FEMALE SHRINE PILGRIMAGE IN CONTEMPORARY KAZAKHSTAN

Abstract

Ethnographies and popular belief posit that women dominate as pilgrims in Islamic shrine pilgrimage in Kazakhstan. This thesis attempts to examine the larger phenomenon of female pilgrim majorities in Islamic shrine pilgrimage and what factors are responsible for it by focusing on a case study of shrine pilgrimage at Aisha Bibi shrine in Kazakhstan as recorded through fieldwork. Islamic shrine pilgrimage first developed through Sufi orders and were a tangible mark of Islam in newly converted lands. Over the years, it has faced recent challenges to its orthodoxy yet it still remains popular with Muslims around the world, particularly women. This thesis finds female predominance in modern Islamic shrine pilgrimage as the result of not only the unique historical and political particularities specific to each host country, such as the impact of Soviet atheism and modern Kazakhstani nation building in developing Kazakhstani shrine pilgrimage, but also of broader social traits of shared by women across the world, which is widely indicative of women’s role in today’s global societies.