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

An important role in the ethnographical and historical studies of Pamir was played by the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Russian scholars like I. Zaroobin, W. Ivanow, A. Semyonov, A. Bobrinskiy, M. Andreev, V. Barthold, A. Bertels, A. Snesaryov, A. Stanishevskiy and many others.³⁰ These scholars mainly deal with the ethnographic and linguistic aspects of Pamir. Similarly, they touch upon certain general religious issues, such as Ismāīlī religious philosophy, the life and thoughts of Nāir-i Khusraw, and stories about the pīrs (religious leaders) and mīrs (political leaders) of Badakhshan and Pamir. Although these authors contributed greatly to the cultural study of this region, several important factors of religious life, such as the spread of Ismāīlism, its religio-cultural and historical contexts, and the further impacts on the lives of the people of the Pamir mountainous regions remain unresolved.

Methodology

Taking into consideration the complicated and obscure nature of the stories narrated in the indigenous sources, this study deals with the narratives from a-historical perspective. In other words, it aims to treat information in Gawhar-Rīz and other conversion narratives systematically rather than chronologically. It does not preoccupy itself with the ‘historical evidence’ provided by the narratives, but merely tries to examine the historical settings in which the various stages of the narratives developed. Yet, the spread of Ismāīlism in Pamir, as a historical phenomenon, is generally approached in chapters 1 and 2 from a historico-ethnographic perspective, on the bases of very restricted historical evidence, ethnographic accounts and their comparison with indigenous conversion narratives.

The rest of the study is based on a textual analysis of Mubārak’s poetry in the light of Islamic mystical discourse in which hermeneutics is used as a tool for understanding Mubārak’s philosophy, a combination of the Ismāīlī esotericism and Sufi mysticism. His ‘Sufisised’ Ismāīlism is a unique personal spiritual experience that went far beyond the actual traditional forms of religious practices of his time and place, but was still regarded, traditionally, as the ‘true’ practice of the faith.