A Khwārazmian Saint in The Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and The Social Vectors of Islamisation

A Khwārazmian Saint in the Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and the Social Vectors of Islamisation 07.05.
07.05.21, 09:43
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Résumé : Un saint khwārazmien dans la Horde d’Or: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata)et les vecteurs
sociaux de l’islamisation.La théorie selon laquelle les shaykhs et les communautés soufis
jouèrent un rôle dans l’islamisation des khanats mongols aux XIIIe et XVIe siècles est fondée sur
l’idée reçue que les soufis prêchèrent l’islam aux nomades (tout en simplifiant la doctrine) et
qu’ils furent populaires auprès d’eux du fait qu’ils ressemblaient aux « saints » (shamans)
révérés des Turcs et des Mongols païens. Des sources, produites dans les ulus des successeurs
d’Hülegü et de Chagatay, montrent que le véritable rôle des soufis dans l’islamisation à cette
époque ne peut se comprendre que dans le cadre social particulier où ils s’inscrivaient. Ainsi,
les soufis œuvrèrent à l’établissement de relations entre leurs communautés, souvent
organisées de manière héréditaire, et les communautés nomades, dont les structures sociales
traditionnelles avaient été détruites par la réorganisation militaire mongole et par une
migration forcée loin de leurs terres d’origine, vers des aires de pâtures plus restreintes, où
vivaient également de nombreuses populations sédentaires. Ces relations sociales incluaient
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A Khwārazmian Saint in the Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and the Social Vectors of Islamisation 07.05.21, 09:43
des alliances matrimoniales ainsi que des liens personnels exprimés en des termes de maître à
disciple. Former de tels liens au niveau communautaire, avec des groupes ou des personnes
prêts à vénérer un shaykh soufi sans pour autant se soumettre au mode de vie rigoureux et
exigeant des disciples soufis, était considéré comme légitime depuis les œuvres d’auteurs
soufis importants des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, liés à la tradition Suhravardī. Dans le cas de la Horde
d’Or, bien que les sources soient moins nombreuses, on peut également démontrer que la
création de relations sociales entre shaykhs soufis et communautés nomades joua un rôle
important dans le processus d’islamisation. Cette étude réunit des sources concernant un saint
nommé Gözlī Ata, ou Közlük Ata ; ces sources sont issues à la fois de la tradition orale
transmise par l’une des « tribus saintes » des Türkmens qui se proclame descendre de Gözlī
Ata, et d’un corpus d’écrits disparates datés des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. L’auteur s’intéresse au cas
de Gözlī Ata en tant qu’exemple de l’héritage social de l’islamisation, et nous éclaire, en outre,
sur l’importance du Khwārazm à la fois comme « base régionale » pour les soufis actifs parmi
les nomades de la Horde d’Or, et comme une fenêtre sur les processus d’islamisation au cœur
de la steppe.
Abstract : The notion that Sufi shaykhs and Sufi communities played a role in the Islamisation
of the Mongol successor states in the 13th and 14th centuries is typically rooted in assumptions,
mostly untenable, about Sufis ‘preaching’ Muslim doctrine to the nomads (often ‘simplifying’ it
in the process) or appealing to the nomads by means of their resemblance to the holy men—
‘shamans’—revered by the pagan Turks and Mongols. Evidence from the Ilkhanid realm and
the Chaghatay ulus in Central Asia suggests that the Islamizing role of Sufis in this era may be
better understood within the framework of establishing social bonds between Sufi
communities, often organized hereditarily, and nomadic communities whose traditional social
CATALOGUE
structures had been destroyed by Mongol military reorganization and by relocation to more All
constricted pasturelands, in the midst of substantial sedentary populations, far from their
original homelands. The socialHOME OF 557
bonds included marital ties, OPENEDITION SEARCH
but also involved relationships OpenEdition
framed in terms of the initiatory bond between master and disciple ; the legitimacy of forming
such bonds on a large-scale communal level, with groups or individuals willing to commit to a
JOURNALS
Sufi shaykh without fully committing to the most rigorous expectations of a Sufi disciple, had
only recently been legitimised, in effect, in the works of prominent Sufis linked with the
Suhravardī tradition, in the 12th and 13th centuries. For the Golden Horde, the source base is
much less extensive, but there is evidence that the establishment of social bonds between Sufi
shaykhs and nomadic communities played an important role in the process of Islamisation
there as well. This paper explores such evidence surrounding a saint known as Gözlī Ata, or
Közlük Ata, known both from oral tradition transmitted within one of the ‘holy tribes’ of the
Türkmens that claims descent from him, and from scattered written sources from the 16th and
17th centuries. It argues that the case of Gözlī Ata offers an example of the social legacies of
Islamisation, which point, in turn, to the social character of Islamisation ; it also highlights the
importance of Khwārazm both as a ‘base’ for the Sufis active among the nomads of the Golden
Horde, and as a window on the process of Islamisation in the steppe.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : islamisation, Horde d’Or, Türkmens, Ata, ‘tribus saintes’ (öwlät), Mots clés : Gözlī
Ata
Keywords : Islamisation, Keywords: Gözlī Ata, Golden Horde, Türkmens, Ata, ‘holy tribes’
(öwlät)
Texte intégral
1 It seems natural, when considering approaches to the problem of Islamisation in the
Golden Horde, to seek evidence for and traces of that process in the territory that once
comprised that polity—whether archaeological and architectural remains still to be
found in the land and landscape there, or coins that circulated there, or historical
sources and other literary works produced there, or historical traditions and memories
clearly rooted there. The nomadic character of important components of the Golden
Horde’s population, however, together with trajectories of migration and conquest—

both those clear from historical sources and others not so well-documented—and the
simple ‘portability’ of records and narrative traditions about human communities—
reminds us that social and ‘ethnic’ traces of Islamisation in the Golden Horde may be
found outside its historical territory. This is obvious in the case of ruling dynasties, of
Jochid lineage, that later held power in places as far from the old Golden Horde as
Bukhara, Tashkent, or Balkh, which patronized the recording of traditions highlighting
their connections with the historical Jochid ulus; it is clear as well in the case of
narratives about Islamisation, which may have first circulated in the territory of the
Jochid ulus, but which have come down to us in versions preserved on the frontiers of
Jochid territory or beyond them (whether the narratives that highlight the roles of
saints such as Sayf al-Dīn Bākharzī, Bābā Tükles, or Sayyid Ata, or traditions about
‘ancestral’ Islamisation preserved among those elites of Jochid heritage who ruled
elsewhere).
2 The present study explores the sparse but persistent evidence for one possible
‘sociological’ trace of the process of Islamisation in the Jochid ulus, found both in
written sources—produced in Istanbul, Samarqand, and Khwārazm—and in oral
tradition preserved among a ‘tribal’ group now classified as ‘Türkmen;’ if the
sociological ‘process’ suggested by this evidence was indeed linked to the Islamisation
of the Golden Horde—and I will be careful to avoid the pretense of scholarly language
that claims to “show” or “demonstrate” this or that hypothesis, highlighting instead the
contingency and uncertainty involved by being content to “suggest” and to advance the
possibility—then the case explored here will also be of interest for supporting what I
have argued on other foundations in other contexts, namely that “Islamisation” is more
fruitfully envisioned as a process involving not the ‘preaching’ of intellectual doctrines
or ‘persuasion’ that a particular set of doctrines was ‘true,’ but rather the embodiment
of ‘Muslim-ness,’ as a social reality, by an individual, family, or group that serves as a
focus for the formation or reinforcement of new communal bonds. If we understand
Islamisation in this way, then positing an ‘intellectual’ or even ‘ritual’ Islamisation as
something separable from the processes of tribal or communal formation in the Golden
Horde becomes untenable. That is, we should not imagine that a particular community
took shape in the context of distinct social and political circumstances outside the reach
of ‘Islam,’ and was then “Islamised” in ‘religious’ ways; rather, we are suggesting, the
processes were happening at the same time and were intimately intertwined.
3 More specifically, the case explored here involves a Sufi saint, like the figures
mentioned above, who appears to have had some connection with the Jochid ulus, and
who—arguably like those named earlier—was successful as an Islamiser not because he
‘taught’ Islam to the nomads of the Golden Horde, but because he embodied Islam for
them; he thereby provided them with a focus of attachment for distinct social bonds,
the establishment of which marked, and entailed, their adoption of Islam, their
‘conversion.’ The saint discussed here differs from those named above, however, in that
the others are all the subjects of extensive narrative traditions, maintained through
many centuries, or of substantial ‘documentary’ records in written sources (or both),
that celebrate their centrality in the process of Islamisation; for the saint in question
here, all we have is a handful of written records, a relatively small body of orally
transmitted narratives, and—above all—a human community claiming descent from
him.
4 Neither the written records, the oral narratives, nor the human community,
moreover, identify him explicitly as an Islamising saint. In this case we are suggesting,
instead, that evidence of the process of Islamisation-as-community-formation is to be
found in the very claim of communal descent from the saint, and in the social cohesion

of the community that makes the claim; in effect, both the ancestral claim, and the
social solidarity rooted in it, stand as substitutes for, or equivalents of, the Islamising
miracles highlighted in narratives about other Islamising saints. It is in fact the very
sparseness of the historical record about the ancestral figure discussed here that
compels us to return the focus of our considerations about the process of ‘Islamisation’
and its ‘vectors’ back toward the social context for that process, and away from the
purely intellectual framework in which ‘conversion’ is too often understood; it also
compels us to begin with the social group that has preserved the most extensive
‘memorialisations’ of this saint.
Oral Tradition and Genealogical Texts

on Gözlī Ata as Ancestor of the Ata
‘Tribe’
5 The figure in question is called, in traditions recorded among the Türkmens, “Gözlī
Ata”, his name indicating his possession of especially keen sight (göz= “eye”), or, by
extension, mystical ‘vision’ or insight; he is best-known as an ancestor—and indeed the
significant holy ancestor—of one of the ‘holy tribes’ of the Türkmens, known collectively
as the öwlät.1 The öwlät comprise six groups defined in terms of their descent from
saintly figures—their names, Shikh, Khoja, Seyit, Magtïm/Makhtum, Müjevür, and Ata,
all suggest a connection with the world of Sufi communities and shrines—and
historically played important roles in Türkmen society, in large measure because they
stood outside its traditional tribal structure. Oral tradition recorded in a wide range of
variants portrays Gözlī Ata as the ancestor of the Ata tribe, and preserves basic
narratives about his life and career as a Sufi saint;2 he is typically portrayed as a direct
disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī—the famous saint of “Turkistān”, i.e., the middle Syr Darya
valley, who is typically said to have died in 562/1167-68, but in all likelihood lived
somewhat later, into the early 13th c.3—or also, occasionally, as a disciple of Ḥakīm Ata,
the Khwārazmian saint typically identified as Yasavī’s disciple.
6 The ‘standard’ narrative of Gözlī Ata’s life (Demidov, 1976: 141-2; Demidov, 1978:
50-52) affirms that his actual name was Ḥasan Ata, and that he came to Khwārazm
together with his companions Ḥakīm Ata and Qochqar Ata;4 as to where they came
from, many versions name “Turkey” as their place of origin, but this seems not to be a
central part of their story (and of course does not figure in other accounts of Ḥakīm
Ata).5 In any case, their aim in coming to Central Asia was to become disciples of
Khwāja Aḥmad Yasavī, and so after spending some time in “Old Urgench” in the
company of “Shikh Kebil”,6 the three moved on to Turkistān. There Ḥasan Ata soon
became Yasavī’s favorite murīd; this made Shikh Kebil jealous, however, and, seeking
to kill his rival, he shot a magical arrow toward Yasavī, but Ḥasan Ata knew that it was
coming and warned his master, managing even to turn the arrow back upon Shikh
Kebil. For his sagacity and ‘visionary’ prowess, Ḥasan Ata was renamed “Gözlī Ata” by
Aḥmad Yasavī,7 who taught his disciple the vocal dhikr and eventually completed his
Sufi training.
7 Some versions of Gözlī Ata’s story focus at once upon the region in which he is
consistently regarded as having settled and served as a Sufi master in his own right,
namely the area of the Balkhān mountains, to the south and west of Khwārazm (east of
the Caspian Sea, in the western part of present-day Turkmenistan). Other versions,
however, interpose a sojourn in the lands of the Golden Horde between his training

with Aḥmad Yasavī and his establishment on the frontiers of Khwārazm (Demidov,
1976: 142-4; Demidov, 1978: 53). He went, the story goes, to the court of the khan
Janibek at Saray, and there, in return for performing the dhikr and reciting a mystical
munājāt, he was given a tray of copper coins and two pieces of bread; he took the
bread, but scattered the money, angering the khan, who banished him from the city.
That night, however, the chiltan, spirits of the unseen world, appeared to the khan and
demanded that he rescind the order of banishment; the khan, terrified, not only did so,
but gave Gözlī Ata his daughter, Aqsil,8 in marriage. The versions recounting these and
similar episodes in Saray or in the steppe likewise end with Gözlī Ata, together with his
wife, moving to dwell near the Balkhān mountains.
8 The name of Gözlī Ata’s wife is relatively stable among the many versions of the
stories about him, though her father is in some cases identified as a wealthy Qazaq
named Janibek, or as a Qazaq khan whose name is not given, or even as a wealthy
Qazaq or Qïrghïz named “Bughrā Khān” (Demidov, 1976: 143-4; Demidov, 1978: 52-3;
Basilov, 1975: 164); the association of her father with the Qazaqs may indeed signal a
natural ‘historical’ substitution making the point that wherever he may have been from
originally, Gözlī Ata spent time in the steppe lands of the old Golden Horde, inhabited
in later times, at least in their easterly portions, by the Qazaqs, and that Gözlī Ata’s
descendants were also descendants of a woman from that region who became his wife.9
This element alone already reminds us that ‘ethnic’ constructions of the origins and
identity of the “Türkmen” holy tribes may mask more complex genealogical traditions,
important still today, that cannot easily be reduced to ‘national’ or ethnic
understandings; we will return to this issue below.
9 The wider repertoire of narratives surrounding Gözlī Ata includes several echoes of
stories linked in different contexts with the names of other saints who are typically
associated with the Yasavī Sufi tradition, suggesting that his saintly persona was
formulated in an environment in which those narrative elements and motifs were in
wide circulation; these narrative elements may thus simply reflect the attachment of
floating motifs to the lore surrounding Gözlī Ata, without preserving anything
distinctive to his saintly persona, much less to his ‘historical’ life, but they may offer
some indication of the milieu in which his saintly persona was cultivated. The
identification of Gözlī Ata’s father-in-law as “Bughrā Khān”, for instance, recalls the
tradition, recorded as early as the 16th c., that Ḥakīm Ata’s wife, ʻAnbar Ana (“Mother
Amber”), was the daughter of the ruler of Khwārazm, who is assigned the name
“Bughrā Khān” (Nithārī, 1999: 301, despite the longstanding association of the
appellation “Bughrā Khān” with the royal Qarakhanid tradition, based in Kāshghar and
later in Mawarannahr, Farghāna, and Turkistān, but never in Khwārazm); in traditions
about ʻAnbar Ana’s father, the name “Bughrā Khān” alternates with “Barāq Khān”,10 but
the Khwārazmian locus is more stable.
10 Similarly, in one account of the naming of Gözlī Ata,11 his master, Aḥmad Yasavī,
sends to a rival a box containing water, a glowing coal, and a wad of cotton,
demonstrating his saintly power of preventing the coal from igniting the cotton or from
being extinguished by the water; the same miracle (though without the water) is
ascribed to Aḥmad Yasavī in stories recorded in the 16th c. (DeWeese, 2000 : 373, n.
10 ; Hazini, 1995 : 49). The motif of a master hurling his staff through the air and
sending the disciple off to find where it landed figures in the narratives about Gözlī
Ata,12 but also in oral tradition recorded in the late 19th c. about Chūpān Ata (Shopan
Ata), a saint linked with a shrine in Manghïshlāq, and also identified in some traditions
as Aḥmad Yasavī’s disciple (“Predaniia”, 1873: 11-14.). Even the motif of shaykhs
‘dueling’ with magical (or miniature) arrows, whereby Gözlī Ata displays his wisdom

and ‘vision,’ is featured in narratives about the Khwārazmian saint Sharaf Ata
(DeWeese, 2012b).
11 With one story about Gözlī Ata—one that again involves his wife, and thus speaks to
the genealogical idiom of the saint’s legacy and the Ata “tribe’s” origins—we find an
even more interesting motif that on the one hand is curiously recurrent in
Khwārazmian lore, but on the other hand also harks back to the time of Khwārazm’s
close connection with the Golden Horde. This story tells how Gözlī Ata once rescued
from drowning the son of a rich Qazaq (or rescued a rich Qazaq who had lost his way);
at a celebratory feast, the Qazaq then gave his daughter, named Aqsil Mama, in
marriage to the saint. The daughter, however, took a dislike to the poorly dressed
stranger to whom her father had promised her, and said so, whereupon Gözlī Ata struck
her, leaving her face twisted around toward her back. Only when she fulfilled the saint’s
condition—that she go begging alms from seven households, holding seven bags—did
she return to her former state and marry Gözlī Ata; the newlyweds then moved to the
frontiers of Khwārazm, near the Balkhān mountains.13
12 The element of the saint’s wife-to-be disliking the appearance of her betrothed again
echoes a familiar story told about Ḥakīm Ata, whose wife, ʻAnbar Ana—daughter of the
ruler of Khwārazm—became unhappy because of her husband’s dark skin; Ḥakīm Ata
knew her thoughts, and chided her, predicting that she would one day become the wife
of a man with even darker skin, alluding to ʻAnbar Ana’s marriage, after Ḥakīm Ata’s
death, to Zangī Ata, whose very name suggests his ‘African’ appearance. This account is
recorded already at the beginning of the 16th c., in the Rashaḥāt-i ʿayn al-ḥayāt, an
important hagiographical work that also depicts Zangī Ata as Ḥakīm Ata’s Sufi disciple
and chief ‘successor;’ the account continues noting that after Ḥakīm Ata’s death, his
widow, ʻAnbar Ana was still in her period of mourning when Zangī Ata came from
Tashkent to Khwārazm and sent her a proposal of marriage. ʻAnbar Ana at first refused,
and physically manifested her rejection of Zangī Ata’s proposal by turning her face
away abruptly; her angry move left her neck painfully twisted, until she relented and
agreed to marry Zangī Ata (Ṣafī, 1977, I : 22-3 ; Zaleman, 1898 : 116-7).
13 The same motif, of a woman’s face and form disfigured because of her ‘rejection’ of a
saint, appears in a much earlier source, in connection with a saint of Khwārazm who
also resided for some time in the Golden Horde. In this case, the woman’s dislike for
the saint is only implicit, and she does not become the saint’s wife (there is thus no
genealogical legacy involved). The saint in question is called Shaykh Tamīmī, and he is
mentioned, so far as I know, in only two sources, both from the 14th c.. The earlier of
the two is a Persian commentary on the Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam of the celebrated Sufi Ibn
ʻArabī, completed in 743/1343 by Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī, who notes that he had met
“Shaykh Muḥammad Tamīmī” in Saray Berke, and that the same Shaykh Tamīmī had
once visited him in his native city of Shīrāz; their meeting in the Golden Horde
probably occurred in 739/1338-39, when the author, Rukn al-Dīn, spent time in Saray
Berke, conferring with ʻAlāʼ al-Dīn Nuʻmān Khwārazmī, an authority on the writings of
Ibn ʻArabī (DeWeese, 1994 : 127, n.142 ; DeWeese, 2016 : 61-65). This account thus
confirms Shaykh Tamīmī’s presence in the Golden Horde, still in the reign of Özbek
Khān, but does not link him with Khwārazm, and says nothing about the impact of
hostility toward him on an unfortunate woman.
14 That link, and the latter narrative element—practically its prototype, in chronological
terms—do appear in the other source to mention Shaykh Tamīmī, a hagiography,
entitled Khulāṣat al-manāqib, written about a prominent Sufi, Sayyid ʻAlī Hamadānī,
shortly after his death in 786/1385; the author, a disciple of Hamadānī named Nūr al-
Dīn Jaʻfar Badakhshī, reported a story recounted to Hamadānī by another of his

disciples, Khwāja ʻAbdullāh, who was the son of Rukn al-Dīn Shīrāzī. The story
(Badakhshī, 1995: 220-21; Teufel, 1962: 106), told on the father’s authority, took place
in the midst of Shīrāzī’s stay in Khwārazm, where he had also visited Shaykh Tamīmī;
the occasion was a gathering of the Sufis and scholars of Khwārazm, during which the
wife of the ruler of Khwārazm likewise came to visit Shaykh Tamīmī. The shaykh
rebuked her, however, asking, “Why did you not become my disciple (murīd)? Instead
you became a disciple of someone else, yet still you have come to visit me.” At once the
woman was overtaken by severe trembling and collapsed, still shaking violently; finally
Shīrāzī himself began to intervene, to relieve her from the punishment Shaykh Tamīmī
had clearly inflicted on her, but Shaykh Tamīmī promptly struck the woman’s back with
his hand, whereupon she recovered and stood up, leaving her face, however, completely
transformed by the fear induced by the shaykh’s rebuke.
15 The story is followed by Sayyid ʻAlī Hamadānī’s negative judgment about the quality
of Shaykh Tamīmī’s spiritual practice, a judgment repeated following another story
about the same shaykh, again set in Khwārazm. For present purposes, the old example
of the narrative motif later applied to Zangī Ata, and Gözlī Ata, is of primary interest,
but taken together, the two old sources that mention Shaykh Tamīmī place him in the
political centre of the Golden Horde and in Khwārazm—a pattern we may suggest also
for the Sufi shaykh who inspired the figure of Gözlī Ata—within a period from roughly
the late 1330s through the 1350s—a time that may also correspond with the era of Gözlī
Ata himself, as we will see. None of this, it should be stressed, provides a basis for
insisting that Shaykh Tamīmī was the inspiration for the figure of Gözlī Ata; the
narrative motif is too ‘flexible’ in its application, and the pattern of Sufi shaykhs linked
both with Khwārazm and with other parts of the Jochid ulus is too common, to insist on
a one-to-one correspondence. To move from suggestive parallels and oral tradition
recorded quite recently to actual earlier evidence of a role for “Gözlī Ata” in these two
environments, we must turn to the few written references we find regarding this figure,
his sphere of activity, and his legacy. Before doing so, however, we must recall two
additional elements in the reputation and persona of the ‘ethnographic’ Gözlī Ata: his
shrine(s) and his fuller genealogical ramifications.
16 In the first regard, at least two sites are identified as the shrine of Gözlī Ata.14 One
site, more prominent in Ata traditions, lies in the region of the Balkhān mountains,
where Gözlī Ata is usually said to have settled after his discipleship under Aḥmad
Yasavī (and after his time in Saray or among the “Qazaqs”).15 Another shrine identified
as that of Gözlī Ata is located further north, in the Khwārazmian oasis near Khīva.16 It is
not certain which of these shrines inspired the inclusion of Gözlī Ata among the various
saints, mostly linked with shrines of Khwārazm and the Türkmen country, to whom the
Türkmen poet Makhdūm Qulī (Magtïm Qulï) addressed poetic appeals for intercession
in the 18th c.;17 his invocation in this context suggests Gözlī Ata’s integration not only
into the specific sociology of tribal sanctity for the Ata tribe, but also into an emerging
‘trans-tribal’ sacred geography of the Türkmens. In any case, it is worth noting that
either site places Gözlī Ata’s shrine outside the historical ‘territory’ of the Jochid ulus.
17 At the same time, the shrine in the Balkhān region also includes a burial place for
Gözlī Ata’s wife, known from oral tradition as the mother of his children, from whom
the Ata tribe descends;18 his wife was, as noted, the chief ‘symbol,’ in oral tradition (as
opposed to the written sources reviewed below), of Gözlī Ata’s ‘connection’ with the
Jochid ulus, or with the “Qazaq” inhabitants of the Dasht-i Qipchaq. Ironically, despite
the prominence of Gözlī Ata’s wife, Aqsil, in oral tradition—where she represents, in
genealogical terms, a component of Ata ancestry and heritage linked with the Golden
Horde, with its Qipchaq nomadic population, or both—she makes no appearance at all

in the two known written genealogical texts that elaborate the lineages leading to, and
descending from, Gözlī Ata; here only the male links in the genealogy are recorded.
18 The two written genealogies were examined by the late Soviet ethnographer V. N.
Basilov;19 they provide further ‘detail’ of Gözlī Ata’s own ancestry and frame tribal
subdivisions among the Atas in terms of different lines of descent from him. More
specifically, they trace Gözlī Ata’s genealogy back to Adam, through the prophets Nūḥ
(in the 12th generation from Ādam) and Ibrāhīm (22nd) and the Caliph ʻUthmān (50th);
from Gözlī Ata (74th), various branchings of one lineage are traced down through 20
generations, to men of the Ata ‘tribe’ born in the early 20th c. According to the account,
ʻUthmān’s descendant in the 22nd generation was a certain Sulaymān, who had two
sons, “Sudzhukluk Ata” (or “Sudzhukluk Ibrahim Ata”) and “Makhab Ata” (Muḥibb
Ata?); the former was the father of Ḥakīm Ata, the latter of Ḥasan Ata, who earned the
name “Közlük Ata” from Aḥmad Yasavī. The two disciples of Yasavī are thus identified
as cousins, and the genealogy pays some attention to the lineage traced from Ḥakīm
Ata, ascribing him four sons—Aṣghar Khwāja, Qochqar Khwāja, Maḥmūd Khwāja, and
Ḥubbī Khwāja—of whom three are well-known from other traditions about Ḥakīm Ata,
while the second, bearing the ubiquitous name Qochqar Ata, was no doubt added either
simply to round out the number of sons to four, or perhaps to make a place in the
genealogy for the ‘figure’ said, in other traditions, to have accompanied Ḥasan
Ata/Gözlī Ata and Ḥakīm Ata on their journey to Khwārazm and Turkistān.
19 Közlük Ata, meanwhile, had three sons, Nūr Ata, ʻUmar Ata, and Ibrāhīm Ata (who
was also known as Ïbïq Ata or Ïvïq Ata); these three are mentioned in other Ata
traditions as the sources of the three major subdivisions of the Atas,20 but the written
genealogies follow a single lineage, through ʻUmar Ata, down to the 20th generation
from Közlük Ata. Basilov suggests that the differences in the two genealogical texts
point to the existence of a written version of the Ata genealogy as early as the beginning
of the 17th c. (Basilov, 1975 : 152-3), but stresses, in any case, these texts’ reference to
Gözlī Ata’s association with Aḥmad Yasavī as evidence of the origins of the Ata tribe not
in an ethnic or kinship group, but in a Sufi community linked to the Yasavī “order” (as
discussed further below).
Earlier Sources on Shaykh Ḥasan,

Közlük Ata
20 Working backwards from the 19th- and 20th-century recordings of Türkmen oral
tradition about Gözlī Ata (and the written genealogies, dating perhaps from the latter
19th c.), we can find only three earlier references to a figure who might be linked with
this saint, dating from the early 17th, the late 16th, and the late 15th c..
A Document from Khwārazm

21 The written genealogies described and summarized by Basilov both give the saint’s
name not in its Türkmen form, Gözlī, but in the ‘standard’ Chaghatay form, Közlük Ata;
this is also the form found, not unexpectedly, in the text of a Khwārazmian document
datable to the early 17th c., which provides a specific ‘snapshot’ of some of the putative
descendants of this saint living at that time.21 It was issued in the name of ʻArab
Muḥammad Khān, a representative of the so-called ʻArabshāhid or Yādgārid dynasty

that ruled in Khwārazm from the early 16th c. through the 17th c.; this dynasty traced its
descent to Shiban, the fifth son of Jochi, though through a lineage different from the
one that yielded the Abū’l-Khayrid dynastic clan ruling in Mawarannahr during the 16th
c. The document bears the hijrī date 1025/1616,22 indeed corresponding to the reign of
ʻArab Muḥammad Khān (1011/1603-1031/1622), according to his son, the famed ruler
and historian Abū’l-Ghāzī Khān (d. 1074/1663) (Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1871-74, I : 273-87, II :
294-308 ; Muʾnis and Āgahī, 1999 : 39-40 ; 557, notes 215-24); it was ʻArab
Muḥammad Khān who moved the seat of government in Khwārazm from Urgench to
Khīva, and the document given to the descendants of Közlük Ata affirms that it was
issued in Khīvaq.
22 This early 17th-century document is of particular interest, with regard to Közlük Ata’s
reputation among earlier Jochid princes, for explicitly confirming privileges granted to
the descendants (awlād) of Közlük Ata in yarlïqs issued by “past rulers” (salāṭīn-i
sābiq-nïng yarlïqlarï); it is unfortunately not altogether clear whether these past rulers
were envisioned as ruling in Khwārazm or somewhere in the steppe—most likely the
latter was intended—and it is likewise unclear just how far back these privileges can be
assumed to have been in place—though if we were to assume that “Közlük Ata” indeed
lived in the time of Janibek Khān, about 250 years had passed between the latter ruler’s
time and that of ʻArab Muḥammad Khān. In any case, three individuals among the
descendants of Közlük Ata are mentioned as having presented the earlier documents
seeking confirmation, but their names—Mullā Muḥibb, Mullā Muʻīn, and Mullā
Muḥammad Ḥusayn—do not help us situate them further in the social or physical
geography of Khwārazm in the early 17th c.; nor does the reference to an apparent
‘branch’ of the descendants of Közlük Ata traced to an otherwise unknown “Niʿmat
Ata.” These names do not correspond to names found among the descendants of Közlük
Ata listed in the genealogies studied by Basilov (though the figure identified as the
leader [bashlïq] among the three, Mullā Muḥibb, does bear the name that was likely
assigned to the father of Közlük Ata in those genealogies).
23 The text of this document, given in an appendix,23 confirms some sort of heritage of
prestige enjoyed among figures claiming descent from Közlük Ata still in the early 17th
c.; this in itself should not be surprising, in view of the longer and better-known history
of Sayyid Atāʼī prestige both in Khwārazm and in Mawarannahr, typically traced to
Sayyid Ata’s reputation earned in the Golden Horde (DeWeese, 2001 ; DeWeese, 1995),
but Sayyid Ata is a far more prominent figure—as are his descendants—than the
relatively obscure saint we are focused on here.
A Hagiographical Reference
24 Moving back a quarter-century, we find another source that may offer a clue about
the figure who inspired the lore linked with Közlük Ata, and may support this figure’s
connection with Aḥmad Yasavī. Both the oral narratives about Gözlī Ata and the written
genealogies agree that this saint bore the name Ḥasan, and that he was a disciple of
Aḥmad Yasavī; the oral accounts, and the major shrine tradition, link him further with
the “Balkhān” mountains. All three of these elements—though not the key appellation
“Gözlī/Közlük Ata”—appear to be combined in the report of the 16th-century Yasavī
shaykh known as Ḥazīnī, writing in or before 1002/1593, that among the direct
disciples of Aḥmad Yasavī was a certain “Shaykh Ḥasan Balghānī.”24 Nothing more is
known of such a figure, and Ḥazīnī provides no narratives about him, and no further
details about his relationship with Yasavī; his unfamiliar nisba might be interpreted as
a garbled form of “Baghlānī”, or perhaps even, as suggested a century ago by Köprülü

(Köprülü, 1984: 35, n. 17; Köprülü, 2006: 42, n. 17), of “Bulghārī.” It is more likely,
however, that “Balghānī” should be understood as referring to the area of the “Balkhān”
mountains (sometimes written “balqān”), and that Ḥazīnī’s comment should be
recognized as an early, and unique, allusion to traditions about a Shaykh Ḥasan, a
disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī who dwelled in that region—or, perhaps more likely, a saint
linked with that area who, as we may conjecture in the case of many other local saints,
was appropriated by later hagiographers and situated within the emerging structures of
Sufi history framed in terms of the silsila or ‘chain’ of initiatic transmission, by
identifying him as a disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī. Other likely examples of such local saints
for whom this sort of trajectory seems plausible—or who may have been appropriated
in a slightly different way, by being inserted at a prominent point in a later phase of the
initiatic lineage descending from Yasavī—include the figures of Ḥakīm Ata, Sayyid Ata,
and Sharaf Ata, all associated with Khwārazm, Zangī Ata, associated with Tashkent,
and Ṣadr Ata and Uzun Ḥasan Ata, associated with Mawarannahr.
25 Most of these saints, it should be noted, are mentioned, and linked with the Yasavī
silsila, already in the Rashaḥāt, from the early 16th c., but the Rashaḥāt makes no
mention of Sharaf Ata, or of Ḥasan Balghānī; the latter name, indeed, is not known
from any other source on the Yasavī tradition identified to date, except Ḥazīnī’s work,
underscoring the diversity of ways in which hagiographical accounts of that tradition
were formulated. It may be instructive, then, with regard to such hagiographical
processes—and more broadly with regard to the abundant indications that different
writers made selective use, or simply independent and hence ‘uncoordinated’ use, of a
limited stock of hagiographical lore (which in some cases included little more than
names)—that the connection between “Gözlī Ata” and the name Ḥasan is also echoed in
an interesting Turkic-language hagiographical work produced in Khwārazm during the
late 19th or early 20th c., entitled Riyāż al-dhākirīn;25 this work goes a step further in
identifying Gözlī Ata with a specific figure named Ḥasan (who is not assigned the nisba
Balghānī), but does so by citing a generalized body of oral tradition rather than the
particular 16th-c. hagiography that first mentions this Ḥasan.
26 The author of the Riyāż al-dhākirīn, that is, cites “reliable authorities” of Khīva
(khīvaq balada-si-ning thiqa-larï) in identifying Gözlī Ata with Uzun Ḥasan Ata, a
figure identified in the Rashaḥāt, from the early 16th c., as a disciple of Zangī Ata ; once
this identification is asserted, the account presented in the Riyāż al-dhākirīn under the
heading for Gözlī Ata simply tells the story of Uzun Ḥasan Ata and his companions,
known already from the Rashaḥāt (Allāh-yār, Riyāż al-dhākirīn, MS, f. 241b/p. 483 ;
Ṣafī, 1977, I : 23-5), and the later work thus offers no insight into local narrative
traditions distinctive to the figure, or name, of Gözlī Ata, with two exceptions. First, the
Riyāż al-dhākirīn does make it clear that the shrine of Gözlī Ata familiar to the author
was located near Khīva (MS, f. 242b/p. 485), not off in the Balkhān mountains. The
other exception is the insertion of an explanation for Gözlī Ata’s distinctive
appellation : he came to be called thus because of his ‘visionary prowess’ in foretelling
the coloration of a calf still unborn inside its mother (MS, f. 242a/p. 484). The latter
motif is not otherwise linked with Gözlī Ata in published discussions of oral tradition
about him, but it is unlikely that we should regard it as a significant story distinctive to
Gözlī Ata ; its appearance in oral tradition about Zangī Ata recorded in southern
Kazakhstan26 suggests that it, too, is a floating motif about supernatural saintly
knowledge that was attached to Gözlī Ata because of the need to account for his
distinctive name, but was just as easily invoked for other saints, in other places, as well.
27 The wide circulation of motifs such as the ‘prediction’ of the color of an unborn calf,
as well as the basic ‘reductionist’ tendencies of popular hagiography (as reflected in

more ‘learned’ works as well), suggests possible explanations for the chronological gap
implied by the link between Ḥasan Balghānī/Gözlī Ata and Aḥmad Yasavī (perhaps in
the early 13th c.), on the one hand, and that between Gözlī Ata and Janibek Khān (r.
1341-1357), on the other; this gap, and the chronological problems posed by the
genealogies of Gözlī Ata more broadly, troubled the ethnographers who studied Ata
traditions,27 who did not know of Ḥazīnī’s work, but we can easily accept that the
connection between Yasavī and Ḥasan Balghānī, as affirmed by Ḥazīnī, signals a looser
association of Gözlī Ata with saints and lore of the Yasavī Sufi tradition—as noted
earlier in connection with elements of the hagiographical lore about Gözlī Ata—without
insisting, as did Basilov, that Gözlī Ata, identified as “Ḥasan” and linked with the
Balkhān region, should be regarded as part of a “Yasavī order” already in the 13th or
14th c. If we assume that Ḥasan Balghānī/Gözlī Ata was first and foremost a local saint
of Khwārazm, with natural ties to the Jochid ulus, we can readily understand both his
mention by Ḥazīnī, and his absence from other sources on the ‘personnel’ of the early
Yasavīya, as the result of different strategies for incorporating local saints into the still-
developing retrospective narrative of the early Yasavī tradition.
A Hagiographical Narrative
28 Our earliest bit of evidence, finally, from the late 15th c., perhaps heightens the
likelihood that we should link the ‘origins’ of Közlük Ata’s prestige with his career in the
lands of the Golden Horde beyond Khwārazm. It appears in a brief narrative recorded
in a Central Asian hagiographical work from the end of the 15th c.—just over a century,
as it turns out, from the time in which the figure that inspired the saintly persona of
Közlük Ata must have lived. One of the hagiographies focused on the famous
Naqshbandī figure, Khwāja Aḥrār (d. 1490), usually referred to as the Masmūʻāt, and
compiled by Aḥrār’s son-in-law and disciple, Mīr ʻAbd al-Avval Nīshāpūrī, mentions a
father and son renowned for their sanctity; this account was not repeated, as were so
many of the narratives recorded in the Masmūʻāt, in the better-known hagiography
dealing with Khwāja Aḥrār, the Rashaḥāt, and indeed it does not appear to be echoed
in any other hagiographical work known to me.
29 The account28 first quotes Khwāja Aḥrār mentioning a certain Yaʻqūb Shaykh,
identified as the son of Közlük Shaykh (note that no such son is mentioned in the
written genealogies of Gözlī Ata); Yaʻqūb Shaykh, he said, used to travel extensively,
and told Khwāja Aḥrār, “I saw a shaykh who had instructed his disciples and
companions to stand constantly and say, in a plaintive voice, ‘ʻayb-i man-ast, ʻayb-i
man-ast, ʻayb-i man-ast’ (“the fault is mine”).” The latter phrase, evincing a
penitential and self-admonitory Sufi stance, is in fact linked with another saint of the
Yasavī Sufi tradition, from the 16th c,29 but this seems to be its earliest recording.
30 Without any commentary the author then recounts a narrative about Közlük Shaykh
himself, again ascribed to Khwāja Aḥrār. Közlük Shaykh, the story goes, was once
together with another shaykh, who remains unidentified, at a gathering hosted by
“Ūrus Khān, the father of Barāq Khān”; Ūrus Khān, we are told, was a devotee of both
shaykhs, each of whom sought to display a miracle in the khan’s presence. This scenario
itself—with two saints attempting to demonstrate their miraculous power in the
presence of a ruler—naturally recalls the setting of many conversion stories, but in this
case the miraculous demonstration is decidedly low-brow, even if the ultimate
superiority of Közlük Ata is established. The other shaykh, we are told, put his hand
inside his khirqa, brought out a very valuable pearl, and presented it to Ūrus Khān;
then Közlük Shaykh reached into his khirqa and pulled out a fish still dripping wet.

Thereafter, explained Khwāja Aḥrār, Ūrus Khān became more devoted to Közlük
Shaykh, “because it was probable that the other shaykh already had the pearl with
him”; it was, implicitly, a greater feat, in that setting, to produce a wet fish.
31 Stories of saints working miracles in the presence of rulers are quite common, but no
others featuring this particular ruler are known to me. With the mention of Urus Khān,
indeed, we may be in a position to better situate the figure of Közlük Ata both
chronologically and regionally, and perhaps to account for the retention of oral
tradition linking him with the Jochid ulus, though in the time of a more illustrious
ruler, Janibek, rather than Urus Khān; the latter came to power, to be sure, less than
two decades after the death of Janibek, leaving it entirely plausible that Közlük Ata was
active in the time of both rulers. Urus Khān, a Chinggisid from the lineage of Toqāy
Timur (the thirteenth son of Jochi), consolidated power in the eastern half of the
Jochid ulus around 1374-75, with his winter residence usually at Sïghnāq; he and
several of his sons were the targets of the efforts of another Toqāy Timurid prince,
Toqtamish, to seize control of important towns of the middle Syr Darya valley, efforts
that led him to seek aid from Timur. Urus Khān evidently died in the late winter or
spring of 1377; he was the ancestor not only of several figures prominent in the politics
of the Dasht-i Qipchaq during the late 14th and early 15th c., but of the entire Chinggisid
lineage that came to rule among the Qazaqs from later in the 15th c.. However, the
Barāq Khān mentioned in the story was not the son of Urus Khān, but his grandson, as
a son of Qoyrïchaq Oghlān, who was for a time installed in power north of the Syr
Darya by Timur—seeking a compliant Jochid prince on his northern frontier—but was
eventually undone by the rise of Edigü. Qoyrïchaq’s son Barāq, however, though
outmaneuvered in the Jochid domains, fled to the Timurid realm in 1419 and won the
support of Ulugh Beg, who like his grandfather sought a Jochid client along the Syr
Darya frontier; with that support, Barāq, by 1425, managed to establish his power over
the “Uzbeks”, as the tribally-organized inhabitants of the eastern half of the old Golden
Horde were by then known, and quickly turned against Ulugh Beg, demanding control
over the Syr Darya cities and defeating the Timurid’s punitive expedition against him
near Sïghnāq in 1427. The next year (832/1428-29), Barāq was killed in battle with a
Jochid rival (of the lineage of Shiban), and power over the Uzbeks was soon
consolidated by Abū’l-Khayr Khān (Barthold, 1958 : 89-90, 102; Akhmedov, 1965 : 38-
9, 93, 120-24; DeWeese, 1999).
32 In any case, this brief hagiographical story allows us to surmise that “Közlük Shaykh”
was active in the Jochid ulus during the third quarter of the 14th c., and though it links
him with Urus Khān, in the eastern part of the Golden Horde, it may suggest some
basis, at least, for the oral tradition linking Gözlī Ata with Janibek Khān, and with
Saray. In all likelihood, we should understand “Közlük Ata” to have been a locally-
prominent saint of Khwārazm, with ties to the Jochid ulus, active in the middle part of
the 14th c., whose memory was nearly lost outside the communal formation linked
directly to him; he was thus never fully integrated into the lore of the Yasavī Sufi
tradition—he does not appear in the Rashaḥāt, the prime example of the
hagiographical process of finding a place for many no-doubt locally prominent saints
within the Yasavī silsila, or in most later ‘internal’ Yasavī works—but was still
prominent enough in the 16th c. (though under his ‘original’ name, Ḥasan Balghānī) to
be re-identified by Ḥazīnī as a direct disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī.
Ata Origins and the Social Legacies of

Islamisation in the Golden Horde

33 Without knowing of Közlük Ata’s appearance in a written source from the end of the
15th c. (or, evidently, of his mention in the Khwārazmian document from the early 17th
c.), Basilov argued that the Ata ‘tribe’ owes its origins to a community of Sufi disciples;
the claim of natural kinship, he argued, masks the original basis for the group’s
solidarity as a society bound by shared affiliation to a Sufi shaykh or order—for, in
Basilov’s view, as Sufism ‘declined,’ the original reason for the unity of the group was
forgotten and replaced with the genealogical framework familiar to the Türkmens from
pre-Islamic times.30 If we ignore the Soviet ethnographer’s tiresome recourse to the
notion of ‘pre-Islamic survivals,’31 and his insistence on seeing historical changes in
Sufi communities as signs of decline and debasement, and if we also de-construct the
essentialized vision of “Türkmen” national identity projected back into history, by
recognizing the sociological “input” into Türkmen ‘ethnic’ history of groups with a
history in the structure of the Jochid ulus—as in fact may be hinted at in the stories
injecting a “Qazaq” element into the kinship ties of Gözlī Ata—then we might find
considerable merit in Basilov’s argument.
34 Such a transformation of spiritual bonds into natural ties of descent is not at all
unlikely, although the early evidence we have noted on what certainly appear to be
actual descent lines from eminent shaykhs should caution us against rejecting out of
hand the possibility that actual kinship groups might have formed the basis for the
community that became the Ata ‘tribe’. However, most of the actual kinship groups that
claimed descent from Yasavī shaykhs do not appear to have retained the kind of
internal cohesion that would have facilitated their development into a group with
‘tribal’ status, and Basilov’s argument is attractive for stressing the capacity of Sufi
organizational bonds to prove stronger and more enduring than the bonds of kinship or
“ethnicity” that we normally regard as fundamental. In the end we need not adopt
Basilov’s insistence on the “decadence” and “barbarization” of Sufism to be persuaded
by his view of the Ata Türkmens’ origins, although we may suggest some refinements;
in particular, we should consider the example of the Ismāʻīl Atāʼī communities of the
14th and 15th c., in which the inhabitants of entire villages, bound by occupation as well,
considered themselves murīds of Ismāʻīl Ata through his descendants; and we have
other examples of such communal affiliations, linking Sufi groups (often hereditarily
organized) with tribal groups or villages, from the 14th and 15th c.32
35 On this model we may imagine the Ata ‘tribe’ as originating among a group, perhaps
already bound together in some way, that became collectively affiliated with actual
descendants of “Gözlī Ata”, or with the saint himself, as they simultaneously became
Muslims; whether this happened during Közlük Ata’s time in the Jochid ulus, or after
he settled near the frontiers of Khwārazm, would remain unclear, though the persistent
tradition about his “Qazaq” wife, and the broader pattern of Khwārazmian ties with the
steppe, seem to point to the Golden Horde as the context for this social formation. The
further establishment of that social formation among the Türkmens would likewise
remain difficult to trace, but would in any case reflect a familiar trajectory argued for
other “Qipchaq” elements among the Türkmens. The Ata ‘tribe’ would thus not be
“descendants” of Gözlī Ata in the simple sense, but neither would the genealogy be
entirely spurious, insofar as the whole community had in effect invested its identity in
the genuine descendants of their collective Ata.
36 In this connection, and considering the role of a khan of the Golden Horde in the lore
of Gözlī Ata/Közlük Ata, it is worth noting that Janibek Khān, ruling from Saray on the
Volga, figures in traditions recorded among the Türkmens in the 17th c. by Abū’l-Ghāzī

Khān, ruler of Khwārazm and himself of Jochid descent; the accounts of interest appear
in a section of the work devoted to “peoples who became Türkmen and joined the
Türkmens” (türkmän bolub türkmän-gä qoshulghan él-lär), thus signaling the
assimilation of ‘originally’ external groups into a developing Türkmen society. One
tradition claims that “in olden days”, in addition to Urgench, the region of the Balkhān
mountains (called by Abū’l-Ghāzī “Abū’l-khān”) and Mangqïshlāq were subject to
“Jānī-bek Khān the Just, son of Özbek Khān”; the khan sent a governor, with many
troops and slaves, among the Türkmens dwelling there, but after a year they induced
one of the slaves who had accompanied the governor to kill his master. The soldiers
returned to Janibek Khān, who soon died, but the murderer remained among the
Türkmens of the Balkhān region, and a particular group there is identified as his
descendants.33
37 Another tradition34 again affirms that the Türkmens dwelling between Khwārazm
and Astarābād were subject to Janibek Khān, who, upon hearing that the Balkhān
mountains were an excellent place to raise camels, sent thirty households of camel
herders there, to tend the khan’s camel herd; the account emphasizes the diverse
origins of the herders in the khan’s service, who came “from every clan” (har urugh-
dïn) and “from every tribe” (har ṭāʼifa-dïn). They remained there until the death of
Janibek’s son, Berdi-bek Khān, but were then attacked and driven away by “Türkmens
of the Balkhān” region, during the time of troubles, among the “Uzbeks”, that followed
in the Golden Horde; they found refuge among another of the groups that had “become
Türkmen and joined the Türkmens”, and, their service as camel-herders now in the
past, they took up fishing along the banks of the Caspian, where they soon became a
numerous people.
38 In between these two stories appears the more famous account identifying the
eponymous ancestor of the Ersarï Türkmen tribe, Ersarï Bāy, as a wealthy Türkmen, of
the Sālūr tribe, who appealed to a saint of Khwārazm, Shaykh Sharaf Khwāja, to write a
guide to Islam in Turkic;35 the story is told prior to the complicated explanation of how
several additional “Türkmenized” groups formed around the four sons of a slave who
spent time in the service of Ersarï Bāy’s daughter (after she had been carried off by a
governor of Khurāsān appointed by “the ruler of Iran”, who later gave her gifts,
including the slave, when he sent her back to her family because she bore no children):
neither the slave’s origin, nor that of his wife (who is explicitly mentioned in the
account), is explained, and although the four “Türkmenized” groups that formed
around the slave’s four sons are said to have included those sons’ actual descendants,
the account also relates how one group was joined by four “Moghūls” who were actually
Uzbeks, six Sālūrs, and the hungry, exhausted, and downtrodden “from all sides”, all of
whom, with their numerous descendants, came to be known by the same designation;
another group was joined by “the poor and wretched from among the Uzbeks and
Türkmens”; the third group was augmented by descendants of a man of the “Chagatay”
Arlat tribe in Khurāsān, who fled to the group because he had killed a man in Durun;
and the fourth group alone consisted solely of the descendants of the slave’s fourth son
—though this group was later the one with which Janibek’s camel-herders took
refuge.36
39 Abū’l-Ghāzī’s accounts do not mention Közlük Ata, or the Ata ‘tribe’,37 and we may
assume that these tales reflect his own ‘editing’ as well as they do ‘authentic’ Türkmen
traditions; Abū’l-Ghāzī maintained extremely hostile relations with the Türkmens, and
some of his stories seem intended to disparage the origins of various Türkmen groups.
In suggesting the complex and diverse origins of multiple “Türkmen” communities,
however, taking shape in the midst of political developments affecting nomadic groups

on the frontiers of the Jochid ulus (sometimes within the reach of the khan’s control,
sometimes beyond it), as signaled by the memory of Janibek Khān’s power, and in the
midst of the process of Islamisation, as signaled by the role of Shaykh Sharaf, the
accounts speak directly to the environment in which we should most likely imagine the
social consequences of Islamisation, as suggested here in the case of Közlük Ata and the
Ata ‘tribe,’ working themselves out on those same frontiers of the Golden Horde.
40 In short, we need not concur entirely with Basilov’s argument that these traditions
point to the ‘origins’ of the Ata ‘tribe’ in a community of Sufi disciples to suggest that
the establishment of formal social bonds between nomadic communities and Sufi
shaykhs or Sufi groups, framed in terms of initiatic bonds but immediately malleable
into symbolic and actual kinship ties, were an important part of the process of
Islamisation; we see these processes, if dimly, in Central Asia, in the context of the
nomadic population of the ulus of Chagatay, and it is reasonable to interpret the
admittedly sparser sources on the Jochid ulus as pointing in the same direction.
Indeed, the formation of such social bonds, reinterpretable in terms of genealogy and
kinship, was arguably of special importance precisely in the context of the second half
of the 14th c., marked by the collapse of central authority in the Jochid ulus and by
considerable social and political instability.
41 This, in turn, helps us consider the social implications of connections between the
steppe lands of the Golden Horde and urban centres such as Khwārazm, where Sufi
communities themselves did not yet have such deep roots, and may indeed have sought
to trade on their influence with the nomads in order to establish and raise their social
and political and economic profile in their urban environment. We need not discard the
cultural, intellectual, or literary impact of the ‘connectedness’ between Khwārazm and
the Golden Horde to appreciate the equal and perhaps greater, importance of the social
bonds facilitated by such connections, and to understand thereby the social character,
and consequences, of the process we refer to as Islamisation.
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Annexe
Appendix : ʿArab Muḥammad Khān’s yarlïq to the descendants of Közlük Ata
‫( عبده عرب محمد خان‬seal)
‫هو العالی‬
‫ابو الغازی عرب محمد بهادر خان سوزمیز‬
‫و اصول شجرهٔ جنکیز خانی دولت یار‬ 38‫شعار‬ ‫[ صواحب الحسب شریعت‬sic] ‫سادات ذوی انسب عالیمقدار و قضاه‬
‫ کفایت آثار‬39‫ر و وزرای‬U ‫ر و امرای عالیمقدار فراحی بی‬U‫قرینداش سلطانی و فروع دوح ٔه خسروانی کامکار جوانبخت فرزند‬
‫رغه اولکیم بو اوجوردا م^ محب باشلیق و م^ معین‬U‫ر تخصیص ایش کوج اوستندا یوری تورغان خذمتکار‬U ‫مشکین قلم دیوان‬
‫ر درکاه عالیغه کلیب فاتحه ت^وت قیلغاندین سونکرا‬U‫ریندین ترور‬U‫د‬U‫و م^ محمد حسین که کوزلوک اتا علیه الرحمه نیک او‬
‫رغه و اینی اوغول‬U‫رین ظاهر قیلیب امضا التماس قیلدی^ر ایرسا نشان سیورغال قیلدوق کیم بو‬U ‫س^طین سابق نیک یارلیق‬
‫ و متعرض بولوب بر تنکه و بر دینار طلب قیلمسون^ر و تکالیف اتفاقی کم کوزلوک اتا علیه‬40‫ریغه نقیب و صدر و غیره مزاحم‬U
‫د نعمت اتانی سوی و مستثنی بیلسون^ر ایلجی و یولجی بارغوجی و‬U‫رینه واقع بولسه اولجمله دین او‬U‫الرحمه اخفاد‬
‫ یانکی نشان‬42‫غ توتمسون هر ییل سالو‬U‫رین او‬U‫رغه توشوب قنلغه و سویسون تی^ماسون^ر و جهارپا‬U ‫ مومی الیهم‬41‫تمغاجی‬
‫ مهر لوق نشان بتلدی‬44‫ طلب قیلماسون^ر تیب تاریخ مینک یکرمه بیشدا خیوقدا بارص ییل‬43‫و حکم مجدد‬
Translation :
(seal : His servant, ʿArab Muḥammad Khān)
He [God] is the Exalted.
Abū’l-Ghāzī ʿArab Muḥammad Bahādur Khān : Our word,
To the sayyids of exalted lineage and the qāżīs who judge in accordance with the sharīʿa ; to
the powerful kindred princes (sulṭāns) of the roots of the genealogical tree of Chingīz-Khān,
and the fortunate youthful offspring of the branches of the tree of royalty ; to the high-ranking
amīrs, the happy bīys, the capable civil officials (vazīrs), and the financial officers (dīvāns)
with dark pens ; and in particular to the servants who are actively engaged in managing affairs,
is this :
That at this time, when Mullā Muḥibb, in the lead, and Mullā Muʿīn and Mullā Muḥammad
Ḥusayn, who are among the descendants of Közlük Ata (mercy be upon him), came to the
exalted court and, after reciting a blessing, displayed yarlïqs of former rulers (salāṭīn-i sābiq),
and requested [our] signature, we gave a document [affirming] the grant (soyūrghāl), saying,
The naqīb and ṣadr and other [officials] should not bother or disturb them, or their younger
brothers or sons, and they should not demand a tanga or a dīnār [from them] ; and [those
officials] should know the descendants (awlād) of Niʿmat Ata to be exempt from the totality of
all levies that might come upon the successors (akhfād) of Közlük Ata (mercy be upon him).
State envoys (élchi va yolchï) and traveling [officials] (barghuchï) and collectors of the craft
tax (tamghachï) should not descend upon the aforementioned [descendants] and demand
lodging (qonalgha) or provisions (süysün) [from them], and they should not requisition their
animals (chahārpālarïn ulagh tutmasunlar).
Let them [the petitioners] not request a new document and renewed command every year.
This document, bearing [the royal] seal, was written in the year 1025/1616, in Khīvaq, in the
Leopard Year.
Notes
1 On the phenomenon of the “holy tribes” among the Türkmens, see above all Demidov, 1976,
and the brief survey of Basilov, 1984. For a good overview of Türkmen tribal structure, see
Wood, 1990. Aside from a brief reference (in a footnote on “religion among the Turkmen”) to
Basilov’s “Honour Groups” (as dealing with “saintly lineages”, 26-7, n. 30), there is no mention
at all of the “holy tribes” in Edgar, 2004.
2 The most extensive assemblages of oral tradition, recorded among the Atas, regarding their
ancestor Gözlī Ata are found in Demidov, 1976: 141-59; Demidov, 1978: 48-56; and Basilov,

1975: 138-68. See also Demidov 1990: 100-02, Demidov, 2001, and Basilov, 1970: 78-80, as
well as the brief notes in Atanïyazov, 1994: 55-7, 278-9, Markov, 1961: 92-4, and the
discussion in Tolmacheva, 2013. The Ata ‘tribe’ is regarded as the largest among the öwlät
(Basilov, 1975: 138; Demidov, 1976: 151); Demidov cites census figures and other sources in
estimating the pre-Revolutionary Ata population as between 13,000 and 15,000 (Demidov,
1976: 155).
3 On this figure, see most recently DeWeese, 2013. The issue of Aḥmad Yasavī’s death-date
cannot be addressed here, beyond noting that there is no early source to place it in 562 A.H.;
nevertheless, dozens of arguments about the historical context for Yasavī’s life, and about the
plausibility of encounters or relationships between Yasavī and other figures—including Gözlī
Ata—have been based at least in part on the assumption that this death-date is firmly
established.
4 The latter appellation, “Ram Father”, is a quite common designation for saints linked to
shrines throughout Central Asia, and should not be regarded as the name of a historically-
identifiable individual.
5 Demidov, 1976: 144-145 (and Demidov, 1978: 53) insists that his informants’ reference to
“Turtsiia” in fact means only the “Near East”, and argues that elements in the narrative signal a
basic understanding that the three companions were in fact from Khwārazm.
6 The latter appellation is most likely a deformation of “Shaykh Kabīr” < “Shaykh Kubrā”,
referring to the famous Khwārazmian saint Najm al-Dīn Kubrā (d. 618/1221). The version of
Gözlī Ata’s story given by Basilov, 1975: 155 links the saint not with two other disciples of
Yasavī, but with just one (Süzük Ata, who is moreover not shown as Gözlī Ata’s companion in
traveling to Yasavī), and identifies Yasavī’s rival as “Shikh-Shekher-Giandzhi” (the name
seems to conceal a form such as “Shaykh Shah Urganjī” or a shaykh of the shahr-i Urganj, but
is already “analyzed” in the story as “Shikhi-Giandzhi”); further details of their rivalry are
given, but this account too ends with the rival struck and killed (or merely blinded in some
versions) by his own arrow, thanks to the protective intervention of the two disciples, each of
whom receives his appellation from Yasavī in the course of this episode.
7 Basilov cites another explanation from oral tradition that does not directly involve Aḥmad
Yasavī in the ‘naming’ of Gözlī Ata: the saint was asked why he bore that appellation, and
explained that it was because he saw the entire world when he looked at his fingernail (Basilov,
1975: 154). Yet another version explains that four books once fell from the sky, and the prophet
“Isa Pikhamber” took one of them and gave it to a certain “Khizret Osman” to read; his
recitation so pleased the prophet that he gave Osman the name “Gözl-Ata”, also giving him his
daughter in marriage, and their children were the ancestors of the Atas (Markov, 1961: 94). It
should be stressed that the oral traditions, and written genealogies, that assign Gözlī Ata the
name “Ḥasan” are not thereby “identifying” Gözlī Ata with a distinct, known figure named
“Ḥasan Ata” or “Shaykh Ḥasan”; hagiographical sources on the Yasavī tradition know at least
two significant figures whose appellations include the element “Ḥasan”, but neither is ‘fleshed
out’ sufficiently to offer grounds for insisting that he is the one who inspired the saintly image
of Gözlī Ata. A third “Ḥasan” mentioned in a Yasavī source—more plausibly linked to “Gözlī
Ata”, but never assigned that appellation in an ‘internal’ Yasavī source—is discussed below.
8 Demidov, 1976: 143, n.2 (cf. Demidov, 1978: 52, n. 118) notes that his informants explained
the second element of this name, -sil, as a Türkmenized alteration of the term sulu (or –slu),
meaning “beautiful”, found chiefly in Qipchaq languages (e.g., Qazaq sŭlu, Qïrghïz suluu,
Bashkir/Bashqort hïlïu; cf. Budagov, 1869-71, I: 649, sūlū, ṣūlū, ṣ.lū); it often appears in the
names of women in ‘epic’ contexts (e.g., Ay-sulu, etc.).
9 Demidov, 1976: 143 (cf. Demidov, 1978: 52) stresses the ‘territorial’ correspondence of
“western Kazakhstan” with the Jochid ulus, while Basilov, 1975: 140 notes that the legends of
Aqsil Mama’s origins suggest a memory of the role of a “Kazakh component” in the formation
of the Atas.
10 This is the version given in the important Naqshbandī hagiography, the Rashaḥāt-i ʻayn al-
ḥayāt, written some 50 years earlier than the Mudhakkir-i aḥbāb on the life of the prominent
shaykh of Samarqand, Khwāja Aḥrār (d. 895/1490); see Ṣafī, 1977, I: 22.
11 The story involving “Shikh-Shekher-Giandzhi”, cited above in note 6, from Basilov, 1975:
155.
12 Dzhikiev, 1991: 248-9. The version given here mentions just two companions, Khekim and
Khesen, affirms their origin in “Turkey”, omits their time in Khwārazm, notes jealousy about
their close relationship with Aḥmad Yasavī on the part of the shaykh’s other disciples, and
identifies Khekim as the one renamed Gözlī Ata by the shaykh, because of his long search for,

and recovery of, the staff hurled by Yasavī.

13 Basilov, 1975: 139-40, gives this story in greater detail than is found in Demidov, 1978: 52;
Demidov’s short account, however, identifies the wealthy Qazaq as “Bughrā Khān”, while
Basilov’s rendering does not—though he mentions this as one version of the father’s name at
Basilov, 1975: 164.
14 More may be linked with him as well, in localities in which his putative descendants—the
Ata “tribe”—dwelled. According to Basilov, 1975: 138, the Atas dwell chiefly in villages of Gïzïl
Arbat (Kizyl Arvat) rayon in southwestern Turkmenistan; in the Ata village of Saragt (Serakhs)
rayon, in the south; in two kolkhozes of Tedzhen rayon; near Mary and Bairam-Ali; and in
Dargan-Ata rayon, along the Amu Darya. Substantial groups also lived in Turtkul rayon of
Qaraqalpaqstan (in Uzbekistan), and in Iran. See also Demidov, 1976: 153-5, for a discussion of
Ata movements during the 18th and 19th c., and the present population centres.
15 Atanïyazov, 1994: 55-7, 278-9, specifies that Gözli Ata’s mazār is located in the Qaraqum
desert, 150 km northeast of Shagadam (= Krasnovodsk/Türkmenbashï). A fuller discussion,
with a photo and drawings of the saint’s grave and the surrounding cemetery, appears in
Poliakov, 1973: 41, Plate 9; 168-9, Table XIII/6, 13; 77-81; 119-20; Poliakov refers to Gözlī
Ata’s shrine as the most highly venerated of western Turkmenistan, and briefly reviews the
legends and genealogical traditions about Gözlī Ata and his three sons. See also Orazov, 1963:
39, noting the appearance of the village of “Gezliata”, with 200 households, in a survey from
1870-71; Saray, 1989: 100 (citing N. I. Grodekov’s account of the Russian campaign against
Khīva in 1873 for a reference to a well of Gözlī Ata); and Berg, 1929: 32-33 (describing a
“ridge” of “Gezli-ata” in the northeastern part of the Krasnovodsk plateau, clearly named for
the shrine, which is not mentioned).
16 The shrine linked with Gözlī Ata near Khīva is mentioned, with no further details, in
Snesarev, 1963: 161, where he refers to annual festivals known as sayls conducted at various
shrines of Khwārazm, including that of “Gözli-baba near Khiva.” It is evidently the shrine near
Khīva that is referred to briefly in the Khwārazm taʾrīfi, an anonymous guide to the shrines of
Khwārazm compiled, in Chaghatay verse, in the late 19th century; after directing the pilgrim
toward Khīva, the author mentions several saints buried in that region, and then advises the
pilgrim who seeks the outpourings of God’s blessings to “Go and perform ziyārat to Közlī Ata”
(ziyārat qïl barub kūzlī ātā-nï). MS Tashkent, No. 7700, f. 54b (a separate study of this work is
in preparation).
17 They include, together with Gara Baba, Gara Älem Ata, and Baba Selman, “Gözli Ata” (and
later Ismi Makhmït): Magtïmgulï, 1992: 72.
18 Her grave elicited an ironically revealing comment by the Soviet ethnographer Poliakov,
who was evidently unable to understand that her status as Gözlī Ata’s wife, and as the ancestor
of the Ata ‘tribe,’ was more than enough to render her a ‘saint.’ Affirming that one grave at the
cemetery of Gözlī Ata is identified as that of the saint’s wife, he saw fit to add that “The
‘sainthood’ of Gözlī Ata’s wife is extremely doubtful. Not in a single legend found among the
Atas or other groups of Türkmens is the wife of Gözlī Ata hailed as a ‘saint.’ A precise answer
to this question will be possible only after excavations are carried out, which will be
impossible in the cemetery during the coming years.” (Poliakov, 1973: 78; italics mine). The
Soviet scholar’s obtuse misunderstanding of this figure’s sanctity is compounded by his
implicit lament over the likelihood of local resistance to digging up a grave, and by his proposal
—reflecting, it seems, an odd twist on scientific materialism—that such an archeological
investigation of a grave would make it possible to determine the ‘sanctity’ of the grave’s
inhabitant.
19 Basilov, 1975: 141-54. The first of the two manuscript versions he presents was owned by
Yarï Tuvokov of the village of Tutlï, the chief Ata settlement of Kyzyl-Arvat rayon; the second
was owned by Aman Èmirov of the village of Ata in Serakhs rayon (141); both date to the end
of the 19th c. (150). The second of Basilov’s genealogies was also noted briefly in Demidov,
1976: 146. Photographs of the genealogical scrolls were evidently given to the Archive of the
Soviet Institute of Ethnography (fond No. 3, ed. khr. 13); I have not had access to the original
documents or the photographs, and the forms of names given here accordingly reflect Basilov’s
Cyrillic transcriptions, unless the name is familiar from other contexts.
20 The name of the third son is often given as “Ubak Ata”, and the subdivision descended
from him is said to have migrated to Iran; see Poliakov, 1973: 120, and Markov, 1961: 92. Cf.
Karpov, 1925: 5 (naming the same three sons and tribal divisions, but without mention of Gözlī
Ata), and see Demidov, 1976: 151-2 for a more detailed discussion of the further subdivisions of
the Ata lineages.
21 The ‘document’ is in fact not the original, but a chancellery copy, from the archives of the

Khanate of Khīva; it was taken by the orientalist A. L. Kun, who accompanied the Russian
expedition against Khīva in 1873. Kun’s papers are housed at the Institute of Oriental
Manuscripts in St. Petersburg, and this particular document (fond 33, op. 1, No. 102) was in
turn transcribed by the late Yuri Bregel during research there in 1959; thanks to the efforts of
William Wood, Bregel’s notebooks are available in digital form. Bregel noted the importance of
Kun’s material in his monograph on the Khwārazmian Türkmens (see Bregel’, 1961: 8, n. 15),
but evidently never discussed this particular document in print; however, one of the
ethnographers, noted above, who worked on the lore surrounding Gözlī Ata, S. P. Poliakov,
credited Bregel with an oral communication affirming that “the earliest mention of the
descendants of Gözlī Ata is found in documents of the 16th c., preserved in the archives of
Kun” (Poliakov, 1973: 78). As noted below, it is clear that Poliakov was somewhat imprecise
about the dating of the document.
22 In addition to giving the hijrī date 1025, however, the document refers to the Barṣ
(Leopard) year; hijrī 1025 in fact corresponds to 1616 (Gregorian), beginning January 20 of
that year, late in the Tavishqan (Hare) year, with most of 1025 falling in the Luy (Dragon) year;
the closest Bars year directly preceded the Tavishqan year and ended in March 1615. This is
considerably more than the ‘usual’ discrepancy encountered often in the work of Abū’l-Ghāzī,
for instance, or in 19th-century Khivan sources; on the problems with calendars and
chronology in Khwārazm, see Bregel’s discussion in the introduction to his translation of the
Firdaws al-iqbāl (Muʾnis and Āgahī, 1999: xxxix-xlv).
23 The document features much the same structure and terminology as is found in the yarlïqs
from Khwārazm published in Wood, 2005 and Bregel, 2007, though it is earlier than those
published there; I give only a summary translation in the appendix, without addressing the
peculiarities in the copy of this text.
24 Hazini, 1995: 46 (transcribing the nisba as “Bülġānī”). Ḥasan Balghānī is not mentioned in
Hazini, 2009, or in any of Ḥazīnī’s other works.
25 The Riyāż al-dhākirīn is preserved in a single manuscript in private hands; I first learned of
its existence from Ashirbek Muminov, and an edition is evidently being prepared by Alfrid
Bustanov and Paolo Sartori. The work’s author identifies himself as Allāh-yār and as a son and
successor (khalaf) of Khalīfa Khudāy-berdī (in a Mujaddidī Sufi lineage), whose death he
places in 1298/1880-81 (MS, f. 140a/p. 278); he affirms that he wrote the Riyāż al-dhākirīn
during the time of Sayyid Muḥammad Raḥīm Khān II (MS, p. 6), the long-reigning
penultimate Qonghrat ruler of Khwārazm (r. 1864-1910).
26 Ergöbekov, 1996: 143-4, the story of Zenggĭ Baba’s success in identifying the coloration of
an unborn calf (recorded from a mullā, Eregen Aghïbayŭlï, of the village of Zertas, in Tölebi
audan [rayon], some 30 km east-southeast of Shïmkent).
27 In addition to his other argument for an early-17th c. formulation of a written genealogy for
the Atas (see above), Basilov, 1975: 154 reached the same conclusion through a chronological
discussion. Taking Aḥmad Yasavī’s death in 1166-67 as firmly established, Basilov discussed
the discrepancy entailed by Gözlī Ata’s association with him and the generational span
required by the written genealogies, which, he writes, should place Gözlī Ata in the beginning
of the 14th c. at the earliest; in this connection he also cited oral traditions affirming that Gözlī
Ata was killed by the “Qalmaqs”, by whom, he writes, the Mongols were intended, pointing
again to the 13th or 14th c. for the saint’s life and death. He thus concluded that the first eight
or nine generations after Közlük Ata have been considerably “telescoped” in the written
genealogies, and that the more reliable transmission of the last ten generations signals the
formulation of a written genealogy among the Atas in the first half of the 17th c.. Demidov
(1976: 145-6; 1978: 54) also argued that the written genealogy known to him justified dating
Gözlī Ata to the early 14th c., but also specifically noted the gap between Aḥmad Yasavī’s death
in 1166-67 and Janibek Khān’s death in 1357. Both Basilov and Demidov thus argued that Gözlī
Ata’s identification as a disciple of Aḥmad Yasavī merely signaled his association with a later
successor of Yasavī, or perhaps his Sufi training at Yasavī’s shrine, in either case linking him
with a Yasavī ‘order.’
28 The work of ʻAbd al-Avval Nīshāpūrī has been edited, along with other works focused on
Khwāja Aḥrār, in Nawshāhī, 2001: 142-324 (Nawshāhī refers to it by the ‘title’ Malfūẓāt); the
passage of interest here appears at 193-4 (giving the father’s name in the form kūzl.k, and
noting kūzlūk as a variant).
29 The use of this phrase as a dhikr formula is mentioned in Nidāʼī, ʻAvālim al-asrār, MS
London, British Library, India Office collection, No. 1330: ff. 94b-95a.
30 Basilov, 1975: 162-3; cf. 140, affirming that the origins of the Ata are to be found in Sufism.

31 See Basilov, 1975: 155-7, where he argues unconvincingly that motifs in the story of the
disciples protecting Aḥmad Yasavī from his rival’s arrow mask pre-Islamic elements; in
addition, his insistence that the very rivalry between the two shaykhs, as depicted in this
legend, “is very far from the ideology of Sufism” (157), is at once undermined by the long
history of Sufi polemics and competition.
32 See my discussion of the Ismāʻīl Atāʼī case, and other groups, in DeWeese, 1996 (reprinted
in DeWeese, 2012a, No. VII).
33 Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1958: 72-3 (text), 74-5 (translation); Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1996: 218-19 (transcription),
269 (translation).
34 Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1958: 76-7 (text), 77 (tr.); Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1996: 225 (transcription), 271
(translation).
35 See, in addition to the account in Abū’l-Ghāzī’s work, DeWeese, 2012b: 212-13.
36 Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1958: 73-6 (text), 75-7 (tr.); Abū’l-Ghāzī, 1996: 220-24 (transcription), 269-71
(translation). On the groups mentioned in these accounts from Abū’l-Ghāzī’s work, see also
Bregel, 1981: 25-6.
37 Basilov, 1975: 163, insisting that Abū’l-Ghāzī must have known of the Atas and other öwlät,
writes that the 17th-century khan’s failure to mention the Ata ‘tribe’ signals his understanding
that they were a group of Sufis ‘descended’ from a saint rather than a ‘tribe’; this argument
loses force in the face of Abū’l-Ghāzī’s accounts of the complex origins of the groups noted
here.
38 The final ‫ ر‬is omitted.
39 Written ‫ وزای‬.
40 Clearly written ‫ چزاحم‬here, but the intended word is clear from the context.
41 Evidently written ‫ نمغاجی‬, but ‫ تمغاجی‬is clearly intended.
42 Clearly written thus.
43 Seemingly written ‫ مجدود‬or ‫ مجدد و‬, but the intended term is clear.
44 Written without dots.
<
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Devin DeWeese, « A Khwārazmian Saint in the Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and the
Social Vectors of Islamisation », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée,
143 | 2018, vol. 143.
Référence électronique
Devin DeWeese, « A Khwārazmian Saint in the Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and the
Social Vectors of Islamisation », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée [En
ligne], 143 | octobre 2018, mis en ligne le 12 octobre 2018, consulté le 07 mai 2021. URL :
http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/10254 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.10254
Auteur
Devin DeWeese
Indiana University, Bloomington
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Ata) and the Social Vectors

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Oral Tradition and Genealogical Texts

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Earlier Sources on Shaykh Ḥasan,

A Document from Khwārazm

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Ata Origins and the Social Legacies of

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Islamisation in the Golden Horde

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Mukhammetjuma Övezgeldiev, Mïrat Charïev, Amanberdi Nuryagdïev, and Geldi Nazarov,

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and recovery of, the staff hurled by Yasavī.

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