introduction
In the late eighteenth century an Indian branch of the Naqshbandiyya
Order, known as Mujadidiyya, established itself in southeastern
Afghanistan. This tariqa derives its name from the teachings of Shaikh
Ahmad Sirhind (1563–1624), known as Mujadid Alf-i Sani, or the Renewer
of the Second (Islamic) Millennium. Shaikh Ahmad was a native of the
Kabul region, but made his base in Sirhind in northern India. The
Mujadidi tariqa is very strict in requiring all of its initiates to adhere to
the external obligations of Islam and uphold the shari‘a while at the same
time pursuing the Sufi way. The Mujadidi encounter with Hinduism in
northern India made the movement particularly opposed to some of the
practice of folk Islam and shrine cults, which they condemned as
syncretic and un-Islamic. Following the fall of Sirhind to the Sikhs in
1763, which led to the destruction of Mujadidi institutions, some pirs of
the movement fled north and established khanagahs in Kabul’s Old City,
Tagab, the Koh Daman, Kandahar, Ghazni and as far north as Bukhara,
Badakhshan and Herat. Under the patronage of the Durrani monarch
Shah Zaman, the Mujadidi Hazrat of Kabul’s Shor Bazaar and the pirs of
Tagab and the Koh Daman rose to political prominence, though subse-
quently the relationship between them and the crown broke down and
ended in a confrontation that would change the course of Afghanistan’s
political history.
Kabul’s historic Shor Bazaar, c. 1879, from the Illustrated London News. Due to Afghanistan’s
position on ancient trans-Asian highways, Afghans have always been a nation of traders
and shopkeepers.