OxTalks is Changing
During Michaelmas Term, OxTalks will be moving to a new platform (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
For now, continue using the current page and event submission process (freeze period dates to be advised).
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Religious Conversion and Communal Identity in Central Asia: The Ismailis of Badakhshan
In this presentation I address the question of how minority religious communities are able to successfully endure and proselytize under adverse conditions of persecution. I examine this through the example of the Ismaili Shiʿi community of the Badakhshan region of Central Asia, a community which, despite many centuries of violent repression, has retained its status as one of the largest religious minorities of the Iranian world. I investigate the inter-related practices of shrine patronage and the elaboration of religious conversion narratives connected with Ismaili saints, and demonstrate how these practices intersect within a cyclical process of appropriation and re-appropriation of the sanctity of these saints among both Ismaili and non-Ismaili communities. This process provides a critical source of symbolic capital for Ismailis and a tool for communal survival and proselytization. Finally, I demonstrate how this framework can address the seeming paradox of why Ismailism, which is often depicted in scholarship as a quintessentially intellectual and literary tradition, has found its deepest roots in “peripheral” regions beyond the political and cultural centers of the Islamic world.
Date:
7 May 2019, 17:00
Venue:
New College, Holywell Street OX1 3BN
Venue Details:
Lecture Room 4
Speaker:
Daniel Beben (Nazarbayev University)
Part of:
The Oxford Society for the Caucasus and Central Asia (TOSCCA)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Laura Spence
