"Malang", Sufis, and Mystics: An Ethnographic and Historical Study of Shamanism in Afghanistan

Abstract

Demographic and historical factors in Central Asia have produced an ethnic and cultural homogeneity, which overrides ecological diversity and artificial political boundaries imposed by nineteenth-century Western imperialism (KRADER 1963, 2). Ethnographically, Afghanistan belongs to the Central Asian region (Map 1), an area extending southward from the Siberian forest belt to the Iranian plateau, and southeastward to the Pamir mountains of northern Afghanistan, the Tien Shan range, and the Hindu Kush. The last mountain range constitutes the Great Divide between Central and South Asia (FRASERTYTLER 1950, 3).1 From west to east, Central Asia includes all the territory from the Caspian Sea to the Mongolian steppes, including the Altai mountains (KRADER 1963, 1-4; OSHANIN 1964, 1-2). The population of Afghanistan2 is overwhelmingly Muslim: 80% Sunni and 19% Shi'ite.3 But in Afghanistan, as elsewhere in Muslim Central Asia, Islam has had to come to terms with shamanistic elements derived from earlier beliefs and practices. In Central Asia, shamanism was once prevalent among the Turkic peoples, originally occupying the area of the Altai mountains. By the sixth century the Turks had invaded the Central Asian steppes, bringing with them their shamanistic beliefs along with cults of ancestors, stones, mountains, and the earth goddess Otukan (KRADER 1963, 131). Such beliefs seem to have been shared by the Uzbeks of the Oxus delta, and the Mongols and Turkmen (KRADER 1963, 131; CAR 1959, 109110). The concept of Tanggri, the heaven or sky deity, along with associated shamanistic beliefs, was brought to Central Asia by the Hsiun-Nu. These people originally occupied the Mongolian steppes