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Home , Geography of Tajikistan, Khatib

Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 13 (2): 128–130 DOI: 10.2478/jef-2019-0018

SUFIS, SHRINES, AND THE STATE IN

This forum posits a range of relationships to shape subjectivities, to the extent that between sacred geographies and forms the region’s authoritarian regimes’ almost of identification across Eurasia, whether hegemonic control over religious discourse inflected religiously, ethnically, or nationally. holds the capacity to shape the terms of being I have written previously about the sacred Muslim in Eurasia (Rasanayagam 2011: 121). in regard to two If the political is performed into being and large shrine complexes – Hazrati Amirjon in performances are constitutive of particular the southern Tajik city of Kulob and Hazrati religious dispositions, then the contrasting Mavlono outside of the country’s capital and politics of spectacle and control at shrine sites urban centre, – both revered and such as Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati Mav- frequented by the male, Naqshbandi and lono offer test cases for how authoritarian Qodiri Sufi groups who formed the basis of approaches to governing affect Cen- my book (Gatling 2018). Hazrati Amirjon tral Asian believers on the ground. Hazrati and Hazrati Mavlono are not necessarily Amirjon and Hazrati Mavlono are particu- emblematic or metonymic of sacred space in larly compelling in that we can use them to Tajikistan. In terms of absolute quantity, the chart the efficacy of state projects to connect vast majority of shrines catalogued by Tajik sacred geography to state-endorsed forms researchers surround natural features, such of national belonging. Hazrati Amirjon and as sacred springs, trees, caves, etc. (Muzaffarī Hazrati Mavlono allow us to explore con- et al. 2007: 10), whereas Hazrati Amirjon and vergences between sacred spaces, devotional Hazrati Mavlono hold the graves of figures practices, state heritage projects, museumifi- of transnational Muslim importance. What is cation, official religious discourse, and ever- relevant about Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati present performative politics. Mavlono is that both sites illustrate contrast- Hazrati Amirjon, situated in Kulob city ing approaches to the state administration centre, holds the grave of Mir Saiid Alii over sacred space in Tajikistan. Although Hamadoni (1314–1384), a celebrated Sufi of both accommodate pilgrims, Hazrati Amirjon the Kubraviya path best known for his mis- primarily exists under the aegis of the Minis- sions to convert Kashmir to Islam. Hamadoni try of Culture as a museum and heritage site, is among those figures from Muslim history while Hazrati Mavolono operates as an active buried in Tajikistan that are widely revered congregational , with its leadership outside of the republic. Hazrati Amirjon is appointed by the State Committee for Reli- emblematic of the museumification of shrine gious Affairs Komitai( oid ba korḣoi din). space in the country. I have previously Recent ethnographic scholarship on poli- argued how Hamadoni’s shrine works as a tics in has emphasised the per- carefully curated artefact of historical , formative dimensions of state governance for which the Ministry of Culture acts as and the ways that ordinary people constitute conservator (Gatling 2018: 36–40). Although the political in repeated actions and negotia- Hamadoni is a figure of transnational impor- tions (Adams 2010; Reeves et al. 2014). In this tance to many Sufi lineages, Sufism at the frame the state is not a pre-existing entity, shrine exists only as national cultural herit- but rather is performed into being through age. A spartan museum welcomes visitors to acts of signification. As anthropologists well the shrine complex. The grounds themselves know, repeated performances hold the power conjure more of an archaeological park than

128 JOURNAL OF ETHNOLOGY AND FOLKLORISTICS 13 (2) a site of active religious importance. Plac- State projects to control Muslim piety and ards note the location of a medieval kiln, for active reverence for sacred geography in con- instance. The Ministry of Culture attempts to temporary Central Asia have been well inves- proscribe completely many of the activities tigated by anthropologists (for example Kehl- that would ordinarily exist on shrine day, Bodrogi 2008; Rasanayagam 2011; Féaux de for example bringing wild rue and water for la Croix 2016; Schwab and Bigozhin 2016), blessing, reciting the Qur’an, or seeking the as has the broad historical importance of saint’s intercession. Museumification seems shrine space in Central Asian Muslim life (for to be the primary goal – not simple curtail- example, Privratsky 2001; Louw 2007). Eren ment of devotional practice – in that numer- Tasar (2017: 226–240) has noted that already ous other sacred sites exist in the environs of in the 1960s unitary Soviet policy toward Kulob at which such activities engender no restrictions on pilgrimages was experienced sanction. Because Hazrati Amirjon is main- unevenly and was dependent entirely on the tained by the Ministry of Culture as commen- political will of local officials. Hazrati Amir- surate with other sites of historical impor- jon and Hazrati Mavlono point toward the tance around the republic, Islam too exists as inverse. Tajik state restrictions on pilgrimages heritage object and is rendered as a feature of were uneven, while the experiences of Sufis Tajik national identity that organs of the state stayed remarkably consistent. That distinc- can muster toward their performative ends. tion suggests a tentative answer to the con- Hazrati Mavlono, situated in the eastern vergences I posed at the outset of this forum suburbs of Dushanbe at the edge of Tajik- response. istan’s main international airport’s runway, The efficacy of state heritage discourse is the burial place of Yaqubi Charkhi (1358– and the tight control over sacred geography 1447). Like Hamadoni, Charkhi is an early were marginal at best among the men with and influential figure in the history of Central whom I regularly worked. There was little Asian Sufism and is well known and revered evidence for state-endorsed subjectivities. outside of Tajikistan. What is different about The Sufis I knew regularly, sometimes- sur Hazrati Mavolono is that, unlike Hamadoni’s reptitiously, visited both sites on pilgrim- shrine, Hazrati Mavlono still functions as a age. The saints buried at each location fig- with hundreds of ured in the prayers the men offered upon pilgrims, some from and other their return. I heard stories told about both countries in the region, visiting its grounds men. Along with other figures of more local every week for shrine day. At the time of and global acclaim, both Charkhi and Ham- my last visit, in 2014, Friday prayers hosted adoni were touchstones of what it meant to so many congregants that the large shrine be a Tajik Muslim for the Sufi groups I knew grounds were seemingly completely filled, who operated across Dushanbe and its wider with some worshippers resorting to praying environs. Museumification did not dissuade outside of its gates. I have previously written ritual or reverence, only how openly it was about the expansive shrine-day market that practiced. If anything, the state’s appropria- supports pilgrims’ activities (Gatling 2018: tion of Hazrati Amirjon’s legacy emphasised 103–109). At Hazrati Mavlono, the spectacular to Sufis the saint’s wider importance. If he state’s heritage-inflected performative poli- were important enough to merit a place on tics seem completely absent, save for the text the country’s 10-somoni currency note and of the imomi khatib’s Friday sermons as man- to mention among the exemplars of Tajik his- dated by the State Committee for Religious tory in state history books, then his shrine Affairs. The one open accommodation to the was well-due their special attention. I have state’s on-going securitisation of Islam was written previously about how Sufis perpetu- the closure of the shrine’s in 2008. ated state-endorsed notions about Tajik iden-

Notes and Reviews 129 tity, even as Sufis simultaneously utilised cle. Tajikistan’s Sufis suggest how irrelevant alternative histories from those celebrated in Tajikistan’s performative politics can some- official discourse (Gatling 2018: 89–95). State- times be to the lives of individuals Muslims. produced touristic shrine literature similarly had its place alongside the narratives Sufis Benjamin Gatling told about Charkhi and Hamadoni, as if they (George Mason University) too were potential fonts of spiritual wisdom. The Sufi experiences I have referenced at References Hazrati Amirjon and Hazrati Mavlono are Adams, Laura. 2010. The Spectacular State: Culture admittedly gendered and anecdotal. I cannot and National Identity in . Durham, be sure how or to what extent the experiences NC: Duke University Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1215/9780822392538. of the Sufis I knew are generalisable beyond Féaux de la Croix, Jeanne. 2016. Iconic Places in the groups I studied or to other Muslims in Central Asia: The Moral Geography of Dams, Pas- the republic, or to Central Asia more gener- tures and Holy Sites. Bielefeld: Transcript. DOI: ally. Still, I could provide other examples of https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839436301. pilgrimage and reverence for locally buried Gatling, Benjamin. 2018. Expressions of Sufi Culture saints among Sufis in Tajikistan amidst the in Tajikistan. Madison, WI: University of Wis- state’s spectacular politics. I went multiple consin Press. Kehl-Bodrogi, Krisztina. 2008. “Religion Is Not So times with Sufis on pilgrimages to the burial Strong Here”: Muslim Religious Life in Khorezm place of a local , Khoja Orifi Regari, outside after Socialism. Berlin: Lit Verlag. , a site completely controlled by Louw, Maria Elisabeth. 2007. Everyday Islam in Post- the Sufi groups I came to know well. I also . New York, NY: Routledge. repeatedly accompanied Sufi friends to the DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203961773. shrine of Makhdumi A”zam – a site housing Muzaffarī, ḣMu ammadalī; Ḣamza Kamol and the grave of an unknown 15th-century saint – Zaĭnuddin Nabotzoda 2007. Joĭḣoi Muqaddasi Tojikiston. Dushanbe: Devashtich. directly adjacent to Hisor fort, one of the larg- Privratsky, Bruce. 2001. Muslim Turkistan: Kazak est tourist sites in the country and under the Religion and Collective Memory. Richmond, Sur- administration of the Ministry of Culture. rey: Curzon Press. The men I knew performed the same ritu- Rasanayagam, Johan. 2011. Islam in Post-Soviet als at each site and held each saint in similar Uzbekistan: The Morality of Experience. New esteem, even as here too state regulation is lax York, NY: Cambridge University Press. and restrictions unevenly enforced. Reeves, Madeleine; Johan Rasanayagam and Judith Beyer, eds. 2014. Ethnographies of the State in Sufi shrine practices in Tajikistan suggest Central Asia: Performing Politics. Bloomington, an important lacuna in ethnographic stud- IN: Indiana University Press. ies of the state and religious life in Muslim Schwab, Wendell and Ulan Bigozhin. 2016. Shrines Eurasia; greater attention needs to be paid to and Neopatrimonialism in Southern Kazakh- less agonistic sites and responses to Central stan. – in the Making: Legitimacy, Asia’s authoritarian regimes’ securitisation of Symbols, and Social Changes, edited by Mar- Islam. I am not suggesting that state interfer- lene Laruelle. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 89–109. ence into religious affairs is always seemingly Tasar, Eren. 2017. Soviet and Muslim: The Institu- detrimental to lived religious experience, just tionalization of Islam in Central Asia. New York, that state regulation may have no immediate NY: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi. effect on the devotion of practitioners even org/10.1093/oso/9780190652104.001.0001. when public religious expression is tightly controlled. The performative shift in eth- nographies of the state in Central Asia risks eliding the subjectivities of Central Asian Muslims into the social work of state specta-

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