Sayyid Ḥukūmat Shāh, son of Shāh Niʿmatullāh, was an influential figure who lived in the Shughnān region of present-day Tajik Badakhshan in the nineteenth century. He traced his lineage to Sayyid Shāh Malang. The family of Sayyid Ḥukūmat Shāh is known for having preserved a large number of documents, including not only genealogies but also documents such as property and revenue records, farmāns of the Ismāʿīlī Imāms, letters, and other documents. Many of the nasab-nāmahs that we have obtained for this project belonged to the families of his descendants Sayyid Sharīf and Kirmān Shāh. Hukūmat Shāh’s family were prominent landholders in the Ghund valley of Shughnān and several of them are known to have served in important political positions. For example, one of the sons of Ḥukūmat Shāh, Dilāvar Shāh, is known to have served as a minister (vazīr) in the Khanate of Khoqand under Muḥammad Khudāyār Khān (Beben; Mamadsherzodshoev and Kawahara, 2:206). Several descendants of Ḥukūmat Shāh also held important political positions during the Soviet era.

In addition to being political figures, some of Ḥukūmat Shāh's descendants were also religious leaders, holding the office of khalīfah within the Ismāʿīlī religious administration in Badakhshan. In 1923 by the order of Imām Sulṭān Muḥammad Shāh a new system of religious education and administration was established in Tajik Badakhshan, replacing the system of the pīrs with a series of regional administrative associations, known as anjumans (Bergne, 97-99; Zoolshoev). The Central Association (Anjuman-i Markazī) for Badakhshan was established in the city of Khorogh under the responsibility of Sayyid Ḥukūmat Shāh’s grandson Kirmān Shāh. The Anjuman-i Markazī was responsible for the collection of the obligatory payments for the Imām within Badakhshan and its transfer to the imamate in India.

References:

Beben, Daniel. "Tajiks in the Land of the Turks: The Pamiris in the Khanate of Khoqand." In Tajiks: History, Religion, Culture and People, ed. Dagikhudo Dagiev (London: Routledge, forthcoming).

Bergne, Paul. The Birth of Tajikistan: National Identity and the Origins of the Republic. London: I. B.Tauris, 2007.

Mamadsherzodshoev, Umed, and Yayoi Kawahara, eds. Documents from Private Archives in Right-Bank Badakhshan. 2 vols. TIAS Central Eurasian Research Series no. 10. Tokyo: Department of Islamic Area Studies, University of Tokyo, 2015.

Zoolshoev, Muzaffar. "Forgotten Figures of Badakhshan: Sayyid Munir al-Din Badakhshani and Sayyid Haydar Shah Mubarakshahzada." In Identity, History and Trans-Nationality in Central Asia: The Mountain Communities of Pamir, ed. Dagikhudo Dagiev and Carole Faucher (London: Routledge, 2018): 143-72.