I received my PhD in History and Central Eurasian Studies from Indiana University in 2015. I am a specialist in the history of the eastern Islamic world, including Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and India. My research is broadly concerned with the dissemination and articulation of religious symbols and communal identities across political and cultural boundaries in Eurasia after the Mongol conquests. I am currently engaged in two major research projects that explore these themes in the context of the Ismaili Shiʿi communities of Central Asia. The first project is a monograph examining the processes of religious conversion, textual production, and cultural memory practices among the Ismaili communities of Central Asia and Afghanistan. Drawing upon previously unstudied manuscript materials, oral histories, shrine records and genealogies, this project take a long-term view of the evolution of conceptions of communal and religious identity among the Ismailis from the Mongol invasions down to the early Soviet period.

The second project is one for which I and several colleagues have recently been awarded a three-year Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, titled “Ismailism in Badakhshan: A Genealogical History.” This project entails a study of original, privately held Badakhshani Ismaili genealogical histories from Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China dating from the 15th-20th centuries, in addition to letters and financial documents associated with them. The project goal is to render a defined corpus of these Persian-language texts legible as historical sources by digitalizing them; identifying their features; defining the local genres of genealogy, letter writing and document production as historical practices; and analyzing them as a source for local knowledge of the Ismaili tradition of Badakhshan. The results will be presented in a co-authored printed book and in the creation of an open access digital repository at Princeton University Library. This will be the first corpus of Ismaili documents from Badakhshan available online in transcription and English translation. The project will have intellectual significance for the historical study of Ismaili Shiʿism, the history of Central Eurasia, and the study of cultures of documentation in the Islamic world.

My research has been supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright, American Councils, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, among others. I have won several awards for my research and teaching, including the Foundation for Iranian Studies Award for Best Dissertation for 2015 and the Overall Excellence in Teaching Award from Nazarbayev University for 2016. In addition to my research and teaching, I also currently serve as Secretary and formerly as Treasurer for the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and on the editorial board for the newly-established International Journal of Islam in Asia (published by Brill). I previously taught Central Eurasian history at Indiana University and began teaching at Nazarbayev University in August 2015.

Books:

The First Aga Khan: Memoirs of the 46th Ismaili Imam: A Persian Edition and English Translation of Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Ḥusaynī’s ʿIbrat-afzā, ed. and trans. with Daryoush Mohammad Poor (London: I.B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2018)

Conversion and Community in Central Asia: Nasir-i Khusraw and the Formation of the Ismaili Tradition of Badakhshan (manuscript in preparation)

Ismailism in Badakhshan: A Genealogical History (co-authored with Jo-Ann Gross; under contract with Brill)

Genealogical History in the Persianate World (co-edited with Jo-Ann Gross; under contract with Bloomsbury)

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

“The History of Badakhshan from the 7th to the 19th Century,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, ed. David Ludden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023); available online at http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com

“The Ṣaḥīfat al-nāẓirīn: Reflections on Authorship and Confessional Identity in a Fifteenth-Century Central Asian Text,” in Before the Printed Word: Texts, Scribes and Transmission, ed. Wafi Momin (London: I.B. Tauris, 2022): 369-388

“The Ismailis of Badakhshan: Conversion and Narrative in Highland Asia,” in The Routledge Handbook of Islam in Asia, ed. Chiara Formichi (London: Routledge, 2021): 109-124

“After the Eclipse: Shaykh Khalīlullāh Badakhshānī and the Legacy of the Kubravīyah in Central Asia,” in From the Khan’s Oven: Essays on the History of Central Asian Religion in Honor of Devin DeWeese, ed. Jeff Eden, Allen Frank and Eren Tasar (Leiden: Brill, 2021): 181-211

“The Ismaili Tradition in Iran: 13th Century to the Present,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, ed. David Ludden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); available online at http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com

“Aḥmad Yasavī and the Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshān: Towards a New Social History of Sufi-Shīʿī Relations in Central Asia,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63 (2020): 643-681

“The Kalām-i pīr and Its Place in the Central Asian Ismāʿīlī Tradition,” Journal of Islamic Studies 31 no. 1 (2020): 70-102

“Recent Scholarship on Early Modern Central Asia,” Journal of Persianate Studies 13 (2020): 105-17

“Reimagining Taqiyya: The ‘Narrative of the Four Pillars’ and Strategies of Secrecy among the Ismāʿīlīs of Central Asia,” History of Religions 59 no. 2 (2019): 83-107

“Remembering Saladin: The Politics of Heresy and the Legacy of the Crusades in Persian Historiography,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society series 3, 28 no. 2 (2018): 231-253

“Religious Identity in the Pamirs: The Institutionalization of the Ismāʿīlī Daʿwa in Shughnān,” in Identity, History and Trans-Nationality in Central Asia: The Mountain Communities of Pamir, ed. Carole Faucher and Dagikhudo Dagiev (London: Routledge, 2018): 123-42

“The Ismaili in Central Asia,” in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, ed. David Ludden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); published online at: http://asianhistory.oxfordre.com

“The Fatimid Legacy and the Foundation of the Modern Nizārī Imamate,” in The Fatimid Caliphate: Diversity of Traditions, ed. Farhad Daftary and Shainool Jiwa (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017): 192-216

“Islamisation on the Iranian Periphery: Nasir-i Khusraw and Ismailism in Badakhshan,” in Islamisation: Comparative Perspectives from History, ed. Andrew Peacock (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017): 317-335

Forthcoming Publications:

“Tajiks in the Land of the Turks: The Pamiris in the Khanate of Khoqand,” in Tajiks: History, Religion, Culture and People, ed. Dagikhudo Dagiev (London: Routledge, forthcoming)

“The Spread of Ismailism in Central Asia,” in Ismailis of Central Asia: An Historical Survey, ed. Hakim Elnazarov (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming)

“ʿIbrat-afzā,” in The Encyclopaedia of the Ismailis, ed. Farhad Daftary (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming)

“Nāṣir-i Khusraw, Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, and the Varieties of the Nizārī Daʿwa in Badakhshān,” in Islamic Traditions in ‘Greater Khurāsān’: Ismailis, Sufis and Sunnis, ed. Dagikhudo Dagiev (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming)

“Who Was Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Patron in Badakhshān? Notes on the Political Vectors of the Fatimid Daʿwa,” in Fatimid Cosmopolitanism: History, Material Culture, Politics, and Religion, ed. Gregory Bilotto (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming).

Book Reviews:

Review of Muzaffar Zoolshoev, Ancient and Early Medieval Kingdoms of the Pamir Region of Central Asia: Historical Shughnān and Its Lost Capital (London: Routledge, 2023), The Medieval Review (forthcoming)

Review of Aziza Shanazarova, Manifestations of a Sufi Woman in Central Asia: A Critical Edition of Ḥāfiẓ-i Baṣīr’s Maẓhar al-ʿAjāʾib (Leiden: Brill, 2020), Journal of Islamic Studies (forthcoming)

Review of James Pickett, Polymaths of Islam: Power and Networks of Knowledge in Central Asia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020), Central Asian Survey 41, no. 3 (2022): 314-16

Review of Richard Foltz, History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), Central Asian Survey 39, no. 2 (2020): 281-83

Review of Devin DeWeese and Jo-Ann Gross (eds.), Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2018), Journal of Islamic Studies 31, no. 2 (2020): 270-74

Review of Andreas Wilde, What is Beyond the River? Power, Authority, and Social Order in Transoxania, 18th-19th Centuries (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2016), Central Asian Survey 37 no. 3 (2018): 496-99

Review of Nile Green (ed.), Afghan History through Afghan Eyes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), Central Asian Survey 37 no. 2 (2018): 328-30

Review of Alice C. Hunsberger (ed.), Pearls of Persia: The Philosophical Poetry of Nasir-i Khusraw (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), Journal of Shiʿa Islamic Studies 8 no. 3 (2015): 379-85

Review of Farhad Daftary, A History of Shiʿi Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013) and Farhad Daftary and Gurdofarid Miskinzoda (eds.) The Study of Shiʿi Islam: History, Theology and Law (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), Journal of Oriental and African Studies 23 (2014): 474-79

Review of Benjamin Clark Gatling, Post-Soviet Sufism: Texts and the Performance of Tradition in Tajikistan (Ohio State University, 2012), Dissertation Reviews (http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/7516), February 2014

COURSES TAUGHT AT NU

HST 100: History of Kazakhstan

HST/REL 110: Introduction to World Religions

HST/REL 237: History of Sufism in the Middle East and Central Asia

HST/REL 261: History of Islam I

HST/REL 263: History of Islam II: Islam in the Modern World

HST/REL 320: History of the Crusades

HST/REL 350: Religion and Power in Islamic Central Asia

EAS 501: General Methodology (for M.A. in Eurasian Studies)

HST/REL 472/572: Seminar on Sufism