Ismaili Sects—Central Asia

The Ismaili sect of Shiʿa Islam (Shiʿa Islam itself being the minority current of Islam, accounting for only some 10 percent of the world's Muslim population) separated from the mainstream of Shiʿa Islam in 765, when a minority of Shiʿites accepted Ismail, the son of the sixth Shiʿite imam, as the seventh and final imam. The Ismaili sect entered Central Asia around 1000 CE.

The Ismailis of Central Asia reside mainly in the ethnolinguistic area of the Pamir and eastern Hindu Kush Mountains, including the Pamirs in present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and China, Dardistan Province in Pakistan, and Nuristan Province in Afghanistan. On the fringes of this area, the Ismailis are scattered in some places in Hazarajat in central Afghanistan and in isolated pockets in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Lagman, as well as in some small communities in Herat and among the Turkmen of Balkh. Ismaili migrants also live in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The center of the Afghan Ismailis is the town of Pul-i Khumri (central Afghanistan), where they dominate local economic and political life.

It is difficult to provide exact up-to-date demographic data on the Ismailis of the Tajik Pamirs, but various records indicate that in the early 1990s the population of the region reached approximately 250,000. The number of Afghan Ismailis is estimated at anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000 people, and several thousand Ismailis live in the Chinese Pamirs.

The bulk of the Pamiri and Hazara Ismailis are village dwellers, dependent for their livelihood on irrigated and usually terraced fields in the valley bottoms. Those living in Afghan cities are often engaged in commerce or in the service sector. The Tajik Ismailis have the highest ratio of high school and university graduates in all of post-Soviet Central Asia.

The great majority of the several groups who live in the Pamirs speak different East Iranian languages. None of these is fixed in writing, and the language of culture and civilization is Tajiki (Persian). Before the late nineteenth century, the knowledge of Tajiki was confined almost exclusively to literate religious leaders.

The Ismailis of Badakhshan Province in Afghanistan refer to themselves as panjtani (followers of the five people of the ahl al-bayt, or the Prophet Muhammad's family). The Hazara Ismailis of Afghanistan are known as qayani after the father of the current head of the Afghan Ismaili community, al-Hajj Sayyid Mansur Nadiri, Nasir-Shah Qayani. The religious beliefs of the Hazara Ismailis shape their ethnic identity: They consider themselves a distinct ethnic group within the Hazara people, who are predominantly Twelver Shiʿites (Shiʿites who accept the twelve imams, rather than the seven of the Ismaili sect) of mixed Turkic-Mongolian and Iranian origin.

Nasir-i Khusrav (1003/1004–1072/1077) was the first Ismaili propagandist associated with the spread of Ismailism in the Pamirs; he was an important Persian writer sent on his mission to the eastern part of the Islamic world by the Fatimid (an Arab dynasty ruling in Egypt) caliph al-Mustansir (1029–1094). Khusrav is believed to have contributed significantly to the initial Islamization of the Pamirs. It is reported, however, that even three hundred years after his death the Ismaili propagandists from Khorasan in northeast Iran still encountered fire-worshipers in the Pamirs.

Due to its isolation, which lasted until the end of the nineteenth century, the Pamiri Ismaili community preserved a number of unique Ismaili manuscripts and developed religious practices specific to their cultural and geographical identity.

Pamiri Ismailis maintained more or less regular contacts with the Ismaili imam (the Aga Khan), whose seat is in India, only during the forty-year period from the mid-1890s to 1936. The mid-1890s marked the arrival of Russian troops in the Pamirs, which brought the end of Ismaili persecution at the hands of Afghans and Bukharans. In 1936, the Soviet-Afghan border was firmly sealed, which again isolated these Ismailis.

During the 1990s, a number of programs were developed by the Aga Khan Development Network, in collaboration with the government of Tajikistan and other international agencies, to promote social and economic development in the region. The current imam, Aga Khan IV (b. 1937), paid two visits to the area in 1995 and 1998, and there is now a growing awareness of and contact with the international Ismaili community and its institutions.

Apart from maintaining the general Ismaili tradition, the Pamiris developed their own practice of deeply venerating Nasir-i Khusrav. According to the 1944 proclamation issued by the Tajik Pamiri Ismaili authorities, the Ismailis based their understanding of religion on the Vajh-i din, one of Nasir-i Khusrav's treatises, which is sometimes ascribed by the Pamiri Ismailis to the teaching of al-Mustansir himself. This book is esteemed as a maghz-i Qurʾan (kernel of the Qurʾan), in which the esoteric aspects of the Holy Book are explained.

When Pamiri Ismailis describe their faith, certain points keep recurring, namely, the doctrine of the outer (zahir) and the inner (batin) meaning of life and, in particular, of religion, which is of utmost importance. Thus, one should strive for pure sincerity and reject what is done solely for outward appearance. Therefore, righteousness and abstinence from evil thoughts and acts are more important than the ostentatious manifestations of religiosity.

Ismailis strive to attain perfection whatever their tasks in life might be, for this path leads to the cognition of God and unity with him. Participation in religious ceremonies, as well as recitation of and listening to devotional religious poetry, is considered to be an educational activity helping a human being to reach his or her real origin—God. However, humans are not the only creatures traveling along this path. Although only humans possess reason ('aql), the faculty that puts them closer to God than all other beings, humans and nonhumans alike strive to get closer to their creator. However, if the lower soul (nafs) overwhelms a human being, he or she loses the privilege of possessing the faculty of 'aql, or intellect, and his or her soul regresses to a lower, nonhuman state. The Pamiris have preserved pre-Islamic traditions, with a complicated system of cosmology linked to the Indo-European substratum, commonly occurring in other Iranian cultures as well.

The Pamiri Ismailis believe that Ismailism is the most progressive and tolerant creed in the world because it is constantly adapting itself to the needs and requirements of the time through the mediation of the current imam, who guides his followers according to the prevailing circumstances.

In daily life, community religious authorities, or pirs (elders, masters), and their khalifahs (deputies) act as agents of the imam: they give believers guidance in matters of religion and accompany people in the events of life, especially during the rites of passage. They also give general moral guidance and counsel and are sometimes believed to have healing power. In their functions, they make use of the Qurʾan and the Vajh-i din. Every Ismaili seeks to learn from a pir, or, if he is inaccessible, from his deputy. Usually this relationship is passed on to succeeding generations wherever they may live.

Since the mid-1950s, due to the pressure of the Soviet authorities in the Tajik Pamirs, khalifahs were elected by the people of a big village or a number of small neighboring villages. Before that, the position of khalifah tended to be hereditary. The pirs were always hereditary, but from the 1890s, the period that contacts between the community and the Aga Khan were reestablished, the pirs' succession had to be confirmed by the Aga Khan. The pirs left the Tajik Pamirs for Afghanistan in the 1930s for political reasons and due to the hostile climate of Soviet antireligious politics, and then the khalifahs became the main spiritual authorities in the area. In Afghanistan, the traditional hierarchy and system of pirs and khalifahs are still in place.

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Van den Berg, Gabrielle. (1997) "Minstrel Poetry from the Pamir Mountains: A Study of the Songs and Poems of the Ismailis of Tajik Badakhshan." Ph.D. diss. Leiden University.

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