Hidden caliphate : Sufi saints beyond the Oxus and Indus / Waleed Ziad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ziad, Waleed, 1980- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Caliphate--History.

Caliphate.

Sufism--Political aspects--History.

Sufism.

Muslim saints--Pakistan--History.

Muslim saints.

Muslim saints--Pakistan--Biography.

Muslim saints--Asia, Central--History.

Muslim saints--Asia, Central--Biography.

Islam and politics--History.

Islam and politics.

Daʻwah (Islam)--History.

Daʻwah (Islam).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (320 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, [2021]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world. In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi “Hidden Caliphate,” as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China. By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the “Great Game,” Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.

Contents:

Introduction beyond the Great Game

A Persianate cosmopolis

The reviver of the second millennium

Transporting sacred knowledge

How Peshawar revived Bukhara's sanctity

The saint and the khan

Peshawar in turmoil

Guardians of the caravans

The diplomat-saints of Farghana

From Swat to Kabul

Conclusion: The sage of North Waziristan.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [287]-336) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780674269378

0674269373

9780674269385

0674269381

OCLC:

1286628605