St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies 89 Panel Six. Religions, Material Culture and Archaeology of Afghanistan... Konstantin Vasiltsov (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia) Mazars of Afghan Badakhshan (Based on the Materials of I. I. Zarubin’s Archive, f. 121, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg) In the archive of I. I. Zarubin (f. 121 of the IOM RAS) a manuscript in Persian of the Hikayat-i mazarha-yi Kuhistan is kept, which contains information on some mazars , revered saints and missionary preachers popular in Afghan Badakhshan. Sacred places play an important role in “folk religion” of theMuslimworld, inmany cases determining the local specificity of the universal message of Islam in a particular region. Despite the ambiguous attitude to the cult of saints and sanctuaries among representatives of various madhhabs , authoritative fuqaha, ulama and other religious figures, the practice of worshiping the saints has for many centuries demonstrated vitality, the ability to adapt to new conditions and to the realities of the modern world. The cultural memory of the inhabitants of Badakhshan has preserved a special attitude to the representatives of the Muslim ( Shi‘i ) sacred history (Muhammad, ‘Ali, Fatima, Hasan, Husain, Zain al-Abidin, Muhammad Baqir, etc.), who became famous in the popular hagiographic tradition. In Badakhshan folklore they are perceived as saints, to them are attributed numerous feats and miracles ( karamat ) that they performed in Badakhshan. Though all these traditions are mythological in nature and have nothing to do with reality, this kind of “lives of the saints” play a special role in affirming the Badakhshan religious identity, linking the local history of the Pamirs to the history of Islam as a world religion, “inscribing” Badakhshan into the sacred Dar al-Islam history (lit. “territory of Islam”). Moreover, the Badakhshanis place into the category of saints Ismaili da‘i s, religious authorities or pirs . Beside Isma’ili characters, representatives of Iranian Sufism ( ahl-i tasawwuf ), whom the local tradition likens to their co-religionists occupy an essential place in the body of oral narratives. Among them, the most popular characters are Shams-i Tabrizi, Jalal ad-din Rumi, ‘Abdallah Ansari, Mansour al-Hallaj. There is a special type of place of worship, which is called qadamgah (the place where a saint left its mark ( qadam-i mubarak ), a saint passed, spent a night, left a mark about his stay ( nishan )). Such places may often be at a worshiped spring, stone or a tree. In the villages of Namadgut, Yamchun, Tim there are such qadamgahs associated with the names of Ali, Fatima-yi Zuhra, Imam Zayn al-’Abiddin. The terms aramgah (lit. “a place of rest”), dargah (lit. “throne [of a holy man]”), jah-yi muqaddas (lit. “holy place”) are also used. To the same category of places of worship we may add the so-called farman-khanah (lit. “house of orders”), which are special segments of the Badakhshani house, where copies of the Koran, Isma’ili literature,