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Post-Soviet Sufism: Texts and the Performance of Tradition in Tajikistan

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Post-Soviet Sufism: Texts and the Performance of Tradition in Tajikistan Post-Soviet Sufism: Texts and the Performance of Tradition in Tajikistan DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Benjamin Clark Gatling Graduate Program in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Margaret A. Mills, Advisor Richard M. Davis Morgan Y. Liu Ray Cashman Copyright by Benjamin Clark Gatling 2012 ABSTRACT Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of the Central Asian republics, public Islamic religiosity has proliferated; new mosques have been constructed, forms of Islamic dress newly adopted, and previously proscribed Islamic literature published. Sufi circles of adepts (halqa) are key producers of nascent religious discourse within this so-called Islamic revival. Sufis in Tajikistan have revived their performance of public ritual and adopted new texts for ritual use. These texts, many of them manuscripts long hidden from Soviet authorities, have newly entered the religious imaginations of Tajik Muslims. The focus of this study is on the specific power of these nascent textualities, the processes of their replication and dissemination, and the discursive support for entextualizing processes that historical narrative and ritual performance provide within Sufi groups in post-Soviet Tajikistan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Tajikistan during 2010 and 2011, this study considers how nascent religious discourse becomes authoritative and how the new hagiographic and canonization process in Central Asia operates. I argue that in Tajik Sufism there exist ongoing projects of textual canonization, historical valorization, and ii general hagiographic construction for the express purpose of legitimating the life and practices of post-Soviet Sufism after the enormity of Soviet disjuncture. At the center of this story of texts are their sites of their enactment, the interrelated contexts of their reading and performance within the intricate bounds of Sufi ritual. As such, this study analyzes specific speech events, such as halqai zikr, the ritualized, collective out-loud remembrance of the names of God, and darsi tariqat, formalized group teaching events, which model and shape conceptions of the grand Tajik Islamic past and draw contemporary practitioners into a discursive relationship with past Sufi masters. I demonstrate how in the tabula rasa post-Soviet religious environment historical narrative and ritual performance work to provide discursive legitimation to relatively new projects of Islamic piety. I further suggest that Sufi practitioners’ creative engagement with the Persian sacred past mitigates discourses of Islamic revivalism and that localized religious, poetical tradition works to open up emic heuristic space for critiquing dominant state strategies aimed at combating terrorism and extremism. iii DEDICATION To Mandy, Gray, and Aram iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The largest scholarly debt I owe is to my advisor, Margaret Mills. Her patience, encouragement, and enthusiasm have constantly guided me throughout my development as a folklorist of the Persian-speaking world and during the course of this project. She has been the model of a mentor, helping give voice to my scholarship, always encouraging critical analysis, and teaching me the ethics of ethnographic fieldwork. I also owe tremendous gratitude to Morgan Liu for his introduction to the anthropological study of post-Soviet Central Asia, his faithful guidance, and his example of what moral scholarly inquiry entails. I also want to thank Dick Davis for patiently enduring my readings of Persian literature, teaching me to love and appreciate the artistry of the Persian language, and for his unwavering support and assistance. Finally, thanks are due to Ray Cashman, whose seminar in the ethnography of communication was formative for my development as a scholar of verbal culture and whose spirit never fails to encourage. I am also grateful to the many organizations that funded and facilitated my research. Fieldwork in Tajikistan was made possible by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Award from the U.S. Department of Education and a student research grant from Ohio State University’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies. A v Presidential Fellowship from the graduate school at Ohio State University funded a year of dissertation writing. Thanks are also due to Carl Ernst and Shai Tamari of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who provided a comfortable and collegial atmosphere in which to work while I completed my dissertation draft. I also want to give my thanks to the many scholars who offered their generous assistance at various stages of the proposal, fieldwork, and writing process. Thanks go to Mark Moritz, Khulkar Matchanova, Saeed Honarmand, Parvaneh Pourshariati, David Edwards, Gabrielle van den Berg, Art Buehler, Sergei Gretsky, Ulrich Marzolph, Snjezana Buzov, and Joyce Burkhalter-Flueckiger. I also benefited enormously from helpful comments on portions of my writing by various colleagues at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society, the annual meeting of the Central Eurasian Studies Society, Indiana University’s Association of Central Eurasian Students, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Anthropology, and the symposium on Persian verbal culture held at St. John’s College, University of Oxford. I owe even more appreciation to the countless individuals who assisted my work in Tajikistan. I am especially grateful to Dilshod Rahimov, Director of the Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature of the Tajik Academy of Sciences, who provided academic affiliation in Dushanbe as well as introductions in Dushanbe and beyond. I also wish to thank numerous colleagues in Tajikistan who provided invaluable support during the course of my fieldwork, especially Ravshon Rahmoni, Taghoymurod Yorzoda, Muhammad Ibrohimov, Mehmonsho Sharipov, Saidahmad Kalandarov, and Nasrulloh vi Muhammadyusuf. In spite of their copious advice, assistance, and helpful recommendations, all the mistakes and misinterpretations in the following pages remain my own. Thanks also go to all of the hardworking individuals in the office of cultural affairs at the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe, especially Shafoat, Rachel, and Mackenzie. Thanks also go to Brian and Angela, Greg and Heather, Terry and Elena, Mac and Sarah, and Drew and Leslie for your friendship in Tajikistan. I also owe an enormous debt of gratitude to all of the Sufis who generously devoted their time and energy to sharing with me the practices of tasavvuf in Tajikistan. Regretfully, religious politics in Tajikistan prevent naming them all in this space. However, I trust that they know who they are and that this project could not have been completed without them and their generosity of time and spirit. My hope is that this project in some small way begins to repay the debt owed to them. Finally, thanks go to my family. To my parents, Will and Cathy, thanks are especially due for their unwavering encouragement and the ways they have always fostered in me a love for other cultures, histories, and literatures. The final and greatest thanks are reserved for my loving wife, closest friend, and inimitable confidante, Mandy. She has patiently endured years of graduate study, living apart from friends and family, and her husband’s never-ceasing obsession with the peoples of Persian-speaking Central Asia. She has sustained and encouraged me throughout the course of this project. To her, the greatest debt for this scholarship is owed. And lastly, thanks to Gray and Aram. I love you both more than you could know. vii VITA 2003................................................................B.A. International Studies and Russian Language and Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2008................................................................M.A. Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Specialization: Ethnology/Folkloristics and Islam in Central Asia viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v VITA ................................................................................................................................ viii LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... xii NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSCRIPTION ........................................ xiii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 Sufism in Tajikistan ...................................................................................................... 10 Texts and Contexts ........................................................................................................ 15 Ethnographic Representation and the Inscription of Esoterica ..................................... 19 Chapter Outline .........................................................................................................
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