Places Beyond the 'Real': Chronotope of the Sacred Sites in Badakhshan Region of Tajikistan

This paper examines the stories associated with the sacred sites in some parts of the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan. It argues that sacred sites, through the stories associated with them, disrupt the scientific and materialist views of the lived environment, and create a rupture in the common narratives about Islam/Isma’ilism in this region. The sacred sites, in that sense, stand at a borderline between the real and the incredible. They are real in a sense of being material things; a building, a tree, a stone, a spring-water, or even a mountain and a lake, and they are incredible through the contents of the stories associated with these places and things. These stories are often about the miracle-works of the Imams and other Muslim saints, who help people to resolve the situations which human beings are powerless to resolve. For the Isma’ilis of Badakhshan, who traditionally had no Mosques, the sacred sites are the focus of their religious affections. The narratives about the miracles worked by the saints, (buzurgan “the great-ones”), associated with the sacred sites are part of this affective field. Many of these stories are associated with the saints who arrived into the region from Persia and who are believed to be ‘foundational figures’ of the local religious tradition. The oral stories about the saints associated with these places have important place in the religious expression and the Isma’ili Muslim identity of the people in Badakhshan. They show the ways in which people attribute meanings to their social and natural environment and articulate these meanings within the framework of their Isma’ili Muslim faith. Through the stories associated with the sacred sites the natural surrounding becomes animated and appropriated as part of their social and cultural world.
This paper is based on the data collected during my fieldwork in Badakhshan region from May 2011 to January 2012 and oral data collected and preserved in the archive of the Khorog Research Unit, an entity run by the London based Institute of Isma’ili Studies.