Shāh Kāshān, known also as Sayyid Muḥammad Iṣfahānī, is a figure that is often claimed as an ancestor among the families of the khalīfahs, or those who served immediately under the pīrs and were responsible for much of the day-to-day religious work of the Ismāʿīlī community of Badakhshan. Most traditions claim that he traveled from Iran to Badakhshan as a companion to Shāh Khāmūsh in the twelfth century (Badakhshī and Surkh-Afsar; Bobrinskoĭ; Gross), although the late Badakhshani scholar Abusaid Shokhumorov, based on Bahār-i Badakhshān of Sayyid ʿAbd al-Karim al-Ḥusaynī (Ḥusaynī, 10; Shokhumorov, 7-11), states that he came to Badakhshan in the sixteenth century (see also his introduction to 11404444).

References:

Al-Ḥusaynī, Sayyid ʿAbd al-Karīm. Bahār-i Badakshān (unpublished manuscript, National Archive of Afghanistan).

Badakhshī, Sang Muḥammad, and Faḍl ʿAlī Bek Surkh-Afsar. Tārīkh-i Badakhshān. Ed. and trans. A. N. Boldyrev (Moscow: Vostochnoi Literatury, 1997), 120b.

Bobrinskoĭ, Alekseĭ A. Sekta Ismail’ia v bukharskikh predelakh Sredneĭ Azii. Moscow: 1902.

Gross, Jo-Ann. "Foundational Legends, Shrines, and Ismāʿīlī Identity in Gorno-Badakhshan, Tajikistan." In Muslims and Others in Sacred Space, ed. Margaret Cormack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 164-92.

Muḥammadzādah, Qurbān (Ākhūnd-Sulaymān) and Muḥabbat Shāhzādah (Shāh Fiṭūr). Tārīkh-i Badakhshān. Ed. and notes A.A. Egani (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), f. 1-2.

Shokhumorov, Abusaid. Said Ja'far Devoni Ash'or (Khorug: Khushkor, 2016): 7-11.