The Ismaili of Central Asia
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Date
2018
Authors
Beben, Daniel
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.
Abstract
The Ismailis are one of the largest Muslim minority populations of Central Asia, and they
make up the second largest Shiʿi Muslim community globally. First emerging in the
second half of the 8th century, the Ismaili missionary movement spread into many areas
of the Islamic world in the 10th century, under the leadership of the Ismaili Fatimids
caliphs in Egypt. The movement achieved astounding success in Central Asia in the 10th
century, when many of the political and cultural elites of the region were converted.
However, a series of repressions over the following century led to its almost complete
disappearance from the metropolitan centers of Central Asia. The movement later reemerged
in the mountainous Badakhshan region of Central Asia (which encompasses the
territories of present-day eastern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan), where it was
introduced by the renowned 11th-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Ismaili
missionary Nasir-i Khusraw. Over the following centuries the Ismaili movement expanded
among the populations of Badakhshan, reaching a population of over 200,000 in the 21st
century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ismailis suffered a series of severe
repressions, first under local Sunni Muslim rulers and later under the antireligious
policies of the Soviet Union. However, in the decades since the end of the Soviet period,
the Ismailis of the region have become increasingly connected with the global Ismaili
community and its leadership. While many aspects of the history of Ismailism in the
Badakhshan region remain obscure and unexplored, the discoveries of significant
corpuses of manuscripts in private collections since the 1990s in the Badakhshan region
have opened up wide possibilities for future research.
Description
Keywords
Nasir-i Khusraw, Badakhshan, Pamirs, Ismailism, Shiʿism, Central Asia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan
Citation
Beben, Daniel. (2018) The Ismaili of Central Asia. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History.