quest for God (bu faṣlda ḥaqq ṭalablïqlarnï aytur) (ff. 47b–48b)
On the spiritual states of the Sufis (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i ṣūfīlar) (ff. 48b–
49b)
On the harmful ego (dar bayān-i nafs-i bad ayturlar) (ff. 49b–51a)
On hajjis (dar bayān-i ḥājjīlarnïng bayānï) (ff. 51a–b)
On the fact of managing without attachment (bu faṣlda taʿalluqdïn kech-
mäkni ayturlar) (ff. 51b–53a)
On presumptuous knowledge (dar bayān-i ʿilm-i gharūrnï ayturlar)
(ff. 53a–54a)
On those who rely on perfidious people (bu faṣlda bīwafālardïn umīd qïl-
ghanlarnï ayturlar) (ff. 54a–55a)
On the fact of travelling for most souls (bu faṣlda jumla zi jānlar safar
qïlmaqnï ayturlar) (ff. 55a–56b)
On the perfect master (dar bayān-i pīr-i kāmil) (ff. 56b–58b)
On the minor ego and the major ego (dar bayān-i nafs-i ṣaghīr wa kabīr)
(ff. 58b–60a)
On the condition of the tomb (dar bayān-i aḥwāl-i qabr) (ff. 60a–61a)
On the good and the bad times (dar bayān-i nīk wa bad dawrānnï aytur)
(ff. 61b–62b)
On the knowledge of all things by oneself (bu faṣlda barcha sheyni özidin
yakhshï bilmäk) (ff. 62b–64b)
On the drunkenness of the judge and of the mufti (dar bayān-i mastlïq-i
qāḍī wa muftī) (ff. 64b–70a)
On the traveller of strangeness (dar bayān-i musāfir-i gharībnï aytur)
(ff. 70a–74a)
On the virtue of love (dar bayān-i faḍīlat-i ʿishq) (ff. 74a–75a)
In The Ruins Of Aksu 109

On the fact of finding no solution to death (bu faṣlda ölümgä chāra tap-
maslïqnï aytur) (ff. 75a–77a)
On Khidr (dar bayān-i khwāja-yi Khiḍr ʿalayhi al-salām) (ff. 77a–79a)
On the blow of fate (dar bayān-i sar zanish-i dunyā) (ff. 79a–80b)
On familial duty (dar bayān-i ṣila-yi raḥim) (ff. 80b–81b)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 81b–83a)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 83a–84b)
On the involuntary servant (dar bayān-i bī ikhtiyār banda) (ff. 85a–86b)
On the riff-raff (dar bayān-i körügär) (ff. 86b–87a)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 87a–88a)
On those who put their trust in superficial people (bu faṣlda ahl-i
dunyāgha wa ʿumrgha iʿtimād qïlghanlarnï aytur) (ff. 88a–90b)
On vain religious knowledge and on knowledge of the spiritual states (bu
faṣlda maghrūr ʿilm-i qāl wa ʿilm-i ḥālnï ayturlar) (ff. 90b–92b)
On inactive ulamas (bu faṣlda ʿulamā-yi bī ʿamallarnï ayturlar) (ff. 92b–
93a)
On the poet (bu faṣlda shāʿirning bayānï) (ff. 93a–94b)
On the guides of caravans (bu faṣlda kārwānlarnï ötkänlärni aytur)
(ff. 94b–96a)
On the perfidious world (bu faṣlda jahān-i bīwafānï ayturlar) (ff. 96a–98a)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (f. 98a)
On love (bu faṣlda ʿishqnï ayturlar) (ff. 98a–100a)
On asceticism and on piety (bu faṣlda zuhd wa taqwānï ayturlar) (ff. 100a–
102a)
On the world that is deceptive and full of knaves (bu faṣlda dunyā-yi
makkār wa pur ʿayyārnï ayturlar) (ff. 102a–104a)
On the people of the tale-tellers (bu faṣlda khalq-i ghammāzlarnï aytur-
lar) (ff. 104a–107a)
On the sinner’s fear (bu faṣlda khawf dar jānī ayturlar) (ff. 107a–108b)
On the devil who is full of tricks (bu faṣlda iblīs-i pur talbīsnï aytur)
(ff. 108b–111a)
On backgammon, chess and all the members (bu faṣlda nard wa shatranj
wa jamīʿ-i aʿḍānï aytur) (ff. 111a–113b)
On the fast-talking and greedy shaykh (bu faṣlda dīn purūsh wa dunyā
ṭalab shaykhni aytur) (ff. 113b–114b)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 114b–116b)
On he whose prayer is granted (bu faṣlda mustajāb-i duʿānï ayturlar)
(ff. 116b–118a)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 118a–120a)
110 Chapter 3

On the fact of denying faith in anger (bu faṣlda khashmlïqda īmānnï yoq
qïlmaqnï aytur) (ff. 120a–122b)
On the manner of thinking the world (bu faṣlda andīsha-yi dunyā kayfi-
yatïnï aytur) (ff. 122b–126b)
On hell and on heaven (bu faṣlda dūzakh wa bihishtni ayturlar) (ff. 126b–
129a)
Oraison (munājāt) (ff. 129a–131a)
On spiritual states that come from obscurity (bu faṣlda qaradaghï aḥwāl­
larnïng bayānï) (ff. 131a–133a)
Anecdote (ḥikāyat) (ff. 133a–134a)
On the law, on the path, and on truth (bu faṣlda sharīʿat wa ṭarīqat wa
ḥaqīqatnï ayturlar) (ff. 134a–135b)
On the fact of being admitted to the intercession of the Prophet (bu
faṣlda shafāʿat-i rasūl Allāhgha maqbūl bolmaqnï aytur) (ff. 135b–137a)
On the benefits of the ‘in the name of God’ (bu faṣlda bismillāhnïng
khāṣiyatlarï bayānïnï aytur) (ff. 137a–140a)
On the manner of good and bad actions (bu faṣlda yakhshï wa yaman
ishlärning kayfiyatïnï aytur) (ff. 140a–141b)
On the struggle against one’s own ego (bu faṣlda öz nafs birlä jang qïl-
maqnï ayturlar) (ff. 141b–142b)
On the spiritual state of those who give donations to grievers (bu faṣlda
isqaṭīlarnïng aḥwāllarnï ayturlar) (ff. 142b–151b)
On the fact of one’s life passing quickly (bu faṣlda ʿumrnï chust birlä ötkär-
mäkni aytur) (ff. 151b–153b)
On the arithmetic of body and soul (bu faṣlda ḥisāb-i tan wa jānnï aytur-
lar) (ff. 153b–157b)
On the gnosis of gnostics (bu faṣlda ʿāriflär maʿrifatïnïng bayānïnï aytur)
(ff. 157b–160b)
On the gnosis of subsistance (bu faṣlda maʿrifat-i rizqni ayturlar)
(ff. 160b–163a)
On the virtue of hospitality (bu faṣlda faḍīlat-i mihmān aytïp durlar)
(ff. 163a–165a)
On children and on thieves (bu faṣlda ṭifllär wa oghrïlarnï ayturlar)
(ff. 165a–168a)
On fine ignorant fellows (bu faṣlda ʿishqbāz-i nādānlarnï ayturlar)
(ff. 168a–173b)
On the beautiful voice (dar bayān-i āwāz-i khūshnïng bayānï) (ff. 173b–
174a)
Invocation (munājāt) (ff. 174a–b)
In The Ruins Of Aksu 111

On the five prayers (bu faṣlda besh waqt namāznïng bayānïnï aytur)
(ff. 174b–176b)
On servants intimate with God who go to paradise (bu faṣlda ḥaqq
taʿālāgha yaqīn bandalar jannatgha barmaqnïng bayānï) (ff. 177a–180b)
On the dhikr of idiots and of intelligent people (bu faṣlda aḥmaq wa
dānālarnïng dhikrini bayān qïldïlar) (ff. 180b–185a)
On the commandment (bu faṣlda sarwarlïqnïng bayānï aytur) (ff. 185a–
190a)
On the complete spirit and the incomplete spirit (bu faṣlda ʿaql-i kull wa
ʿaql-i juzwīnï aytur) (ff. 190a–194a)
On the ego gifted with love (bu faṣlda ʿishq birlä nafsnï ayturlarnïng
bayānï) (ff. 194a–197a)
On the fact of opening one’s eyes and seeking a guide (bu faṣlda köz achïp
bir rāhbarnï izlämäkni aytur) (ff. 197a–201a)
On being drunk on the wine of love (bu faṣlda may-i maḥabbatnïng mas-
tlïqnï ayturlar) (ff. 201a–207a)
On the perfidiousness of the world (bu faṣlda dunyānïng bīwafālïqïnï ay-
turlar) (ff. 207a–b)
On the date in conclusion (bu faṣlda khātimada tārīkhnïng bayānïnï qïlïp-
durlar) (ff. 207b–210b)

To start with, let us read the incipit and three chapters from the beginning of
the mathnawī, setting aside the prayers, the praises for the Prophet and a few
other passages. Kharābātī begins with an invocation10:

State your praises: O perfect God

You, of the pure men who have suffered so

Creator, I have seen your un-countable creation

There is nothing that could equal you

Your essence is beyond imagination

Your heavens are beyond reason

From the elements you made mankind

Some like demons, others born of a siren

The sky without a tent, ground with no tapes

You have built these two worlds without haste

10 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 1b–2a.

112 Chapter 3

You have equipped the sky with stars

To light up the night and say ‘behold’

To the earth you bring plenty

And the earth made men happy

‘Whatever the being that breathes

We have never reduced what it receives’

You have given your gifts to all souls

Lavished meat on all human souls

Lord, night and day are the same for you

Forgiving your servant is easy for you

The bird of the soul will fly to paradise

The tongue will begin to sing your praises

You made mankind to look handsome

You made the spirit man’s companion

You have laid bait to trap mankind

You have tamed the ego of mankind

You gave to mankind a place in the world

And joy in the delights of the world

The soul became a lure, in the end

And man came into the world just then

The world was a place of grief for man,

Night and day, pain, violence and abuse afflict man

He remained always in this grieving world

For three hundred years mourned his distance from God

Providence, your decree was thus

O Creator, your decision was thus

For reasonable people the world is pain

In The Ruins Of Aksu 113

For the unreasonable the world is fine

The world will be a dungeon for the reasonable man

There a scourge will befall the reasonable man

Kharābātī, from today your body in torment

Will crumble in suffering and bewilderment

What is most striking in these introductory verses is the simplicity, of style as

of language. The poet of Aksu composes verses that are stripped of complex
imagery or syntactical virtuosity. His vocabulary is, in the final analysis, limit-
ed; it is probably quite close to the eastern Turkish that was spoken in the oases
of Kashgaria and elsewhere, with the support of a few Persianisms. Rather
than deducing from these characteristics a lack of literary quality, we should
perceive origins, and intentions, that are essentially popular: Kharābātī, the
village imam, gets straight to the point.11 In addition, while one finds here
the classic ritornello of the tragic cycle, following creation with separation and
the despair it evokes in God’s creatures, hopeless of ever being reunited, there
is also a consistent and profound sentiment of unalterable pessimism. This is
confirmed in the succeeding text, in the chapter called ‘Advice for Turks and
Tajiks’ (naṣīḥat-i turk wa tājik)12:

This advice is for the descendants, all of them

Arabs, Turks, Tajiks, all of them

Just think for a moment, senseless men

The world was never your true friend

All who leave it long for it

All who remain suffer for it

Up against the world, pride won’t last long

Believe me, by the end you will not be so strong

11 In Älanur Yusup, “‘Kulliyat mäsnawi Kharabati’ wä uning ilham mänbäsi ‘hädis’tä

ipadilängän ijtimayi äkhlaqi qarashlar toghrisida’,” Bulaq 6 (2010): 76–92, there is a (very
accurate) mention of the frequent references by Kharābātī to this or that hadith. Unfortu-
nately, the author attributes to the scholarship of a humanist intellectual a cast of mind
that, in fact, arises merely from the traditional education of an imam.
12 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 9a–10b.
114 Chapter 3

Don’t expect a promise from this rotting world

Don’t take heart’s evil and make it good

Don’t bring your heart to this world without faith

Don’t banish from your heart religion and faith

Let not falseness give joy to you

Waste not the faith that lives in you

He who gives and then carries his heart to the world

Will, to no one’s surprise, go to hell

Rejoice not in the world’s good things

Freedom from torment lies in renouncing

Never be heedless in the world for one minute

Make your devotion promptly, be not sluggish in it

Heedlessness engulfs the whole world

It will drown mankind, come the end of the world

Old people can never be young again

Contrition means nothing if it comes at the end

Don’t let your mind wander, day or night

Don’t forget death for a single minute

Unhook the heart that hangs from the world

And free yourself from pain here and in the beyond

O brother, the world is not to be trusted

Give it your heart and you’ll be disappointed

This world oppresses a hundred thousand souls

It is the mother of every revolt

Never forget God, day or night

Forget the world, each day, each night

This world is the cause of all ways of hating

In The Ruins Of Aksu 115

Give it your heart and know the darkness of hurting

(…)

Kharābātī, don’t embrace the world

Don’t ever forget death

Here the term āl does not primarily mean the dynasty or the family, but rather
human groups in general, diverse Arab, Turkish or Tajik lineages whose ethnic
identity is not mentioned. The author is addressing peoples and individuals,
broadcasting his advice to the anonymous crowd and aiming far beyond the
princely public for whom the naṣīḥa, the mirror of princes, is generally writ-
ten.13 Is what he is offering really ‘advice’ in the strictest sense? The reader is in
fact discovering repetitive maxims, quasi-aphorisms that seem to be intended
rather to be listened to than to be read; they are easy to remember and their
meaning is clear. Anaphora works to underline what the author proposes and
to help memorise it. Kharābātī insists on the fact that one must forget the
world and think only of God. There is an elementary mysticism trying to ap-
pear here, in spite of the crepuscular predispositions evident in the text. The
following parts of the mathnawī, in particular the chapters on cruelty (dil
āzārī) and on goodness (yakhshïlïq), may have something of the appearance of
moral teachings, but here again at first glance the real matter is mystical. Here
is what is said on the subject of cruelty14:

Those who seek to cause harm

Have undoubtedly renounced God

Who makes hearts suffer, in his heart will suffer

The lord of hell will make him suffer

He who insults the impoverished

God will undoubtedly curse him

He who harms the innocent orphan

Feels the wrath of earth, heaven and the divine throne

13 See, for example, Alexandre Papas, “Islamic Brotherhoods in Sixteenth Century Central
Asia: the Dervish, the Sultan, and the Sufi Mirror for Princes,” in Faith’s Boundaries: Laity
and Clergy in Early Modern Confraternities, eds. Nicola Terpstra, Adriano Prosperi and Ste-
fania Pastoria (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 209–31.
14 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 11a–b.
116 Chapter 3

Do not cause pain for anyone else

Do not strike back at yourself

He who renounces his own life

Will suffer forever among the beasts

For he has caused such pain, and has no faith left

For this man’s sickness no remedy is left

The good man who commits evil acts

Digs a chasm right across his path

Don’t do what’s bad, do what is good

Do not make your bad case worse

O friend, whoever breaks your heart

Will have to make his excuses to God

O son, do not impose suffering on the living

Or you will never encounter heaven

(…)

Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice?

With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

Kharābātī’s injunctions are aimed at everyone, bad people as well as good, un-
known people as well as those close to him. These pleas to avoid spreading evil
or injustice certainly do recall the standard exhortations to morality and
threats of divine punishment for those who ignore them, but they also point
an accusing finger at the ordinary cruelty of society, and do so in the name of
the mystical ambition that must animate each individual. This poet, disguised
as a judge, now demands justice and goodness15:

If you want to be delivered, O friend,

Good in this world you must spread

If someone is habitually liberal

15 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 11b–13a.

In The Ruins Of Aksu 117

He will be respected by other people

For those who don’t see the finality of each action

Seeing does not mean paying attention

Make a servant of yourself, O brother,

Bow yourself down with ardour

If someone does good or bad works

What he has sown he will harvest

Whoever rebels puts the king to pillage

And will be chased away from his village

All acts of a being encounter frustration

Let him give himself to adoration

(…)

Don’t throw stones at the child or the madman

Don’t give away your secret to bad men

First, pay the creature-debt

Then obey God’s precept

Old or young, swallow your anger

He is saved who swallows his anger

The one who turns his face from God

His breath will turn against him

(…)

To become a dervish, your efforts must be multiplied

To become wounded, your repentance must be multiplied

He whose behaviour in the lodge is right

Is crowned by God, this is no surprise

To those who disobey among men

Closed is the door of repose and esteem
118 Chapter 3

He who gives his heart elsewhere than to God

Marks his own face with a curse in code

(…)

He who disobeys the ego, brave is he

A sultan among creatures in the next world will he be

Renouncing ego, at peace will he be

Among both worlds’ creatures a beggar is he

Can one appease the lusted-after ego?

Can the heart be protected from its ego?

Every man who is content in God

Submits to the Prophet Muḥammad

Ask and ask again, ask more

Ask everything of God, ask more

The careless man lives all his life without knowing

But you must pray to God night and morning

Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice?

With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

The order to behave properly has, paradoxically, no effectiveness until the con-
sciousness of the nullity of all actions has been awakened, so that the very
meaning of the ‘proper’ actions loses any validity. There is therefore no real
moral content here; absolute disillusion leads directly to devotion. Kharābātī
never hesitates in his verdict: each human creature is condemned to the mysti-
cal life, to becoming a dervish, to renouncing the world, if he is to have any
hope of eventually returning to his Creator. At heart he has no need to claim
the support of any authority, of a brotherhood, a genealogy, since none of these
institutions is cited in this text. All that survives of the vast enterprise of purga-
tion is the dialogue between the poet and his listeners (regardless of the
speechlessness of the latter and the doubts of the former).
Of what form of Sufism does this mathnawī speak? Hörmätjan Fikrät has
shown that the collection uses all of the mystical allegories of classical poet-
ry (love, the lover, wine, drunkenness, etc.), as well as the Sufi technical vo-
In The Ruins Of Aksu 119

cabulary (the battle against the ego, spiritual states, the dhikr, etc.).16 We are
certainly dealing with a Sufi text, written by an author so well versed in Sufism
that some called Kharābātī ‘the child of Mawlānā Rūmī’ (farzand-i Mawlānā
Rūmī), even though there is no real comparison between the two mathnawī.
We must also mention a commentary (sharḥ) on Kharābātī’s mathnawī,
which forms the first part of a manuscript of this very mathnawī, as copied in
1304–1305/1906–1907 and preserved in Tashkent (shelved under IVAN Uz 5938).17
This commentary, entitled Turkī-yi Kharābātī (Kharābātī’s Turkish) but also
Risāla-yi dar ḥaqīqat-i faqr (Treatise on the truth of poverty) strives to explain
the concept of poverty (faqr). It also makes allusions to Kharābātī’s proximity
to the Naqshbandiyya Sufi path in verses that repeat some of the eleven
Naqshbandī teachings, such as ‘the attention paid to steps’ (naẓar bar qadam)
and ‘the journey to the homeland’ (safar dar waṭan); this is a system of refer-
ences that is already found in ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī.18 However, although in the case
of ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī the affiliation to the largest ṭarīqat of Central Asia is certain,
the ‘brotherhood’ identity of Kharābātī is perplexing, since we can find no ex-
isting trace of any affiliation. It seems that in the real world and far from any
Sufi brotherhoods, and even from any informal but well-defined groups – and
consequently also far from the specialist representations of Muslim mysticism
that reduces them to modalities of affiliation, succession and lineage­– Kharā­
bātī’s Sufism springs from a socio-religious current made up of relatively mar-
ginal, though popular, figures, whose principle teachings focus on radical
renunciation and even on existential wandering. This current in Sufi thinking,
which took the medieval name of Qalandariyya, was certainly strong in eastern
Turkestan during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition to
these contextual details, we must add two indicators: first, our poet’s chosen
pen-name comes from the term kharābāt, meaning, as we have seen, the ruin,
but also the tavern, the brothel. This word is part of the preferred vocabulary of
the Central Asian Qalandars, following the Persian mystical poets of the mid-
dle ages. Second, the manuscript of the above-mentioned mathnawī includes a
treatise on spiritual poverty, corresponding to the genre of faqrnāma, or book

16 Hörmätjan Fikrät, “Harobotii va uning ‘masnavii Harobotii’ asari,” Imom al-Buhoriy

sabo­qlari 2–3 (2003): 115–16; id., “Rumii va Harobotii,” O’zbek tili va adabiyoti 5 (2003):
46–49; id., “Mäsnäwi Khärabati’diki täsäwwupi obraz wä timsalar,” Bulaq 2 (2007): 49–58;
id., “Mäsnäwi Khärabati’din,” Bulaq 4 (2007): 5–30; id., Khärabati wä uning ädäbi mirasi
(Urumqi: Shinjang Universiteti Näshriyati, 2011). This last item is a book presenting a syn-
thesis of the preceding articles and much complementary material, the second part of
which is a version of the mathnawī, unfortunately without a listing of the original chap-
ters.
17 Hörmätjan Fikrät, “‘Shärhi Khärabati’ häqqidä däsläpki mulahizä,” Bulaq 6 (2009): 79–82.
18 Marc Toutant, Un Empire de mots, passim.
120 Chapter 3

of poverty, that was very popular among Indian and Central Asian Qalandars.
These different indications lead one to believe that Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh
Kharābātī belonged to this current of Sufism, even though he did not wander
and apparently remained sedentary. A paradoxical figure, this dervish imam of
Choghtal was as radical as he was close to the community, as vindictive as he
was accessible to the faithful – in sum, he was a person on the margins.

2 To Peasants, Artisans, Doctors and the Powerful

In the absence of any mention by our author of the earthquake that destroyed
Aksu in 1716 it is nonetheless plausible to follow the thread of the theme of
devastation in his work, in order to understand what Kharābātī is saying about
the society and times he lives in, and the world that surrounds him. In order to
make a comparison, one may put these descriptions side-by-side with those in
a contemporary document composed in Ottoman Istanbul, the Risāle-yi
gharībe, or treatise of curiosities.19 Here, in the context of imperial decline and
popular anger, the anonymous author presents an image of a decadent capital,
reeling off a long sequence of short sentences that mock different social groups
– religious figures, judges, the military, civil servants, merchants, etc.
The verses that follow throughout our third chapter are more than poems:
they are predications, and less comical than those in the Ottoman anthology,
often fiery and sometimes somber.20 Let us begin with a generalising section,
called ‘On the knowledge of mankind’21:

Know the human condition, O seer of mankind

Without hesitation measure all its many kinds

Some have a heart that’s a dense treasure

Some have a heart that’s a heavy sorrow

Some have a heart like a bird

Some have a heart like a reptile

19 Lāṭifī, Eloge d’Istanbul, suivi de Traité de l’invective (anonyme), trans. Stéphane Yerasimos
(Paris: Sindbad, 2001), 145–79.
20 A comparable passage of oral and written predication can be observed, for example, in
the life and several of the works of Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī (d. 910/1505), although Kharābātī
probably did not compose the order of his mathnawī himself. See Jean Calmard, “Les rit-
uels shiites et le pouvoir. L’imposition du shiisme safavide,” 131.
21 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 38b–39b.
In The Ruins Of Aksu 121

Some have a heart that’s a running horse

Some have a heart that’s a running bull

Some have a heart that’s a beautiful palace

Some have a heart like the moon’s halo

Some have a heart like a rose garden

Some have a heart like a furnace

Some have a heart like a ruin

Some have a heart like a butterfly

Some have perfume for a heart

Some have a foul stench for a heart

Some have a heart that’s fairest of all

Some have a heart that’s darkest of all

Some have a heart like running water

Some have a heart like stagnant water

Some have a heart that’s as light as day

Some have a heart that’s as dark as night

Some have beauty for a heart

Some have a home for a heart

Some have a heart like a drinking den

Some have a heart like a temple full of idols

Some have a heart like a tomb

Some have a heart like a bazaar

(…)

When he is exposing the human condition (khalqnïng ḥālï) to his listeners,

Kharābātī divides it into two contrasting tendencies, with the heart acting as
a synecdoche for personalities. If at first glance the anthropology of our der-
vish looks dully Manichean, an interpretation of his metaphors allows us to
refine our reading. Thus the ‘dense treasure’ is the force of the soul; the ‘bird’
122 Chapter 3

is enthusiasm; the ‘running horse’ is impetuousness; the (night) ‘butterfly’

(parwāna) is versatility; the ‘stagnant water’ is indolence; the ‘bazaar’ is vain
agitation; the ‘drinking den’ symbolises mystical emotiveness; the ‘temple full
of idols’ (obviously) represents the propensity to idolatry. Finally, ruin or deso-
lation (wayrāna) signifies consciousness of infinitude. These pairs are there to
remind one, because of the ambivalence of their metaphorical meanings, that
precisely complementary couplings of verses are not quite what they seem,
and that human nature, whatever it amounts to, must be examined critically.
Other sections of the text are explicitly social. One of these speaks ‘on the
duty of the peasant’22:

Peasant, do your duty, sow the food

Sowing it, drought’s avoided, duty’s good

If the peasant is true to his good intentions

Crops will never fail, peace upon him!

If he sows the crops with bad intentions

There won’t be a harvest, drought will come

Ill-will reduces wealth,

Thus, only the few will eat

Peasant, give bread aplenty, without reluctance

An open door means refuge without reluctance

If you give bread without reluctance

You shall be freed from the fires of hell, amen!

See that peasant hypocrite giving his bread

On Judgement Day he shall be black with shame

This peasant has always known evil intent

Corrupt, his life with bad people spent

If the peasant follows this advice

Each grain will give eleven harvests

22 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 37a–38a.

In The Ruins Of Aksu 123

(…)

To high folk and low: put discord behind you

For discordant people heaven is denied too

If he renounces discord he’s admitted

From then on, his place in heaven’s given

The dishonest plotter is despised in both worlds

Intriguers are ignored by God

May he repent his faults, this grateful man

He will be freed from hell, this meek man

(…)

Here Kharābātī reminds the peasants who make up the overwhelming major-
ity of the population of his times of their duty to labour with good intentions;
he makes the very abundance of the earth depend on their generosity of spirit,
which is a sort of rural piety without which drought and famine would ensue.23
Towards the end of the chapter, he makes his proposals more general when he
declares his fear that high and low (the elite and the masses, khāṣṣ ū ʿām) are
just a bunch of intriguers (fitnachï). His thinking runs along the same lines
when he speaks ‘On the condition of the artisan’24:

(…)

Know religion and display your skill

Give yourself to God, give all for Him

Does the artisan’s heart rejoice in God?

God will make him prosper in both worlds

It’s good to make your art within the law

Your work will come alive and be sought out

23 This link between piety and the abundance of the harvest is also found in the manuals
(risāla) of agrarian corporations in Central Asia, at least since the nineteenth century. See
Jeanine Elif Dağyeli, ‘Gott liebt das Handwerk’. Moral, Identität und religiöse Legitimierung
in der mittelasiatischen Handwerks-risāla (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2011), 125.
24 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 38a–b.
124 Chapter 3

The man who never stays long in any place

Will suffer in his heart if he does stay

In wandering every person finds some joy

The heart becomes akin to a rainbow

The wanderer’s every step will polish his heart

If he had to stop somewhere he’d suffer

Whoever travels has a sweeter scent

Like running water also smells so sweet

If this water stagnates it is foul

He who’s stuck for long is foul as well

He who remains at home remains in suffering

He who remains abroad remains in health

(…)

Even more than he is defending religious law and devotion, Kharābātī seems
here to be promoting the artisan’s initiatic wanderings, without which these
men would be condemned to incompetence and decrepitude. One must, in
addition, understand the individual or collective travelling of the artisans
in two concrete senses: as the migratory expression of their livelihoods, and
as pilgrimages to the shrines of their patron saints.25 There is another social
category exposed to Kharābātī’s critical eye, that of the ‘competent doctor’26:

Not all doctors are to be trusted, O sufferer

He will kill you with his cure

The wise doctor is the one with the right potion

The medical tyrant is the one who offers poison

Understand that you must not need a doctor

Eat little, speak rarely, sleep little

25 Jeanine Elif Dağyeli, ‘Gott liebt das Handwerk’, 90–94, 198; also Asta Olesen, Afghan Crafts-
men, 68–70
26 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, f. 28a.
In The Ruins Of Aksu 125

Whoever has a strange habit of breath

Incessant malediction coats his head

If one breathes too oddly, faith escapes

Then souls can get lost among those of no faith

O my people, don’t you breathe too strangely

If someone does, don’t approach him too closely

There is no grace for one who breathes strangely

He will stay in hell perpetually

If a person says strange things

No wonder God reproaches him!

This astrologer is the village’s idiot

The fortune-teller is its lunatic

Ah, prudence, prudence, prudence!

If he breathes oddly, avoid him

He who breathes strangely is a sinner

Know this, he is an imposter

If he breathes oddly, hit him on the head

Do not pour your mercy on his head

The careless man lives and knows nothing

Day or night, avoid strange breathing

Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice?

With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

Although Kharābātī is wary of doctors, the incompetent among whom he iden-

tifies with astrologers (munajjim) and pseudo-diviners (literally ‘scapuli­mancy’,
daluchï), he reserves his greatest mistrust for people whose illness makes them
breathe strangely (ghaybdin dam urmaq) – they terrify him. Caught between
his belief in a malediction that ‘coats (yaghïlur) [the] head’ and his fear of con-
tagion, the dervish limits himself to prescribing a hygiene that is very close to
126 Chapter 3

asceticism. Closer to what we expect but no less acerbic is the chapter entitled
‘On just sovereigns and unjust sovereigns’27:

O king, ask after your people

Render justice with affection

Be attentive to the condition of the people

Be a just shah in both worlds

Oppress too much and lose your power

Laugh too much and lose your honour

O king, think lofty and humble thoughts

Do not lead your kingdom to loss

The just shah is a boon to the city

The unjust shah is a sorrow for the city

The just shah brings benefits to the city

The unjust shah brings sorrows to the city

The just shah serves the law

The unjust shah serves chaos

O king, be resolute in the law

Don’t inflict suffering in both worlds

O king, be a shah but be virtuous

In this world be also pious

For the king there is nothing better than justice

For the king so many actions are requisite

O king, do not spend your life in ignorance,

Life in this world gives you no second chance

(…)

27 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 34b–35a.

In The Ruins Of Aksu 127

Faithful to the traditional discourse of Persian moralia, Kharābātī celebrates

the virtues that a sovereign needs. But he adopts a tone that sounds more like
a non-negotiable injunction than a gentle moral lesson. And his preaching be-
comes even more aggressive when the subject is ‘the fast-talking and greedy
shaykh’28:

O son, keep your distance from smooth talkers

Avoid braggarts and smooth talkers

These fast talkers are dishonest folk

They will end up like wild boars

There was once a saint in his time among folk

He understood not the profit or loss of God

His name was Balʿam Bāʿūr

His reputation was forever ruined

On his back this shaykh wore beautiful clothes

He was never able to be free from his ego

He said supererogatory prayers for the folk

But they never obtained the mercy of God

He resolved the problems that people had

By asking after the desires of each man

Moses agreed to lay siege to this town

With his tribe he marched on this town

The townspeople then informed this shaykh

They gave gold and silver to this shaykh

From that moment, Balʿam Bāʿūr rejoiced

He hid the townsfolk from Moses

From that moment Balʿam set God’s anger afoot

As though struck by a curse, he was cast out

28 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 113a–114b.

128 Chapter 3

He who out of self-interest prays

Will be turned into Christian or Guebre that day

Those who out of self-interest pray

Will immediately be reduced to a dog’s estate

(…)

Kharābātī resembles Nawāʾī in this respect, that he scorns false spiritual mas-
ters, corrupt saints, too-beautiful preachers. Attacks on such targets, even if
they have near-classic status in Sufi literature overall, take place here in the
heart of the historical period that was classified as the golden age of saints;
Kharābātī’s unusually hostile attitude gives us a good idea of the provocative
verbal violence of our Aksu dervish, observer of a deliquescent world. The leg-
end of Balʿam Baʿūr may allude to some saint of the period, with the aim of
discrediting him: featuring in the old testament and then mentioned in the
Quran (7:175–6) and taken up by Sufi tradition, Balʿam was accorded signs from
God but then turned away and pursued the path of Satan, losing his status to
the extent that he was as low as a base dog. His guilt functions as a negative
symbol, of ignorance and of the triumph of worldly things over religious vir-
tue.29

3 The Call to Renunciation

Kharābātī proffers the same message to all of these human natures, all of these
social classes, a message whose mystical and ascetic contents we have already
seen above. This message could be summed up as an expression of a single
ideal, of renunciation, touched by a frank contempt for the world (contemptus
mundi), a doctrine studied by Robert Bultot30 and which Islam has also consid-
ered. The chapter ‘On the fact of one’s life passing quickly’31 contains the fol-
lowing precepts:

O grandfather, understand well these words

Don’t waste your life in this world

29 Faramarz Haj Manouchehri and Mushegh Asatryan, “Balʿam Bāʿūr,” Encyclopaedia Islami-
ca, BrillOnline.
30 Robert Bultot, La Doctrine du mépris du monde, en Occident, de Saint Ambroise à Innocent
III, le XIe siècle (Leuven: Nauwelaerts, 1963).
31 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 151b–153b.
In The Ruins Of Aksu 129

Live your life fast, like a bolt of lightning

You will not slide into ignorance and not caring

Life goes by as fast as a lightning bolt

Whoever doesn’t know this is just a dolt

Each morning is the rising sun’s moment

All speak their repentance at this very moment,

The sun attains its perfection at midday

From then on it sets stage by stage

And everyone stops repenting

This is why night and day are vanishing

O brother, understand aright these words!

You ought never to pass your days in work

You ought never to pass your life without obeying God

You ought never to face death without repentance

If the old man shows zeal in obedience

His urge to rebel will disappear at that moment

All the world is busy with a task

Some accept and some refuse their task

Those who disobey insult God

Their mouths will fill up with stones and clods

Understand this advice if you are aging!

You live long, give yourself to praying!

If you are aging, choose spiritual retreat

Don’t debase yourself in the crowd, among people

Old men are indecent in the throng

And the people weigh on them in the throng

Old man, may you honour the masters of old!

May retreat become your secret home!
130 Chapter 3

If in your life you reach the age of ten

Then begin to submit to God

If in your life you reach the age of twenty

Then begin to know God

O brother, if you reach the age of thirty

Prostrate yourself continually

Whoever suddenly attains forty years

Repent and turn away from ignorance

If a man’s years pass the number of fifty

Distance yourself from the world of ‘me’

If someone’s life arrives at sixty years

This person abstains from life’s pleasures

O brother, if you reach the age of seventy

While weeping, sigh copiously

If one becomes old, one must have aspirations

One must be worthy of God and submission

(…)

If by aspiration a king is never moved

The beggar and his aspiration are worth more

He who is without aspiration remains impure

Every hair on his body stands for lack of faith

(…)

Young or old, unceasingly seek aspiration!

High aspiration is a mark of satisfaction

High aspiration is the attribute of ʿAlī

This is why he became the Lion of God
In The Ruins Of Aksu 131

In the town of Khaybar lived a beggar who could not see

He begged for bread from ʿAlī

ʿAlī’s aspiration was set free

Forty golden camels to the beggar gave he

(…)

The poet’s pessimism expresses the existence of human life as a brief moment,
essentially without any more content than a single day. Since a life without
lasting worship is not worth more than a single day, Kharābātī goes so far as to
disqualify any profane activity, as typified by the peasant’s labour in the field
(kisht kār); this is a reference to the earlier social subject, peasants. What fol-
lows is a list of man’s ages that assigns meaning to each only through devotion;
the summit of these life stages is old age. At this point it is time to retire from
the world (khalwat) and venerate the spiritual masters (pīr). The second part of
this section introduces the concept of aspiration, of the spiritual ideal (him-
mat), a notion that we have already seen several times. What is particularly
notable here, to our eyes, is the reference to ʿAlī and to his model of sharing and
abnegation, which are equally highly praised in Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s
Qalandarnāma. The following description of life is part of a chapter on death
called ‘On the fact of travelling for most souls’32:

With a single end travel the world over

On such journeys there are many dangers

Son, take not the path with no destination

Don’t become weary, promptly perform your devotions

(…)

O brother, there is no solution to death

All souls are mutilated, afraid of death

There is no remedy for the one sick with dying

This is death, without poison or killing

There is no treatment for the pain that is death

Whether your body’s hot or cold, regardless

32 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 55a–56b.

132 Chapter 3

If death’s soldier approaches a person

No matter what, that man will see no one

Kings and beggars cannot escape this soldier

Kings and beggars are equals against this soldier

(…)

O heedless one, take care of your heart

Go as far as cooking your chest and your heart

O heedless one, if you act right only for today

Your satisfactions will disappear on judgement day

O heedless one, if you take advantage of today

You will be uttering your regrets on the last day

(…)

O heedless one, what remains of Aaron (Hārūn) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Korah (Qārūn) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Moses (Mūsā) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Jesus (ʿĪsā) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Enoch (Idrīs) here?

O heedless one, what remains of George (Jirjīs) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Ishmael (Ismāʿīl) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Saleh (Ṣāliḥ) here?

O heedless one, what remains of Jonah (Yūnus) here?

(…)

Unsurprisingly, Kharābātī continues as before, using an efficient and unor-

namented eloquence to erase any glimmer of hope in the face of death. The
originality of this passage lies in the author’s use of pre-Islamic prophets in
his examples – prophets who themselves have not escaped their final death
knell. It is in the recollection of this perspective, one that allows for no possible
In The Ruins Of Aksu 133

escape, that four additional chapters should be read, the first of which carries
the strange title of ‘On the fact of coveting and of borrowing from a ‘nouveau-
riche’33:

(…)

Be not constantly coveting

Know that your goal has no ending

Don’t go into debt to the parvenu

Understand these words, it’s a duty for you

You shall not touch the bread of another

Nor become emotional over mere provender

This is just carrion, your are a fly on it

There is nothing left but to renounce it

For he who begins taking another man’s bread

Debt and misfortune will rain down on his head

The one who spends all day playing with his child
Will end up by being set aside

Among those with neither continence nor modesty

We can also be certain they have no belief

Adopt proper behaviours with each person

Never reveal a secret to any person

(…)

Give each individual a proper greeting

Hell will be denied you, come the ending

For he who fills his mouth with bad words

Satan has inspired his words

33 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 32b–34a.

134 Chapter 3

You must call on the friend of God

That he may become thy guide

Whoever fears divine power

In all creatures will inspire fear

(…)

The text departs quite quickly from the double problem of borrowing and
debt, in spite of the probably very topical nature of these issues, and concen-
trates instead on covetousness and the broader daily attitude to be taken to-
wards other people. The preaching of Kharābātī, (good dervish that he is)
strikes his listeners with provocations. One must also note that bread (nān) is
a recurring theme in his mathnawī, seen previously in the section on peasants
and that on the himmat of ʿAlī. Bread appears anew in the chapter ‘On the pa-
tient and the impatient ones’34:

All those who promptly carry out God’s order

Know for certain that he is the world’s master

For every misfortune patience is the cure

He who has none is just a fire-worshipper

Whatever happens, God’s decree you must accept

Punishment will come for he who cannot accept

For he who sins, sorrow will strike him

For he who complains, judgement will strike him

For all those who complain to God

Curses shall rain down on their heads

O poor man, take not the bread of the destitute

He who takes their bread shall become destitute

Do not become settled in the web of the spider

Keep this in your heart, it’s advice to remember

34 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 20b–21b.

In The Ruins Of Aksu 135

Spend just what you earn

This is the qadi’s order

The one who delays in obeying divine orders

Know that he is a dullard

(…)

All those who can renounce sexual wishes

Are capable of putting an end to their passions

All those who chose desire

In both worlds will be despised

Trust not any nor every man

Despair not over your isolation from man

Have trust only in God

Set yourself free from all the world

(…)

Rend your chests, O my people

Purify your hearts with zeal

Each man’s pride, which is immense

Finally just means abasement in both worlds

He who knows His greatness knows no obstacle

My God, among the creatures, sets him no obstacle

Whoever speaks with piety

On him my God will doubtless have pity

Seat yourself with the pious ones

Ask for grace like the pious ones

Pious people keep their distance from the impious

Reasonable people stay away from deceivers
136 Chapter 3

The conversation of the impious breeds impiety

Conversation with good sense breeds sincerity

The people that obeys God gains learning

The people that disobeys Him becomes overweening

For he who flees from tyrants,

My God, do not condemn him to hell’s fires

He who serves much knows good fortune

He who refuses to serve knows misfortune

If one gives oneself to servitude, God grants high station

He makes of this ascete a man of Islam

(…)

Kharābātī’s inherent asceticism is at once material, sexual and relational. In

other words, the marginal poet urges his readers to become affiliated to the
margins of society themselves, through poverty, abstinence (ideally through
celibacy), and isolation (or at least keeping exclusively to the company of as-
cetes). The same concern is expressed in the section ‘On the company of super-
ficial people’35:

Do not desire from superficial people their companionship

He who rubs against them will want more of their companionship

If any person becomes devoted to them

He shall be excluded from among God’s friends

Whoever perseveres in his respect of the law

No torment in either world will he know

(…)

His few acts will become prodigies thanks to God

He will receive good omens by the grace of God

35 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 21b–22a.

In The Ruins Of Aksu 137

You must above all be decent

Then generous, devout and benevolent

It is by maintaining probity alongside sincerity

That you avoid betraying this probity

If each person has this awareness of morals

It’s because God, even before eternity, worked miracles

God is qadi for the two worlds

Only believers receive the consent of God

Building on good actions a man becomes a believer

Then in both worlds he may prosper

This man may weep for God’s pity

But God turns away from crybabies

Whosoever longs to resist

By God will soon be cursed

God turns away from moneylenders

As he turns away from drinkers

The futility of all our actions regardless,

‘The best of all men’ [the Prophet] has commanded us

The heedless one lives life knowing nothing

Don’t be futile, night, day or morning

Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice?

With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

Here, note especially the mention of moneylenders or usurers (sūdkhūr), as

well as of drinkers (khamrkhūr), among the unsuitable companions, even if,
ultimately, all heedless figures are condemned. Kharābātī’s incitement to re-
nunciation reaches its final peak with a more concrete call that refers, not to
general behaviour, but to the body – he speaks ‘On the benefits of eating lit-
tle’36:

36 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 16b–17b.

138 Chapter 3

Spend your days without sleep

Don’t spend them in absurdity

Sleep only at the beginning and the end

By your ego be not imprisoned

Don’t trouble yourself to feed your ego to excess

Vice will take you over if you do this

He who eats too much doesn’t become somebody

Because his labours are too shoddy

For those who eat a lot perfection will be lost

For those who eat a lot beauty will be lost

The heart becomes wise if one eats little

The body becomes nothingness if one eats little

The heart is illuminated if one eats little

If one eats too much the heart is blackened

Know that those who suffer a curse

Do so by their full-time negligence

The wing of a bad omen has struck their faces

It may look like a dove but really it’s a raven

Take care not to travel alone

From sages themselves does danger come

Don’t gaze in the mirror every night

Without knowing it, don’t waste your life

In the shadows you will move forward alone

You will obey, once from the mirror you turn

Don’t sit side-by-side with an ignoramus

Don’t hit yourself with your own clenched fists

(…)
In The Ruins Of Aksu 139

Every man’s body is replete with flesh

Making him sick, in its prison enmeshed

If you’re afraid, it’s yourself you must conquer

If you have a request, then God gives the answer

Satan’s battle against faith has this goal

It’s because he wants to steal your soul

O family, the road is long, the burden weighty

How your evenings and mornings seem heavy!

(…)

Such mortifications, affecting the body as well as the ego, are infrequent in
eighteenth century Central Asia, and refer back to medieval ascetic practices
that were later marginalised.37 Here Kharābātī places himself in this radical
lineage. One could object that this is just Sufi rhetoric, as found in other, much
more orthodox and majoritarian sources; this would be to deny the specificity
of this mathnawī and its bare, almost brutal style, which seeks rather to con-
vert than to illustrate. Here the antinomianism of the dervish is affirmed, gorg-
ing itself on imperatives, interjections and counterpositions. It is therefore not
surprising that the verses devoted to language defend its paradoxical usage.

4 On the Paradox of Language

The preceding passages contain a few allusions to the problems of words and
of expression. Like Nawāʾī, of whom one recalls his enjoinders to Sufis to mod-
erate their language as much as their appetites, Kharābātī sets out the exhorta-
tion, ‘Eat little, speak rarely, sleep little’, and adds, ‘Never reveal a secret to any
person’. The dervish must master his words and not combine them with words
that may be harmful, ‘Whoever speaks with piety / On him my God will doubt-
less have pity // Seat yourself with the pious ones / Ask for grace like the pious
ones (…) The conversation of the impious breeds impiety / Conversation with

37 For examples, see: Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 324–25; Qushayrī (d. 465/1074) devotes a
whole chapter of his treatise to the technique for mastering hunger (jūʿ): Abū al-Qāsim
al-Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism. Al-Risala al-qushayriyya fi ‘ilm al-tasawwuf,
trans. Alexander D. Knysh and Muḥammad Eissa (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2007),
157–60.
140 Chapter 3

good sense breeds sincerity’. However, it’s often the opposite that is true: ‘If a
person says strange things / No wonder God reproaches him!’; ‘Those who dis-
obey insult God / Their mouths will fill up with stones and clods’; ‘For he who
fills his mouth with bad words / Satan has inspired his words’. This is not
an issue of the moral decorum of language, as propounded in seventeenth cen-
tury France by Pierre Bayle and Nicolas Boileau38, but concerns rather an asce-
sis of language, based on religious demands. Kharābātī’s chapter ‘On the
indecency that lies in speaking much’ underlines this39:

Ah, prudence, prudence, prudence!

The garrulous merit avoidance

If he speaks too much, he’s in ignorance

None of what he says makes sense

If one is careless of self, one is pretending

Aware of one’s words, one is waking

Words will make him suffer in both worlds

Until the very end he will be crushed by God

(…)

He becomes like a demon if he is garrulous

No longer human, he is monstrous

He who remains silent is the best of men

He who speaks much is the worst of men

(…)

O brother, you have spent your life being ignorant

He who speaks much is damned in the end

Myself, how shall I make hearts rejoice?

With which heart’s pain shall I mourn?

38 Aurelio Principato, Eros, Logos, Dialogos: huit études sur l’énonciation romanesque de
Charles Sorel à Germaine de Staël (Paris: Peeters, 2007), 9–19.
39 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, ff. 25b–26a.
In The Ruins Of Aksu 141

Kharābātī once again expresses his aversion to overflowing speech, not ne-
glecting to include in his attack the people who are responsible for it. Ignorant,
lazy, monstrous (nasnās), demon-like (waswās) – loquacious people will carry
the responsibility for their words down here below as well as in the hereafter,
because language (our author suggests) is a serious business. So serious, in fact,
that language itself not only forbids the dervish from frequenting most of its
users, but also from using it himself, even if he is capable of doing so. This
economy of the spoken, coming close to mutism, reminds one of the rare ex-
amples of mute mystics from the Timurid period, as mentioned above in our
first chapter, who themselves descended from an ancient Sufi tradition.40
There is a new paradox here, in this linguistic regime: Kharābātī the com-
poser of verses does not believe in poets, or at least he is suspicious of many of
them, as affirmed in his chapter ‘On the poet’41:

There are two kinds of poets

Either naturalistic or mystical poets

If the poet a true bard remains

This poet shall be saved from hell, amen!

Full of divine graces the mystical poet is

He will awake in paradise, there is no doubt of this

Very subtle is the poet who’s naturalistic

But the closest to God is the one who’s a mystic

The naturalistic poet loves the natural

But his work shall be destroyed by the natural

The mystical poet receives a divine gift

Partial faith only has the poet who’s naturalistic

Nature makes the naturalist blind

He is always miserable, day and night

The poet is the one who loves song

He draws on the invisible world

40 See especially Hujwīrī, The Kashf al-mahjùb, 355–57; and the chapter devoted to silence
(ṣamt) in Qushayrī, Al-Qushayri’s Epistle on Sufism, 138–42.
41 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, 93a–94b.
142 Chapter 3

(…)

If the poet a true bard remains

No doubt he’ll stay out of hell, amen!

If the poet praises mere creatures

He will never escape hell’s clutches

The naturalist is not a theist, never

If he’s stone it’s not marble, ever

The mystical poet’s sincerity is all

With each breath, crying from the invisible world

Poet, declaim your verses spontaneously

And in this world you will find only rough weeds

Poet, let your verses make you wait

And you will expect God in hope night and day

(…)

Crack open the glass of your being

Then you’ll become a pure being

It is wealth to be among those who are suffering

Whoever is among the people is in suffering

Whoever, like Satan, says, ‘I am the greatest one’

Will end by saying ‘I am the Christian or Zoroastrian’

(…)

The distinction made by Kharābātī comes from a classical pairing in Arabic

literary criticism, which was also taken up in the Turko-Persian world; first, the
natural (ṭabʿ, maṭbūʿ) designates the fluid and direct rapport between writing
and reality that exists when a gifted poet makes such links in a natural way.
What is usually contrasted with this is the artificial (takalluf, mutakallif), in
which the writer gets tangled up in complications and fails to find the most
appropriate word or the image that comes closest to reality.42

42 Jamel Eddine Bencheikh, Poétique arabe, précédée de Essai sur un discours critique (Paris:
Gallimard, 1989), xxxi–xxxii, 81–86; Justine Landau, De Rythme et de raison. Lecture croisée
In The Ruins Of Aksu 143

However, here ṭabʿī is presented as being, in fact, the opposite of ghaybī,

the invisible, occult or mystical. This may be a reference to the language of
the invisible (lisān al-ghayb), attributed to the poet Ḥāfiẓ (d. 792/1390). This
adjective, ghaybī, signifies something a bit beyond the natural, physical, vis-
ible world of nature itself. This being the case, the naturalistic or realistic
poet (ṭabʿī-parwar) is thereby distinguishable from the mystical or theistic
poet (tengrī-parwar). Kharābātī has turned the scale of values around: it is no
longer the ṭabʿī who is preferable to the takalluf, it’s the ghaybī who must sup-
plant the ṭabʿī. Our author rejects, in no particular order, all taste for nature,
attention to creatures, or subtleties of any sort. In the place of the spontaneous
poet, too brilliant not to be under some Satanic influence, he places the figure
of the bard (madḥ-khwān), described as a devotional singer who awaits divine
inspiration, and who is at once of the people (khalq ichrä) and distant from
them, a model that is strongly reminiscent of the maddāḥ, those heterodox
cantors of Central Asia, whom we will discover in the fifth chapter. Finally,
the couplet evoking the work (ish) of the naturalistic poet being destroyed
by nature or the natural (ṭabʿī) can be understood not so much as a critique
of the rhymer who becomes a victim of his own prowess, but as a reminder of
the red thread of devastation: nature suffocates language’s mystical possibili-
ties by sating language with profane spectacle.

To finish, let us give the last word to Kharābātī, who spoke thus43:
No one would know how to avoid fearing God
Nor how to forget the anger of God

Whether rich or poor, the shah, everyone

Whether shaykh, Sufi, mullah, everyone

Whether qadi, mufti or officer

He can never refuse what has been offered

O brother, hear this counsel and remember it

No one could remain indifferent to it

de deux traités de poétique persans du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2013),
121–25, 204; ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī, Mīzān al-awzān (the measurement of meters), in Mukammal
asarlar to’plami. Vol. 16 (Tashkent: Fan, 2000), 43–44.
43 Kharābātī, Mathnawī, f. 208b.
144 Chapter 4

Chapter 4

In the Depths of the Grottoes of Central Asia

1 Silences in Khotan

On Wednesday 13 April 1892, and again on 5 June of the same year, the French
explorers Jules-Léon Dutreuil de Rhins and Fernand Grenard ventured into a
grotto twenty kilometres south of Khotan. As experienced travellers, they
knew that eastern Turkestan resembled the rest of Central Asia: there was
more to it than the endless great steppes that had been hypnotising occiden-
tals with their flatness since Marco Polo (who had in fact, passed through Kho-
tan). The two travellers noted1 that once they’d arrived in Yarkand there was
‘A curious thing about the country around the town, where there is a great
number of ravines, of vertical cliffs carved from the whitish clay. In the sides of
these cliffs grottoes are dug out, which serve as living-places for a mass of poor
folk. One finds such cliffs and such grottoes everywhere in Kashgaria, but per-
haps nowhere as many as in Yârkend. In fact, the name of the town is signifi-
cant in this respect; it means “the town of ravines and cliffs”, and indigenous
tradition reports that in the past the population of Yârkend consisted entirely
of troglodytes.’
In a sense, everything has been summed up already. The Central Asian cavi-
ties were numerous; they served as shelters for the poorest fringes of the popu-
lation. As spaces that were out of alignment, for lives that had run their course,
grottoes call forth a social reality as much as they do a space for religious imag-
ination, and, we may add, dervishes exist precisely at the intersection of these
two notions. Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard describe the most elaborate grot-
toes in detail, with an almost naive disapproval2: ‘One penetrates into these
molehills, each of which is composed of a single room, by a sloping corridor
shut off by a hurdle. A round hole, cut into the ceiling, serves equally ill as a
chimney and as a window, there is as little light coming into it as there is smoke
going out of it. The smoke combines very appropriately with a terrible smell of
he-goat and sour milk to suffocate anyone coming in from outdoors; even in
times of the greatest drought there is always, within, a moist and repugnant

1 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 1:38 (and
1:39 for the illustration).
2 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 1:70. A sketch
appears in 1:165.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_006

In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 145

Figure 4
Grottoes of
Kashgaria

humidity and when it rains the ceiling seizes the opportunity to let in water,
when it doesn’t collapse outright. When one has become accustomed to the
darkness, one sees a woman cooking her thin corn broth and wearing a large
patched shift, formerly white, and then one sees, pell-mell, a heap of dried
brushwood, a coffer, a little wooden cradle without a base containing a crying
naked infant, a butter-churn, wooden vases full or empty of milk, a young kid
being suckled by its mother, a few lousy torn blankets, with a bolster that’s
shiny with grease.’
Nevertheless, there is one cavern that attracts them particularly, that of the
shrine of Kuhmārī, located, as we have said, twenty kilometres from Khotan.
Let us return to the account by the two Frenchmen of their expedition3: ‘We
found yet more relatively insignificant vestiges of antiquity, but [this is] where
we had the good fortune to make the most important archaeological discovery
ever in eastern Turkestan. We speak of the grottoes of Koumâri, carved into a
little hillside that drops steeply down to the left bank of the Karakâch daria: In
this place there are several subterranean chambers to which one climbs via a
rough ladder, but into which the indigenous people do not dare to penetrate
because of their superstitious respect for the place. (…) At the summit of the
south-east extremity of the hill, where the grottoes of Koumâri are carved,
stands the mazâr (shrine) of Khodja Mouhebb Khodjam. This mazâr consists
simply of a wooden enclosure surrounding a few poles to which horsetails are

3 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:142–44.
This is a lengthy quotation from which I have cut a few passages, and to which I have added
some commentary.
146 Chapter 4

Figure 5
Shrine of
Kuhmārī)

attached. Opposite, a mosque has been built of planks covered with pebbles.
To the north-west, at the far end of the hill, stands another small mazâr called
Kountou, just above the riverbed. Dutreuil de Rhins visited this site on Wednes-
day 13 April 1892 and brought back a few fragments of a very old manuscript
that an indigenous person told him had been stolen from the sacred grotto.
I went there myself on 5 June of the same year, and was fortunate enough to lay
my hands on all that remained of the rest of the manuscript (…)’
What they had found was a Buddhist manuscript dating probably from the
first century of our era, and it is an exceptional document. Where our two
scholars were excavating in search of pre-Islamic vestiges, we are looking for
ascetic or even hermitic practices of Islam, the past of which, regardless of its
confessional origins, interests us less than its present.
Grenard concludes, ‘The details that Hiouen Ts’ang gives about the last
mountain apply perfectly to the hill at Koumâri. It has two summits, that of the
Kountou mazâr and that of the Mouhebb Khodjam mazâr; in its flank and its
central part are carved grottoes, in which a manuscript and objects relating to
the Buddhist religion have been found; at the foot of these grottoes one can
still see the remains of walls, seemingly the vestiges of the monastery spoken
of in the annals of the T’ang. Today as in the past, the hill of Koumâri is a sacred
mountain, consecrated by Muslim saints who apparently succeeded to the lu-
minous Buddha.’
A few years later, on 12 November 1900, Aurel Stein visited Kuhmārī with the
same archaeological preoccupations.4 Besides confirming that this was an

4 Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, 1:185–90.

In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 147

Figure 6
Grottoes of Kuhmārī

ancient site sacred to Buddhism, although the above-mentioned manuscript

had probably first been conserved elsewhere, the historian of Central Asian
Islam reads that the little mosque attached to the shrine of Muḥibb Khwāja
was probably built during the reign of Yaʿqūb Beg, between 1864 and 1877; this
is an irrefutable sign of an active cult here in the nineteenth century. The grot-
to was where saint Muḥibb lived. Composed of two stories and accessible by
ladder, there is an upper chamber measuring 3m50 in length and 2m50 in
width, with several holes piercing the surrounding stone. A long crack rises
from the ceiling and disappears into the stone above. Buddhist legend affirms
that this was a passage that was obstructed in order to hide the ascete who had
gone off to settle in the cavity; the Islamic version says that it was via this an-
cient passageway that the Muslim martyr was able to flee. The walls of the cave
are covered with soot that, according to Stein, originates from the tapers lit by
pilgrims for their vigils. According to the pilgrims, this blackness of the walls
comes from the torches of the infidels who tried to kill the saint.
The archaeologist Stein adds, not without malice5: ‘The shrine and cave of
Kuhmārī still form a favourite place of pilgrimage for the faithful of Khotan,
and the well-fed, contented look of its shaykhs shows that their income

5 Aurel Stein, Ancient Khotan, 1:189–90.

148 Chapter 4

Figure 7
Shrine of Kuhmārī
(Ancient Khotan, vol. 1,
p. 186)

derived from pious offerings is substantial. The intercession of holy ‘Maheb

Khojam’ is believed to be especially efficacious when the low state of the rivers
makes the cultivators of certain tracts fear inadequate irrigation and conse-
quent failure of crops. On this account, quasi-official recognition, in the form
of a liberal offering from the Amban (governor), Pan Darin, was said to have
been recently accorded to the shrine. It is possible that this belief in a connex-
ion between worship at Kuhmārī and the supply of flood-water in the rivers
had its distant origins in the legend which, as related by the ‘Annals of Li-yul’,
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 149

Figures 8,9 Entrance and interior of the grotto in 2008

made Buddha symbolise at this spot the future draining of the waters covering
Khotan.’
Not long after this, on 11 December 1906, the Finnish Marshal Carl Gustaf
Mannerheim went, in his turn, to the grotto, and brought back the following
legend6: Pursued by his enemies, the saint Ḥājjī Kuhmārī sought refuge in the
grotto, which opened itself up miraculously when he flew away. The opening
was so narrow that he was obliged to take the shape of a snake to pass through
it. The black colour of the walls came from the smoking fires set by his enemies
to asphyxiate the saint. The faithful believe that he still lives in the grotto and
appears to those who pray with sufficient fervour. Outside the grotto, notes
Mannerheim, there is ‘a little Muḥammadan temple’, along with a few shelters
for pilgrims. These latter inscribe their names on the walls of the ‘temple’. Al-
low us to add that according to Grenard and despite the useless doubts of
Stein, the people of the region translate the name ‘Kuhmārī’ to mean ‘the ser-

6 Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Across Asia from West to East in 1906–1908 (Oosterhout: Anthro­
pological Publications, 1969), 1:101.
150 Chapter 4

pent of the mountain’; this translation is grammatically correct and corre-

sponds to the above legend.
The field data collected by Rahile Dawut in the 1990s, as well as those col-
lected by the present author, confirm and complete the description of this
place.7 The shaykhs of the tomb relate that Muḥibb Khwāja was a descen-
dant of Imām Ḥasan, the son of ʿAlī. Muḥibb was said to have come from Ara-
bia in order to spread Islam in Khotan. At the moment of his death, he made
his last will and then changed himself into a snake. As for the pilgrims, both
men and women, sometimes accompanied by children, their custom is to stay
in the grotto, all night as well, for devotional vigils. This space is particularly
busy in July and August, and is part of the pilgrim circuits (säylä-sayahät) fol-
lowed by Uighur Muslims in the region. As well as the grotto, the mosque, a
small inn and the humble dwelling in which the shaykhs live, one must also
take note of the presence of a cell of a relatively uncommon sort, for isolation
or spiritual concentration (etikapkhana/iʿtikāf khāna); this is used by the most
devout pilgrims and by the Sufi adepts. It’s probable that this was the building
called a ‘temple’ by Mannerheim.
Finally, there is more than one hagiographical recital dedicated to Muḥibb
Khwāja; these are contained in the Tadhkira-yi Satuq Bughra Khan, which, as
far as appearances can tell us, dates from the sixteenth century.8 We read that
the man whom the text calls Muḥibb Kuhmār was a descendent of Ḥasan; a
scholar and great ascete, he mastered Arabic but also Greek, Syriac and He-
brew. Formerly a hunter, he decided to live an austere life after having mis-
treated a bird. In the desert, a serpent offered to join him. The ascete asked the
snake how it was possible for a human and a serpent to become companions?
The reptile answered by citing the Quran (67:3), ‘He is the All-mighty, the All-
forgiving – who created seven heavens one upon another. Thou seest not in the
creation of the All-merciful any imperfection. Return thy gaze; seest thou any
fissure?’ Muḥibb suspected that the snake was actually a man or a jinn. They
travelled together for a year, during which the animal performed numerous
extraordinary feats. At that point, Muḥibb though that of the two of them it
was the serpent who represented the man or was a holy personnage. This was
confirmed by the reptile, who admitted that his name was ʿAbd Allāh Yamanī
and that his task was to travel across the world and control it. The serpent then
changed itself into a man, recited the Fatiha and blew on the face of the ascete,
who immediately lost consciousness. The snake-saint cut open Muḥibb’s chest,

7 Rahilä Dawut, Uyghur mazarliri, 123–25. I interviewed a shaykh and two pilgrims in July 2008.
8 Tadhkira-yi Bughra Khan, MS Supplément turc 1286, ff. 317b–322a; translated into English by
Julian Baldick, Imaginary Muslims, 163–66 (ch. 37 of the tadhkira).
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 151

Figure 10
Cell for spiritual
concentration in
2008

cleaned out the inside and closed his torso back up. He again recited the Fatiha
and blew on Muḥibb’s face. The ascete re-awakened with a pure heart. ʿAbd
Allāh informed him that from that time on he would come and visit him twice
a year, and then he disappeared. Muḥibb stayed where he was for two years,
and attained a high spiritual degree while snakes stood guard around him.
After this, ʿAbd Allāh enjoined Muḥibb to go to Turkestan, and a serpent
guided him there. Two more years passed, and Muḥibb arrived in Māchīn, in
eastern Turkestan, where he encountered a dervish called Sufyān whose
speech flew like an arrow, thus his nickname, ‘arrow-speaker’ (dam-i tīr). This
dervish taught the ascete to shoot arrows as he did. Where Muḥibb shot, there
an inn (langar) for the dervish was built. The two men parted and agreed to
communicate by means of arrows. Ten years passed. The serpent that had
guided Muḥibb stayed coiled up by the stoop of the hermitage in order to stay
152 Chapter 4

safe from Satan and evil jinns. The ascete soon became a great saint. As a saint,
he communicated with Khidr and Abū al-Fayḍ Ilāhī twice a day. On one occa-
sion, the arrow came in through his door and then disappeared. Muḥibb un-
derstood that his final hour was upon him, and asked the people around him
to bury him in his hermitage and continue consulting him for 200 years. Pil-
grims who had a request knew that it was a good omen if they saw the serpent.
The animal continued to carry out its task as a guardian; people came with
their problems, leaving ink and paper and returning later to find the answers to
their questions written down. This state of affairs lasted for 200 years, even
though the serpent also died, twenty years after Muḥibb’s death. One of the
responses on paper stipulated that the saint was to be buried in his hermitage.
From all these data one may learn several things. The topography suggests,
as much as does the oral or written legend of the holy place, that its function
was eremitic. There is no mention anywhere of spiritual education, the found-
ing of a community, of social relations. This is a space for voluntary solitude,
the roots of which certainly plunge down into a Buddhist sub-soil, while its
modern form nevertheless appears only in devotional Islam. Whatever the bio-
graphical reality of Muḥibb Khwāja, Kuhmārī has perhaps been a hermitage
for dervishes since at least the nineteenth century, using the grotto for khalwat
and the cell for iʿtikāf. What remains to be examined is the Uwaysī identity in-
dicated by the telepathic link established with Khidr and Abū al-Fayḍ, some-
thing that is sometimes a sign of heteropraxy; the story also demonstrates a
naturalistic tendency. The bird victim, and especially the serpent – protective
spirit or servant of the saint – are part of a bestiary that’s well known in Islam,
in North Africa, for example.9 There as here, the animal that crawls on its belly
is linked to a spring (water-source) or to a grotto, often taking on a guardian’s
role, perhaps in reference to the following anecdote: the Prophet was reciting
a verse of the Quran to his disciples in a grotto; a snake appeared and He or-
dered that it be killed, but the reptile escaped. From this the Prophet deduced,
‘God has protected it against coming to harm from you as He has protected you
against coming to harm from it.’
More specific to our own, Central Asian, example, what strikes one at Kuh­
mārī is the generally economical use of words. Apart from the Muslim folk
tradition transmitted by the Stories of the Prophets (qiṣāṣ al-anbiyāʾ), in which
the snake is a beast that was chased from paradise and condemned to silence,

9 Mohammed Hocine Benkheira, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen and Jacqueline Sublet, L’Animal en

islam, 114, 144, 163. See also J.-H. Probst-Biraben, “Le serpent, persistance de son culte dans
l’Afrique du Nord,” Journal de la Société des Africanistes 3/2 (1933): 289–95; René Basset, Le Culte
des grottes au Maroc (Algiers: J. Carbonel, 1920), 20, 39–40.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 153

there are diverse narrative, cultual and physical elements that are marked by
silence. The interior voices of the Uwaysī, the expression by means of arrows,
the communication with paper and pen, the cell and the spiritual concentra-
tion that takes place within it – all of these describe an austere world with no
timbre, the world of the mutist dervishes. The very restrained serenity that
comes over the pilgrims even today seems to recall this former hermitage at-
mosphere.

2 Whispers in Tashkent and Samarkand

On the outskirts of Tashkent, the capital of today’s Uzbekistan, we find a case

that resembles that of Kuhmārī without being identical to it. This site is at the
bottom of an underground space that was formerly just northwest of the city,
in a village that at the time was known as the ‘Gnostic’s [village]’ (Orifon/
ʿĀrifān); this appellation may well have come about because of the under-
ground space there. During the nineteenth century the village was swallowed
up by Tashkent, becoming known as Kökcha suburb.
Here can be found the shrine of the (supposedly) thirteenth century Sufi
saint Zayn al-Dīn Bābā, next to which is a cell for retreat (chilliaxona/chilla
khāna) that has two underground stories excavated from a hillock and sur-
rounded by a large cemetery; these can today be visited piously without the
obligation to practice the austerities that were the rule in the past.10 After
the dig of 1951, Russian archaeologists were able to recreate a fairly precise
chronology of the strata of construction.11 The young Soviet Republic of Uz-
bekistan undertook extensive restoration of the shrine during the 1920s, after
having rebuilt the walls of the tomb and those of the mosque that was attached
to the holy place during the nineteenth century. Resembling the Sufi lodges of
the period, with a cruciform plan, a porch and a cupola, the entire monument
dates from the sixteenth century, although the shrine itself was already receiv-
ing the largesse of Tamerlane (d. 807/1405), who paid to have several Sufi sepul-
chral monuments reconstructed. Until these reconstructions, the tomb of
Zayn al-Dīn Bābā as erected by his disciples was probably of modest dimen-
sions. All of the edifices on the site are of later date than the cell for retreat,
which existed during Zayn al-Dīn’s lifetime, since he made this cell his home.

10 I visited the site and spoke with the shaykh in May 2002 and in October 2007.
11 V.A. Bulatova, “K istorii mavzoleia Zein-ad-dina,” in Arkhitekturnoe nasledie Uzbekistana,
ed. G.A. Pugachenkova (Tashkent: Akademii Nauk, 1960), 75–84; V.A. Bulatova and L.Iu.
Man’kovskaia, Pamiatniki zodchestva Tashkenta xiv-xix veka (Tashkent: Gafur Guliam,
1983), 116–18. Both publications are illustrated.
154 Chapter 4

Figure 11 Shrine of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā in Tashkent in 2007

This Sufi master would have lived between the twelfth and the thirteenth cen-
turies. Before describing this Sufi ascetic, let us note the possibility that the cell
for retreat was dug as early as the twelfth century or even the eleventh; this is
according to the archaeologists’ dating of several of the artifacts that were un-
earthed, including construction materials, the mihrab and even an ancient ir-
rigation channel. However, what interests us most is not so much medieval but
modern times, in the heart of which the marginal practice of spiritual reclu-
sion still subsists.
The name of Zayn al-Dīn is absent from the great biographical compendi-
ums of Central Asia, such as Jāmī’s Nafaḥāt al-uns or Nawāʾī’s Nasāʾim al-
maḥabba, and does not seem to appear before the sixteenth century in
hagiographical sources other than the Persian Qandiyya, which is a later de-
scription of Samarkand than had been thought12; we will also return to that
text in the part of our sub-chapter devoted to the grottoes of the legendary city.

12 C.A. Storey, Persidskaia literatura. Bio-bibliograficheskii obzor, translated into Russian and
reviewed with supplements and corrections by Yu. E. Bregel (Moscow: Glavnaia Redaktsia
Vostochnoi Literatury, 1972), 2:1113–1115.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 155

The Qandiyya reports several important facts about the man to whom it re-
fers as ‘Zayn al-Dīn from the village of ʿĀrifān’.13 His master is said to have been
Abū Yūsuf Hamadānī, and his disciple Nūr al-Dīn Baṣīr (d. 646/1249). Although
it is the latter of these who most interests the hagiographer, an implicit portrait
of our man is nevertheless drawn. The reader is reminded that Zayn al-Dīn
came from Nūshkent (a village near Tashkent), and that he settled in ʿĀrifān,
five kilometres from the city. He was in contemplation (naẓar) when Baṣīr
came to him, but he immediately agreed to undertake the spiritual training of
this young adolescent who, we read, ended up spending more time with his
master than with his own mother. One day, Zayn al-Dīn asked his little circle of
disciples why no one could speak of mystical knowledge. While the other nov-
ices were perplexed, Baṣīr stood and said that this knowledge consisted of act-
ing in a just manner (ṣawāb) – in other words, it was not to do with speech. In
this little scene we see the classical apophatism of mystical Islam, according to
which any attempt to define God is a betrayal.14 More precisely, the hagiogra-
pher sums up the teaching of Zayn al-Dīn Bābā as silence, contemplation and
the practice of retreat. A second anecdote confirms this point: Baṣīr was in the
habit of preparing the ewer for his master’s ablutions. One night, he carried
the ewer to the threshold of Zayn al-Dīn’s cell and prostrated himself there. It
was winter, and very cold, snowing heavily, so that the disciple was covered
with snowflakes. In the morning, when the saint came out of his seclusion, he
fell over the heap of snow, from which Baṣīr suddenly appeared. He had kept
the ewer close to his chest, and the water was still warm. From this the master
concluded that his disciple had himself become a master, and sent Baṣīr, with
his mother, to Samarkand to preach. This story illustrates the preceding lesson
on just actions as a mode of mystical knowledge, and underlines the demand-
ing ascesis of the recluse.
Oral tradition has transmitted the following teaching down to the present
day.15 It is said that Zayn al-Dīn arrived in the village on a camel, the animal
having stopped at the gates of the city of Tashkent. The shaykh interpreted this
as a divine sign and settled in an underground chamber. Later he built other
cells around his, for a few of his disciples. An urban legend even states that
there was a tunnel stretching for several kilometres under the city, linking Zayn

13 Qandiyya wa Samariyya. Dū risāla dar tārīkh-i mazārāt wa jughrāfiyā-yi Samarqand, ed.

Irāj Afshār (Tehran: Muʾassasa-yi Farhangī-i Jahāngīrī, 1367/1988), 85–88.
14 On this question, see Eric Geoffroy, “L’apophatisme chez les mystiques de l’Islam,” Revue
des Sciences Religieuses 72/4 (1998): 394–402.
15 Ozod Shomansur, Shayx Zayniddin ku’yi Orifon Toshkandiy. Risola (Tashkent: O’zbekiston
milliy kutubxonasi, 2006). This small work contains some scholarly studies, but is primar-
ily intended for pilgrims.
156 Chapter 4

al-Dīn’s cave to the tomb of Qaffāl Shāshī (d. 365/976), the celebrated Shafiite
jurist who was buried in Tashkent, so that Zayn al-Dīn and the jurist could
commune with each other. Thus today’s popular imagination has held onto the
idea of a parallel world in the depths, echoing to the sound of dervishes whis-
pering. In addition, the octagonal and isothermic chilla khāna has acoustic
properties that would be propitious for the recitation (tilāwat) of the Quran. In
practical terms, there are two openings, in the floor and in the ceiling, permit-
ting daylight to shine into the chamber and thus allowing the time of day to be
perceived. This structural detail, domestically interpreted, according to a cer-
tain post-Soviet scientism that is prevalent in Uzbekistan, as the traces of an
observatory for dioptrics, actually bears witness to the religious and spiritual
uses of such an underground cell, dedicated to the contemplative life. The
shaykh of the shrine affirms that this spiritual practice was maintained until
the nineteenth century, a hypothesis that appears to be supported though not
authenticated by some late manuscripts relating to the architectural ensem-
ble.
What we know of the identity of Zayn al-Dīn is effectively completed by
documents conserved by his supposed descendants, who have become the
clergy of the holy place.16 Although the chronology remains uncertain, a ge-
nealogical scroll (nasabnāma) states that our Bābā was the son of the great Sufi
shaykh Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ḥafṣ al-Suhrawardī, whose diplomatic missions
linked Baghdad to Khwarezm for several years, which would explain
Suhrawardī’s somewhat tenuous link with Central Asia and the city of Tash-
kent. What really makes sense of this filiation is the status of Suhrawardī as a
tutelary figure for Central Asian dervishes.17 In any case, it is useless to seek an
undiscoverable biographical exactitude, since forged genealogies are common
currency. The nasabnāma was written in Chagatay Turkish and in Arabic, prob-
ably at the end of the eighteenth century, with seals dating from 1789, 1792, 1804
and 1889. There is also a group of five other genealogical documents that can
furnish complementary information.18 Written in Persian and in Arabic, they
contain a large number of the seals that are applied by judges to certify the
filiations mentioned therein, and thus the inheritance of land. The most recent
seals are dated 1215/1804, 1236/1820, 1281/1864, 1293/1876 and 1301/1884. Finally,
there is one document that indicates an Uwaysī Sufi lineage. In any case, we
know that Zayn al-Dīn Bābā was the object of intense veneration until the

16 V.A. Bulatova, “K istorii mavzoleia Zein-ad-dina,” 80–81.

17 See the reference to Suhrawardī in the Qalandarnāma by Amīr Ḥusayn Harawī, translated
in the introduction to the present work.
18 Ozod Shomansur, Shayx Zayniddin, 28–36.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 157

Figure 12 Cell adjoining the shrine, with the entrance on the right, in 2007

Figure 13 The interior of the cell with a dervish’s staff as a relic, in 2007
158 Chapter 4

nineteenth century: the complex was used, maintained and institutionalised.

The notion that dervishes should have waited for a later epoch to elect to live
here and practice as hermits would appear to be uncertain. However, the case
of Samarkand tends to support this hypothesis.
The nineteenth century offshoot of the Qandiyya mentioned above is called
the Samariyya, thus reviving the two components of the name ‘Samar-Qand’;
this was written by Abū Ṭāhir Samarqandī. The seventh chapter, called ‘On the
subject of the grottoes and gulfs that are well-known for their quality and their
propriety’ (dar bayān-i ghārhā wa maghākhā ki bi ṣifat wa khāṣiyat mashhūrand);
there is much to be gained from translating this chapter19:
‘The first gulf is that of Saint Khwāja-yi Sang-rasān [the petrifying one],
which crosses the external facade of the citadel of Afrasiab. It contains a series
of cells (huḥjra), some of which are full of human bones. The second is the
grotto of the Indigent One (maskīn). This can be found below the holy place
(mazār) of Muḥammad Sang-rasān, on the north side, near the Siab River
(siyah-āb), underneath the great tel. This is the grotto of Saint Khādim, who
was one of the Turkish shaykhs (mashāʾikh-i turk) and who made it into a spir-
itual cavity (kanda maqām) for Sufis. His tomb is near the grotto. This was a
dwelling rich in spiritual effects and a place for saints. The third grotto is that
of the Bridge of Muḥammad Chap. It lies at the foot of the citadel of Afrasiab,
to the west of the highway leading to the Bridge of Muḥammad Chap, above
the River Siab, that people take to go to the Plaza Garden and the Upper Gar-
den. The fourth grotto is that of Khwāja Danyāl. This grotto can be found at the
foot of the citadel of Afrasiab, east of the mausoleum of Khwāja Danyāl. This is
a noble dwelling. The fifth grotto is that of the Lovers (ʿāshiqān). It is situated
on the eastern side of the citadel of Samarkand, near this citadel’s moat. Saint
Makhdūm Khwārizmī dug out this grotto for Sufis. There is a series of cells
here. After the death of the saint, this became for some time the lodge of the
Qalandars (qalandarkhāna) of the city of Samarkand. The sixth is the grotto of
Kūhak. It lies to the east of Kūhak hill. People say that a man by the name
of Mullā Sakkākī practiced austerities in this cavity, and that he named it “Con-
quest of the conquerors of the forty” (taskhīr-i musakhkhirāt-i chihil).’
With the exception of the prophet Danyāl/Daniel – certainly fictional in this
context –20 and of Khādim, who was a Yasawī shaykh in the fifteenth century,

19 Qandiyya wa Samariyya, 151–52.

20 In Qandiyya wa Samariyya, 181–82, Abū Ṭāhir specifies: ‘[The shrine of Danyāl] is situated
outside the town, in a northerly direction, in the eastern crevasse of the citadel of Afra-
siab, on the banks of the River Siab. People claim that this is the tomb of the prophet
Danyāl. But the shrine of this saint is in Mosul.They also say that it was a companion of
Qutham b. ʿAbbās [a proselytising Arab chief] who rested in this place.’ Additionally,
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 159

these saints are hard to identify. They were essentially marginal, and the mem-
ory of Samarkand has retained them only in the hollows of its stones. The fact
that all the sacred grottoes are part of the antique site of Afrasiab indicates a
recuperation of pre-Islamic sites, as happened at Khotan. Without going into
archaeological detail that would be beyond both the remit of this book and the
capacities of its author21, let us retain the existence of a profound continuity of
hermetic values in Transoxanian Islam. Although our source seems to be evok-
ing a world that no longer exists, in a present that no longer invites into its en-
trails dissidents who are ceaselessly aligning themselves with the past, his
description of the grottoes still resonates with the whispers of dervishes. One
might even say (perhaps risking over-interpretation?) that the very structure of
the chapter reads like a brief history of Sufi asceticism in Samarkand, despite
the absence of dates.
According to Abū Ṭāhir, at the beginning there was a ‘petrifying’ saint, in the
possible sense that he taught his disciples to isolate themselves within
the stones; the inviolate bones in the caves are their final traces.22 The medi-
eval Sufism of the Turkish shaykhs (that is to say of the steppes, more or less)
gave birth to a holy man who was called Khādim (the servant) or Maskīn (the
indigent one) because he had made a vow of radical poverty. His cavern be-
came a hermitage over the long term. A master from Khwarezm also made a
grotto into a dwelling for Muslim mystics, lovers of God; this grotto later (ap-
parently in the pre-modern period) became the lodge for the Qalandar der-
vishes of the city at a time when they were increasing in number. Finally, an
ascete chose a cavity as the propitious place for quadragesimal retreat, ‘the
conquest of the forty’; perhaps he left behind the memory of a technique less
excessive than total reclusion, more accessible to the faithful and easier to
adapt to the rhythms of modern life.
On the subject of the grotto of Danyāl, let us add the description made by
the French ethnologist Joseph Castagné of the site as he saw it in the 1910s:
‘Great willows, with knotty branches and thick foliage, cast their shade on this
place, which is good for meditation. All sorts of objects brought as offerings by
the faithful testify to the veneration of the tomb: clay lamps, stones covered

I visited this mazār in February 2001 and in September 2013: pilgrims at the site affirmed
that it did in fact contain a part of Danyāl’s body, brought there by Tamerlane, and that
the relic had continued to grow, which was the reason for the form of the tomb.
21 See G.A. Pugachenkova and I.V. Rtveladze, “Afrasiab i. The Archeological Site,” Encyclopae-
dia Iranica, online.
22 Another grotto containing a mummified body (that of Saint Isḥāq Khatlānī) is said to ex-
ist in the vally of the high Zerafshan in Tajikistan, see Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux
saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” L’Ethnographe 46 (1951): 89.
160 Chapter 4

Figure 14 Shrine of Danyāl in Samarkand in 2013

Figure 15
Uzbek pilgrims at the entrance in
2013
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 161

Figure 16
Cenotaph of Danyāl in 2013

Figure 17 Doors at the entrance to the grotto of Danyāl in 2013

162 Chapter 4

Figure 18 Interior of the grotto of Danyāl in 2013

with Arabic inscriptions, rams’ horns, scraps of cloth attached to staffs at the
top of which are pieces of red or white fabric fluttering like flags, horsetails
solidly attached to reflective metal balls … all of these objects reveal the pres-
ence of a venerated tomb.’23 Such grottoes as this one may today become cells
for short-term retreat and centres for miraculous healing. This appears to be
the definitive destiny of most of the dervish grottoes of twentieth century Cen-
tral Asia, as we will see in the following example, to the west of Khwarezm.

23 Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” 85–86.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 163

3 Graffiti in Manguistaou

In today’s Kazakhstan, the region of Manguistaou (or Mangyshlak) is charac-

terised by solitary necropolises, established as dependencies of troglodyte
mosques whose galleries run underneath the desert. As a brief historical re-
minder, let us note that Manguistaou was inhabited by Turkic tribes from the
tenth century; these were Islamised during the twelfth and thirteenth centu-
ries. The Ustyurt Plateau to the east was controlled for a long time by the Ka-
zakh hordes, and conquered by the Russians in the 1870s.24 The Islamic history
of the region remains very poorly understood; the following pages limit them-
selves to the introduction of the question of Muslim hermits and dervishes,
relying on a small assortment of varied publications of fieldwork collected by
Kazakh researchers and by the present author. Let us hope that the future pub-
lication of manuscripts, especially those held in private archives, will offer new
material for historians of Sufism.25
The names of three saints occur particularly frequently: Shopan Ata, Shaq­
paq Ata and Beket Ata. They are buried in three necropolises spread across the
Manguistaou peninsula; small groups of pilgrims travel from one to the next.26
The first stage of the pilgrimage, situated at the foot of the Ustyurt on
the ancient caravan route to Khwarezm, is the holy complex of Shopan Ata,

24 Yuri Bregel, “Mangishlak,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Gian Luca Bonora,
Guide to Kazakhstan. Sites of Faith, Sites of History (Turin: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2014),
ch. 9.
25 For an initial grounding, especially on the lineages of the Yasawī sayyid, on the Sufi lodge
of master Ḥidāyat Khwāja Bāqirghānī and on the nomadic Mangyshlāqī disciples of Nāṣir
Khwāja and then of the Kubrawī Ḥusayn Khwārizmī, see Devin DeWeese, “The Sayyid
Atāʾī presence in Khwārazm during the 16th and early 17th centuries,” in Studies on Central
Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel, ed. Devin DeWeeese (Bloomington: Indiana Univer-
sity, 2001), 255–56, 265–67.
26 There are other holy caves that would repay systematic research. Apart from the three
places mentioned I was able in August 2016 to visit the mazār of Karaman Ata and that of
Sultan Epe. Both of these form large complexes, containing underground mosques with
several chambers linked together by tunnels. On the surface, the necropolises are watched
over by families of guardians who guide pilgrims. According to the few accounts that
I was able to gather, Karaman Ata is said to have been the grandson of Shopan Ata, sent to
propagate Sufism in the tribe of the Adai. Some pilgrims practice circumambulation on
the surface, resting their hands on the nearby stones. The necropolis contains tombs dat-
ing from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The site of Sultan Epe goes back to
the twelfth-thirteenth centuries, and not to the ninth as asserted on the official plaque;
here the tomb is on the outside and is said to contain the earthly remains of a man con-
sidered a son by Ḥakīm Ata. Beause he had helped some fishermen as a young man, Sul-
tan Epe became the patron saint of sailors on the Caspian Sea.
164 Chapter 4

the largest such site in Manguistaou.27 The Kazakh ethnologist Raushan Mus-
tafina described it in 1991, before the renovations and additions of recent
decades, indicating that the space around the saint’s tomb was shabby but
carefully maintained, showing that there was an assiduous cult here in spite of
the lack of any public finance during the Soviet period. The underground part
of the holy site can be found in the south-western part of the cemetery, which
contains Oghuz, Kipchak, Turkmen and Adai Kazakh tombs. Pilgrims take their
shoes off and enter through a passage in the limestone, which leads to a main
grotto around which, along with alcoves for the performance of devotions, are
placed the ground-level tombs of Shopan and his sister. In the middle of the
main chamber are two beams, planted in the ground and passing up through
the ceiling by a skylight through which air and light can enter the underground
chambers. The double mast (tugh), representing the cosmic axis, receives the
wishes of the pilgrims in the form of knotted cloths and ram-horns. Various
rituals are practised on the floor, which is entirely covered with mats and rugs:
prayer, the lighting of candles, vigils. As is to be expected, the mazār28 has a
reputation for bringing about births, healing various ills and reinforcing faith.
The documentation concerning Shopan Ata currently remains mostly oral
and legendary. It was assembled by three generations of scholars who had ­access
to popular testimonies rather than to Sufi initiatic teachings; they ­questioned
mullahs, the shrine’s guardians, supposed descendants, and pilgrims.29 Among
the Russian orientalist, the Soviet ethnologist and the Kazakh researcher, none
is opposed to the general conviction that the saint lived between the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries. However, their versions diverge when it comes to the
exact spiritual pedigree of Shopan. Of Yasawī obedience (this Sufi order be-
gan its spread through Central Asia during the medieval period), he is said to
have been the disciple either of the eponymous master Aḥmad Yasawī himself,
or of one of this masters’ disciples, either Saʿīd Ata or Ḥakīm Ata. The name
Shopan, which means ‘shepherd’, was given to him because he converted the
pastoral nomads of Ustyurt to Islam. Let us add that this appellation certainly
also refers to the religious figure of the shepherd of souls. Among the legends
recounting his great deeds there are two very current, and similar, filiation

27 Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,”

Otan tarikhy 4/44 (2008): 155–56.
28 In Kazakh, the terms zherasty meshet or zher töle meshiti (underground mosque) and au-
liya (holy place) are used.
29 A.K. (sic), “Prednaia Adaevtsev o sviatykh, sekty khanafie, zhivshikh i umershikh na
Mangyshlake,” in Sbornik svedenii o Kavkazkikh gortsakh (1873), 7:12–14; Sergei M. Demi-
dov, Sufizm v Turkmenii (evoliutsiia i perezhitki) (Ashkhabad: Ylym, 1978), 62–65; Raushan
M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,” 153–55.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 165

l­ egends. The first recounts that as he was dying, Aḥmad Yasawī had to choose
a successor. He threw a baton (ʿaṣā) from the window of his mosque in Turke-
stan, on the southern edge of the Kazakh steppe, promising to give his bless-
ing to the man who picked it up. Only Shopan understood that the baton was
already much farther to the west, in Manguistaou. It took the dervish several
months to find the object, planted in the shade of a tree where some men were
waiting for him. He married the daughter of one of these men, and stayed there
to preach his master’s teachings as his legitimate successor. The second tradi-
tion has it that Shopan Ata was the natural heir of king Muḥammad (of the
Khwārezmshāh dynasty), who reigned in Khwarezm between 1200 and 1220.
Unable, for unknown reasons, to accede to the throne, he became a dervish
under the spiritual direction of Saʿīd Ata. One day, this latter set his novices a
test: he threw his baton out from the chimney of the yurt. After searching for
seven years, Shopan found the baton hanging from a mulberry tree in the Man-
guistaou steppe. A third version specifies that only the saint was able to pull
the baton from between the stones where it had stuck, and that he then drove
it into the ground afresh. Both of these legends conclude that it was in the
place where he found the baton (the tugh that still exists today) that Shopan
Ata built the mosque, and from there that he initiated disciples.
Neither the problems of genealogy (whether of brotherhood or of tribe) nor
the question of Islamisation concern us in the present volume. For us, the in-
terest of Sufi oral history lies in its recounting and remembering of an initial
act of retreat into underground chambers in the Islam of Manguistaou, an act
about which one can at the very least assume that it counted among the spiri-
tual practices contemporaneous with the diffusion of these re-tellings in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Today these practices seem to have dis-
appeared. According to our observations in 2016, Shopan Ata had become a
very popular pilgrimage site for Kazakh families, who follow their underground
devotions (which are quite controlled by the celebrants) with customary ritu-
als around a sacred fountain, and then around a wood and cement yurt of re-
cent date.
The second stage of the pilgrimage is also the second act in the intellectual
foundation of Sufi anchoritism: Shaqpaq Ata.30 About 135 kilometres north of
the town of Aktau, not far from the village of Taushyq on the steep edge of a
valley, this site is sculpted in the thick layers of a limestone deposit. Near the
mazār is a necropolis containing tombs dating from the eleventh to the eigh-
teenth centuries; a mosque set between the shrine and the shores of

30 A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata. Jerastı meşiti men qorımınıñ epi­gra­
fikası (Almaty: Daik Press, 2009), 28–32. Numerous photographs.
166 Chapter 4

Figure 19 Entrance of the shrine of Shopan Ata in 2016

Figure 20 Entrance of the main grotto in 2016

In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 167

Figure 21 Collective yurt for pilgrims in 2016

the Caspian Sea welcomes pilgrims. The pilgrims climb a staircase leading to a
terrace (both built in 1983, when large-scale restoration was begun) in order to
gain access to the grotto. After having entered and passed along a tunnel carved
into the stone, they arrive in the troglodytic mosque, lit by a skylight, where the
roof is held up by three-quarter pillars. Above this are a tower and a minaret
that are half-destroyed. Three additional chambers prolong the sides of the
principal chamber in a cross shape. The walls of the holy place contain niches
(miḥrāb) and, especially, more than 200 illustrated inscriptions, closer to graf-
fiti than to epigraphic art. They are present in exceptional quantities. This site
dates back at least to the first half of the fourteenth century, despite the fact
that the official plaque at the entrance situates it in the period between the
tenth and the thirteenth centuries.
The founding saint, Shaqpaq Ata, is also supposed to have lived in the four-
teenth century.31 Popular tradition identifies him with Shāh-i mardān, the
grandson of the Yasawī Shopan Ata, who was given the name of Shaqpaq,
meaning fire-starter or flint, because of his ability to start a fire by rubbing one

31 A.K., “Prednaia Adaevtsev o sviatykh, sekty khanafie, zhivshikh i umershikh na Mangysh-

lake,” 12–14; reprinted in A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 32–33.
168 Chapter 4

fingernail against another. Another legend recounts more prosaically that the
dervish on his travels needed to start a fire and did so with the help of a piece
of flint; Kazakh researchers observe that flint is abundant in the region. Allow
us to add that this sobriquet, as for Shopan, seems also to have a symbolic sig-
nificance: the saint as the one who lights the way into religious conscience, or
who starts the mystical fire. It must be recalled that we are speaking of Sufism
here, and not merely of the cult of saints. Hagiographical tradition describes
Shaqpaq Ata as a devoted hermit, worker of miracles, and martyr. Notably, it is
reported that on the summit of Mount Imedi there is a holy place called Sa-
habi (‘cloudy’ and/or ‘companion of the Prophet’) because Shaqpaq went there
on a cloud. Another, more eloquent tale has the dervish fleeing from his ene-
mies. When the hour for prayer arrived, he found a large stone, climbed upon
it and began to pray. He prayed for two years without perceiving the passage of
time. The marks of the praying saint’s feet, hands and forehead can still be seen
in the stone. After two years, his enemies found him and cut off his head, but
Shaqpaq took his own head in his arms and ran away. The prints of his fleeing
feet are said still to be visible in the Qunan Su ravine.
Beyond their habitual functions (sacralising the territory around the shrine,
martyrology, expressing the idea of the miraculous decapitation32), these leg-
ends attempt to preserve the memory of hermetism in caves and grottoes. In
fact, these memories are explicitly illustrated, if we are to believe some of the
graffiti markings of Shaqpaq Ata. Generally these inscriptions written in Ara-
bic, Persian or Chagatay consist of proper names, sometimes accompanied by
dates, by a bismillah, hadiths, or poems. While not saying much about medi-
eval frequentation of the site, these graffiti teach us a lot about visitors in the
modern period, and for our purposes provide precious data. They show that
there were intensive pious visits to this holy place from the beginning of the
eighteenth century up until the 1920s, with pilgrims and the faithful coming
from Khwarezm but also from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Bukhara and Andi-
jan.33 Among the visitors were a number of masters and disciples, as well as a
ribāṭchī. Editors have not heretofore noticed that the latter title designates
someone who lives in Sufi lodgings, isolated from the world, and that this graf-
fiti, carved by an anchorite called Mullā Ẓāhir, quotes a couplet by the mystical
poet Fuḍūlī (d. 963/1556): ‘In strange lands there’s no satisfaction for a ­stranger /
[For] no one is welcoming with a stranger’ (Ghurbatda gharīb shādmān bolmas

32 Very common in Central Asia, one also finds this attributed to Qutham b. ʿAbbās and to
ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī.
33 A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 33–34, 67, 72, 76, 81, 104.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 169

emish / hīch kimse gharībā mihribān bolmas emish).34 This signifies that the
voyage of the dervish must lead him inward, to his Creator, and not to the oth-
erness of the outside world. The contours of a Sufi culture marked by dervish-
ism are delineated on the walls of the grotto by other graffiti.35 A long poem by
the ascete (zāhid) Mullā Muḥammad deplores the ontological evanescence of
the world; an apocryphal hadith defends voluntary poverty and degradation; a
certain Niyāz Muḥammad Andijānī proclaims that knowledge of the Islamic
sciences does not a Muslim make. These proofs of the perseverance of an-
choritism are few but they do have the value of all autograph writings.
When we visited this site in August 2016, none of our interlocutors (guard-
ians or pilgrims) mentioned the practice of spiritual retreat. The chamber on
the right-hand side is frequented as much by Muslims as by orthodox Chris-
tians, both men and women, who all lie on their backs in order to receive the
Baraka, the influx of the saints, while a preacher recites an invocation in
the mihrab. Finally, it is interesting to note the existence of a grotto linked to
another shrine, in the Jambyl region and also called Shaqpaq Ata, which is
dedicated to a serpent cult, as at Kuhmārī.36 Here women who want to become
pregnant come to spend a night, during which, it is said, the snake slides over
their bodies and around their necks, without harming them.
The third stage of the pilgrimage brings us back to the western Ustyurt pla-
teau. The five chambers of the Beket Ata shrine were hollowed out of the heart
of Mount Oglandy; pilgrims reach it via a long walkway. Most of them are con-
tent to pray there under the direction of the local cleric, sitting in the immacu-
late whiteness of the first chamber. This vast complex contains a mosque as
well as a hostel for visitors. In 2016 we spotted a notice addressed to the pious
visitors in Kazakh, prohibiting them, for example, from leaving votive offerings
or performing traditional healing rituals. Such control of pilgrimage leaves
­little space for devotional acts and spiritual techniques. The information panel
that was put up in 1986, but has recently been removed, gave the saint’s dates
as 1650–1713. Scholars believe that in fact he died in 1813 and lived between the
second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth.37

34 A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 72; Fuzūlī divanı, ed. Abdülbaki
Gölpınarlı (Istanbul: İnkılâp Kitabevi, 1948), 355.
35 A.K. Muminov and A.Sh. Nurmanova, Shaqpaq-Ata, 76, 104, 107, 108.
36 Raushan M. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakov (v kontekste bytovogo isla-
ma v iuzhnom Kazakhstane v kontse XIX-XX vv.) (Almaty: Qazaq Universiteti, 1992).
37 Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,”
156.
170 Chapter 4

Figure 22 Shrine of Shaqpaq Ata in 2016

Figure 23 Central chamber of the grotto

In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 171

Figure 24 Ritual for receiving the influx of the saint

In 1991, Turganbai Sauleev was not only the guardian of the space (shyrakshy
in Kazakh), but also the principle source of information on Beket Ata.38 From
his oral testimony one discovers that the holy man studied at a madrasa either
in Kunya-Urgench (in today’s Turkmenistan) or in Khiva. In a characteristic
hagiographical topos, it is said the young student was remarkable for his intel-
lectual capacities but also for his physical strength. When the master chal-
lenged his pupils to uproot a tree near the madrasa, only Beket managed to do
so. When, on another occasion, the teacher threw his baton out the window –
this may reflect a contamination from the legends relating to Shopan Ata39 –
only Beket was able to find it where it had embedded itself in the soil next to a
shepherd and his flocks; only he was able to pull it out of the ground. The sub-
sequent stages of his career are more important for our purposes. Once Beket
Ata had completed his studies, he became a dervish and retreated into a grotto
in Manguistaou, interrupting his austerities only to teach the children of the

38 Raushan M. Mustafina, “Sviatye Beket-ata i Shopan-ata: legendy i traditsiia pochitaniia,”

151–53.
39 Counter to all temporal coherence, one anecdote affirms that Beket Ata was a disciple of
Shopan Ata.
172 Chapter 4

Figure 25 Walkway leading to the shrine of Beket Ata in 2016

nomads to read. Two additional chambers were said to have been dug out by
his pupils. Then all sorts of acts are attributed to the saint: fighting against Kal-
muk infidels, resolving conflicts with the Turkmens, distributing donations,
caring for people with mental illnesses, etc. Then, in a posthumous miracle,
Beket Ata was not buried immediately, but left for a time in the underground
mosque, where his body remained intact; the shroud that was draped over him
yellowed slightly. The grotto continued to offer its benefits to those who spent
nights in it. During the troubles of 1916–1920, Turganbai’s father received a sig-
nal from the saint one night, enjoining the populace to leave for Nukus in order
to avoid the depredations of the White Russians. Most people did not believe
him, and were massacred. Later, Turganbai acquired the power to treat sciati-
ca, while his sister treated rickets.
This is the substance of the ‘history’ of the grotto of Beket Ata, which was
among the final spaces for subterranean retreat in the Kazakh region, provid-
ing the conditions that made Islamic marginality (as distancing from the
world) possible in modern Central Asia.
As an epilogue, let us remember that the dervishes had not altogether disap-
peared from Soviet Kazakhstan, despite having been reduced to a mere shad-
ow of their former status, irremediably relegated to the ranks of healers, similar
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 173

Figure 26
Entrance of the grotto in
2016

to the Muslim ‘shamans’ (bakhshi).40 Between 1983 and 1987, Raushan Musta-
fina collected the testimonies of two holy fools (dīwāna/duana) in the oblasts
of Chimkent and Almaty.41 The father and grandfather of the first of these, Al-
man, were both also bakhshi. He himself was 56 years old when a spirit ‘came
to visit’ him, demanding that he take the whip of his deceased mother and a
vielle (kobyz) and make a pilgrimage to around twenty mazār. Battling against
this interior voice, Alman insulted it and drank vodka to excess. Eventually, he
lost the capacity to speak, fell ill and suffered from pains in his hands and feet.
It was no good. Admitting defeat he obeyed, and, restored to health, put on a
white coat before undertaking eleven months of speechless wandering. At the

40 Raushan M. Mustafina, Predstavleniia, kul’ty, obriady u kazakov, 143–46.

41 There are also dīwāna indicated in the steppe to the north-east of Kazakstan as early as
the end of the eighteenth century and until the 1860s: Allen J. Frank, “Sufis, Scholars, and
Divanas of the Qazaq Middle Horde in the Works of Mäshhür Zhüsip Köpeyulï,” in Islam,
Society and States across the Qazaq Steppe (18th-Early 20th Centuries), eds. Niccolò Pianc-
ola and Paolo Sartori (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenchaften, 2013), 227–
30.
174 Chapter 4

end of his travels, Alman discovered his healing powers and his gift for finding
lost people. The second dervish was called Umurzak, and was 88 years old at
the time of the interview. His life had been very dramatic – orphaned at the age
of five, visited at 13 by a spirit who ordered him to incite the nomads to sell
their herds and flee from the region, which was threatened with imminent
starvation, losing almost all of his family to the terrible famine that ravaged
Kazakhstan in 1931–1933. The genie that inhabited him tormented him so
fiercely that he lost his reason completely. Then Umurzak wandered from one
camp to another, dressed like a vagabond. Constantly possessed by the spirit,
he stopped smoking and drinking, becoming a healer and at times being able
to foretell the future.

4 Legends in Fergana and Pamir

Let us return to the southern part of Central Asia. The Fergana regions con-
tains areas of karst, with numerous cavities (g’or or teshiktash in Uzbek, ung-
kur in Kirghiz), the most celebrated (though little studied to date) of which is
that at Chihil-sutūn/Chil-ustun, in the Osh oblast, in Kirghizstan.42 A religious
site that is still frequented today, this grotto takes its name (‘forty columns’)
from its abundant stalagmites and stalactites. The devout get to the mountain
from the town of Charbak either along an increasingly steep path or by go-
ing around the rocky outcrops at the crest of the mountain. A monumental
entrance takes the shape of an arc; this opens onto three chambers, linked to-
gether by narrow tunnels, difficult to pass through in places. With its ceiling of
bands of yellow onyx and spots of red haematite, propitious to esoteric visions,
the first chamber is the most used by pilgrims.
With the exception of any undiscovered documentation that may be un-
earthed in future, the first mention of the grotto is by the Ferganese Muḥammad
Ḥakīm Khān, in a chronicle accompanied by an account of pilgrimage, com-
pleted in 1843.43 While the khan of Kokand, ʿUmar Khān, and his suite were
travelling from Osh to Andijan, Muḥammad decided to depart from an extraor-
dinary spot called Chihil-sutūn. He relates:

I got it into my head to see it. Saying goodbye to the khan, I left for the
countryside. Once I’d arrived there, I noticed a very high mountain,

42 Our principle source is the detailed study by Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narod-
nom islame,” Etnograficheskoe obozrenie 1 (2003): 69–86.
43 Muḥammad Ḥakīm Khān, Muntakhab al-tawārīkh, ed. Yayoi Kawahara and Koichi Hane-
da (Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2006), 2:184–86.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 175

visible from afar, on which were visible two staircases and the opening
leading to a grotto. Seeing this redoubled my curiosity. Leaving the horses
behind, with twenty men I went towards the summit. After many efforts,
we reached the first staircase, much damaged. When I looked down, the
horses were the size of ants. I was full of anxieties, but overcoming these
difficulties I continued to climb the stairs, and came to the second stair-
case, even more decrepit than the first. If by misadventure someone had
broken his leg and fallen, he wouldn’t even have reached the ground. I
pictured myself on the bridge of Ṣirāṭ44, and a thousand times regretted
my mad undertaking. Constrained to advance, with no retreat possible, I
eventually gave myself up to destiny and after much misery and difficulty
reached the entrance to the grotto. When we went in, we saw that it re-
sembled a great mosque, with its forty columns so finely sculpted from
the stone. Twenty of them were set aslant, not touching the ground, and
another twenty were straight and did not reach the top. After about a
thousand steps we could just see a narrower part where a rivulet of water
ran; there was also a white stone on which the image of a camel was en-
graved, with its legs bent. As we progressed, we were again trapped in a
dark and narrow passage. However, with the help of big torches we had
retraced about a thousand of our steps when an enormous bat, the size of
a pigeon or a steppe partridge, flew past and extinguished our torches
with a flap of its wings. At that moment we mastered our fear and appre-
ciated all the marvels of this place, and then we left with much difficulty
and went back down to our horses.

A few years later, in 1898, it was the turn of the Russian explorer V. Demchenko
to climb the mountain. In spite of the complete destruction of the wooden
staircase, the place was still the object of great veneration. Demchenko’s local
guides prostrated themselves before they explored the grotto, where they dis-
covered something like a small mosque and the remains of human bones. The
explorer suggested that the cavern might have served as a hiding place, or that
someone was ambushed there, but the guides evoked a legend according to
which a white demon had lived there, against whom ʿAlī had fought.
Finally, the epigraphic data from the first two chambers – again a sort of
graffiti, in sum – throw light on the visitors to Chihil-sutūn. Let us pass over the
inscriptions in Latin characters, and especially those in Cyrillic, left by overly
curious Europeans, and which sometimes obscure Muslim prayers. An initially
surprising discovery is the presence, carved into the stone, of several Sanskrit
formulas in the Devanagari alphabet. In fact, these are invocations of Hindu

44 According to several hadiths, this bridge to the heavens runs along a precipice over hell.
Believers pass along it easily, while the evil fall into the flames of Gehenna.
176 Chapter 4

gods, probably carved in the eighteenth century by people from Indian mer-
chant communities that had formed in Central Asian towns. Are we dealing
here with the traces of a religious space shared with Muslims, or, on the con-
trary, with proofs of the concealment of a minority religion? This remains an
open question. In addition there are professions of faith, verses from the
Quran, the symbol of the hand (representing the five members of the Prophet’s
family), the sword of ʿAlī, footprints (qadamjāh), the names of Muslims and
the dates of their pious visits, etc. All of these clues traced on the walls indicate
a Muslim occupation from at least 1716 until the 1870s.
From the fieldwork of Valentin Ogudin, it appears the grotto of Chihil-sutūn
is at the centre of a vast religious complex of five sacred spaces.45 At the foot
of the mountain, east of the hamlet of Charbak, the fervent village of Aravan
lies next to a boulder called Dūldūl Ata on which the image of a celestial horse
and foal appear.46 Legend has it that ʿAlī tied up his horse Dūldūl here when he
battled with the demon of the grotto. As for Charbak, according to tradition its
grove of walnut trees comes from Qurbān Ata/Kurban Ata, a dervish from the
early eighteenth century who, it is said, arrived from nowhere, dug a well on
this spot and threw some walnuts into it. A mullah from the region recounts
what followed: the holy man continued to live in society until he discovered a
secret stream that led to the grotto. He alone was able to follow it without dan-
ger to himself. Qurbān closed off the passage and settled in the cave to live
there as a hermit. Before leaving, he told his relation Charbak Dīwāna, who
lived in the grove, ‘If you need me, call me and I will come out of the grotto.’
Charbak agreed, in spite of his sorrow at the absence of one who was dear to
him. One day he called on Qurbān, who appeared immediately and asked him
the reason for his call. Charbak, in tears, explained that he ardently desired to
see him again – a futile excuse that displeased Qurbān. The same thing hap-
pened again, and the third time the anchorite did not appear, though this time
the need was genuine. He who wants to meet the saints, the mullah reminds
us, must venerate Allah by constantly reciting prayers and by remaining pure.
Since this time, the faithful pray either in a cell for retreat (chilla khāna) at the
heart of the grove or in the grotto itself, hoping to meet the saint in a dream
and communicate with him. According to believers, Qurbān Ata still lives in
either the grotto or the grove.
The third part of the sacred landscape, Qïz mazār/Kiz mazar, can be found
to the south of the crest of Chihil-sutūn, in a canyon. At the heart of a small
amphitheatre, a flat stone measuring 190 × 90 cm stands a bit proud of the

45 Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 77–79.

46 See also Joseph Castagné, “Le culte des lieux saints de l’islam au Turkestan,” 82.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 177

ground. The mullah explains that its surface constitutes a miraculous map. The
fossilised lines represent innumerable secret subterranean passages leading to
the sacred grotto. There was a cell (ḥujra) on this flat stone, in which it was
necessary to spend a night before entering into Chihil-sutūn; this was de-
stroyed in the 1970s for unknown reasons. Finally, there are two other sites
linked to the hermitage of Qurbān Ata. Forty metres below the entrance to the
grotto of Qurbān Ata lies the grotto of Āshkhāna/Oshxona (dining hall), in
which offerings of food were made to the saint; it is said to have contained a
secret passage that the 1911 earthquake definitively destroyed. The other site,
Sulï Kamar/Suvli Kamar, or ‘watery grotto’, lies on the hill farther along the
crest and ends in an underground basin whose water comes, according to pop-
ular belief, from a sacred spring in Chihil-sutūn.
Once again, the social imagination has multiplied the layers of a buried
world behind this world, where it is a question of welcoming religious margin-
ality in as physical a way as possible.47 It is not so much a question of populat-
ing the surrounding landscape with mythologies as of maintaining the reality
of a legendary radicalism, the opening scene of which is the actual life of its
founding saint. Both pilgrims and the guardian of the place state with certain-
ty that Qurbān Ata did exist.48 He was a dervish and fool of God who lived
three hundred years ago. Having decided to take back the grotto from the de-
mon who inhabited it, he acquired supernatural powers with the help of spirits
(chiltan) who continued to haunt him. However, from the Sufi point of view,
this is not the essential aspect of the story, which lies in the practice of spiri-
tual isolation, begun in this place by the hermit Qurbān Ata. This practice
seems to have lasted until the 1870s, the time of the latest inscriptions, and to
have subsisted into the twentieth century only at the cost of a ritualisation of
the practice. Anchoritism has been replaced by the night’s vigil. Today the pil-
grim experience lasts at least one night, and may be prolonged to three days.
Added to the fasting and prayers is a two-fold vigil: before climbing Chihil-
sutūn the pilgrim spends a night in the chilla khāna of Charbak Dīwāna; during
this period of half-sleep God sends a sign in a dream. If the sign is terrifying
(fires, floods, war, death etc.), then the pilgrim must put off the ascension to
another time; otherwise it is permitted to climb the mountain. Once the pil-
grim arrives in the grotto, he or she must attempt to enter into communication
with the reclusive saint, either by wandering through the maze of galleries

47 Some beliefs attribute secret passages to Mecca to the grottoes, as is the case for the holy
place Apshyr Ata, south of the town of Osh, near the village of Kulatov in the Nookat re-
gion. For more on this, see Gulnara Aitpaeva, ed., Sacred Sites of the Southern Kyrgyzstan:
Nature, Manas, Islam (Bishkek: Aigine Cultural Research Center, 2013), 98.
48 Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 80–81.
178 Chapter 4

until God brings him or her to the saint, or by spending the night in a half-sleep
during which the saint will speak. Here the language of dreams is at a premi-
um.
Even recently, Sufi adepts continued to make this journey.49 In the summer
of 1991, a Naqshbandī group from Margilan accomplished a pilgrimage to the
grotto. Some had come earlier to spend the night in the chilla khāna or in
the grove, others arrived from the town the next morning by car. The Sufis took
no food, either while travelling from their homes or within the grotto. They
drank their water, which was barely sufficient in the heat of the summer, spar-
ingly, and used it for their ablutions. Once they arrived in the grotto, they
passed praying through the archway and then spent the greater part of the
night in wakeful prayer. Alas, neither those who stayed awake nor those who
slept were granted a vision of the saint.
Our last example of a dervish’s cave lies in Tajik Pamir, on the upper reaches
of the Obimazor river, a tributary of the Obihingou that has its source in the
mountains of the Darvaz. The Obimazor (‘River of the holy place’) runs like a
thread through a narrow valley full of rubble and boulders, at an altitude of
2,700 m. When the Soviet ethnologist Nikolai Andreevich Kisliakov arrived in
the village of Hazrati Burkh in 1931 there were no more than thirty-six houses
there, made of rough stone; there were three tiny hamlets distributed nearby.50
At that time, the principal economic activities of the villagers – hunting ibis,
weaving, and metalwork – had already practically disappeared, surviving only
in the cult objects associated with Saint Burkh. His cave sits proudly in the
middle of the village on the steep bank of the Obimazor. Burkh Sarmast Vali
has rested there since an uncertain date, beneath the dome of a quadrangular
tomb with two columns in the shape of minarets around a carved doorway.
The mazār has two chambers: the vestibule and the holy of holies. A mantle
made of goat hair (chadar-palas) covers the raised sepulchre, at its base are
placed weaving spindles (navarda), which are considered to be relics that must
be kissed during pious visits, before proceeding to make an offering to the
shaykh of the shrine. On the opposite riverbank is a spring, the bottom and
sides of which are covered in red clay called ‘Burkh earth’ (khoki burkh); popu-
lar belief attributes healing properties to this clay. The holy place is said to at-
tract pilgrims from Tajikistan, but also from Bukhara, Samarkand, India and
Afghanistan.
Kisliakov collected a curious hagiography on the subject of Hazrati Burkh,
the essence of which is as follows:

49 Valentin L. Ogudin, “Kul’t peshcher v narodnom islame,” 83.

50 Nikolai A. Kisliakov, “Burkh – gornyi kozel (drevnii kul’t v Tadjikistane),” Sovetskaia etno-
grafia 1–2 (1934): 181–89.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 179

One day, God gave some luminous pearls to a certain Abū Saʿīd Rūmī. He
lost them and set out to seek them. In vain. He then asked a mystic whose
name was Burkh to find them. After forty years of fruitless searching, Abū Saʿīd
ran into Burkh without recognising him and asked him who he was. Once he’d
heard his name, and had confirmation that Burkh was a descendent of the
Prophet, Abū Saʿīd understood his error, repented and declared that he would
immediately depart. Eventually, Burkh found the pearls, but the quest made a
holy fool of him. From the country where he had met Abū Saʿīd, Burkh flew
with his mother and brothers to the fortress of Kabul. One of his brothers died.
The family then flew to Tolikon (Tālikān, near Kunduz). A few months later, his
younger brother also died. Burkh said to his mother, ‘God’s anger has struck, let
us leave this place.’ He took her hand and they left together for Shahrab
(Shahrāb in Iran?). It was there that his mother died. The saint stayed for sev-
eral months, observing a vigil on her tomb. One night, he dreamed that she was
enjoining him to leave. He then went to Borshida Mountain and settled under
a tree.
Long after this, an old man called Bobo Khoja climbed the mountain look-
ing for wood. He seized the branch of a tree and suddenly heard a voice saying
to him, ‘Your burden is already heavy enough!’ Bobo Khoja saw no one, and was
about to try to break the branch again when he noticed a strange green stone.
He picked it up and discovered the entrance to a grotto, where Burkh was liv-
ing, always prostrated. The saint lifted his head and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, tell
people about me, go and find them that they may come and build a tomb for
me.’ Bobo asked how he could prove the saint’s existence, and Burkh gave him
the luminous pearls as a proof. Bobo Khoja did as he’d been asked and the vil-
lagers began to build the tomb. The dervish demanded that it be finished in a
single day, but at nightfall only the carpenters’ work on the doorway was done.
The saint’s supernatural powers forced the artisans to keep working through
the night, and by dawn the next morning the tomb was finished. At that mo-
ment, an ibex descended the mountain and stopped on a platform. Saint Burkh
ordered Bobo Khoja to kill the animal and offer it as a sacrifice for the artisans.
He did so, and the ibex’s spilt blood is said to have given the spring-water its
purple colour.
The recently deceased Uzbek ethnologist Raxmat Raximov furnished many
complementary data from written material and fieldwork undertaken in the
2000s.51 To sum some of these up: although the village no longer exists, its

51 Raxmat R. Raximov, “Odinokii mazar v tesnine gor,” in Tsentral’naia Aziia: traditsiia v us-
loviiakh peremen, eds. Efim M. Rezvan and Raxmat R. Raximovich (Saint Petersburg:
Kunstkamera, 2009), 2:180–227; id., “Mifologia Burkha: ne tait li ona istoriiu vne vreme-
ni ?,” in Tsentral’naia Aziia: traditsiia v usloviiakh peremen, 2:228–80.
180 Chapter 4

­ opulation having been displaced elsewhere, the shrine has been enlarged with
p
the addition of a porch, a mosque and a cell for retreat. Many times restored,
the original tomb dates from the eighteenth or nineteenth century. As for the
reclusive dervish, legend describes him as having long black hair down to his
chest, and as having lived in the grotto for 300 years. In addition, Bobo Khoja
became an integral part of the cult, as he was the guardian of the tomb and was
later buried at his master’s side. Subsequently the role of shaykh was transmit-
ted according to criteria of religious knowledge, but seems to have stayed with-
in a single family. Finally, the weaving spindles that are said to have belonged
to Burkh can be understood literally, as the instruments of the saint’s former
art and as incarnations of the forge and looms that had operated in the village,
but also allegorically as symbols of the esoteric weaving introduced by the der-
vish: between the social, natural and supernatural worlds. Let us remember,
in this context, the similar metaphor that was already being woven by ʿAbd
al-Raḥīm in his Qalandarnāma, when he spoke of the dervish’s cloak.
One is obliged to acknowledge that the character of Burkh has less to do
with some ancestor, perhaps the founder of a community, and more in com-
mon with the figure of the Sufi hermit, wearer and weaver of the cloak, whose
uncompromising isolation defines a model of piety that’s exclusive, as though
marginality was the only possible doorway into the beyond – in other words,
excess as access to God.
In this regard it is striking to note that there is a homonymous saint, with a
sulphurous reputation, who is well represented in the Sufi tradition in Central
Asia and elsewhere. The two saints appear to have only their name in common
– except, perhaps, for the status of each as a perfectly marginal being. There is
no doubt that this classical tradition has influenced the recent development of
the legend of the Pamirian saint, to the point that it identifies the two men as
one.52 To sum up, Burkh/Burq was a black slave (Burkh al-ʿAbd al-aswad) who
was asked by Moses to call on God to grant rain to the land of Israel, which
was suffering from drought. God Himself had recommended him to Moses for
the innocence of his gentle madness. Burkh’s prayer for rain did receive an
answering aid from God; he did not hesitate to boast insolently of this in the
presence of Moses, who wanted to punish him. But the angel Gabriel stopped
Moses, arguing that God had had Burkh as his slave for so long because three
times a day he made God laugh out loud, which Moses was utterly incapable

52 I have not been able to consult it, but suppose that this ‘contamination’ affects the popu-
lar work by Abdulmalik Shekhov, Hazrati Burkhi Sarmasti Vali (Dushanbe: Alif, 1998),
which is often cited by Raximov.
In The Depths Of The Grottoes Of Central Asia 181

of doing!53 In Central Asia, Burkh the madman, the drunkard (Burkh-i dīwāna,
Burkh-i sarmast) is eventually obliged to give way to orthodoxy54: the delirious
saint had become an intimate friend to God, who promised to grant him what
he willed. Burkh was capable of making very extravagant demands; one day he
asked God to destroy hell, and thus to save His own creation from the flames.
Faced with God’s refusal, the dervish reproached Him with imperfection be-
cause He had not kept his promise, with impotence because He could not de-
stroy hell, and with incoherence because He destroyed what He had perfectly
created! The quarrel ended when God explained to Burkh that hell was there
to ensure His authority and men’s obedience, which calmed the holy fool, who
understood that the destruction of hell would not have been good for him.
However, apart from this return, in extremis, to order, Burkh clearly incarnated
the antinomian spirit, somewhere between a laugh and an insult.
Although the custom of hermetic cave-dwelling is not necessarily synony-
mous with heterodoxy, it often acts as the social (if not the doctrinal) ante-
chamber to difference. Assuredly this technique, however minoritarian it may
be, derives from the imitatio Muḥammadi. The Prophet himself set the exam-
ple, according to Sufis, in the hadith as in the biography (the Sīra), which both
describe him retreating for one month each year into a cavern in Mount Hirā,
or ‘the mountain of light’ (jabal al-nūr), near Mecca. It was during one of these
retreats that the nocturnal meditation of Muḥammad was interrupted by
the angel Gabriel, who transmitted the divine words to him. Thus began the
Quranic revelation.55 And thus were quests for mystical illumination pursued.

53 A first version can be found in the Qūt al-qulūb by Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (386/996), then in
the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn by Ghazālī, the Muṣibat nāma by ʿAṭṭār, etc. There are a few refer-
ences in Hellmut Ritter, The Ocean of the Soul. Men, the World and God in the Stories of
Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, trans. John O’Kane and Bernd Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 539 and 584.
54 See two editions of the Burq nāma, respectively by Herrmann Vambéry, Ćagataische
Sprachstudien. Enthaltend grammatikalischen Umriss, Chrestomathie und Wörterbuch der
Ćagataischen Sprache (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1867), 59–70, and by Andras Bodrogligeti,
“Aḥmad’s Baraq-nāma: a Central Asian Islamic Work in Eastern Middle Turkic,” Central
Asiatic Journal 18/2 (1974), 83–128. There are manuscript references in Devin DeWeese,
“An ‘Uvaysī’ Sufi in Timurid Mawarannahr: Notes on Hagiography and the Taxonomy of
Sanctity in the Religious History of Central Asia,” Papers on Inner Asia n° 22, Bloomington
(1993), 27–31.
55 Claude Addas, “Hirā’,” in Dictionnaire du Coran, ed. M.-A. Amir-Moezzi (Paris: Robert Laf-
font, 2007), 389–91. A second ‘Scriptuary cavern’ is the well-known Cave of the Seven
Sleepers or Companions of the Cavern (aṣḥāb al-kahf) in Quran, 18:9–26, but this place
was good for protection and resurrection and not for revelation. However, as, according to
the Quran, the period of reclusion for the Seven Sleepers was 300 years, that myth was
able to impregnate the Central Asian legends mentioned above. See Geneviève Gobillot,
“Gens de la Caverne,” in Dictionnaire du Coran, 362–65.
182 Chapter 4

However, one who follows an example is not disbarred from doing so in an

exaggerated way. Gleaned from here and there in the hagiographical tradition
of Sufism, are the names of a few anchorites who go counter to authority, indi-
cating both a relative intensity of this behaviour in the medieval age and its
modern persistence. From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, there was a
certain number of saintlets in the ‘extreme Maghreb’ taking temporary or per-
manent refuge on the grottoes of the Atlas Mountains, or even in Marrakesh in
the lepers’ quarter, evidently in order to avoid State authoritarianism. They
lived on offerings or what they could gather.56 At the other end of the Muslim
world, in 742/1341, the traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, after being disgraced in the prince’s
eyes, found refuge with the dervish Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghārī, who
lived in a dugout near Delhi.57 In Iran, the master, Ḥājjī al-Dīn ʿUmar Murshidī
(d. 826/1423) began his spiritual career as an ascete of the grottoes before re-
turning to society.58 The hermitic saint Ibrāhīm Darwīsh lived in the moun-
tains of Badakhshan during the seventeenth century.59 Moroccan pilgrims
who visited the retreat of ʿĀysha Qandīsha also passed by the neighbouring
cave of a fool of God (majdhūb) to receive his benediction.60
The maceration of the Sufis in the subsoil of Central Asia seems to have
drawn to a close during the nineteenth century. Even earlier, as we have seen,
anchoritism had begun to give way to the abbreviated vigil. As time passed,
all of these asocial Islamic figures lived more in the imagination of religion
than in its reality, like ghosts, forced by their cavernous box-like surroundings
to resonate with dark legends – legends that amplified their bad reputations
at the same time as they offered a moment of respite to people who loved ru-
mours and were tired of the established order. It is not the case that the der-
vishes disappeared – on the contrary – but they ceased to evolve except in their
representation of themselves, built up on the road out of cobbled-to­gether
hawkers’ legends and impenetrable languages.

56 Jean-Pierre Van Staëvel, “La caverne, refuge de l’‘ami de Dieu’: une forme particulière de
l’érémitisme au temps des Almoravides et des Almohades (Maghreb extrême, XIe-XIIIe
siècles),” Cuadernos de Madīnat al-zahrā’ 7 (2010): 311–25.
57 Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Voyages et périples, in Voyageurs arabes, translation, presentation and anno-
tation by Paule Charles-Dominique (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), 767.
58 Shahzad Bashir, Sufi Bodies. Religion and Society in Medieval Islam (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2011), 63–64.
59 Thomas Welsford, Four Types of Loyalty in Early Modern Central Asia. The Tūqāy-Tīmūrid
Takeover of Greater Mā Warā al-Nahr, 1598–1605 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 213.
60 Michael W. Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 235.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 183

Chapter 5

On the Road with Cantors and Itinerants

1 The maddāḥ in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang

Unlike hermits and the wakeful, who have learned of the virtues of silence or
whispers, the marginal group of those whom we will call ‘cantors’ (to translate
the Arabic term maddāḥ with all its meanings) owes its social existence to the
sounds it produces. Declamations, acclamations, chants, songs and music –
much more frequently mystical than epic – resound in the sonic landscape of
the under-populated southern part of Central Asia, still resonating to the slow
frequencies of a pre-industrial society.
They are in no way newcomers. We have seen how Nawāʾī was already invok-
ing the musicians, singers and storytellers of Herat in his Maḥbūb al-qulūb,
giving them no quarter.1 Let us recall how the Timurid scholar regarded most
of them as being among the least respectable dervishes: they brought a danger-
ous mood to séances of spiritual concert (samāʿ), all frequented the same de-
bauched dives, deliberately confused a fermented high with mystical exaltation,
took advantage of people’s gullibility, and mistreated language and harmony.
At about the same time, the Sufi predicator Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī, who lived during the
fifteenth century in Nishapur, Mashhad and Herat, devoted a chapter to
cantors in his Futuwwatnāma.2 According to him, there were four sorts of
maddāḥān, distinguishable by their literary aptitudes: the authentic ones, who
composed and put into verse their own panegyrics (madḥ); the ‘narrators’
(rawāyān), who recited the verses of others; those who had work of another
sort at the same time (a ‘day-job’); and finally, those who had learned a few
verses by heart and went from door to door reciting them: ‘they sell an ode for
a piece of bread and make the eulogy of the Prophet’s family into a trap
for their own begging’. Another passage of this work proposes a typology of the
maddāḥ according to their use of literary language: those who recite all poetry,
as much in Arabic as in Persian; the ‘brilliant’ cantors who interpret all sorts
of prose; the maddāḥ with ‘ornate language’, who sing ornamented prose
(muraṣṣaʿ), decorated with verses. Lastly, Kāshifī enumerates the insignia of
the cantor: lance, standard, initiatic belt, blanket, lantern and axe. As with the

1 See under the sub-heading devoted to them in chapter 1 of the present volume.
2 Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ Kāshifī, Futuvvatnomay sultoni, 95–101; studied, with other sources, in Jean
Calmard, “Les rituels shiites et le pouvoir,” 131–34.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_007

184 Chapter 5

dervish, each object carries a symbolic load. Among these different types of
Khorasanian maddāḥ, it is the most modest and least prestigious that are the
most fascinating to our eyes; they are probably the most numerous, too.
In Anatolia during Seljuk and Ottoman times cantors were also storytellers
(qiṣṣakhwān), recounting Persian or Turkish epics, or stories of the Prophet
and his family, ahl al-bayt.3 In fact, tradition has it that the first maddāḥ was
a companion of Muḥammad, and sang his praises. It is only from the eigh-
teenth century that there began to be a distinction between maddāḥ and
qiṣṣakhwān, when the first of these groups began to specialise in realistic or
even humorous recital. Although the only names and manuscript records to
have come down to us are those of the most eminent, thanks to patronage
from the court and the elite, it is important to remember that numerous anon-
ymous cantors, with few or no writings to their names, wandered the Anato-
lian roads, living by begging and associating so closely with dervishes and
bards (ʿāshiq/āshik) – whose patron saint was Yūnus Emre – that they were all
mixed together in a single social group. They also shared a single space on oc-
casions such as religious festivals, pilgrimages, market days – or, from the nine-
teenth century, in the central squares, taverns and cafés (kahvehāne). Although
maddāḥ, āshik and dervishes had very different repertoires, with the first group
preferring to perform social tableaux and moral lessons where the others of-
fered love-stories/dialogues and calls to fervour, all of them expressed popular
sentiments such as social aspiration in simple terms. Finally, although their
appearance differed according to the various accessories as enumerated by
Kāshifī, their use of language had many similarities.
Pertev Boratav writes, in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, ‘The narrative tech-
nique of the meddāḥs followed a parallel evolution to that of the themes. Grad-
ually as realistic themes supplanted heroic themes, the narration was enriched
by dramatic elements; the actor was substituted for the storyteller; he embod-
ied the deeds, by miming and, by changes in the intonation of his voice, the
various people of his narratives; and indirect speech gave way to direct speech
animated by dialogues. It is this other aspect of the art of the meddāḥs which
has interested specialists in the history of the theatre as much as the research-
ers on the narrative genre. (…) According to the testimony of literary and icon-
ographic sources, as well as of direct observers, the meddāḥ used to perform
his art in a public place (in a café usually), and used to install himself on a
platform, at a higher level than his audience; he held in his hand a cane which

3 Pertev N. Boratav, “Maddāḥ,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline; Özdemir Nuktu,
“Meddah,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, online; Nurettin Albayrak, “Āşık,” Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi, online.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 185

he used for making a noise; a napkin placed on the shoulder was used to ob-
tain, by its application to the mouth at the desired time, the various effects of
vocal intonation of the person imitated. The meddāḥ began and ended his nar-
ration with dedicatory formulas which contained, essentially, excuses for the
situation in which the listeners might be vexed by the fortuitous resemblance
of names of people or places, or by too daring subject matter.’
In the southern part of Central Asia during the nineteenth century and
until the 1920s, cantors who were the distant heirs of the middle ages lived
in specific quarters when they were not on the road. Tashkent still had 200
maddāḥ, mostly living in the Beshaghach/Beshog’och neighbourhood near
the Qalandar lodge.4 There were neighbourhoods of the same sort in Khiva
around 18705, in Samarkand at least since the eighteenth century (in the south-
eastern part of this city of 20,000 inhabitants)6, in Bukhara in an area that
came to be called the Street of Musicians (kucha-yi nagārachīhā), where the
profession was eventually institutionalised in conservatoires and other State
organisations.7 Gathering around an inn (mihmānkhāna) run by an elder, the
maddāḥ went from village to village in small groups, stopping in the bazaar,
the central square or in a tea house (chaykhāna). While the crowd was gather-
ing, the leader chanted his melody, with his staff he marked the episodes of a
rhythmic narrative animated by the cries and leaps of the little troop. Here in
Central Asia, unlike in the Ottoman Empire, the repertoire had preserved its
religious character. There were three peaks in these recitals: the cantors be-
gan by intoning what were called ‘spiritual’ verses (ḥikmatī) drawn from oral
or written poetry anthologies attributed to Aḥmad Yasawī or to the less well
known Qalandar, Bābāraḥīm Mashrab (d. 1123/1711), these two being very pop-
ular figures among Turkestani dervishes.8 Second, the maddāḥ touched the
listeners’ religious feelings by recounting the life of the Prophet of Islam, or
the tribulations of Sufi saints, with many marvellous details and moral lessons.
Here again the repertoire came from oral or written works that were known

4 According to Anna Troitskaia’s classic article, “Iz proshlogo kalandarov i maddakhov v

Uzbekistane,” which I translated from Russian into French in Mystiques et vagabonds en islam,
269–312 (see especially p. 283 and following). I lived for more than six months in the Beshog’och
quarter in 2002, but no trace nor memory of the presence of dervishes subsists.
5 E.A. Akhundzhanov, “K istorii razvitia knizhnogo dela v Khive,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar
7–8 (1997): 103.
6 M.M. Abramov, “Iz istorii Samarkanda kontsa XVIII-nachala XIX veka,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii
fanlar 9 (1970): 98–99.
7 A.B. Dzhumaev, “K izucheniiu ritualov ‘arvokhi pir’ i ‘kamarbandon’ v gorodskikh tsekhakh
muzykantov Srednei Azii,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii fanlar 5-6-7-8 (1995): 163–65.
8 There is a translation from Chagatay, with a commentary on Mashrab’s life and poetry, in my
Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 31–136.
186 Chapter 5

to people from the less educated social classes and to the ‘lesser clergy’. The
sermon would culminate in a collective prayer for the faith, for its guardian
and for its believers.
From the socio-religious point of view, the cantors were inter-mixed with
other marginal groups – Qalandar, dervishes, showmen and gypsies. Their ini-
tiatic rites were, in fact, very similar: sometimes these were inscribed in a cor-
poration manual (risāla) and put under the protection of a patron saint such
as Gabriel or the Sufi ʿAbd al-Qādir Gilānī9; the reception of a new member,
or the ten- or twenty-year anniversary of the group’s incorporation, would be
the occasion for a specific ritual. The performers would gather and invoke the
spirits of their founding masters, read the Quran, share a collective meal and
present their respects to the musical instruments. The end of the session would
arrive when the eldest among them took the newest postulant’s hands in his
own, reciting the Fatiha before wrapping an initiatic belt (kamar) around him.
Representing as they did a sort of figurehead for an at-risk class, acting as
the scarecrows of an observant counter-society, the maddāḥ of Turkestan, per-
haps in spite of themselves, presented a problem for the colonial authorities,
in terms both of public order and of religious fervour. There were current ru-
mours, whether these were myth or reality, that they served as spokesmen for
the recalcitrant, as when they were suspected of having preached holy war on
the orders of the Sufi rebel Dukchi Ishan in Fergana in 1895.10 It was equally
said that they had been very numerous in the Emirate of Bukhara after hav-
ing been instrumentalised by the court itself. In a valuable article founded
on documents from the central state archives, the historian Aftandil Erkinov
retraces the stages in the persecution of the maddāḥ by the Russian Gover-
norate (1865–1917), before they were eradicated by the Soviet regime.11 This
‘problem’ opened up divisions among the authorities between 1895 and 1897.
Nil Lykoshin, Tashkent’s police chief and a connoisseur of the ‘natives’, who
had translated the texts of Mashrab into Russian, condescended to these street
pre­dicators, considering them devoid of Islamic scholarship; an opinion that
he believed the more erudite locals shared, while the lower classes were too

9 See the sections in chapter 3 on peasants, artisans, doctors and the powerful. The ethno-
musicologist John Baily was present at similar ceremonies among the musicians of Herat
during the 1970s (personal communication, Venice, 30 October 2015).
10 M.G. Vakhabov, “Eshche raz ob andizhanskoi vosstanii 1989 goda,” O’zbekistonda ijtimoii
fanlar 7 (1987): 46.
11 Aftandil Erkinov, “Maddakh,” in Islam na territorii byvsheì Rossiiskoi imperii. 4. Entsiklope-
dicheskii slovar’ (Moscow: Vostochnaia Literatura, 2003), 45–47; id., “Le contrôle impérial
des répertoires poétiques. La mise au pas des prédicateurs maddāḥ dans le Gouvernorat
général du Turkestan (fin XIXe-début XXe siècle),” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 24 (2015): 145–82.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 187

naively attentive. Suspicion and anxieties about their bad influence on the
masses were increasingly directed at the cantors, to the extent that Lykoshin
decided to ban their activities; his justifications were as follows: their life-style
was sordid, the way they collected money was questionable, and the gather-
ings they brought about were potentially dangerous. As a compensation, the
police chief offered them the opportunity to sign on in centres for rehabili-
tation through work. Tashkent’s chief, Aleksei Tveritinov, thought this was a
premature decision, arguing that such a ban could be perceived as an injus-
tice and as running counter to civil liberties. This was not so much a show of
goodwill as a prudent tactic; the real intention behind it was to put the ‘bazaar
preachers’ to good use in the support of colonial power and policies.
In 1898 everything changed. Immediately after the insurrection in Andijan
in 1898 and the execution of its instigator Dukchi Ishan, the city’s government
feared that the maddāḥ had had a hand in encouraging anti-imperial senti-
ment. From that time, the police forbade gatherings around the maddāḥ and
other holy fools (dīwāna), kept a watch on wandering dervishes, and prevented
them from, as we may read, inculcating their delirious visions and unrealised
dreams into the credulous population. The situation was becoming untenable
for the cantors, constrained by new rules and strangled by debt. Families ad-
dressed desperate and contrite appeals to the authorities. Let us look at one
particularly upsetting example, dated 28 July 189812:

To his Excellency the Governor general of Turkestan

The Sart storytellers Mullā ʿAbduḥalīm and Dāmullā Mullā Aḥmatov
And the maddāḥ Igamberdi Mullaḥmat Beshaghachkoy

By recounting the lives of our ancestors of old, by the interpretation of the

prayers of the Quran and of the rituals of the prayers – since our earliest
childhood and following in the footsteps of our fathers and great-grand-
fathers – there are almost eighteen people, from a poor and unfortunate
background, who have been able to earn a little bit of bread to provide
regular nourishment for our families; now, according to the undertaking
of the Chief of the town, we are constantly made to submit to various
interdictions. Taking into account that our recitals and the meaning of
our prayers have been studied and counted among the books autho-
rised by censorship, and that our recitals do not go against the will of the
authorities or the peace of the inhabitants living under the protection
of out Great Sovereign (the Tsar), and that not one of us would permit

12 Aftandil Erkinov, “Le contrôle impérial des répertoires poétiques,” 166.

188 Chapter 5

himself to pronounce the least word against him, we all have families
and children to feed. With the adoption of these undertakings, we are
being thrown into abject poverty, having no other means of earning our
living, and it being too late for us to find any other work not demanding
qualifications, since, being Muslims, we have received a superior educa-
tion and are unaccustomed to painful work. We remind you of what has
been mentioned by Your Excellency and humbly request that you adopt
an undertaking allowing us to recite the prayers and their rituals as well
as the Quran.

The maddāḥ submitted unreservedly, so that repression became a method of

instrumentalisation. Permission to perform was reserved for those who could
obtain official agreement after having been scrutinised by the censors. The
rules were simple, unspoken but understood: their sermons could in no case
contain any texts susceptible to being interpreted as praising a sacred power.
In other words, any glorification of the Prophet, no matter how apolitical it
might be, was banned. Sufi saints could be celebrated strictly for their tradi-
tional association with a traditional localism, as though mysticism was to give
way to the picturesque. Here already, at the beginning of the twentieth centu-
ry, we find the tendency, later taken up by the Soviets, of turning Islam into
folklore.
Moving along with and around the cantors (as strictly defined), there were
also two other marginal groups, one related to the street arts and one to the
itinerant lifestyle. Enquiries conducted in Uzbekistan by Russian and Europe-
an ethnologists at the beginning of the 2000s throw some light on the past of
these little-known groups, at least on those aspects that are within their living
memories.
Under the generic name of dārbāz/dorboz, which is literally ‘tightrope-walk-
er’, the first of these groups contains different types of street performers: acro-
bats, balancing acts, jugglers, magicians, strongmen.13 Some elements drawn
from Sufi manuals (risāla) and oral recital contain essentially religious legends
that are interpreted by anthropologists in terms of Islamisation, but their
meaning seems to us rather to partake of the initiatic message. Thus when we
learn that the Prophet’s cousin ʿAlī invented the tightrope in order to cross a
moat and conquer an infidel fortress, we feel that the artiste here evokes not so

13 Olaf Günther, “Acrobats Remember Their Lives,” in The Past as Resource in the Turkic
Speaking World, ed. Ildikó Bellér-Hann (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008), 123–37; Id., Die dorboz im
Ferghanatal. Erkundungen im Alltag und der Geschichte einer Gauklerkultur (Frankfurt-
am-Main: Peter Lang, 2008).
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 189

much the conversion of others but rather the conquest of one’s own internal
fortress. In the same way, when the strongman (pālwān/polvon) recounts that
his patron saint Bilāl, the black companion and first convert of Muḥammad,
was, among other tortures, placed under an enormous stone by his master, but
survived thanks to his physical strength, it is just as much a spiritual strength
that he is demonstrating. In fact, the links with dervishes were evident until
the beginning of the twentieth century, in spite of the lack of historical data.
Interviews with the dorboz reveal that it was by this Sufi name that the most
modest of the street performers were called, while the more eminent among
them claimed dervishism (darwīshlïq), for themselves, initiating themselves
into its teachings and tracing an audacious parallel between the technique of
the balance artist and the ascetic path.
It may be the case that the discourse of today’s street performers should
challenge notions of their social or religious marginality, and that the names of
successful performers should constantly be cited, in order to reject a Soviet
historiography that was keen to invent victims of a feudal past in order to jus-
tify its cultural politics, but it nevertheless remains difficult to believe that the
dorboz could have occupied a more enviable place in society than did dervish-
es and the maddāḥ, at least until the Soviet period. For the historian of Central
Asian Islam, it is less a question of the conception of arts as major or minor,
and the effect of this on the social rank of the performers, than of the represen-
tation of the Islamic doxa. In the eyes of the religious elite of Turkestan as for
the colonial political powers, does not the acrobat represent the ignorant
masses of Islam who invented myth-making prophets, recycled Sufism any way
they could and displayed a lifestyle in opposition to that of the honest man?
Here again, it makes no difference whether we are dealing with myth or reality,
because opinion itself is the deciding factor. Regardless of the lack of sources,
we must at least renounce a post-Soviet historiography (or a too-pat post mod-
ernism) in which power relations disappear and every person submits to reli-
gious orthodoxy, and the social body exists in an inclusive dream. Returning to
the question of opinion, especially the exogenic opinion that attributes foreign
origins to the acrobats, claiming they are the ancestors of Gypsies (lūlī/luli)
who came from India, how can we see this otherwise than as a relegation to the
socio-religious margins?
As mythical as such links may be, they are nevertheless assumed to exist
between street performers and the itinerant groups that in Uzbekistan take the
generic names of Luli, Mugat or Multani.14 The Gypsies had social ­relationships

14 Karine Gatelier, “La représentation des Mugat dans les sources écrites: réalité de leur mo-
bilité et de la sédentarité,” Cahiers d’Asie centrale 11–12 (2003): 269–89; id., “Hama Mugat !:
190 Chapter 5

with dervishes, dorboz, and maddāḥ, since these latter groups included some of
the former among their members, and members of all of the groups ­sometimes
dispensed the same services; one thinks in particular of activities related to
begging, magic and fortune-telling. Although there are no historical studies
of the Luli, ethnology teaches us that the Gypsies of Turkestan practiced and
continue to practice as small-scale artisans and itinerant vendors. As, start-
ing in the nineteenth century, they became more sedentary, itinerant families
were obliged to adapt to new ways of living and settle in one place: either in
groups at the edges of villages, where they cultivated crops and raised animals
for food, or in specific areas within the big cities. This is suggested in one of
the rare primary sources to mention the Luli at any length. The Makhāzin al-
taqwā (‘The treasures of piety’), a work in verse that was finished by the rank-
ing civil servant and Naqshbandī scholar Mīr Ḥusayn Mīrī in about 1830, treats
of different aspects of the Emirate of Bukhara.15 One passage therein describes
the quarter of Kāfirābād (‘city of infidels’), doubtless so-called because of the
common belief that Gypsies practiced a religion other than Islam, although
they were in fact Sunni Muslims. This belief is the reason for the segregation
of their buried dead, as is the case in the Shāh-i zinda cemetery in Samarkand
and the Chigatay cemetery in Tashkent.16 The Kāfirābād quarter is said in the
Makhāzin al-taqwā to have been home to about 1,000 families. Our author then
takes the trouble to denounce the occupations of the women there in barely
veiled terms: the Luli women spend their time sitting on the doorsteps of their
miserable hovels, outrageously made up and covered in vulgar jewellery; they
freely receive the shady clients who visit them.
Leaving to one side the complex question of prostitution, let us retain only
the representation of a supposedly foreign population, whose very language,

modèle de reproduction identitaire des Mugat, Tsiganes d’Asie centrale,” PhD diss., Paris,
EHESS, 2004.
15 For more on this author and his works, consult Anke von Kügelgen, “Die Entfaltung der
Naqšbandīya Muğaddidīya im Mittleren Transoxanien vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jah-
rhunderts: Ein Stück Detektivarbeit,” in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the
18th to the Early 20th Centuries. Vol. 2, eds. Anke von Kügelgen, Michael Kemper and Allen
J. Frank (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1998), 107–8. Karine Gatelier and Nuryog’di Toshev discov-
ered the passage concerning Kāfirābād. An author from the beginning of the twentieth
century, Vladimir Ivanov affirmed that in Bukhara the Gypsies were not allowed to enter
the town after sunset. Nevertheless, he observed Gypsy quarters (maḥalla) in Nishapur
and Sabzevar in the Khorasan, see Wladimir Ivanow, “Further notes on Gypsies in Persia,”
Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, new series 16 (1920): 282–83.
16 On this point, and on the subject of Islam among the Gypsies, see Elena Marushiakova
and Vesselin Popov, Gypsies in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Basingtoke: Palgrave Mac-
millan, 2016), 47–49.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 191

as we shall also see on the subject of Xinjiang and when we analyse in detail
the idiom of the dervishes, was by reputation impenetrable for non-Gypsies.
The maddāḥ of the Chinese Wild West are not as well-known as their col-
leagues in Uzbekistan. We know nearly nothing about their lives in the Emirate
of Yaʿqūb Beg, nor of what the political attitude to them was after the creation
by the Qing in 1884 of the province of Xinjiang.
We do know that they were part of the religious landscape, as testified by
Grenard and Dutreuil de Rhins17: ‘It is said that before 1863 books were very
rare in Khotan; one found very few commentaries on the Law or legends of the
saints there. Since then, translations of Persian works have spread; these are
mostly fragments of those texts that are recited by the travelling storytellers
who on bazaar-day gather the loitering crowd around them (…) Their tales
present about the same characteristics of naive marvels and tasteless farce as
in every country in the world, and their motives are more or less the same, too.’
A bit later there are details on the language used: ‘One must be cautious, be-
cause none of these tales presents the local dialect in all its purity. Those who
narrate them have travelled a lot, or they have a certain amount of education,
so that they tend to mix several more or less different dialects.’ This suggestive
but reductive observation does not completely take into account the fact that
the repertoires of the cantors of Tarim included popular songs (chöchäk) that
were mostly intended to be comical.18 Accompanied by musicians and per-
forming in groups of three or four, the maddāḥ could perform skits vaguely
reminiscent of boulevard theatre, mocking mandarins and Qadis.19 In one
sense, these scenes continued in the tradition of popular irony against the au-
thorities, especially the religious authorities, that was expressed through jokes
and sayings such as the well-known ‘Do as the mollah says, not as the mollah
does!’ (mulllānïng degänini qïl qïlghanïnï qïlma).20 What’s more, before under-
going the polishing that was intended to make them more tame, it was not
unknown for the epic tales (dāstān) recited by the street singers to include
political allusions, apologies of martyrdom and even calls to holy war.21 The
subversive intention was thus explicit.

17 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:86–87.
18 There are some translated examples in Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scienti-
fique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 3:104–24.
19 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:140–41.
20 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:237–
38.
21 Jun Sugawara, “Expanded texts of ‘martyrdom’: The genesis and development of the Ui-
ghur legend of Abdurahman Ḫan,” Eurasian Studies 12 (2014): 417–35.
192 Chapter 5

Current ethnomusicology confirms that today’s Uyghurs have perpetuated

the tradition of cantors and other dervishes in a form that is very attenuated
but still close to that of the nineteenth century. Kashgari musicians in the 1980s
could list eleven categories of religious musician22, among which no fewer
than four could be considered marginal. The first and calmest of these is the
maddāḥ/mädda, presented as actors and masters of two or three disciples,
most active at the time of Muslim and agrarian festivals and living on dona-
tions from the public. They tell tales from the Quran and of the Prophet’s life.
The second group is the ʿāshiq/ashiq, bards who devoted their lives to singing
God’s praises, accompanied on the sistrum (sifāy/sapay) and frame-drum (dāf/
dap). They had long hair and wore rags, playing in public spaces but refusing
any alms. All of them, men and women, made a vow of celibacy and renounced
property, including dwelling-places; they did not refuse to consume hemp. The
third type of religious musician corresponds to the majnūn/mäjnun or mad-
man, who was also celibate, a ragged wanderer and user of hemp. Their instru-
ments were the sistrum, drum and vielle (sitār/satar), and they often played in
cemeteries. Finally there are the dīwāna/diwanä, the holy fools, making up a
group of professional beggars who could marry and stay living under one roof.
Nevertheless, they lived in poverty and were meant to distribute their worldly
goods to those more unfortunate than themselves. They were mainly active
near mosques, sometimes on a daily basis, reciting in a sing-song and clapping
sistrum against shoulder. Certain of them claimed to have been chosen by
God, to be Sufis and members of Sufi brotherhoods.
As in Russian Turkestan, so in the eastern parts of Turkestan cantors and
their partners in misfortune rubbed along more or less easily with other mar-
ginal populations. It must be admitted that our current knowledge on this sub-
ject is very insufficient. However, the clues provided by language, or rather by
the slang used by marginal populations, do promise some interesting results.
It was precisely the use of language that attracted the attention of Fernand
Grenard when he made contact with the Luli and the Abdāl/Abdal of Khotan.
On the first of these groups, the orientalist merely mentions his visit in Decem-
ber 1891 to an encampment near Khotan: ‘Conmen and fortune-tellers, they
speak a composite language combining Persian, Turkish, Baluchi, various Hin-
du dialects, Arabic and other words with roots that cannot be determined.’23
Then Grenard asked himself whether these Luli might not include a sub-group
called Abdal, because, especially from the linguistic point of view, there is a

22 Sabine Trébinjac, Le Pouvoir en chantant. Tome 1: L’art de fabriquer une musique chinoise
(Nanterre: Société d’éthnologie, 2000), 180–86.
23 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:308.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 193

Figure 27
Dīwāna in Keriya

surprising number of common points. He concluded that the differences in

ethics and traditions between the two groups were too numerous for them to
be identical. What’s more, the Abdal families that he met in Keriya and Cher-
chen in 1893 were constantly intriguing.24 In spite of having been granted
land by Yaʿqūb Beg in recognition of their service in the army, this minority
remained very poor and despised, living apart from the rest of society. Possibly
influenced by Shiism, the Abdal cultivated isolation on the territorial level and
on that of their notoriously secret language, the understanding of which was
impossible for the uninitiated.
In October 1906, Paul Pelliot did some research into the Abdal of eastern
Turkestan.25 Without casting doubt on his predecessor’s results, this archae-

24 Dutreuil de Rhins and Grenard, Mission Scientifique dans la Haute Asie 1890–1895, 2:308–11.
25 Paul Pelliot, “Les Ābdāl de Païnāp,” Journal asiatique, 10th series, tome 9 (1907): 115–39. In
Otto Ladstätter and Andreas Tietze, Die Abdal (Äynu) in Xinjiang (Vienna: Österreichisch-
en Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1994), 51–56, several hypotheses on the origins of the
194 Chapter 5

Figure 28 Dervishes of Kashgar

ologist noted that the Abdal in the Kashgar region did not suffer from any so-
cial exclusion, but rather the opposite, in that the general population found
them to be ‘people who are somewhat strange, who often become sorcerers’.
They seemed to feel ‘a sort of superstitious respect for them, as much because
of the occult powers they are meant to have as because of the large number
of languages they are supposed to know’. In fact, according to popular opin-
ion, the name ʿAbdal’ was given to wandering monks who begged as they
passed through towns wearing black turbans and white coats (chāpān);
they were seen as being a little superior to the dīwāna and the Qalandars. The
main thing that set them apart was their Persian dialect.
The elucidation of people’s origins or ethnic identities is not this book’s con-
cern. In our perspective, which is the study of religious marginality in Islam,
we are hypothesising that aspects of this marginality took refuge in language
after having been driven out of theory and praxis, and out of the contents of

Abdal are discussed, with no decisive conclusion. However, linguistic analysis (pp. 86–95)
reinforces the hypothesis of an Iranian ethnicity from a low social class.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 195

the texts as much as their transmission. The name Abdāl designates not only
this hypothetical minority of crypto-Shiites in Xinjiang but also the general
dervish milieu in Central Asia, following the example of heterodox groups in
Anatolia, such as the Abdāl of Rūm, or those in Khorasan and Transoxania, if
we are to believe the Qalandarnāma of Harawī and of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm that
we studied closely in our introduction and in chapter 2.26 During the nine-
teenth century and until the first decades of the twentieth a common argotic
language called abdāl tili/abdoltili held together this milieu that defined itself
as kastak (or crafty, artful fellow in nineteenth-century European terms), in
opposition to other people, the daghā/degha or ‘dupes’.

2 Abdāl tili, the Language of Outsiders

The dervish’s slang is a slippery terrain because data are few and invite perilous
etymological or ethno-historical conjecture. Nevertheless, we propose to take
another look at the available information on the language of marginal peoples,
gathered principally by Vladimir Alekseievich Ivanov, Anna Leonidovna Troits-
kaia and the late Clifford Edmund Bosworth; we will concentrate more than
they did on the heterodox culture contained in this language.
While travelling through Iran and Turkestan at the beginning of the 1910s,
Ivanov observed that numerous idioms were common to dervishes, cantors,
petty criminals and Gypsies – that is, to the underclasses – who all used Turko-
Persian argotic languages that were similar though not identical, and shared
several formal characteristics: suffixations, the transposition of syllables, and
creolisation.27 It was during a trip to Qarshi, in today’s Uzbekistan, that the
orientalist discovered a manuscript collection (majmūʿa) attributed by its sell-
er (against all probability) to Avicenna; the price therefore rose to a peak that
was inaccessible to a university researcher’s pocket. Ivanov rented the docu-
ment for one night and discovered within the 200 in-quarto folios the secret of
a linguistic code that was said to have benefited a religious community. Ac-
cording to the anonymous author, this was ‘the language of those who adore
the Divine ʿAlī (zabān-i ʿAlī ilah khwānān)’. At that time, ʿAlī Ilahī designated
various types of heretical and antinomian sects, and not only Shiites as Ivanov

26 Alexandre Papas, Mystiques et vagabonds en islam, 195–96, 308–9. The Anatolian Abdāl,
perhaps the heirs of the heterodox communities, used a slang that was studied by An-
dreas Tietze, “Zum Argot der Anatolischen Abdal (Gruppe Teber),” Acta Orientalia Aca-
demiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 36/1–3 (1982): 521–32.
27 Vladimir Ivanov, “An Old Gypsy-Darwish Jargon,” Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal, new series, 18 (1922): 375–83.
196 Chapter 5

thought. The manuscript, which seemed to have been copied during the six-
teenth century, contained, written in the margins of three of its pages, a poorly-
written fragment of a secret lexicon called Āghāz-i kitāb-i sāsiyān-i bikamāl, or
The beginning of the book of perfect beggars. The scholar identified 100 among
the 400 words noted. Let us retain, on the social side, the ‘thief’ (genāw), the
‘rascal’ (jaʿfar), the ‘Sufi’ (sahāk), the ‘brigand’ (bīs), the ‘acolyte’ (zanbūrī),
the ‘gambler’ (munkākir) – all terms that oscillate easily between literal and
religious meanings.
A few decades later, in 1945, Anna Troitskaia conducted interviews with Uz-
bek performers, in particular with three comic actors (qiziqchi) called Arifjan
Tashmatov, Rafik-ata Gaibov and Abdurahman Abdullaev, in order to gain a
better understanding of the jargon they used among themselves, the above-
mentioned abdoltili, which was also known as mehtarlik, takia-i sozanda; that
is to say, the language of musicians that was also known to women, children,
the maddāḥ and the Qalandars.28 With few adjective and not many verbs, this
sociolect consisted mainly of words that named individuals (by age and gen-
der), parts of the body, foodstuffs and colours; there were also words for values
such as good and evil, and words relating to the universe of violence (to which
we shall return). If, proud of her collection of more than 200 words, Troitskaia
somewhat exaggerates the possibilities of Abdoltili as a lingua franca by com-
paring it to the language of the Abdāl of eastern Turkestan, she nevertheless
concludes that this language has little in common with that other secret slang
spoken by the Luli of Fergana, arabcha.29 Going beyond oral sources, the So-
viet ethnologist followed Ivanov in consulting a manuscript copy of the Kitāb-i
sāsiyān, dated to 745/1344 that was conserved at the Institute of Orientalism in
Tashkent, shelved under reference 2213/25. This document was divided into
two parts: a dictionary of the language of beggars in nine chapters, and a lexi-
con of the slang of the ʿAlī Ilahī, with the following chapter headings: names of
saints; parts of the body; names of family relationships, various objects and
adjectives; names of animals; names of products; names of all sorts of goods;
names of towns and places; verbs; numbers. The second part includes the
names of dishes, drinks and certain professions. The (coded) names of towns,
and the lexicon itself, clearly delineate the world of Central Asian dervishes:
Samarkand, Merv, Bukhara, Herat, Nishapur, Rey, Balkh; places where ascetes
(zāhid) lived, martyrs (shahīd) died and ritual circles (ḥalqa), gathered, where
the lute (barbat zadan) and the flute (ney kardan) were played.

28 Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili – argo tsekha artistov i muzykantov Srednei Azii,” Sovetskoe
vostokovedenie 5 (1948): 251–74.
29 Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili,” 256–59, tables 1 and 2.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 197

Troitskaia compared this with another source, Abū Dulaf’s tenth century
Ode to Beggars (Qasīda sāsāniyya), an Arabic lexicon of delinquency that was
studied in detail by Edmund Bosworth.30 From this she concluded that there
was a linguistic continuity between the underclasses of medieval society in the
Muslim orient and modern Central Asian dervishes. Bosworth himself did not
oppose this hypothesis, arguing as follows: the spread of the Sāsān in the east-
ern provinces took place in propitious conditions just to the extent that, even
until the twentieth century, those regions preserved very ancient languages
and populations; this is demonstrated by (among others) the Yaghnobi Iranian
language (descended from Sogdien) in Tajikstan, and by, for example, the se-
cret language of some Central Asian and Iranian professions, Zargari, which
inserts the sound [z] or [za] into each syllable.31
We will follow the path of neither of these authors; there are too few ­sources,
the analogies are too tenuous and the hypotheses don’t ring true. As modest as
it may seem, rather than dealing with vast continuities this book prefers dis-
creet ambiguities, minute irregularities, imperceptible mutations. Leaving
aside the diachronic approach, we will stick with the synchronic: the state of
Abdoltili as the nineteenth century becomes the twentieth says little about the
conservation of a language (all languages are stratified by their long life-spans),
and less still about the conservation of the discrete groups of people who spoke
Abdoltili; it speaks rather more of the language’s destiny as a locus of preserva-
tion. Marginal peoples’ slang rings out as their final expression, a last refuge for
an antinomianism whose acts and ideas are disappearing, whose very practi-
tioners are fading, leaving behind only the words they’ve used.
We propose to look at part of the Abdoltili lexicon, reconstituted with the
help of the actors/performers from Tashkent32, in order to return it to its sta-
tus as slang through a translation – we feel this is the only way to preserve its
intentions, both comical and subversive.33 There are four particularly common
operators here: suffixation as a popularising device, vulgarism, the repertoire
of violence, and that of dervishism.

30 C. Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground, 2:181–290, with critical edition
and translation of the text into English.
31 C. Edmund Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underground, 1:171–76. References to Zargari
in Gurgen Melikian, “On the problem of secret languages and slangs in Iran,” Iran and the
Caucasus 6/1–2 (2002): 181–88.
32 Anna L. Troitskaia, “ʿAbdoltili,” 269–74.
33 I take inspiration here from what was attempted by Mikhaïl Mikhaïlov, on the basis of
Fikrī’s Lughat-i gharībe (Istanbul, 1890), in his Matériaux sur l’argot et les locutions popu-
laires turco-ottomans (Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1930), although he abstained ‘from pub-
lishing about 45 words and expressions that, while being characteristic, have a obscene
meaning (…)’
198 Chapter 5

The first of these operations is to be understood as an alteration or subver-

sion not of the meaning of a noun but of its register. Thus buyrak means ‘heart’,
but buyraktuqi (with the suffix ‘-tuqi’) should be translated as the ‘beating one’;
dandon means ‘tooth’, but dandontuqi would mean ‘gnasher’; ‘door’ would be
dar whereas dartuqi designates ‘the heavy one’; ‘mother’ is modar and modar-
tuqi ‘mum’; Qobbar, the ‘police officer’ becomes qobbartuqi, the ‘copper’; qulf,
the ‘lock’ becomes qulftuqi, ‘locksmithery’; tabar, the ‘axe’ becomes tabartuqi,
the ‘chopper’. In the same way, the much rarer suffix ‘-ki’ turns patta, ‘money’
into pattaki, ‘dosh’. As for the suffix ‘-tak’, its French equivalent would be ‘-ard’,
with perhaps ‘-y’ in English, giving us kastak, ‘roublard’ (FR)/ ‘dodgy (person)’
(EN), akhmardor kastak, ‘richard’ (FR)/ ‘filthy-rich (person)’ (EN); hashpak
(musical instrument) would be ‘le braillard’ (FR), the ‘rackety one’ (EN); and
kalpak would give ‘klébard’ (FR)/ ‘doggy’ (EN). In the last case the French ver-
sion has its origins in the same word, the Arabic kalb having been incorporated
into French slang as ‘klébard’.
Vulgarisms, the second common linguistic operation in Abdoltili, corre-
spond to bad language, obscenities and coarseness of all kinds. In Abdoltili,
bazaura danap means a ‘bird’ (young woman), danapboz ‘skirt-chaser’, enmoq
‘to nab, score, snag or snatch’, enqim is ‘flab’, hor ‘shit’, hordela ‘arse’, kannos da-
nap the ‘brat’, kokonlamoq ‘gabbing’, otar is ‘Joe public’, pindadargosh ‘the one
who’s clammed up’, qlikannos the ‘stuck-up one’, sekokonchi the ‘gabbler’, sout
or sogut an ‘old fogey’, shaushau or shoushou ‘to piss’, valhajar ‘rabble, scum’.
Perhaps we should stop there.
The third operator of the language of marginal people, which we (slightly
dramatically) called ‘the repertoire of violence’ covers a wide range of objects,
gestures, and persons who are linked to the interlopers’ world on the streets.
The word dela means ‘house’, but also ‘tavern’, with its derivatives dela khutarak
and dela-i qilil, which would be ‘hovel, shack or hut’. Dilorom literally means
the ‘appeasement of the heart’, or, in other words, the (thief’s) object of desire,
but in Abdoltili becomes the equivalent of either the ‘key’ or the ‘lock’, and
thus corresponds to ‘charm’ (thieves’ cant for lockpick or key) and ‘joke’
(thieves’ cant for lock). In the same way, duxon, cigarette, corresponds more
closely to ‘fag’ and duxon talesi, tobacco pouch to something like ‘mill’ (an ob-
solete slang term for a snuff or tobacco pouch). In Persian, tīgh means a ‘blade’,
‘knife’, but the meaning of tighno is closer to ‘shiv’. The word yakan (money)
would be translateable as ‘dosh’. Finally, akhmar, the literal meaning of which
is ‘gold’, would be more accurately translated as ‘bread’ or ‘dough’, which when
it builds up constitutes the ‘loot’ (goz), or else the part of profits called the
bahra, the ‘split’. Thus, the act of sharing out any profits is bahra qilmoq, ‘split-
ting the loot’. Eniqp uymoq (to steal) is closer to ‘to nick’ and quttoqlamoq
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 199

means ‘to pinch’ or ‘to lift’; met qilmoq or metlamoq (to kill) means ‘to ice’; sok-
hunmoq (to strike) means ‘to duff up’; uday bulmoq (to escape) ‘to hook it’; pa-
stop qilmoq (to hide) ‘to stash’. There are distinct words for strangers or
outsiders, such as ganjo, similar to the Romani ‘gadjo’ (non-Romani) and noshi
(the mark or dupe). Hatapboz means a player or punter; muddabirdegho and
ghamboz both mean ‘stool pigeon’; munopuqtuqi means ‘double-crosser’; ge-
nou and khittok are robbers or pickpockets; kula ‘kiddies’; khit ‘scum’ or ‘riff-
raff’, and poisha, sut danap and khit danap are all words for ‘working girls’.
Finally, when we speak of the repertoire of dervishism, we refer to the often-
ambiguous words that describe the figures and behaviours prevalent in the
milieux of the dervishes, those ‘nutters of God’ (gelmon). There is the musi-
cian, or ‘note-eater’ (maisagar), the street-singer or busker (malamgu), the
‘performer’ (shelagar), the ‘gov’nor’ (ponuchi). They may consume ‘hooch’
(harl, opohal, mayob), hash (hashah), ‘black’/opium (napialan, qorakhonam),
or other ‘highs’ (jingon).
Although it is the best-known secret language of Central Asia, Abdoltili is
far from being the only one in this region where the principle of hermeticism
claims descent from antinomian tradition. We now return, in a way, to the be-
ginning of our book – not to Herat, but to various regions of Afghanistan where
we find different and specific social groups, each with its secret, or at least ex-
clusive, idiom that it was still possible to hear at the end of the 1970s.34 At the
end of our first chapter we mentioned the followers of Shaykh Mohammadi.
They lived in the north and east of the country, essentially surviving as itiner-
ant vendors, but they also included a few groups of Malang Sufi beggars, who
were considered the more ‘authentic’ descendants of their eponymous found-
er. All of them claimed to know a secret language called Ādūrgarī/Ardurgari,
taught to them from the age of six or seven, after Persian Dari. This language
was said to have ‘stolen its words’ from about twenty other languages. The Ka-
wol, who went to southern Tajikistan from Afghanistan, claimed descent from
the lineage of either Shaykh Mohammadi or Fakir Mardum, and spoke Kawoli,
a Persian argot. Also in Tajikistan, in the Gissar valley, the speakers of Chis-
tonegi fell into three groups, the most illustrious of which was called by the
curious code-name ‘Qalandar mulberry-eaters’ (lalandara tutxur). The Chis-
toni distinguished their argotic lexicon from the rest of their language, and
claimed that it came from a ‘language of thieves’ (zaboni duzdi). An interesting

34 Jadwiga Pstrusińska, Secret Languages of Afghanistan and Their Speakers (Newcastle:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 36–42, 48–55. Although it has many excellent qual-
ities, this work does display a tendency to get lost in the byways of hazardous etymologi-
cal investigations.
200 Chapter 5

task remains, that of comparing these linguistic phenomena with the variants
of Arabic argots (lughat al-sīm) attested from the nineteenth century to our
own times.35

3 Argot and Mystical Language

These argots spoken by marginal peoples would seem to be separate in every

way from the mystical language of Sufis, at least in its well-known versions.
Abdoltili and Adurgari appear to be completely lacking in any technical lexi-
con such as that studied by Louis Massignon and Paul Nwyia.36 Few of the Sufi
concepts (iṣṭilāḥāt al-ṣūfiyya) that make up the fundamental Arabic vocabu-
lary, elaborated between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries and adopted
by all Sufi currents, can be unearthed in the work of a dervish such as Kharābātī.
The science of Arabo-Persian letters, elaborated by Faḍl Allāh Astarābādī (d.
796/1394) does not seem to have reached the antinomian spirits of Central Asia
either.37 Yet we know that Hurufism (ḥurūfiyya, from ḥurūf, letters) and its eso-
teric and numerical speculations on the thirty-two characters of the alphabet,
attracted numerous adepts not only in Iran, India and the Ottoman Empire,
but also in the heterodox circles of Herat. Must we therefore conclude that
these tardy jargons are just a final paltry vestige of Sufi antinomianism in Cen-
tral Asia, the mere remains of mysticism that has progressively lost its way?
That would be too simple. Instead, one must first restate the relevant questions
relating to language over the long duration, in order to understand what is at
stake socially and religiously; then one must compare our marginal people
with other cases of socio-linguistic outsiders in the Muslim world.38
When one establishes links between the argots of modern times and the
way language was used by fifteenth century dervishes a constant begins to

35 E.K. Rowson, “al-Sīm,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., BrillOnline.

36 Louis Massignon, Essai sur les origines du lexique technique de la mystique musulman (Par-
is: Cerf, 1968); Paul Nwyia, Exégèse coranique et langage mystique. Nouvel essai sur le lex-
ique technique des mystiques musulmans (Beirut: Dar el-Machreq, 1991). For a reflection
on the didactic dimension, see Carl W. Ernst, “Mystical Language and the Teaching Con-
text in the Early Lexicons of Sufism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 181–201.
37 Hamid Algar, “Horufism,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, online; Shahzad Bashir, Fazlallah Astra-
badi and the Hurufis (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006).
38 We can go no further in the context of this book. The temptation to compare with other
religious cultures remains strong, particularly with regard to Christian mysticism of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and what Michel De Certeau called the ‘ways of
speaking’ in La Fable mystique, 1, XVIe-XVIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), ch. 4.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 201

appear, one that goes beyond the dialectological continuity sought by Troit-
skaia and Bosworth – there is a constant power struggle, a tension within the
very modes of expression of Islam.
ʿAlī Shīr Nawāʾī deplored the brute-like voices of the cantors and storytellers,
accused false Sufis of twisting the real meanings of words, blamed drunken-
ness for abolishing the poetic … all of this while leaving the door open to the
subversive potential of the mystical vagabonds, either through laughter or la-
conicism. The Timurid scholar’s ambivalence even allowed him to concede
that as long as a religious speaker abstained from poetry, then a radical verbal
economy, or its opposite, verbal delirium, could guarantee not only his sincer-
ity but his saintliness itself. Later, the Qalandar Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, himself a
user of popular speech, or at least a non-scholar, defended an ascesis of lan-
guage against all forms of sophistication. This linguistic poverty was the natu-
ral concomitant of the voluntary impoverishment of the dervish. Forbidding
neither esoteric etymologies nor speculative lexicography, ascesis retained
only the religious significations of words. What do we retain of Kharābātī? The
onslaught of imperatives, interjections, and contrapositions in his verses seem
to belong rather to the sermon than to literature. The poet reinvented himself
as a preacher, believer in a stylistic privation that tended towards a negation of
speech itself, and therefore of his own reasons for writing. Thus it’s not surpris-
ing that he cast down the figure of the poet to put in its place that of the in-
spired cantor (maddāḥ), who was more popular yet less profane. Going against
the grain of a noisy modernity, reclusive dervishes deep in their grottoes ob-
served a silence that was heavy with content. It was a question of making one-
self absolutely available to God’s message, whether it was expressed in the
language of dreams or the play of echoes. All that remained of their erstwhile
vocabularies, however scholarly these might have been, was a few inscriptions
or orally transmitted anecdotes. As for the slang and argotic languages, as well
as being the secret preserve of a brotherhood they were used to thwart at-
tempts by vain intellects to impose signification or semantics, in order better
to denounce the derisory nature of human expression in the search for the
absolute. Only a language that had been pushed to lexical extremes could es-
cape its own banalisation.
To sum up, the marginal people of Sufism never stopped disputing institu-
tionalised language in Islam, including their own, because according to them,
and in parallel with the repeated institutionalisations of Sufism in general,
everything that came out of the mouth of a believer, like everything that was
traced by his reed pen, was destined to become part of the monotonous flow
of social exchanges. In other words, neither ordinary language nor the lan-
guage of monuments, nor literature, nor the liturgy … nor perhaps even the
202 Chapter 5

language of scripture itself managed to reproduce the initial primitive miracle

of language. This in its turn and for the same reasons set up a chronic battle
against the dervishes’ mystical language itself. With their slang and argotic lan-
guages antinomians from Central Asia and elsewhere fought the last engage-
ment in this war.
We can gain a better understanding of what was at stake in these power rela-
tions by looking elsewhere than Asia. We need not spend too much time on the
classic theme of linguistic concision, but shall merely observe that until fairly
recently the dervishes sought, in one way and another, to keep this medieval
tradition alive; the tradition did not survive in the same way in the Arabic-
speaking world. And yet that part of the world invented mystical linguistic
concision, whether in the ‘paradoxes’ (shaṭaḥāt) of Bisṭāmī, as we have seen in
the introduction, or those of Ḥallāj and of Niffarī (d. 354/965), whose dialecti-
cal force lay in their incitement to mutism – as guarantor of the experience of
mystical union and as a means of translating this new experience for others.39
The Suryāniyya language, contemporaneous with our Central Asian mar-
ginal folk but less studied, has fascinated researchers for several reasons. Al-
ready a theme in the tenth century in the Epistles of the ‘Brothers of purity’
(Ikhwān al-ṣafā) – a collection of doctrinal writings elaborated within a clan-
destine brotherhood with Shiite tendencies – pseudo-Syriac (Suryāniyya) was
said to have been spoken by Adam himself, after which time the words were
lengthened by the composition of Suryāniyya ‘letters’, and progressively formed
all the different languages. As the mother of all languages, this angelic idiom
was accessible only to certain mystics, and then only in a spontaneous and
unpredictable way.40 Most of these people were illiterate shaykhs (ummī) of
the Ottoman period who, following the Prophet’s example, had obtained their
wisdom through inspiration (ilhām), notably in the Uwaysī telepathic mode.
Alongside all those who expressed themselves in a ‘foreign language’ (lisān
aʿjamī), those who had difficulty in speaking (aghlaf al-lisān), those who knew
the synthesising words (jawāmiʿ al-kalim), and those who reached glossolalia,
there were also the speakers of Suryāniyya.41 The hagiography of the ummī

39 Pierre Lory, La science des lettres en islam (Paris: Dervy, 2004), 51–52, 128–29; Abdelwahab
Meddeb, Les dits (shatahât) de Bistami (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Louis Massignon, Kitāb al-
ṭawāsīn par al-Ḥallāj (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1913); Arthur J. Arberry, The Mawáquif and
Mukhátabát of Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbdi’ L-Jabbár Al-Niffari (London: Luzac, 1935, re-pub-
lished 1978).
40 Pierre Lory, La science des lettres en islam, 28, 69.
41 Eric Geoffroy, Le soufisme en Égypte et en Syrie sous les derniers Mamelouks et les premiers
Ottomans. Orientations spirituelles et enjeux culturels (Damascus: Institut français d’études
arabes de Damas, 1995), 299–307.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 203

shaykh of Fez, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (d. 1132/1720), provides a description of

pseudo-Syriac.42 In essence, an extreme concision allows this idiom, which is
undetectable by the senses, to produce a multitude of meanings – more than
any other language – with a minimum of words. For where other languages are
composed of words, Suryānī is above all composed of letters of the alphabet,
each of which changes its meaning according to its association with another
letter. The apparently incomprehensible babblings of infants are close to
Suryānī to the extent that on the esoteric side Adam spoke in Suryānī to his
children, who transmitted it onwards. Here we also perceive the notion of a
language in its infancy being related to holiness. Finally, Dabbāgh teaches that
certain words in the Quran come from pseudo-Syriac and not from Arabic.
Consequently, they carry meaning beyond what is apparent. In addition, the
initial letters of the Quran’s chapters belong to Suryāniyya; they reveal the path
to the interior significance of the text. Even in the twentieth century, some
Sufis still had, by reputation, the ability to speak pseudo-Syriac; for example,
Upper Egypt’s ardent ecstatic (majdhūb) Aḥmad Radwān (d. 1967), who ad-
dressed the earth’s saints in their primordial language and received premoni-
tory messages from them.43
Not in the Middle East now, but in the Maghreb, the argotic speech or Ghūs
of Morocco’s Heddāwa in the nineteenth century relied on an Arabic syntax
while its vocables drew on various sources.44 Here again, one finds few verbs
or connectors, but rather a detailed secret vocabulary of drugs, their consump-
tion and what was forbidden. There was no mystical lexicon. Nevertheless, in
way that related closely to Ghūs, the gyrovagues used expressions that sprang
from an intention to diminish both the substance of the world and the pre-
sumptions of any grasp of the spiritual on the material world. On the one hand,
the Heddāwa called themselves by their given names as little as possible, to the
point where it was forgotten; they compulsively multiplied the number of di-
minutive words that they used to indicate utensils, foods or the gestures of
daily life. On the other hand, when they spoke of their brotherhood rituals they

42 Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh, Paroles d’or. Kitâb al-Ibrîz. Enseignements consignés par
son disciple Ibn Mubârak al-Lamtî, preface, notes and translation from Arabic by Zakia
Zouanat (Paris: Le Relié, 2001), 201–9, 258; Aḥmad b. al-Mubārak al-Lamaṭī, Pure Gold from
the Words of Sayyidī ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh (Al-Dhabab al-Ibrīz min Kalām Sayyidī ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz al-Dabbāgh), translation, notes and detailed plan by John O’Kane and Bernd
Radtke (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 421–57.
43 Rachida Chih, Le soufisme au quotidien. Confréries d’Egypte au XXe siècle (Paris: Sindbad,
2000), 105.
44 Pierre Brunel, Le monachisme errant dans l’Islam. Sidi Heddi et les Heddawa (Paris: Mai-
sonneuve et Larose, 1955), 360–67.
204 Chapter 5

replaced technical terms with images or very concrete periphrases, in the same
way as epigrams and humorous sayings replaced abstract quotations.
The Turkish-speaking world also had an episode of mystical language in the
pre-modern period; this did not last as long, but was resolutely sophisticated.
This was no less nor more than the invention of a language, Bāleybelen, by a
Sufi scholar called Muḥyī Gülşenī (d. 1014/1606).45 Muḥyī Gülşenī was a shaykh
in the Gülşeniyye brotherhood, an order founded in Cairo at the beginning of
the sixteenth century, which was passably heterodox and Hurufī. Also in Cairo,
once he had finished his years of training in Edirne and Istanbul, lived the man
nicknamed Dervīş Muḥyī. A tireless polymath in Persian and Ottoman Turkish,
in 988/1580 he composed a grammar and a dictionary of Bāleybelen, an unu-
sual name that means ‘language of the life-giver’, in reference to the name of
the author (muḥyī) and the promethean essence of his invention. Essentially,
this new idiom that foreshadowed Esperanto or Volapük had an alphabet of
thirty-three Arabo-Persian letters, in the service of a morphology of Semitic
type, that is to say, one based on consonant roots with grammatical inflections
made of prefixes and suffixes, as in the agglutinative Turkic languages. Of more
interest to us is the fact that the Bāleybelen lexicon of 10,000 items seems to
have been created ex nihilo but in fact takes its inspiration from the three
source languages (Arabic, Persian and Turkish), even containing terms the
meaning of which corresponds either metaphorically or metonymically to its
‘etymology’. For example, in Bāleybelen pīr means ‘mirror’, and comes from the
Persian word pīr, signifying ‘spiritual master’, that is, the metaphorical mirror
of the disciple. Gulāb means ‘cheek’ in Bāleybelen, and comes from the Persian
gulāb, meaning ‘rose-water’, a metonym for tears. Dervīş Muḥyī himself admit-
ted that his aim was to explain the rules and the vocabulary of this language in
order to put it into order, to teach the exoteric knowledge of the Sufis, and to
allow poets and writers to understand it. Partly the fruit of Sufi inspiration and
partly the expression of unity with God, Bāleybelen was explicitly presented as
an idiom of divine origin whose only purpose was mystical. Its use remained

45 Sylvestre de Sacy, “Le Capital des objets recherchés, et le chapitre des choses attendues ou
dictionnaire de l’idiome balaïbalan,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliothèque
impériale, tome 9 (1813): 365–96; Alessandro Bausani, “About a curious ‘mystical’ language
Bāl-a i-balan,” East and West 4/4 (1954): 234–38; Mustafa Koç, Bāleybelen. İlk yapma dil.
Muhyī-i Gülşenī (Istanbul: Klasik, 2011); Charles G. Häberl, “Bālaybalan language,” Encyclo-
paedia Iranica, online. For a recent study on the Gülşeniyye, see Side Emre, Ibrahim-i
Gulshani and the Khalwati-Gulshani Order: Power Brokers in Ottoman Egypt (Leiden; Brill,
2017). A manuscript copy of the Kitāb-i bāleybelen is available online: <http://pudl.prince
ton.edu/objects/t148fh20m>.
On The Road With Cantors And Itinerants 205

limited to the Gülşeniyye brotherhood, but the radical gesture of the Ottoman
shaykh was praised by several of the period’s intellectual authorities.
Each of the many mystical languages represented an alternative to the an-
ticipated failure of language. Like their brothers in the middle east, Transoxa-
nian dervishes did not resign themselves to institutionalised ways of speaking:
the Turkish of political domination, the Persian of literary prestige, the inesca­
pable Arabic of the sacred realm. The marginal peoples of Islam never entrust-
ed their voices to a mode of expression that claimed to be definitive, instead,
step by step, they tested the means of uttering the things that clean religious
consciences held to be unsayable. And if antinomianism in the modern era
faded until only words were left, at least in the centre of Asia, this happened
because of an obstinate fidelity to the first among them: no.
206 Conclusion: Dervishes yesterday
Conclusion: and today
Dervishes Yesterday And Today

Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday and Today

Having reached the end of this long and somewhat fragmented historical jour-
ney, we can observe that the situation in Central Asia incontestably demon-
strates the existence in Muslim societies of ‘a desire for transgression and a
return to the wild side of life’ – a desire quoted in our introduction as applying
to the Christian west only. More specifically, the case of Central Asia encour-
ages us to look for diversity in Sufism in parallel with its institutionalisation,
and long after the Medieval era, and to draw on the most varied array of ­sources
possible, because the marginal people we seek are, by definition, excluded
from majoritarian discourse, or escape from it. The current volume aims to
convince the reader of the necessity of having recourse to doctrinal treatises,
to poetry, to orally-transmitted legends, ethnographical research, and lexico-
graphy. There are two questions arising from all this, one historiographic and
one current:
To what extent do the conclusions of this quasi-counter-history of Central
Asian Islam, which attempts to rescue from oblivion the signs of religious resis-
tance to the limits and the very name of faith, apply to the rest of the Muslim
world? Our first chapter attempted to answer this by following up a few clues
on the history of dervishes. To recapitulate: in Herat at the end of the fifteenth
century and the beginning of the sixteenth there was a milieu of interlopers
making shift to survive while being the object of contempt and fascination.
The dervishes and their extreme practices were as scandalous as they were
sanctified. By cross-referencing several chapters of Nawāʾī’s moral treatise with
hagiographical notices we were able to describe a popular milieu, anonymous
and yet containing strong and individual personalities, not reducible merely to
the classical figures of ummī shaykhs such as were identified by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb
al-Shaʿrānī (d. 973/1565) from Cairo, for example, but representing instead a
rich society that included street performers, gypsies, beggars, etc. The spoken
language here was also popular, encompassing harangues, patter and song.
Instead of researching in the ummī realm, it will be necessary to examine the
minority socio-religious groups such as the Khāksārs of Iran (the word appears,
instead of a name, in chapter 33 of the above-mentioned treatise) in order to
unearth these marginal ways of living and expressing oneself.
In the region of Bukhara in the seventeenth century, groups of Qalandarī
Sufis built up around small masters at the margins of the great brotherhoods;
their physical appearance could be shocking or amusing, although from the
Qalandarī point of view it was the material representation of their beliefs.
Through our reading of Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm’s treatise we have been able to give

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_008

Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday And Today 207

details of the ideal type of the Transoxianian dervish by analysing not only the
physical characteristics of the paraphernalia that extends his body, but also
the symbolic value of each object, the rituals involved in its fabrication, and
the initiatic teachings expressed by each piece of equipment. The results of
this analysis reveal a relatively coherent doctrine situated between scholarly
Islam and popular practice. Here we are dealing neither with the speculation
of high Sufism nor with people who are completely illiterate. In this respect
the obsession of the Qalandars with all that is lexical, etymological or has to
do with the language of symbols is striking. It is likely that the exploration of
neglected treatises from the Qalandariyya, such as the massive Rawḍ al-azhār
fī ma⁠ʾāthir al-qalandar and its supplement (takmila) printed in Rampur1, will
considerably enhance our understanding of dervish thought.
During the eighteenth century a poet was born in eastern Turkestan and
grew up to write vindictive verses that promoted a flight from the world; far
from being the precursor of Enlightenment as he was called by some, this
preacher displayed a sombre conscience, leaning towards the obscurantism of
despair. Kharābātī’s voice is a singular one, which is not, to our knowledge,
echoed in any hagiographies or other Sufi prose writings of the period and re-
gion. Dervishes, and other men of faith, often expressed their religious claims
or transgressive views through poetry. Here, our author is not content to berate
his society for its weaknesses – in his meaning as in his form, avoiding techni-
cal language and rhetorical subtleties, he defends an untimely asceticism. In
order to take the measure of the extent of this Sufi contemptus mundi at the
beginning of modern times, one should also read Kharābātī’s contemporaries
– those who were nearby, such as Shāʿir Qalandar or Ismāʿil Maḥzun Khotanī
(both in Khotan) and those from farther afield, for example in the Ottoman
sphere of influence, such as ʿÖmer Ḥāfıẓ Yenişehr-i Fenārī among others. Here
one finds a discourse that is just as austere and disenchanted.
During the nineteenth century, some belated anchorites hid themselves in
grottoes in Yarkand, in Samarkand, in Mangistaou and in the Fergana; the der-
vishes opposed a radical indifference to triumphant modernity, through their
hermitism renewing their links with the origins of Sufism. One hypothesis that
resulted from the work on this chapter, founded on various ethnographical
material, has to do with the persistent tension between ascetic reclusion and
temporary retreat, between what one could call the khalwat and the ʿuzlat, or
the arbaʿīniyya and the chilla (forty days). It is possible that our marginal sub-
jects attempted, often unsuccessfully, to resist the institutionalisation of the
khalwat, which had evolved from a solitary existence into a spiritual technique.

1 Many thanks to Fabrizio Speziale for this reference.

208 Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday And Today

As is often the case among dervishes, one can find no theoretical discussion on
the subject, not even a reference to the developments on this issue written by
Qushayrī, Suhrawardī, Najm al-Dīn Kubrā and a few others. However, they have
left behind a legacy of mythical names, legends and inscriptions that even to-
day still make up part of Central Asian religious culture. Beyond Central Asia,
and in spite of the existence of some excellent monographs, what is needed is
a synthesis or a collective work on the Khalwatiyya, explaining the institutio-
nal evolution of the khalwat. In the same way, systematic research is lacking
into the confined natural spaces of Sufis – cavities, ditches, hollow trees.
Until the beginning of the twentieth century the roads in the part of the
world that is today’s Xinjiang and Uzbekistan were travelled by cantors, per-
formers and Gypsies; this closed counter-society maintained close relations
with dervishes, socially as much as culturally and religiously. When read in
conjunction with our first chapter (on Herat during the fifteenth-sixteenth
centuries) this final section, drawing primarily on lexicography, suggests the
possibility of a historic continuity for marginal milieux, though other sources
are needed to confirm this continuity. What remains is to follow to the end and
over the long duration the traces that have barely been touched upon by a his-
toriography that has been more attentive to institutions than to anything that
calls them into question. It seemed easiest to us to follow the linguistic trail: in
the context of a repression of marginal peoples in general, dervishes, whose
space for action and expression was constantly shrinking, found in language
itself one final resource, a last free space. Here again, it would be interesting to
study comparable cases, at the end of the nineteenth century and the begin-
ning of the twentieth, across the Muslim world, notably in the Balkans.
The second question is, ‘What is the situation today for religious marginality
in Islam?’ Where are the twenty-first century dervishes? If Central Asia today
remembers dervishes only through a few words and even fewer individuals,
and no longer as a phenomenon in a society that somehow included marginal
people, it is nonetheless certain that Sufi heterodoxy has not vanished. It con-
tinues to exist and survive in other spaces, and not merely in the person of
some anonymous mystical fool of God (majdhūb) or wanderer. Here we are not
singing the praises of a pretty diversity in Islam – as people sometimes do for
fear of falling into an essentialising uniformity – rather, we are remembering
Islam’s many and fruitful contradictions. Among the fresh traces that the con-
temporary observer may discover there are two specific examples that interest
us, both existing on the ‘periphery’ of the Muslim world, one example in Sen-
egal and one in Pakistan. New anthropological studies reveal a hidden and per-
haps unavowable face of today’s Sufism, resisting the surrounding tendencies
to increasing orthodoxy.
Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday And Today 209

Within the great Mouride brotherhood, founded at the beginning of the

twentieth century in Touba, a minoritary path, that of the Baay Faal/Bayye Fall,
split off during the 1950s.2 Its origins lie in the preaching of Shaykh Ibra Fall (d.
1930); some sources underline his bizarre (or even delirious) behaviour.
A former aristocrat who became a ragged beggar with long dreadlocks, Ibra
Fall submitted himself entirely as a disciple to the founder of the Mouridiyya,
Shaykh Amadou Bamba. He did not respect the Quranic precepts and was not
interested in religious instruction, preferring to labour in the fields and work
on the maintenance of the communitarian infrastructure (daara). After he
had in his turn become a spiritual master, he instigated an absolutist mode of
allegiance to the marabout and wove a large sphere of influence, through ei-
ther alliances or brotherhood affiliations. Ibra Fall developed the trade in pea-
nuts, which provided an economic basis for the propagation of the Mouride
communities. The Baay Faal then gradually distinguished themselves from the
Mourides, forming a spiritual path dedicated to work and submission to the
master, with no fasting or daily prayers. The appearance of some of its mem-
bers bore a close resemblance to that of dervishes, for similar reasons of sym-
bolism: a wide leather belt (laaxasay), a patchwork garment (njaaxas), a
talis­manic necklace (doomubaay), and dreadlocks (jneñ). They found their re-
cruits principally among young men of the lower classes, who then joined the
daara, autarchic communitarian villages situated on the outskirts of towns.
Here, over a period of three years, these celibate young men divide their time
between agricultural labour, collective begging (maajal), religious instruction,
and performing the dhikr (sikar). They also partake of festive rituals compris-
ing trances, dancing, flagellation and the discreet consumption of cannabis.
In spite of the prevalence of a rigorous outlook in Pakistan, fed by powerful
currents such as the Tablighi jamaat, ultra-devotional Islam is a major social
fact there, in the north, where tradition would have it that piety is less exuber-
ant than in the Punjab or Sindh, as much as elsewhere.3 The town of Gilgit
and the valleys surrounding it count among their inhabitants a substantial
number of mystical fools of God, majdhūb, dīwāna, faqīr, malang, phútkish
(possessed ones) and pāgal (demented ones). Let us follow a few biographical
itineraries. The much-regretted Sangula, who died in 1991, wore rags, never

2 Charlotte Pezeril, Islam, mysticisme et marginalité: les Baay Faal du Sénégal (Paris: L’Harmattan,
2008).
3 Jürgen Wasim Frembgen, “Divine Madness and Cultural Otherness: diwāna and faqīrs in
Northern Pakistan,” South Asia Research 26/3 (2006): 236–48; id., “Ecstatic Sainthood and
Austere Sunni Islam: A majzūb in Northern Pakistan,” in Politics of Worship in the Contemporary
Middle East. Sainthood in Fragile States, eds. Andreas Bandak and Mikkel Bille (Leiden: Brill,
2013), 155–68; Michel Boivin, Le soufisme antinomien dans le sous-continent indien. La’l Shahbâz
Qalandar et son héritage, XIIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 2012), 182–89.
210 Conclusion: Dervishes Yesterday And Today

washed and was often in the news for his antics – standing on one leg to pray
to ʿAlī, exhibiting his penis, and insulting political and religious authorities.
Before his death in 2000, Rabar Hasan (alias Labar) wandered from village to
village and spent almost all his time collecting leaves and pieces of paper in
order to decode the Quranic messages inscribed thereon. A pronounced taste
for hashish allowed Jan Khan to pronounce prophecies, while Ghulam Abbad
and a certain Dolo lived half-naked all the year round, a sign of their super-
natural powers. Finally, Abdul Ghani, better-known by the name of Majzub
Baba (d. 1999), lived in the small town of Chilas. He had studied at the madrasa
and even got married. A mystical crisis drove him to break with this too-com-
fortable way of life. Indifferent to prayer and to any form of ritual purity, he
lived on alms and devoted his days to blackening notebooks with illegible in-
scriptions, of which it was said that they blended Arabic, Persian, Pashto and
Shina. Although in the north these personages inspire veneration and disdain
in equal measures, in the south their holiness is recognised more generally. In
addition to these individual cases representing holy fools (mast-bābā), some
extant groups of heterodox Sufis, such as the Qalandariyya Shahbāziyya and
the Bahāriyya, perpetuate Sufi antinomianism. Celibate wanderers of spectac-
ular appearance, consumers of hemp, the members of these groups survive by
cleaning shrines and (especially) on the alms from pilgrims.
In the case of Senegal as in that of Pakistan, it is not impossible that in the
possible absence of any historical continuity (which is difficult to demon-
strate) there may, on the contrary, have been a whole series of ruptures and
reversals through which dervishism came back into fashion, perhaps even with
the involuntary support of orientalism, the salutary attraction of which to the
picturesque margins may have documented the twentieth century reconstruc-
tion of a long and much-interrupted religious tradition. The task that falls to
historians of Islam is to rediscover the genealogy of contemporary dervishism
through a multitude of hidden clues and scattered sources. In the present vol-
ume we have attempted to undertake these inquiries, in the consciousness that
some texts, especially manuscripts and archive documents, will escape our no-
tice, and that fieldwork may remain incomplete, for the area is so vast, the pe-
riod so long and its religious history so little-known.4 Nevertheless, (in a
pastiche of Sufi hagiography), we rely on the readers of this brief essay to par-
don the faults and weaknesses of its miserable author.

4 Recent important publications on Central Asian Islam include: Rian Thum, The Sacred Routes
of Uyghur History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); Eren Tasar, Soviet and Muslim.
The Institutionnalization of Islam in Central Asia, 1943–1991 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2017); Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross, eds., Sufism in Central Asia. New Perspectives on Sufi
Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
 Bibliography
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Index OfIndex
Namesof Names 223

Index of Names

Aaron 132 Aḥmad Khadruyya 99

ʿAbbās 78, 87, 100 Aḥmad Radwān 203
ʿAbd Allāh Buzurg 100 Akhī Maḥmūd 50
ʿAbd Allāh Kūchakī 100 Akhī Muḥammad 50
ʿAbd Allāh Ṣaffār 99 ʿAlī 78, 80, 83–84, 89, 94, 98–99, 101, 131, 134,
ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar 100 150, 175–176, 188, 195–196, 210
ʿAbd Allāh Yamanī 150–151 Alman 173–174
ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Khān 21, 59 ʿAlqama-yi ʿĀd 86
ʿAbd al-Jabbār ʿIshqī 100 Amadou Bamba 209
ʿAbd al-Khalīl Ata 73, 98 Amīr Khalīl khwānanda 34n
ʿAbd Manāf 81, 82, 86–88 Amīr Kulāl 98
ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib 77, 81, 87–88 Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali 8n
ʿAbd al-Qahhār Shahrisabzī 100 Anṣārī, ʿAbd Allāh 11, 50
ʿAbd al-Qāyyūm 101 Āṣaf b. Barakhyā 77
ʿAbd al-Quddūs 99 Ashraf Astarābādī 50
ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf 98 Aṣīl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh Wāʿiẓ 50–54
ʿAbd al-Ṣamad 101 ʿĀṣim b. Habhāb 81
ʿAbd al-Shahīd 100 Astarābādī, Faḍl Allāh 200
ʿAbd al-Shukūr 99 ʿAṭṭār 181n
Abdullaev, Abdurahman 196 Avicenna 195
Abraham 63, 66, 77–78, 80, 87–89, 98–100, ʿĀysha 82
132 ʿĀysha Qandīsha 182
Abū ʿAlī Rūdbārī 100
Abū Bakr 66, 89, 92, 94, 98–99 Bābā ʿAlī Pāy Ḥiṣārī 54
Abū Dhar 87, 102 Bābā Arslān 51
Abū Dulaf 197 Bābā Gīlānī 52
Abū al-Fatḥ Rāhib 81–82 Bābā Ḥasan Turk 51, 54
Abū al-Fattāḥ Daqqāq 99 Bābā Ḥidā 51
Abū al-Fayḍ Ilāhī 152 Bābā Ibrāhīm 53
Abū Ḥanīfa 100 Bābā Jalīl 54
Abū al-Qāsim Balkhī 100 Bābā Jamāl 51
Abū Qays 88 Bābā Jān Bābā 53
Abū Saʿīd 25 Bābā Khamīrgar 51
Abū Saʿīd Andikānī 98 Bābā Kūkī 52, 54
Abū Saʿīd Rūmī 179 Bābā Mullā Imān Balkhī 21
Abū Sufyān 78 Bābā Pīrī 55
Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī 181b Bābā Qanbar 51
Abū Yazīd Simnānī 100 Bābā Qul Mazīd 101
Adam 62, 66, 76–78, 81, 87–88, 98, 101, Bābā Sammāsī 98
202–203 Bābā Sangū 51, 53
Adham Saqqā 102 Bābā Sarïgh Pūlād 55
ʿAdnān 88 Bābā Shihāb 54
Āfāq Khwāja 24 Bābā Turkesh 99
Afshari, Mehran 22, 59 Bābā Zakaryā 51
Agar 80 Babur 34, 52

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_010

224 Index Of Names

Badawī, Aḥmad 73, 101 Fārmadī, Aḥmad 98

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Mashriqī 100 Farzūq 86
Bahlūl 6, 71 Fāṭima 83, 97
Bahlūl Kāmlāʾī 100 Fattāḥ Khwārizmī 100
Baily, John 186n Fayḍī, ʿAlī 28
Balʿam Bāʿūr 127–128 Feridun 47
Barāq Abdāl 70 Fikrät, Hörmätjan 105, 118
Barāq Bābā 70 Foucault, Michel 6
Bayle, Pierre 140 François I 56
Beket Ata 163, 169, 171–172
Belin, François Alphonse 30 Gabriel 77–78, 81–82, 85–86, 89–90, 95,
Bilāl 189 180–181, 186
Bisṭāmī, Bāyazīd 8, 49, 73, 98–99, 202 Gaibov, Rafik-ata 196
Bloch, Marc 19 Gatelier, Karine 190n
Bobo Khoja 179–180 George (Jirjīs) 86, 132
Boileau, Nicolas 140 Ghazālī 181n
Boratav, Pertev 184 Ghijduwānī, ʿAbd al-Khāliq 98
Bosworth, Edmund 195, 197, 201 Ghulam Abbad 210
Buddha 146, 149 Gīlānī, ʿAbd al-Qādir 72, 101, 186
Bultot, Robert 128 Grenard, Fernand 22, 24–25, 144, 146, 149,
Burkh 178–181 191–192
Gurgānī, Abū al-Qāsim 98, 101n
Castagné, Joseph 159
Charbak Dīwāna 176–177 Ḥabīb ʿAjamī 101
Ḥāfiẓ 143
al-Dabbāgh, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz 203
Ḥāfiẓ Qazaq qānūnī 34n
Dāmullā Mullā Aḥmatov 187
Ḥājjī ʿAbd al-Raḥīm 21–22, 59–61, 63–67,
Danyāl 158–159
69–70, 72–74, 76, 80, 82, 84, 88–91, 94–95,
Darwīsh Bahrām Saqqā 101
97, 99–102, 131, 180, 195, 201, 206
Darwīsh Manṣūr 54
Ḥājjī al-Dīn ʿUmar Murshidī 182
David 77–78
Ḥakīm Ata 98, 163n, 164
Dawut, Rahile 150
Ḥallāj, Manṣūr 57, 71, 202
De Certeau, Michel 200n
Hamadānī, Abū Yūsuf 98, 155
Demchenko, V. 175
Hamadānī, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt 8, 57, 168n
Dermenghem, Émile 7
Dolo 210 Ḥamal 88
Dukchi Ishan 186–187 Hamaysaʿ 88
Dūldūl 176 Ḥamīd ʿIshqī 101
Dutreuil de Rhins, Jules-Léon 24–25, 144, Ḥamīd Rūdbārī 100
146, 191 Ḥamīd Walad 99
Harawī, Amīr Ḥusayn 11, 15–16, 47, 75, 156n,
Elias, Norbert 20 195
Enoch 132 Harawī, Niẓām al-Dīn 100
Erkinov, Aftandil 186 Hartmann, Martin 104
Eve 81 Hārūn al-Rashīd 100
Evliyā Çelebī 5 Ḥasan 99, 150
Ḥasan Baṣrī 95, 101
Faghnawī, Maḥmūd Anjīr 98 Ḥasan ʿūdī 34n
Fakir Mardum 199 Hāshim 81, 87–88
Index Of Names 225

Ḥidāyat Khwāja Bāqirghānī 163n Karaman Ata 163n

Hiouen Ts’ang (Xuanzang) 146 Kāsānī, Aḥmad (Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam) 35n,
Hosayni, Naser al-Din Shah 59 93, 98, 100
Hūd 78 Kāshgharī, Saʿd al-Dīn 50n
Ḥusāmī Maddāḥ 50 Kāshifī, Ḥusayn Wāʿiẓ 120n, 183–184
Ḥusayn 99, 102 Kaygusuz/Qayghusuz Abdāl 10
Ḥusayn Kūchak nāʾī 34n Khadīja 88
Ḥusayn Khwārizmī 163n Khādim 158–159
Khalīl Ata 73
Ibn ʿArabī 73, 101 Khāmūsh, Niẓām al-Dīn 99
Ibn Baṭṭūṭa 182 Kharābātī 23–24, 104–105, 111, 113, 115–116,
Ibn al-Qouçâb 7 118–121, 123–125, 127–128, 131–132, 134,
Ibra Fall 209 136–137, 139–143, 200–201, 207
Ibrāhīm Darwīsh 182 Kharaqānī, Abū al-Ḥasan 73, 98
Idrīs 66, 78 Khāwand Tahūr 100
Igamberdi Mullaḥmat Beshaghachkoy 187 Khayyam, Omar 23
ʿIrāqī, Fakhr al-Dīn 8 Khidr 7, 109, 152
Isaac 66, 74, 80 Khujandī, Maṣlaḥat al-Dīn 73
Isḥāq Khatlānī 159n Kirmānī, Awḥad al-Dīn 9
Isḥāq Khwāja 23 Kisliakov, Nikolai 25–26, 178
Ishmael 77–78, 80, 88, 94, 132 Korah 132
Ismāʿil Maḥzun Khotanī 207 Khwāja Aḥrār 98, 99
Ivanov, Vladimir 190n, 195–196 Khwāja Isḥāq 100
Khwāja Jawānmard 100
Jābir Anṣārī 89
Khwāja Qāsim 100
Jacob 66, 80
Khwāja-yi Sang-rasān 158
Jaʿd b. Aṣfar 81
Kononov, Andrei 28
Jaʿfar Ṣādiq 73, 98–99, 101
Kubrā, Najm al-Dīn 73–74, 101, 208
al-Jāḥiẓ 3
Jāmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān 48, 154
Laʿl Shāhbāz Qalandar 70
Jāmī, Aḥmad 49
Lazard, Gilbert 28
Jamshīd 44
Leylī 69
Jan Khan 210
Lot 74, 78
Jarring, Gunnar 105n
Jesus 66, 78, 81–82, 86, 89, 132 Lykoshin, Nil 186–187
Jethro 66
Job 94 Maʿadd 88
Jonah 85–86, 132 Maḥmūd Baḥrī 4
Joseph 78, 88–89 Majnūn 69
Junayd Baghdādī 49, 71 Majzub Baba (Abdul Ghani) 210
Jurjānī, Abū al-Qāsim 101 Makhdūm Khwārizmī 158
Jurjānī, Aḥmad 95 Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf 149–150
Jurjānī, Ismāʿīl 5 Maqṣūd ʿAlī raqqās 34n
Jurjānī, Muḥammad 99 Marco Polo 144
Maʿrūf Karkhī 71, 101
Kaʿb al-Aḥbār 97 Marzāq 86
Kalbī 100 Mashrab, Bābāraḥīm 185–186
Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghārī 182 Massignon, Louis 200
226 Index Of Names

Masʿūd Jabalī 95 Nidāʾī 21–22, 103n

Mawlānā Darwīsh Dīwāna-yi Shamʿrīz 48–49, Niffarī 202
50 Nīsābūrī 6
Mawlānā Ghiyāth al-Dīn Shamʿrīz 51n Niyāz Muḥammad Andijānī 169
Mawlānā Ḥājjī Abdāl 51 Noah 63, 66, 77–78, 81, 88
Mawlānā Khurd ʿAzīzān (Tāshkandī) 98 Nuʿmān Mānūrī 99
Mawlānā Khwāja gūyanda 34n Nuʿmān Miṣrī 73
Mawlānā Mastī 98 Nūr al-Dīn Baṣīr 155
Mawlānā Muḥyī 53 Nuranjan 104
Mawlānā Qizili 34n Nūrī, Abū al-Ḥusayn 35
Mawlānā Ṣāliḥ Tarkībī 98 Nwyia, Paul 200
Mawlānā Shams al-Dīn Maʿdābādī 54
Michael 78 Ogudin, Valentin 176
Mikhaïlov, Mikhaïl 197n Ortis 56
Mīr ʿAbd al-Ḥayy 25 ʿÖmer Ḥāfıẓ Yenişehr-i Fenārī 207
Mīr Ḥusayn Mīrī 190
Moses 66, 78, 81, 87, 94, 127, 132, 180 Pādishāh Ḥusayn Qalandar 70
Muḥammad (Khwārezmshāh) 165 Palang Tabarrānī 50
Muḥammad b. Abū Bakr 91, 97 Pan Darin 148
Muḥammad Bāqir 99 Pelliot, Paul 193
Muḥammad Darwīsh Ghijduwānī 98 Pīr Fakhr Thānī 51
Muḥammad Ḥakīm Khān 174 Pīr Sih Sad Sāla 51
Muḥammad Khān 24 Pīr Surkh 52
Muḥammad Qāḍī 98, 99 Pīr Turk 51
Muḥibb Allāh balabānī 34n Prévert, Jacques 106
Muḥibb Khwāja 145–152 Prophet Muḥammad 54, 55, 64–66, 68,
Muḥyī Gülşenī 204 76–83, 87–91, 93, 97–98, 100–102, 106,
Mullā ʿAbduḥalīm 187 110–111, 118, 137, 168, 176, 179, 181, 183–185,
Mullā Aka Shiburghānī 98 188–189, 192, 202
Mullā Hāshim 105
Mullā Mīr Makhdūm ibn Mullā Shāh Qaffāl Shāshī 156
Yūnus 105 Qāsim ʿAlī qānūnī 34n
Mullā Muḥammad 169 Qāsim b. Muḥammad 98
Mullā Muḥammad Sayyid Khān 105 Qedar 88
Mullā Pāyanda Muḥammad Aqṣī 98 Qurbān Ata/Kurban Ata 176–177
Mullā Sakkākī 158 Qushayrī 208
Mullā Ẓāhir 168 Quṭb al-Dīn Ḥaydar 7, 50
Muniyaz, Abbas 104 Qutham b. ʿAbbās 158n, 168n
Mūsā Kāẓim 99
Muṣṭafā ʿAlī 31 Rabar Hasan 210
Mustafina, Raushan 164, 173 Ram 69
Rāmitanī, ʿAlī 98
Nabt 88 Raphael 78
Naqshband, Bahāʾ al-Dīn 70, 93, 98, 99n Raxmat Raximov 179, 180n
Nāṣir Khwāja 163n Riḍā 99, 101
Nawāʾī, ʿAlī Shīr 20, 23, 27–28, 31, 33–48, Ridgeon, Lloyd 66n
52–55, 57, 65, 102, 119, 128, 139, 154,183, 201, Riwgarī, Khwāja ʿĀrif 98
206 Ruḥānī Bābā 56
Index Of Names 227

Rūmī, Jalāl al-Dīn 73, 96, 119 Speziale, Fabrizio 207

Rūzbihān Baqlī 8 Stein, Aurel 146–147, 149
Sufyān 151
Sabit, Eziz 105 al-Suhrawardī, Shihāb al-Dīn 15, 156, 208
Saʿīd Ata 164–165 Sultan Bayezid II 9
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ibn Mubārak Bukhārī 99n Sultan Epe 163n
Ṣāliḥ 74, 78, 101, 132 Sulṭān Ḥusayn Bāyqarā 20
Salmān Fārisī 91–92, 98
Samarqandī, Abū Ṭāhir 25, 158–159 Tabataba’i, Sayyed Muhammad Sadeq 59
al-Samarqandī, Mūsā 28 Tabrīzī, Qāsim 101
Samlākhayl 78 Tamerlane 20, 53, 153, 159n
Sangula 209 Tashmatov, Arifjan 196
Saqqā 87n Toshev, Nuryog’di 190n
Satan 41, 43, 69–70, 97, 128, 152 Troitskaia, Anna 27, 195–197, 201
Sauleev, Turganbai 171–172 Tsar 187
Sawī, Jamāl al-Dīn 8 Tustarī 75
Sayf al-Dīn Turk 50 Tveritinov, Aleksei 187
Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh Khwārizmī 101
Sayyid Aḥmad ghijakī 34n ʿUbayd Allāh Khān 49–50
Sayyid Ata 73 Udad 88
Sayyid Awtad al-Dīn Khwārizmī 101 Udd 88
Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Khwārizmī 101 ʿUmar 89, 94, 98–101
Sayyid Burhān al-Dīn Qalandar 70 ʿUmar Khān 174
Sayyid Ghiyāth al-Dīn 52 Umm Hānī 81, 87
Sayyid Marjān Muḥammad Qalandar 101 Umurzak 174
Sayyid Qāsim Khwārizmī 101 ʿUthmān 89, 93–94, 98–100
Schmitt, Jean-Claude 1 Uways Qaranī 6, 54n, 98, 101
Seth, 66, 77–78, 81
Seven Sleepers 181n Villon, François 2
Shāhrukh 10, 54
Shāʿir Qalandar 207 Wāṣifī, Zayn al-Dīn Maḥmūd 34, 48
Shaqpaq Ata 163, 165, 167–169
al-Shaʿrānī, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb 206 Yaḥyā 94
Shaykh Bahrām Ṭabasī 101 Yaʿqūb Beg 147, 191, 193
Shaykh Burhān 99 Yaʿqūb Charkhī 98
Shaykh Khudā(y)dād 98 Yasawī, Aḥmad 73, 98, 164–165, 185
Shaykh Mohammadi 199 Yūnus Emre 184
Shaykh Mubram 102 Yūsuf Ashʿarī 99
Shaykh Muẓaffar 99 Yūsuf Saqatī 99
Shaykh Ṣādiq 100
Shaykh Sāsān 3 Zangī Ata 98
Shaykh Sulaymān 99 Zangīcha Tūnī 50
Shiblī, Abū Bakr 35 Zayd Aʿrābī 82
Shopan Ata 163–165, 167–168, 171 Zayd b. Arqam 100
Shuʿayb 81 Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn 51, 99
Sirhindī, Aḥmad 100 Zayn al-Dīn Bābā 153-156
Solomon 76, 77–78 Zulaykha 89
228 Index of Places Index Of Places

Index of Places

Afghanistan 21, 53–54, 178, 199 China 22, 26–27

Afrasiab 158–159 Choghtal 104–105
Aksu 22–24, 104–105, 113, 120, 128 Congo 25
Aktau 165 Constantinople 31
Aleppo 3
Almaty 173 Damascus 3, 5
Altishahr 22, 24 Darvaz 178
Anatolia (Rūm) 9–10, 55, 70, 184, 195 Delhi 182
Andijan 168, 174, 187 Dūldūl Ata 176
Andkhoy 53 Dushanbe 59
Annam 25
Apshyr Ata 177n Eastern Turkestan 10, 22, 144, 151, 193, 196,
Arabia 2, 150 207
Aravan 176 Edirne 204
Ardabil 24 Egärchi 104
Ard al-Tabbālah 4 Egypt 3–5, 89, 203
Āshkhāna/Oshxona 177 Emirate of Bukhara 186, 190
Atlas Mountains 182
Azerbaijan 168 Fergana 25, 99, 174, 186, 196, 207
Fez 5, 203
Bāb al-Lūq 4
Badakhshan 182
Gallipoli 31
Badr 82
Gāzurgāh 11n, 50
Baghdad 2, 4–5, 156
Gehenna 175n
Balkh 21, 196
Ghuziv 11
Baṭḥā 86
Gilgit 209
Beshaghach/Beshog’och 185
Bombay 4 Gissar valley 199
Borshida Mountain 179
Bukhara 18, 21, 59, 61, 67, 75, 105, 168, 178, Hama 3
185, 190n, 196, 206 Herat 11–12, 19–20, 28, 30, 37, 39, 44, 48,
50–52, 54–56, 100, 183, 186n, 196, 199–200,
Cairo 3–5, 28, 204, 206 206, 208
Caspian Sea 163n, 167 Homs 3
Central Asia 2, 5, 8, 11, 18–19, 21–22, 24–26,
119, 123n, 139, 143–144, 154, 156, 162, 164, India 2n, 4, 5, 8n, 11–12, 15n, 22, 71, 100, 178,
168n, 174, 180–183, 185, 195, 199–200, 202, 200
205–206, 208 Injīl 51, 55
Chafūrchāq 105 Iran 2–3, 8, 20, 34, 51, 59, 179, 182, 195, 200,
Charbak 174, 176 206
Cherchen 193 Iraq 3, 15n
Chigatay 190 Israel 180
Chihil-sutūn/Chil-ustun 174–177 Istanbul 5, 10, 28, 120, 204
Chilas 210
Chimkent 173 Jambyl 169

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004402027_011

Index Of Places 229

Jerusalem 86 Morocco 203

Mount Ḥijāz 81
Kaʿba 68 Mount Hirā 181
Kabul 179 Mount Imedi 168
Kāfirābād 190 Mount Oglandy 169
Karakâch daria 145 Mount Saʿdāniya 86
Karategin 26 Mount Ṭāʾif 86
Karmana (Navoiy) 25 Moscow 26
Kashgar 22, 105n, 194 Mosul 158n
Kashgaria 25, 113, 144 Muḥammad Chap bridge 158
Kashmir 77 Mukhtār hill 51
Kawthar 91 Multan 12
Kazakhstan 163, 172, 173n, 174 Muslim East 4
Kazakh steppe 18
Kerbala 78 Near East 80
Keriya 193 Nishapur 183, 190n, 196
Khaybar 131 Niya 25
Khiva 171, 185 Nookat 77
Khiyābān 50–52 North Africa 152
Khorasan 6, 10, 18–19, 34, 100, 156, 190n, 195
Nukus 172
Khotan 22, 25, 105, 144–145, 147, 149–150, 159,
Nūshkent 155
191–192
Khwarezm 99, 101, 159, 162–163, 165, 168
Obihingou river 178
Kirghiz mountains 18
Obimazor river 178
Kirghizstan 174
Orifon/ʿĀrifān 153, 155
Kokand 174
Osh 174, 177n
Kökcha 153
Ottoman Empire 25, 185, 200
Kucha 22
Oxus (Amu Darya) 21
Kūhak hill 158
Kulatov 177n
Kunduz 179 Pakistan 208, 210
Kunya-Urgench 171 Pamir 26, 174, 178
Paradise 81, 82
Lebanon 6 Paris 28
Lund 105, 106n Persia 2
Plaza Garden 158
Māchīn 151 Punjab 209
Maghreb 182, 203
Mālān 50 Qaran 101
Manguistaou 163–165, 171, 207 Qarshi 195
Margilan 178 Qïz mazār/Kiz mazar 176
Marrakesh 182 Quba 91, 102
Mashhad 183 Qunan Su 168
Māwarāʾ al-nahr 21, 67, 99–100
Mazandaran 28 Rampur 207
Mecca 28, 55, 97, 105, 177n, 181 Rey 196
Medina 81, 91, 97 Roumelia 9
Merv 196 Russia 25–26
Middle East 203 Russian Empire 24
230 Index Of Places

Sabzevar 190n Touba 209

Saint Petersburg 26–28, 59 Transoxiana 25, 195
Samarkand 18, 25, 27, 53, 153–156, 158–159, Tunisia 4, 6
178, 185, 190, 196, 207 Turfan 22
Sāq Salmān 52 Turkestan 26, 151, 186, 190, 192, 195
Senegal 208, 210 Turkestan (city) 165
Shāh-i zinda cemetery 190 Turkmenistan 171
Shahrab 179 Turko-Persian (area) 7–8, 10, 18
Siab River 158 Tus 51
Siberia 22
Sindh 209 Uḥud 54b, 87
Sino-Manchu Empire 24 Upper Garden 158
Ṣirāṭ bridge 175 Upper Mesopotamia 2
Street of Musicians 185 Urumqi 105
Sulï Kamar/Suvli Kamar 177 Ustyurt 163–164, 169
Syria 2–3 Uzbekistan 25–27, 153, 156, 183, 188–189, 191,
195, 208
Tabūk 80
Tajikistan 26, 159n, 178, 197, 199 Western Europe 1
Tarim 191
Tashkent 27–28, 105, 119, 153, 155–156, Xinjiang 18, 25–26, 104–105, 183, 191, 195, 208
185–187, 190, 196–197
Taushyq 165 Yarkand 22, 144, 207
Tehran 26, 59, 105 Yemen 101
Tibet 25
Tigris 78 Zerafshan 159n
Tolikon/Tālikān 179 Zubaydā 52
Torbat-i Jām 54