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The history of Sufi traditions in Khwārazm reveals patterns of development that broadly correlate with patterns and alignments evident in the region's social, political, and economic history; this is not unexpected, of course, but this correlation provides a convenient vantage point from which to explore Khwārazmian Sufi traditions, and it also lends significance to the literary and folkloric legacies of those traditions, which can illuminate aspects of Khwārazmian history for periods otherwise poorly represented in written sources. The present study offers a broad outline of Sufi activity in Khwārazm, from the 12th century to the 19th, noting the sometimes alternating, sometimes overlapping patterns of locally-rooted Sufi communities, deeply embedded in Khwārazmian social topography, and of regionally- and internationally-connected Sufi groups reflecting large-scale networks; in the latter case, particular attention is given to 'mapping' the links of Sufi communities based in Khwārazm with other groups - both in distinctive configurations of regional Central Asian frameworks (i.e., northern Khurāsān, Manghïshlāq, the Syr Daryā valley, the Dasht-i Qïpchāq), and in wider 'global' frameworks connecting Khwārazm with the broader Muslim world (the holy cities, Istanbul, Crimea, Kashmīr and India). Consideration of the initial phase of Sufi history in the region, in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, is followed by a focus on the sparse but significant evidence on Khwārazmian Sufis of the 14th and 15th centuries, perhaps the most poorly known era of Khwārazmian history in the Muslim era, and to the much richer source base for the flourishing of 'Kubravī' communities - in Khwārazm and in the regions closely connected with it - during the 16th century; the continuation of these patterns, but also the emergence of distinctively local Khwārazmian variants of other Sufi traditions ('Yasavī' and Naqshbandī), from the 17th century to the early 19th will also be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant body of Muslim religious rites, with roots in Sufi devotional practice, continued to be conducted in Central Asia well into the Soviet era, despite Soviet antireligious policies and pressures. Reflecting communal adaptations of the Sufi dhikr, or "remembrance" of God, as part of healing or funerary ceremonies, these rites were reclassified, in Soviet ethnographic literature, as vestiges of "shamanism," and thus largely escaped notice by western observers of "Soviet Islam," who imagined 'Sufism' in terms of clandestine militant organizations intent on undermining the Soviet regime. This paper explores the reclassification of Sufi activity as shamanism, notes historical evidence on the diffusion of Sufi rites into wider public circles, and suggests some implications of these developments for our understanding of Soviet Islam, Central Asian Sufism, and the phenomena of "shamanism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the shrine of Sufi saint Ahmad Yasavi in Kazakhstan and its role in the hagiographical traditions of the Yasavi Sufi order. Problems of Yasavi hagiographical traditions; Narratives about Yasavi from the 16th and early 17th centuries; Yasavi's flight from the retirement cell/burial chamber.