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

For Wakhān was a commercially insignificant market, and the route merely served as a short and safe passageway for Chinese and Central Asian merchants travelling from China to Badakhshan and then to the other parts of Central Asia and vice versa. The region, thus, remained economically undeveloped until the establishment of the Soviet reign in Tajikistan. Its dominant agrarian economy entirely depended on animal husbandry and a small portion of its cultivated land (almost 98% of its territory is mountainous), the products of which were merely meant for domestic use. There were no higher education institutions, such as madrasas or mosques, except for a few home-based private schools to which very few people had access; thus, the majority of the population was illiterate.¹ Hence, due to its geographic location and economic backwardness, the region remained almost inaccessible to and ignored by foreign scholars and politicians until the late nineteenth century when the first open interaction with Europe began. However, this interaction, which occurred towards the end of Mubārak’s life, commenced during the Anglo-Russian political and military contest of Central Asia, known as ‘the Great Game’ that consequently worsened the situation of the Wakhīs. The region was subjugated by the Afghan troops of Abd al-Ramān Khān (d.1901), who spread a reign of fear and terror throughout the region. The Ismāīlīs of Wakhān, like the rest of the Pamir principali­ties (Rushān, Shughnān, Ghārān and Ishkāshim), endured both political and sectarian persecution from the Sunni Afghans. This situation continued until the Russians took control and divided (in agreement with the British) the entire Pamir region into the Tajik and Afghan provinces. For the inhabitants of the Afghan Pamir, the religio-political persecution continued.

With the establishment of the VMKB, however, to which Wakhān was included as a district, the Soviet government modified the region’s economic infrastructure and transformed it into one of the more prosperous oblasts in the USSR by the post-Second World War period. Several educational institutions and academic research centres were established, including schools, colleges, universities and the Tajik Academy of Science with its specific research branches.