Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus. Harvard University Press. Fall, 2021. 368 pp.
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.
REVIEWS
“Hidden Caliphate announces the arrival of a major new scholar. By focusing on the more recent past of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ziad recenters the study of the Sufi tradition, which all too often has been relegated to the realm of metaphysics and poetry. He brings a contested period to light with encyclopedic insight. I heartily recommend this book.”—Omid Safi, author of The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry
“A major achievement. In this innovative, well-written book Ziad shows us a region knit together by the networks of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis. He is the first to set out their massive influence across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and northwest South Asia, and in the process reveals how limited was the understanding of the colonial powers in the Great Game.”—Francis Robinson, author of The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia, 1206–1925
“Equipped with an impressive array of primary sources, Ziad skillfully dismantles restrictive notions of region and sovereignty and casts aside binaries such as that of Sufis and ulama. He then offers us a breathtaking view of a Persian cosmopolis held together by vibrant networks of Naqshbandi Sufis in the politically turbulent eighteenth century. This hugely important book should be read across a range of disciplines.”—Supriya Gandhi, author of The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India
“A pioneering study of the Mujaddidi Sufi networks that spanned the eastern Islamic world, from Siberia to India, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grounded in a prodigious range of sources, Hidden Caliphate shows how the order’s doctrinal, ritual, and institutional dimensions offered intellectual and social cohesion for Muslims across this vast region before and after the advent of colonial domination.”—Devin DeWeese, author of Studies on Sufism in Central Asia
“Refreshingly original, Hidden Caliphate shows how the Mujaddidi Sufis combined high textual tradition with ecstatic Sufism and local rituals and thus built a seminal authority to unite diverse communities across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. Ziad brings a vital new perspective on a region long understood only through the narrow lens of European imperial histories.”—Muzaffar Alam, author of The Mughals and the Sufis: Islam and Political Imagination in India, 1500–1750
“A brilliant transregional study of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi scholastic–religious networks (the batini khilafat) in Khurasan, Hindustan, and Transoxiana that significantly advances the field of Persianate studies. Ziad traces sacred networks of cultural and economic exchange as well as the leadership structure that helped maintain a degree of stability during a time of political decentralization. A must-read for all interested in Sufism, the Persianate sphere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the history of the Afghan empire.”—Jo-Ann Gross, Professor of History, Emeritus, The College of New Jersey
…
In the Treasure Room of the Sakra King: Votive coinage of Gandhara’s Shrines. American Numismatic Society. Fall, 2021.
A monograph on the political and numismatic history of a temple polity in the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier based on archaeological evidence. 300 pp.
In a lush valley within the Sakra peak in Gandhara (northwestern Pakistan) is a vast limestone cave temple, part of an ancient Hindu sacred complex. For over 700 years, this cluster of shrines minted hundreds of varieties of their own votive coinage – a unique case in Central and South Asia. These were miniscule copper coins, issued for pilgrims, featuring eclectic and original combinations of Greco-Roman, Iranian, Indic, and Islamic iconography. This book examines the native Sakra copper coinage issued from circa 550 to 1100, corresponding to the Nezak, Turk Shahi, Hindu Shahi, and Ghaznavid dynasties. These coins provide a window into what may have been an ecclesiastical administration exercising varying degrees of autonomy throughout its lifetime. They practically blur boundaries between vernacular folk art and monetary instruments serving political or confessional agendas.
The book relates both the remarkable story of these coins and the sacred sites, and introduces the obscured history of the most neglected yet formative 500 years of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s history. It also offers new paradigms for conceptualizing local currency, the making of religious imagery, and the process of transculturation. Importantly, the Sakra coins issued under Ghaznavid rule overturn popular misconceptions about early Hindu-Muslim encounters, suggesting instead that the Ghaznavids pursued a flexible, negotiated policy with regard to Hindu sacred sites.
IN PROGRESS
Beyond Khutba and Sikka: Sovereignty and Coinage in Sindh, 1300-1700. 200 pp. (draft complete; under review).
This book is intended as the first in a series of histories which I am writing on the hitherto unexplored coinage and history of Sindh, based on my original research in over 20 sites and towns across the province. This study is an effort to unveil history through the study of numismatics, and to demonstrate the importance of coins as integral sources in the reconstruction of Pakistan’s social, political, and economic history. This book focuses on the unique monetary history of the Samma, Arghun, and Tarkhan Sultanates of Sindh, and Mughal Sindh. Sindh’s coins provide concrete evidence of how rulers represented themselves, and how they managed their powerful neighbors; and, from a subaltern perspective, how die engravers, celators, and merchants managed local economies.
…
Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and Her Spiritual Network (proposal submitted for review)
This book centers on a remarkable and unique hagiography, written in 1818, by the esteemed Afghan scholar-mystic Shah Fazlullah (d. 1822), in honor of his two Sufi masters, Khwaja Safiullah (d. 1798), and Bibi Sahiba ‘the Great’ (d. 1803), who was also the author’s mother. This is the first time her story will be told in English, but at the turn of the 19th century, Bibi Sahiba was recognized as the “most exalted saint” of the age. Her network of thousands of disciples spanned from the Arabian Sea to Central Asia. She was the spiritual guide of scholars and kings, including the Khan of Bukhara, who personally invited her to his kingdom. Her travels took her to North India, Central Asia, and Arabia; she led a caravan from Mecca; and she built and managed colleges and shrines at Kandahar, Kabul, Yemen, and Sindh. Bibi Sahiba’s sons and grandsons – Sufi masters in their own right – defended Afghanistan against the invading British in the Anglo-Afghan Wars. Their stories are among the only available narratives of the wars from the perspective of the Afghan forces on the ground.
…
Mir Izzatullah’s Travels (critical edition, title undecided). Brill series: Sources in Persianate History. Exp. 2022, with Abbas Amanat and Arash Khazeni.
Two unpublished early 19th century travel accounts of Mir Izzatullah, assistant to William Moorecroft, dispatched by the East India Company to secure horses from Central Asia. These are among the first colonial forays in Central Asia.
…
Epistles and Poetry of ‘Abdullah Jan Faruqi (critical edition, with Kashifuddin Chohan and the custodians of Idara-i Naqshbandiyya, Thana, and Masjad al-Lata’if, Idak, North Waziristan).
Over the last four years, Waleed Ziad, Kashifuddin Chohan, and custodians of Sufi centers in Malakand, Waziristan, and Peshawar (near the Pakistan-Afghan border) have identified a treasure trove of epistles, writings on metaphysics and meditation, poetry, and handwritten posters and ephemera of the last great Sufi saint of North Waziristan (1950-2006) ‘Abdullah Jan Faruqi, in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Pashtu. A unique set of sources which can recover this region, dubbed by Obama as “the most dangerous place in the world” from dominant narratives of war and extremism.