Category: Documents

The legend of the “Tomb of the Forty Sages” in Guangzhou, by Pascale Bugnon

The site called “Ancient Sage mausoleum” (先贤古墓 Xianxian gumu) in Guangzhou, reputed to house the alleged tomb of Sa‘d ibn Abi-Waqqas, is surrounded by many other graves and stelae. Among them is a tomb locally named the “Tomb of the Forty Sages” (四十位先贤碑 Sishi wei xianxian bei), which was restored in 1955 by the People’s Municipal Government of Guangzhou (Yang, 2002: 27).

Life Story of Khorasan Ata, by Ulan Bigozhin

Translation of the first two pages (4–5) of a short Qazaq hagiography ommemorating Abd-Zhalil Bab (Khorasan Ata) and his shrine complex. Entitled ‘Holy of Holies: Khorasan Ata’ (Aulierdïn Aulesï: Khorasan Ata), it was written by Orazkhan Zhanïsbekov and Ahmet Abutalip.

Fragment of an Anti-Hagiographic Discourse: Visit to a Yarkand Shrine, 2000 by Alexandre Papas

In 2000, Abduwäli Äli published a historical novel (tarikhi romani) written in Uyghur and completed in 1998, about Afaq Khoja, the famous Sufi who ruled over Kashgharia in the late seventeenth century, along with other novels dealing with his ancestors (the Makhdumzadas) and his heirs (the so called Turghaq Khojalar). The two-volume book is a highly critical narrative of Sufi holy men in Eastern Turkestan; it belongs to a subgenre that I suggest to call ‘anti-hagiographic literature’.

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