Sufis of central Asia

Central Asia’s Sufi Orders

 Historically, four Sufi orders had a significant presence in the region. The Kubrawiya, Yasawiya, and Khwajagan Naqshbandiya movements originated in Central Asia. Their histories are interwoven with that of Central Asia more generally. The Qadiriyya movement, which originated in Baghdad, also had followers in Central Asia. Its founder, Abd al-Qadir Jilani (1076–1166), was originally from the Iranian city of Jilan. Another order, the Qalandariya, which in Central Asia is known as the brotherhood of wandering dervishes, is of more obscure origins, but its followers too have been found in the region. In addition to organized Sufi orders, Central Asia has also had its share of self- taught Sufis—ascetics who preached their own personal messages of spiritual purification and who gathered followers around them.

Kubrawiya and Yasawiya

 The Kubrawiya brotherhood was founded by Najm ad-Din al-Kubra, who died in 1221. According to legend, he was killed defending his home town of Urgench, the capital of Khorezm, while it was under attack by the Mongols. A number of Kubrawiya leaders left distinctive marks on the political and eco- nomic history of the region. One was Sheikh Sayf ad-Din Baharzi of Bukhara, who died in 1263. He was a well-known and much respected figure of the period just after the Mongol conquest. A disciple of Najm ad-Din al-Kubra, he remained in Bukhara after it was ravaged by the Mongols. Baharzi played a key role in the economic revival of the city and used his and others’ restored economic fortunes to fund the city’s spiritual revival, including finding funds for the building of new madrassa. Moreover, Baharzi reached out to the local Chingisid (Mongol) governors, and his surviving correspondence with them records his efforts to appease them and to avoid other attacks on the city and the vicinity.

The Kubrawiya remained an important force in what is now western Uzbekistan and eastern Turkmenistan until the seventeenth century, by which time its structural cohesion (the linkage among religious doctrine, economic power, and political support) was almost fatally weakened. By the nineteenth century the Kubrawiya movement had almost completely disappeared, but by then most of its teachings and many of its rituals had been adopted by other Sufi groups in the region By contrast, the Yasawiya was a brotherhood of “common Turks,” whose ritual practices were often borrowed from their cultural and religious traditions. The movement was founded by Khoja Ahmad Yasawi, who died in 1166 in the city of Turkestan (Kazakhstan). Construction of a massive mausoleum over his grave was begun, and it achieved its state of near completion during the reign of Timur (also known as Tamerlane, who lived from 1370 to 1405). The shrine was a site of strong spiritual and historic importance during the period of the Kazakh khanate, especially for the khans of the Middle Horde, because burial there was viewed as interment in sacred ground.

Yasawi’s followers emphasized the use of mysticism and the need for absten- tion from worldly pleasures and amusements even more than the other Sufi groups in the region. Hence, most prominent Sufi figures were historically more focused on their spiritual dedication to God, and they largely insulated them- selves from politics and the world of the powerful.

 As a result, the Yasawiya were much more loosely or informally structured than some of Central Asia’s other orders. Thus, Yasawiya branches relatively quickly disappeared and, though these branches sometimes revived, the effort at coordinated activity by Yasawiya leaders generally did not last long.

 One exception was the period of political activity by Yasawiya sheikhs in Transoxiana (also known as Mawara an-nahr, the region between the rivers Syr and Amu) during the sixteenth century, when the sheikhs’ behavior was strongly influenced by the leaders of the traditionally more active Naqshbandiya move- ment. Even that did not last long, and by the eighteenth century the Yasawiya brotherhood had largely disappeared from Central Asia as an organized force. Individual followers, including some who received recognition as sheikhs, were able to continue to make the Yasawiya religious tradition a continuous one up through the end of the Soviet period. Soviet antireligious policies led to the exis- tence of a more organized and better established Yasawiya movement in Turkey than in Kazakhstan; for this reason, financing from Turkey was quick to be of- fered to restore the shrine of Yasawi in 1992.

In the years since independence there has been a resurgence of interest in the movement and in the formal veneration of Yasawi’s shrine. The shrine is of combined national and religious significance for the Kazakh government be- cause it allows current leaders to lay claim to the role of Kazakhstan in Central Asia’s Islamic past. A Turkish university in Ankara has funded the creation of the Yasawi Kazakh-Turkish International University in the Kazakh city of Turkestan; the university’s mission is to combine spirituality with contempo- rary education. It is permitted to operate in Kazakhstan because the government sees nothing threatening in its message. 

Naqshbandiya in Central Asia

 The Naqshbandiya movement was founded near Bukhara by Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduvani, who lived in Ghijduvan and died sometime between 1182 and 1221. The movement, however, is associated with Ghijduvan’s disciple, Baha ad-Din Naqshband, who came from Kasr-i Hinduvan near Bukhara and who was buried just beyond Bukhara in 1389. The shrine over his grave remains an important point of pilgrimage within Central Asia and for Naqshbandiya followers worldwide.

Naqshbandiya has been by far the most widespread and influential of the Central Asian Sufi movements. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth cen- turies, branches of Naqshbandiya had spread to most corners of the Muslim world—from Xinjiang, China, in the east to North Africa and the Balkans in the west; from the Hind peninsula in the south to the Volga River and Siberia in the north. From the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, the Naqshbandiya brotherhood was the dominant Sufi brotherhood throughout this region. 

The Naqshbandiya has been the dominant Sufi brotherhood throughout Central Asian history. It alone managed to reappear in different forms again and again after periods of stagnation. It is not surprising then that during the pres- ent Sufi revival, Naqshbandiya again has the broadest popular base. Although estimates are imprecise (and hence they vary greatly), a good conservative guess is that there are 30,000 to 40,000 Naqshbandiya followers in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Only about one-tenth of that num- ber support the Yasawiya and Qadiriyya movements, which are concentrated mostly in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Because of the substantial literature on Naqshbandiya’s doctrines, rituals, and history, 5 this report will instead emphasize its social and political activity. Historical precedents will help us understand Naqshbandiya’s modern revival and its future trajectory, and we will note the way in which members of the Naqshbandiya have been able to transform their doctrines and in general have been able to adapt to history’s evolving political environment. 

Initially, Naqshbandiya was known by a different name: the Khajagan. Its founder, Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduvani was an extreme ascetic who refused to com- municate with high-ranking bureaucrats and rulers except on rare occasions, when he was said to have been famously harsh. His followers attribute to him this exhortation: “Be afraid of sultans as you are afraid of lions.” Ghijduvani also rejected any accumulation of wealth. 

For the first five or six generations, the brotherhood did not reach beyond the Bukhara oasis, and little distinguished it from dozens of similar brotherhoods. According to Naqshbandiya written tradition, however, a Khajaganiya sheikh named Sayyid Amir Kulal (who died in 1371) was one of the first Sufi leaders to inspire Timur (Tamerlane) to conquer Transoxiana and create an empire.

Whether or not this is true (it is not confirmed in historic chronicles), it became symbolic for future leaders of the brotherhood. Future generations cit- ed this as the historic precedent that supported and legitimized their political activities.

More certain is the fact that the structural formation of Naqshbandiya began with Sayyid Amir Kulal. The formation was represented by the appearance of hierarchy among the successors (khalifalar), disciples (murid), and followers (muhlis) of a head teacher (murshid). 

Sayyid Amir Kulal’s disciple Baha ad-Din Naqshband (who died in 1389) became the second father figure of the brotherhood, which adopted his name. His main contribution was the addition of his famous “Four Statutes” to the brotherhood’s doctrine. These statutes rejected extreme asceticism and carried a world-affirming ethos. As such, they became the foundation of a new kind of social activity. 

Baha ad-Din Naqshband’s most famous statute allows for seclusion within so- ciety (khalwat dar anjuman). In other words, adherents are not required to leave the society or to isolate themselves from it, but they may seek seclusion within their hearts, where God alone must live. At the same time, adherents are urged to participate actively in the life of the community—trading, manufacturing, 

and farming—as they contemplate God constantly in their hearts. This statute was very important to the brotherhood because it became the foundation for future theorists of the brotherhood, and it created the preconditions for the movement’s political and economic influence. 

Also, Baha ad-Din Naqshband did much to enlarge the social foundation of the brotherhood, bringing in new members who were craftsmen, merchants, and common peasants. The Naqshbandiya process of initiation was less rigor- ous than for other brotherhoods. Instead of a complex series of spiritual exercis- es and lengthy seclusion, initiation for Naqshbandiya involved only “extending one’s hand” to the sheikh and repenting of one’s sins; this was to be followed by completing a lesson on how to commemorate God. After joining, new brothers were sworn to continue to perform zikr (an act of remembering God) while they remained part of society and carried on their everyday business.

The same process of initiation continues to this day. Initiation takes less than an hour. Later, a murid may visit his teacher from time to time (bringing a pres- ent or some money [nazr]) to talk about his spiritual state before and after zikr and to discuss his dreams. The simplification of the initiation process and the spiritual exercises widened the social and ethnic base of the Naqshbandiya and made it the most popular brotherhood in the region, which contributed to its permanent revival as well as to its geographical expansion. 

No trustworthy record exists of the political activities of Baha ad-Din Naqshband himself although the later written tradition of Naqshbandiya does attribute to him some communications with Timur. 

After Baha ad-Din Naqshband, the next most influential person in the histo- ry of the movement was Khoja Ubaydallah Ahrar (1404—1489). 6 Sufi scholars in Central Asia pay special attention to Khoja Ahrar for several reasons. First, he initiated the politicization of the Naqshbandiya brotherhood in Transoxiana, a politicization that was possible only because of the brotherhood’s unprecedent- ed popularity that resulted from its simple initiation and relaxed conditions of membership. 

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