Saints Atlas

Yahya b. Ahmad al-Bakharzi (Abu'l-Mafakhir)

Abu'l-Mafakhir · Khwaja Yahya

Abu'l-Mafakhir Yahya Bakharzi , grandson of Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, founder of the Central Asian branch of the Kubrawiya; administrator of his grandfather's khanaqah at Fathabad near Bukhara and author of a book on Sufi norms of conduct, Awrad al-ahbab wa fusus al-adab . The source used here gives no dates of birth or death. His grandfather Sayf al-Din Bakharzi was one of the khalifas of Najm al-Din Kubra; born in 1190 at Bakharz, a small town in Quhistan, he came to Bukhara on Kubra's instruction to propagate the Kubrawi order and spent the remaining forty years of his life there. Sorqoqtani, the mother of the great khan Möngke, entrusted him with the supervision of a madrasa she had established in Bukhara and enabled him to establish a khanaqah at Fathabad in the environs of the city. Yahya was the son of Burhan al-Din, Sayf al-Din's middle son. At the request of Qutlugh Terken Khatun of the Qutlughkhanid dynasty, Sayf al-Din had sent Burhan al-Din to Kerman, and the khanaqah she established for him became a centre for the temporary expansion of the Kubrawiya in southern and southeastern Persia. When Burhan al-Din died in 1297 , he was succeeded at the Kerman khanaqah by his son, Abu'l-Mafakhir Yahya. After Sayf al-Din Bakharzi died in 1261 and was buried at the Fathabad khanaqah, its administration passed to his eldest son, Jalal al-Din Muhammad; but he was killed, a victim of intra-Mongol violence. Thereupon his nephew, Abu'l-Mafakhir Yahya, came back from Kerman to take charge. According to the source, this effectively brought to an end the activity of the Kubrawiya in Kerman; members of the Bakharzi family who remained in Kerman were locally celebrated there as "kings of Bukhara", but did not function as Sufi shaikhs. Under Yahya the Fathabad khanaqah prospered to an unprecedented degree: additional endowments were settled on it, and funds were set aside for the purchase and manumission of slaves who, converted to Islam, were to work on the khanaqah's lands. Ibn Battuta visited the khanaqah during Abu'l-Mafakhir's administration; he reports that he was received most hospitably and heard the resident dervishes sing poems in Persian and Turkish. The source states that the Fathabad khanaqah continued to flourish for at least a century after Sayf al-Din's death, and that the Bakharzi family lineage continued unbroken in Bukhara until at least the late 19th century, though apparently not as an initiatic tradition, even one of hereditary type. His Works — Abu'l-Mafakhir Yahya wrote the Awrad al-ahbab wa fusus al-adab , a book of Sufi norms of conduct and customs. Drawing in part on existing manuals of the same type, notably Ziya al-Din Abu'l-Najib Suhrawardi's Adab al-muridin , the work, according to the source, is valuable primarily for its anecdotes of the author's grandfather and for quatrains attributed to him and to other Kubrawi shaikhs. It was edited by Iraj Afshar (Tehran, 1979 ). His Tomb and Complex — The source used here gives no information on Yahya's grave; his grandfather Sayf al-Din Bakharzi was buried at the khanaqah of Fathabad near Bukhara.

Sayyid Ata

Sayyid · Ata

The Sufi from whom the Atāʾīya , a branch of the Yasavī brotherhood especially active in Ḵᵛārazm from the 8th/14th century, takes its name. According to the source, the Turkish title "atā" (father) was given to most of the early successors of Aḥmad Yasavī (d. 562/1166); the Khwarazmian Atāʾīya stems in particular from Sayyed Atā, the second successor of Zangī Atā , himself a disciple of Ḥakīm Atā (Solaymān Baqerḡanī), who was in turn a successor of Aḥmad Yasavī. Because the Yasavī chain places only two shaikhs between Sayyed Atā and the 12th-century founder Aḥmad Yasavī, the chronology presents difficulties; nevertheless, according to the source, it seems certain that he lived in the last quarter of the 7th/13th and the first quarter of the 8th/14th century. The Maqāmāt-e Amīr Kolāl , a 9th/15th-century Naqšbandī work, places him in Bukhara in 683/1284 . He is said to have been a contemporary of the Ḵᵛājagānī shaikh ʿAlī Rāmīṯanī (d. 721/1321), with whom he carried on a correspondence, and of the Kobravī shaikh ʿAlāʾ-al-Dawla Semnānī (d. 736/1336). Since his shaikh Zangī Atā lived in Tashkent, and the Yasavī hagiographies name successors of Sayyed Atā in the same area, the source assumes that he lived for a while in the Tashkent region before beginning his missionary activity among the steppe nomads, which in turn preceded his settling in Ḵᵛārazm. The anonymous history Šajarat al-atrāk , composed in the early 10th/16th century, ascribes to Sayyed Atā the conversion to Islam of Uzbek Khan, ruler of the Golden Horde (r. 1314-41), in 720/1320 , and states that this conversion is described in detail in the Maqāmāt-e Sayyed Atā ; that work has not survived. The Islamization of the Turkic tribes of the Dašt-e Qepčāq was traditionally associated with Sayyed Atā. An early 11th/17th-century hagiography records that he went to "the farthest reaches of the Dašt-e Qepčāq and to the frontiers of the Mangit and Tātār" and was responsible for converting "most of the Uzbek khans" to Islam. According to the 19th-century Khivan historian Moʾnes, after Uzbek Khan's conversion one of the khan's amirs, Naḡdāy of the Qongrāt tribe, went to Ḵᵛārazm with Sayyed Atā and served the shaikh there. In Ḵᵛārazm he is said to have served as the custodian of the tomb of Ḥakīm Atā in Baqerḡan. His followers remained in Ḵᵛārazm and maintained relations with the nomads of the Dašt-e Qepčāq. The source does not give the date of his death; he was buried in Baqerḡan, where the tomb of Ḥakīm Atā of which he was custodian stands. His Circle of Influence — The Montaḵab al-tawārīḵ of Moʿīn-al-Dīn Naṭanzī, compiled in 817/1414 , relates that a follower of Sayyed Atā in the 760s/1360s induced, albeit temporarily, a certain ʿAzīz Khan, a prince of the eastern half of the Jöchid ulus who ruled briefly from Saray on the lower Volga, to repent of his evil habits and adhere to Islam, and that the shaikh was given the prince's daughter in marriage. Naḡdāy was the father of the first three rulers of the "Qongrāt Sufi" dynasty of Ḵᵛārazm, who in the second half of the 14th century repeatedly defied Tīmūr; the source notes that the title "Sufi" adopted by these rulers probably reflected their adherence to Sayyed Atā's order. The Khivan khan Abu'l-Ḡāzī (r. 1054-74/1644-63) records in his Šajara-ye tork two examples of the order's influence: after the defeat of the Uzbek Šaybānī Khan in 916/1510 , the leading citizens of the town of Vazīr, occupied by Persian troops, proposed to one of Sayyed Atā's successors, Ḥosām-al-Dīn Qatāl, that he become ruler and drive out the Qezelbāš; the shaikh, citing the vagaries of popular support, declined, and proposed instead the Uzbek prince Ilbars, whom he had met while travelling among the Uzbeks to collect pious offerings; Ilbars became the first khan of the Khwarazmian Uzbek dynasty. In the second instance Naẓar Ḵᵛāja, a descendant of Sayyed Atā, incited the Uzbek tribes in 1622 to revolt against Esfandīār Khan, the ʿArabšāhī khan of Ḵᵛārazm. His Tomb and Complex — The tomb of Sayyed Atā in Baqerḡan was an important pilgrimage site in Ḵᵛārazm. The Ottoman admiral Seydī ʿAlī Reʾīs visited it around 962/1555, and Moʾnes records a special pilgrimage by the Khivan khan Moḥammad Raḥīm (r. 1806-25). The Ḥakīm Atā article places Baqerḡan near the town of Qonghirat in Uzbekistan and notes that the shrine of Ḥakīm Atā there is mentioned as a prominent pilgrimage place already at the beginning of the 16th century. According to recent Soviet sources, a "cult" of Sayyed Atā survives in Khanqah in southern Ḵᵛārazm, where some inhabitants claim to be his descendants.

Imam Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Sa'd

Imam

Imam Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Saʿd , the scholar whom the Juybari shaikhs of Bukhara regarded as their progenitor; the necropolis of Char Bakr (Chor Bakr) near Bukhara grew up around his venerated tomb. The sources used here give no information on his life, education or scholarly activity. Iranica's article BUKHARA, drawing on Moʿin al-Foqaraʾ, gives his death as 360/970-71 ; the article ČĀR BAKR records the same year (for a different view see Multiple Views). His Circle of Influence — The first public role of the Juybari family was as caretakers of the Char Bakr shrine; the family traced its genealogy to Imam Abu Bakr and considered him its progenitor. In the 16th century the tomb was under the care of the influential Khwaja Muhammad Islam, a shaikh of the Khwajagan-Naqshbandi path and a supporter of the Shibanid ruler ʿAbd-Allah Khan ( 964-1006/1557-98 ). Known as "Khwaja-yi Juybari", Khwaja Muhammad Islam ( 1482-1563 ) is regarded, for his role in politics and in the social and economic life of Bukhara, as the real founder of the family; the name Juybari derives from the family residence in Juybar, a village just west of Bukhara. The family came to preeminence in the middle of the 16th century and remained a social, economic and political force in the city until the Soviet Revolution; its centre was the shrine and cemetery of Char Bakr, where most of its members were eventually interred. His Tomb and Complex — Char Bakr ("four Bakrs") lies near the village of Sumitan (Samtin), about 5 km outside the Shirgaran Gate of Bukhara; McChesney writes that Somitan, a sacred site of some antiquity, lies about six kilometres west of the walls of Bukhara. In 966/1558-59 ʿAbd-Allah Khan instructed that a complex including a mosque, a madrasa and a khanaqah be established there; it was completed by 976/1569 , and a tree-lined avenue was laid out from the Shirgaran Gate to the necropolis. The UNESCO record states that ʿAbd-Allah Khan built these structures for the Juybari shaikhs near the tomb of their ancestor in gratitude for their support and help at his accession. The complex stands on a platform with a central courtyard: the mosque and the khanaqah flank the courtyard, and they are connected by the madrasa, a long, narrow building with two tiers of arcades facing the courtyard on either side of a tall central portal. The fourth side of the courtyard is open. With their tiled pishtaqs and their domes on tall drums, the three structures loom impressively above the lower monuments of the necropolis; inside, systems of intersecting ribs divide the surfaces of the cupolas into small facets. Beyond this core lies a sprawling cemetery with family mausolea, small fenced courtyards, paths and many tombstones. A small minaret echoing the shape of the Kalan minaret in Bukhara was erected in the 20th century. According to the record submitted by Uzbekistan to UNESCO's Tentative List in 2008 , the ensemble comprises 25 structures: the khanaqah, the mosque, an ayvan with hujras, a gatehouse, a minaret and 20 small units consisting of domed burial courtyards and free-standing portals; together the memorial and the old cemetery occupy an area of 3 hectares. In many courtyards marble tombstones with epigraphic inscriptions and vegetal and geometric ornament stand over the graves, and many buildings are richly decorated with polychrome tiles. The record notes that some structures have lost their domes and that the ensemble has preserved 80 percent of its authenticity and integrity. McChesney counts the Char Bakr complex of madrasa, mosque and khanaqah among the largest institutions that survived thanks to the Juybari endowments. The Persian inscriptions of the necropolis have been published by Babajanov and Szuppe.

al-Sabadhmuni (Abu Muhammad Abd Allah b. Muhammad al-Harithi)

According to DİA, Muʿīn al-Fuqarāʾ records that the grave of al-Sabadhmuni, the student of Abu Hafs al-Saghir, lies right beside the grave of Abu Hafs al-Kabir in the Tall-i Khwaja (Abu Hafs) cemetery of Bukhara. Died 340 H/952.

Khoja Abu Talib Sarmast (Chor Chinor shrine, Urgut)

Khoja

The figure to whom the Čār Čenār shrine in Urgut is dedicated. The Urgut article of the Encyclopaedia Iranica introduces him as Khoja Abu Ṭāleb Sarmast , a Samanid missionary killed by the "unbelievers" for propagating Islam in the area. The source gives neither his dates of birth and death nor his lineage nor any further details of his life; it connects his death solely with his activity of spreading Islam in the area. His Tomb and Complex — The Čār Čenār ("Four plane trees") shrine was landscaped by the Emir of Bukhara in 1813 . The source names it as one of the two notable shrines that attract visitors to Urgut, a town about 30 km southeast of Samarkand on the foothills of the Zarafshan range; the second is the mazār in Saygus, southeast of Urgut, which local lore connects with Pir Ḡawṯ-e Aʿẓam ʿAbd-al-Qāder Jilāni. Certain locations in the mountains are associated with the graves of Abu Ṭāleb Sarmast's brothers and companions, Khoja Bāzmān , Khoja Sagrasān and Khoja Amon .

Abu Hafs al-Saghir (Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Hafs)

Son of Abu Hafs al-Kabir and a Hanafi scholar of Bukhara. According to Mu'in al-Fuqara, his grave adjoins his father's in the Tell-i Khwaja cemetery in Bukhara.