New York University Professor Emeritus Robert D. McChesney is a luminary in the field of Afghanistan, Central Asian, and Persianate studies, whose body of work echoes and takes new directions in this book composed of case studies of four shrine complexes. The shrines, whose histories are masterfully illuminated by McChesney, are the Gur-i Mir in Samarqand, the Khawaja Abu Nasr Parsa in Balkh, the Noble Rawzah in Mazar-i Sharif, and the Shrine of the Prophet's Cloak in Qandahar. The shrine complexes are interconnected in various political and stylistic ways, but they are treated as distinct ensembles of similar component parts including the gunbad/gunbaz domed structure that frequently serves as a mausoleum, the khanqah/khanaqah or Sufi lodge, masjid or mosque, madrasas or Islamic schools, the langar khana or “soup kitchen”, as well a number of other structures including dormitories, gates, arches, walls, pools, canals, latrines, etc. The four case studies include three complexes in Afghanistan and one in Uzbekistan, and the narratives cover approximately 500 years from the Timurids, through the Mughal, Durrani, colonial, and Soviet periods, to the contemporary post-2001 era when the most recent transformations to shrines in Afghanistan were contextualized by an international military occupation. The narratives are built on McChesney's meticulous use of scores of Persian-language sources, a rich array of English and Russian texts, a smaller sampling of French materials, as well as epigraphy and 107 photographs that adorn the volume and enhance the treatment of each shrine.
The Gur-i (A)Mir shrine complex in Samarqand is the first and longest (c. 120 pages) of the four case studies, and many of the themes addressed here are revisted in subsequent chapters. The most historiographically significant of these recurring motifs are source interrogation and source comparison. In the case of this shrine ensemble, McChesney juxtaposes the writings of Sultan Muhammad Samarqandi (pen name Mutribi) and Muhammad Badi’ (pen name Maliha) to contextualize and describe transformations during the seventeenth century. These and other sources highlight the regularity and importance of Mughal imperial patronage of the Gur-i Mir complex due to their dynastic lineage being traced through Timur's second son Miranshah who is also interred there. Mughal patronage of the Gur-i Mir is exemplified by a memorable poetically licensed account of an elephant, bequeathed by Akbar, going mad, killing its handlers, crashing through a gate to escape Samarqand, and fleeing all the way back to India! The chapter provides fascinating details about the context and intentions surrounding the burials and reburials of Timur, Miranshah, Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg, the saintly figure Mir Sayyid Barakah, and others at the Gur-i Mir. As with the other shrines addressed in this book, the Gur-i Mir has been impacted by political pressures, including nationalism, that continually inscribe new historical meanings upon the shrine complex. In this regard, McChesney describes how the imperatives of Soviet ethnogenetic theorizing about Uzbek history and identity that hinged on the literary production of Mir Ali Shayr Nawa'i led to the exhumations of Timur, Ulugh Beg, and other Timurids in Samarqand, and how in the post-Soviet era the Uzbek state has framed Timur as the founding father of Uzbekistan.
The intimate connection between Naqshbandi Sufism generally and particular Naqshbandi Shaykhs and lineages, and various Timurid and later Muslim rulers that McChesney describes for Samarqand is a recurrent theme in the second and third chapters of the book (and indeed throughout Mawarannahar, Khorasan, and Hindustan). The Khwajah Abu Nasr Parsa shrine at Balkh and the Noble Rawzah shrine at Mazar-i Sharif dedicated to the Prophet Mohammad's cousin and son-in-law, the Caliph or Imam ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, are separated by a mere twelve miles in the plains between the Hindu Kush and Amu Darya. The two shrine complexes are sustained by an impressive ancient system of 18 irrigation canals (Hazdah Nahr) emanating from the Balkh river that constitute the hydro-historic foundation of the region's political economy, with the most south-easterly King's Canal or Nahr-i Shahi designed to support the Noble Rawzah. Both chapters emphasize family monopoly over shrine administration, with the Parsa'i family occupying the Shaykh al-Islam position in Balkh, and the Ansari family as similar trustees (Mutawalli, and other titles) in Mazar-i Sharif. The two shrines have experienced episodic but substantial Afghan state-based intervention, beginning with the mid-eighteenth-century founder of the polity Ahmad Shah Abdali/Durrani when Naqshbandi Mujaddidi Sufis become associated with the Noble Rawzah; to the 1870s when Mazar-i Sharif became the provincial capital, after which the shrine was much elaborated by Abd al-Rahman in the 1890s, apparently as a form of atonement for the atrocities he perpetrated to bring northern Afghanistan into his emerging imperially bounded orbit. Balkh absorbed Kabul-centred refashioning most markedly during the 1930s when the shrine's cemetery was laid waste to make space for modern “New Balkh” that was intended to become a celebrated site of ancient Aryan origins as Aryanism was first deployed by state functionaries as a historical framework for managing and manipulating increasingly ethnicized politics in Afghanistan.
The fourth chapter, on the Shrine of the Prophet's Cloak in Qandahar, continues the discussion of themes addressed in earlier chapters, including the presence and influence of Sufis and Sufism as well as South Asians in these Central Asian shrines. At about 70 pages, this final case study is the shortest chapter, but it is important for several reasons. It does the most with sources relating to water usage and taxation, the food provisioning and refuge (langar khana and bast) functions of the shrine, and the social tensions within this multi-ethnic frontier society, including the unfortunate reality of episodic friction between Shii and Sunni communities. This chapter is arguably the most effective in bringing the lived experiences of the shrine into historical relief.
This book will be of great interest to historians of Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Persianate World, as well those interested in the architectural history of Islam. It is a requisite item for all research libraries. As is the case throughout McChesney's oeuvre, it takes hundreds of pages to stumble upon a minor typo, and the primary technical/editorial/typographical error in this volume is a footnoted reference to an essay by the author that does not appear in the bibliography. Among the possible long-term benefits for Afghanistan studies of this illuminating volume is the spawning of future substantive historical research into matters necessarily mentioned only in passing, such as the pursuit of answers to questions on the materiality of the shrines and the local and peripatetic labouring groups, artists, and engineers who built, maintained, and transformed these captivating structures.
