Seven nineteenth-twentieth century genealogies and one seventeenth-century genealogy are from the district of Zībāk in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, two of which are wall inscriptions inside the shrine of Abū’l-Maʿānī and one of which is a wall inscription inside the shrine of Divānah Shāh. Research on the history of the Ismāʿīlī community of Zībāk is scant, due to the impact of the long years of war since 1979, which has shattered the documentary record maintained by local families and limited scholarly access to the region. The nasab-nāmas that remain in the hands of individuals families in Zībak (and nearby Ishkashīm), and those that are inscribed on the walls of shrines and copied by khalīfas in notebooks, demonstrate the resilient nature of knowledge production about matters of descent, the preeminence of sayyid pedigree, and the interrelationship between Sufism and Ismāʿīlism in the region. The district of Zībāk is strategically located at the foot of the Daliz Pass, which connects with Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south. The genealogies map a socio-religious connectivity across the writing cultures of the Pamir that extends to Tajik Badakhshan and to Northwest Pakistan, the character of which has yet to be examined comparatively. The genealogies from Zībāk include those of Sayyid Shāh ʿAbū’l-Maʿānī (d. 1384/2005), son of Shāhzāda Layth and grandson of one of the most influential Ismāʿīlī pīrs in the nineteenth century, Shāh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, who was forced into exile in 1883 and fled to Chitral (Abdul Rahim 18; Biddulph 119); Sayyid al-Ḥusaynī (also known as Shāh Sayyid Ḥusayn Sādāt and Sayyid Shāh Ḥusayn), father of Shāh ʿAbd al-Raḥīm who is said to have come to Zībāk from Dehbid-i Samarqand, a well-known center of Sufism; the Ismāʿīlī foundational figure Divānah Shāh, son of Sayyid ʿAbdullāh, whose shrine is located in Khalkhān village in Zībāk; and the eminent eighteenth-century poet and Naqshbandī Sūfī, Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Badakhshī (d. 1768), whose grandfather also migrated from Dehbid to Jurm, Badakhshan (Badakhshī and Bīzhan; Papas, 88). One twentieth-century document is a compilation of genealogies that includes the Twelver Shīʿī imāms and their families, different lines of pīrsand sayyids, sayyids of Hind, Rūm and Kūhistān, and those of Shāh Niʿmatullāh Valī and Nāṣir-i Khusraw. Another modern collection of genealogies includes those of Shāh Khāmūsh and the rulers of Shughnān, the rulers of Zībāk and Yumgān, Sayyid Suhrāb Valī, ʿAbd al-Qādir Jīlānī, Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī, ʿUmar Yumgī, Mīr Ghiyāth al-Dīn Ghiyāthī, and Nāṣir-i Khusraw.

References:

Papas, Alexandre. “Soufis du Badakhshān, un renouveau confrerique entre l‘Inde et l’Asia centrale. Cahier d’Asie Central 11-12(2003): 87-102.

Badakhshī, Shāh ʿAbd Allāh, and Farīd Bīzhan. Armaghān-i Badakhshān. Tehran: Bunyād-i Mawqūfāt-i Duktur Maḥmūdd Afshār, 2006.

Rahim, Abdul Munshi. Journey to Badakhshan, with Report on Badakhshan and Wakhan. Simla: F.D. Press, 1886.

Biddulph, John. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh. Calcutta, 1880.