Description: Through revealing the fascinating story of the Sufi master Aghā-yi Buzurg and her path to becoming the 'Great Lady' in sixteenth-century Bukhara, Aziza Shanazarova invites readers into the little-known world of female religious authority in early modern Islamic Central Asia, revealing a far more multifaceted gender history than previously supposed. Pointing towards new ways of mapping female religious authority onto the landscapes of early modern Muslim narratives, this book serves as an intervention into the debate on the history of women and religion that views gender as a historical phenomenon and construct, challenging narratives of the relationship between gender and age in Islamic discourse of the period. Shanazarova draws on previously unknown primary sources to bring attention to a rich world of female religiosity involving communal leadership, competition for spiritual superiority, and negotiation with the political elite that transforms our understanding of women's history in early modern Central Asia.
Brief description: Aziza Shanazarova is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, where she specializes on the religious history of Islamic Central Asia and the broader Persianate world with an emphasis on the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.
Review Quotes: 'Shanazarova's groundbreaking book offers a reassessment of the prevailing understanding of gender history in early modern Central Asia through her astute analysis of the narrative traditions of a little-known sixteenth-century female Sufi master, Aghā-yi Buzurg, who lived in Bukhara during the post-Timurid era of Shibānid rule in Central Asia and the rise of the Shīʿī Safavid dynasty in Iran. This book is a must-read for scholars and students of women and gender, Sufism, and narrative traditions in early modern Central Asian and Islamic history.' Jo-Ann Gross, Professor Emerita, The College of New Jersey