1. Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient
  2. Veranstaltungen
  3. Intersecting Paths. Sufi Connections across the North Caucasus and the Russian Urals
Veranstaltungen
Vortrag, Vortragsreihe

Intersecting Paths. Sufi Connections across the North Caucasus and the Russian Urals

The two presenters attend to transnationally operating mystical paths (tariqa) in wider Central Eurasia and particularly the connection between the North Caucasus and the Russian Urals. Employing a historical approach, Dr. Shikhaliev works with “ijazat-name” in Arabic scripture, certificates of competence that Sufi adepts (murids) receive from their masters. Since the early 19th century, the Naqshbandi Sufi brotherhood expanded to Russia and while the Mujaddidi branch gained influence among Tatars of the Volga-Urals returning from madrassas in Central Asia, the Khalidi branch was imported from the Ottoman Empire to Dagestan. The Dagestani Sufi scholar Sayfallah-Qadi Bashlarov, by receiving the ijaza from a famous Sufi master (sheikh) in the Uralic town of Troitsk, established an important link between the two regions. Dr. Schmoller presents his ethnographic material gathered in meetings with current Tatar and Bashkir Sufi murids from the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi brotherhood in the Urals. The old transnational connections continue to exist, as some of the younger murids are trained at a madrassa in Istanbul and the sheikh of the brotherhood regularly assembles his followers in neighbouring Kazakhstan. Drawing upon social science theory, the anthropologist inquires how places and selves are being mutually produced. 

Dr. Shamil Shikhaliev is the head of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts, Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Makhachkala. He works on Arabic manuscripts, Sufism, Islamic education in the North Caucasus, Muslim law and the reformist movement in late imperial / early Soviet Russia. He is the author of articles and books on Sufism, Islamic education and Muslim law in Dagestan.

Dr. Jesko Schmoller is a senior researcher at the Centre for Comparative History and Political Studies, Perm State University (Russia), and a visiting fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. He works on Islam, mobility, material culture and subscribes to an anthropology of emergence and becoming. Some of his articles were published with Problems of Post-Communism, the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures and Contemporary Islam.

Diese Veranstaltung gehört zur Vortragsreihe
Vortragsreihe im akademischen Jahr 2019/20
Central Eurasian Studies and Translocality. A Debate Unfolding

Veranstaltungsdetails