Female Religiosity in Central Asia: Sufi Leaders in the Persianate World

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh

*Note this is in Pacific Time*
Through 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, offering a far more nuanced gender history than previously recognized. Her recently published book, Female Religiosity in Central Asia: Sufi Leaders in the Persianate World, challenges traditional narratives by mapping female religious authority onto early modern Muslim contexts, reshaping the debate on women and religion by viewing gender as a historical construct. Drawing on previously unknown primary sources, Shanazarova highlights a rich world of female religiosity involving communal leadership, competition for spiritual authority, and negotiation with the political elite, transforming our understanding of women’s history in early modern Central Asia.

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. She holds a dual PhD in Religious Studies and Central Eurasian Studies completed at Indiana University-Bloomington in 2019. Before joining the Department of Religion, Aziza was a UCIS/REEES Postdoctoral Associate in the Humanities at the University of Pittsburgh.