Ethnohistory of the Qizilbash in Kabul: Migration, State, and a Shi'a Minority

Abstract

This study explores the question of who are the Qizilbash people of Kabul. My research uses the ethnohistorical method for the study of Qizilbash history and culture. The Qizilbash history is reconstructed in a chronological and thematic manner by including data from a wide range of anthropological and historical sources that contains primary sources, memoirs, hagiographies, images, maps, participant observation, and in-person interviews. The advent of the Qizilbash coincides with the advances of the Safavid Sufi order that arose in the Iranian Plateau. This study then explains the reason behind the Qizilbash migration to the eastern frontier city of Kabul and ends by discussing the shifting Qizilbash relations with the modern state of Afghanistan. The latter part helps us better understand the Shi’a question in the context of Afghanistan, 1880-1978. This study, for the first time places the stories of a relatively small, but influential urban Shi’a group within the broader state-formation efforts that materialized in Kabul (constitutionalism, modernity, urbanization) prior to the Soviet Union invasion of 1979.