The public proclamation of pro-ʿAlid sentiment, encouraged under the Timurids, became dangerous when veneration of ʿAlī and his descendants began to be associated with sympathies for the Shiʿi Safavids. Although the Safavid state rapidly became a major political threat to its neighbors, the gradual conversion of the majority of Iran’s Sunni population to Shiʿism under Safavid rule caused even greater distress in Sunni Central Asia from a religious standpoint. Within the tumultuous religio-political environment of the early sixteenth century, we find Aghā-yi Buzurg and her disciples in Mawarannahr, where they continued the Timurid-era tradition of ʿAlid devotion under Shibanid rule. It is within this socioreligious context that Aghā-yi Buzurg’s veneration of the ahl al-bayt and the centrality of ʿAlidism in the Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib are examined in Chapter 2.