Sacred History For A Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin Inhistories of Sayrām

Sacred History for a Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin inHistories of Sayrām, 18th-19th Centuries 07.05.
07.05.21, 09:41
Accueil Numéros 89-90 Première partie Sacred History for a Central Asian T(…)
Revue des mondes Français
musulmans et de la Portail de ressources électroniques

en sciences humaines et sociales
Méditerranée OPENEDITION
89-90 | juillet 2000
Figures mythiques des mondes musulmans Nos plateformes
Première partie – Figures mythiques des mondes musulmans
OPENEDITION BOOKS
OPENEDITION JOURNALS
Sacred History for a Central

HYPOTHESES
Asian Town CALENDA
Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Bibliothèques et institutions
Origin in OpenEdition Freemium

Histories of Sayrām, 18th-19th
Centuries Nos services
Histoire sacrée pour une ville d'Asie centrale : saints, mausolées et légendes d'origine dans les Histoires de
Sayrām, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles.
OpenEdition Search
La lettre d'OpenEdition
DEVIN DEWEESE
p. 245-295
Résumés
Français English
Cet article étudie les mythes historiques concernant Sayrām, une petite ville du sud de l'actuel
Kazakhstan, cas exemplaire de concepts indigènes d'identité communautaire en Asie centrale
pré-soviétique. Ces traditions sont conservées dans un ensemble de travaux en turc, sous le
titre générique de « Histoire de Sayrām », qui combine une « histoire sacrée » de la ville avec
une « géographie sacrée » sous la forme d'un catalogue de mausolées locaux ; ces deux
composantes situent ainsi Sayrām à la fois dans le temps et dans l'espace, à l'intérieur d'un
https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 1 von 38

Sacred History for a Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin inHistories of Sayrām, 18th-19th Centuries 07.05.21, 09:41
univers sacré défini en tant qu'islamique. Elles offrent une vision de la participation de cette
ville à un cadre historique déterminé par l'hommage sanctificateur du Prophète Muhammad à
Sayrām, et une affirmation de la présence continue et de la protection, à travers leurs
mausolées, d'une multitude de saints musulmans (comprenant aussi bien des personnages
purement locaux que d'autres bien connus dans le folklore islamique). Ces ouvrages, compilés
vraisemblablement au XVIIIe siècle et répandus très largement dans la seconde moitié du XIXe
siècle, reflètent souvent d'anciennes traditions narratives évocatrices du rôle de Sayrām au
début de l'islamisation de l'Asie centrale. Mais elles montrent également l'importance capitale
de la définition par la religion des identités locales et régionales, au sein de la population
sédentaire d'Asie centrale, avant les changements induits par la conquête russe, l'établissement
du pouvoir soviétique et la formulation des nouvelles identités « nationales » qui perdurent
aujourd'hui.
This article examines historical myths focused on Sayrām, a small town in the south of
present-day Kazakstan, as a case study of indigenous conceptions of communal identity in pre-
Soviet Central Asia. These traditions are preserved in a set of Turkic works, generically entitled
« The History of Sayrām », which combine a « sacred history » of the town with a « sacred
geography » in the form of a catalogue of local shrines ; the two components thus situate
Sayrām both temporally and spatially within an Islamically-defined sacred universe, offering a
vision of the town's participation in a historical framework hinging on the Prophet
Muhammad's sanctifying homage to Sayrām,CATALOGUE
and an affirmation of the continuing presence
and protection, through their shrines, of a host of Muslim saints (including both purely local
Tout
figures and well-known personages of Islamic lore). These works, probably compiled in the
ACCUEIL DES 557 OPENEDITION SEARCH
18th century and circulated most widely in the latter half of the 19th century, often reflect quite OpenEdition
old narrative traditions evocative of Sayrām's role in the early Islamization of Central Asia ;
they also reflect, however, the centrality of REVUES
religiously-defined local and regional identities
among the sedentary population of Central Asia prior to the changes brought on by the
Russian conquest, the establishment of Soviet power, and the formulation of the new
« national » identities that persist today.
Notes de la rédaction
Avertissement :
Ce document est issu d'une numérisation par OCR (reconnaissance optique de caractères), il
peut contenir des erreurs.
Texte intégral
1 In Central Asia during the 18th and 19th centuries, one of the most common forms of
« historical » writing was a particular sub-genre of collective hagiography, combining a
« city history » that recounted the origins, blessings, and tribulations of a particular
town, as well as the contributions of its eminent natives, with a catalogue of the town's
holy places that served, in effect, as a guide for pilgrims. The historical value of such
works has usually been rejected out of hand : the city history is typically dismissed by
labeling it « legendary », while the shrine catalogue, rooted in two phenomena
— hagiography and « popular » religious practice — with which historians of Central
Asia have traditionally been uncomfortable, might at most be granted some grudging
attention as a source on urban topography.
2 What these works offer, however, is not merely the preservation — admittedly quite
imperfect from a narrow historicist perspective — of local legends and traditions, but a
complex and coherent vision of a locality's legitimation and sanctification as a human
community ; they are sacred histories, fitting diverse elements of local lore into a
narrative structure determined by an Islamic « historical » framework, and marked by
recurrent evidence of the town's providential blessing and preservation. The shrine
catalogues typically joined to such narrative histories in effect complete the vision of
the town's sacrality, both by recounting the lives of later exemplars of Islam's ideal, and
by affirming the continuing, tangible presence of the saints through their sanctifying

shrines ; those shrines, moreover, structure the town spatially, providing the
fundamental orientation points for its sacred topography. The works thus join
hagiographical accounts of saints whose shrines were locally prominent to legends of
origin and narratives of communal history often tied to renowned figures of universal
Islamic lore, and the combined effect of the two components — narrative history and
shrine catalogue — is to situate the town both temporally and spatially within an
Islamically defined sacred universe ; the vision thus constructed of the town's place in
the world, we may add, was a central component in local and regional identities among
the sedentary population of Central Asia on the eve of the transformations brought on
by the Russian conquest, the establishment of Soviet power, and the formulation of new
« national » boundaries and identities.
3 Compilations such as these have a long pedigree, and may find their earliest
antecedents in the classical « city histories », cast as biographical compendiums of a
locality's eminent figures, from pre-Mongol times ; these works, of which the most
familiar examples are focused upon Samarqand, Balkh, and Nishāpūr1(to mention only
Central Asian towns), have been relatively well-known, but a series of later
compilations produced from the 15th to 17th centuries, though less familiar, may be
considered in part as continuations of those earlier biographical traditions and as the
direct inspiration for the later works of primary interest here. Examples of this second
generation of local biographical compendiums, all in Persian, include the Tārikh-i
Mullāzāda from early 15th-century Bukhāra ; the Qandiya that seems to have taken
shape by the latter 16th century in Samarqand ; a series of unpublished works on Balkh
produced evidently in the 16th and 17th centuries ; and two better known works
devoted to Herat.2
4 The local hagiographies of this period, we may stress, are marked already by a clear
concentration upon the graves of eminent figures, and they are in many respects best
understood as shrine guides rather than as biographical compendiums like those of the
pre-Mongol era ; at the same time, these later works incorporate a wider range of
figures, encompassing not merely jurists or traditionists, but Sufis of various stripes, as
well as pre-Islamic prophets and sacral figures from early Islamic history, transplanted
to Central Asia. In general it is not difficult to see in these works the beginning, at least,
of a transition from one style of validating a local community to another : in the pre-
Mongol city histories, towns such as Samarqand were praised for their fine qualities,
including the number and quality of scholars they produced, while in the later works it
is the continued presence of both scholars and other types of saints, through their
shrines, that validates, and indeed sanctifies, a given locality.3
5 The late 18th and 19th centuries, however, witness, in addition to a proliferation of
local hagiographies focused on these same cities,4 thespread of this sub-class, of sacred
history joined with shrine guide, to serve other, narrower local and regional
constituencies (with an accompanying shift in language from Persian to Turkic). Such
works are focused on regions that had traditionally been, or had more recently come to
be, on the periphery of traditional Muslim cultural, religious, and political centers, even
from a Central Asian perspective ; they include « sacred histories » and shrine guides
focused on the region of Khorezm ;5 sacred histories of the town of Osh in the Farghāna
valley ;6 a brief poetic treatment of the shrines of the Farghāna valley ;7 a number of
narrative traditions, recorded in Tsarist times, focused on the sacred history of towns
such as Tashkent and Awliyā Atā ; and a set of works, providing an exemplary
combination of sacred history with hagiographical shrine guide, devoted to the town of
Sayrām (in the south of present-day Kazakstan, near the city of Shï'mkent).
6 Here I would like to consider the latter works, focused on Sayrām, which offer a good

illustration of the adaptation of a quite old hagiographical genre to evoke and shape
local and regional identities in 19th-century Central Asia. The quite limited aim of the
present paper is to call attention to the remarkably rich tradition of local hagiography
focused on what is, after all, a quite modest town, and to suggest both its general
parallels with other examples of local shrine guides from the same era, and its
distinctive evocation of both local traditions drawn from Sayrām and from nearby
regions, and of more widely known Islamic models. The works in question combine a
collection of narratives about the prophets, saints, and local rulers who shaped
Sayrām's history with a catalogue of shrines that continued to define the town as a
sanctified space ; together the two components may be considered a comprehensive
hagiographical sacred history that situates Sayrām and its distinct local traditions
within a framework of providential protection and patronage, and calls attention to the
tangible legacy of the town's sacralized past.
Sayrām/Isfijàb in Political and

Religious History : Sources and
Echoes of the Sacred History
7 Sayrām is today a small town, located about ten kilometers east-southeast of the
larger industrial center of Shïmkent (Russian « Chimkent ») in southern Kazakstan,
about 120 kilometers north of the Uzbek capital of Tashkent. The town's antiquity is
well attested : Sayrām is identified with the city more often called, in Islamic sources of
the pre-Mongol era, Isfïjāb, a place that figures prominently in Central Asian history
beginning from the 8th century. Already in the Divān lughāt al-turk, the
« Compendium of Turkic Dialects », of Mahmûd Kāshghari, from the second half of the
11th century, however, the town is assigned three names, identified as Arabic, Persian,
and Turkic, respectively : it was Madinat al-bayzā, the « white city », it was Isfijāb (for
which the Iranian etymology usually cited echoes a similar meaning) ; and it was
Sayrām.8Kāshghari's work likewise notes, already, a metathesized variant of this latter
form that, to judge from its wide occurrence in later times, appealed to both popular
and learned imagination both on euphonic grounds and as me basis for fanciful
etymologies ;9 it is this variant, « Saryam », that appears in most of the local
hagiographies to which we will turn shortly. In any case, the wider currency of the form
« Sayrām » already in the early 13th century is affirmed by its reflection in the Chinese
travel account of Ch'ang-ch'un, the Taoist monk summoned to Chingiz Khān during his
campaign in Central Asia ;10 from the following century we know of a prominent Hanafi
jurist bearing the nisba « Sayrāmi » who established himself in Égypt.11 The name
Isfijāb nevertheless continued to be used in historical sources throughout the Timurid
and Uzbek periods, perhaps as a classicist affectation, and several noted saints of the
town are known not only by the nisba « Isfïjàbï », but even as « Bayzāvi », a nisba
reflective of the name « Madinat al-bayzā ».
8 Isfïjàb/Sayrām appears to have been an important caravan center on the eve of the
Arab conquest of Central Asia, and, as one of many independent city-states in the
region, managed to resist Arab domination longer than the towns of Mawarannahr. It is
not mentioned prominently in accounts of the initial Arab conquest, but the sources'
silence changes with the Sāmānid era. Isfijāb was subdued by the Sāmānid Nûh b. Asad
in 840, and Sāmānid armies reached as far as Tarāz (present-day Jamb'il) by 893 under
Nûh's nephew Ismā'il (who figures in our sacred history as the « ruler of Samarqand »

and as the captor, albeit ultimately benevolent, of a prominent ruler of Sayrām). The
town became known in the Sāmānid era for its many ribāts, the « frontier » military
posts often associated with raids against unbelievers ; Sāmānid control in Isfijāb,
however, was largely nominal, and the city retained, well into the 10th century, an
essentially independent local dynasty, most likely of Turkic origin, that paid only token
tribute to the Sāmānids and dominated the steppes as far east as Semirechye.12
9 This independent dynasty of Isfijāb, of which little is known, may well have provided
the earliest environment in which Islam was integrated with local Turkic political,
cultural, and religious traditions, prior even to the Islamization of the Turkic dynasty
that has come to be known as the Qarākhānids ; it is thus not surprising, considering
the ribāt tradition as well, that Isfijāb came to be closely associated with the
Islamization of the Turks and with the ethos of holy war on the frontiers of Islam ; the
latter element indeed pervades the sacred history of Sayrām.
10 The only two members of the local dynasty of Isfijāb to be mentioned in early sources
may also provide a point of contact with the sacred history. One of those figures, called
Qarā Tekin, was governor of Balkh under the Sāmānid Nasr b. Ahmad, and is explicitly
identified as belonging to the « ruling family » of Isfijāb ; he endowed a prominent
ribāt in the city, and as noted already by the geographer al-Muqaddasi, writing in the
latter 10th century, was buried near that structure.13 The other figure is Qarā Tekîn's
son, Mansūr, whose grave was near his father's.14 It is no doubt noteworthy in this
regard that two of the most prominent rulers associated with Sayrām mentioned in our
sacred history bear the names « Qarā Tekin » and « Mansūr ». « Qarā Tekin » appears
near the end of the sacred history, but the old Turkic title « Tekin » is attached to
several other rulers associated with Sayrām in the work ; at the same time, the longest
narrative in the sacred history is devoted to a ruler of Sayrām called « Sultān Mansūr
Khamir ».15
11 Isfijāb's local dynasty appears to have survived down to the time of the Qarākhānid
conquest of the town in 980, when it became the staging ground for the Qarākhānid
seizure of Bukhāra from the Sāmānids.16In this regard it may be noted that our sacred
history of Sayrām seems to conflate, perhaps purposefully, what we might recognize as
the local dynastic tradition of Sayrām with one more clearly evocative of the
Qarākhānid tradition rooted, originally, in Kāshghar. In any case, Sayrām seems not to
have suffered significantly from the Mongol conquest, but from the 13th century on the
town belonged to an important frontier region,17 first between the Chaghatayid and
Jöchid realms, and later between the Timurid domains and those of the Uzbeks ; it was
incorporated into the Shïbānid Uzbek state early in the 16th century, but from the latter
16th century, Sayrām was most often under the rule of the Chingisid khāns of the
Qazaqs of the Middle Horde. It suffered from devastating raids by the Junghars — who
came to embody the infidel threat to Muslim communities of Central Asia — during the
late 17th and early 18th centuries, but appears to have remained in Qazaq hands until
its conquest by 'Umar Khān of Qoqand in the early 19th century. It fell to the Russians
late in 1864.
12 Although we may find, in the traditions assembled in the 19th-century « sacred
histories » of Sayrām, occasional echoes of events or personalities known from earlier
historical sources, the region of Sayrām is quite poorly reflected in sources from either
the pre- or post-Mongol period. This naturally complicates the problem of trying to find
recognizable correspondences between the sacred history of Sayrām and the town's
« real history », since its « real history » is so poorly known ;18 but the lack of sources
on Sayrām also makes it difficult to trace the development of local traditions and
historical projections, and even to suggest the historical circumstances that evoked the

development and circulation of the narratives we find compiled in the sacred history of
Sayrām.
13 It is my assumption that the compilation of the work as it survives may reflect the
aftermath of the Junghar invasions, and thus date to the middle of the 18th century ;
the atmosphere of communal protection and saintly patronage that pervades the work
seems to reflect a period of heightened communal anxiety, and we know of other
Central Asian works focused on sacred origins and protection evidently prompted by
the Junghar threat that reached its peak during the early 18th century. On the other
hand, although some of the material compiled in the work appears to be quite archaic,
reflecting locally preserved traditions dating from well before the Mongol conquest, let
alone the Junghar invasion, it is also quite possible that the work in its present forms
was not put together until the second half of the 19th century, in the aftermath of
Sayrām's last foreign conquest, by the Russians ; and indeed, no manuscript copy
clearly datable to before the Russian conquest has so far been identified.
14 If the historical circumstances reflected in the work's contents and compilation are
difficult to trace, however, the style of religious thought that permeates the sacred
history of Sayrām is somewhat easier to identify for comparison. Sayrām was long
regarded as a special, sacred town, closely associated with sacred narratives about
Central Asia's Islamization and with its most popular saints ; these associations may
reflect the early Islamization of Sayrām/Isfïjāb, and above all its status not only as an
outpost of Islam on the steppe frontier, but as the venue for the parallel processes of
Islamizing native traditions and nativizing Islamic lore. It is, after all, those processes
that we find reflected, in their latest pre-Soviet stage of development, in our sacred
history of Sayrām (and here I would mention, without digressing to explore the issue,
that both processes are resuming now in post-Soviet Sayrām) ; without presuming to
find specific echoes of the earliest phase of those processes, we can assume that this
earliest phase must go back, in essence, to the 9th century.
15 Specific echoes come only later, however. By the late 13th century, for example,
Sayrām was said to have been the native town of Khizr ;19 it is a small step from there to
the claim made in our 19th-century sacred history, that Khizr's parents lie buried in the
city, and that step was no doubt virtually inevitable insofar as a grave of Khizr himself
was out of the question as a tangible, physical sign of his association with the town. In
any event, Khizr's appropriation for Sayrām signals the nativized strength of Islamic
narrative traditions in the town. From roughly the same period, on the other hand, we
find evidence of Sayrām's continued association with Turkic and Inner Asian traditions,
as the town was identified, in the Islamized version of the legendary history of Oghuz
Khān reflected in Rashid ad-Din's world history, as the capital of the ancestor of the
Turks, Yāfith b. Nüh ;20 the sacred history evokes similar associations by presenting a
succession of specific rulers linked by name and titulature with Turkic traditions.
16 By the middle of the 14th century, moreover, Sayrām figured prominently in a cycle
of narratives, focused on Central Asia's Islamization as led by a figure called Ishāq Bāb,
that directly parallel some of those reflected also in the sacred history of Sayrām
(including, for instance, the rulership of « Mansur Khamir ») ; these narratives linked
Sayrām to local' shrine traditions and sacred lore associated with other nearby towns
stretching from the middle and lower Syr Darya basin, from Otrār to Jand, eastwards as
far as Awliyā Atā(the medieval Tarāz, or Talās, known in Soviet times as Jambïl and
now renamed « Taraz »).21 Those narratives were first recorded in connection with a
14th-century Sufi shaykh, known as Ismā'il Atā, who was regarded as a descendant of
Ishāq Bāb's brother, and who dwelled near a mountain south of Sayrām called
Qazghird ; the mountain, known now as Qazï'qurt, appears often as a central toponym

in the sacred history of Sayrām, and came to be known in popular tradition asthe place
where Noah's Ark came to rest22 (this tradition, too, is at least echoed in the sacred
history).
17 As we will see, the sacred history of Sayrām assigns a prominent place in local lore to
the figure of Idris as well, and the central role of Idris' shirt in the town's sacred history
suggests that his image in Islamic lore as the « culture hero » who first wore cloth
clothing instead of animal skins, and who became thereby the patron-saint of tailors,
was well understood in local lore ;23 in this regard we may suppose that a reference,
dating to the early 15th century, to a mazār of « Darzi Bābā » (darzi = « tailor »),
located « near Chimkent »24, might echo local tradition already current about Idris.
18 By the 16th century, further, it would appear that local tradition of Sayrām had laid
claim to the legacy of the pivotal Central Asian saint more closely associated with the
nearby town of Turkistān, namely Khoja Ahmad Yasavi, who against the record of
earlier traditions was declared to have been a native of Sayrām ;25his parents' graves
are noted in the sacred history of Sayrām, and Sayrām is today an important focus of
regional lore associated with the Yasavi tradition. By the 19th century, finally, Sayrām
had come to be regarded as a town especially marked by the kind of sanctity signaled
above all by the sacralizing presence of saints' shrines, in great numbers. A history of
the khanate of Qoqand written around 1870 refers to Sayrām as « the [resting] place of
most of the Turkic shaykhs » (mashā'ikh-i atrākiyah),26and the notion of Sayrām as
the spiritual home of « innumerable saints » [Sayrām-da sansïz bāb] was frequently
invoked bothin popular poetry, and in shamanic invocations, addressed to helping
spirits, recorded among Qazaq baqsi's beginning about a century ago.27
19 Aside from these echoes of local lore, we have no sources from before the second half
of the 19th century through which to confirm or refute the circulation of the traditions
we find in the sacred history of Sayrām, or of other local hagiological lore not
incorporated into that work. The same uncertainty prevails with regard to the shrine
traditions as well, whose antiquity may be presumed but rarely pinpointed. Most of the
surviving structures at the shrines appear to date only from the 19th century ; this in
part explains why the shrines of Sayrām attracted little attention as archeological sites
or architectural monuments — and Soviet scholarship only rarely considered shrines as
anything else — but the relative youth of the structures may in fact reveal only the
vitality of the shrine tradition, as an indication of frequent renovation and
reconstruction.28
20 These considerations allow us to suppose, then, that elements of traditional lore
suitable to suggest as the narrative foundations for the Saryām tarikhi were in
circulation at least as early as the 13th century and continued to be developed down
through the 19th century. Many of these traditions, indeed, and still others of less
certain antiquity echoed in the sacred history of Sayrām, are also preserved separately,
in independent familial traditions of southern Kazakstan, in local lore of nearby cities
such as Tashkent, Awliyā Atā/Taraz, and Turkistan, and in various genealogical and
hagiographical traditions (some of this material was recorded in pre-Soviet times, but
much is just now coming to light).29 It must be stressed, however, that they are used
quite independently in the account of Sayrām's sacred history, in which they have been
integrated, almost seamlessly and with virtually no allusion to other environments in
which they are preserved as well, to present a coherent and connected, if inevitably
contrived, narrative of a particular town's hallowed origins and repeated divine
protection. What matters in this sacred history is not the connection of these no doubt
originally independent narratives with specific familial lineages,with nearby towns, or
with particular Sufi communities ; such connections are almost never mentioned. What

matters is their connection with Sayrām : other ties are all but dissolved.30
The Sacred History of Sayrām

21 After all we must conclude that without a clearer idea than the foregoing discussion
allows regarding the antiquity of the traditions preserved in the various versions of the
sacred history of Sayrām,31it is difficult to assess the environment in which the work
took shape in its surviving form ; nevertheless, the apparent provenance of all copies
from the early years of Russian rule in Central Asia suggests that the work's wider
circulation, if not its actual compilation, may be linked with the communal anxieties
evoked by foreign, non-Muslim domination — of which the Russian conquest was only
the most recent example. It was, in any case, from the era of Russian rule that we first
find allusions to a written work on Sayrām's antiquities, as Russian scholars and
officials began to take note of the town's extensive network of shrines and hagiological
narratives.
22 A Russian archeologist, writing in 1928, remarked that « what is especially
characteristic of Sayrām, and distinguishes it from other towns and from cities of later
emergence, is the extraordinary abundance of holy places or mazārs, which are the
pride of [its] inhabitants and are described in a special risāla. »32The latter reference is
one of several allusions to what is clearly a copy of a version of the sacred history of
Sayrām under consideration here. Another discussion of such a work, by a Russian
historian of Central Asia, appeared in 1923 ;33 a Soviet ethnographer mentioned a
manuscript of a similar work in 1975 ;34 yet another copy is mentioned in a review of
archeological sites in southern Kazakstan, withreference to an unpublished Russian
translation ;35 another copy appears to have been examined by a Tsarist-era
ethnographer and archeologist who collected extensive material on Central Asian
shrines ;36 a version was evidently lithographed in Tashkent in 1884 ;37 what is clearly
another version of the work was published in Shïmkent in 1991 ;38 and three
uncatalogued 19th-century manuscripts are preserved in the Institute of Oriental
Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan in Tashkent.39No doubt additional
copies are still held in private hands, and may be brought to light as a result of changing
attitudes toward local religious history in post-Soviet Central Asia.
23 The two original manuscript versions I have been able to examine signal the variety
that may be expected in additional copies ; while clearly reflecting the same structure
and stock of traditions, the two copies differ substantially in language, volume, and
often content. We should no doubt expect to find that each copy amounts to a distinct
version of the « work », which itself must be understood not as a single text, but as a
body of traditions freely adjusted, condensed, expanded, and supplemented according
to the tastes of individual copyists or « sponsors », a similar « flexibility », which
should caution us against assuming we have a single work with an established (or
establishable) text, is also evident in the case of the 19th-century shrine guides for
Bukhara and Samarqand.40 Both manuscripts of the sacred history of Sayrām, however,
bear the generic « title » « Saryām tārikhi »and both include the two sections, of
roughly equal length, that together form the work as we have it. These sections do not
bear separate headings, but the second part begins with a new bismillāh and brief
introduction ;nevertheless, despite the likelihood that the two sections, and possibly
even portions within each section, were originally independent, no separate copies of
the two sections, let alone of smaller fragments of the work, have yet been identified.
24 The first section of the sacred history is the narrative that recounts Sayrām's origins,

tracing the rule of its ancient kings and affirming the foundational and protective
intervention of various prophets in the town's past ; the second section is the catalogue
of saints' shrines, first those within the city and then those found nearby.
The Narrative History

25 « History informs us », the account begins, « that there was a city named B.r.q.'.n »
— an unknown place name that from the logic of the narrative must be identical with or
close to Tarāz41 — « and that city had a ruler called Tekin-bāsh Malik » ;42 this ruler had
no son, and prayed to God for one, until one day the holy prophet Idris came to spend
the night in his home. Thereafter Tekin-bāsh's wife became pregnant, and this happy
event was credited to the presence of the holy visitor, who was honored with a fine robe
(khal'at) ; when his wife bore a son, Tekin-bāsh named the boy « Akhnūj Malik »,
which, we are told, means « guest » in Hebrew ( 'ibrï tili).43The name of the son, which
clearly reflects the name « Akhnuh » or « Akhnukh » — i.e., the Biblical Enoch — is
consistently written in these texts as « Akhnûj », and the difference in forms, rooted in
the placement of a single dot, is significant for indicating a written rather than
oraltransmission, at some point, for this story. The story's content, however, departs
even more strikingly from conventional Islamic lore in distinguishing « Akhnūj » from
Idris : Enoch is typically identified as Idris himself, but the sacred history of Sayrām,
for unclear reasons, splits him into two figures with quite different roles.
26 The account continues noting that Akhnūj Malik became king at age 15, upon his
father's death, and then began to ask his father's vazirs why he had been given that
name ; the vazirs told him the story of how he was born, and Akhnūj at once had Idris
found and brought before him. He honored Idris with fine robes, and also gave him in
marriage « a girl from among his own relatives » ; Idris then lived for several years in
the city of B.r.q.'.n — or, according to another copy, in the city called « Talāsh » (an
evident error for Talās, the form typically used in these texts to refer to Tarāz). In any
case, Idris then decided to build his own city at a considerable distance from « Talāsh »
(at this point both texts use this name) : he chose a site evidently called « the place of
the helmet »,44 built his city, and dwelled there for 27 (or 23) years, performing for the
people there the proper Islamic duty of « commanding the good » (amr-i ma'rūf).
Then, however, Idris resolved to build « an even bigger and better city », and with
several wise men decided on a spot between the Bādām river and the Aq river. There he
built the city of « Sayrām » with 400.000 homes, four gates, six ribāts at each gate, and
one well for each 100 dwellings. Sayrām is thus the second, more perfect city
established by Idris, and we hear no more about the first one.
27 Idris, the story continues, spent 30 years in Sayrām. He established a hermitage
(sawma'a) for himself, on the site where a prominent mosque of Sayrām (called here
the masjid-i jūy-ābi)45would later be built, and spent most of his time sitting there. The
city was still surrounded by a wilderness (changalistāri), however, and no one would
go outside the city until Idris, implored by Sayrām's people, went out and commanded
all the wild animals to go away and not to harm God's servants ; the creatures obeyed,
and the people were freed from danger. A brief excursus follows on the threenames of
Sayrām, two of which are declared to be of Hebrew origin : the Arabic « Madinat al-
bayzā », we are told, is the Hebrew equivalent of « Üriing-kent »,a rather archaic
Turkic phrase meaning « White City » ; the Iranian « Isbijāb » is said to be the Hebrew
name for « a dry and rocky place between two streams » ; and « Saryām » is identified
as the « Turki » designation for a rocky place between two streams.
28 The foundation story for Sayrām concludes with an account, focused on Idris'

departure from the town he had established, that evokes his reputation as a tailor and
as the first person to wear a sewn shirt instead of animal skins. « He gathered the
people and khojas of Saryām, took off his blessed old shirt (köylak), and gave it to
them ; he said to the people of Saryām, “If after me trouble and distress should come
upon you, use my shirt as your intercessor (shaft'), and no affliction or enemy will be
able to harm you.” ». Idris thus bade farewell, and the people of Sayrām took his shirt
and placed it inside a cave. After several years there was a plague in the city, which took
the lives of one quarter of its people ; the inhabitants of Sayrām searched but were
unable to find Idris' shirt (as we will see, however, it served its purpose during a later,
more urgent threat).
29 The account notes that in Idris' time, no city was greater than Saryām, and then turns
to the next phase of Sayrām's history, the time of the prophet Nūh. Nûh's summons to
the true faith was accepted by only a few, who became Muslims ; the rest were
destroyed in the storm (tūfān) sent by God, but Nūh and those who accepted the faith
entered the ship and were saved. Nūh then made Saryām flourish (ābād) once again ;
beyond this we are told only of a curious custom among the people of Saryām in the era
immediately after the flood. « The people (él) of Saryām would make someone their bék
each year ; when the new year came, they would kill him. Later they would make
someone a bék for each gate ;46 and when he reached the end of his year, they would kill
him too ». This story, unfortunately, is not further elaborated ; it seems to echo
traditions of sacral kingship involving a prescribed term followed, in some cases, by
ritual execution, that are paralleled in various ancient societies, and are echoed in an
Inner Asian context in stories focused on the Khazars and on the Turks of Mongolia,
but it is regrettable that we cannot be more certain of its sources.
30 After several years in which this custom was maintained — the story is evidently
intended to show how Sayrām was ruled between the Flood and the next conqueror —
Jamshid emerged and conquered the world ; and so inall the world there was tyranny.47
At this point we find a somewhat garbled account of an army commander of Jamshid's
called « Ashqar-sālār », who was sent to « the province of Turkistān » ; he came upon
Tàshkand, where there was a mound (tepe) that existed, we are told, even in the time of
Sām b. Nūh. One night the mound collapsed, 40 vats (khums) emerged from inside it,
and in each vat were 200 mithqāls of gold ; Ashqar-sālār took all of it and sent it to be
placed inside Sayrām's treasury. Then he came to Sayrām himself and was greeted by
the city's elders ; they provisioned his troops, and as he departed he imposed a tax of
ten bātmans48of wheat upon each of the city's 100,000 dihqāns.49
31 Next Iskandar Dhū'1-Qarnayn conquered the world, built Samarqand, and marched
toward the east ; he came upon Sayrām, and resolved to select a ruler for the town from
among the khojas. They affirmed mat there was no one wiser among them than the
Prophet Khizr ; Iskandar liked him too, showed him great esteem, and conferred his
entire army upon him. The account does not explicitly emphasize that Khizr was a
native of Sayrām, though it implies as much through his selection by the townsmen as
their « ruler » ; as we will see, however, Khizr's association with Sayrām plays an
important role in the town's sacred history as outlined in this work, and it may well be
that we should see in his prominence a separate tradition paralleling the focus on Idris.
In any case, Khizr's special relationship with Sayrām is attested, as noted, already at the
beginning of the 14th century.
32 The narrative, however, next turns to a series of harsh and accursed oppressors and
the heroes who undo or evade them. The first is Nimrūd, who sought to cast Ibrāhim in
the fire ; he charged the people of Sayrām with delivering 40,000 donkey-loads of
firewood, but Ibrāhim had relatives in Sayrām who turned hostile (yāv bolup) and

refused to give the firewood to Nimrūd's agents. The story is left undeveloped,
however ; we are told merely that some of these relatives managed to flee and were
spared Nimrūd's wrath, and mat God made the fire like a rose-garden for Ibrāhim.
Beyond this, the account affirms that Ibrāhim lived for twelve years inSayrām, and
established his hermitage on the site of the « Mosque of the Cloak » (palās masjidi).50
33 Next the accursed Nūh b. Basra51 conquered the world, and tyranny (érklik) reigned ;
he sought to conquer Sayrām, but failed, and finally set about destroying the town's
citadel (qal'a). It was at this point that the people of Sayrām found the blessed shirt of
Idris and brought it forth as their intercessor. At that moment a piece (késak) fell from
the top of the citadel's wall and struck Nūh b. Basra, who died and fell from his horse ;
one foot remained caught in his stirrup, however, and before anyone could take hold of
his horse, « it dragged him and left his bones atop Qāzûghûrt mountain. »52 Here we
are reminded that Idris had declared, « I will always pray to God for this city's well-
being and prosperity, and until the Day of Resurrection not one of its streets will be
destroyed. »53
34 The next conqueror and oppressor, Fir'awn (i.e., Pharaoh), likewise tried to take
Sayrām but could not ; in his days 'Isā lived in the city for four years, and at first most
of the city's people were Magians and Christians (rnûgh tarsa). Some of them came to
the true faith, while others did not, until those who did not were struck by famine.
Sayrām itself was preserved by God's protection, and people came from all around to
get the food available there. Then Nûshirvān the Just conquered the world, and gave
the region of Turkistān and Sayrām to his son « Yazdjir Malik » ; Yazdjir came to
Sayrām and drove out the Magians and Christians, killing some of them. He lived in the
city for 13 years, and established his palace54 there at a place called mahār-téfa ; the
account identifies the borders of this palace (or, in another version, the citadel he also
built), as Shirkent, Chumushlaghu, Chimkent, and Mahār-téfa.55
35 By a standard reckoning the time of Nūshirvān would bring us close to the time of the
Prophet Muhammad, and in this instance the history of Sayrām adheres to a relatively
more recognizable chronological sequence. Two stories are told about the Prophet
Muhammad's dealings with Sayrām ; he too, like Idris, Nūh, Khizr, Ibrāhim, and 'Isā, is
said to have spent time in the town. According to the first anecdote, the Prophet
assembled his Companions and came to Sayrām for ziyārat (to whom this visitation
was intended is not specified, but mention of it may allude to another episode noted
shortly) ; he and his Companions stayed in the city for a year, and the infidels, who
were very numerous in Sayrām, fled from them and took refuge in the citadel. We are
not told if or how they were dislodged ; rather, there follows a story in which Khālid b.
Walid, amazed to see the very waters of Sayrām break into pieces before his eyes,
declares to the Prophet that this wonder was evoked by « fear of our swords » ; it is left
to 'Ali to explain that « the lands of 'Ajam are very cold », and that what Khālid had
seen, without understanding it, was simply ice.
36 The next narrative belongs to the genre of mi'rāj stories, a common motif in tales of
Islamization and legends of origin, in which the Prophet blesses a people or a place
during his ascent through the heavens ; here we find a quite interesting variation on
this theme. According to this account, when the Prophet looked out over the world
during the mi'raj, he saw a great light stretching from a certain place on earth all the
way to the Throne ('arsh) of God ; he asked Jibrā'il about it, and Jibrà'il explained that
this was the light, of divine origin, that illuminated the city called Madinat al-bayzà.
The Prophet affirmed that it was truly a fine and blessed city, and expressed his desire
to circumambulate it ; Jibrā'il was commanded by God, « Lift up the city of Madinat al-
bayzà to the sky, and let my beloved Muhammad circumambulate it. » Jibrà'il thus

raised Sayrām up to the heavens, and the Prophet performed two rak'ahs of namāz at
the site of the masjid-i jûy-ābï, he also recited a prayer (du'ā) of blessing for the city,
given in utterly garbled Arabic but explained as meaning, « Not a single part of the city
of Sayrām will be destroyed down to the Day of Resurrection, nor will there be any
famine. » At last, Jibrā'il put Sayrām back in its place, but it was nevertheless « forty
cubits (qari) higher than other cities. »56
37 After this passage, we come upon the beginnings of a more connected legendary
history of Sayrām that seems to echo, if faintly, the early Islamic period as reflected in
local traditions of the Syr Darya basin. The names ofseveral rulers mentioned in the
account echo, as noted, those of historical figures from the pre-Mongol era, but there is
a far closer correspondence with names and titles known from the narrative of
Islamization focused on Ishāq Bāb ; and like that narrative, first recorded in the 14th
century, the sacred history of Sayrām links the town's ruling house with that of
Kāshghar (though without ever losing its focus on Sayrām), as noted below.57
38 After the Prophet's visitation, the account continues, Sayrām's sultān was Sebük-
Tekïn-bàsh,58in whose time thievery was unknown ; he ruled 70 years, and built 4,000
mosques. He was succeeded by a figure called Qarā Bughrā Khān,59described as mild
and just ; he dwelled in Talās, and appointed his relative (he is later called Qarā Bughrā
Khān's ini, « younger brother »), Chaghir Tekin, to rule in Sayrām. The latter ruler,
although he was supportive of students and scholars, was oppressive ; once when hewas
building a city, which he named Qūtlûq Ként,60 he forced the people of Sayrām to
transport the mud and bricks61 for the city's buildings, prompting them to appeal to
Qarā Bughrā Khān, who became angry upon hearing of his kinsman's oppression. He
decided to trap Chaghir Tekin with a ruse, and spread the rumor that he was leaving to
perform the hajj ; « he passed through Sayrām and pitched his tent at the base of
Qāzghûrt mountain », sending this message to Chaghir Tekin : « I am going on a
journey toward the qibla ; I entrust the kingdom to you. Let no foreigner (yāt kisi)
become master of the kingdom. » Chaghir Tekin, however, became covetous of power
and held a royal audience ; Qarā Bughrā Khān then confronted him,62 accused him of
oppressing God's servants, not fearing God, and claiming divinity « like Shaddad », and
held him while the executioner killed him on the banks of the Bādām river. His coffin
(tābūt) was placed, we are told, « next to his own ribāt on the road that goes up to
Qaràmūrt. »63
39 Despite his inglorious end, Chaghir Tekin is a prominent figure in the narrative (and
is mentioned in the shrine catalogue, as we will see) ; the account here not only
reaffirms that he used to treat scholars favorably and behave humanely (insānlik qïldi),
but lists his good works as well. There were, in his time, 444 muftis in Sayrām, and
Chaghir Tekin used to give to each mufti « 100 bātmans of wheat and 10,000 gold
coins (āltūn yarmāq) ; he renovated old ribāts throughout the country, as well as one
of Sayrām's principal mosques.64 All waqfs still existing in Sayrām, furthermore,
aresaid to have been established by Chaghir Tekin, in support of « 50 madrasas [...]
from Qūylūq » [or, in MS 12708, « Tūtlùq »] as far as the border of the Keläs (i.e., the
Keles river). The ambivalent depiction of Chaghir Tekin, who in the shrine catalogue is
even more straightforwardly included among the saints whose graves sanctify Sayrām,
may suggest that traditions about two figures with similar names have been conflated,
or simply that one historical figure inspired different sorts of traditions among different
communities, which were only clumsily reconciled.
40 In any case, the account then, for once, draws an explicit connection with a separate
tradition. Qarā Bughrā Khān, 'Ali Khān, Hasan Khān, and Chaghir Tekin Khān were all
brothers, we are told, as two additional figures are named alongside the subjects of the

preceding narrative ; the four brothers sent their wise and beautiful sister65 to the
region of Kāshghar, and for this reason (though we must assume a rather flexible
understanding of a « Lineage »), « all the Kāshghar khāns are from the lineage of the
holy Qarā Bughrā Khān. »66The account then turns abruptly to a figure who is evidently
to be understood as one of these khāns of Kāshghar — namely the Arslān Khān
mentioned next as the ruler of Sayrām — before recounting a division of the kingdom
that seems to dispose, finally, of the Kāshghar branch. In Arslān Khān's time, the
account affirms, the town boasted 300,000 « flourishing palaces » [ma'mûr sarāy],
and 400,000 windmills ; inside the citadel, further, were 50 madrasas, upon each of
which Arslān Khān bestowed 50 gold pieces and 100 sheep. It was also in his time that
the arïq (irrigation canal) of the Bādām river was dug. Arslān Khān assigned
responsibility for this work to various groups in turn, but a story is told of one group
that, for reasons that are not explained, killed Arslān Khān's agent when its turn
came ;67 consequently the khān imposed the blood-price on the community, and levied
a tax of one-half tenge on each person. We are told, further, that at that time there were
10,000 each of blacksmiths, firewood collectors, and soapmakers working in Sayrām,
and that Arslān Khān's era was one free of tyranny. In his time, finally, the citadel
(qal'à) of Sayrām was repaired and strengthened, with four gates, and walls 19 cubits
thick and 19 cubits high ; 100 (or 1000) master craftsmen directed the work, and
12°,000 persons labored for ten years, each receiving in exchange 100 bātmans of
wheat and 100 gold pieces.
41 Then follows a somewhat obscure passage outlining the division of « the realm »
between Arslān Khān and 'Abd al-Khāliq Khān, who as noted are in one version
portrayed as nephews of Qarā Bughrā Khān, 'Ali Khān, Hasan Khān, and Chaghir Tekin
Khān ; in one version (MS 11367), both are said to have been rulers over Otrār, and the
division leaves Arslān Khān in control in Sayrām, with 'Abd al-Khāliq Khān ruling in
"Qarā Asmān" ;68according to the other version, 'Abd al-Khāliq alone was the khān of
Otrār, and upon the division of the kingdom, Sayrām fell to Arslān Khān and Otrār
together with « kh.rāsmān »69fell to 'Abd al-Khāliq. The passage may be understood,
no doubt, as yet another allusion to links between the ruling house of Sayrām and that
of Kāshghar, a theme stressed also in the Ishāq Bāb narratives ; whether this reflects
the obscuring of dynastic boundaries, as memory of the Qarākhānid conquest of Isfijāb
in 980 receded from historical significance, or a more conscious attempt (at some stage
in the narrative's development) to connect those two apparently separate dynasties is
impossible to say. In any case, we hear no more of 'Abd al-Khāliq or of the Kāshghar
lineage. We are told, rather, that Arslān Khan died in a plague « several years » after
the division of the kingdom, and that his successor in Sayrām was Sultan Mansūr
Khamir.
42 The latter figure is the subject of the longest extended narrative in the history of
Sayrām ;70 as noted, he appears also, though as a relatively minor figure (primarily a
genealogical place-holder), in the Ishāq Bāb narrative. The account of Mansūr Khamir
in the sacred history of Sayrām begins with a few comments on the eminent figures and
buildings of his era : it notes that two prominent religious leaders lived during Mansūr
Khamir's reign, the shaykh al-islām Ra'is al-Din, and the qāzi 'Abd al-Rahmān, and
that the minaret of the town's Friday mosque was built in his time as well, on land
purchased from 'Â'isha Khātūn, wife of a certain Ibrāhim, and converted into waqf (this
made possible, we are told, a meal every Friday prepared from 20 bātmans of flour and
20 sheep). The account also includes a curious section on three wondrous and
unmatched feats Mansūr claimed to have performed,71 but is otherwise taken up by a
long description of his troubled reign : first his divinely-aided victory over an infidel

army that attacked Sayrām, then his imprisonment by Ismà'il Sāmānï, his release upon
demonstrating his benevolent concern for his realm, befitting a true king, and finally
his return to Sayrām to live not as a king, but as a hermit.
43 The story of his tribulations begins with an attack on Sayrām. An enemy army came
and surrounded the city ; the Prophet, in a dream, charged Mansūr to drive them away,
and the ruler went up to the top of the wall during the middle of the night to survey the
enemy forces. There he found the Imam Ra'is al-Din, who as it turned out had had a
similar dream, and who explained that Mansūr had been honored with this dream for
his justice, and he himself for his knowledge. The two men prayed together, prepared to
go out against the foe, and saw that the enemy army stretched from Chumushlaghu to
Chimkent. Mansūr, trusting in God, took his sword and went out among them, and,
finding that the enemy troops were asleep, he slew so many that their corpses formed
heaps ; when at last the enemy troops became aware of what was happening, in their
confusion they killedone another, and the rest of them fled.72 One of them was captured
and asked why they had fled ; he explained that their attackers were seen to have lances
40 cubits long, which they simply could not withstand. Mansūr then returned to the
city and proclaimed that whoever wanted the spoils of war should go out and take what
he could ; and indeed the people of Sayrām went out and took the defeated army's
property, « and the poor people became wealthy ».
44 The real point of this story of Mansūr's single-handed defeat of the attackers, and of
his generosity in consigning all the spoils to his subjects, is evidently to highlight the
ungrateful response of the people of Sayrām, and thereby to set the stage for his
« retirement » from rulership several years later. Immediately after this victory,
unspecified « backbiters » denounced Mansūr to Ismā'il Sāmānï, the ruler of
Samarqand, who came, seized Mansūr, carried him off, and threw him in a dungeon.
Then, we are told, the infidels came — in one version, they are explicitly called the
infidels of Iran73— and besieged Sayrām, but after seven years they were unable to take
the city and went away. At that point, the relatives of Mansūr assembled and decided to
send several men to Samarqand to appeal for their kinsman ; in Samarqand Ismā'il
Sāmānï ordered them to be taken to Mansūr in his dungeon, but told two of his vazirs
to listen secretly and report all that was said. When they did so, what Mansūr had asked
his kinsmen seemed so strange to Ismā'il Sāmāni that he had the prisoner brought
before him to see if he had indeed lost his senses during his imprisonment.74 His
questions were four ; « Is it snowing a lot in the mountains ? Is the grass sprouting in
the steppe ? Are boys studying in school ? Are the believers ofmany minds or are they
united ? »75Mansūr explained to his captor that to ask those questions was obligatory
for him ; and when further pressed by his captor, he explained more fully. « I was the
ruler of that region ; it was my duty to be concerned about the inhabitants and to ask
about their condition. If snow is abundant on the mountains, the streams will be full of
water [or, in MS 12708, there will be a lot of water for crops] ; if the grass is abundant,
the worms and birds will eat their fill [and not harm the crops] ; if boys study in the
maktab, the prayers will be performed among the people, and Islam will be strong ; and
if the believers are of many minds, the realm is ruined, but if they are united in
concord, the realm will be at ease. »
45 This explanation impressed Ismā'ïl Sāmāni, who acknowledged Mansūr's kingly
character and set him free ; and the Prophet, too, we are told, appeared to Mansūr in a
dream and approved of his concern for his realm. As Mansūr returned to Sayrām, he
was greeted by all the people, including its khojas, to whom he declared that he would
no longer serve as ruler : « For seven years I lay in a dungeon, and I swore to God that I
should spend the rest of my life in a wretched state ; what was it that I did to deserve

being held captive in a dungeon for seven years ? Why would I become ruler again only
to once more be held captive in a dungeon ? » Instead he lived as a farmer,76 driving
400 yokes of oxen and providing 100,000 bātmans of wheat and 100 sheep to the poor
and orphaned each year ; each Friday he provided a meal prepared from 100 bātmans
of flour, and would then engage in worship. The account of his other good works
suggests that, ruler or not, he continued to look after the city : he established
āshkhānas on all four sides of the city and staffed them with servants to provide meals
to all who came : and he also had water brought into the city and ensured a sufficient
supply to irrigate its fields.
46 After Mansūr Khamir died, Sayrām was without a pādshāh for forty years ; the
infidels of Iran heard of this and took advantage of the opportunity to besiege the city
once more. The shaykh al-islām Ra'is al-Din was still alive, however, and an extended
passage recounts his calm assurance to the people that Sayrām was divinely protected
during this interregnum. First, he told them, Khizr comes every Monday during the day
and every Friday evening in order to circumambulate the graves of his parents ; no
enemy would be able to harm the city. He reminded them that the Prophet Muhammad
had prayed for Sayrām « several hundred years ago », that the prophets Idris and Dā'ûd
protected the city, and that the prophets 'Isāand Yûsha' and Ilyās were natives of
Sayrām and had also prayed for it77. After hearing the Imam Ra'is al-Din's reassurance,
the people of Sayrām found that the infidel troops were fleeing, and captured one of
them to bring before the Imam. He asked why they had run away, and the infidel
explained : his army numbered 50,000, he said, but when they had entered Sayrām,
they had seen a very tall person leading 100,000 troops, each armed with immensely
long lances ; « their lances reached us, ours did not reach them, and so we fled ». The
tall person was Khizr ; and the explanation again rehearses the blessings and
protections provided to Sayrām by so many prophets :
« Every Monday Khizr comes for ziyārat to the blessed graves of his parents ;
the holy Prophet prayed for this city a hundred years ago ; the holy Ibrāhim
lived here for twelve years, and it is mentioned in the Torah (tùrāyt) as well
that “Not a road of this city will be destroyed until the Day of Resurrection.”78 If
someone enters by one gate of this city and goes out by another, not a speck of
his sins will remain [or, in 12708, « he will be untouched by the fires of hell »].
[Whoever sits with people of Sayrām and eats a morsel of food with them, God
willing, will obtain abundant rewards.] If he gives food to fill one hungry person
there, it will be as if he has fed all the dervishes of Mecca. Whoever dies in this
city will never face the final questioning [of the Day of Judgment]. »79
47 The narrative resumes following this litany of blessings, and focuses on yet another
ruler connected with Sayrām. Sultān QarāTekin Atā, we are told, was a native of 'Irāq,
and had a slave named Aflah ; QarāTekin was a « saint by mystical experience, »80 and
used to read the Torah (tūrāyt) constantly. One day he « heard » (though it is implied
that he read this in the Torah) that there was a city called Madinat al-bayzāin
Turkistān, and that whoever should place one brick atop another on a building in that
city would never see the face of hell (or, in MS 12708, « would be spared from the fires
of hell »). QarāTekin immediately sent his slave Aflah to Sayrām with all his master's
wealth and with instructions to consult with the khojas and elders there, to buy up
suitable sites for mosques and ribāts, and to restore waqf-properties that had been
ruined. Aflah did as commanded, and the city was made to flourish ; when he had spent
all his money, he sent a messenger to QarāTekin for further instructions. Qarā Tekin
moved to Sayrām with his clan and relatives, and they pitched their tents at the base of
Qāzghûrt mountain. Aflah went to greet his master, who asked him what Sayrām was
like ; the slave told him Sayrām was indeed better than Qarā Tekin's place, and

suggested that his master « enter the city, walk about it, and see the structures built up
inside it ». At that moment, however, God's command went out to Azrā'il to take Qarā
Tekin's soul ; he thus died before entering Sayrām, but his body was taken and buried
inside the city, and thus he reached his goal.
48 Sayrām's sacred history ends abruptly with this episode.
The Shrine Catalogue

49 The shrine catalogue is presented here in summary form,81 but its style is already
quite simple and direct. In both sections an initial shrine is identified by the name of
the saint supposedly buried there (most often without extensive epithets), and
subsequent shrines are located roughly with directional indicators (and less often with
indications of distance) given in reference to the preceding shrine (or occasionally using
a shrine noted earlier as a reference point) ; regardless of whether locations are
indicated, however, the entries usually note whether the grave in question is marked by
some visible sign or not. In some cases we are given little more than the name of the
saint, but usually we find also some account of the saint's life and familial and spiritual
relationships, and occasionally longer anecdotes as well. As noted, the catalogue is
divided into two sections focused on saints buried inside and outside the city,
respectively ; eachsection includes approximately 30 saints, but entries in the first
section tend to be somewhat shorter than those in the second.
50 The saints whose shrines are noted represent several distinct types of figures. They
include :
51 1. figures mentioned in the narrative sacred history of Sayrām, both rulers and
scholars [I/8, I/15, II/26] as well as the parents of Khizr [II/14, II/24] ;
52 2. saints ascribed a role in Islamization and/or holy war, including some known from
other narrative traditions [II/1, II/2, II/31] ;
53 3. relatives of Khoja Ahmad Yasavi [I/6, I/11, II/28, II/32] or other figures linked
with lore about Yasavi [II/5, II/15] ;
54 4. figures identified as Sufi disciples of prominent saints of Naqshbandi (Khoja
Ahrār, Bahā' al-Dïn Naqshband) and Yasavi (e.g., Zangi Atā, Ismā'il Atā, Mawlānā
Shams Uzgandi) affiliation [I/12, I/13, I/16, I/17, I/21, II/3, II/9, II/19, II/23, II/27], as
well as figures identified as disciples of otherwise unidentified Sufi shaykhs [I/20, I/22,
I/26, I/27, I/28, II/11] ;
55 5. jurists and scholars otherwise unknown from available biographical sources [I/1,
I/24, II/8, II/10, II/18, II/21] ;
56 6. otherwise unknown figures of evident local prominence, to judge from the
frequent allusions to them as teachers or relatives of other saints [I/9, I/10, II/12, II/13,
II/17, II/22, II/23] ;
57 7. figures ascribed particular efficacy in resolving specific types of individual illnesses
or communal threats [I/2, I/25, II/l, II/8].
58 Several quite interesting figures do not fit neatly or exclusively into one of these
categories [I/4, I/14, I/29, II/5, II/15] ; and in addition, the account notes several
mosques or sites of mosques [I/3, I/18, I/28, II/16b], as well as two sites linked
especially closely to the « men of the unseen world » [I/28, II/8].
Inside the City

59 1. Mawlānā 'Imād al-Dïn Isbijābi, a khalifa of Sa'd al-Dïn Nishāpūri ; he was born in

« Jùmūshlāghù », but taught in Herat ; MS 11367 includes a longer story about his
seven school-companions who came to visit him, and, aware of his reputation in his
native region, to test him.
60 2. Khoja 'Abd al-Samad, known as Kôk Tonluq Atā [MS 12708, Kôk Ton Atā],
regarded as a protector against whooping cough (kôk yùtāl) in children.
61 3. The mosque of Idris, without further details.
62 4. Imām Abu 'AU Hanafi, whom some associate with « Muhammad Hanafiya ».82 he
served at the mosque of Idris, and a story is told of his weekly disappearances, each
Thursday, and of how it was ascertained that these were due to his miraculous travel to
the Ka'ba [MS 12708 calls him « Imām Hana-fi » and says only that he taught and
served as imam at the mosque, omitting the story and the link with « Muhammad
Hanafiya »].
63 5. Sūfi Nawrūz, a contemporary of the preceding [who is called « Imām Hanafiya » in
MS 11367, « Imām 'Ali » in MS 12708].
64 6. The mother of the holy Sultān Khoja Ahmad Yasavi : MS 11367 adds here that it
would be improper (bi-adab) to mention her name (her shrine is nevertheless well
known as that of Qara-sach Ana, « Black-Haired Mother », whence the compiler's
reticence may be understood as a sign of his reluctance to mention the hair of the holy
woman to whom he was na-mahram. MS 12708 notes here that four saints are buried
at her shrine, namely Khoja Ibrāhim, Khoja Sulaymān, Khoja Salim, and Dā'ūd ; MS
11367 names four saints under the following entry, but later (see N° I/11) refers back to
the first of them as being buried at the grave of Yasavi's mother suggesting that MS
12708 more accurately reflects the tradition. In any case, MS 11367 gives their names
thus : « Khoja Ibrāhim, Khoja Sulaymān, Khoja Tir-tarāsh [“arrow-maker”] ātlarï
Khoja Salim » (the phrasing would seem to indicate that the real name of Khoja Tir-
tarāsh was Khoja Salim, but most likely the text is corrupt, and Khoja Salim was
intended as the fourth saint). Both manuscripts affirm that there is no longer any trace
of these four saints' graves. (This shrine was noted in Masson ; visited in April 1995.)
65 7. Nūr al-Din Atā, called « Bābā Taghāy Vali » (taghāy = « maternal uncle ») [MS
12708 gives his first appellation as « Nûr al-Din Àmāni »].
66 8. Mawlānā Rā'is al-Din, the contemporary of « Sultān Mansūr Khamir Atā »referred
to in the narrative history ; MS 11367 alone recounts here a slightly different version of
their cooperation in warding off an enemy attack (see above, note 72).
67 9. Khoja Nasir al-Din Vali, a murid of Mir 'Ali Bābā [N° II/13].
68 10. Khoja Abu Nasr Fārsā, the son of the same Mir Ali Bābā ; MS 11367 alone tells of
his father's approval of this figure's vision of two cities, explained as heaven and hell
[MS 12708 gives his name as « Khoja Nasr Fāri-sā »]. His grave is longer visible. [His
name echoes that of the son of Khoja Muhammad Pārsā, the famous disciple of Bahā'
al-Din Naqshband].
69 10a. Shāh 'Abd al-Bāq, mentioned only in MS 12708 ; his grave is not visible.
70 11. Ibrāhim Atā : both versions note that there are four figures called Ibrahim Atā
among the saints of Sayrām, two inside and two outside the city ; of the first group, one
is in the cemetery of Yasavi's mother [N° I/6], and the other, evidently this one, is said
(in MS 12708 alone) to be at the base of Sayrām's qal'a (discussion of the other two is
deferred until the second part of the shrine catalogue). Both versions note that some
people regard this Ibrāhim Atā as Yasavi's father. (Noted in Masson ; visited April
1995).
71 11a. Mir 'Ajam, mentioned only in MS 12708, with no further details.
72 12. Khoja Burhān [al-Din] Vali, called in MS 12708 a murid of « Khoja Ahrār Vali »,
but in MS 11367 a contemporary of Khoja Ahrār Vali and a murid of « Khoja Nizām al-

Dîn Khāmùsh Tāshkandi » (i.e., the figure typically cast as Khoja Ahrār's master) ; his
grave is not visible, according to MS 11367.
73 13. Khoja Ismā'il Pùstïn-dùz (« the furrier »), identified as a murid of « Khoja Shams
al-Din Uzgandi » (and in MS 11367 alone as a contemporary of « Qāsim Shaykh
Karmi », i.e. the 16th-century Yasavi saint Qāsim Shaykh Karminagi) ; his grave is not
visible, according to MS 11367.
74 14. Shaykh Kamāl al-Din Bayzāvi, called Bozlaq Atā because he « bellowed »83 in
mourning for his son who perished during a plague that struck Sayrām. (The site was
shown to us as the shrine of « Bozluq Ata » in April 1995.)
75 14a. Hājji Nazar Pāyband, mentioned only in MS 12708, without further details.
76 15. Sultān Mansūr Khamir Atā, mentioned in both versions with reference to
narratives recounted earlier.
77 16. Hāfiz al-Din Bākharzi [so MS 12708 ; MS 11367 here gives his nisba as
« Bākharzin »], a murid of Ishāq Atā (MS 11367 alone further identifies the latter as the
son of Ismā'il Atā) ; his grave is not visible, according to MS 11367.
78 17. Shaykh 'Attār Vali, a murid of « Shah Naqshband Bukhāri » (MS 11367 alone,
though linking him more strongly with Bahā' al-Din Naqshband — he clearly echoes the
latter's well-known disciple 'Āla' al-Din 'Attār — further identifies him with Farid al-Din
'Attār and relates a story about his encounter with a beggar drawn from traditions
about the eminent poet).
79 18. The mosque of Khizr, called the masjid-i qazā.
80 19. Sayyid Badr al-Din, a contemporary of Mawlavî Jāmï.
81 20. Mawlana Nāsir al-Din Bayzāvï, a murid of « Mir Bahā' al-Din Yak-pā »
[N° II/17].
82 21. Khoja Husayn Saryāmi [his nisba is given as « Bayzāvi » in MS 12708], a murid of
Zangi Atā ; MS 11367 alone adds that this Khoja Husayn took care of tending Zangi
Atā's cattle when Zangi Atāwas busy providing guidance to the people, and through this
service attained his spiritual goal.
83 22. Khoja Hakim Akhcha-lik, identified in MS 11367 alone as a native of Akhcha, a
dependency of Balkh, who came to Sayrām by his master's command ; his master is
identified only as « Mawlāna Sayf ad-Din », and a story is told of Khoja Hakim's role in
presenting his master's case before Khizr, who was to choose either Mawlana Sayf ad-
Din or a certain « MawlanāAhmad Samarqandi » to enter the ranks of the chihil-tan
(none of this appears in MS 12708, which notes only, as affirmed in MS 11367 as well,
that his grave is not visible).
84 23. Mustafā Quli Khoja, identified as a contemporary of Shaykh Kamàl al-Din
Juvānmard [in MS 12708, he is called a contemporary of « Shah Kamāl Jùmard » ;
N° II/21 is the grave of a figure identified in MS 11367 alone as a son of Shaykh Kamāl
al-Din Juvànmard] ; his grave is not evident. This figure is of interest because of the
prominence, in local tradition of Sayrām reported by Ivanov and Masson, identifying a
shrine of « Mustafa-qul » or « Mustaba-qul » as that of a son of Ahmad Yasavi ; the
shrine of a figure bearing this name is mentioned, in MS 11367 [see N° II/32], as that of
a grandson of Yasavi (mentioned in Masson).
85 24. 'Allāma Tāj al-Din [thus in MS 12708 ; MS 11367 gives the form « ‘Allāma
Tājdin »], said to be the master of all the muftis (said to number 400 in MS 11367) of
Sayrām.
86 25. Shaykh Vali [called « Sultān Vali » in MS 12708], called Qābiz Atā because if
someone appeals to his spirit when gripped by pain (qabz), the saint relieves the pain if
God so wills (MS 11367 adds that this saint "partook of God's quality of qahhār-lik', i.e.
of the divine wrath).

87 26. Khoja 'Abd al-Rahmān and 27. Khoja 'Abd al-Rahim, two brothers who were
murids of Shaykh Abu Sa'id Otrāri ; MS 11367 says they both performed the duty of
spreading prayer-rugs (farrāsh-Uk) in a local mosque, while MS 12708 says they served
as watchmen in the Masjid-i Palas.
88 28. Shaykh Ishāq Vali, a murid of Shaykh Nūr al-Din Tāshkandi ; some call him the
« gatekeeper » (darvāza-bān) of Sayrām.
89 29. The mosque of the mardān al-ghayb [MS 12708 alone gives this designation, but
MS 11367 describes the same place], where the people of the unseen world gather from
evening until dawn to confer together ; no trace of the mosque itself remains.
90 30. Nāsir al-Din Barāq, the son of Shaykh Ishāq (N° I/28), who is said to have gained
the appellation « Barāq » because his blessed eyebrows were thickly overgrown and
practically covered up his eyes ;84 his grave is not visible, according to MS 11367.
91 At this point the first section ends, and the author appeals to those who examine the
book to correct it, since there is no longer any sign of the graves of many of the saints,
and because he had abbreviated what he found in books of history even in the case of
those of which some trace remained.
Outside the City

92 In MS 12708 this section begins immediately with 'Abd al-'Aziz Bāb ; in MS 11367 we
find this brief and evidently truncated listing : « Ishāq Bāb ; second, the holy Yuvāsh
Bāb85was the brother of Ishāq Bāb ; third, the holy 'Abd al-'Aziz,... » (continuing as in
the entry below).
93 1. 'Abd al-'Aziz Bāb, called « the best and foremost and most perfect of all the
eminent [saints] who are in Saryām ». He was, the account affirms, among the tābi'in,
and was the standard-bearer ('alam-dār) of Ishāq Bāb, and for this reason they call him
"Khoja 'Alamdār Bābā" in Tashkent ; what is there, however, is his qadam-jāy. His
grave in Sayrām is said to be a place where prayers are answered (ijābat-i du 'a), and
the account makes it clear that its power is felt in a communal sense :
« Whenever some misfortune befalls the region of Saryām, if the people of the
region will offer a certain amount as sadaqa, pray at his grave, and appeal to
his noble spirit, then God willing that affliction will be removed. The difficulties
of many people have become easy at this shrine ; and it is hoped that from now
on whoever seeks aid from this person will not go away in despair. »86
94 The account notes further that he was martyred in holy war with the infidels, and
that some affirm that he left one child (specified as a daughter in MS 11367), while
others say he had no children. (Visited in April 1995.)
95 2. Sayyid Khoja Khān Atā, identified as the son of Awliyā Atā (i.e., the patron saint of
Tarāz/Talās/Jambïl, usually identified also as « Qarā Khān ») ; his shrine, the account
says, was built by Amir Timūr, but was destroyed and rebuilt (of brick, says MS 12708,
but of stone according to MS 11367) in the time of « Amir Nawrūz Barāq Khān » (the
latter figure is clearly identifiable with the Shïbānid ruler of Tashkent in the mid-16th
century, called Nawrûz Ahmad Khān, or Barāq Khān).87
96 3. Ismā'ïl Atā, called here the « son » of the holy Muhammad Darvish Atā (this brief
notice would appear to refer to the Yasavi saint of the early 14th century known as
Ismā'ïl Atā, whose Sufi lineage is linked to Ahmad Yasavi through Sufi Muhammad
Dānishmand, but whose father is called, in early sources, Ibrāhim Atā ; this Ismā'il Atā,
likewise according to early sources, was buried in the town now called Turbat, after his
grave and that of his son, about halfway between Sayrām and Tashkent).

97 4. Hājji Khoja Atā, identified only as the son of « Bikja Atā » (the latter name
resembles those of « Biktāw Ata » and « Bigich Atā » invoked by the Qazaq shaman
recorded by Divaev).
98 5. The master (ūstādh) of Khoja Ahmad Yasavi : the text in MS 12708 reads, against
all probability, as if this is the grave of Ahmad Yasavi himself, but MS 11367 seems
more clearly to indicate that the grave is that of Yasavi's teacher, called here « Shaykh
Shihāb al-Dïn Isbijābi » ; this might be understood as an allusion to the widespread
tradition identifying Ahmad Yasavi as a disciple of Shihāb al-Din Suhravardi. However,
MS 11367 adds an extended narrative drawn from popular lore about Yasavi's
relationship with Arslān Bābā (the episode in which Yasavi, as a boy, walks backward
with the Qur'ān on his head so as not to turn his back on his teacher, and in that state is
spied by Arslān Bābā, who had been commissioned by the Prophet to deliver Yasavi's
amanat, a date). If MS 11367 means to imply, by including this narrative, that « Shaykh
Shihāb al-Din Isbijābi » was the real name of Arslān Bābā, its claim that this figure's
grave is in Sayrām is hardly less improbable than a claim to find Ahmad Yasavi's tomb
there (Arslān Bābā's shrine is well-known near Otrār). None of this narrative about
Arslān Bābā appears in the corresponding account in MS 12708, which mentions only
that near this Shihāb al-Din's grave, « the holy Sultān Khoja (Ahmad Yasavi) ate the
blessed date (khurtnā), water came forth from his mouth, and several men, drinking of
that water, became saints (ahlu'llāh) » ; the account, evidently corrupt, then notes that
« there is a bridge there now », and evidently begins to affirm that « whoever, by that
bridge, [does something, e.g. drinks ?] », before turning abruptly to the following entry,
on Ibrahim Namad-pūsh (it may be, however, that the account is merely condensed,
and intended to situate the next grave with respect to the bridge). The allusion to
drinking water from Yasavi's mouth, in connection with the story of the date, and the
mention of a bridge, however, allow us to connect this garbled account from MS 12708
with an extended entry in MS 11367 devoted to the grave of « Sultān Sanjar Lāy-khūr »
(see N° II/15 ; MS 12708 mentions this figure's name but offers no narrative), whose
spiritual realization is explicitly linked to the story of Arslān Bābāpassing the date to
Yasavi.
99 6. Ibrahim Namad-pûsh, identified as a servant of 'Abd al-'Aziz Bāb ; his grave is not
visible.
100 7. Gharib Shāh Shaykh, the son of Hājji Khoja Atā [N° II/4] ; his grave is not visible.
101 8. Khoja Hasan Bayzāvi, identified as a scholar in the exoteric and esoteric sciences ;
his grave is said to be a gathering place for the abdāl and awtād, having been made a
ziyārat-gāh by the mardin al-ghayb after his death, and the account notes that « his
prayers have never been rejected » by God (his grave is nevertheless not visible).
102 9. Shāh Ghāziyàn Bābā, said to have been a murid of « Bābā-yi Sammāsi » (the
Khojagāni saint typically cast as the direct master of Bahā' al-Din Naqshband) ; he
performed the dhikr-i qalb, we are told, and wherever he lay down, everyone would
hear his heart saying « Allah, Allāh ».
103 10. Mawlānā Lutfullāh Saryàmï, « called by the people of Saryām “Bàbà-yi
Mashvarat” » (mashvara = « counsel ») ; he was a direct pupil of Qāzi Bayzāvi, wrote
37 books, and was for 19 years the most learned man in the region of Sayrām. MS 11367
alone adds an anecdote about his relationship with an unnamed ruler, in which the
scholar's justification for his own retirement from scholarship induces the pādshāh to
abandon his rule.
104 11. Hājji 'Abdullāh Saryāmi, a murid of ShaykhSayf al-Din Khwārazmi ; he performed
the pilgrimage to Mecca 52 times, for which reason he was called among the people
« Yïllagān Hājji ».88

105 11a. Iskandar Bābā, whose grave is not visible, mentioned only in MS 12708.
106 12. Padshāh Malik Bābā, a contemporary of Khoja Yûsuf Hamadāni (traditionally
cast as the spiritual ancestor of the Naqshbandiya) ; according to MS 11367 alone, the
two exchanged letters.
107 13. Mir 'Ali Bābā, called a sayyid and identified as the son of Pādshāh Malik Bābā ;
MS 11367 alone adds an apparently garbled passage seemingly affirming that after his
father's death, Mir 'Ali Bābā was served for 15 years by one « Muhammad Sharif Bāy
Ghijduvāni » (but more likely intending a reversal of those roles). Both versions affirm
that Mir 'Ali Bābā had two sons, Khoja Nasrullàh Fārsā and Khoja Fathullāh Majdhūb ;
some say their graves are beside their father's, some say they are elsewhere, and in fact,
the account concludes, their resting places are not known [nevertheless, Nos I/9 and
I/10 are « Khoja Nāsir al-Din », identified as a disciple of Mir 'Ali Bābā, and « Khoja
Abu Nasr Fārsā », identified as a son of Mir 'Ali Bābā, respectively]. (Visited in April
1995).89
108 14. Bibi Ghiyāth Anā, the mother of Khizr [her notice comes immediately before
N° II/12 in MS 12708].
109 15. Sultān Sanjar Lāy-khūr : in MS 12708 this entry comes after N° II/11a, and gives
only his name, but MS 11367, which notes that his shrine is on the bank of a stream,
adds an anecdote explaining the saint's name (lāy-khûr = « mud-eater »90) ; the story
alludes to the account of Ahmad Yasavi and Arslān Bābā noted in N° II/5 above (but
not found in MS 12708). He heard, the account explains, that after Arslān Bāb had
given the date (khurma) to AtāYasavi, the two of them sat beneath a bridge on the bank
of a stream. Sultān Sanjar came there and resolved that he would drink water from that
blessed spot, but it happened that there was no water in the arïq at that time ; so « he
ate of the mud of that place, and attained perfection ». [« Shaykh Sanjar Lāy-khûr » is
mentioned in the Jāddat al-'āshiqin, a hagiography from the second half of the 16th
century devoted to the Kubravi shaykh Husayn Khorezmi ; his eating of mud is noted as
an ascetic example that inspired Husayn Khorezmi during a period of seclusion in the
deserts of Khorezm91].
110 16. Qudratullāh Vali, whose grave is not evident ; in MS 11367 it appears that some
words are missing from a slightly longer passageindicating his relationship with some
other figure (« Qudratullah Khoja Vali Andïjāni-ge dākhil érdiler »).
111 16a. Shāh Jamāl al-Dïn, whose grave is not visible, mentioned only in MS 12708.
112 16b. A mosque, not further identified, is mentioned in MS 12708 alone.
113 17. Mir Bahā' al-Dïn Yak-pā, for whom MS 11367 alone presents an anecdote
explaining his name (yak-pā = « one-leg ») : he sought to rise from the ranks of the
saints (awliya) into those of me prophets (anbiya) ; but a blow from the unseen world
struck his leg, and he was left lame. [For this figure's disciple, see N° I/20].
114 18. Qāzi Khoja, identified as a commentator on the Qur'ān ; MS 12708 says only that
his grave is not now visible, but MS 11367 adds a long (and occasionally garbled)
anecdote about a ruler who sought from the 'ulamā a rivāyat legitimizing his marriage
to a woman (called « thrice-divorced ») whose lawfulness for him was questionable ;
several Hanafi jurists refused, but the ruler was advised to seek out the Shāfi'i scholar,
Qāzi Khoja. The ruler did so and made him qāzi over his entire realm ; the account
notes that some blame him for approving the ruler's plans in order to become qāzi, but
that in fact it is not known whether he approved it or not. Some say, the account
concludes, that when doing tafsir, he would indicate one judgment based on rules of
syntax, and another based on rules of morphology ; and the entire account is cited from
« a book of history » (sahifa-i tārikh).
115 19. Mawlana Hakim Isbijābi, identified as a son of Ishāq Atā ; the text in MS 11367,

evidently conflated again, notes that he attained perfection through his father, and then
mentions, without explanation, a « Khoja 'Abd-i Samï' Vali », the son of Ishāq Atā.
116 20. Khoja Islām, the son of « Khoja Hakim », evidently referring to me figure in the
preceding notice ; his grave is not visible.
117 21. Mawlānā Qutb al-Dïn 'Allāma Bayzāvï (called in MS 12708 « 'Allāma Qutb al-Dïn
Isbijābi »), identified in MS 11367 alone as the son of Shah Kamāl al-Dïn Juvānmard
[see N° I/23 for another reference to this figure] ; MS 11367 is likewise alone in noting
that according to an unidentified risāla, this Qutb al-Dïn was the son of « Imām Bakr
Qaffāl » (a name inspired by that of the 10th-century Shāfi'ï jurist of Tashkent), but that
this may be rejected insofar as Mawlānā Qutb al-Din's grave is near that of Kamāl al-
Dïn. (It is not clear which of the various figures assigned the nisba « Bayzāvï » is to be
linked with the shrine of « Qāzi Bayzāvï » which is mentioned frequently in the shrine
catalogue, as a reference point, and which we visited in April 1995 ; probably it is this
Qutb al-Dïn Bayzāvï).
118 22. Bibi Maryam, the daughter of Hājjï Hāmid ; she was majdhūb, and because of the
confusion and enticements of the jinns, she wandered in the steppes and deserts
throughout the world. The account notes that some identify her with the mother of 'Isā.
(This site was mentioned in Ivanov, 1927, and Masson ; Masson noted that a structure
there built in the 1890s had soon collapsed, leaving no trace. A new mosque, built with
foreign funds, was standing near the site in April 1995.) [This and the following five
entries do not appear at all in MS 12708.]
119 23. Otluq Yûnus Atā, said to have been a ruler in 'Ajam ; an anecdote is told to
explain how he became a disciple of Ismà'ïl Atā. One day he went out to hunt, strolling,
with 70,000 slaves, through the fresh grass of early spring on the steppe ; he came to a
stream, where he saw four men lying one on top of the other, and asked them why they
were tormenting themselves in this way. They informed him that they were servants of
Ismà'ïl Atā, and that through their exertions they were watering the fields of their
master, in the hope that « he might give the water of his attention to the fields of our
hearts » ; when they then stood up to brush the dust off their clothing, the water did not
adhere to them at all, and the pādshāh, seeing this wonder, abandoned his rule. He
became a devotee of Ismā'ïl Atā, and reached his goal ; « and the reason he was called
Otlugh Yûnus Atā is that whenever he engaged in the dhikr, plumes of fire would come
out from his blessed body, and flames would burst forth from his mouth ».
120 24. Khoja-i Tāli' Atā, the father of Khizr [not found in MS 12708]. (This shrine was
shown to us, as that of « Khoja-yi Tāl », in April 1995.)
121 25. Mawlànā 'Izām al-Dïn Bayzàvï, a scholar in aql and naql, who combined hal and
qāl ; his grave is not known [not found in MS 12708].
122 26. Chaghïr Tekin Atā, called here one of the brothers of Awliyā Atā, implying the
latter's identity with the Qarā Khān mentioned in the sacred history (but without
reference to the stories about Chaghir Tekin there).
123 27. Sar-halqah Bābā : the brief passage devoted to him appears to link, in an obscure
and no doubt syntactically garbled way, three saints known from the Yasavi tradition :
it reads « he belonged to the family (spelled “khāndān”) of Ismā'ïl Atā Sadr Atā Badr
Atā ; for this reason, out of respect, they would make him the circle-leader (sar-halqa)
for all dhikrs, and therefore they called him Sar-halqa Bābā ». His real name, however,
was Khoja Hàmid Bayzàvï.
124 28. Ibrāhim Atā (once again mentioned in MS 12708 also, where he follows
immediately after « 'Allāma Qutb al-Dïn Isbïjābï », N° II/21) ; as both versions affirm,
most agree that this grave belongs to the father of « the holy Sultān » (i.e., Khoja
Ahmad Yasavi). (Mentioned in Masson, visited in April 1995.)

125 29. The qadam-jāy of the holy Yūsha' [i.e., Joshua], near which were the graves of
two saints, of which only one is named : Khoja 'Abdullah Bāghistāni, identified as a
companion of Khoja Rawshanāy Tāshkandi (his grave, however, is not now visible).
(The site is mentioned by Masson.)
126 30. Khoja 'Abd al-Qahhār Saryāmï, whose grave is near an irrigation ditch (arï'q) ;
the ruler of his time, we are told, gave to him as a votive offering the waters of the arï'q,
and he spent the substantial income its produce yielded on his khānqāh.
127 31. Mir Shāh Bābā-yi Ghāzî, leader of ghāzis, of which he commanded an army 400
men strong (in MS 12708, 4,000) ; the infidels found him and his troops at prayer and
martyred them all, and the martyrs lie buried around him. His grave is located, the
account affirms, in « a place which people call Jūmūshlāghū » ; MS 11367 alone adds
that Mir Shāh Bābā-yi Ghāzî is popularly called « Ūzghān Atā ».92
128 32. A grandson of Khoja Ahmad Yasavi : with this, the last entry in both versions, the
two copies offer substantially different accounts. According to MS 11367, the last entry
is mat of Shaykh Mustafā Quli Khoja (the same name appears at N° I/23, where there is
no discussion of his parentage) ; here the account specifies that Mustafā Quli Khoja was
the son of 'Ali Khoja by a daughter of « the holy Sultān » (i.e., Ahmad Yasavi) ; MS
12708 affirms that the grave in question is that of « a grandson from one of the
daughters of the holy Sultan Khoja Ahmad », but names neither the grandson nor his
father. Both accounts agree that this grandson was brought, as a child, to Yasavi, who
showed him affection and greeted him saying, « Welcome, my sūzūk » ;here the
versions diverge again. According to MS 12708, Yasavi also said « Welcome, my
kûzùk », and the account notes, rather vaguely, that « for this reason, people called him
Sùzùkùm Atā ». In MS 11367, we find the still more curious explanation that Yasavi
addressed his grandson thus because the child's eyebrows were connected (« payvasta-
abrū-chashm »), and « in 'Arab and 'Ajam, they call a person of that appearance
'sùzûk'. »93Both accounts then note that thisgrandson had a chilla-khāna, located in a
cave, which became his burial place : once again in agreement, the two versions explain
further that after the grandson died, a certain « Sufi Nazar » served as chirāghchï at his
grave, having been instructed to place his body in the cave ; he did so, and men closed
up the mouth of the cave. MS 11367 alone adds that there is no grave (turbat) inside the
cave ; but both versions note that according to some accounts, Sufi Nazar's grave was
near that of « Qāzi Bayzāvi ».
129 Both accounts then conclude, as the author affirms that he has related what he had
seen in « a book of history », but recalls the adage that there are innumerable saints
buried in the region of Sayrām ; nevertheless, « if one seeks assistance from the spirits
of the eminent saints mentioned in this treatise, then if God wills, whatever is his goal
will be obtained ». MS 11367 alone adds a ghazal in praise of Sayrām.
Conclusion : Sacralizing Vision and

the Local Past inthe Sacred History of
Sayrām
130 What, after all, may we derive from the sacred history of Sayrām as outlined above ?
The traditions are quite rich, and we will not pretend to analyze them exhaustively
here, but a few general comments are in order with regard to the ways in which the
work conveys its religious meaning, and with regard to its relationship with other
examples of local sacred histories (and with other types of works that appear to have

served similar functions).

131 The work's religious meaning, to begin with, is conveyed both by its contents and its
structure. The essential message of the narrative history, simply put, is that Sayrām's
sanctification as a human community goes back already to the first prophetic
generations after Adam : the town was founded by Idris during his earthly sojourn ; it
was implicitly the first place re-settled and sanctified, after the Flood, by Nūh ; and it
produced its own « native » prophet in Khizr. Thus founded and blessed by the pre-
Islamic prophets — Ibrāhim and 'Isà are mentioned too — Sayrām predates even the
formation of the historical Muslim community ; its people, moreover, though subject to
the temptations of unbelief in the time before Muhammad, were more often a bastion
of the true faith against the attacks of tyrannical conquerors heedless of God's will.
Then Muhammad himself took note of the town's special sanctity and paid it an honor
otherwise reserved for the Ka'ba itself ; and after the confirmatory, re-sacralizing
attention of the last Prophet, Sayrâm was blessed both by a series of just and solicitous
Muslim rulers and by further examples of divine protection mediated by prophetic
pronouncements. The shrine guide, in effect, records the continuing presence during
more recent times of pious figures who contributed to the proliferation of sanctity's
signs in the city, and the presentation as a whole thus evinces both the antiquity and
sanctity of Sayrâm, and the antiquity — or perhaps more properly the metahistorical
character — of the Islamic revelation itself.
132 It is in the fusion, indeed, of the local, particular focus on Sayrâm with the universal
and extra-temporal character of Islam that the sacred history most effectively advances
its « argument » about Sayrâm's special status as holy space in a Muslim religious
framework ; and that fusion is perhaps most vivid in the rich blending of purely local
figures, situated in the framework of Islamic-era history, with universal figures of
Islamic lore contextualized locally within Sayrâm's more ancient past. Of special
interest in this regard is the symbolic inversion of Sayrâm's remoteness, in space and
time, from the centers and origins of Islam, accomplished through the Prophet
Muhammad's sanctifying visitation (which appropriately enough is recounted twice,
once « historically » and once metahistorically) : Sayrâm's spatial distance from the
center of the Muslim world, and the temporal remoteness of the original sanctification
asserted for it from the historical circumstances of the central Islamic revelatory event,
are in effect negated by the Prophet Muhammad, thus ensuring the essentially Islamic
character of a sacred history originally hallowed by Muhammad's precursors.
133 Yet these distances in space and time are not so much traversed by the Prophet as
dissolved by him. Muhammad does not bring Sayrâm to an Islamically-defined center,
nor does he significantly redefine its sanctity in terms of the new revelation of Islam ;
rather, he confirms the town's sacred, axial character, despite its remoteness, through
his spiritual circum-ambulation, and implicitly endorses earlier prophets' sanctification
of Sayrâm.94Muhammad thus serves not as a bridge, linking Sayrâm spatiallyand
temporally with Islamic centers and beginnings, but as a narrative hinge, a sanctifying
pivot that both affirms Sayrām's pre-Islamic sanction and confirms its Islamic
character. The effect, of course, is achieved within a thoroughly Islamic framework, for
by the Prophet's endorsement, the inhabitants of Sayrām are assured that they have
been, in effect, Muslims from all time, since their adherence to divine revelation goes
back not just to Muhammad, but very nearly to the beginning of humanity.
134 This, incidentally, is the more fundamental reason why the sacred history of Sayrām
should not be approached as defective history or as a garbled recording of « real »
events ; what the narratives reflect, after all, is paradigmatic history structured to
achieve at every step, and within a framework set by a thoroughly nativized Islamic

dispensation, the symbolic assimilation, or perhaps even reidentification, of the

periphery with the center. The significant, valued narrative « core » that we may
presume to have been transmitted over several centuries was not a record of specific
events in need of sanctification or even simply of a « modernized » explanation, but a
more fundamental vision of Sayrâm as a holy space, sacralized by figures who though
historically « pre-Islamic » nevertheless made Sayrâm a Muslim town. That is, the
sacred history of Sayrâm should not be thought of as a « mere » sacralization, much
less a « fantasization", of real historical memories that had somehow lost meaning for
the town's inhabitants and thus had to be reinfused with new content, but rather as a
narrative built originally on the dual foundations of Sayrām's special character and of
broader Islamic mythic and theological themes. The latter themes, in turn, include not
only particular legendary cycles about the pre-Islamic prophets, but the general
historical and metahistorical understanding of the Muslim world, in which adherence
to divine revelation is possible, even in a place as remote in time and space as Sayrâm
from the sacred centers of the last Prophet's community. Indeed, the Islamic vision of
pre-Islamic history finds a place not only for thejāhiliya (which is itself conceptually
dissolved in the sacred history of Sayrām), but for communities that managed, through
special divine protection, to maintain the true faith revealed through other prophets
before Muhammad ; and it is precisely on the peripheries of the Muslim world that
such special communities are typically located, whether in the mythic imagination that
gives us the stories of 'Adites and the people of Jābilqâ and Jâbilsâ, or in the
concretized mythic history that gives us the account of Sayrâm.
135 The very possibility of Sayrām's pre-Islamic sacralization was thus ensured by its
spatial remoteness and its externally peripheral status. By being located far from the
places where the historical revelation of Islam unfolded, Sayrām could be Muslim
before Muhammad ; and yet its historically Muslim character is ensured by
Muhammad himself, when he first recognizes the holy character it was accorded by his
predecessors and men actively endorses its sacrality by making it a center for his own
exemplary ritual performance. The Islamic vision of divine revelation's accessibility
before Muhammad's career allows the possibility that Sayrām's people indeed belonged
among communities fortunate enough to adhere to such a revelation ; that they
definitely did so is affirmed by the acts of the various prophets, but above all by the
sanctifying visitations of the Prophet Muhammad. In any case, we may be sure mat me
framework of sacred history took precedence, at least in thematic terms as applied to
the Saryâm tārîkhi in the forms in which it survives ; it was the nativized Islamic
framework that found a place for local traditions, not the local traditions that were
merely adjusted to accommodate a new historical vision imposed upon mem by an
alien and essentially superficial « ideology ».95
136 That this is so may be suggested by the recurrence of many similar thematic elements
in other local sacred histories of Central Asia, from the same era, that we have not the
space to explore.96 In this connection, however, we must note also how the sacred
history of Sayrām compares with other works mat resemble it thematically,
structurally, or functionally. What perhaps most distinguishes the Saryâm târîkhi in
this regard is its remarkable autonomy ; its autonomy in the handling of traditions also
preserved in other settings was noted earlier, but the work's autonomy is also evident if
we consider the parallel works, noted at the beginning of this article, comprising sacred
histories and shrine guides, that were produced in the same era as the Saryâm târîkhi
but for other cities. The latter point isworth stressing, because in both structure and
content, the history of Sayrām shows close parallels with the works devoted to
Samarqand, especially, in which a sacred history of the city and its environs is followed

by a review of the city's holy sites.97 There is no clear indication, however, that the
history of Sayrām was directly modeled on the sacred histories of Bukhāra or
Samarqand, or even that its anonymous compiler was familiar with such works ; if their
similarity leads us to suspect that he was, we nevertheless lack any allusion to
traditions associated with those works, much less direct citations from them. The
sacred history of Sayrâm is distinguished, indeed, by such a remarkably narrow focus
on Sayrâm and its environs that not only those other, similar sacred histories, but even
the cities that inspired them, are all but invisible in it ; aside from a brief reference to
Iskandar's establishment of Samarqand — which incidentally makes it younger and less
hallowed than Sayrām, founded much earlier — the narrative history of Sayrām never
attempts to fit the city into a broader Central Asian framework, while even the shrine
catalogue mentions links between those buried in Sayrâm and individuals from other
towns, but rarely links them with more broadly-defined Sufi communities, juridical
schools, or regional traditions.
137 The history of Sayrām, then, however much it parallels other Central Asian sacred
histories, preserves quite independent traditions, an independent cast of characters,
and an independent self-assurance that the significant sacred history of the community
of Islam — a community understood to predate even the last Prophet — left clear marks
on Sayrâm itself. In this regard, finally, we may note one particularly distinctive feature
of the sacred history of Sayrām, in the context of another widespread genre that served
also, but in different ways, to construct a sacralized local heritage for Central Asian
communities. The sacred history of Sayrām pays virtually no attention to what is
arguably the most fundamental idiom of social organization, and hence of projections
of communal identity, in Central Asia, namely the idiom of kinship and heredity ; that
idiom, however, lies at the heart of the other genre, comprising genealogical traditions
tracing the origins of families, tribes, and villages in terms of natural descent. Those
genealogical traditions appear to assign a much more central position to Arab origin
than we find in the narratives about Sayrām ; they typically legitimize existing social
structures in terms of descent from the Prophet, or the Caliphs, but rarely evoke links
with the pre-Islamic past (even though such links were claimed in earlier genealogical
formulations of Central Asian communal origins). Even when the stories about Sayrâm
appear to privilege « foreign » origins for its saints or legendary rulers,98they do so
outside any genealogical framework. What appears, then, as an almost pointed neglect
of such a framework suggests that those who compiled and transmitted the sacred
history of Sayrām, as well as those who learned from it, understood communal bonds in
a different way, in terms of a religious unity sanctioned not by the Prophet's
descendants, but by his spiritual attention to their town, a spiritual attention for which
the model was, in turn, the deeds of the pre-Islamic prophets ; the sacralizing effects of
those deeds, after all, served to place Sayrām on a par with the traditional sacred
centers of Islam by lending antiquity to (or by completely de-temporalizing) its
involvement with a revelatory experience that, while Islamically-defined, was
understood to transcend the confines of a conventional rehearsal of Islamic history.
***
138 We may conclude, after all, that despite its remarkable autonomy in terms of its
contents and its vision of Sayrām's sacrality, the Saryâm târikhi shares several features
with other late Central Asian examples of the genre of local sacred histories, especially
in terms of sources, form, and function. The compilers of these works drew upon local
oral tradition as well as earlier written material ranging from narrative histories and
hagiographies, to family genealogies, to grave inscriptions ; their synthetic accounts

may be considered the discursive counterparts to the more concrete (and often ritually-
oriented) sacralization of local space through shrines (and occasionally natural
features) associated both with local or regional saints, and with sacred personages
shared with the entire Muslim world. They may also be considered as the equivalents
(functionally and often structurally), for the sedentary population of Central Asia, of the
narrative complexes, involving legends of origin and genealogical traditions, that
sacralized tribal structures and relationships, and legitimized communities defined in
terms of shared descent from saintly ancestors, for the nomadic population ;99 the city
histories and shrine guides, however, provide closer parallels than are found among the
tribal traditions to the literary conventions of Islamic hagiography.
139 In each case, we may detect a balance between narrative and descriptive elements
linking a particular place with the Islamic world as a whole (by evoking ties with the
sacred centers or « founders » of Islam), elements insistent upon the distinctive virtues,
and distinctive history, of the local community, and elements seemingly intended to
link these two aims, of which the clearest example is the treatment of pre-Islamic
prophets. These prophets, whose tangible reminders are noted along the streets of
Sayrâm, are shared with the entire Muslim world, to be sure, and are ascribed
particularly close ties with Sayrâm ; but they also serve to situate the local community
within an Islamically-defined sacred history, and perhaps more importantly, to place
that community at the center of a more universal and metahistorical Islam, an Islam
envisioned as anterior to, and not confined by, the « normative » historical vision of
Islamic origins and centers.
Bibliographie
Abbreviations
IVANUz : Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Tashkent.
PL : STOREY, C.A. / BREGEL', IU.È., 1972, Persidskaia literatura : Biobibliograficheskii
obzor, Moscow, Nauka, GRVL.
SVRANUz : Sobranie vostochnych rukopisei Akademii nauk Uzbekskoi SSR, Tashkent, 1952-
1987.
1. Unpublished manuscripts
'ABD AL-RAZZÀQ, Shâ'ir-i Khuqandi, [untitled verse work in praise of the shrines of the
Farghāna valley], MS IVANUz, N° 9455/1V, fol. 387a-388b.
'AVAZ-MUHAMMAD b. Mullâ Rûzi-Muhammad Sûfï 'Attâr, Tuhfat al-tavârikh-i khâni, MS
IVANUz, N° 9455 ; MS St. Petersburg, C440.
Kh'ārazm ta'rifi, MS IVANUz, N° 7700.
KHWÂRAZMÎ, Sharif al-Dïn Husayn, Jâddat al-'âshiqin, MS Aligarh Subhanullah, N°
297.71/1.
Saryâm tārikhi, MSS IVANUz, N° 11367, 12708.
2. Published sources
AL-BALKHÏ, Abû Bakr 'Abdullah / 'Abdullâh [b.] Muhammad, 1350/1971, 'Abd al-Hayy Habibi
(ed.), Fazà'il-i Balkh, Tehran.
AL-FÀRISI, Abû'l-Hasan 'Abd al-Ghàfir b. Ismâ'il / Abû Ishaq Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. al-

Azhar al-Sarifini, 1403/1362/1983, Muhammad Kâzim al-Mahmûdi (ed.), al-Halqa al-ûlâ min
Târikh Nîsâbûr, al-muntakhab min al-Siyâq, Qumm, Jamâ'a al-Mudarrisin fï'1-Hawza al-
'Ilmiya.
AL-HUSAYNÎ AL-DASHTAKI AL-VÂ'iz, Asil al-Din 'Abdullah b. 'Abd al-Rahmàn, 1351/1972,
Najib Mâyil Haravi (ed.), Maqsad al-iqbâl-i sultâniya va marsad al-âmâl al-khâqânîya,
Tehran.
IBN HAJAR AL-'ASQALÂNÎ, 1972, (ed.), al-Durar al-kâmina, I, Da'iratu'l-Ma'arifi'l-Osmania,
Hyderabad.
JUVAINÎ, 1958, J. Boyle (transi.), The History of the World-Conqueror, 2 vol, Cambridge,
Harvard University Press.
[IBN] KARBALÀ'Ï TABRÏZÏ, Hàfiz Husayn, 1344-49/1965-70, Ja'far Sultan al-Qurrâ'i (éd.),
Rawzât al-jinân va jannât al-janān, Tehran, Bungâh-i Tarjumah va Nashr-i Kitâb.
AL-KÀSyARÎ, Mahmûd, 1982-85, R. Dankoff and J. Kelly (transi.), Compendium of the Turkic
Dialects (Diwân luyāt at-Turk), Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures, 7, Turkish
Sources, VII, Cambridge, Harvard University Printing Office.
AL-KlSÂ'î, 1978, W.M. Thackston Jr., (transi.), The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisà'ï, Boston,
Twayne Publishers, G.H. Hall & Co.
Mu'ÏN AL-FUQARÂ', Ahmad b. Muhammad, 1339/1960, Tirikh-i Mullāzâda, Ahmad Gulchin-
i Ma'âni (ed.), Tehran.
AL -MUQADDASI, 1906, M.G. De Goeje (ed.), Ahsan al-taqâsim fi ma'rifat al-aqâlim
[Description imperii moslemici] ; 2nd ed., Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, III,
Leiden, Brill.
NARSHAKHI, 1954, Frye, R.N. (transi.), The History of Bukhara, Translated from a Persian
Abridgment of the Arabic Original by Narshakhi, The Mediaeval Academy of America,
Cambridge, Mass.
NÂSIR AL-DÏN TORE b. Amir Muzaffar al-Bukhâri, 1328/1910, Tuhfat al-zâ'irin, (éd.),
Bukhara.
Qandiya va Samariya, 1367/1988, I. Afshâr (éd.), Tehran, Mu'assasa-i Farhangi-i Jahàngïri.
AL-RABGHOZÏ, 1995, H.E. Boeschoten, M. Vandamme and S. Tezcan (éd.), J. O'Kane and M.
Vandamme (transi.), The Stories of the Prophets : Qisas al-Anbiyà' ; An Eastern Turkish
Version, 2 vol, Leiden, Brill.
RASHÏD AL-DÎN, 1969, K. J. (transi.), Die Geschichte der Oguzen des Rasid al-Din, Vienna,
Hermann Bôhlaus Nachf, Ôsterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-
Historische Klasse, Denkschriften, 100. Bd., Forschungen zur ~ islamischen Philologie und
Kulturgeschichte,"BcT. TV :
1987, R.M. Shukiurova (transi.), Oguz-name, Elm, Baku.
3. Studies
AGEEVA, E.I. and PATSEVICH G.I., 1958, « Iz istorii osedlykh poselenii i gorodov iuzhnogo
Kazakhstana », in Trudy Instituta istorii, arkheologii i ètnografii AN KazSSR, 5
(Arkheologiia), p. 3-215.
BARTHOLD, W., 1977, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion, V. and T. Minorsky
(trad.), C.E. Bosworth (ed.), 4th ed., London, Luzac. BARTOL'D, V.V., 1965a, « K istorii
oroshenii Turkestana », Sochineniia, 3, Moscow, Nauka, p. 222-223.
1965b, « Chimkent », Sochineniia, 3, Moscow, Nauka, p. 563-564.
BASILOV, V.N., 1975, « O proiskhozhdenii Turkmen-Ata (prostonarodnye formy
sredneaziatskogo sufizma) », in Domusul'manskie verovaniia i obriady v Srednei Azii,
Moscow, Nauka, GRVL, p. 138-168.
BOSWORTH, C.E., 1987, « Asfîjâb », in EIr, II, p. 749-750.
BRETSCHNEIDER, E., 1910, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, London,
Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co.
BUDAGOV, L., 1869, Sravnitel'nyi slovar' turetsko-tatarskikh narechii, St Petersburg ; repr.
1960, Moscow, 2 vol.
BUNIATOV, Z.M., 1989, « Ob odnom chagataiskom sochinenii po istorii Khorezma »,
Sovetskaia tiurkologiia, 2, p. 69-75.

CASTAGNÉ, J., 1930, « Magie et exorcisme chez les Kazak-Kirghizes et autres peuples turks
orientaux », Revue des études islamiques, 4, p. 53-156.
1951, « Le culte des lieux saints de l'Islam au Turkestan », L'Ethnographie, 46, p. 46-124.
CLAUSON, G., 1972, An Etymological Dictionary of Pre-Thirteenth-Century Turkish, Oxford.
COLLINS, B.A., 1994, 77je Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions : A Translation
ofAhsan al-Taqasim fi Ma'rifat al-Aqalim, Reading Center for Muslim Contribution to
Civilisation.
DANKOFF, R., 1971, « Baraq and Burāq », Central Asiatic Journal, 15, p. 102-117.
DEWEESE, D., 1990, « Yasavian Legends on the Islamization of Turkistan », in D. Sinor (dir.),
Aspects of Altaic Civilization III, Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana
University Uralic and Altaic Series, Bloomington, vol. 145, p. 1-19.
DlVAEV, A.A., 1896, « Legenda o Kazykurtovskom kovchege », in A.A. Divaev (dir.),
Etnograficheskie materialy, 5, Tashkent, p. 1-11.
1899, « Iz oblasti kirgizskikh verovanii ; Baksy, kak lekar' i koldun (Ètnograficheskii ocherk) »,
Izvestiia Obshchestva arkheologii, istorii, i ètnografü pri Imperatorskom Kazanskom
universitete, 15/3, p. 307-344, and separately, Kazan, 1899.
FRYE, R.N., 1965, (ed.), The Histories of Nishapur, Harvard Oriental Series, vol. 45,
London-The Hague-Paris, Mouton ;. GOLDEN, P.B., 1990, « The Karakhanids and Early
Islam », in D. Sinor (dir.), The
Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, p. 343-370.
1995, « Sayrām », in EI2, IX. GRENARD, F., 1900, « La Légende de Satok Boghra Khân et
l'histoire », Journal Asiatique, ser. 9, 15, p. 5-79.
IVANOV, P.P., 1923a, « Sairam. Istoriko-arkheologicheskii ocherk », in [al-Iskandariyah],
Sbornik Turkestanskogo vostochnogo instituta v chest' professora A. E. Shmidta, Tashkent, p.
46-56.
1923b, « Predanie o kalmytskom nashestvii na Sairam (Zapisano so slov sairamskogo zhitelia
Mully Turdymeda letom 1920 g.) », in [al-Iskandariyah], Sbomik Turkestanskogo
vostochnogo instituta v chest' professors A. È. Shmidta, Tashkent, p. 57-58.
1927, « K voprosu ob istoricheskoi topografii starogo Sairama », in ['Iqd al-jumân], V.V.
Bartol'du Turkestanskie druz'ia, ucheniki i pochitateli, Tashkent, p. 151-164.
« Karamurt-kapka (Iz perepiski Pravleniia Kruzhka) », 1898, in Protokoly zasedanii i
soobshcheniia chlenov Turkestanskogo kruzhka liubitelei arkheologii, Tashkent, 3, p. 178-
180.
KHALIMOV, N.B., 1981, « Novye svedeniia ob arkhitekturnykh pamiatnikakh Kunia-Urgencha
(Po materialam rukopisnykh knig) », in Izvestiia Akademii nauk Turkmenskoi SSR, seriia
Obshchestvennykh nauk, 6, p. 19-24.
KOPRULU, M.F., 1950, « Ahmed Yesevî », in Islam Ansiklopedisi, I, p. 210-215.
1984, Turk edebiyatmda ilk mutasavviflar, 5th ed., Ankara, Arisan Matbaacilik.
MASSON, M., 1928, « Staryi Sairam », Izvestiia Sredazkomstarisa, Tashkent, 3, p. 23-42.
MIKLUKHO-MAKLAI, N.D., (ed.), 1975, Opisanie persidskikh i tadzhikskikh rukopisei
Instituta vostokovedeniia, III, Istoricheskie sochineniia, Nauka, Moscow.
MOMINOV, A.K., 1993, « Yässäviyä : ildiz va mânbälär », Fän va turmush, 9-10, p. 18-19,21.
MUMINOV, A.K., 1994, « O proiskhozhdenii bratstva lasaviia », in Islam i problemy
mezhtsivilizatsionnykh vzaimodeistvii, Moscow, Nur, p. 219-231.
1996, « Veneration of Holy Sites of the Mid-Sïrdar'ya Valley : Continuity and
Transformation », in M. Kemper, A. von Kügelgen, and D. Yermakov, (dir.), Muslim Culture in
Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th centuries, Islamkundliche
Untersuchungen, Bd. 200, Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, p. 355-367.
PAUL, J., 1993, « The Histories of Samarqand », Studia Iranica, 22, p. 69-92.
PISHCHULINA, K.A., 1969, « Prisyrdar'inskie goroda i ikh znachenie v istorii kazakhskikh
khanstv v XV-XVII vekakh », in Kazakhstan v XV-XVII vekakh (Voprosy sotsial'no-
politicheskoi istorii), Nauka, Alma-Ata, p. 5-49.
1983, « Pismennye vostochnye istochniki o prisyrdar'inskikh gorodakh Kazakhstana XIV-XVII

vv. », in Srednevekovaia gorodskaia kul'tura Kazakhstana i Srednei Azii, Alma-Ata, Nauka.

RADTKE, B., 1986, « Theologen und Mystiker in Hurasan und Transoxanien », Zeitschnft
derDeutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 136, p. 536-569.
« Rodoslovnaia Karakhana patrona gor. Auliiaata », in Protokoly zasedanii i soobshcheniia
___chlenoyTurkestanskago kruzhka liubitelei arkheologii, Tashkent, 4 p. 87-91.
TAIZHANOV, K., ISMAILOV, Kh., 1986 « Osobennosti doislamskikh verovanii uuzbekov-
karamurtov », in V.N. Basilov (dir.), Drevnie obriady, verovaniia, i kulty narodov Srednei
Azii : Istoriko-ètnograficheskie ocherki, Moscow, Nauka, p. 110-138. WEINBERGER, J., 1986,
« The Authorship of Two Twelfth Century Transoxanian
Biographical Dictionaries », Arabica, 33, p. 369-382.
ZHILINA, A.A., TAIZHANOV, K., 1984, « K izucheniiu uzbekskogo naseleniia luzhnogo
Kazakhstana (Istoriko-ètnograficheskaia kharakteristika seleniia Karamurt », in Polevye
issledovaniia Instituta ètnografii 1980-1981, Moscow, Nauka, p. 48-55.
ZIMIN, L » 1913, « Musul'manskoe skazanie o gorode Oshe », in Protokoly zasedanu i
soobshcheniia chlenov Turkestanskago kruzhka liubitelei arkheologii, Tashkent, 18, p. 3-16.
Notes
1 For a survey of works of this sort (including one extant Arabic version) focused on
Samarqand, see Paul, 1993 ; Weinberger, 1986, and PL, 1972, II, p. 1112-1115. For Balkh we
have a Persian translation of an Arabic work of the same type written in the early 13th century
by Abû Bakr 'Abdullah b. 'Umar al-Balkhi ; see Radtke, 1986 ; PL, 1972, II, p. 1053-1054, and
the text edition of the surviving Persian work, the Fazā'il-i Balkh, ed. 'Abd al-Hayy Habibi. The
now lost sources that underlay the extant Persian Tārikh-i Bukhāra — which however is a
more narrowly historical work without extensive biographical material — appear to have
included similar works (see PL, 1972, II, p. 1108-1112 ; Narshakhi, 1954). For Nishāpūr, see
Frye, 1965 ; al-Fārisi. Similar works appear to have been produced for other Central Asian
cities : a Tārikh Kāshghar is ascribed to an 1 lth-century writer, Abù'l-Futūh 'Abd al-Ghaffār
al-Alma'ï, and may have been identical with the Mu'jam al-shuyùkh credited to the same
writer (see the discussion in Barthold, 1977, p. 18), while lost histories of Khorezm (Barthold,
1977, p. 17) and of Marv may have been, in whole or in part, the same kind of biographical
history.
2 The Bukharan example is almost entirely a shrine catalogue ; see Mu'in al-fuqarā', 1960 ; PL,
1972, II, p. 1115. The textual history of the Persian Qandiya remains unclear (see Paul, 1993,
p. 75-81, and PL, 1972, II, p. 1113-1115), but the work came to incorporate not only a shrine
catalogue but longer narratives focused both on Samarqand's sacred history and on the lives of
major saints ; one of the late, reworked versions of the Qandiya was published in Tehran in
1334/1955 by Ïraj Afshār, and has been reprinted, together with a 19th century catalogue of
Samarqand's shrines, in Qandiya. The works devoted to Balkh include the Tārikh-i mazàrāt-i
Balkh (PL, 1972, II, p. 1053), 'which may or may not be the same as works signaled under such
designations as Tārikh-i madfûnin-i Balkh and Risāla dar ta'rif-i Balkh ; a somewhat more
ambitious work is the Jāmi' al-hikam by Ahmad b. 'Ali « Balkhiyāyi », completed early in the
17th century, IVANUz, N° 625 ; see the catalogue description in SVRANUz, VI, N° 4166. For
Herat we have the late 15th-century work of al-Husayni al-Dashtaki al-Vā'iz ; see PL, 1972, II,
p. 1048-1049, and the more extensive work of Mu'in al-Din Isfizàri, Rawzāt al-jannāt fi awsāf
madinat Harāt (PL, 1972, II, p. 1045-1048). Similar works from this era are well known for
several cities of Iran, notably Shirāz, Kirmān, and Tabriz.
3 See the comments of Paul (1993, p. 80) on the shifting focuses of these genres.
4 These works mark, in effect, a third generation of locally oriented biographical works, which
not only reflects and transmits the continuum of traditions and themes established in earlier
representatives of the genre, but also expands the range of saints whose lives and sanctifying
presence are presented as key to the region in question (as well as the range of legendary
material incorporated on their lives). For Samarqand, we have not only the Samariya of Abū
Tāhir Khoja Samarqandi (published by Afshār, 1343/1964, and reissued with the Qandiya as
cited above), but several apparent reworkings and expansions of the Qandiya itself (Afshār's
edition of the Qandiya reflects one such work prepared by a certain Mullā ' Abd al-Hakim and
printed in the early 20th century) ; manuscript catalogues often register what are most likely
similar works under such generic titles as Risāla-i buzurgān-i Samarqand, Dhikr-i mazārāt-i

Samarqand, etc. For Bukharā, in addition to similar brief guides to its shrines noted in
catalogues, with generic titles, we have the important compendium of Nàsir al-Din Tore b.
Amir Muzaffar al-Bukhāri, the Tuhfat al-zā'irîn (on its author, see PL, 1972, II, p. 1177 ; the
work was lithographed in Bukharā in 1328/1910). Similar guides were produced in the same
era for the shrinès of Herat and Mazār-i Sharif.
5 The most remarkable is an unstudied verse catalogue of shrines prefaced by a sacred history
of Khorezm traced from the « secret » conversion of its people during the Prophet's own
lifetime ; the work, called simply Khwārazm ta'rifi, survives in a single uncatalogued
manuscript (IVANUz, N° 7700, fol. 97 ff.). Similar, shorter works have drawn somewhat more
attention ; Khalimov, 1981 ; Buniatov, 1989.
6 MS St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, C2038, fol. 42a-44a (described in Miklukho-Maklai, 1975, p. 321-322, N° 455) ; a
similar text was given in Russian translation by Zimin, 1913.
7 IVANUz, N° 9455/IV, fol. 387a-388b, an untitled verse work in praise of the shrines of the
Farghāna valley and Qoqand in particular, by Mawlānā 'Abd al-Razzāq « shā'ir-i Khuqandî. »
8 See al-Kāsyari, II, p. 241.
9 In « Karamurt-kapka », p. 180, the Tsarist-era Russian orientalist N. S. Lykoshin is cited
affirming that Sayrām's correct name is « Sar-i-aiam », meaning (as Lykoshin renders it in
Russian) « chief of antiquity » (i.e., sar-i ayyām, « ancient of days »). The editor of this article
disagreed and insisted that the name « Saryām » consisted of Persian sar, « head », and Arabic
yam, « river » (i.e., yamm, « sea », « river ») and thus alluded to its status as the source of a
stream. These etymologies are not reflected in the sacred history of Sayrām, which offers a
different explanation of the town's three names, as noted below. If the form spelled « Sayrām »
is indeed Turkic, incidentally, it most likely refers to « a place of shallow water » : al-KāsYari
gives, alongside his entry on « Sayrām » as the name of Isfijāb, the phrase « sayram süw »,
« shallow water », and elsewhere notes the verb stem sayramlan-, « to become shallow », with
the phrase « sùw sayramlandï » meaning « the water was shallow » (al-KāSyari, II, p. 256).
10 See Bretschneider, 1910, I, p. 74.
11 This was 'Ala' al-Din 'Ali b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Sayrāmi al-Hanafi
(d.790/1388) ; see Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalāni, p. 364-365.
12 On Isfijāb's history and historical geography in the pre-Mongol era, see Bartol'd, 1965a,
p. 222-223 ; Barthold, 1977, p. 175-176 ; and the discussions of Bosworth, 1987 ; Golden, 1995.
13 See al-Muqaddasi, ed. 1906, p. 273, and the translation by Collins, 1994, p. 244.
14 Barthold, 1977, p. 176, cites Ibn al-Athir (early 13th century) on the grave of Qarā Tekin at
his ribāt, and on the grave nearby of Qarā Tekin's son Mansūr.
15 The significance of the last element of his usual appellation (khamir = leaven, leavened,
ripe, mature) remains unclear.
16 See Barthol'd, 1977, p. 211-212.
17 For the history of Sayrām in post-Mongol times, see Ivanov, 1923a, p. 46-56 ; Ivanov, 1927,
p. 151-164 ; Masson, 1928, p. 23-42 ; Ageeva and Patsevich, 1958, p. 128-131 ; and especially
the surveys of Pishchulina, 1969 ; 1983, p. 165-177.
18 That is, we should expect neither (1) historical information about the pre-Islamic or early
Islamic eras in Sayrām/Isfijàb, nor (2) historical foundations for most of the narratives the
Saryātn tārikhi contains. In the first regard, even if we insist that the names of several rulers
echo actual figures from the local dynasty of Isfijāb or from the Qarākhānid ruling house, or
that the narrative's depiction of links between « Ismā'il Sāmànï » and Sultān Mansur Khamir
reflects the historical relationship between the Sàmànid state and Isfijāb, or even that the
historical role of the Sàmànid Nûh is echoed in the prominence attached to the prophet Nûh in
Sayrām's sacred history, the nature of the work precludes claiming to find in it original or
confirmatory material about particular events or figures. In the second regard, while it is true
that available sources do not allow us to conclusively confirm or deny the historicity of many
events or figures mentioned in the work, or at least the existence of some real event that served
as their model, we clearly misconstrue the work and its traditions if we assume that the
narratives necessarily reflect, even dimly, specific events we would regard as historical (we will
return to this question below). The wars and sieges recounted in the sacred history, for
example, are generic battles, set-pieces through which to evoke the protection of Sayrām's
saintly patrons ; we may assume, of course, that Sayrām's « real » history, were it better
known, would offer ample inspiration for stories of attacks upon the town, but nothing in the

sacred history suggests any reason to equate a specific episode either with a known historical
event or with an event that, while unknown to us, might be assumed to have actually
happened.
19 The tradition appears in the Turkic collection of stories of the prophets assembled at the
beginning of the 14th century by « Rabghuzï » ; see al-Rabghuzi, I [text], p. 369, II [transi.],
p. 460.
20 See Rashid al-Din, p. 17 ; cf. the Russian translation, 1987, p. 25.
21 For a preliminary discussion of these narratives, see DeWeese, 1990.
22 See Divaev, 1896.
23 On Muslim traditions about Idris, see al-Kisā'i, p. 87-91 ; al-Rabghuzi, I [text], p. 40-43, II
[transi], p. 49-52.
24 The first hand account, reflecting events from ca. 821-822/1418-19, is preserved in the work
of « Ibn Karbalā'i » from the late 16th century ; see Karbalā'i Tabrizi, p. 222-223.
25 The tradition that Yasavi was born in Sayrām is first attested in the Ottoman Turkish
Javāhir al-abrār of Hazini from the late 16th century ; because Mehmed Fuad Köpriilu relied
so heavily upon this work for his classic Turk edebiyatinda ilk mutasavviflar (originally
published in 1918 ; see the fifth Latin-script printing, 1984, p. 61-62), Yasavi's birth in Sayrām
has been generally accepted without discussion (Köprülü even identified his birthplace as a
place called Sayrām in Xinjiang/Eastern Turkistān, an error he amended in his article
« Ahmed Yesevî », but earlier sources identify the town of Yasï/Turkistān as Yasavi's
birthplace. This and other aspects of Yasavi lore noted here in connection with the sacred
history of Sayrām are discussed more fully in my forthcoming study of the Yasavi tradition.
26 Mullā'Avaz-Muhammad b. Mullā Rùzi-Muhammad Sufi 'Attār, Tuhfat al-tavārikh-i khānî,
IVANUz 9455, fol. 88b, 90a, MS St. Petersburg C440, foi. 168a, 170a-b ; on the work see PL,
1972, II, p. 1193-1195.
27 See the chants given, in text and translation, by Divaev, 1899 , Divaev's material was
repeated (with not always accurate French translations) by Joseph Castagné, 1930.
28 On the shrines popular in Sayrām during the late 19th and early 20th centuriés — far fewer
than those named in the shrine catalogue described below — see Ivanov, 1923a, and especially
Masson, 1928. During my visit to Sayrām in April, 1995, together with a graduate student,
David Tyson, and a Qazaq colleague from Yasaui University in Turkistan, Zikiriya
Jandarbekov, we were able to visit the sites of eight shrines in the town (noted below).
29 See, for example, the recent broader survey of shrines in southern Kazakstan, with some
reference to local hagiological traditions but an unfortunate tendency to seek in them only
reflections (often more tenuous than is acknowledged) of « real » historical events, in
Muminov, 1996.
30 We may argue, of course, that these narratives' evocation signal an attempt to « compete »
with other towns for spiritual preeminence, or simply an effort to appropriate the sacralizing
features of other places, with or without an actual rivalry ; if so, however, the accessible
versions of the Saryām tārïkhi virtually never explicitly acknowledge the connection of one or
another tradition with a specific family, town, or Sufi community, let alone pointedly insist
upon Sayrām's greater claim to such a tradition.
31 We may stress again the preliminary character of the present survey, since additional
versions yet unseen may yield narratives not reflected in the two manuscript copies employed
here (see below).
32 Masson, 1928, p. 25.
33 Ivanov, 1923a.
34 Basilov, 1975, p. 155 ; Professor Basilov notified me by letter dated December 24, 1991, that
a preliminary search for a microfilm of the version he noted had been unsuccessful.
35 Ageeva and Patsevich, 1958, p. 129 ; the authors refer to the Russian translation, by G. V.
Iskhakov ; as being preserved in the library of the Institute of History, Archeology, and
Ethnography of the Academy of Sciences of Kazakstan, in Almaty.
36 See Castagné, 1951, (the material published here was distilled from the author's earlier
publications in Russian and from unpublished material he collected in the first two decades of
the 20th century) ; though he does not mention it, the list Castagne provides of saints buried in
Sayrām (p. 57-58) makes it clear that he must have been acquainted with the sacred history.

37 The work, ascribed to Mullā Bek-Muhammad Qāzi-kalān and bearing the title Sāryam
shähridä ötgān äziz-ävliyalär khususidä, is cited in Mominov, 1993, p. 119, n. 11, and in
Muminov, 1994, p. 231, n. 63.
38 Mirahmad Mirkhaldar-oghli, Sayrām tārikhi, Chimkent, 1991, cited in Muminov, 1996,
p. 364, n. 39.
39 IVANUz, N° 8197, 11367 and 12708 ; I have utilized the two latter manuscripts for the
present study. MS 11367 is undated but is on the whole a better copy, while MS 12708 was
copied in 1298/1881 ; MS 11367 also bears a somewhat more decidedly Turkic cast, often
employing rather archaic Turkic terms where MS 12708 uses words drawn from Persian.
40 See in this regard the comments of Paul (1993, p. 78-79).
41 The name is spelled clearly in both manuscripts as « B.r.q.'.n » , MS 11367 says « there was
a city called B.r.q.'.n and Madinat al-bayzā », but this would violate the point of the following
narrative, in which Madinat al-bayzā is established later by Idris, and undoubtedly reflects a
careless insertion perhaps caused both by the unfamiliarity of the word « B.r.q.'.n » and by the
mention of « Madinat al-bayzā » along with « Sayrām » and « Isfijāb » in some versions of the
work's « title ». In the narrative that follows, moreover, before Idris establishes Sayrām he first
dwells in « B.r.q.'.n » and then builds another city at some distance from « Talāsh » (see below
on this name), according to MS 12708, or first dwells in « Talāsh » and then builds his city far
from « Talāsh » (MS 11367) , the texts in both copies are no doubt corrupt at this point, but we
may assume that the understanding conveyed by the extant versions (if not by the « original »
narrative) makes « Talāsh » and « B.r.q.'.n » either identical or neighboring towns. It is
possible that the form masks some otherwise unattested toponym of the region, or some
mythical name from prophetic lore (in this regard the term resembles the name, « Birqi »,
applied to the first heaven, made of emerald, created by God, in al-Kisā'i, p. 11 ; however, al-
Rabghûzî, I, p. 10, calls the first heaven « Raqi'ā » and gives no form approximating
« B.r.q.'.n »).
42 The « name » is of course a composite of titles, with bāsh meaning « head » or « chief. »
43 Thus in MS 12708 ; MS 11367 gives « bir til birle », i.e. « in one language », but in
subsequent cases refers regularly to : « ibri tili ».
44 The term translated as « helmet » is « yoshuq » or « yushuq »(MS 12708, yūshūq ; MS
11367, yūsh.q), which does not appear to be current in modern Uzbek or Qazaq ; cf. Clauson,
1972, p. 977, and al-Kāsyari, I, p. 108. It is conceivable that its appearance reflects an error for
the name of Yūsha' (Joshua), who appears later in the sacred history, but it is unlikely that his
name would have occasioned such an error only at this point in the narrative.
45 This designation would appear to conceal the name that appears in the narrative cycle of
Islamization focused on Ishāq Bāb, noted above, as « chûba masjid »(i.e., « wooden
Mosque ») ; see note 64 below. In the early 20th century, Masson (1928, p. 27-31) noted, as the
two mosques of Sayrām, a mosque of Khizr and the cathedral mosque, that of Idris
Payghambar ; a sandstone column in the latter was said by local inhabitants to have been
crafted on the spot by « one of Adam's sons ».
46 So in MS 12708 ; in MS 11367, « they would exalt someone at each gate » (and the apparent
shift in the custom is not identified as a later development).
47 The term used here is érkiik, « authority », which often conveys a sense of independence
and free will, but which here clearly has the negative connotation of an oppressive assertion of
arbitrary free will, contrary to God's will, untempered by the fear of God, and unrestrained by
justice.
48 On the range of equivalents attested for this unit of weight, see Clauson, 1972, p. 305-306 ;
Budagov, 1960,1, p. 231.
49 The likelihood of a garbled text here is strengthened by the appearance at the end of this
passage, in MS 12708, of the word « tammat », possibly indicating that this anecdote came
near the end of one copy or version of the work.
50 It is not clear whether this « Mosque of the Cloak » (the term « palās » is used especially to
refer to a dervish's frock) is to be associated with the site where Idris also had established his
hermitage, its name perhaps alluding to the cloak or shirt of Idris.
51 I have not traced this character in stories of the pre-Islamic prophets.
52 MS 11367 : sūyrāb söngäkini qāzūgūrt tāgïda alïb barïb qoydï. In MS 12708 a somewhat
different version is given : the fragment fell and hit the horse, the rider fell, and his foot
remained in the stirrup ; before he could get hold of his horse, he died, and his people took his

body to « Ghāzikird mountain ».

53 The shirt of Idris is not mentioned again in the « sacred history » section of the work ; but
as noted below, it appears in one version of the shrine catalogue (MS 11367), in a story focused
on Sultan Mansūr Khamir, who is instructed by the Prophet to get the shirt from its cave as he
fights Sayrām's enemies.
54 In MS 12708, the word used is simply orda ; MS 11367 uses the Mongol-era term and
explains it ; « his qarshi, that is, his orda ».
55 Chumushlaghu, or « Jūmūshlāghū » asoften spelled in the sacred history, is mentioned as a
settlement near Isfijāb already in the 10th century (Bartol'd, 1965a, p. 223) ; it is mentioned, as
the burial place of a certain « Yuvash Bābā », in the narrative of Islamization focused on Ishāq
Bāb, first recorded in the 14th century. Chimkent is first mentioned in sources of the early 15th
century (Bartol'd, 1965b, p. 563-564). I have not identified Shirkent or Mahār-tepe.
56 Here again MS 12708 inserts the word « tammat », suggesting the end of some written
source.
57 In the Ishāq Bāb narrative, the rulers whose names are echoed in the sacred history of
Sayrām are identified as descendants of Ishāq Bāb's uncle, 'Abd al-Rahim Bāb, whose sphere of
Islamizing activity begins with Kāshghar ; the dynasty he founds there produces rulers who
later establish themselves in several towns of the region known as Semirechye/Yeti Su, and
then in Tarāz, Sayrām, and finally Otrār. The ruler of his lineage who established himself in
Sayrām was, in the Ishāq Bāb narrative, « Mansūr Khamir », portrayed as the son of « Awliyā
Qarākhān » (the patron saint of Tarāz/Awliyā Atà/Jambïl) and as the father of « Chaghir
Tekin », who also ruled in Sayrām. The Ishāq Bāb narrative, however, presents a quite
different sequence of rulers as compared with the sacred history of Sayrām ; in the former we
find this lineage : Awliyā Qarākhān > Mansūr Khamir Khān > Chaghir Tekin > Qïlïch Arslān
Qarākhān > Ismā'il Khān > Ilyās Khān > Ahmad Khān > Arslān Khān (the last named is the
latest to echo names in the sacred history of Sayrām). A fuller study of the Ishāq Bāb narratives
is in preparation ; see DeWeese, 1990, on this lineage, and, for a somewhat different
presentation from a 19th-century reworking of the account, see « Rodoslovnaia Karakhana »,
p. 87-91. The sacred history of Sayrām devotes considerable attention to Mansūr Khamir, as
we will see, but makes no mention of Awliyā Qarākhān, unless we identify him with Qarā
Bughrā Khān, perhaps by assuming a conflation with the figure of « Satuq Bughrā Khān », the
famous Qarākhānid Islamizer (confusion with regard to Qarākhānid titulature is hardly
uncommon) ; on Satuq see Barthold, 1977, p. 254-255 ; Golden, 1990, p. 357.
58 This figure's name seems clearly to echo that of the famous Sebuktegin, father of Mahmūd
of Ghazna, and we might seek, in the figures that follow him in the sacred history's account,
reflections of names associated with the Qarākhānids (« Qarā Bughrā Khān ») and the Saljûqs
(« Chaghir [< Chaghri ?] Tekin »), thus yielding a historical, if condensed, dynastic sequence of
Ghaznavids, Qarākhānids, and Saljûqs ; against this, however, we may stress that the most
striking echoes of these names (except for Sebiik-Tekān-bāsh) appear not in « real » historical
sources, but in the Ishāq Bāb narrative.
59 MS 11367 says instead that Sebük Tekin-bāsh was of the lineage of Qarā Bughrā Khān, but
later in the narrative it is clear that Qarā Bughrā Khān is the ruler who installed, and then
deposed, Chaghir Tekin.
60 This name, meaning « Fortunate Town » echoes the designation (« Qutlugh Bal'igh »)
reportedly applied to the town of Zarnūq (northwest of Sayrām, on the left bank of the Syr
Darya, near where the Arys flows into it) after it surrendered to, and was thus spared by, the
Mongols (see Juvayni, I, p. 100, and Barthol'd, 1977, p. 407-408 ; it may be simply a generic
appellation here, however.
61 In MS 11367, bālchiq va kirfij ; in MS 12708, lāy va khisht.
62 The narrative is extremely condensed here, and does not make clear how or when Qarā
Bughrā Khān exposed Chaghir Tekin.
63 So in MS 12708 ; in MS 11367, « Qarāmûrûd ». The name « Qaramurt » is applied to a
particular village near Sayrām, but is also used to refer to certain groups identified as Uzbeks
living in southern Kazakstan ; see Taizhanov and Ismailov, 1986 ; Zhilina and Taizhanov, 1984.
64 MS 12708 calls it again thejûy-āb mosque, but MS 11367 hints at the form in which we most
likely find it mentioned in earlier accounts, calling it the jūyah masjid (orthographically
similar to « chūbah masjid » ;see above, note 45). The accounts are garbled here, evidently.
MS 11367 says that he (implicitly Chaghri Tekin) renovated the jūyah mosque, and goes on to
affiim that « Qarā Tekin Atā's father, Alās Tekin, had built the site of the Falās mosque » (or

« had built it on the site » of that mosque ?) ; Qarā Tekin appears at the end of the narrative
history, however. MS 12708 says that « his father — evidently meaning Chaghir Tekin's — had
built the jûy-āb mosque and the Palās mosque in Sayrām ».
65 65. In MS 11367, she is called « turk.n » (explicitly vowelled with a dhamma), but in MS
12708, she is called « q.y t.r.kin » ; the first element is unclear (possibly to be read as quy,
referring to « women's quarters » [see Clauson, 1972, p. 674], or simply as qoy, « sheep »), but
the second is clearly terken, a royal title most commonly applied to women (cf. Clauson, 1972,
p. 544).
66 Thus MS 11367 ; MS 12708 says only that from her were born Arslān Khān and 'Abd al-
Khàliq Khān. As noted earlier, it is tempting to see in « Qarā Bughrā Khān » an echo of the
Islamizing figure of Satûq Bughrā Khān ; and in this connection we may note that the story of
the four brothers sending their sister to be the ancestor of the khāns of Kāshghar bears a very
rough resemblance to the widespread traditions focused on the wars for the faith waged by the
Qarākhānids of Kāshghar, cast as descendants of Satūq Bughrā Khān, against the unbelievers
of Khotan, traditions known primarily from narrative elaborations of the legend of Satûq
Bughrā Khān that appear to date, like the sacred history of Sayrām, from the late 18th and 19th
centuries (the names of the two « additional » brothers in the History of Sayrām, 'Ali Khān and
Hasan Khān, resemble those of a son and grandson of Satūq known from the Kāshghar cycle,
in which Satūq's daughter likewise plays a central role ; see Grenard, 1990, still the most
extensive discussion of such narratives).
67 The accounts differ here, above all with regard to the name of the guilty community. In MS
11367, it was the « ar.g.m.chi », called simply a « jamā'af », « community », who killed
Arslān'Khān's agent (cf. Budagov, 1960,1, p. 29, where « arghamchi »is explained as a term for
"trap", or "snare", derived from the verb ārghāmāq, « to deceive, lure, entice »). In MS 12708,
however, we are told that Arslān Khān assigned the task successively to various occupational
groups (kasb), and that it was thé « Bāshbāqji » kasb that struck and killed the yasāvul he
sent ; the term evidently refers to "turban-makers" (cf. Bugadov, 1960, I, p. 231, « bāshbāgh »,
« turban »).
68 In the 19th-century reworking of the Ishāq Bāb narrative reflected in « Rodoslovnaia
Karakhana », « Qarā Āsmān » is the site of the grave of Satûq Bughrā Khān, an appellation
explained as the local Kāshghari name for Ishāq Bāb's uncle 'Abd al-Rahim ; Qarā Āsmān is
known from 16th-century sources as a locality near Otrār (in tradition of East Turkistān, the
site of Satūq Bughrā Khān's grave is well known in a town near Kāshghar called Artuch).
69 It is not clear whether this form should be understood as an oral deformation of « Qarā
Āsmān », or the latter a meaningful, « explanatory » devolution from an unfamiliar form
masked by the orthography « kh.rāsmān ».
70 MS 11367, fol. 320a-325a ; MS 12708, fol. 52a-59a.
71 This passage appears near the beginning of the account in MS 12708, but follows his release
by Ismāil Sāmāni in MS 11367. The three feats were these : (1) « One day I was lying asleep in a
garden, and a snake went into my mouth ; I awoke, but as hard as I pulled I could not get it
out, and so finally I bit it in two ; half of it I threw away, and half of it remained inside. » ; (2)
« I suffered from a skin disease (qotur) for seven years, but never once did I scratch my nails
upon it. » ; (3) « I went out and fought with innumerable foes and asked no assistance from
anyone. » The second and third feats appear to allude to episodes recounted below (to his
seven-year stay in a dungeon, and to his single-handed victory over an attacking army).
72 A different version of this story is told in the second part of the work, the shrine catalogue,
in the notice on the grave of Mawlānā Ra'is al-Din, but appears only in MS 11367 (fol. 331b-
332a) : the Prophet, in a dream, instructed « Sultān Khamir Atā »to get the shirt of Idris from
the cave where it had been deposited and to take it with him as he faced the enemy ; when he
went out to fight, he found Ra'is al-Din there, and the two men, learning that they had had
similar dreams, together drove off the enemy.
73 The phrase recurs in both versions, in a later episode. Appropriately enough, while in
historical terms Islam comes to Isfijàb from the south, in effect from Iran, in the sacredhistory
the fact of an attack on Sayrām from Iran necessarily makes Iran into the abode of unbelief : if
Sayrām was Muslim from the time of Idris, its enemies must have been infidels. On the other
hand, of course, by the time the sacred history was compiled, Iran was from the perspective of
Sayrām as much an abode of unbelief, or its equivalent, as the land of the Qalmaqs or
Russians.
74 Ismā'il Sāmāni says, « O Mansūr Khamir, your rulership and your justice were well-known
throughout the world ; after spending seven years in a dungeon, have you lost your mind ?

What kind of talk is this, when you ask [these questions] ? (they are repeated). Why did you
speak thus ? »
75 In MS 12708, the fourth question reads thus each time it is repeated : « mu'min-lar choq
choq-mu yagān yagān-mu? » In MS 11367, the question simply asks if the believers are « at
ease » (dil-jam’) the first two times the question is repeated ; when the explanation of these
questions' significance is given, however, both copies explain that if the mu'min-lār are choq
choq, it shows that the realm is ruined, while if they are yagān yagān, it shows that the realm
will be at ease. The passage is problematical. It may refer to the « hearts » of the believers, as
implied in MS 11367, with « choq choq » referring to multiple views and communal discord,
and « yagān yagān »to unity and harmony ; or it may refer to the believers gathering « in
groups » or « one by one », perhaps alluding to disputes over the size of a congregation needed
to render Friday prayer valid. Alternatively, it may mask other terms that were no longer
understood, for instance « choq »(attested as an Oghuz word for « vile » ; see Clauson, 1972,
p. 405) vs. « yeg »(« better », cf. Clauson, 1972, p. 909).
76 That is, he performed dihqānchïlïq ;does this conceal an allusion to his status as one of the
aristocratic dihqāns of Isfijāb in the Sàmànid era ?
77 We may note here the introduction of new figures into the sacred history, perhaps revealing
the narrative's composite character : the narrative itself, in the « pre-Islamic » period, links
Idris, Nûh, Khizr, Ibrāhim, and 'Isā with Sayrām, while here, after the time of Mansūr Khamir,
the city's juridical chief comforts the people with a somewhat different lineup of prophets,
reminding them of the presence of Khizr, Idris, Dā'ûd, 'Isā, Yûsha', and Ilyās, and noting the
city's explicit blessing by Muhammad and Ibrāhim as well.
78 Thus in MS 11367 ; in MS 12708, « and many prophets and holy men ('aziz) and saints
(vali) have prayed for this city's well-being ».
79 MS 11367 alone adds that « whoever makes water flow in the city and gives a cloak to a
naked person, if he does hajj tavāf, he will be accepted as a hājji ».
80 MS 11367, « vali-i sāhib-i bātin » ; MS 12708, « valî-i sāhib-i hāl ».
81 MS 11367, fol. 328a-351b ; MS 12708, fol. 63b-77b. The summary of the shrine catalogue
given below adopts MS 11367 as the basis. In most cases it is fuller and more detailed, and in
one instance inserts a total of six biographies not found in MS 12708 ; on the other hand, it
omits a few figures mentioned in MS 12708.
82 I.e., Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya, son of 'Ali by a woman other than the Prophet's daughter,
and a figure of enormous popular resonance in Central Asian narrative and genealogical
traditions.
83 Cf. Clauson, 1972, p. 392, and Budagov, 1960, I, p. 280 : bozla-, « to bellow », « to groan »,
« to lament » in mourning.
84 MS 11367 says merely that his eyebrows were « long » (uzun), but in MS 12708 they are
described as « overgrown » (ösük). On the term « barāq, » used for « shaggy » animals, see
Dankoff, 1971.
85 Yuvāsh Bāb, whose grave is said in other traditions to be in Chumushlaghu, is mentioned
already in the nasab-nāma of Ishāq Bāb appended to the 14th-century work of Ishāq Khoja b.
Ismā'il Atā. He is not there identified as a brother of Ishāq Bāb, however, and it is not
impossible that his name reflects a distortion of that of Yūsha' (Joshua), whose qadam-jāy is
noted outside Sayrām (see below, N° 29 of part II).
86 Masson (1928, p. 26-27) discusses this shrine, which he calls that of « Balā-gardān » (i.e.
« warder-off of troubles ») ; a legend about a miraculous stone found at the shrine, which was
carried off following a Qalmaq raid but was eventually returned, is recounted in Ivanov, 1923b.
87 Masson (1928, p. 26) however, insists that it is the shrine of 'Abd al-'Aziz Bāb that is
ascribed by the local people to Barāq Khān.
88 Perhaps « annual pilgrim » ( ?), written « y.la-kan »in both copies.
89 Masson (1928, p. 25-26) speaking of only one shrine « of Pādshāh Malik Bābā or of Mir-'Ali
Bābā », implies that these are the same person ; he describes it as one of the oldest shrines in
the town.
90 The term "lāy-khùf' as applied to figures appearing in mystical poetry is usually translated
as « dregs-drinker », but the anecdote recounted here, as well as the 16th-century reference
noted below, make it clear that mud is intended in this case.
91 MS Aligarh Subhanullah N° 297.71/1 (uncatalogued), fol. 28b. I have not yet traced this

figure elsewhere.
92 His name is presumably derived from oz-, « to precede », « to surpass », « to outstrip » .
Masson, 1928, p. 37, mentions a mazir of « Uzgan Ata », located 6 km from Sayrām, but gives
no particulars.
93 The Turkic sūzūk, meaning « strained », « clarified », « purified », might be appropriate for
a saint's name, and a shrine of Siiziik Atā is well known in a neighborhood of Tashkent bearing
the same name ; however, this appellation may reflect the name of a shaykh of the Yasavi
tradition, cast as the disciple of Sūfi Muhammad Dānishmand and the master of both Ismā'il
Atā and his father Ibrāhim Atā, known as Siiksiik Atā. Türkmen tradition preserves stories
linking, as disciples of Ahmad Yasavi, ancestral figures called Süziik (or Süsük) Atā and Gözli
Atā (see Basilov, 1975, p. 155 ; the latter name may suggest a reason for the inclusion, in MS
12708, of the curious form « közük ». The curious explanation of the meaning of "süzük"
suggests a possible confusion with the term « osük », meaning « overgrown » or « shaggy »,
used in connection with another saint's eyebrows in.N° I/29 (MS 12708 only).
94 In this regard it is noteworthy that the most important pre-Islamic prophets in Sayrâm's
sacred history are precisely those with the most universal and extra-temporal character : Idris,
who escaped death (and who, as noted, is the culture-hero linked with a significant feature of
« civilized » life, the wearing of man-made clothes) ; Nūh, whose prophetic career resanctified
the entire earth ; and Khizr, who like Idris was immortal, and whose continued
« accessibility » to those on earth was widely evoked both in Sufi experience and paradigm,
and in popular lore. Khizr, indeed, is portrayed in the narrative as a more constantly accessible
presence than Idris, who, after all, must leave his shirt to serve as the city's patron ; Khizr, by
contrast, is more regularly available, but the narrative, appropriately enough, draws the
universally known features of Khizr's image into the particular setting at hand by linking the
more widely evoked spiritual aspect of his accessibility with an ancestral one: Khizr comes to
Sayram because his parents are buried there.
95 That is, despite its composite and cumulative character, the sacred history of Sayrām should
not be considered the product of a continuous, straightforward historical memory preserved
within a community conscious of itself outside the framework of Islamic history or
metahistory ; its narrative traditions reflect not simply an attempt to fit cherished local
traditions into an Islamic framework, but the adoption of an Islamic framework — and
specifically an expansive, inclusive Islamic framework — as the basis for understanding
Sayram's special sacrality. Local traditions were clearly available to be reinterpreted,
reclassified, and fitted into the framework, but we may be sure that the framework came first,
in effect, and that the framework was wholly shaped by a nativized Muslim consciousness,
having been provided in part by the stories drawn from Islamic lore and localized in Sayrām.
96 For example, Khorezm is Islamized in the time of the Prophet ; the Uzbeks arc formed as a
people when they aid the Prophet in battle ; Osh is founded by Sulaymān ; various Companions
of Muhammad fight for the faith in Samarqand, Farghāna, and beyond ; and numerous holy
sites throughout Central Asia are known as the graves of pre-Islamic prophets and
Companions.
97 Cf. the comments of Paul (1993, p. 76-79).
98 For example, a prominent saint such as Otluq Yûnus Atāmay be identified as a ruler in
'"Ajam", while even QarāTekin — a figure that seems most clearly to echo local dynastic
tradition of Isfijāb — is declared to have been an outsider, from 'Irāq.
99 Though as of yet little studied, such narrative and genealogical traditions have been
recorded for tribal groups among the Uzbeks, Qazaqs, Qïrghïz, and Türkmens.
<
Pour citer cet article

Référence papier
Devin DeWeese, « Sacred History for a Central Asian Town
Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in
Histories of Sayrām, 18th-19th Centuries », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la
Méditerranée, 89-90 | 2000, 245-295.
Référence électronique
Devin DeWeese, « Sacred History for a Central Asian Town

Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in

Histories of Sayrām, 18th-19th Centuries », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la
Méditerranée [En ligne], 89-90 | juillet 2000, mis en ligne le 12 mai 2009, consulté le 07 mai
2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 ; DOI :
https://doi.org/10.4000/remmm.283
Auteur
Devin DeWeese
Indiana University.
Articles du même auteur

A Khwārazmian Saint in the Golden Horde: Közlük Ata (Gözlī Ata) and the Social
Vectors of Islamisation [Texte intégral]
Paru dans Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, 143 | octobre 2018
Droits d’auteur
Les contenus de la Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée sont mis à

disposition selon les termes de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation
Commerciale - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 4.0 International.

Sacred History For A Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin Inhistories of Sayrām

Transféré par

Informations du document

Titre original

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Sacred History For A Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin Inhistories of Sayrām

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Sacred History for a Central Asian TownSaints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin inHistories of Sayrām, 18th-19th Centuries 07.05.

Revue des mondes Français

musulmans et de la Portail de ressources électroniques

Sacred History for a Central

Asian Town CALENDA

Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Bibliothèques et institutions

Origin in OpenEdition Freemium

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 1 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 2 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 3 von 38

Sayrām/Isfijàb in Political and

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 4 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 5 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 6 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 7 von 38

The Sacred History of Sayrām

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 8 von 38

The Narrative History

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 9 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 10 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 11 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 12 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 13 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 14 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 15 von 38

The Shrine Catalogue

Inside the City

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 16 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 17 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 18 von 38

Outside the City

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 19 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 20 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 21 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 22 von 38

Conclusion : Sacralizing Vision and

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 23 von 38

served similar functions).

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 24 von 38

dispensation, the symbolic assimilation, or perhaps even reidentification, of the

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 25 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 26 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 27 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 28 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 29 von 38

vv. », in Srednevekovaia gorodskaia kul'tura Kazakhstana i Srednei Azii, Alma-Ata, Nauka.

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 30 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 31 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 32 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 33 von 38

body to « Ghāzikird mountain ».

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 34 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 35 von 38

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 36 von 38

Pour citer cet article

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 37 von 38

Saints, Shrines, and Legends of Origin in

Articles du même auteur

Les contenus de la Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée sont mis à

https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/283 Seite 38 von 38

Vous aimerez peut-être aussi