YouTube Video:
https://youtu.be/CY06a2W-nuA?si=TW81CnSVZjVKxbSP
Organized By Asian Study Group Islamabad. Recorded By: Dr. Naeem Mishtaq with special kind permission of Asian Study Group Islamabad. Coffee With Friends Series. Saturday, January 27th, 2024. 6:00PM , Islamabad Seena Hotel Islamabad. Islamabad, Pakistan. Book Basic Theme: Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world. About The Author:
https://waleedziad.com https://religion.unc.edu/_people/full... Ph.D., Yale University, 2017 M.A.; M.Phil, Yale University, 2013 B.A., Yale University, 2002 Recent Awards: Yale Law School, Research Scholar in Law; Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow, Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization. 2016-2017.
Theron Rockwell Field Prize’, 2017 (one of two highest Yale University dissertation awards across disciplines)
Honorable mention for superior scholarship, originality, clarity, and the significant contribution it makes to the field of Iranian Studies” as part of Foundation for Iranian Studies’ Best Dissertation Award, 2017.
Brief Bio Dr. Waleed Ziad is Assistant Professor and Ali Jarrahi Fellow in Persian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to this, he was a Research Scholar in Law, and an Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School. He received his PhD (with Distinction) in History at Yale University. His dissertation (entitled Traversing the Indus and the Oxus: Trans-regional Islamic Revival in the Age of Political Fragmentation and the ‘Great Game’, 1747-1880, 797 pp.) was awarded the university-wide Theron Rockwell Field Prize, one of the two most prestigious Yale dissertation awards, awarded to two students selected from all disciplines. He also received his undergraduate degree from Yale in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Economics, and his MA and MPhil from Yale in History. At the intersection of social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Dr. Ziad’s research concerns the historical and philosophical foundations of Muslim revivalism and the varying revivalist responses to internal political fragmentation and colonialism in the ‘Persianate’ world (South and Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran). In this endeavor, he has conducted fieldwork on historical and contemporary Muslim revivalism, reform, and mysticism in over 120 towns across Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. For well over a decade, he has focused his attention on the development of Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi networks after the mid-18th century, spanning modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India, China, and Russia. These were arguably the most extensive Muslim scholastic-religious networks until the 20th century. His research has resulted in two books, Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard, 2021), and Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and Her Spiritual Network (in progress). Another long-standing focus of his research is numismatics and material culture of the Indo-Iranian borderlands, with particular interest in religious transculturation, dismantling notions of boundaries between Iranian, Turkic, Indic, and Arab cultural zones. His book In the Treasure Room of the Sakra King: Votive Coinage from Gandharan Shrines (American Numismatic Society, 2021) introduces a unique pilgrimage site of late antiquity centered on a cave temple in the Sakra mountain range in the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier regions, which existed as a monetarily independent polity from the 4th-11th centuries. His forthcoming monograph Beyond Khutba and Sikka: Sovereignty and Coinage in Sindh, 1300-1700 (under review) looks at how intermediate sovereignty in regions in the interstices of great empires was strategically articulated through coinage. Dr. Ziad’s academic work has appeared in several leading academic journals and edited volumes and his articles on historical and ideological trends in the Muslim world have appeared in the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, the Hill and major dailies internationally. Dr. Ziad has studied Arabic, Persian / Dari / Sabk-e Hindi, Urdu, French, Uzbek / Chaghatai and Romanian.
Amazon:Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus-Waleed Ziad
Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world.
In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi “Hidden Caliphate,” as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China.
By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the “Great Game,” Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.
Review“This book is so far ahead of the curve in this field of study that it is in a different time zone…a vigorous, excoriating rebuttal of current ideological myths about the era and the land, and the impact of the Europeans on central Asia and the Indian subcontinent…an intelligent, courageous, and important work, rooted in common sense and sturdy research.”―Abdullah Drury, Muslim World Book Review
“Brilliant…An outstanding book, which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Sufism, modern Islamic thought, and the social and political history of the Persianate world.”―Fitzroy Morrissey, Asian Affairs
“Ziad does an exceptional job of demonstrating how the Persianate zone was intrinsically bound by dynamic Sufi networks in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and how these networks provided a place for the exchange of various forms of knowledge and the establishment of institutional structures that continue to be influential until this day.”―Lulie El-Ashry, Religious Studies Review
“An important work…Ziad provides a riveting account of how history has buffeted the fortunes of the Mujadidi Sufis, from Punjab to the Peshawar valley, Kabul, Bukhara and Turkey.”―Farrukh Husain, Friday Times
“Hidden Caliphate announces the arrival of a major new scholar. By focusing on the more recent past of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ziad recenters the study of the Sufi tradition, which all too often has been relegated to the realm of metaphysics and poetry. He brings a contested period to light with encyclopedic insight. I heartily recommend this book.”―Omid Safi, author of The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry
“A major achievement. In this innovative, well-written book Ziad shows us a region knit together by the networks of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis. He is the first to set out their massive influence across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and northwest South Asia, and in the process reveals how limited was the understanding of the colonial powers in the Great Game.”―Francis Robinson, author of The Mughal Emperors: And the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia, 1206–1925
“Equipped with an impressive array of primary sources, Ziad skillfully dismantles restrictive notions of region and sovereignty and casts aside binaries such as that of Sufis and ulama. He then offers us a breathtaking view of a Persian cosmopolis held together by vibrant networks of Naqshbandi Sufis in the politically turbulent eighteenth century. This hugely important book should be read across a range of disciplines.”―Supriya Gandhi, author of The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India
“A pioneering study of the Mujaddidi Sufi networks that spanned the eastern Islamic world, from Siberia to India, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grounded in a prodigious range of sources, Hidden Caliphate shows how the order’s doctrinal, ritual, and institutional dimensions offered intellectual and social cohesion for Muslims across this vast region before and after the advent of colonial domination.”―Devin DeWeese, author of Studies on Sufism in Central Asia
“Refreshingly original, Hidden Caliphate shows how the Mujaddidi Sufis combined high textual tradition with ecstatic Sufism and local rituals and thus built a seminal authority to unite diverse communities across Central Asia, Afghanistan, and South Asia. Ziad brings a vital new perspective on a region long understood only through the narrow lens of European imperial histories.”―Muzaffar Alam, author of The Mughals and the Sufis: Islam and Political Imagination in India, 1500–1750
“A brilliant transregional study of the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi scholastic–religious networks (the batini khilafat) in Khurasan, Hindustan, and Transoxiana that significantly advances the field of Persianate studies. Ziad traces sacred networks of cultural and economic exchange as well as the leadership structure that helped maintain a degree of stability during a time of political decentralization. A must-read for all interested in Sufism, the Persianate sphere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the history of the Afghan empire.”―Jo-Ann Gross, Professor of History, Emeritus, The College of New Jersey
About the Author:
Waleed Ziad is Assistant Professor and Ali Jarrahi Fellow in Persian Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Formerly a Research Fellow at the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School, Ziad has conducted fieldwork in over 120 towns across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan.
YouTube Video: The Extraordinary, Enchanted Journey of a Female Scholar Saint in the Afghan Empire: Waleed Ziad- Royal Asiatic of Great Britain & Ireland-Oct 27, 2023
https://youtu.be/0e3doZDdXzs?si=-UXjNhhAhywRszxT
At the turn of the 19th century, Bibi Sahiba Kalan (1752-1803), Kabul’s great female Sufi master and scholar, was recognized as the “most exalted saint” of the age. Her network of thousands of disciples spanned the Arabian Sea to Central Asia. She was the spiritual guide of scholars, poets, and nobles, invited to Bukhara by the khan himself. She led a caravan to Mecca, and built and managed colleges and shrines at Kandahar, Yemen, and Sindh. Bibi Sahiba’s sons and grandchildren – Sufi masters in their own right – defended Afghanistan in the Anglo-Afghan Wars. They expanded Bibi Sahiba’s spiritual network all the way to the Thar desert and Rajasthan, where at least fifteen great female saints were appointed as their successors - each with Muslim and Hindu disciples in the thousands. These female saints are the subject of Prof. Waleed Ziad’s forthcoming book Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and her Sacred networks (Harvard 2024), based on fieldwork in several dozen towns and villages from the Thar desert to the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands to Central Asia. Dr Ziad’s research overturns our assumptions on Muslim women’s empowerment before colonialism; His research indicates that Bibi Sahiba was one of many female religious leaders in what is today Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan from the 18th to 20th centuries. Waleed Ziad is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to this, he was the Islamic Law and Civilization Research Fellow at Yale Law School. He completed his PhD in the Department of History at Yale University, where he won the university-wide Field Prize, the highest Yale doctoral dissertation award across all disciplines. His first book Hidden Caliphate (Harvard, 2022) was awarded the Albert Hourani Prize from the Middle East Studies Association, the most prestigious prize in Middle Eastern Studies. For over a decade, Dr. Ziad has conducted fieldwork on historical and contemporary religious revivalism and Sufism in over 140 towns across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan. Dr. Ziad has studied Arabic, Persian, Urdu, French, Sindhi, Uzbek / Chaghatai and Romanian. Currently an acclaimed historian and associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar.
YouTube Video:Demystifying Sufism | Waleed Ziad-afikra-Feb 26, 2024
Waleed Ziad — author of "Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus" — joins us on the afikra podcast to demystify Sufism. Ziad explains the mystical and scientific aspects of Sufism and its far reaching geographies that surpass today's "securitized" borders and colonial conceptions of South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East as "reified zones". We also learn about the concept of sovereignty in the Islamic world and how modern day understandings of Sufism and abandonment of meditative practices differ from the realities of the pre-20th century Muslim world.
