MIASU Research Seminar – 25 November – Jesko Schmoller

Drawing Closer: Paths of motion and places of passage of a transregional Sufi brotherhood

Jesko Schmoller (Humboldt University Berlin & MIASU Visiting Scholar, University of Cambridge)

This talk is concerned with the emergence of space through the mobility and interaction of members of a transregional Sufi brotherhood: the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi tariqa (path). Particularly in the Central Asian region, where it originated, this Sufi brotherhood has for about two centuries been a powerful if mostly invisible presence. Over the previous few years, the empirical material for this talk has been compiled in the framework of ethnographic research in Kazakhstan and the neighbouring Ural region of Russia. The space that takes shape through the movement and activities of Sufi masters and disciples displays religious connotations and in some respects can be considered a counterspace, or an alternative geography.

A central approach informing the larger research project would be the reflection upon this kind of geography in the light of the epistemological and ontological frames that members of the brotherhood subscribe to. From their own perspective, the places they regularly seek out are first of all destinations of their mobile pursuits. There, they have the opportunity to be in the company of living and dead masters, who often have attained sainthood. But in the next instance, proximity to the same masters also allows them to draw closer to God. Therefore, those places can further be considered places of passage. In the Naqshbandi Mujaddidi cosmology, they even resemble transit areas, as they are located at the threshold of two distinct worlds.