In Remembrance of the Saints
The Rise and Fall of an Inner Asian Sufi Dynasty
Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari author David Brophy translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Columbia University Press
Published:5th Mar '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Winner, 2024 Patrick D. Hanan Prize for Translation, Association for Asian Studies
In the first half of the eighteenth century, rival dynasties of Naqshbandi Sufi shaykhs vied for influence in the Tarim Basin, part of present-day Xinjiang. In the 1750s, the collapse of the Junghar Mongol state gave one branch of this family an opportunity to assert their independence in the oasis cities of Kashgar and Yarkand. Others sided with the armies of the Qing dynasty, which were massing on the frontiers to invade. The ensuing conflict saw the region incorporated into the expanding Qing imperium.
Three decades afterward, Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari was commissioned to write an account of these Naqshbandi Sufis and their downfall. Blending the genres of collective biography and historical epic, mixing prose and verse, Kashghari’s text vividly depicts religious and political conflicts on the eve of the Qing conquest. It became the most popular and influential Chaghatay-language work to grapple with this divisive period. This volume presents the complete, long recension of In Remembrance of the Saints, translated for the first time into any Western language and extensively annotated with reference to both Islamic and Qing sources. The introduction situates the work in the Inner Asian tradition of Sufi biography and discusses the political factors shaping historical memory in Qianlong-era Xinjiang. Providing a rare local perspective on China’s expansion into Muslim borderlands, this translation sheds light on Xinjiang’s political and religious traditions and makes a foundational work of Inner Asian literature available to students and scholars.
A timely and lasting contribution to Qing studies. Brophy has made this essential counternarrative of the Qing conquest of Xinjiang accessible to readers of English. He offers an affecting translation, and his introduction crisply integrates and augments the venerable but fragmentary scholarship on Islamic sects of Inner Asia. -- Pamela Crossley, author of A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology
Brophy has given us a superb translation of Muḥammad Ṣadiq Kashghari’s text. With its judicious annotations and excellent introduction, this book is a major contribution to the study of an important Sufi tradition of Islamic Inner Asia and its confrontation with Qing expansion. -- Devin DeWeese, coeditor of Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th–21st Centuries
Written in classical Uyghur, In Remembrance of the Saints records the fateful entanglement of Muslim sainthood, tribal politics, and Qing imperial expansion. This evocative translation brings to life the Inner Asian world of the Uyghurs in the lead-up to the conquest of Xinjiang. -- Nile Green, author of Sufism: A Global History
David Brophy’s translation of In Remembrance of the Saints is a monumental contribution to the field, and it deserves to be read by historians of China and Central Asia alike, especially now as Xinjiang has become a major topic in scholarship and media. -- Eric Schluessel, author of Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia
David Brophy’s superb new translation of Muhammad Sadiq Kashghari’s In Remembrance of the Saints brings an important source on eighteenth-century Central Asian and Chinese history to a general audience. . . [T]his work will be a must-have for any scholar of Central Asian history and its accessibility makes it a worthy candidate as a primary source reading for Asian or even world history courses. * Journal of Asian Studies *
One of the most important and impressive additions in recent memory to English-language scholarship on Central Asia. * Journal of Islamic Studies *
- Winner of Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation, Association for Asian Studies 2024
ISBN: 9780231198196
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
304 pages