(1) An Incomplete Genealogical Work

According to Togan’s description from 1953, the manuscript contained four works. The first, he wrote, comprised ff. 1a–30b (it actually appears on ff. 1b–29b), and contained a “silsila” of lineages linked to “the YasavÄ« shaykhs” Sayyid Ata, Ismāʿīl Ata, ZangÄ« Ata, Khurāsān Ata, MÄ«r ḤaydarÄ«, “MaḫtÅ«m-i Aʿẓam,” and “MaḫtÅ«m-i ḪorezmÄ«,” as well as accounts of the “Akeşelik Seyyids” (but in the manuscript [10b], “Āq-eshek-lik”) and the “Seyyid Nasirîs,” with whom the author was connected; from the names mentioned, it was already surmisable that what was found in this section of the manuscript was not a series of initiatic lineages, but lineages reflecting claims of entirely natural descent,⁶¹ and this is indeed what this first work is about. As such, this work, in which the author identifies himself as the as “khādim al-fuqarā AmÄ«r Sayyid Aḥmad Mawlānā Shaykh Nāṣir al-DÄ«n al-MarghÄ«nānÄ«,” and which is incomplete at the end, closely parallels the work preserved in the Tashkent manuscript, MS IVRUz 11290, and even includes, at the outset (f. 1b), the author’s stated intention to trace his genealogy through prominent female ancestors, as well as a presentation organized around lineages purportedly descended from the first four Caliphs.

This first section thus includes valuable genealogical traditions surrounding families claiming descent from various YasavÄ« saints, beginning with extensive material on the ancestors, brothers, wife, and children of Aḥmad YasavÄ« himself (esp. ff. 19a–20b and 25a–29b, with substantial portions of the text on ff. 25a–27b repeated at ff. 144a–146b); the work is of interest for echoing two distinct traditions about the mother of Aḥmad YasavÄ« (ff. 19a-b, 25a-b), but not explicitly contrasting them, and for the extensive oral tradition reported in connection with the discussion of Yasavī’s daughter, called here Gawhar KhÅ«sh-tāj BÄ«bÄ«, which is prominent in the section on Ê¿Umarid lineages (ff. 3b–4a). The discussion of Yasavī’s brother, and his sons and grandsons, meanwhile, differs notably from the presentation of these figures in the Ürüng-qÅ«ylāqÄ« nasab-nāmas reflected in other traditions, and appears to conflate Aḥmad Yasavī’s nephew, “Khwāja-yi Dānishmand,” called, as we are told, “Zāhid Ürüng-qÅ«ylāqÄ«,” with Yasavī’s learned disciple, ṢūfÄ« [Muḥammad] Dānishmand, known from earlier hagiographical sources.⁶²

The work ranges more widely as well, however, in recording similar traditions about groups and individuals linked to other descent groups, especially when the focus turns to different groups of sayyids (here is where he lists the saintly ancestors, beginning with Sayyid Ata and Ismāʿīl Ata, mentioned in Togan’s article [f. 10b]); at one point, for instance, the author traces the ancestry of his wife—whose father was among the several Sufi masters claimed by MarghÄ«nānī—back to Sayyid Ê¿AlÄ« HamadānÄ« (d. 786/1385), and then turns to the Sayyid Atāʾī lineage of one of his own disciples. It is also in the section on sayyids—here clearly understood as encompassing all Ê¿Alids—that the author mentions his own descent, traced through a lineage descended from a son of Muḥammad b. al-ḤanafÄ«ya whom he calls “Shāh Manṣūr-i QÄ«rqÄ«z,” and who he says is buried “in the east of the town of MarghÄ«nān, in the district of Tāshlāq-i DÅ«-jÅ«ya, below the shrine of Ibn Muʿādh b. Jabal” (f. 11b);⁶³ this “Shāh Manṣūr b. Muḥammad-i ḤanafÄ«ya,” along with his shrine in MarghÄ«nān, is mentioned often later on in the manuscript, in connection with the author’s genealogy, but this appears to be the only time he is labeled a “QÄ«rqÄ«z,” suggesting a possible conflation with traditions linking Qïrghïz origins with the illustrious Sufi, “Shāh Manṣūr Ḥallāj.”⁶⁴ The author also finds a place in his reconstruction of sacred lineages for another Islamizing figure, whom he calls “Tükläs Ata,” and links genealogically with the three Islamizing heroes led by Isḥāq Bāb⁶⁵ (ff. 26b, 145b).

This first section of the manuscript includes several places in which an entire line is left blank, possibly merely a sign that headings were meant to be added, but possibly a sign that the material in this ‘work’ was a rough draft that the author intended to organize into a more polished presentation; the latter suggestion is perhaps strengthened by the manuscript’s preservation of another version of some of the material included in this first ‘work,’ in a later section (see below). In any event, the first section also includes ‘theoretical’ discussions (typically marked with the heading, dar-īn masʾala ke, i.e., “on the question of …”), relating to sacred lineages, regarding the lawfulness of assigning precedence and favor on account of lineage, or opinions of the ʿulamā on rulers showing honor to sayyids, or whether the status of sayyid passes through the mother’s side as well as the father’s; these discussions are of interest for ‘problematizing’ the genealogical idiom that shaped so much of Muslim religious life in Central Asia, and elsewhere, but also for revealing the specific modes of ‘justification’ for the prominence of sacred lineages in the region during the eighteenth century. It is nevertheless the rich genealogical ‘data’ and narrative traditions that give the work its primary value, and closer study of its material, and comparison with the presentation of quite similar material in MS IVRUz 11290 (and in a later section of the manuscript explored here, as discussed below, namely the fifth section), will enrich our understanding of the social and religious history of Central Asia in this era.

(2) A Genealogy of the Khāns of Khoqand

The second work noted by Togan (but ignored in the catalogue description) is quite short, occupying ff. 30b–37b; Togan described it as comprising genealogies of the khāns of Khoqand and stories about Timur and his descendants, and this is essentially what it contains, though several important clarifications are worth noting here. The first is that the author does not identify himself anywhere in this work; Togan assumed that it was written by the same Sayyid Aḥmad Nāṣir al-Dīn Marghīnānī who clearly wrote the first and fourth works in the manuscript, but this is not at all clear. This section of the manuscript was copied in an entirely different hand, and it contains none of the characteristic textual and rhetorical elements that Marghīnānī typically employs (the invocation ay farzand, the introduction of new topics with the phrase va nīz badānand ke, “And let them know also that …”), suggesting that it might have been composed by someone else, and circulated separately, before simply being bound together with several works of Marghīnānī (especially the first and fifth works in the manuscript) because of their shared focus on genealogy.

This second work includes a longer introduction, with comments on royalty and royal lineage, before the author, without naming himself, announces his intention to recount the hereditary lineage (nasab-i á¹£uvar) of a ruler who is identified, after several lines of exalted epithets, as AmÄ«r Sayyid Ê¿Umar Bahādur Khān, i.e., the khān of Khoqand, of the Ming ‘tribal’ dynasty, who ruled from 1225/1811–1237/1821; each link in his royal genealogy is accorded extensive epithets, and the simple recording of the lineage occupies ff. 31a–32b: Ê¿Umar Khān < AmÄ«r NārbÅ«ta Bahādir Khān < AmÄ«r Ê¿Abd al-Raḥmān Bahādur Sulṭān” < AmÄ«r Ê¿Abd al-KarÄ«m Bahādur Sulṭān < Shahrukh Bahādur Sulṭān < Ê¿Ashur-qulÄ« Bahādur < ḤājjÄ« BÄ«y Bahādur < Shahrukh Bahādur (the latter three are called “bahādur ibn al-bahādur”) < Muḥammad Jamash BÄ«y. Down to this point, the genealogy matches what is related by several other sources on the ancestry of the khāns of Khoqand (including the apparent duplication of Shahrukh),⁶⁶ but with the last-named figure, whose name is typically given as Chamash BÄ«y, the genealogical listing of names and epithets gives way to narrative before resuming on f. 33a.

The narrative amounts to yet another version—this one quite early, if indeed recorded during the reign of Ê¿Umar Khān—of the legend of origin of the Ming dynasty, though that tribal appellation never appears in this manuscript. According to the account, “Muḥammad Chamash BÄ«y” came to the Farghāna valley in the time of Ê¿Abdullāh Khān b. Iskandar Khān—i.e., the Abūʾl-Khayrid ruler who consolidated his power through dynastic struggles from the 1550s through the 1570s, ruled as khān from 992/1584 until his death in 1006/1598, and managed to bring virtually all of western Central Asia, including even Khwārazm, under his control; a lion appeared on the banks of the Syr Daryā and blocked the khān’s advance through the valley, but Chamash BÄ«y, acting at the directive of the Sufi saint Mawlānā Luá¹­fullāh ChustÄ« (d. 979/1571; his nisba is written thus in this work), managed to take the lion alive and bring it to Ê¿Abdullāh Khān, who thereupon conferred upon Chamash BÄ«y the governance of the area.⁶⁷ During the same ‘audience’ with Ê¿Abdullāh Khān, the account continues, Chamash BÄ«y told of his Bāburid descent, and recounted how he had come to Farghāna from “NÅ«ghāyistān,” a region further identified as on “the banks of the River Irtish, JimgÄ«, TubÅ«l, and Tārī”—i.e., from western Siberia. With this brief and anomalous specification of the place of origin of Ê¿Umar Khān’s dynasty, however, the narrative ends and the genealogy resumes—now in a thoroughly anomalous form—with several earlier links, however, requiring further explanation.

“Muḥammad Jamash BÄ«y” was, we are told, the son of a certain KÅ«chuk Bahādur Sulṭān, and the lineage is traced back further, first to “T.b.j.k Bahādur Khān” (identified as ruler of NÅ«ghāyistān) < Abūʾl-Qāsim Muḥammad Bahādur Khān < Muḥammad AmÄ«n Bahādur Khān (who ruled in Turkistān and Khwārazm) < Khudāy-berdÄ« MÄ«rzā Bahādur Khān < TengrÄ«-berdÄ« MÄ«rzā Bahādur Khān; the combining of the title khān (once reserved for Chinggisids only) and mÄ«rzā (borne by the tribal aristocracy) for the last two figures is worth noting. The last-named figure, we are told, was also called ĀltÅ«n BéshÄ«k MÄ«rzā—if the date given for this second work’s completion (discussed shortly) is correct, this marks our earliest reference to the ‘name’ Altun Beshik, “Golden Cradle,” in the genealogy of the khāns of Khoqand⁶⁸ —and the account explains further that TengrÄ«-berdÄ«/ĀltÅ«n BéshÄ«k was the son of “Bahādur Khān” [sic] < MÄ«rzā Ê¿Umar Shaykh Bahādur Khān. Mention of the latter figure, identified as a descendant of Timur’s son “AmÄ«rānshāh,” prompts discussion of the two prominent Timurid princes named Bābur, from which it is clear that the “Bahādur Khān” named as the father of TengrÄ«-berdÄ«/ĀltÅ«n BéshÄ«k was indeed ẒahÄ«r al-DÄ«n Muḥammad Bābur; but there is no hint of the story of Bābur abandoning his son in the wilds of the Farghāna valley, as known from the developed legend of Altun Beshik.

Instead, we find a series of “clarifications” (vażīḥa), exploring Āltūn Béshīk’s marriage to the daughter of a Chinggisid prince whose ancestry is traced first through several links clearly drawn from the Abūʾl-Khayrid lineage of ʿAbdullāh Khān, but traced through an uncle of the latter; after a few unrecognizable links preceding Abūʾl-Khayr Khān’s father, the lineage jumps from a Jochid to a Toluid Chinggisid line, following the line of the Ilkhanids from Abū Saʿīd back through Hülegü to Chingīz Khān, and then continuing to list the latter’s ancestors back as far as the figure here called “Muḥammad Āltūqī Khān,” and called a few folios later “Muḥammad Al.n.qūyī Bahādur Khān” [f. 37a], both recognizable as deformations—and transgenderings—of the famous miraculous progenitor of the Chinggisid house, Alan-qoʾa. The latter figure is said to have married the daughter of Imām ʿAlī Bāhir, a son of Imām Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, and the lineage of Chingīz Khān, and of ʿUmar Khān, is thus supplied not only with descent from the Prophet, but with descent from the ancient kings of Iran (through the marriage of Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn’s father, Imām Ḥusayn, as we are told, to the daughter of “Yazdjir”).

Other “clarifications” discuss the Timurid side of the lineage, offer a fanciful account of Timur’s career, and advance other claims about the descendants of Altun Beshik, who included, we learn, the “sulṭāns of the Qazāqs;” in the course of one such genealogical meditation, we are given the date for this second work’s composition (f. 36b). The ruler of Bukhārā in our time, we are told, which is specified in words and figures as 1229/1814—the date seized upon by Togan for the composition of the “TārÄ«kh-i mashāʾikh-i turk,” and seemingly for the contents of the manuscript as a whole—is AmÄ«r Ḥaydar Pādshāh b. AmÄ«r Shāh Murād BÄ«y Manghïrt [sic], whose lineage descended from the daughter of Abūʾl-Fayż Khān.⁶⁹ The genealogical material continues, with two lineages that offer the closest tie-ins with the genealogies discussed in the works clearly written by MarghÄ«nānÄ«: first, a genealogy of the mother of Timur is traced back to Muḥammad-i ḤanafÄ«ya through a lineage given elsewhere by MarghÄ«nānÄ« that recalls, without matching precisely, the ‘Qarakhanid’ lineage traced in the narrative of the three Islamizing warrior-saints led by Isḥāq Bāb (i.e., through “Awliyāʾ-i Qarākhān,” though this appellation is applied to different descendants of Muḥammad-i ḤanafÄ«ya in the two accounts); and second, the ancestry of the mother of Ê¿Umar Khān is traced through Muḥammad ḤakÄ«m TirmidhÄ« and the eighth imām, Ê¿AlÄ«-yi MÅ«sā al-Riżā, back to Ê¿AlÄ« and the Prophet.⁷⁰

These genealogies are as fanciful as they are interesting, as is the case with many of those found in Marghīnānī’s works, and may further strengthen the supposition that he was the author of this second work as well; it could have been simply based, or modeled, upon material he collected, however, and the question of authorship must remain open. In any case, the second work’s completion in 1229/1814 lends it considerable importance as one of our earliest sources on the process of legitimizing the khāns of Khoqand, with significant, and datable, material relevant to the construction of their genealogy and the development of the legend of Altun Beshik; we cannot take up a detailed comparison of this work’s account with other versions, but its early date, and its differing versions of names and other details in the genealogy—including the dynasty’s ‘Siberian’ origins—pose complications to all previous scholarship on the legend and on other facets of the legitimation of Khoqand’s Ming rulers.

(3) A Treatise on the Vocal Dhikr

Togan characterized the third section of the manuscript, comprising ff. 38b–57b (in fact, ff. 38b–57a) as a “treatise on the vocal dhikr” (Risāla-yi jahrÄ«ya) outlining ten varieties of the type of Sufi dhikr (i.e., the ritual practice of “remembrance,” involving the repetition of the divine name or some other formula as a meditative discipline) that was uttered or recited audibly (jahr), rather than silently. His description in this case is reasonably accurate, though it is not clear why Togan wrote specifically of ten types of vocal dhikr: many more than ten are identified and briefly explained in this third work, which will bear comparison with several short works on the same subject produced during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.⁷¹

A comparative study may identify common themes and concerns in discussions of the vocal dhikr during this era, but it may also help determine whether it is possible to distinguish specifically Yasavī modes of the vocal dhikr from forms employed in other Sufi lineages in this era. Audible or notably loud forms of the vocal dhikr were also used in Central Asian Sufi lineages and/or communities identified as ʿIshqī and Kubravī at various stages in their development, with additional strains of the dhikr-i jahr ‘imported’ into the region through the Qādirī, Chishtī, and even Suhravardī initiatic lineages that came to the region in ‘bundled’ form during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; all of these forms were sometimes criticized and condemned, as harmful ‘innovations,’ by some Mujaddidī Naqshbandī shaykhs during this era, just as early Khwājagānī and Naqshbandī groups had criticized the Yasavī and ʿIshqī forms of the vocal dhikr in earlier centuries. At the same time, just as Naqshbandī groups came to tolerate the vocal dhikr beginning in the sixteenth century, some Mujaddidī shaykhs likewise came to adopt it, or to allow their disciples to employ it, during the later period, and works defending and opposing the dhikr-i jahr accordingly came to reflect new alignments and combinations of communal and initiatic preferences (even before the broad assaults on Sufi rituals in later times, by would-be ‘reformers’ and the subsequent Jadidists who followed their lead). It will thus be important to delineate specific practices as discussed in such works, when possible.

With this agenda in mind, a few refinements and clarifications to Togan’s brief description, based on a quick examination of the work, may be useful. To begin with, at the end of the work, the copyist has indeed referred to the completion of al-risālat al-jahrīya al-sulṭānīya, but throughout the work itself, the phrase dhikr-i jahr (or its equivalent) is only rarely used, as the author indeed focuses on the specifically (and traditionally) Yasavī form of the vocal dhikr, which is typically referred to in this work as the dhikr-i arra (or sometimes, using an Arabized form, as al-dhikr al-arrat), i.e., the “dhikr of the saw,” a term that reflects (as explained in other sources) its raucous, rasping sound, likened to that of a two-handled saw cutting rhythmically through wood. In this short treatise, it is thus the dhikr-i arra that is shown to have had numerous varieties, each with a distinctive designation and formula.

Secondly, the author never identifies himself by name in this treatise, but it is clearly the work of the same Marghīnānī who wrote the first work (and, as we will see, the fourth, fifth, and sixth works as well as the short seventh and eighth); this is evident from his repeated use of the address “ay farzand” (though he does not name his son in this work as he does in the fourth), and from the remarkable ‘summary’ passage at the end of the work, discussed below. This third work is, incidentally, complete, like the second and fourth works, but unlike other substantial sections in the manuscript (the first lacks the ending, while the fifth and sixth works lack both their beginnings and their ends); the handwriting in the third work is clearly different from that in which the second work was copied, but matches the handwriting in the longer fourth work.

Finally—in terms of preliminary refinements—based on Togan’s brief discussion, I had expected this work to resemble some of the other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century treatises on the vocal dhikr noted above, and to be (like most of those treatises) of considerably less value for the history of the shaykhs and Sufi circles that comprised the Yasavī tradition, i.e., its ‘personnel;’ I thus expected to give only a brief discussion of this work, focusing primarily on the overtly ‘biographical’ sections of the manuscript. My initial expectation was borne out through much of the work, but to my surprise, this third section turned out to be of enormous interest for the history of the Yasavī tradition, in three regards, beyond the valuable discussions of the dhikr-i arra. First, the third work includes specific, invaluable comments on an obscure figure of the Yasavī tradition from the late sixteenth or seventeenth century; these comments underscore, and to some extent clarify, comments about the same shaykh found in the fourth work, and are best discussed after introducing him below, in the review of that part of the manuscript.

Secondly, in the midst of the work, the author pauses to discuss the dhikr varieties in which he himself was initiated, and the shaykhs through whom they reached him, supplementing his ‘autobiographical’ comments in several works, and adding some nuance to his characterization of his Sufi training. And thirdly, near the very end of the work, the author addresses his son with what amounts to a summary of the history of the Yasavī silsila, an account closely tied to the issue of its ritual practice; this passage in effect explains why he was writing more or less everything that he is known to have written. It would not have been imagined, based on Togan’s description, and certainly not from the catalogue description, but the author’s closing comments in this work on the Yasavī dhikr are perhaps the most significant in all of Marghīnānī’s works (especially when combined and contextualized with some of his comments in the fourth and sixth works, discussed below).

The work opens with an extended section in Arabic (ff. 38b–41a), as the author explains, following the phrase ammā baÊ¿d, “Some of my brethren in the JahrÄ«-SulṭānÄ« á¹­arÄ«qa⁷² asked me about the character of the vocal dhikrs, in the manner of the saw, in the mystical practice of the shaykhs of the Turks” (fa-qad saʾala minnÄ« baʿḍ ikhwānÄ« fī’l-á¹­arÄ«qat al-jahrÄ«yat al-sulṭānÄ«yat Ê¿an kayfÄ«yat adhkār al-jahr bi-á¹­arÄ«q al-minshār fÄ« sulÅ«k al-mashāʾikh al-atrāk); the treatise is thus framed as the author’s response to this inquiry.

After beginning with a brief theoretical discussion of the aims of the dhikr and of the two basic types, jahr (“public”) and khafāʾ (“private”), he notes the further subdivision of each into three sorts, which in the case of the jahr he terms, in order, qawlī, fiʿlī, and qalbī, pertaining to speech, action, and the heart; then he writes that in addition to these three ‘subdivisions,’ the dhikr al-jahr can also be divided into two sorts, with the first involving the raising of the voice to distinguish and emphasize the sounds of the divine name or names, and the second entailing the same but in conjunction with a constriction of the performer’s larynx (ḥanjarat al-ḥulqūm).

It is the latter sort, he explains further, that the shaykhs call the dhikr al-arra, and this, he says, was performed by the Prophet in the cave on the mountain of al-Ḥirāʾ; he gives a reference, in effect, for this claim, citing the riwāyat written by “Mawlānā Sharīf Bukhārī” that was endorsed by “the ʿulamā of Bukhārā, Samarqand, Ḥiṣār, Balkh, and the cities of Farghāna.” The qāżīs of these towns, he continues—alluding to a story he explains more fully at the end of his work—“gave a judgment in dispute against Shaykh Ḥabībullāh” (ḥakamū qużāt hādhihiʾl-bilād fī nizāʿ shaykh ḥabībullāh), and he then observes further that this dhikr al-arra “is the path of the great shaykhs” (maslak al-mashāʾikh al-kibār), as is affirmed in respected books, among which he names only the Nafaḥāt and Rashaḥāt. At this point, he writes that there are many varieties of the “dhikr of the saw”—he soon explains that dhikr arra is a Persian phrase for it used among the mashāʾikh al-atrāk—and he turns to naming the types and explaining them.

His first foray into naming and defining types of the dhikr-i arra lists 44 in all, but he eventually fills the work with multiple ways of distinguishing and framing both the dhikrs he discusses and the awrād, or Sufi ‘litanies,’ he outlines; when he first turns to the latter (in the middle of f. 41a), he begins with a heading indicating a new ‘section’ explaining litanies for daytime and nighttime (faá¹£l dar bayān-i awrād-i layl va nahār), adds his familiar address to his son, “ay farzand,” and shifts from Arabic to Persian, the language in which most of the rest of the work is written. The types and descriptions of awrād and then, again, of adhkār continue for many folios, with specific formulae written out in both cases, prescribing precisely what is to be said during each variety, and noting how many times particular phrases are to be repeated, and the different times of day, and different sequences, in which each should be performed (it is in the midst of one early listing of special varieties of the “dhikr of the saw” that he refers to an obscure but important YasavÄ« shaykh, discussed below). It may be of interest that by far most of the designations mentioned by the author in his lists of the varieties of the dhikr-i arra involve Arabic and Persian terminology, but he does refer several times to a type of dhikr denoted by a Turkic term—one otherwise used chiefly in military contexts, to refer to a quick raid or other vigorous attack—that signals the intense and energetic performance of the remembrance of God. The term is chāpqÅ«n, and the dhikr-i arra-yi jābqÅ«n, MarghÄ«nānÄ« writes (f. 55b), is a dhikr characterized by speed (surÊ¿at) resulting from “the utmost desire and passion” (min kamāl al-shawq waʾl-ishtiyāq); he explains further that the term, i.e., chāpqÅ«n, is of Turkic origin and refers to “the speed of a horse in its travel” (surÊ¿at al-faras fīʾl-sayr).⁷³

After long enumerations and discussions of types of the dhikr and the awrād, the author shifts his focus for a time (ff. 54a–b), with a series of reminders, addressed to his son, of a more general cast, about the virtues of constancy in the sharīʿa and ṭarīqa, and the importance of adhering to the Sufi path and lineage of one’s individual shaykh, citing the Naqshbandī shaykhs Makhdūm-i Aʿẓam, Luṭfullāh Chustī [sic], and Yaʿqūb Charkhī (quoting the latter’s tafsīr); this principle extends to writings as well, we are told, and Marghīnānī tells his son to pay attention to the books of his own masters, just as Ḥanafīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Ḥanbalīs heed the writings of jurists in their own madhhabs. It is, he writes, not merely permissible, but obligatory, for a person to stay with his or her own shaykh (“unless someone has been given permission and licensure for the choice of initiatic lineage and guidance” [magar kasī-rā ke rukhṣat va ijāzat-i ikhtiyār-i salāsil va hidāyā]), perhaps signaling that challenges to this principle were common, but were blamed by the author for the trials of his silsila as discussed toward the end.

After this digression—which does seem to clarify those parting comments— the author signals, to his son, his return to his subject, affirming that “the lucid pen has returned to the root of the discussion” (ay farzand, āgāh bāsh ke qalam-i mubÄ«n ba-aá¹£l-i sukhan bāz gasht [f. 54b]); he indeed turns to formulae and enumerations of types of dhikr-i arra, first noting 21 types (but in fact discussing just 20), and then beginning to delineate 20 sorts with names reflecting their contents; he discusses only 12 of these, however, before again addressing his son and signaling that he is ready to conclude the work. “Whoever seeks more details,” he writes, should consult additional sources, which he names, but which cannot be identified for certain;⁷⁴ then, he writes, “Whoever seeks the path of a dervish of the shaykhs of the Turks” should consult a different set of books: he names the TanbÄ«h al-żāllÄ«n, among the compositions of the Sulṭān Khwāja Aḥmad YasavÄ«,⁷⁵ the Lamaḥāt, among the works of ʿĀlim Shaykh Ê¿AlÄ«yābādÄ«, and the Ḥujjat al-dhākirÄ«n by Mawlānā SharÄ«f BukhārÄ« (on the latter two works, see the discussion of the fourth work in the manuscript, below). He goes on to name several authoritative figures, the first of whom is Imām SïghnāqÄ«, “author of the Nihāya” (a prominent book of fiqh, but by the seventeenth century, this SïghnāqÄ« was ascribed a treatise about Aḥmad YasavÄ«); the rest are YasavÄ« shaykhs: Mawlānā ṢūfÄ« Dānishmand, identified as a khalÄ«fa of Aḥmad YasavÄ« (as if he might not be familiar to his readers), Khudāydād GhazÄ«ra-gÄ« [sic], Qāsim Shaykh KarmÄ«nagÄ«, Khwāja Sulaymān ŪzgandÄ« (otherwise unknown, unless he is to be identified with a figure incorporated into Aḥmad Yasavī’s familial lore), and Shams al-DÄ«n ŪzgandÄ« (all but the first and fourth are accorded entries in the fourth work in the manuscript, as noted below). Despite not naming books by the latter figures, he concludes that “others of the shaykhs of the Turks have many compositions; they should consult them, and they should not reject this á¹­arÄ«qa” (va ghayruhā min mashāʾikh al-atrāk taá¹£nÄ«fāt-i bisyār dārand, muṭālaÊ¿a konand; nabāyad Ä«n á¹­arÄ«qa-rā Ä«nkār [sic] konand [ff. 56b–57a]).

This referral and admonition then bring us to the final passage in the work, which as noted evokes and explains the passage at the outset alluding to the dispute with the Mujaddidī Shaykh Ḥabībullāh:

Son, this silsila, from the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him) down to the time of his holiness, Sulṭān Khwāja Aḥmad YasavÄ«, and from his time down to the time of Mawlānā SharÄ«f, was flourishing and brilliant. In the time of Subḥān-qulÄ« Khān,⁷⁶ his holiness Shaykh ḤabÄ«bullāh, who was among the successors of Miyān Maʿṣūm [SirhindÄ«],⁷⁷ came from India and promoted the NaqshbandÄ« path in Bukhārā; Subḥān-qulÄ« Khān was the patron and supporter of Shaykh ḤabÄ«bullāh. Despite the support and patronage of the aforementioned khān, his holiness Mawlānā SharÄ«f wrote a rivāyat giving him a judgment of unbelief, brought his holiness Shaykh ḤabÄ«bullāh into the circle of the vocal dhikr, and had him perform the vocal dhikr; and so from the time of Mawlānā SharÄ«f down through the time of Mawlānā Niyāz Muḥammad ChuqmāqÄ«, who was among the companions of Mawlānā SharÄ«f, [it, i.e., the YasavÄ« silsila] flourished. But after his death, no one remained among the great shaykhs, and a scarcity of men occurred in this silsila; in Bukhārā, the SulṭānÄ« [i.e., YasavÄ«] silsila did not survive at all. After that, when it happened that a saint remained in some hidden corner or wild place, this humble [servant], who is your father, served him and attached himself to him; praise be to God that through His will (may His glory be magnified), this book, which is a testament for you, was written. The outcome and purpose is this, that the SulṭānÄ« silsila is true, and he who harbors a rejection of it is an infidel; the rejecter has been broken, let not the broken be led astray. God is the beneficent and the protector.⁷⁸

Stories about the conflict, and sometimes the reconciliation, between the YasavÄ« shaykh Muḥammad SharÄ«f BukhārÄ« and the MujaddidÄ«-NaqshbandÄ« Shaykh ḤabÄ«bullāh are found in multiple sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the defense of the vocal dhikr was the reason the former wrote his Ḥujjat al-dhākirÄ«n;⁷⁹ MarghÄ«nānī’s comments underscore the impact of their interaction a century later, as well as his own sense of ‘mission’ in reviving and spreading the silsila that cultivated the “dhikr of the saw”—a mission he discusses more extensively in the sixth work in MS F745, discussed below. More broadly, it is worth noting that the author’s focus on the dhikr-i arra would seem to indicate that he was indeed focusing on the vocal dhikr as performed in distinctly YasavÄ« communities, but in this regard as well, some caution is necessary; the author, after all, claimed initiations that envisioned the ‘mingling’ of forms of Sufi practice used not only in distinctly YasavÄ« circles, but also in QādirÄ«, Ê¿IshqÄ«, KubravÄ«, and NaqshbandÄ«/MujaddidÄ« groups, and it is doubtful that specific alignments between initiatic lineage and varieties of the vocal dhikr can be meaningfully demonstrated for the era in which he was writing.

(4) A History of the Shaykhs of the Yasavīya

Togan’s article from 1953 described the fourth “and final” section of the manuscript as occupying ff. 57b–149b, and as having been written by Sayyid Nāṣir al-Dīn Marghīnānī for his son, Sayyid “Gurretullah;” his reading of the son’s name (i.e., “Ghurratullāh”) always struck me as odd, and I had presumed that it was a misreading of the name “ʿIzzatullāh,” but the manuscript itself makes clear that his reading had omitted a clearly-written letter, and that the name of the author’s son—whom he addresses throughout the work simply as “ay farzand”—was “ʿUrvatullāh” (in this regard the 1995 cataloguers improved upon Togan’s account). Not mentioned in the catalogue or by Togan was the additional appellation mentioned for his “natural son” (farzand-i ʿaynī va ṣulbī), who, he writes, bore the byname “Ṣūfī Khwāja ʿAzīzān,” or the work’s further rhetorical address, not only to “my beloved son (bar farzand, nūr-i chashma-ī [sic]), Sayyid ʿUrvat,” but also “to whoever follows me or follows him among the devout and righteous” (va ʿalā man tabaʿanī wa man tabaʿahu min al-atqiyāʾ va’l-adhkiyāʾ [sic], f. 57b).

As discussed below, this fourth work—which, unlike several in the manuscript, is complete—actually occupies ff. 57b–140b, and is not the final section of the manuscript, which includes another two substantial sections, and an additional two short works, after the fourth work comes to an end. Togan described this section as dealing with the silsila of the YasavÄ« shaykhs, and the branches of the á¹­arÄ«qa; the latter point is exaggerated, inasmuch as the work does not follow many ‘branches’ of the YasavÄ« silsila—MarghÄ«nānÄ«, for example, appears to have been unaware of, or to have ignored, the ‘branch’ that led to ḤazÄ«nÄ« in the sixteenth century—but it does follow that silsila from Aḥmad YasavÄ« himself down to the author, with accounts of saints and shaykhs whose lives spanned the full period from the thirteenth century through the eighteenth. Despite the value of the rich genealogical material foregrounded in the first section (and the fifth), and of the discussion of the vocal dhikr in the third section, this fourth work is without question the single most important section of MS F745 in terms of the initiatic lineage of the YasavÄ«ya—though, as we will see, it must be read in conjunction with the sixth section, discussed below, from the portion of the manuscript not described by Togan. It is also the work, among the several included in the manuscript in full or fragmentary form, that most fits the generic ‘title’ suggested by Togan—sometimes, seemingly, for the entire manuscript—namely the “TārÄ«kh-i mashāʾikh-i turk.”⁸⁰

This fourth work also exhibits the simplest and most straightforward structure of any of the sections of MS F745; it is essentially a series of hagiographical entries devoted to the major shaykhs of the Yasavī tradition, as known to Marghīnānī, including some figures of collateral lines, outside the lineage leading directly to him—and thus partly justifying Togan’s claim that the work covers “branches” of the Yasavīya, with most of the entries set off by headings, in red ink, consisting of the names of these shaykhs (in some of the longer entries, to be sure, a particularly important shaykh’s disciples may be discussed in what amounts to a separate entry, with no heading, inserted into the life of the central figure).

As a work thus structured according to the unfolding of the YasavÄ« silsila, it is derivative both in concept and, for the most part, in content; it follows, that is, the basic structure used for presenting the YasavÄ« silsila found already in the first work to undertake that task, namely the NaqshbandÄ« hagiography, devoted to the pivotal figure of Khwāja Aḥrār (d. 895/1490), the Rashaḥāt-i Ê¿ayn al-ḥayāt, completed in the early sixteenth century, and repeated, with relatively minor adjustments (beyond the extension of coverage for another century) in the most important and comprehensive YasavÄ« hagiography, the Lamaḥāt min nafaḥāt al-quds of ʿĀlim Shaykh Ê¿AlÄ«yābādÄ«, completed in 1035/1626.⁸¹ The latter work provided additional hagiographical material even for the figures ‘covered’ already in the Rashaḥāt; MarghÄ«nānÄ« explicitly cites the Lamaḥāt, as well as a later YasavÄ« work, the Ḥujjat al-dhākirÄ«n of Mawlānā Muḥammad SharÄ«f al-ḤusaynÄ« al-Ê¿AlavÄ« al-BukhārÄ«, completed in or soon after 1080/1669–70, in which the hagiographical section on the YasavÄ« silsila was based mostly on the Lamaḥāt’s presentation, but occasionally added ‘new’ information not found in the earlier work.⁸²

However, Marghīnānī’s accounts of the Yasavī shaykhs, though largely ordered and based on the accounts of the Lamaḥāt, quite often add material not found in ʿĀlim Shaykh’s work, based evidently on oral tradition passed down within the silsila, as well as on other written sources; some of this material is not otherwise known—such as the stories about Sharaf Ata that apparently first drew Togan’s attention for his 1928 article—and this fourth work will thus be of major importance for comparison with earlier accounts of the shaykhs of the Yasavī silsila; its ‘new’ material may turn out, naturally, to be of primary value as evidence on the way Yasavī history had been reshaped and was understood within the tradition in its latest phases, but it may occasionally include stories that go back to much earlier periods in Yasavī history, and in both cases it is of significant value, even for periods, and figures, for which it must be regarded as a secondary source.

Therein lies the major importance of the work, indeed, through some 90 percent of its text, from the beginning of the silsila down to the entry on ʿĀlim Shaykh, i.e., ff. 57b–134b; for the remaining six folios, however (ff. 134b–140b), Marghīnānī’s work takes on much greater significance, first as an additional, and often clarifying, source on Yasavī shaykhs and silsila lines that are otherwise only poorly reflected in other sources, and then as a firsthand original source on figures previously unknown to scholarship on the Yasavī tradition. That short section of this fourth work, combined with equally important material in the sixth section, discussed below, offers entirely new information on Yasavī history during the second half of the eighteenth century, showing the spread of the ‘order’ in that era into regions in which it is not known to have been previously found; it also reveals the author’s concern for the Yasavī tradition, and his commitment to cultivate it as a distinct tradition, even alongside his multiple initiations and ties with shaykhs of other silsilas.

The ‘new’ material in Marghīnānī’s work appears already in the long account of Aḥmad Yasavī with which the work begins, occupying ff. 57b–61a; the account includes multiple narratives focused on Yasavī, ranging from stories known already in the earliest sources on him to narratives known only from nineteenth- or twentieth-century sources. Some, interestingly, are known to me only from the works of the sixteenth-century Yasavī shaykh Ḥazīnī, even though Marghīnānī otherwise gives no evidence that he was aware of Ḥazīnī or his works, or even of the collateral silsila line leading to him, which branched off from the lineage leading to Marghīnānī (and, earlier, to ʿĀlim Shaykh and Muḥammad Sharīf) following Shaykh Jamāl al-Dīn, a figure active in the late fifteenth century.

This is not the only instance in which Marghīnānī either did not know of, or chose to ignore, collateral ‘branches’ of the Yasavī silsila. Several stories included in the section on Yasavī in fact deal with one of his disciples, called here Bābā Mājin (i.e., Bāb Māchīn), known for his familial legacy, but another major disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī, typically called Ṣūfī Muḥammad Dānishmand—whose silsila led to important shaykhs known chiefly from the writings produced in the Sufi circles associated with Ismāʿīl Ata—is not accorded an entry here, probably because Marghīnānī, or his sources or informants, conflated him with a figure bearing a similar name who appears in traditions about Aḥmad Yasavī’s family, as a nephew (who, to be sure, is counted among Yasavī’s disciples in Marghīnānī’s genealogical works). The only ‘collateral branch’ of the Yasavī silsila followed for more than one generation—i.e., beyond just the naming of a fellow-disciple of a figure accorded an entry in the work— is the line that branches off after Mawdūd Shaykh, followed in three generations, i.e., Kamāl Shaykh Īqānī, Sayyid Aḥmad, and Shams al-Dīn Ūzgandī; the first member of this ‘collateral branch’ is mentioned already in the Rashaḥāt, while the other two are added in the Lamaḥāt.

The principal headings, and the folio range of each entry following the account of Aḥmad Yasavī, down to ʿĀlim Shaykh, are as follows (the dates given for some figures do not appear in Marghīnānī’s work, but are drawn from other sources, and are given for chronological orientation):

Following the account of ʿĀlim Shaykh, MarghÄ«nānÄ« includes entries on figures for whom the Lamaḥāt was obviously no longer his source. They include figures whose place in the YasavÄ« silsila is presented differently in our sources—which become steadily fewer in number, and less detailed, in the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—with several shaykhs bearing nisbas reflecting their activity in the Syr Daryā valley among them;⁸⁴ MarghÄ«nānī’s work is quite late, but its newly available accounts may offer clarifications regarding some of these figures. Immediately after the account of ʿĀlim Shaykh, for instance, comes an entry on Mawlānā IbrāhÄ«m QavghānÄ« (ff. 134b–135a), who is shown in some accounts as a disciple of ʿĀlim Shaykh, but is here identified as a khalÄ«fa of Qāsim Shaykh KarmÄ«nagÄ«; more intriguingly, MarghÄ«nānÄ« writes that this figure “had a distinctive silsila and path, and at present the mystical practice in Turkistān is built upon his path” (silsila va maslak Ê¿alā-ḥida dāshta-and, al-ḥāl binā-yi sulÅ«k-i turkistān ba-maslak-i ān-ḥażrat ast), suggesting that the uncertain handling of the ‘Syr Daryā shaykhs’ of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries might reflect a distinctive profile going back to IbrāhÄ«m QavghānÄ«.⁸⁵

Such a distinctive profile is further supported by MarghÄ«nānī’s comments about “Mawlānā IbrāhÄ«m QavghānÄ«,” alluded to above, in his treatise on the dhikr-i arra, where at one point he announces to his son his intention to describe the dhikrs and litanies employed by this figure, noting that QavghānÄ« “has a distinct method and path, which is today in effect at the illuminated shrine of the holy Khwāja Aḥmad Yasavī” (ān ḥażrat-rā á¹­arÄ«q va maslak-i khāṣṣ-ast, al-ḥāl dar sar-i mazār-i fayż-āthār-i ḥażrat khwāja aḥmad yasavÄ« jārÄ«-ast [44b–45a]); he goes on to describe “six circles of the dhikr-i arra” used by QavghānÄ« (one of which is the dhikr-i arra-yi chābqÅ«n), and to discuss the litanies and other elements of practice that were distinctive to Qavghānī’s circle (ff. 45b–46a), but perhaps more noteworthy than these details is the basic characterization of Qavghānī’s community as in effect dominating Sufi practice at Aḥmad Yasavī’s shrine in YasÄ«/Turkistān. MarghÄ«nānÄ« goes on to outline his own silsila connection going back to IbrāhÄ«m QavghānÄ«,⁸⁶ leading him to a wider discussion of his initiatic lineages for the receipt of other prominent litanies,⁸⁷ but his account as a whole suggests that despite his obscurity today, IbrāhÄ«m QavghānÄ« was an important figure in the cultivation and transmission of the YasavÄ« legacy in the region of its origins, Turkistān, and was still recognized as a major shaykh at the end of the eighteenth century.

The entry on Qavghānī is followed by one on Mawlānā Khwāja Muḥammad Ūtrārī (f. 135a), identified here as Qavghānī’s successor; other sources give conflicting accounts of this figure, making him a murīd of a disciple—from a town of the Syr Daryā valley—of ʿĀlim Shaykh, or of ʿĀlim Shaykh himself, and in any case placing him somewhat later than discipleship under a murīd of Qāsim Shaykh would allow. He is an important figure in this work, however, as Marghīnānī portrays him as responsible for, in effect, the implantation of the Yasavī silsila into the Farghāna valley, affirming that, in the time of Subḥān-qulī Khān (r. 1092/1681–1114/1702), he left his native Otrar, spent time in Bukhārā and Samarqand, and eventually went to Ūra-tepe, Khujand, Khūqand, Marghīnān, Andijān, and Namangān, where “most” of the ʿulamā and shaykhs became his murīds.

Marghīnānī next gives a relatively short entry on Mawlānā Sharīf (ff. 135a–b), by most accounts the most important Yasavī shaykh of the later seventeenth century, whose Ḥujjat al-dhākirīn is cited often by Marghīnānī; starting with this figure, nearly all the shaykhs accorded an entry in the work are ascribed multiple teachers, with multiple initiatic lineages, reflecting the pattern of ‘bundled silsilas’ discussed elsewhere. For Mawlānā Muḥammad Sharīf, four shaykhs are mentioned as having licensed him: ʿĀlim Shaykh, the latter’s disciple Khwāja Fatḥullāh, the Naqshbandī shaykh “Mawlānā Kamāl” (i.e., Faghānzavī), and Muḥammad Ūtrārī; in the next entry, for Mawlānā ʿAvaż Baṣīr (f. 135b), this figure is ascribed a licensure by a shaykh in Madīna, one from the same “Mawlānā Kamāl,” a third from Muḥammad Ūtrārī, and a fourth from Mawlānā Muḥammad Sharīf (who is also said by Marghīnānī to have licensed a shaykh known as Mīrzā Bahādur, whose chief initiatic lineage went back to the Kubravī shaykh Ḥusayn Khwārazmī).

The exception to the new ‘rule’ of multiple masters is the next figure, ʿUthmān Shaykh Rīgistānī (ff. 135b–136a), who is shown as a disciple of Muḥammad Ūtrārī alone; it thus remains unclear whether this figure can be identified with the “Mawlānā ʿUthmān Bukhārī” named in other sources as a disciple of ʿĀlim Shaykh or of Muḥammad Sharīf (and as a shaykh of the subject of the subsequent entry). Significantly, however, Marghīnānī sums up his short entry on this figure with the comment, “He took the utmost care in traveling the mystical path of the Jahrīya, but after him, languor set in in the lineage of the Jahrīya” (dar sulūk-i jahrīya iḥtiyāṭ-i tamām dāshta-and, baʿd az īshān futūr dar khāna-dān-i jahrīya rafta ast). Marghīnānī alludes elsewhere in his works to the ‘slackening’ in the Yasavī community he mentions here, as do other writers of the nineteenth century, and his sense of his own role in the tradition must be understood against this backdrop.

The next entry is for a much more famous figure, “Mawlānā MuḥammadÄ«, that is, his holiness Īshān Imlāʾ” (ff. 136a-b), referring to the prominent scholar and poet of Bukhārā, mentioned earlier, who died in 1161 or 1162 (1749); in his case many more initiations are noted, his first having been with the YasavÄ« master Ê¿Uthmān Shaykh,⁸⁸ and his entry is followed by a short account of a less familiar figure, Mawlānā Muḥammad Laá¹­Ä«f (f. 136b), known as Ḥażrat Īshān-i ShahÄ«d (though the circumstances of his martyrdom are not discussed), who is shown as a disciple of Mawlānā Muḥammad SharÄ«f; earlier sources suggest his connection with the latter’s initiatic legacy,⁸⁹ without fully confirming MarghÄ«nānī’s account. In any case, MarghÄ«nānÄ« names three khalÄ«fas of this Muḥammad Laá¹­Ä«f—Mawlānā TursÅ«n KhujandÄ«,⁹⁰ Mawlānā MÄ«r Ṣāliḥ TāshkandÄ«,⁹¹ and Mawlānā Rajab Namangānī—whose nisbas suggest the spread of YasavÄ« initiations to two ‘gateway’ towns near the Farghāna valley, and to a town in the midst of the valley itself; the successors from Tashkent and Namangān were both among the spiritual guides of MarghÄ«nānÄ« himself.

The same is true of the next figure accorded an entry, Sayyid Muḥammad Dhakariyā Khwāja, said to be known by the laqab [sic] KhalÄ«fa Tāsh-Muḥammad VāchkatÄ« [? vāch.k.nÄ«?] al-BukhārÄ«⁹² (ff. 136b–138a), referred to by MarghÄ«nānÄ« as “the PÄ«r-i Aʿẓam” (“greatest master”), whose YasavÄ« lineage went back, we are told, to a relatively obscure disciple of Mawlānā Muḥammad SharÄ«f (“MÄ«rzā Bahādur,” shown in other sources as an initiate into exclusively NaqshbandÄ« and MujaddidÄ« lineages), but who was also a disciple of “Mawlānā Miyān Maʿṣūm Sirhindī” (d. 1079/1668), the son and successor of Aḥmad SirhindÄ«, thus combining YasavÄ« and MujaddidÄ« initiatic lineages; with this entry, we return to extended discussions of family ties, insofar as MarghÄ«nānÄ« was married to two granddaughters of the PÄ«r-i Aʿẓam. This figure also looms large in the sixth work found in the manuscript, discussed below, as does the subject of the following entry, Mawlānā Niyāz Muḥammad ChuqmāqÄ« al-BukhārÄ« (ff. 138a–b), whom we have also mentioned above as a significant ‘node’ in the bundling of silsilas; he is identified here as a companion and/or disciple of, among others, Mawlānā Ê¿Avaż Baṣīr, Īshān Imlāʾ, Mawlānā Muḥammad SharÄ«f, and the “MÄ«rzā Bahādur” named above as having been licensed by Muḥammad SharÄ«f.

Next comes an entry on Makhdūm Khwāja ʿUbaydullāh, known as Īshān Makhdūm Ūra-tepegī (ff. 138b–139a), a natural descendant of the sixteenth- century Kubravī shaykh Ḥusayn Khwārazmī; the only initiation mentioned for him was through his grandfather in that lineage, called Īshān Mūsā Khwāja b. Īshān Mīr Yaḥyā b. Shaykh ʿUbaydullāh Kūlābī, making it unclear whether (and how) he might also have been regarded as a Yasavī shaykh. The account of him is followed by an entry on a disciple of Īshān Imlāʾ, Mawlānā ʿAbd al-Raḥīm Afghān (ff. 139a-b), and the final heading in the work marks an entry on Mawlānā Shāh Raḥmatullāh Ḥiṣārī (f. 139b), a disciple of Īshān Imlāʾ with initiatic ties to separate Yasavī, Naqshbandī, Mujaddidī, and Kubravī lineages as well. I have so far been unable to trace either the Afghan shaykh or the native of Ḥiṣār in other sources; the figure from Ūrā-tepe is mentioned later in the manuscript, in the sixth work, among important shaykhs of the author, but it seems doubtful that he should be identified with the “ʿUbaydullāh Bukhārī” who is mentioned in other sources as a successor of Muḥammad Sharīf.

As this fourth work comes to an end, the author addresses his son—in fact he now implies that he is addressing several sons—with benedictions and blessings, and, after emphasizing his status as a sayyid, and his hereditary ‘affiliation’ with the house of the Prophet (va īn ṭarīqa-yi mā ṭarīqa-yi khānadān-i rasūl ast), with a final admonition:

My son, as long as there are successors in this lineage who are sayyids, do not become a disciple of other successors; but if there should be no one among the sayyids, then take hold of the successors in this lineage. And if, God forbid, no one remains among the successors to this lineage, find sayyids of this same á¹­arÄ«q of the Ê¿AzÄ«zān and become their disciple; but if you do not find such sayyids, then, lamenting and groaning to God and His Prophet, stay with the [books of] tafsÄ«r and ḥadÄ«th, books of fiqh, and these dusty writings [of mine], and [await] what God wills.⁹³

This passage captures a bit of the author’s anxiety for the future of the silsila, among his multiple initiatic and hereditary lineages, to which he clearly felt the strongest attachment—the Yasavīya—and foreshadows the indications in yet another work, considered below, in which he gives voice to the key role he felt he was called to play in furthering the Yasavī community. At the same time, it should be noted, based on searches that are still only preliminary, that of the 11 figures assigned prominent entries in Marghīnānī’s work following ʿĀlim Shaykh and Ibrāhīm Qavghānī (the latter himself quite obscure in other sources)—a number we may increase to 14 if we include the three khalīfas of the sixth, Muḥammad Laṭīf, mentioned in the entry on him—six cannot be identified from other sources; possible identifications may be suggested for three others, but are doubtful; and five are mentioned in more than one other source, though only three of these—Muḥammad Sharīf, Īshān Imlāʾ, and Niyāz Muḥammad Chuqmāqī—may be considered prominent figures. Marghīnānī’s work thus already enriches our knowledge of the ‘personnel’ of Central Asian Sufism, and the Yasavī ‘order,’ during the eighteenth century, and of developments during that time in the reformulation of initiatic lineages and communal ‘boundaries;’ it also provides a basis for more thorough searches of other sources, and also for comparison with the claims of Yasavī initiatic ties that have been coming to the fore in the past few decades.

(5) A Fragment of a Genealogical Work

The recovery of the sections of the manuscript that were described, if briefly, and used by Togan would be significant enough for scholarship on the Yasavī tradition, but the several works, of varying lengths, found in the final 44 folios of the manuscript—which Togan did not even acknowledge, much less describe—make this manuscript even more valuable; some of the works parallel what is found in earlier sections of the manuscript, while others—and one in particular—add remarkable material of a type rarely found in Central Asian sources of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

This ‘new’ material begins, as noted, with the final folios that were included by Togan within the folio-range of the fourth work he describes, but which clearly comprise a fragment of a fifth work, on ff. 141a–149b, following the end of the colophon, of sorts, that appears on f. 140b; there is a catchword at the bottom of f. 140b, indicating that the brief text that follows the colophon of the fourth work—written at a different time, clearly, but in which the same author refers to himself as “Amīr Sayyid Aḥmad Nāṣir al-Dīn, who is your father” (ke padar-i shumā-st), thus continuing the repeated addressing of his son—was to continue on the following folio; however, f. 141a does not begin with that catchword, and is written in a different hand, which continues until the end of f. 149b.

There are no catchwords through these folios, but the textual continuity leaves no doubt that this is a fragment of a separate work, which thus begins and ends abruptly, with neither introduction nor colophon to indicate its title or the name of the author; in this case, however, his identity is certain, thanks to the numerous self-referential comments throughout the genealogical material included in it. This fifth work, indeed, is not only similar, in its chiefly genealogical content, to the first work in the manuscript (and to the first work in MS IVRUz 11290), but in fact includes sections that closely parallel the text in parts of that first work, though not in the same order, and often without an exact word-for-word correspondence (without belaboring the specific line-by-line textual correspondence, the parallel sections appear on ff. 25a–27b/144a–146b and 29a-b/141a). This fifth work may reflect a different redaction of what appears in the first work, or simply a later version in which the author restructured his genealogical material (a heading for a “third section” [faṣl-i siyum] appears, in red ink, on f. 144a).

The sections that are paralleled in the first work sometimes allow better readings of names, and in any case will be valuable for a careful comparison with the genealogical material found in that work and in MS IVRUz 11290; in sections that are not paralleled earlier, in the first work, Marghīnānī offers genealogical explorations on a wider range of figures, including several of his Sufi teachers, and some of his disciples as well; even when particular individuals whose genealogies are traced cannot be identified, the accounts often lead to interesting traditions.

At one point, for example (ff. 146b–147a), he discusses first the sons, and then the ancestors, of “Mawlānā Ibrāhīm Shaykh,” identified as among the eminent figures of the Jahrī lineage; he fails to specify whether this is indeed the Ibrāhīm Qavghānī who is accorded an entry in the fourth work, but he goes on to tell us that this shaykh was among the descendants of Awliyāʾ-i Qarākhān (the “Awliya Ata” for whom the town now known as Taraz was once named, on account of his shrine there, and a figure incorporated into the narrative of the three Islamizing warrior saints led by Isḥāq Bāb, as a grandson of the latter’s uncle, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm). As noted already, Marghīnānī’s presentation of the lineages linked to those three saints differs from what we know from the earliest presentation (and from later versions as well), and in this case he acknowledges Ibrāhīm Shaykh’s descent from a brother of Awliyāʾ-i Qarākhān, but he then proceeds to graft a version of yet another famous genealogy into his grand picture of these sacred lineages: Awliyāʾ-i Qarākhān, he explains, had two wives, one from India and the other an Arab, with the former bearing him six sons—Qïpchāq, Qïrghīz, Qarlīq, Khalaj, Taṭar, and “T.q.rāj” (?)—and his Arab wife bearing him one son, namely Oghuz Khān. Marghīnānī gives the familiar names of the latter figure’s six sons—Āy Khān, Kün Khān, and Yuldūz Khān from his senior wife, and Kök Khān, Ṭāq Khān, and Téngīz Khān from his junior wife—and then affirms that all six “abandoned kingship and royal sovereignty,” adopted the path of poverty, and became eminent shaykhs, “firm in the silsila-yi Jahrīya.” He then outlines another lineage of Sufis whose ancestry went back to Oghuz Khān (f. 147b), affirming that they too were among the shaykhs of the Jahrīya and were buried along the Syr Daryā; bringing his account full-circle to the latest phases of the Yasavī lineage he discussed in the fourth work, he notes that the murshid of this lineage—evidently referring to the latest figure he had named, a certain Murād Shaykh—was one Burhān Shaykh ʿAzīzān, and that his master was Mawlānā Khwāja Muḥammad Ūtrārī, “whom the common and elite call Ākhūnd ʿAzīzān.”

Several other lineages are followed as well, with most figures discussed belonging to distinct hereditary lineages (“Khurāsān Atāʾī,” “Qïlïchī Atāʾī,” Sayyid Atāʾī) but also linked initiatically with one of the later figures of the Yasavī silsila mentioned in the fourth work; this fifth work thus fleshes out the body of disciples of several of those figures, but also reminds us of the repeated intersections of hereditary and initiatic lineages that seem to mark Yasavī history almost from its inception.

Such intersections are reflected in other ways in Marghīnānī’s works, which, as should be evident by now, should be characterized as primarily genealogical or initiatic in focus, not exclusively so. In the midst of this fifth work, for instance, and in the course of noting the hereditary Sayyid Atāʾī lineage of one Yaʿqūb Khwāja ʿAzīzān—who was himself connected initiatically through one intermediary to Shaykh ʿUthmān and Mawlānā Muḥammad Sharīf—he mentions that a son of this Yaʿqūb Khwāja, named ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Khwāja ʿAzīzān, was “the first person who obtained licensure” from “this humble slave and servant of the poor and indigent”—i.e., Marghīnānī himself; he then proceeds to identify the second person who was licensed by him as Khalīfa Ḥāfiẓ Tāsh-Muḥammad, who, he explains, had been a disciple of Īshān Imlāʾ, Niyāz Muḥammad Chuqmāqī, and Muḥammad Dhakariyā Khwāja (apparently in that order), but had received licensure from “this humble slave.” For some reason—perhaps the copyist omitted the passage—he fails to mention his third licensee, but he continues his list with accounts of the fourth person licensed by him, Mawlānā ʿUbaydullāh Turkman, the fifth, Mullā Muḥammad Fayyāż Khujandī, the sixth, Mullā ʿĪdī Muḥammad (also linked previously to Muḥammad Dhakariyā Khwāja), and the seventh, Mullā Ḥayyit-qulī Ūshī (ff. 147b–148b), with genealogical accounts of the latter figure’s wife following thereafter. The fifth work thus not only is invaluable for the history of familial groups linked to the Yasavī tradition, but also bears on the continuity of Yasavī initiatic transmissions beyond Marghīnānī himself.

(6) An Incomplete Work on the Yasavī Tradition and Marghīnānī’s Role in It

Quite different handwriting appears on f. 150a, where there is also found, once again, written in red ink, the address “ay farzand,” familiar from the third and fourth works; this folio does not begin with the catchword from f. 140b, and its distinctive handwriting continues only to the end of f. 150b, where the catchword, however, indicates that f. 151a is indeed in the proper order, and continues the text from 150b. The handwriting on f. 151a somewhat resembles that found in the fourth work, but it nevertheless undoubtedly signals a different copyist: it is somewhat neater and finer than in the fourth work, and the copyist does not follow the habit, evident in that fourth work, of almost invariably adding maddas to explicit medial alifs. In any case, the same handwriting continues almost to the end of the manuscript, forming the bulk of a sixth work (ff. 150a–189b) that thus stands apart in terms of its two copyists, but may have been originally an extension of the fourth work, or a part of a different redaction of it; in any case, it too begins and ends abruptly, with no proper introduction and no conclusion or colophon.

The author is again clearly the same Marghīnānī, as is evident from the frequent self-referential comments and from the repeated instances of the characteristic address “ay farzand;” toward the end we find a reference to “the time of this darvīsh, who is your father” (dar zamān-i īn darvīsh ke padar-i shumā ast (f. 189a). Yet this is a much more personal work, or part of a work, than the others preserved in this manuscript, with extended accounts of the author’s own sequence of Sufi training, and his own visionary experiences, that reveal him to be a quite remarkable religious personality, with a quite exalted sense of his own mission; it is particularly regrettable in the case of this work that no introduction survives to offer some sense of Marghīnānī’s stated aim in compiling it, or of its connection to his other works. The visions, and claims, recorded in this sixth work go well beyond what is presented in the ‘visionary’ section near the end of MS IVRUz 11290, and should remind us, again, of the range of religious profiles, and perspectives, that flourished in a period that is still too often collapsed tendentiously into a mere prologue for the advent of a flattened notion of ‘modernity.’

Much of this sixth work has a focus on doctrine and practice, and will be useful in conjunction with the third work, on the dhikr; but there is also frequent discussion of the Yasavī initiatic lineage, with attention to reconciling—or simply combining—the multiple early traditions about Aḥmad Yasavī’s own silsila, through the various masters ascribed to him, with citations of various works, mostly familiar (ff. 153a–155a). Already at f. 160a, however, the author begins a somewhat meandering discussion of his own training, claiming that he was first trained by Khiżr, then by his ancestor Muḥammad-i Ḥanafīya, and then by two other distant ancestors; he claims to have been licensed by “Khwāja Ḥāfiẓ Shīrāzī” (and this sixth work, the text of which is generously interspersed with verse, appears to be the only one among his known works in which Marghīnānī sought to show off his poetic talents), and he likewise claims inspiration from Khwāja Kamāl Khujandī. Soon he begins moving through an essentially chronological list of figures who each gave him three things: the first two—ijāzat and rukhṣat—are familiar terms for licensure in Sufi training, while the third is bashārat, evidently referring to the “good tidings” of the distinctive role he believed had been destined for him.

The first Sufi mentioned in this connection is Miyān Shāh Ghulām Maʿṣūm (a figure shown later with two silsila-links between himself and Aḥmad Sirhindī’s son Muḥammad Maʿṣūm), who, we are told, gave a kulāh—a Sufi cap, and a significant marker of designated succession—to “Ghiyāth al-DÄ«n Valī”—evidently referring to a figure mentioned below, native to Badakhshān—with the explanation that he should convey it to “a Turk” to whom it belonged; it thus came to MarghÄ«nānÄ«, he writes, in a great vision, and between this directive of Shāh Ghulām Maʿṣūm—referred to as his bashārat—“and my birth,” 120 years passed. The bearer of this ‘good tidings’ is evidently to be identified with Shāh Ghulām Muḥammad Maʿṣūm (d. 1175/1761), a MujaddidÄ« master based in Peshawar;⁹⁴ it is unfortunately impossible to guess when, precisely, his bashārat was delivered, leaving this chronological marker unhelpful in pinpointing the year of MarghÄ«nānī’s birth.

Next, Marghīnānī writes, it was his master Mawlānā Niyāz Muḥammad Chuqmāqī who gave him the bashārat about the role he was destined to play. First (f. 162a) he recounts this figure’s words on the occasion of the burial of Mawlānā Ibrāhīm Sūkhārī, a disciple of Īshān Imlāʾ, when Chuqmāqī was asked why Īshān Imlāʾ ordered his Sufis to perform “vocal dhikrs” (adhkār-i jahr), but did not do so himself; Chuqmāqī explained—with words that help us understand how the phenomenon of ‘bundled’ silsilas was understood—that Īshān Imlāʾ used to say, “I hold the lineage of the vocal [dhikr] for safekeeping; this silsila will go to someone, God willing” (man silsila-yi jahr amānat dāram, īn silsila ba-kasī khwāhad rasīd, inshāʾa’llāh). “In the same way,” Chuqmāqī continued, “Mawlānā Ibrāhīm used to say, like our lord Imlāʾ, ‘I am the trust-holder of the lineage of the public [dhikr]” (man amānat-dār-i silsila-yi ʿalānīya-am). Chuqmāqī, too, had referred to himself as the “lieutenant” (nāʾib-munāb) of the Yasavī lineage (silsila-yi sulṭānīya-yi jahrīya), Marghīnānī continues, and had predicted,

Any day now, a Turk, from among the Turkic sayyids, will come into the world of [physical] existence, and the perfections of this Royal lineage of the Vocal [dhikr]—may God increase the blessings of the silsila until the Day of Resurrection—will become manifest in his blessed [dhikr] circle.⁹⁵

Chuqmāqī had reiterated a similar prediction on his deathbed, we are told, and Marghīnānī concludes his account noting that his master’s bashārat occurred three years before his own birth; once again the uncertain dating of that ‘good tidings’—if he referred to the occasion of his death, it would mean that Marghīnānī in fact never met Chuqmāqī during his lifetime, which seems not to have been the case, judging from other accounts—leaves it unclear which mention of the Turk under whom the Jahrī silsila would flourish he had in mind.

In any case, Marghīnānī continues recounting his ijāzat, rukhṣat, and bashārat under “the Pīr-i Aʿẓam,” Sayyid Muḥammad Dhakariyā Khwāja, whose disciple he became, he writes, at the age of 18; this master, however, had explained to his disciples ten years earlier that he had been licensed by 62 Jahrī shaykhs, and one Naqshbandī saint, and that, God willing, “a Turk from among the Turkic sayyids” (yak turkī az sādāt-i atrākīya) would come after some time and would receive the “connection and lineages” (nisbat va salāsil) that he had received from those 63 shaykhs. At this point, Marghīnānī begins to recount a remarkable visionary experience, which he likens to the Prophet’s miʿrāj, in which after traversing multiple levels of hell, he heard the Prophet’s voice and was soon taken through the eight paradises, as the spirits of prophets and saints gave blessings for him; during this vision, he encountered three figures from the Naqshbandī silsila—ʿAbd al-Khāliq Ghijduvānī, Bahāʾ al-Dīn Naqshband, and Khwāja Īmkana-gī Naqshbandī—and, after serving each of them for three years, in his vision, he obtained licensure from each. He then regained normal consciousness, and told his master, the Pīr-i Aʿẓam, about his experience; soon he was receiving licensure to perform the vocal dhikr from six prophets—Ādam, Nūḥ, Ibrāhīm, Mūsā, Dāʾūd, and ʿĪsā—and performing the dhikr together with them, receiving also their promise to look after “every person who enters your ṭarīq” (har kasī ke dākhil-i ṭarīq-i shumā gardad parvarish mīkonīm [f. 164a]).

Further visionary wonders came over him during his training under the PÄ«r-i Aʿẓam. In one, as he performed austerities in a cave at the famous mountain of Osh known as the Takht-i Sulaymān, a group of spirits appeared and became his disciples, declaring, “We are the ancestors of the holy Ādam,” while another group did the same, declaring that they were children of Ādam who had not yet come into the world. In another, he underwent training by the spiritual being (rūḥānÄ«yat) of AbÅ« Bakr, then of Ê¿AlÄ«, and then of several Sufis, including Khwāja Aḥmad YasavÄ«, ḤakÄ«m Ata, and two prominent Ê¿IshqÄ« shaykhs, receiving licensure from all of them; then, MarghÄ«nānÄ« continues, “The holy Ér Ḥubbī” (referring to a saint typically cast as the wayward son of ḤakÄ«m Ata) became “my teacher in the vocal dhikr” (muÊ¿allim-i dhikr-i jahr-i man), and he next cites further ‘predictions’ by two of his other masters. Mullā TÅ«rsÅ«n Muḥammad (evidently KhujandÄ«, mentioned in the fourth work) used to say, he writes, “I saw in a book that the holy Prophet said, ‘In the year 200, in a province of the east, one of my descendants will arise from among the tribes of the Turks; his name is Nāṣir al-DÄ«n, and his year is rendered by [the phrase] “guidance to my peoples.’”⁹⁶

After then noting his licensure by his next master, Amīr Ghāʾib al-Khujandī thumma al-Namangānī—specifying that in this case his ijāzat and rukhṣat were given “in the flesh” (ba-ḥasb-i ṣūrat va sīrat), and thus suggesting that his contact with Chuqmāqī and with the “Pīr-i Aʿẓam” was in the spiritual world—he cites another figure, Dāmullā Ibrāhīm Khaṭīb, for a somewhat less exalted prediction: “This young Sayyid Nāṣir al-Dīn will become the shaykh of the noble town of Namangān” (hamīn juvān sayyid nāṣir al-dīn shaykh-i balada-yi fākhira-yi namangān khwāhand shod [f. 165a]). Several other such ‘predictions’ or laudatory comments are recorded as well, before Marghīnānī returns to a kind of summary of his most important masters (ff. 165b–166a): though he became a murīd of every saint he met, he says, his three key guides were Amīr Ghāʾib Namangānī, Niyāz Muḥammad Chuqmāqī, and the “Pīr-i Aʿẓam” (to whom he assigns specific roles as, respectively, his “master in the sharīʿa and Sufi path” [pīr-i sharīʿat va ṭarīqat], his “master in the sanctities of [divine] attraction and [spiritual] madness” [pīr-i vilāyāt-i jadhba va junūn], and his “master in the perfections of Truth and the pillars of [divine] Knowledge” [pīr-i kamālāt-i ḥaqīqat va arkān-i maʿrifat]); there were nevertheless seven others with whom he entered the bonds of discipleship and whom he considered his “masters” in “fellowship” (ṣuḥbat), including several mentioned already in the fourth work:

First, Sayyid ʿUthmān Khwāja Sayyid Atāʾī; second, Ṣūfī Khwāja-yi ʿIshqī; third, Mawlānā Amir Ṣāliḥ Tāshkandī; fourth, Mawlānā Rajab al-Namangānī; fifth, Mawlānā Shāh Raḥmatullāh al-Ḥiṣārī thumma al-Bukhārī; sixth, Mawlānā Afghān ʿAbd al-Raḥīm; and seventh, Mawlānā Makhdūm Ūra-tepegī.

This personal and ‘autobiographical’ account gives way at this point to additional discussions of doctrine and practice, first with an exposition of the divine “name of essence” (ism-i dhāt), i.e., “Allāh,” then a longer account of the dhikr, and eventually a discussion of the “stations” (maqāmāt) of the Sufi path; throughout the work, as in other compositions of Marghīnānī, there is little sign of any preconceived structure or ‘hierarchy’ of divisions and subdivisions, beyond the repeated address to his son and the turn to yet another matter he wanted him to know.

(7) A Short Account of a Handshake Transmission

The text of the sixth work appears to be coming to an end on f. 189b, but the text breaks off abruptly, and f. 190a bears a new bismi’llāh at the top. The short text that follows, by the same Marghīnānī, occupies all of f. 190a and the first five lines on f. 190b; despite its brevity, it is—unlike many of the sections found in this manuscript—a complete ‘work,’ the seventh in the manuscript. It is an Arabic “handshake” (muṣāfaḥa) text, similar to the one known from MS IVRUz 11290 (ff. 42a–43b), and giving the same transmission lineage as recounted there, but without the interesting chronological indications added in that version.

(8) An Incomplete Work on the Author’s Initiatic Lineages

A new bismi’llāh appears on f. 190b, after a few blank lines that follow the end of the handshake text, and the eighth and final text (ff. 190b–192b) again resembles part of Marghīnānī’s work preserved in MS IVRUz 11290, though it once again breaks off abruptly at the end of f. 192b. This work first promises to record Marghīnānī’s links to the Prophet through four silsilas, each framed as passing through one of the first four Caliphs, but identified in terms of Sufi lineages, i.e., ʿIshqī, Jahrī, Kubravī, one labeled “Kubravī-Qādirī-Jahrī,” Qalandarī, Naqshbandī, etc. It is at the end of this short work (f. 192b) that Marghīnānī names yet another of his own masters, namely Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Badakhshī (thus supplying a nisba for a figure called simply Ghiyāth al-Dīn Valī in the sixth work [f. 161b]), whose lineage—labeled Naqshbandī-Qalandarī-Jahrī—went back through his master Shāh Ghulām Muḥammad Maʿṣūm (d. 1175/1761) < Khwāja Muḥammad Ismāʿīl < Khwāja Muḥammad Żibghatullāh [sic, for Ṣibghatullāh (d. 1120/1708–09), also the son of his master] < Muḥammad Maʿṣūm (d. 1079/1668) b. Shaykh-i Mujaddid (i.e., the son and successor of Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī [d. 1034/1624]).