The Ismaili-Sufi Sage of Pamir: Mubarak-i Wakhani and the Esoteri ...

As a religious phenomenon, however, Mubārak’s philosophy cannot be reduced to merely personal boundaries as it was the manifestation of the commonly held faith: the Panj-Tanī. It is, therefore, essential to interpret the linguistic and symbolic expressions in Mubārak’s works and their esoteric aspects in order to understand the core principles of Pamiri Ismāīlism, to make a distinction between its popular and intellectual dimensions, and to perceive both as the inner experience of a living tradition of the Pamiris.

An important point, which one has to take into consideration when dealing with Mubārak’s poetry, is the use of the Persian language in the local Badakhshani context and its influence by the local Pamiri languages. Although Mubārak was undoubtedly well grounded in Persian, there are at least three reasons why one should exercise caution while reading his poetry. Firstly, his Persian was Tajik, a language of the Eastern Iranian ethnic groups of Transoxiana, where historically the Persian language was born and to some extant remained ‘classical’ afterwards. In addition, during the course of history, though the official and literary language, it was significantly influenced by the Turkish languages (especially Uzbek), as Turkic nomad tribes have existed in the majority of Transoxiana and entire Central Asia since pre-historic times. It, therefore, stands to reason that the Tajik language, its vocabulary, grammar, morphology and phonetics developed in a slightly different way to that of modern Persian (Iranian), and these differences do occur in Mubārak’s poetry.³¹ Likewise, the process of the development of Persian literature itself was accompanied by “regional peculiarities and characteristic distinctions” that led to the formation of different poetic styles (s. sabk), such as Khurāsānī, Irāqī, Hindī, etc.³² It is argued in the present study’s sub-section entitled ‘Poet’ that Mubārak’s style tends to be in line with the sabk-i Hindī. Secondly, Mubārak’s native dialect had an oblique influence on his poetry. There are very few words and expressions of this nature that are observed in his works and explained throughout this work. Although Mubārak lived in Wakhān, where the Wakhī (or in local usage khik) language, belonging to the Pamiri group of languages, is spoken by the majority of the population, one cannot detect any vocabulary relating to this language in his poetry so far.³³