The Teahouses and Sufis of Kashgar

Ever since its conquest by the Karakhanid Turks in the eleventh century, the city of Kashgar in Eastern Turkestan—modern-day Xinjiang—has acted as a magnet for Sufi orders. From the 15th century onward, it became a stronghold for the Naqshbandiya, an order that originated further west in Bukhara.

The Naqshbandiya was always inclined toward orthodoxy, generally wary of the ecstatic worship common across Central Asia. In the oases fringing the Taklamakan Desert, the order eventually transcended spiritual guidance to become a formidable political power.

Before long, internal schisms split the regional followers into two rival factions: the "Black Mountaineers" and the "White Mountaineers." Following a curious theological alliance between the Fifth Dalai Lama in Lhasa and his Dzungar Mongol emissaries, control of the Kashgar oasis passed to the "White" faction. Their most renowned leader, Afaq Khoja, still rests in the towering mausoleum that bears his name.

Local and foreign accounts from the turn of the 20th century describe a city still pulsing with Sufi activity. The most famous center was the khanqah (dervish lodge) of Igarchi Ishan, a revered teacher from the Fergana Valley. He had been a simple saddle-maker before embracing asceticism, and chronicles from the era vividly depict the gatherings he led near the city’s western Toqquzaq Gate.

By the early 1900s, Igarchi’s order was the most influential in the city. His followers numbered in the thousands, drawn from the local Turkic population—today’s Uyghurs—and the nomadic Kazakhs and Kyrgyz whose yurts dotted the Tian Shan slopes to the west. On feast days, it was said that cattle and sheep were slaughtered by the dozen to feed the throngs, who gathered for bowls of grain stew and fresh naan. The lodge’s teahouse served as a crossroads for devotees, qalandars (wandering dervishes), and the city’s various idlers and dreamers.

The lodge of Igarchi Ishan was destroyed after the People’s Republic of China asserted control over Xinjiang. Since then, the Uyghur Sufi orders have suffered alongside the region’s other civil and religious institutions. Yet, if the history of Sufism under the Soviet Union is any guide, these orders have a way of resurfacing once the immediate threat has passed.

I met the musician in the photograph last year, strumming a Uyghur tanbur in a smoky teahouse tucked away in a Kashgar alley. He was singing a Sufi hymn; I hope to upload a recording of it soon.

Since that visit, the teahouse has been shuttered. The fate of the old musician remains unknown.