Abstract
In the search for physical traces of Buddhism after the fourteenth-century fall of the Il-Khan Mongols in Iran, we find almost nothing with a concrete Buddhist signature, even though the Mongols’ first five rulers were Buddhist. This lack of evidence is due to the conversion of the late Il-Khans to Islam and the consequent eradication or transformation of traces of Buddhism; the only concrete Buddhist remnant we have from this period is in the work of a well-known historian of the time, Rashīd al-Dīn Faḍlallāh Hamadānī (d. 1318), who recorded the life and doctrine of the Buddha. This historical writing, known as Jāmi’ al-Tawārīkh, is a magnificent work that will be highlighted and analyzed in the first part of this chapter.
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Notes
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H. Mostaufī, Nodhat ul-Qulub (Tehran, 1336/1957), 88 mentions that the population of Tabriz was mostly Shafi’i Sunni but there were many people from other sects and religions; we assume that in Mostaufī’s time (thirteenth/fourteenth centuries) there were still Buddhists in Tabriz.
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see also T. Zarcone, “Sufism from Central Asia among the Tibetan in the 16–17th Centuries,” The Tibet Journal Autumn 20/3 (1996): 96–97.
Though this affinity between the Mongols and Sufism and proselytizing instrument of Sufism might be true, there is a disagreement that the role of Sufis in converting the pre-Mongol Turks has been exaggerated and propagated by Barthold; see J. Paul, “Islamizing Sufis in Pre-Mongol Central Asia,” in Islamisation de l’Asie centrale: Processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle, edited by Etienne de la Vaissière (Paris: Studia Iranica, Cahier 39, 2008), 297–317.
Cf. J. J. Elias, The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of Alā’ ad-dawla as-Simnānī, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 18.
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I. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 2002), 233; see also Bausani, “Religion under the Mongols,” 545.
T. Lawson, “The Spiritual Journey in Kubrawi Sufism,” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam, edited by Todd Lawson, (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), 364–366.
A. S. A. Hamadānī, Asrār al-Nuqta, translation and introduction by Mohammad Khājavī (Tehran: Mola Publications, 3rd edition, 1388/2010), xxi.
Simnānī is mentioned to be his maternal uncle, see A. H. Hamadani, “Life and Works of Sayyid Ali Hamadani,” Encyclopedic Survey of Islamic Culture, edited by Mohamed Taher (Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1998), 111; see also Elias, “Sufism,” 601.
See Y. Sikand, Muslims in India: Contemporary Social and Political Discourses (Delhi: Hope India Publications, 2006), 181.
Shridhar Kaul and H. N. Kaul, Ladakh through the Ages: Towards a New Identity (Delhi: M. L Gidwani Indus Publishing Company, 3rd edition, 2004), 118.
S. Bashir, Messianic Hopes and Mystical Visions: The Nūrbakhshīya between Medieval and Modern Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 249—in this book there is a whole chapter on Sufism in Baltistan and Ladakh. See also Kaul et al., Ladakh through the Ages, 118–119.
For an anthropological comparison of the Tibetan Buddhism and North African Sufism see G. Samuel, “Tibet as a Stateless Society and Some Islamic Parallels,” The Journal of Asian Studies 41/2 (February, 1982): 222–227.
See J. Paul, “Influences indiennes sur la naqshbandiyya d’Asie centrale,” Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 1–2 (1996): 205, argues whether Buddhism was still influential in Central Asia at the time of rising Sufi sects such as Naqshbandi in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
D. DeWeese, “The Eclipse of the Kubravīyah in Central Asia,” Iranian Studies 21/1–2 (1988): 53–55, 58–59, 83;
for a Buddhist and Naqshbandī parallel see A. F. Buehler, “Sharī’at and ‘ulamā in Ahmad Sirhindī’s ‘Collected Letters,’” Die Welt des Islam, 43/3 (2003): 314.
L. Lewisohn, “The Esoteric Christianity of Islam,” Islamic Interpretations of Christianity, edited by Loyd Ridgeon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), 132;
see also G. Lane, Early Mongol Rule in Thirteenth-Century Iran (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 229–230.
See L. Lewisohn, “An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part 1: The Ni’matullāhī Order: Persecution, Revival and Schism,” BSOAS 61/3, (1998): 437–464,
and L. Lewisohn, “An Introduction to the History of Modern Persian Sufism, Part 2: A Socio-Cultural Profile of Sufism, from the Dhahabī Revival to the Present Day,” BSOAS 62/1 (1999): 36–59.
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Vaziri, M. (2012). Buddhism during the Mongol Period in Iran. In: Buddhism in Iran. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137022943_7
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