Afghanistan's Islam

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

This book provides the first overview of the history and development of Islam in Afghanistan. Written by leading international experts, chapters cover every era from the conversion of Afghanistan through the medieval period to the present day. Based on primary sources in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Uzbek, and Urdu, its depth of coverage is unrivalled in providing a developmental picture of Afghanistan’s Islam, including such issues as the rise of Sufism, women’s religiosity, state religious policies, and transnational Islamism. Looking beyond the unifying rhetoric of theology, the book reveals the disparate and contested forms of Afghanistan’s Islam.

 

Nile Green is Professor of South Asian and Islamic History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Sufism: A Global History and Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam.

List of Illustrations
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction. Afghanistan’s Islam: A History and Its Scholarship Nile Green

Part one. from conversions to institutions (ca. 700–1500)
1. The Beginnings of Islam in Afghanistan: Conquest, Acculturation, and Islamization Arezou Azad
2. Women and Religious Patronage in the Timurid Empire Nushin Arbabzadah
3. The Rise of the Khwajagan-Naqshbandiyya Sufi Order in Timurid Herat Jürgen Paul

Part two. the infrastructure of religious ideas (ca. 1500–1850)
4. Earning a Living: Promoting Islamic Culture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries R.D. McChesney
5. Transporting Knowledge in the Durrani Empire: Two Manuals of Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufi Practice Waleed Ziad

Part three. new states, new discourses (ca. 1850–1979)
6. Islam, Shari‘a, and State Building under ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan Amin Tarzi
7. Competing Views of Pashtun Tribalism, Islam, and Society in the Indo-Afghan Borderlands Sana Haroon
8. Nationalism, Not Islam: The “Awaken Youth” Party and Pashtun Nationalism Faridullah Bezhan

Part four. holy warriors and (im)pious women (1979–2014)
9. Glossy Global Leadership: Unpacking the Multilingual Religious Thought of the Jihad Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
10. Female Sainthood between Politics and Legend: The Emergence of Bibi Nushin of Shibirghan Ingeborg Baldauf
11. When Muslims Become Feminists: Khana-yi Aman, Islam, and Pashtunwali Sonia Ahsan

Afterword Alessandro Monsutti

Notes
Glossary of Islamic Terms
List of Contributors
Index